Portfolio: Vancouver Web Series “Average Dicks” Delivers Brilliant, Absurd Comedy (2015)

Originally published on BestComedyTickets.com, December 8, 2015 WrittenBy Gary Miller

The internet is a terrifying place to grow up. You can find anything and everything—and probably did. It’s a world with its own language, rules, and dark corners. I learned early on you can Rule 34 a blue waffle while watching two girls enjoy a cup, and somehow still leave room to feel guilty about your browser history. How many of us have felt that twinge of fear when someone else touches our laptop?

And really, be honest how many times have you googled “Average Dicks” just out of curiosity?

Well now, you’ve got an excuse.

Average Dicks (2015)

The Rise of the Web Series

Thanks to the democratization of digital media, comedians and creators no longer need a greenlight from Hollywood to make something funny. Just ask the teams behind Workaholics, The Lonely Island, Broad City, or Drunk History. What used to be short-form experiments online are now award-winning television shows and major studio properties.

Vancouver-based This Is A Spoon Studios LTD is part of that wave of fearless creators making content on their own terms. The team is responsible for Taking My Parents to Burning Man and Shooting: The Musical—the latter of which earned actor Bruce Novakowski a Best Actor award at the Canadian Film Festival. Taking My Parents to Burning Man racked up accolades across the festival circuit, including wins at Sonoma, Red Rock, Newport Beach, and Maui.

Now, with their latest project Average Dicks, the team is back with something they call “brilliant stupidity” a smart, absurd, and refreshingly unfiltered web series that mixes genre, tone, and toilet humor in all the best ways.

Meet the Team: Joel Ashton McCarthy & Mike Doaga

We caught up with Joel Ashton McCarthy (Pastor Cody) and Mike Doaga (Mike) to talk about the show, their writing process, and how Average Dicks came to life.

Mike and Joel have been collaborating since they were sixteen. Their shared comedic sensibility comes from real-life experiences—and maybe a bit too much time spent together.

“When writing the show, it’s very difficult to know where one ends and the other begins,” says Mike. “We’re an unbeatable team at movie trivia. When you’re writing alone, your partner is the negative voice inside your head. When you have a partner, you can bounce ideas off each other and trust their taste.”

“Partnership and deadlines are two great ways to beat writer’s block.”

Brainstorming usually happened on long, unstructured walks. Scriptwriting, however, was more methodical—divided between the two of them before coming back together.

Web Series vs. Feature Films

According to Joel, creating a web series opens up opportunities for chaos that a feature film just doesn’t allow.

“With a feature, you’re locked into one story you can’t sidetrack too much without upsetting the audience. With a series, you can take things in weird directions as long as you keep using the same characters. Average Dicks had no network telling us what to do. So we got to switch genres, break rules, and just have fun.”

That flexibility allowed Average Dicks to evolve organically—characters changed mid-season, villains became heroes, and plot points were invented on the fly. Case in point: a throwaway lizard people joke in episode one became the core of the finale.

“Sometimes, you don’t know what a show is until you’re done making it,” Joel adds.

Casting From Community

Joel and Mike leaned on their film community in Vancouver, pulling from the talent they’d worked with on previous projects.

“We had just wrapped Shooting: The Musical, where we held proper casting sessions,” Joel explains. “So we wrote characters for actors we loved working with and played to their strengths. It made the series feel tight and fun because everyone knew each other.”

Building a Scene in Vancouver

While the Vancouver indie film scene is still finding its identity, it’s growing fast—and web series are at the center of that growth.

“Our stuff tends to get more love outside of Vancouver,” Mike says. “But that’s changing. There’s a great monthly competition called Vanchan where ten web series enter and five move on. It’s the best community for web creators I’ve found so far.”

How It All Started (Hint: Rap)

Average Dicks actually has its roots in an old, never-produced rap web series.

“Joel and I had a parody rap group called The J-Man Quartet back in the day,” Mike explains. “We wrote scripts for a web series that never got made. Four years later, we read one of those old scripts out loud one where my character sucks a dick and our roommate Rob laughed out loud. That moment kickstarted the whole show.”

They named a character after Rob in honor of that laugh (and because he handled all their sound design). The first five episodes were shot in two weeks with next to no budget and a lot of favors. After a short hiatus, they stitched together a finale that somehow tied the madness together.

Crafting the Finale

“It was satisfying to retroactively map out logic to the total absurdity of our earlier episodes,” says Joel. “We thought it was going to be just another stoner comedy but it ended up with way more heart and story than we expected.”

“Characters started to develop on their own,” Mike adds. “Agent 69 was originally going to be a hillbilly, but our actor dropped out. We’d just worked with John Fitzgerald the day before—he played a secret agent so we pivoted. That one decision changed everything.”

What started as a goofy, anything-goes stoner comedy became something more layered. By the finale, the butt-fucking pastor and the angry roommate fall in love and become surrogate parents. Even the villains have charm and dimension.

“The best comedy comes from characters you believe in even in the most warped situations,” says Mike. “That’s where good acting and writing meet.”

What’s Next?

Mike is currently studying at the Atlantic Acting School in New York (founded by William H. Macy and David Mamet), and Joel continues to lead new projects at This Is A Spoon Studios. The duo is currently co-writing an untitled horror-comedy feature, which promises to deliver more of their signature absurdity.

Until then, we recommend you check out Average Dicks. Not just because it’s hilarious, but because now if someone finds that phrase in your browser history you can say it’s research.