The Sklar Brothers have a brand new series for PBS Digital, I caught up with the hilarious brothers, Randy and Jason, the about their new show, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG, how they choose the topics for each week’s episode, what prompted them to start the series, and web series’ they’re enjoying.
What prompted you guys to start “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG?”
The Sklar Brothers: We are huge fans of Kids at Play, the production company who had the initial idea for this and having worked successfully with those guys in the past, we are always looking for projects to do with them. They came to us with this idea. We loved it, because we love delivering both comedy and information at the same time. The information allows the structure off which we can hang any and all of our comedy. This idea reminded us as well of our history channel show, The United Stats of America and so we jumped at the chance to do something that was both funny and informative with people we love working with. Also, as fans of PBS programming, the opportunity to do a PBS project, really intrigued us.
How do you choose what topics to do for your videos?
We tried to choose, along with Mark, Jason and Amy, at Kids at Play, with the approval of PBS, that were simple everyday activities, activities that we have done for so long that we aren’t even thinking about how we are doing them. Basically, this is a recipe for bad habits to be birthed. So, curing hiccups, or running, or sleeping or pooping, are things we often don’t think about as we do them. Then we tried to mix in topics that were interesting to us, like air guitar or twerking. Now, many PBS viewers probably don’t twerk regularly, but if they were going to ever drop it like it was hot at a farmer’s market, we wanted to arm them with all the pertinent knowledge that would allow them to twerk properly.
Has there been an episode so far that made you realize you were doing something wrong and hadn’t noticed until that episode? The packing episode was eye opening for me, I’ve been packing completely wrong for years!
We both enjoy running as exercise and so there were a lot of small details that we learned from researching that episode that we now both employ when running. The very idea that poor posture while running can restrict the amount of oxygen that goes throughout your body is something we never thought of before. Also, in terms of sleeping, we didn’t realize how harmful it is to look at any screen right before bed…how much it even affects you the next morning. So we’ve both really tried to cut out screen time of any kind right before bed, and it’s been helpful.
Can you tease some upcoming episodes for us? What wrongs will you help us fix next?
We are really excited for the dirty laundry episode to come out, and not just because we love the airing of dirty laundry, but because there are some great jokes and interesting facts that we didn’t know, going into this project. Again doing laundry is something that most of us do weekly, and if you have small children, many times every week. So if you know how to do it right, you can feel like a laundry champion.
What other web series are you guys fans of?
We were huge fans of the old web series WAINY DAYS from David Wain a few years back, and honestly, when DRUNK HISTORY was a web series, (now it’s a hilarious TV show) but when it was a web series, it was the greatest thing we’d ever seen. So many laugh out loud moments in that show, it’s ridiculous.
New Episodes of YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG are released Wednesdays on PBS Digital.
