BIT Improv Comedy Network | MAIN STAGE · Billy Merritt

Podcast Town 14 | The Willoughby Zone

·29 min·1 clip

Three movie screens, French flags, and the Willoughby rock band all collide in the town square.

1. BIT Improv Comedy Network’s Podcast Town 14, “The Willoughby Zone,” turns a fictional town called Willoughby into a community affairs radio show. 2. Billy Merritt hosts, Don picks the number 11 from 1 to 22, and the cast builds the episode around a submitted town name. 3. The episode uses the question of what Willoughby is “for” as its hook: a town report, a restaurant review show, and a culture war over French and American tastes. 4. Early dialogue mentions a Twilight Zone episode about a man stopping in Willoughby and wanting to live there. 5. The hosts describe Willoughby as having floods, a main-square pagoda, and a closure for construction. 6. A commercial break introduces Jay Tanner-Smith, Attorney at Law, and Oliver’s Photography School before the scene cuts to a grandmother packing lunch. 7. The grandmother serves tacos and burritos to Jeff and Hillary, and the kids complain about 64 days of tacos and burritos in a row. 8. The grandmother cites a receipt for 4,000 burrito wraps and 5,000 taco shells and says she prepared lunch for the rest of the year. 9. A later call-in segment names a French Bistro run by Pierre, who says his chef has connections to Thomas Keller’s French Laundry and Per Se New York. 10. Polly from Polly’s Pies and Pastries answers with apple pie, cherry pie, pork pie, and a custom peanut butter taco pie. 11. The show repeatedly stages food as identity, with Pierre pushing “continental service” and Polly defending American classics like hot dogs and baseball. 12. Willoughby also gets a free tortilla giveaway at Stadler Park, limited to 100 per person, and a French film screening of Truffaut’s Les 400 coups. 13. The restaurant-review setup turns into a running joke about famous people, celebrity residents, and who counts as a foodie in town. 14. A school scene puts Mr. Don in front of a flooded classroom while a student tries to choose between two French movie screenings and asks about eating American food during class. 15. The rock-band subplot adds a new pressure point when the group is paid to play both the Star Spangled Banner and the French national anthem. 16. The band eventually agrees to play “Le Marseille” in rock form and even sings “Petit poisson” for a student seeking extra credit. 17. The tone stays fast, cut-up, and studio-based, with characters constantly interrupting each other and calling for commercial breaks. 18. The format mixes live radio parody, scene changes, callers, and fake sponsorships, which keeps the energy broad rather than intimate. 19. People who like improv comedy about town politics, food jokes, and French culture. 20. People wanting a straight narrative with minimal side-character chaos.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from BIT Improv Comedy Network | MAIN STAGE