Stream It or Skip It: ‘Alpha Betas’ on YouTube Relies on Regressive “Gamer” Stereotypes To Power Its Meager Brand of Humor

Alpha Betas is an animated comedy starring YouTube creators Evan “VanossGaming” Fong, Brian “Terroriser” Hanby, Marcel “BasicallyIDoWrk” Cunningham, and Tyler “WILDCAT” Wine. It follows the group of four twenty-something gamers who comprise Alpha Team, a CIA-backed group gathered to keep order throughout the world of gaming. In this universe, video games power America’s electrical grid, with citizens one small glitch away from completely losing power. Auditor Darryl (Chris Parnell) finds the team’s existence dubious, as it costs the CIA more money than it’s worth, but team lead Allison (Paget Brewster) is dead set on proving Alpha Team is the best at what they do. Alpha Team must tackle their toughest mission yet or face an imminent shutdown — that is, if they can stop playing “Don’t Touch the Floor” long enough to do their jobs.

ALPHA BETAS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The stage is set: Omaha Beach, Normandy. A ship arrives at the shore in a reference to the now-infamous Saving Private Ryan scene. It’s only a few minutes until one of the platoon is shot in the head with a gory pop. The soldiers spread out and begin to attack the Nazis occupying the shore and beyond to gruesome effect.

The Gist: The CIA has control over much more than we think. Though unbeknownst to society at large, the electricity we use on a daily basis is actually generated by video game consoles. The government introduced gaming as a quick and free way to generate power for free, and that’s how the first system came to exist. Millions of gamers across the world provide power for homes and businesses, all while enjoying their favorite titles.

But that steady stream of power could be interrupted at any time. Should players encounter glitches that frustrate them enough to quit, that puts entire American power grids in jeopardy. That’s where Eddie (Evan Wong), Tommy (Tyler Wine), Buck (Brian Hanby), and Mason (Marcel Cunningham) come in. Alpha Team was assembled by the CIA to ensure these glitches never occur, these four work to keep gamers playing and the lights on. But Darryl (Chris Parnell) is out to pull the plug on the operation if it can’t tackle the latest pitfall: a glitch in Redhead Intervention, an obvious play on the Western-themed Red Dead Redemption.

That particular bug is keeping Area 51 online. Alpha Team must work to keep one of the AIs from going rogue and rendering the game unplayable. Under the tutelage of team leader Allison (Paget Brewster), Alpha Team must stop the AI and keep Darryl from shutting down their sector for good.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Comparisons will undoubtedly be made to the superior Rick and Morty or Solar Opposites, thanks to the pilot’s art style and familiar voices. But where it really belongs is with shows like Star Trek: Lower Decks and the kind of straight-to-streaming schlock that only rears its head on your favorite video platform when you can’t be bothered to press “play” on something else, like Daniel Tosh’s Brickleberry.

Our Take: Bear with us, here. For years, the CIA has spearheaded an initiative that gathers electricity generated by gamers through hours and hours of video games. Yes, the entirety of America’s power grid is somehow kept alive by way of a pastime that also requires electricity. It’s an Ourobouros of stupidity that kicks off a video game-centric comedy that’s keen on furthering harmful stereotypes that gamers are mindless idiots who can barely function in the real world. No one ever claimed Alpha Betas was an intellectual’s show.

Alpha Team, led by Allison’s ragtag bunch of twenty-somethings Eddie, Tommy, Buck, and Mason, routinely enters video games to ensure the show must go on, even when glitches occur. They’re apparently great at what they do, but they’re also mind-numbingly stupid, so you take the good with the bad, we suppose.

Alpha Team’s introduction comes as the four are sitting on a sofa in what appears to be a CIA-funded gamer house. They have a visitor at the door, but can’t be bothered to walk a few feet over. One by one the guys call a Tesla Cybertruck-like vehicle to their living room, use hover boots to try (and fail) to make it to the door, and call in a SWAT team on themselves. It’s a tasteless joke about swatting, a tactic that’s resulted in the death of real-world victims — a subject in poor taste given the tumultuous state of the video game streaming industry.

The team’s sweep through the Western game they must investigate is harmless enough, though dotted with bland action and jokey dialogue that feels less related to video game scenarios and more akin to action movie tropes. There’s a dim-witted villain who believes one member of Alpha Team captured the others, a play that appears to have been ripped straight from the pages of low-rent comedies like Netflix’s Paradise PD.

Out of three female characters in the pilot, CIA handler Ruby is relegated to monitoring Alpha Team’s in-game actions and begrudgingly dealing with their jabs. One of Alpha Team’s members also brought a sex doll resembling Ruby to work, a somewhat disturbing, off-handed joke that feels unnecessary. The only other woman in the show aside from Allison and Ruby is an in-game prostitute who offers a sex act “with her good hand.” Her alter ego, who you see later on in the show, has all of three lines, one of which includes the word “merked.”

Alpha Betas’ gross-out humor has been done before — and better (a joke about self-fellating oneself on TikTok falls pathetically flat), and it’s derivative at best. But if you want to turn your brain off for some absolutely mindless laughs, it can occasionally force a hint of a smile (robotic Stephen comes to mind). When it finally trudges to an ending point, however, its narrative becomes downright nonsensical, which makes the entire show feel like Alpha Team’s skulls: wasted space.

Sex and Skin: Multiple sexual references and cartoonish imagery abound in the pilot. A nude sex doll, Wild West prostitute, and other sexual innuendos are found throughout.

Parting Shot: As Allison explains her failed “plot” to fire Alpha Team, which was going to happen if she didn’t intervene with Darryl’s plans, rendering the entire pilot moot, the chipper Stephen from earlier in the episode arrives to clean up one of Bravo Team’s casualties. He contorts his body into a vacuum and proceeds to have a bit of spinal cord stuck in his rotors. He chuckles as the screen fades to the credits.

Sleeper Star: Darryl may be positioned as the antagonist here, but by looking to shut down Alpha Team’s operations, he might very well be doing the world a favor. His goofy observations and dim-witted demeanor call back to nearly every other character Chris Parnell has voiced, however, which doesn’t give Darryl enough room to shine. Still, some of the episode’s only jokes land when Darryl can take them and run with them. That said, however, it feels like the entirety of Darryl’s character is based on Rick and Morty’s Jerry, down to the constant “bad husband and dad” assessments.

Most Pilot-y Line: Darryl is incredulous after Allison finishes her brief explanation of using video games to generate electricity. “Are you telling me we’re powering the country with video games? And the only thing separating us from the complete breakdown of society is four twenty-something gamers?”

Our Call: SKIP IT. Alpha Betas is the worst kind of comedy: the kind that’s aimed at “gamers,” or at least what society believes anyone who likes video games is like. If you have trouble sharing your favorite hobby with anyone for fear of being ostracized, this show certainly won’t improve things, or the notion that video game fans are little more than crass caricatures of human beings. Alpha Team is wholly unlikeable, dim-witted, and constantly spouting sexist, ignorant, and regressive garbage masked as “mature” humor. Perhaps that’s all we should expect from YouTube, a platform that regularly stands by this type of content.

Brittany Vincent has been covering video games and tech for over a decade for publications like G4, Popular Science, Playboy, Variety, IGN, GamesRadar, Polygon, Kotaku, Maxim, GameSpot, and more. When she’s not writing or gaming, she’s collecting retro consoles and tech. Follow her on Twitter: @MolotovCupcake.

Watch Alpha Betas on YouTube