"Everyone's favorite hosts, Wise and Heimer"
"Welcome to the Wisenheimers Show, my name's Yotam and with me is Max, sit back and relax..."
— Yotam Perel
Wisenheimers is a comedy podcast that started in early 2010 and ended in January 2012, ran by popular internet flash cartoonists Yotam Perel and Max Gilardi.
It lasted for 46 episodes before Max and Yotam decided to end it. In January 2012 they recorded an extra episode as a finale, and during the summer of 2012 Yotam made another short bonus episode out of a skype call between him and Max, adding up to a total of 48 episodes.
The podcast can be downloaded for free on iTunes and from the archives of Max's website.
This podcast uses the following tropes:
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: This particular back and forth from the "Bella's song" bonus episode:Max: You're a freak.
Yotam: You're a Freakazoid!
Max: You're an Animaniac!
Yotam: You're a Real Monster!
Max: Oh, you ain't nothing but a damn Tiny Toon!
Yotam: You're... You're Bobby's World!
Max: Oh wow, that makes sense... - Beyond the Impossible: The Pizza Vampire describes his own nationality as being half spanish, a quarter eskimo, a third indian and 1% every other nationality in the world, adding up to an inexplicable 106%.
- Big Guy, Little Guy: The fact that Yotam is short and Max is a "tallman" is often brought up during the show.
- Book Dumb: During an attempt to do some Mad Libs on the show, Yotam shows his ignorance of the English grammar by constantly forgetting what nouns, adjectives and adverbs are.Yotam to the audience: This is "Learning English with Retarded Jews".
- Bragging Theme Tune: The show's first intro, sung by Max."This is a podcast all about ME! Your best, best friend, MAX GI-LAR-DI!"
- Can't Take Criticism: Max can be extremely touchy and self-conscious when it comes to his work in animation or his physical appearance. At one point he officially forbid people to draw fanart of him because people were drawing him ugly on purpose or just got his physique completely wrong.Yotam: You have to understand that a lot of people are gonna like your stuff but it's never gonna be everybody!
* beat*
Max: This is the last show... - Cannot Tell a Joke: Yotam has a few moments like this during the show, and is called out by Max every single time.
- Catchphrase:
- Max has his trademark disapproving "Mmmmh." and "I don't know about that." Honorable mention to "That's inappropriate."
- Yotam seems to really like the words "body", "baby" and "sugoi". He also frequently ends sentences with "ok bye!" which Max initially found annoying but eventually started saying himself.Max: "Ok bye"? Are you going to leave?
Yotam: That's just a thing that I say, come on.
Max: Well, it's not funny and it's not cute.
Yotam: It's both and you know it. - Mabel's catchphrase is "Sure, not bad"
- Petunia's catchphrase is "Just sayin'!!!!!"
- Vincent Valberg doesn't miss any opportunity to remind the audience that he's 27 and he has DEBT. DEBT! AT 27!
- Max's "Check it out at X.com!"
- Crossover:
- Episode 34 "Strange cast" features Mickey the Dick from Max's cartoon series Wacky Game Jokez, 4 Kidz!. Part of the audio from that episode was animated by Max and used as a WGJ 4 K fanmail special.
- Towards the end of the show, Mike David from Red Bar Radio wanted to make an appearance in an episode after having talked to Yotam via e-mail. Max wasn't up for it because he feared it would have been too awkward and they would have nothing to talk about so they eventually gave up on that idea.
- Comedic Sociopathy: Fuels most of the show and both Max and Yotam make ample use of this kind of humor, though Max occasionally feels guilty about it, especially if it happens to involve real people or real life events. Yotam on the other hand only draws the line to not make fun of people he knows personally.
- Crying Wolf: Because of Yotam's weird sense of humor Max eventually reached a point where he had trouble believing anything Yotam said (most notably the notion of his brother being gay), much to Yotam's frustration.Max: Listen, your brother is straight, you're just being an asshole...
Yotam: What a strange way to be an asshole!
Max: You are ALL ABOUT coming up with weird ways to be an asshole! You wake up in the morning and say to yourself "How can I be an asshole in a confusing way today?" - Eating Contest: One of the pop-corn eating variety, to be specific. Featured on the official Wisenheimers youtube page.
- Evil Counterpart: Episode 38 features Dark Max, who has traveled from dimension X on behalf of the government to murder Yotam in every possible reality to prevent the destruction of the multiverse. He is described as being short, black, gay and having long "Egoraptor looking" hair, as opposed to Max who's quite tall, white, straight and has a shaved head.
- Freudian Slip: In episode 30 ("Awkward") Yotam accidentally calls Max by his ex girlfriend's name. Hilarity ensues.
- Funny Foreigner:
- Yotam. His weird accent and frequent mispronunciations are often a source of frustration/hilarity for Max, who often jokes about his country and culture.
- The Pizza Vampire is made of this trope. His accent constantly changes during the course of a conversation and his exact nationality is hilariously convoluted.
- I Have No Son!: The Pizza Vampire's father is none other than Count Dracula himself. Suffice to say, he's not very enthusiastic about his son's carreer as a pizza maker and refuses to aknowledge him as his son unless he chooses to continue the "family business".
- Insane Troll Logic: Once Max and Yotam were discussing how people with mental retardation have big dicks, which prompted Max to suggest that he should bang his head against a wall until he becomes retarded so his penis would grow in size.Max: That is iron-clad logic, Yotam.
- Kind Hearted Cat Lover: Yotam loves his two black female cats, Ubolnik and... Ubolnik. In one episode Max is surprised to discover that the one thing that can make Yotam sad is cat deaths.Max: Have we discovered the one thing that makes you sad? When a cat dies? Maybe Yotam does have a soul!
- Mad Libs Catchphrase: "Check it out, X.com!" Replace X with whatever Max and Yotam were talking about at the moment.
- No Name Given: The Pizza Vampire is only ever referred to with his full title, even though he supposedly has an actual name.Pizza Vampire: Did you ask me what my name is?
Mickey the Dick: No... I'm afraid to ask, to be honest. - Non Sequitur:
- Yotam does that from time to time, Max usually doesn't approve of it because he considers it a cheap form of humor.Yotam: I always go to job interviews in an astronaut suit, because I want to be an astronaut...
Max: He wears an astronaut suit you guys! Everybody laugh! Oh man, it's so ludicrous! It's a ludicrous idea! It's funny because he wouldn't really do that! - Yotam's intro gags also qualify. Max mostly finds them to be insulting.Yotam: Hey everyone, this is Wisenheimers episode 31, I'm Yotam the cutest and with me is the human equivalent of a pitchfork, Max Gilardi!
Max: OK, I'M HANGING UP RIGHT NOW. You should apologize and start over!
- Yotam does that from time to time, Max usually doesn't approve of it because he considers it a cheap form of humor.
- N-Word Privileges: Yotam is jewish yet he doesn't shy away from joking about the holocaust and nazis in the slightest.
- Odd Couple: Max and Yotam are polar opposites on almost every aspect, and that's probably the reason why they are best friends/mortal enemies.
- Our Vampires Are Different: The Pizza Vampire is anything but your typical vampire. He can turn into onion bread with bat wings, he is hurt by Seinfeld DVDs, he never sleeps and gets energy by making pizza.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Whenever Yotam is role-playing as a character, such as the Pizza Vampire or Bob Bubbers, he has trouble sticking to a single voice.Max: Why is it so hard for you to stick to a voice?
Yotam: I don't know, cause I, uh, I forget how I do them.
Max: As you're doing them!?
Yotam: Yeah! - Running Gag: Many of them.
- Either Max or Yotam declaring during the course of an episode that this is the "last episode" or the "last show". One of the episodes is even called "Last Show Cast"
- Max or Yotam saying "Yeah, I think it'll be fun." out of nowhere after they lost their train of thought during a particularly loose conversation.
- Max changing subject by shouting "E-MAILS!" after a few seconds of awkward silence at the end of an especially awkward conversation. (Apparently borrowed from the Mega64 podcast)
- Max's impression of Yotam's accent and awful stories.
- Scott Pilgrim became a running gag because it kept popping up a lot during conversations, especially in the early episodes.
- Most of Max and Yotam's skits where they play the part of comedy characters end up with Yotam's character asking out Max on a date.
- Almost every time Max was about to tell a story Yotam would start beatboxing as a musical accompaniment and Max would get distracted and immediately ask him to stop doing that.
- Self-Deprecation: This little excerpt where Max and Yotam try to figure out a name for the podcast in Episode 2:Yotam: Let's think about it, which word describes this podcast best?
Max: ..."mediocre".
Yotam: Yeah... "dummies". - Sixth Ranger: Maria from Poland. After talking to her for the first time during an episode where they took skype calls from listeners, both Max and Yotam immediately took a liking into Maria for her cuteness, innocence and foreign accent, so they made her the "third Wisenheimer" and gave her a small part on the show called "Maria Mail".
- Stealth Insult:Yotam: Wow, Max... You really don't like jokes!
Max: What do you mean? I love jokes! ... I love you!
Yotam: Aww, thanks Max! But it feels like you have trouble accepting my jokes.
Max: I feel like I just made a joke and you didn't even get it. - Straight Man and Wise Guy: Max typically plays the role of the straight man with a no-nonsense attitude (or as he says, the Squidward) while Yotam is the wise guy, but both have their fair share of... Wisenheimer moments.
- Tempting Fate: Max once got hit by a car because he thought that going for a walk in the middle of the road during a blackout that affected his whole city would be a good idea. Miraculously, he was completely unscathed by the event because he managed to throw himself onto the hood at the last second.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Max's drink of choice, Fresca, accompanies the show for the entirety of its run. Yotam even nicknames it "Francesca".
- Totally Radical: Max's parody of Scott Pilgrim talks like this.
- Unfortunate Names: An email by listener Andy Gaye had Max in tears laughing because of this, especially because it ended with the request to refrain from saying his name on the show. Max revealed it anyway and Yotam named the whole episode after him. Also adding to the irony, the animation which won the Wisenheimers Animation Contest was the one portraying that very segment from the show.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Part of the appeal of this podcast is the unique chemistry between Max and Yotam and how they always find new ways to get mad at each other over anything and yet remain best buds.
- Who Would Want to Watch Us?: Invoked almost verbatim by Max in episode 44 ("Eggplant")
