Good Session

Brent Gill knows what he’s doing. The cre­ator and pro­duc­er of Good Ses­sion has thought of every detail to make his 1^st, 3^rd, and some­times 5^th Sun­day of each month at Creek and the Cave a wild­ly enter­tain­ing expe­ri­ence. The long­time host of Boul­der Com­e­dy Show, MC of Hole Heck­lers and Good Ses­sion, Gill’s high ener­gy trans­lates into turn­ing every­thing said on stage and off stage into an excuse to bel­ly laugh.

The moment you’re seat­ed, you notice two cards on your table — a Ques­tion card and a dif­fer­ent col­or Response card each with a dif­fer­ent QR code. Each audi­ence mem­ber can sub­mit a Ques­tion about some per­son­al dilem­ma either before or dur­ing the show. Dur­ing the show, as Gill posts each new ques­tion on the screen, the audi­ence can sub­mit a response adding to a ful­ly inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence. All ques­tions and respons­es are anony­mous so there’s a lot of raw hon­esty on dis­play. The three com­e­dy pan­elists see the Ques­tions and Respons­es in a rolling chat that only they can see on the tablets placed in front of them. The show is a tech­no­log­i­cal won­der for cre­at­ing such a high­ly inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence for the audi­ence and the pan­elists, but you nev­er feel like the show gets bogged down in the technology. 

There seemed to be a lot of flow­ing liba­tions in the audi­ence as Respons­es were sub­mit­ted as Ques­tions and vice ver­sa, but Gill knows that’s par for the course (that’s a fun ref­er­ence to his oth­er show Hole Heck­lers). Or maybe the audi­ence laughs because a new Ques­tion appears on the screen before the pan­elists are done riff­ing on the cur­rent ques­tion. And the inevitable heck­lers always throw a wrench in any plan. With as much struc­ture as Gill has put in place for Good Ses­sion, if things don’t go per­fect­ly, well, hell, that’s not a prob­lem, that’s just anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to have a laugh. 

The enter­tain­ment begins before the show starts with a slide show scrolling through ques­tions from past shows and pre­views of the evening’s pan­elists. On our par­tic­u­lar evening, we saw Pey­ton Rud­dy, Ruby Set­nik, and the incred­i­ble Sam Tal­lent (who came in for the show after a week­end head­lin­ing in Cleveland).

When the show prompt­ly begins at 6pm, the fire­works start instant­ly. Gill wel­comes the audi­ence, intro­duces the com­ic pan­elists, the on-stage tech (Don­na Lee) and the first ques­tion pops up on the screen (it hap­pened to be one I sub­mit­ted, so I was hooked into the expe­ri­ence imme­di­ate­ly). The comics aren’t doing sets tonight; the show is impro­vised enter­tain­ment from start to finish.The vibe is clas­sic Hol­ly­wood Squares with comics riff­ing on the ques­tion, riff­ing with each oth­er, and giv­ing the audi­ence ridicu­lous call­backs. A par­tic­u­lar­ly hilar­i­ous thread through­out this par­tic­u­lar show was a return to the open­ing lyrics of ​“The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. The unpre­dictable ener­gy cre­at­ed by new ques­tions, new audi­ences, and new com­ic pan­elists for each show guar­an­tees a good time. The great expe­ri­ence on our par­tic­u­lar night is the one con­sis­tent through­line you can expect at every Good Session.

The audi­ence laughs at the ques­tion, the pan­elists do their best to answer, but if you had­n’t noticed, this isn’t real therapy. 

As more than a dozen ques­tions appear on the screen over the course of the evening, the pan­elists take turns giv­ing advice, or in the case of the show I watched, some­times (prob­a­bly every time) the pan­elists just poke fun at one anoth­er. Good Ses­sion isn’t a roast show, and one could hard­ly qual­i­fy it as a true ther­a­py show, but it is very focused on get­ting the audi­ence to par­tic­i­pate in a unique way. It’s like tak­ing sug­ges­tions from the crowd, but bet­ter. After all of the evening’s ques­tions were asked and hard­ly answered, and it’s time to wrap up, Gill shares anoth­er detail with his audi­ence. Good Ses­sion isn’t real ther­a­py, but if some­one in the audi­ence needs it, there’s a dis­count code pro­vid­ed to Bet­ter Help, an online pur­vey­or of cre­den­tialed therapists.

If you’ve got a fever and you need a pre­scrip­tion for laugh ther­a­py, look no fur­ther than Good Ses­sion for the cure.