The Jason Rickard Show

***The Jason Rickard Show*** is an American sketch comedy television series which was broadcast on FX from February 7, 2014 to August 26, 2022. The series stars Jason Rickard in various sketches alongside Derek Bauer, Jennie Charles, Laura Gregory, Robbie Jensen, Bruce Lionel, Luciano Montero, Jabari Preston, Mariana Ricardo, and Perry Suzuki. It was produced by The Jason Rickard Company and FX Studios.

The show is described by Rickard as being "nightmarish public-access" and "private-access anti-vision". It often recognized for its blend of satire and cringe humor, unique editing and visual effects, and synthwave/vaporwave soundtrack. Each episode is made up of public-access-style musical acts, bizarre commercials for nonexistent products, faux film trailers, satirical public service announcements, and/or fake archived broadcast tapes. The series was edited by Justin Fischer, who also edited many of Rickard's YouTube videos in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

*The Jason Rickard Show* has received positive critical reception. It was particularly praised for its editing, acting, humor blending, and music. It was nominated for numerous awards, including 22 Primetime Emmy Awards and six Saturn Awards, one of which was "Series of the Year" in 2019. It was ranked no. 3 on TV.net's Top 50 Most Legendary 2010s Shows (2019), and no. 1 on Teletwist's Top 25 Greatest Sketch Comedies of all Time (2022). It successfully spawned three spin-off series: *Check It Out! with Dr. Finn Biscuit* (2018–2021), *Enjoy the Arts! with August Evening* (2022–present), and *Suburban Werewolf* (2022–present).

## Format

*Main article: List of The Jason Rickard Show characters and sketches*
Each episode of *Living Color* consists of three to five sketches, and the series has a number of recurring sketches. The writing and editing styles take their influence from various elements and forms of mass media, including films, talk shows, soap operas, and infomercials.

Most of the show's characters are portrayed by the main ten cast members, who also star in the recurring segments. However, celebrities frequently appear in cameos. Notable guests include Brad Checker, Kevin Hearst, Jackie Morgan, John C. Reilly, Louie Stanford, and Kenji Yamazaki.

## Production

### Development

Rickard's career began on YouTube, where he uploaded videos of himself performing in several standalone comedy sketches, sometimes alongside his friends—namely Drake Dougstein and Bryan "Spark" MacLeod. These short videos racked up millions of views individually, and Rickard quickly reached one million subscribers. His content quickly caught the attention of television executive Samuel Rockwheel, who met Rickard in Burbank, California June 2010 and quickly struck a friendship with him.

Not long after Rickard founded The Jason Rickard Company, in late 2011, Rockwheel became the President of FX Networks, and contacted Rickard to ask him about working on a new television show for the network. Rickard initially chose a talk show parody, but after coming up with numerous ideas for that project, he combined them all into one half-hour sketch comedy show. In his 2015 book *Jason Rickard's Book... in Living Color*, Rickard cited classic sketch comedies such as ABC's *On the Air with Louie and Marco* (1970–1979) and CBS's *The Mickey Pearson Show* (1972–1981) as influences for his show.

Development began under the working title ***The Jason Rickard Program***. It was later renamed ***Laugh It Up with Jason Rickard*** and ***Jason Rickard in a World of Pain***. Shortly before casting began, the production team finally settled on *The Jason Rickard Show*.

### Casting

Kevin Chearie, the show's casting director specifically wanted to add nine more people to the main cast. After watching over sixty actors auditioned, he finally settled on Rickard, Derek Bauer, Jennie Charles, Laura Gregory, Robbie Jensen, Bruce Lionel, Luciano Montero, Jabari Preston, Mariana Ricardo, and Perry Suzuki.

The main ten cast members played most of the show's recurring characters. Over the series' run, only seven recurring characters were played by other actors, each appearing in only one sketch per appearance:

* Bobbi (Wendi Chen; season 1)
* Christian J. Christian (Bruce Lyndon; seasons 7–8)
* Gregorio (Mario Mendez; entire run)
* Nicole Fuentes (Daniela Vazquez; seasons 1–3)
* Jake (Conner Fredrick; seasons 5–6)
* Mrs. Wopperfudge (Kennedy Garrison; seasons 2–8)
* Zayden (Logan Ricki Novak; seasons 2–5)

### Filming and editing

The series was recorded in various locations around California, and the production crew frequently alternated between using single- and multi-camera setups. The production crew used various Sony cameras, most prominently the HDC-1500. The multi-camera setup was mostly used for talk show, television commercials, and soap opera segments. Due to the segments' varying styles, the show rotated between being filmed at 24 and 30 FPS.

*The Jason Rickard Show* was edited by Justin Fischer, who also edited most of Jason Rickard's YouTube videos from 2007 to 2013. Often times, the footage for certain segments would be piped through a videocassette recorder to simulate a low budget or archival video footage, though certain later episodes would simply use very similar digital video effects courtesy of Starpad Create.

## Episodes

*Main article: List of The Jason Rickard Show episodes*