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In this first-ever Defunctland After Dark feature, Kevin heads straight back to 2009 to explore the hotbed of pitching in this retrospective on Billy Mays and his Discovery Channel show, Pitchmen.

This 3-and-a-half-hour video is a Patreon-exclusive project that we had a lot of fun making over the past couple of months. We're still experimenting with our Patreon-only material, so this is our attempt at something a bit wider in scope, while keeping the Defunctland After Dark tone. I hope you enjoy.

Files

Billy Mays and the Myth of the American Inventor

In this first ever Defunctland After Dark feature, Kevin heads straight back to 2009 to explore the hotbed of pitching in this retrospective on Billy Mays and his Discovery Channel show, Pitchmen.

Comments

frunnahaus

oh damn, 3.5 hours? Thank you Kevin!

Nate Gonzales

3.5 hours of new Defunctland content?? Blessed.

Joshua.H

O M G!!!! LET'S GO

Dante C

215 minutes of elite content incoming…

Britta Garbo

I’m so glad I walked the dog early tonight!

Jill K.

3.5hrs? Ehhh I don’t need to sleep tonight, right?

McKenna

So excited to watch but is there any way you could turn on auto captions? They’re currently unavailable. Would be much appreciated!

Ross

For the love of God man, I don't know how you survive doing so much Patreon only material, please just put this on YouTube and get that ad revenue for yourself

danowano

Merry frixkin Xmas in October let’s gooooo

Defunctland

Unfortunately YouTube will not auto-caption because of the video length. I can work on creating what will be generated captions if you would like, but it will take a moment. Sorry about this.

Defunctland

This is made to be behind the paywall as a bonus for supporters. The public version would need to be far more polished, shorter, and probably have a different tone, but this was fun to make while I work on our main channel content.

McKenna

Gotcha, thank you for the quick response! If you can add any at some point in the future that would be appreciated by me and I’m sure others as well ☺️ That’s so unfortunate that YouTube has a limit on the length of video they’ll do it for automatically though!

Defunctland

No worries, I'm adding them now. They should be up in the next hour.

Sabi Sgambi

Dinner with my friends, finding pretty bugs, AND a new Defunctland After Dark??? It feels like today is my birthday 🍾🍾🍾

Eve Miller

Have to be honest this made me cry tears of joy

Defunctland

Ok I was wrong. Videos this long can't be translated, but it is being auto captioned. 20 minutes left.

Alyssa

now this is what I'm pay the big bucks for 👏

andie bansil

shout out to discovery channel stans

Fangz

You spoil us Kevin.

Kae

I'm only 19 minutes in and I'm already crying and wheezing laughing 😂😂😂

Who Knows Aymore ???

I used to be afraid of infomercials as a kid because I thought they could just come on and take your channel hostage for half and hour

Who Knows Aymore ???

I'm glad to finally financially support you after spending years exclusively falling asleep to the lines video

James Haro

Saving hours 2 and 3. Have to savor this. Amazing work and just really fun spending time on this topic with your commentary.

jay butler

will billy survive? ✨

danowano

In the original series no but maybe if it’s a reboot

tumbleweed🍂

Just in time to watch during my nightly Tuck-In with the Count 🧛

James Morrone

When this show aired I was old enough to be interested in the business of making tv while young enough to be completely naive that Discovery would script a reality show

Courtney H

this is the best thing I have ever seen

Courtney H

3 and a half perfect hours

inkmagnolia

i actually screamed seeing the notification

irene

wow made my week

McKenna

Captions are working, thank you so much! ☺️

Chareth Cutestory

My names Ashley and my idea is snlegs, legs for snakes. All I need is for Billy Mays to allow a rattler to choke him out with his prosthetic snleg ™️ thighs and then my grandpappy can finally retire from the snilk ranch and get a kidney 🥹🙏

BvD

"I know what you're thinking, Kyle."

thomas mcgrady

Welp i know what I'm listening to tonight

Archaeolinguist

Oh cool, a new Defunctland vide- THREE AND A HALF HOURS?! XD

Fury Haddock

Three hours of peak; thank you Kevin!!!

AssertiveSalamander

Thank you Kevin- my dad and I are super excited to watch together!

ritz

they were zooming in on that lady's foot like crazy for the foot mop only for it to be the dud of the two😭😭😭

amethyst

now why'd I think that was mr mayor zohran mamdani for a second

NeurodiversiTidy

wild experience to be sitting here and seeing a thing i actually own and is sitting on my desk, the klever kutter at 2:24:01 lmao. i think it's one of the things my dad gave me but i definitely didnt buy it. it's good for boxes but like so is an exacto knife

Luthien Tinuviel

I dont think anything makes me audibly laugh as much as Defunctland after Dark ngl

James B

oh my GOD i cant wait to dig into this. thank you kevin and crew

Kiera

Dead pixels the mvp of the show

Sydney

did anyone get a final dead pixel count

Abbie

I would love more deep dives like this in the future! This was great

Adam S

Rarely have I felt more hyper-targeted by a video than by this one. What nerdy teenager of the late 2000s didn’t have a weird love of Billy Mays and mourn his loss.

Alex

Wow the Kyle zero to hero story I never knew I needed

Clay Moth

It’s so fascinating because growing up I remember it being a scandal about the cocaine, hearing that he had died because of an overdose — I love learning that different childhood memories got impressed on us and to find out the truth contained much more subtly is so fun and fascinating!

al

this episode could be a pitch for the perfect defunctland-after-dark format

nicole

i thought the uk flags were just another sign of it being 2009

al

that obituary line from sully 25 days before billy died... wow

Krab

You ever just click a video, see the length, then cheer?

Kae

Cutting his way out of the box with the saw lmao what the hell even was this fever dream of a show??

David A Behlman

Asking someone if their dead dad was a baller. 😂

Alexandra Holmes

Spectacular, seeing the notification for this video in my inbox was like Christmas coming early. RIP Billy Mays.

Wally

great, great video. this show feels like one of those vaguely shittier dinosaurs from the triassic you have to walk by in the musuem on the way to the t. rex. like, you can see that they were on to something about what would eventually become a genuine cultural force like shark tank but it was either too early (and too recession-addled) or just never actually had enough time to click and have telegenic chemistry that they might have hit in an S2 that featured Billy. the looming extinction event of the death of cable and the rise of dropshipped crap about to obliterate the entire medium of DTC tv anyway. loved the video!!

Audrey

the great kyle crashout of 2006 oh my god

Krab

"I could watch 10 episodes about her job, that's fascinating" RE: The woman doing the food styling at one point- I totally suggest looking for the "Superstar Food Stylist" episode of Food Network Challenge because it is a really neat (quick, since I think its one of the few non cake eps that show did) look at a lot of the little tricks to food styling. sad to now realize the youtube upload of it I had bookmarked got taken down at some point

Dr. Chunk

I did not expect to be tearing up about the Oxi-Clean guy

Lucas Stopper

Incredible video all around, always grateful to see a new post on here. I’m genuinely amazed that Pitchmen didn’t bring up Kyle’s involvement on another inventing show three years prior. I mean they bring up HATING shamwow once an episode, they obviously have no fear of mentioning rivals. It would have been a phenomenally better arc if they showed Kyle as a kid who had tried pitching before and had been rejected, and the pitchmen want to give him a chance to try again. Instead they really make you think this is the First time Kyle has ever tried to pitch something. There’s something really interesting happening there but I really doubt we’ll ever know :(

Kae

Oh my god Kyle's drawings remind me of that episode of It's Always Sunny where Charlie invents "a machine that lets spiders talk to cats!"

Chareth Cutestory

the kitten mittens pitch would sweep American inventor

Andy Vinson

kyle's mom is listed on linkedin as 'president at kyle invents' since 2005

Kae

Snilk ranch!! You stop 🤣 love the username

Nick Doiron

Along the lines of the grater plate thing, I was just seeing people promoting a Japanese style mortar and pestle - it has ridges in the bowl to help you mash and grate stuff

Sarah (the other one)

'I'm Billy Mays and i'm currently urinating' absolutely sent me.

Nicole Elizabeth

literally exactly what i needed tonight. what a journey. perfect as always

Jeffrey Hernandez

Excellent content. Worth a year of Patreon, at the very least. And yeah, can't wait for the 26 commercial round up. Best part of January!

Hannah Wilson-Nikolich

Wait so was the dog car killer in pitch men a nod and Easter egg to the American inventors fandom

Justine Wiesinger

Interestingly, I had never heard the head injury theory. I had ONLY heard cocaine.

Beramious Clockwork

1:25:38 I looked away for a second and when I looked back to this scene my brain registered it as a scene from The Office

Supreme Leader Garfield

Amazing video. Tried to call Invention Champ - their number is out of service.

KG Lucky

I like how in the tribute episode, Sully literally says "you're my best friend" while crying. So we get definitive proof that the antagonism was all manufactured. Also, Sully has spent the last 5 years running a CBD farm and making a reality TV show about it called Kings Of Kush, which I love for him!

L G

My brother and I were pretty young when Billy Mays died but I remember my brother asking my dad what happened and he said “He died because he yelled too much”.

Dante C

AJ Khubani

Rae Donaldson

This was amazing, thank you so much for posting! I loved every minute of this video 🖤