In this sneak peak of Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, and Fred Armisen’s new IFC show, Documentary Now!, Hader and Armisen don their best Brooklyn garb to play VICE reporters—er, I mean, Dronez reporters. In the series’ second full episode, released online ahead of the show’s Aug. 20 premiere, Dronez promises to provide “the real news of today’s world,” as two reporters—a bespectacled Armisen and mustachioed Hader—travel down to Mexico to hunt down infamous drug lord El Chingon. Despite multiple warnings that they’ll never make it out alive.
As they gawk their way through Ciudad Juárez, Hader and Armisen’s characters get more enlightened by the second—until they inevitably die and get replaced by uncannily similar reporters (also Hader and Armisen), who go on to ignore the advice of locals and rip off information from an embedded New York Times reporter. “We’re the only ones out here. New York Times isn’t doing this,” Hader’s third incarnation smirks as they approach El Chingon’s house in the foothills. “I think New York Times did do a piece out here,” Armisen admits.
But in the end, it’s all worth it, as Hader and Armisen find themselves coked up with El Chingon at just the right dramatic moment. “What do I say?” the New York Times reporter marvels as the police raid El Chingon’s home. “I mean, I have been embedded with the federal police for an entire year, and this is the biggest operation they’ve ever conducted, and apparently you guys are right in the middle of it, so that is just, that is … wow.”
