Extraordinary Commentary: The Story Behind the Show

After founding KAYLEX in 2014, Adler quickly realized that producing short films would be a more time-consuming endeavor than he had anticipated. Consistently creating them posed an even greater challenge. With the new company name, KAYLEX, he saw an opportunity to create a show that would not only keep the creative momentum going but also highlight the personalities of all the members.

In their sophomore year of high school, the group was tasked with producing a weekly show on any topic of their choosing. They named the original episodes Extraordinary Commentary. The title was inspired when La’Quan jokingly suggested, "What about Extradentary Commentary?" And so, the show was born.

The early episodes were produced on the school’s computers, with La’Quan as the main host, supported by Eduardo and Antonio as co-hosts, while Adler took on the roles of producer and editor. Although La’Quan and Antonio weren’t particularly close at the time, Antonio had a knack for provoking funny reactions from La’Quan. After just three episodes, the show failed to air, prompting the group to continue independently by uploading it to YouTube. The show drew inspiration from AMC Movie Talk hosted by John Campea.

On September 24, 2015, KAYLEX released the first episode of Extraordinary Commentary on their newly created YouTube channel, Kaylex Cubed. The video, titled Who Shot Batman and Lex Luthor!?, introduced a new lineup: Adler as the host, with Esay and La’Quan as co-hosts. Despite being camera-shy, Adler stepped in as the host and producer, and the team filmed in his parents’ living room.

The show aired weekly, eventually producing a total of 87 episodes. After the first five episodes, Adler persuaded his mother to let him and his friends convert the basement into a studio where they could film and edit their episodes. Adler invested in lighting and edited every episode on his Toshiba Satellite Laptop, which had an Intel Pentium processor and 8GB of RAM.

As the show gained traction, they introduced a segment called "Twitter Tuesdays," where they answered tweets from their early supporters. When questions began to dwindle, they pivoted to creating other types of content. The show gradually evolved from discussing their lives to reviewing movies and TV shows, and eventually to producing reaction videos.

Their first episode to surpass 1,000 views was titled Jessica Jones Review Episode 1 NON-SPOILER. The crew attended Comic-Con and watched the world premiere of the first episode of Jessica Jones. At the time, Adler worked at AMC Theaters, where he received free tickets and early screenings of movies. He later helped Esay get a job at the theater, and together they helped Antonio, La’Quan, and Eduardo secure jobs as well. This allowed the group to watch movies early and immediately film reviews.

The reviews performed well, but they struck gold on December 14, 2015, when their Batman v. Superman trailer reaction garnered 3.3k views. Then, on March 17, 2016, their reaction to the Captain America: Civil War trailer, featuring Esay’s tearful excitement at seeing Spider-Man, went viral with 54k views. This success led the team to double down on reaction content.

The Cast

The show’s primary goal was to introduce KAYLEX to the world, featuring Adler, Esay, and La’Quan as the main hosts. By Episode 4, Eduardo joined the show alongside Adler and Esay on October 7, 2015, in an episode titled WTF is a Kaylex and Roachman!?. Elkin, who composed all the music for the show, made his first appearance on November 25, 2015, in Promposal Gone Wrong and Margot Robbie. Antonio didn’t join until around 18 episodes in, with his first appearance in Let’s Watch the Batman v. Superman Trailer 2 + Discussion. The panel would rotate between Eduardo, Antonio, and Elkin, with Adler, La’Quan, and Esay as the main hosts.

Burnout

On February 2, 2017, Adler posted a video titled I Promise..., where he opened up about experiencing burnout and trying to keep the channel going. At the time, the crew had just graduated high school and was adjusting to the realities of adult life. Despite finally reaching 1,000 subscribers after 67 consecutive episodes, the group faced challenges as Adler shouldered the editing workload alone. In the video, Adler expressed his commitment to continuing uploads but acknowledged the need for a brief break.

Extraordinary Commentary continued to produce 21 more episodes with sporadic uploads. The final episode aired on February 10, 2018, with the original trio of Adler, Esay, and La’Quan. By then, Antonio had joined the military, Eduardo had chosen a different path, and Elkin had begun working full-time at a bank.

On September 30, 2018, Adler, Esay, and La’Quan released the short film CASSIE.

The Creation of a Non-Podcast

During the 2020 pandemic, Adler noticed the rise of YouTube channels that bore similarities to Extraordinary Commentary. These channels produced hours of content, which they then broke down into clips and repurposed for platforms like TikTok. Recognizing that the biggest challenge for Extraordinary Commentary was the editing bottleneck, Adler considered adopting a podcast format to streamline content production. Throughout 2020, Adler researched ways to bring back a version of the show, addressing past production issues by investing in new microphones, cameras, and a setup that would simplify the process.

The only downside was that Esay had moved to Texas, leaving Adler and La’Quan as the remaining hosts. This led to the evolution of Extraordinary Commentary into a new show—KAYLEX NKOUNTER.