"Are y'all ready?" "Mmmmmmmmmm!"
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The Round Table Game Show is a comedy series created by Atlanta-based actress and influencer Melonie "Melo" Torres and her fiancé Chase Brown. Springing from Torres' annoyance at online personalities whose "deep thoughts" are actually very shallow, it started out as parody skits and then evolved into its current format, a play on the "you laugh, you lose" challenge where Torres and a group of her friends sit at a couch or table and tell each other jokes and fake deep thoughts to try to make each other laugh; those who break have to leave the group until (usually) only one remains.Left to right
While the cast has varied from episode to episode, the core group consists of Melo, Tee Sanders (Tee), Beverly Buo (Bev), Jordan Johnson (Jojo), Vanessa Damaris (Nessie), Whitney Code (Whit), Anjali Persad (Anj), and Heather Tamera McLaughlin (Mera). Chase is the main cameraman, and sometimes acts as a judge on if someone laughs, complete with a yellow penalty flag.
The first episode was released in July 2024; the fifth season ended in early 2026. Episodes, clips, and compilations are posted on the social media pages for all the participants, as well as Chase and Melo's YouTube page
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Provides examples of:
- Actually Pretty Funny: Nessie cracks up when Tee makes a joke about the result of trying to motorboat her — a concussion.Nessie: You try to motorboat me, you might as well knock your head against the wall!
- Black Comedy: Some of the jokes can get really dark; Bev is especially prone to dishing these out, such as:What do you call an emo white girl? A cutting board.
What's one good thing that R. Kelly does for the community? He drives slow in school zones.
There's nothing scarier than a mosquito coming out of Magic Johnson's house.
I knew an old, white dyslexic man. He didn't like gingers. - Brief Accent Imitation:
- Bev, Melo, and Anj will occasionally tell jokes in (respectively) exaggerated African, Latin American, and Indian accents for added humor.
- Whit took out Anj and Jojo with a joke about Anj's uncle answering when she presses 1 for English, complete with accent and stuttering to simulate bad phone reception.
- Call-Back: In some of the season 5 episodes, Tee and Anj are wearing Jay Jay the Jet Plane shirts, referencing a joke from season 3 where Joy says that Tee looks like JayJay.
- Catchphrase:
- "See you later, [X]" or "Bye bye, [X]" when someone laughs. Of everyone, Jojo is best known for her struggles (and frequent failures) to keep from breaking, to the point that "See You Later Jojo" shirts were printed and worn in some episodes.
- In the first season, one of Tee's lines was "If it involves running....it doesn't involve me." This also ended up on shirts in some episodes.
- Corpsing: The point of the show; anyone who laughs at any point is eliminated and has to leave the table/couch and watch from the sidelines, although they can crack jokes and act as a peanut gallery to everyone still playing. Along with the jokes, a lot of the humor in each episode comes from the ladies trying (and often failing) to not laugh, especially Jojo. They've also taken themselves and others out several times by cracking up while just trying to tell a joke (Nessie being particularly prone to this) and riffing on people's jokes, such as when Anj, after laughing at one of Tee's jokes, plays along with it and breaks Tee, Whit, and Melo at once, giving Zaynah the win.
- Difficulty Spike: When it gets down to 3-4 players, the challenge gets increased by everyone who's not telling a joke having to hold a mouthful of water and not spew.
- Fun with Acronyms: One of Tee's jokes:I used to be a ho when I was with men, so bad it gave me PTSD — Pussy Tryna Slow Down.
- Get Out!: Played for laughs as someone who tells a really foul joke or whose laughing is on the verge of getting someone else to laugh will sometimes be told to leave.Bev: [after Nessie tells a sus joke] You need to leave!Tee: [after Nessie gets taken out by Whit] Go on, Nessie! Slide out, Nessie!
Nessie: No, I got ammunition!Jojo: [from the couch after being eliminated] Can I get a laugh pass?
Tee and Nessie: No!
[Whit starts laughing and Tee waves at her to leave the table while struggling to not laugh] - N-Word Privileges: While the actual N-word is very rarely dropped, since everyone in the group is a person of color, they routinely make racial/ethnic jokes, along with LGBT jokes since Tee and Anj are both LGBT, jokes from and about Mera regarding her dwarfism, and fat jokes from Bev and Tee, who are both bigger women.Bev: What's black and brown people's national anthem? [Beat. She starts singing "Row Row Row Your Boat"]
Melo: What does a Mexican say to the goodies before he eats them? "Yo quiero Taco Bell!"
Tee: Dating straight women is like having a piece of cake in my house. It's not good for me, and it's not gonna last, but I'mma eat it.
Mera: I wanted to join the military...but they said they would use me as a missile. [Beat. She makes a sudden 'taking off' gesture with the mic that breaks Melo] - Opening Narration: Melo introduces each episode with:Melo: What's up, y'all, and welcome back to another episode of the Round Table Game Show, where we'll be sharing our best fake deep quotes with the goal of making each other laugh. The rules are simple: If you laugh, you are out, and we must affirm everyone's quotes. Are y'all ready?
The group: Mmmmmmmmmm! - Pun: Count on multiple per episode; Jojo is quite fond of them.Jojo: Hey, Anj? Was that wignote expensive? How much did you have toupee for it?
Bev: I got ghosted by a wheelchair stud. I guess she wheelie wasn't feeling the spark!
Nessie: If amputees could do karate...would that be called partial arts?
Whit: My soup told a joke...and it was stewpid! - Running Gag:
- Melo's fondness for jokes about doing kegels.
- During the first season, when Chantelle made appearances, she would pull out a notepad and exaggeratedly flip through it before telling a joke, which often broke someone. In one episode, she got Tee out by tearing out a page and handing it to her, then asking her to pick it up after she dropped it.
- Jojo asking for a laugh pass and trying to argue whether or not she's laughed.
- The song-and-dance bit done when the water bottles are given out for the challenge.
- Spit Take: The inevitable result of someone laughing during the water-in-the-mouth challenge, sometimes resulting in other people getting sprayed.
- Stunned Silence: The really dark or oh-she-really-went-there jokes leave most or all of the group blue-screened, such as Bev's aforementioned emo girl and national anthem jokes and one from Anj that left Tee stunned for a full 40 seconds.
- The Take: Shocked Gasps and Eye Takes are a frequent reaction to the darker jokes, the latter especially from Tee, Anj, Whit, and Mera.
- Toilet Humor: It's not a staple of anyone's humor, but such jokes do come up occasionally.Tee: I blocked Whitney from calling me, once. She farted on the phone, I don't like to be gaslit.
Bev: If you take a dump in an elevator...is that taking shit to the next level?
Melo: My period spoke to me. Know what it said? "Bomboclot!" - Uranus Is Showing: One of Tee's jokes from Season 4:If R. Kelly was an astronaut...I think every planet would be safe except Uranus.
