Is the E.T. Adventure better than Revenge of the Mummy? Is Halloween better than Alien? Is anything better than EPCOT’s Living with the Land? (Answer: No.) If these are the kind of burning debates that keep you up at night, you’ve got kindred spirits in Pat and Sean Rice — better known as the Bracket Brothers — who have turned their friendly online pop-culture arguments into a semi-monthly live interactive show at SAK Comedy Lab. After seeing their first few well-attended shows, I recently interviewed the siblings — who originate from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and both work behind the scenes for major theme parks — ahead of their biggest show yet on Aug. 14, featuring Rep. Anna Eskamani.
“The origin of this started in the pits of depression during COVID,” recalls Sean Rice. “We and probably a group of 15 to 20 friends started doing this weekly Zoom call where we would pick a band, and then somebody would volunteer to pick the top 32 songs of that band or artist [and] create a March Madness-style bracket. … We posted it on Instagram and nobody cared, but it was just a very fun thing to do [while] socially distanced.” At the same time, SAK Comedy Lab — where Sean has studied and performed for the past dozen years, was doing remote Zoom improv shows. “[So] they were open to anything to fill time,” says Sean, which prompted him and Pat to bring the Bracket Brothers first to screen, and then to stage.
Although this isn’t the type of act usually associated with SAK, Sean says, “It’s nice to bring something to SAK that’s not just short-form improv comedy, which is really what they have made their name doing. It’s a comedy lab, quote-unquote. It’s not obviously improv, it’s not sketch, but it’s, it’s a different sort of thing. A lot of people equate it to sort of a live podcast, but we don’t record it like a podcast.”
To pick the 16 contestants for each Bracket Brothers face-off, they first select a concept. “Once we know our topic, one of us will put the list together of anywhere from 20 to 50 to 60 things in that category,” says Pat. “We’ll always give each other room to kind of say, ‘I really think this should be on it, and this is why.’ And we’ve been pretty good about not really fighting about it. It’s like, ‘Hey, if you want to die on that hill,’ if you really want that to be in the show, it can be in the show.”
The Rices’ choice of topics for their initial shows — horror movies, theme park attractions — stirred me to show up, which turns out to have been an intentional move. “The biggest thing we wanted coming out of the gate was topics that people were gonna get upset about or have a lot of passion behind,” admits Sean. “Anything with fandoms, anything that’s going to have people get getting excited. We thought we wanted to come out early and gain sort of a little bit of a following for the show itself. Eventually, we always joke, we’re going to do bugs or something totally out there.”
Leveraging their longtime friendships and connections, the Bracket Brothers have recruited guest stars like Mike Aiello and Charles Gray of Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights, and Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan and Scott Gairdner of “Podcast: The Ride.” Their next lineup sees Anna Eskamani and her sister, Ida, alongside local performers Joel Warren and Sabrina Ambra, in a showdown of “real Orlando” attractions outside the theme parks.
“Eventually we will run out of friends,” jokes Pat, “but Orlando is a great city because it’s so tight-knit, and everybody knows everybody to a certain extent. The math of the show is pairing the guests to the right topic, and then also making sure it’s seasonally appropriate.”
If a Bracket Brothers debate moves you to speak up — as it did me — don’t be afraid of being shushed. “One of the things that makes this show unique is we really encourage a lot of audience participation, whereas [with] a lot of comedy shows that is blatantly asked for it to not happen, right? ‘Shut up, sit down,'” adds Sean. “Come with your opinions. We’re going to give you the microphone. We might bring you on stage. … It’s just as much about the audience getting to voice their opinions. I mean, some of my favorite moments from the shows have been audience, not us.”
At the same time, don’t take the final outcome too seriously, even if a 40-year-old boat ride about agriculture beats out Rise of the Resistance. “The idea of the show is not to determine what the No. 1 thing of that category is. The idea of the show is to put on an entertaining show,” says Pat. “If we did the same topic 10 times, I think we’d get a different No. 1 every time.”
While there are no topics or tickets announced for October or beyond, sales have been strong so far. Sean says, “As long as people keep coming out and have passion around the stuff we’re talking about, I think the show continues.”
Sak Comedy Lab
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This article appears in Aug 13-18, 2025.