Comedy Bang Bang: The Podcast · Earwolf and Scott Aukerman

Best of 2025 Pt. 1

·2 hr 42 min

Best of 2025 Part 1 opens with the holiday season already on the doorstep. Scott Aukerman immediately drags the Babadook into the Star Wars cantina, parks him beside the devil, and refuses to let the image stay simple for even one polite second. It never does stay simple. The gag gets tightened, reopened, and treated like a serious casting note until the room is talking about double takes, camera awareness, and the strange office-worker dignity of a monster in a hat. That is the tone. The show then moves through holiday bookkeeping, noting that it is about three days out from Christmas, four days out from Kwanzaa and Boxing Day, and that Hanukkah is already in the rear view. Scott frames the installment as Best of 2025 Part 1 and points toward Thursday, Christmas Day, as the next stop in the countdown. Then comes Deli Boys. The title gets explained, the premise gets praised, and the conversation turns into a blunt request for viewers to finish the season so the completion rate holds up and maybe helps secure a second season. The pitch is explicit. The room treats streaming math like a civic duty, and the whole exchange feels like a plug that has been chased down a hallway and forced to apologize for itself. Miss Macy follows. She enters as one of the First Timers Club newcomers with a routine wellness check from the Hollywood Cabal, which is exactly the kind of deadpan bureaucratic nonsense this show can turn into a full scene before anyone has time to blink. The language starts to wobble. Her explanation of actors living a severed life, with their innie in Hollywood and their outie elsewhere, gives Scott exactly the kind of mock-formal nonsense he loves to keep poking until it squeals. The room keeps piling on. What starts as a guest intro quickly becomes a polite interrogation of phrasing, workplace identity, and the absurd logistics of being split in two for the convenience of show business. The special keeps that holiday looseness without ever losing the sense that every word is one misfire away from becoming a bit. Scott and the guests keep taking small phrases too seriously, then treating those over-precise fixes like they were the only sane response in the room. Every plug becomes a bit. Every bit becomes a mock memo. Every memo becomes another excuse to name a devil, a Babadook, or a corporate outie. The countdown framing gives the episode a deadline, but the show uses that deadline as fuel instead of pressure. It wants the listener to feel the calendar ticking while the jokes get stranger. By the close, the promise is not subtle. Thursday is coming, the top 10 is coming, and the rest of the best-of run is clearly going to keep mining the same habit of turning normal phrasing into a small disaster. The result is a holiday special that feels loose on purpose, lively in the moment, and fully committed to making one ridiculous image do far too much work.

As heard by us

Holiday best-of chaos that keeps turning one small premise into a bigger bit.

Best of 2025 Part 1 opens with a Babadook-in-the-cantina riff and soon slides into Miss Macy's Hollywood Cabal wellness check, which gives the episode its sharpest comic contrast.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want holiday chaos, a Babadook pitch, and zero respect for normal structure.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify