Home » Latest » TRENDING NOW » CollegeHumor is Shutting Down

CollegeHumor is Shutting Down

7

81 0 TRENDING NOW

6.7

SaveSavedRemoved 2

CollegeHumor just found the most illegal way possible to keep the lights on.

Released August 5, 2019, “CollegeHumor is Shutting Down” is a scripted CH Originals sketch, not a press release. It stars Katie Marovitch as the office’s most unhinged employee, and it plays the company’s real financial anxiety for laughs by handing the whole operation to her via a cocaine ring run out of the break room. The video went up on YouTube and on CollegeHumor’s subscription service, Dropout, the same day.

• The sketch opens with CollegeHumor losing a “vital, annoying” investor, putting the company on the verge of shutting down.
• Katie Marovitch steps in to save the outlet, funding operations through an absurd cocaine-trafficking scheme run out of the office.
• The premise leans on a recurring CollegeHumor bit — seen in sketches like “Katie Marovitch Is Unbreakable” — where Marovitch is played as a sociopathic, criminal presence among her coworkers.

A Company on the Brink

The sketch’s setup is simple and deliberately close to home: an investor CollegeHumor depended on — described in-universe as important but insufferable — pulls out, and suddenly the whole staff is staring down the possibility of the doors closing. It’s a bit that only works because CollegeHumor’s audience already knows the site runs lean and scrappy, so the writers lean into that reality rather than away from it, then detonate it with the most ridiculous fix imaginable.

Katie’s Solution

Enter Katie Marovitch, who doesn’t pitch a rebrand or a new ad deal — she pitches crime. The company’s survival lands, as the brief puts it, in her “little coke-dealing hands,” and from there the sketch turns the office into a chaotic front for a drug operation while everyone else tries to keep pretending it’s a normal Tuesday at work.

The fate of the company falls into Katie’s little coke-dealing hands.

The Running Gag Behind the Joke

None of this comes out of nowhere. CollegeHumor had already built a recurring gag around Marovitch playing an unhinged, borderline-sociopathic version of herself in the office, most notably in “Katie Marovitch Is Unbreakable.” “CollegeHumor is Shutting Down” is basically that character getting the keys to the whole company, which is what makes the escalation land — regular viewers know exactly what kind of trouble she’s capable of before she says a word.

The Necessity of Dropout Integration

The timing wasn’t random. CollegeHumor released the sketch exclusively under the CH Originals banner as part of the push to drive subscriptions to Dropout, the paid streaming arm the company was building out through 2019. A sketch about the company itself nearly folding, saved only by its most chaotic cast member, is exactly the kind of self-aware bit that plays well with a fanbase being asked to pay for more of it.

CollegeHumor had been leaning on this brand of workplace self-parody for years, the same instinct that shows up across sketches built on office dysfunction and cast members turning on each other for a punchline — the kind of dynamic fans of actors who treat their co-stars like trash recognize even when it’s played for comedy instead of drama. It’s also part of a longer tradition of cold-open-style sketch chaos that outlets from SNL to CollegeHumor have mined for years, not far removed from the escalating absurdity of a bit like Message from the President Cold Open – SNL.

Marovitch’s coke-dealing office manager never gets a sequel titled “CollegeHumor is Shutting Down Again,” but the joke didn’t need one — it landed exactly where CH Originals wanted it, as a five-minute pitch for Dropout dressed up as the company eating itself alive.