"The Greatest Freakout Ever" series was a big thing back in 2008, when a YouTube user who goes by the name of Wafflepwn (hence the series being titled as such on IMDb) first uploaded a video of his older brother Stephen freaking out. Although he didn't expect it, the video went viral with about 100 million views currently, resulting in more similar uploads. It has now been a thing for eleven years now, the most recent episode being uploaded about a year ago in 2019. Overall, one definitely can't take this seriously as being a real series in the regular sense of the word: each 'episode' is more like a home movie video shot by a low-quality camera, making it not really qualify to be on IMDb, but since it is, I might as well just write a decent review for it since I enjoyed it.
I first learned about the series through my YouTube recommended. After seeing the first episode, I just had to keep watching them because they were pretty entertaining, centering around the annoying younger brother Jack filming his psychopathic teenage brother Stephen losing his temper. The one thing that bothered me was the realism. For instance, the third episode: Stephen gets a truck for his birthday which has graffiti all over it. Just because it isn't a new truck that has been badly damaged, Stephen of course loses his temper and takes a baseball bat to it. Seeing such ungrateful behavior disturbed me somewhat, even if watching the kid wreck everything was admittedly entertaining.
I felt like this for only a little bit at first, but after awhile it stopped bothering me. Then, I learned the big news: none of it was real. Every video was staged specifically, no scripts or anything, but merely ad-libbed by the whole family. The evidence of a phone call interview with Stephen's mom and a second shoot of the aforementioned episode three surfacing on the Internet was enough for most people to admit the truth. Except for those who believed those two pieces of evidence were merely there to cover up the fact everything was in fact real. After this, the sheer greatness of the series struck me: the acting is just amazing. Great dialogue, amazing performances, and such an incredible amount of realism surrounding really makes it convincing. The setups for each episode are perfect and the action mostly is great. The fact that it's filmed with such a poor camera increases the reality, and when the mother tells Jack to please stop filming this just makes it look all the more like an actual situation.
At least, this was true of the earlier episodes. The later episodes really weren't as good, with the exception of some. A few of them don't really contain any real action, for instance "The Great Freakout Ever 18" where Jack shows Stephen a kitten when he knows his brother doesn't like cats. This episode was so brief and plotless that there really wasn't much of a freakout going on. The most recent upload, "The Greatest Freakout Ever 36" seems to have brought back some of the original charm in a better setup, and despite the fact Stephen is an adult in his twenties now he's still as terrific an actor as the rest of them.
I would give it a ten star except these episodes should work for kids as well. After all, what adults are still going to be sitting at home and browsing YouTube for popular videos? So yeah, the episodes should be clean right? Wrong, to increase the realism even further some of them make use of bad language, particularly as the characters got older. Sometimes, and while I normally wouldn't condone this, the use of such language did work ("The Greatest Freakout Ever 6" is an outstanding episode and uses a little of this) but when it became too harsh and frequent without improving the dialogue in any way it just wasn't necessary.
To conclude, this really is a fun channel that started back in the prime days of YouTube. Stuff like this passed as great content back then, I don't see why it can't now. Entertaining stuff with outstanding dialogue and action, and while some of the uploads are weaker than others, a lot of it is gold. One of those YouTube things that will never die.
I first learned about the series through my YouTube recommended. After seeing the first episode, I just had to keep watching them because they were pretty entertaining, centering around the annoying younger brother Jack filming his psychopathic teenage brother Stephen losing his temper. The one thing that bothered me was the realism. For instance, the third episode: Stephen gets a truck for his birthday which has graffiti all over it. Just because it isn't a new truck that has been badly damaged, Stephen of course loses his temper and takes a baseball bat to it. Seeing such ungrateful behavior disturbed me somewhat, even if watching the kid wreck everything was admittedly entertaining.
I felt like this for only a little bit at first, but after awhile it stopped bothering me. Then, I learned the big news: none of it was real. Every video was staged specifically, no scripts or anything, but merely ad-libbed by the whole family. The evidence of a phone call interview with Stephen's mom and a second shoot of the aforementioned episode three surfacing on the Internet was enough for most people to admit the truth. Except for those who believed those two pieces of evidence were merely there to cover up the fact everything was in fact real. After this, the sheer greatness of the series struck me: the acting is just amazing. Great dialogue, amazing performances, and such an incredible amount of realism surrounding really makes it convincing. The setups for each episode are perfect and the action mostly is great. The fact that it's filmed with such a poor camera increases the reality, and when the mother tells Jack to please stop filming this just makes it look all the more like an actual situation.
At least, this was true of the earlier episodes. The later episodes really weren't as good, with the exception of some. A few of them don't really contain any real action, for instance "The Great Freakout Ever 18" where Jack shows Stephen a kitten when he knows his brother doesn't like cats. This episode was so brief and plotless that there really wasn't much of a freakout going on. The most recent upload, "The Greatest Freakout Ever 36" seems to have brought back some of the original charm in a better setup, and despite the fact Stephen is an adult in his twenties now he's still as terrific an actor as the rest of them.
I would give it a ten star except these episodes should work for kids as well. After all, what adults are still going to be sitting at home and browsing YouTube for popular videos? So yeah, the episodes should be clean right? Wrong, to increase the realism even further some of them make use of bad language, particularly as the characters got older. Sometimes, and while I normally wouldn't condone this, the use of such language did work ("The Greatest Freakout Ever 6" is an outstanding episode and uses a little of this) but when it became too harsh and frequent without improving the dialogue in any way it just wasn't necessary.
To conclude, this really is a fun channel that started back in the prime days of YouTube. Stuff like this passed as great content back then, I don't see why it can't now. Entertaining stuff with outstanding dialogue and action, and while some of the uploads are weaker than others, a lot of it is gold. One of those YouTube things that will never die.