To close out the year, we're taking a look back at some of our favorite Daily J podcast episodes of 2022. If you missed this one, you missed out. And if you already heard it, it's worth another listen. Enjoy!
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If you drive an all-black Dodge Ram in Metro Detroit, you’re “clutch.”
Not only because that’s a “clutch” truck, but because you likely helped fuel a rising star in the Metro Detroit comedy scene.
When Garrett Fuller and his friend Mike Smith set out to launch a series about a character named Cody making his way through life in Wayne County, they simply wanted to get Fuller some exposure in the comedy world in hopes of “someone important” seeing his videos and taking a chance on him to be in a TV show or movie.
Fast forward nearly a decade, and Wayne County Lyfe is a thriving short comedy sketch series that lives exclusively on social media in an era that’s slowly seeing such content surpass the traditional forms of entertainment. And it’s thriving in large part to a video about those all-black Dodge Rams that helped grow their audience more than they could’ve ever imagined.
Today, it’s become a series that has struck a chord with many across Metro Detroit.
Chances are, you’ve seen one of their videos – it’s usually an unassuming guy in a bright green “hi-vis” shirt, sunglasses and a camo hat ranting about whatever’s been happening at the job site, bemoaning the familiar daily annoyances of his life or gushing over how sweet a blacked out pickup truck is. His name is “Dip Cup” – one of three characters in the Wayne County Lyfe universe. (Well, four if you count Duncan Stanko, but more on him later.)
Or maybe you’ve seen him wearing a Lions jersey, showing his unrelenting pride and belief in an organization that so many seem to have lost hope in.
And you can’t forget Uncle Terry – the all-too-relatable gray haired, mustachioed, lovable “old” man spinning tales about his glory days, sharing unsolicited advice and griping about how much the world has changed.
Then there’s the original – Cody. The flatbill-wearing, sometimes cringey goofball putting on a “tough guy” act and stretching his stories of being a badass.
Together, they create Wayne County Lyfe, delivering one-liners that make you laugh, but also say, “hey – I know someone just like that.”
Fuller, 37, is the man behind all three characters, thanks to his years of experience in the Metro Detroit improv comedy scene. He, with the help of Smith, has created a trio of personas that resonate with many in Metro Detroit and beyond.
Why do they resonate so much? Because we all know someone who resembles Dip, Uncle Terry or Cody, for better or worse. They’re relatable.
In Smith’s words, it’s because they’re not caricatures – they’re characters. “They’re real people.”
And he’s not wrong. And in a time where the pandemic has gotten many of us feeling down, those real people have helped bring us some much-needed laughs. But not in an over-the-top manner or a way that’s insulting to those people. Just by being oh-so-relatable and real. OK, maybe there’s a little bit of embellishing.
“When I see them, I know people who are like that,” Smith said. “And I don’t feel like it’s punching down or making fun of those people, it’s just being those people in the world.”
Smith says oftentimes comedians will take things to the extreme, and the people they’re portraying will become caricatures. And then that demographic feels like they’re being made fun of, “and they don’t enjoy that.”
But Smith says his stepdad loves Uncle Terry. In fact, “he thinks he is Uncle Terry.” And that’s why, Smith says, Wayne County Lyfe clicks with so many people. They either see themselves in a character, or see someone they know and love.
Fuller says “a lot of stepdads are Uncle Terry.” And a lot of dads, father-in-laws, grandpas, uncles, brothers, neighbors and even youth baseball coaches. Uncle Terry is a combination of all those people.
But above all, Fuller is just trying to bring heart to his comedy. And it shows.
“I’m not trying to do a parody, I’m trying to make this original, living being,” he said. “And that person has to have heart. It’s so zen and weird, and I hate talking about the creative process, because it sounds bizarre, but it’s true. I’m just trying to add heart into it and I think people connect with them because the characters never win. It’s not about making a funny line. I just want you to see them live.”
So when Uncle Terry climbs into his Ford Fusion and cranks up AM 950 to get a dose of “the real news” and tell his nephew Duncan all about it, that resonates. That strikes a chord.
Whether it’s someone in Wayne County, Michigan or Wayne County, Pennsylvania, there’s an Uncle Terry everywhere. The other characters, too. Fuller’s got family in Wayne County, Pa., and when he visited there, he got recognized as the Wayne County Lyfe guy. And the woman who recognized him had no clue he wasn’t from Pennsylvania.
Smith says the page gets lots of comments and messages asking if they’re from Wayne Counties in Nebraska, Pennsylvania and New York, which really goes to they’re doing something right because it’s
So how did we get to this point? Let’s rewind to 2003 when Fuller, a Garden City native, started taking improv classes his senior year of high school and got a nudge from his teacher to check out The Second City – “the empire of where to go for improv,” as he puts it – which at the time had a program in Detroit, before consolidating to just one location in Chicago.
He recalls being handed a pamphlet for the school, which had pictures of Bill Murray, Tina Fey and Chris Farley. Those comedic legends were enough to convince him to take that path.
After performing live improv shows across the metro area for several years, Fuller eventually began teaching classes at the Go Comedy! Improv Theatre in Ferndale. That’s where he met Smith, a student of his at the time. They bonded over their love of the Pistons and wrestlers. Kurt Angle, to be exact.
Smith saw something in his teacher, and wanted to get his name out there.
“For me, it felt like he was the funniest person left in Detroit,” Smith said. “There were a lot of really funny people that went to Chicago, New York, LA, got into other stuff. And I was like, alright, if we’re gonna be here, let’s do something – I want to put him out there somehow. And he had some ideas for some videos, I had some ideas to add to it.”
In short, they hoped to get Fuller his break for a movie or TV gig, not knowing they were a few years ahead of the online content creation explosion.
Fuller had become bored with live performing when he stumbled upon a YouTube series from “Saturday Night Live” alum Kyle Mooney portraying a hapless outcast named Chris. That’s when it clicked – he could make comedy based on just one character.
They began with a series of videos documenting Cody – a “gangster” kinda guy, if you will – going around Garden City and trying to convince a judge he shouldn’t be put in jail.
Let’s just say it wasn’t a great effort on Cody’s end.
But it was a pretty good one on Fuller and Smith’s end. That first video went over pretty well, though Smith says the next 5-10 didn’t get the same kind of traction.
But they stuck with it, and about three years down the road, and after the introduction of Cody’s cousin Dylan “Dip Cup” Stanko (and Duncan – that’s Smith’s voice behind the camera) and their Uncle Terry... their little online miniseries had 3,000 subscribers on YouTube.
And then a few more years down the road, “All-black Dodge Ram happened,” and Wayne County Lyfe exploded to about 50,000 followers on Facebook.
Somehow, Fuller’s simple comedy drawing on something so mundane as seeing a sharp-looking pickup truck all over Metro Detroit had finally helped him reach a larger audience. Fuller says he deliberately pays attention to such mundane things in everyday life and tries to turn it into comedy.
That's partially why he landed on using the word "clutch" to describe the truck.
"'Clutch,' to me is something that's even above cool, it's even above awesome," he said. "
That definitely worked. To date, that video has more than 3.3 million views on Facebook.
From catchphrases like "all-black Dodge Ram" and "clutch," to some of Uncle Terry's zingers, fans love to quote Fuller in the comment section. He calls that one of the most sincere forms of flattery.
"That's exactly how I grew up, quoting the funny movies from Farley and (Will) Ferrell," Fuller said. "I was a quote machine. I feel like when you're a kid, you kinda learn comedy through (quoting)."
To have people say he's a quotable comedian, Fuller says he loves that.
Their series, which has little production value by design, has garnered lots of attention and a highly engaged fanbase, largely in part to that video. Wayne County Lyfe has more than 210,000 followers on Facebook; over 220K followers and nearly 6 million likes on TikTok; and 17,000 subscribers on YouTube. They make personalized videos on Cameo, and they’ve even got a merch store online with hi-vis T-shirts, “wobble pop” koozies and more, with lots of ideas brewing in their minds.
That following has helped Fuller, who has worked in medical device manufacturing for the better part of a decade, go part-time with his work. Half his week is spent there, and the rest of the time is spent chasing his comedy dream, with hopes of making that his full-time job some day.
While Fuller is the face of the series, Smith also brings his own comedy to the fore. Though you only ever hear his voice behind the scenes, he improvises behind the camera as Duncan, oftentimes driving videos forward.
With the Ram video picking up a big following, Fuller and Smith soon capitalized on something pretty much every Michigander can relate to – regrettably loving the Lions. Every Sunday during football season Dip Cup is inviting anyone and everyone over to his mom’s house to watch the game.
He’s typically taking shots at that week’s opponent – even Michigan's own Kirk Cousins – or gushing over how clutch Matthew Stafford is. Those Stafford videos definitely captured a city’s attention. Rumor has it, even Stafford and his wife have seen the videos and think they’re a hoot.
It wasn’t intended for the Stafford videos to take off the way they did, but Fuller and Smith ran with it. In fact, they flew with it – all the way to California.
After Stafford was traded to the Los Angeles Rams in the offseason – which prompted some very “emotional” messages from Dip – the WCL guys flew all the way to LA last fall to see the Lions play Stafford in his new digs and spend some time on the beach.
And of course make some fun content. And yes, Fuller got recognized by plenty of fans all the way out in Hollywood, something that happens back in Metro Detroit all the time.
They definitely took an opportunity and made the most of it. Which really is essential in today’s day and age. When Fuller was a kid he remembers watching his heroes like Jim Carrey in “Ace Ventura” and Chris Farley in “Tommy Boy” and “SNL,” then going to school and quoting those guys.
Back in the day, comedy revolved around movies and TV. Our whole world did, really, if you think about it.
But much like the rest of our lives today, comedy is changing. It’s always readily available in our pockets, just a couple scrolls and a few thumb taps away.
Many friends and fans often tell Fuller he should have his own TV show.
Well, he’s got some news for you – he kinda already does.
“I feel like I have my own TV show… I have my own ‘Saturday Night Live.’ I play the characters in skits. That’s what I do.”
While we all grew up watching TV in 30-minute blocks, renting VHS tapes and DVDs from Blockbuster and sitting in front of the big screen to get our laughs, nowadays, people are gravitating towards shorter, more digestible bits of comedy. That’s why their three-minute-or-less format on Facebook and TikTok works so well.
It's a format adopted by many comedians and content creators like Charlie Berens and Trey Kennedy, who have found they can capture audiences with characters inspired by their surroundings.
“You gotta carve out a block of time to watch a movie now,” Fuller says, mentioning he recently watched “Airheads” and felt like it took forever. “I feel like the world’s different. We’re just moving quick. A lot of people are on the go and we don’t want to watch movies…”
Like it or not, our mobile devices are essential in our lives. So comedians are finding a way to adapt.
Uncle Terry isn’t too sure about all that nonsense, though.
“They all got their heads up their butts or up their phones. Either one, same damn thing,” Uncle Terry shouts. “No one looks ya in the eyes anymore, bud. I’m screamin’, hootin’ and hollerin’ for a waitress to bring me a pop – she’s on her damn phone sittin’ over there. I guess we can use these at any time now, huh?”
Yeah. We can. And that’s the way many industries, including comedy, are shifting. Fuller says it’s smart. Many late-night TV show hosts these days seem to be focusing more and more on their digital numbers than on-air ratings. Pulling a clip from the show and plastering it on social media probably has the potential to get more eyeballs than
“Who cares how it’s digested, as long as you get it in front of people,” he said.
That’s all Fuller and Smith want to do. Wherever your eyeballs are, they want to be there.
At the onset of the Internet, all the way back in 1993, some saw this digital shift coming. Executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told a reporter back then “instead of 50 channels with nothing on, we're going to have 500 channels with nothing on,” according to a story from KQED that details the explosion of content.
The story highlights how musicians can share their work to the masses at the drop of a hat. But the same can be said for non-musical artists.
“It can also be said that the expanded universe of amateur ‘content creators’ has helped to change tastes in such a way that many of us prefer, or at least enjoy, communication that looks as if it hasn't been heavily produced. Even if it's not really amateur,” author Rachel Myrow writes in the piece.”
So as the world undergoes this change, how will Wayne County Lyfe change with it? Fuller sees it growing outward, not upward. He envisions developing an entire “Wayne County Lyfe world,” with more characters with their own individual pages, and even getting more actors involved.
The hard part is, it’s hard to predict where we’ll be five more years down the road, in terms of content creation. But regardless, Cody, Dip and Terry will keep plugging away, one genuine bit at a time.
They may not win the race to become worldwide stars. But the race to win the hearts of fans in a city, county and state that beam with pride of where they come from?
“Checkered flag, bud. Every single time.”
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