BIT Improv Comedy Network | MAIN STAGE · Billy Merritt

Podcast Town 17 | North Caldwell, NJ

·34 min·2 clips

North Caldwell had Overbrook Hospital for the Insane and the Essex County Penitentiary.

1. BIT Comedy Network’s Podcast Town episode centers on North Caldwell, New Jersey, and treats the town as a shared setting for a fully improvised local broadcast. 2. Billy Merritt hosts and directs the segment, and Margo Escott appears as the guest whose childhood in North Caldwell gives the episode its geographic anchor. 3. The episode’s job is to turn North Caldwell’s real details into a comic town portrait built from landmarks, civic rituals, and neighborhood rumors. 4. Margo says North Caldwell has no traffic lights and no stores, but it does have Maserato's tomato farm and an annual fireman's picnic in September. 5. She remembers the picnic for birch beer, grilled hot dogs, and going with her mom, dad, and younger brother when her Pan Am pilot father was home. 6. Billy and Margo locate North Caldwell 18 miles from New York City, which becomes a joke about a tiny town sitting near a huge city. 7. Margo mentions Joe Piscopo as someone from North Caldwell, and Billy treats the name as part of the town’s local celebrity shorthand. 8. The episode also names Overbrook Hospital for the Insane, later turned into a tuberculosis hospital, as a major town landmark. 9. Billy and Margo describe the Essex County Penitentiary as another nearby site, including the detail that kids played in the ruins after it closed in 1954. 10. The conversation brings in Mountain Avenue, the rocky road Margo used to drive to school, and ties it to the visual geography seen in The Sopranos. 11. The show repeatedly folds in Sopranos references, including Tony Soprano’s house, the production set up the street, and a tour-company parody. 12. A traffic light becomes the episode’s running symbol, and the cast treats its colors like a local mystery and a religious sign. 13. The Church of the Traffic Light turns red, orange, and green into a comic theology, with a priest explaining what each color means. 14. The town’s tomato-queen plot line adds a mob-like civic contest, with Big Al, his daughter, and threats of kneecaps hanging over the vote. 15. Tim’s kids repeatedly wander into the abandoned asylum, which creates a second comic thread about children playing in unsafe places. 16. The episode also uses fake local ads for the Tony Soprano Tour Guide Company and Freddy’s Funeral Home to widen the parody of town commerce. 17. The format is rapid-fire ensemble improv, with role-playing, cutaway scenes, and recurring callbacks instead of a straight interview. 18. The energy stays loud and meta, and the cast keeps breaking into new scenes from the same town until the final reveal lands. 19. Listeners who like improv, Jersey references, and town-as-worldbuilding should get a lot from this. 20. Listeners wanting a straight interview or minimal chaos probably should skip it.

As heard by us

A small-town setup that keeps opening into stranger rooms.

Podcast Town 17 starts with North Caldwell, New Jersey and keeps widening the joke until the town itself feels caught in the bit. A Church of the Traffic Light, death therapy in an abandoned asylum, kids drifting through padded rooms, and a finale that loops everything back into…

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Why you'd press play

For when you want a town show that keeps escalating from local oddity into full civic delirium.

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