Before landing the lucrative television deal that became Impractical Jokers, Sal Vulcano, James Murray, Joe Gatto, and Brian Quinn toured and performed live shows as the professional comedy quartet The Tenderloins. They also self-produced sketch comedy content for a number of years during the early days of YouTube, under a channel appropriately called The Tenderloins. The channel is still active, and many of their oldest videos are available to watch if you've got a free afternoon to dive into a decade's worth of memories. That sketch comedy work got them significant attention — first in the form of a failed scripted comedy pilot for SpikeTV and then the television deal with truTV for the series that became Impractical Jokers. With all the previous material available online and their professional background touring, they were given particularly generous creative control (especially since this was their first official television foray) as executive producers.
If the best improv is fostered through a sense of trust, Vulcano and the Impractical Jokers boys certainly have it in spades purely from time and experience. With trust comes the understanding that when conflict comes, they can manage it between each other. "Of course we fight from time to time," Vulcano explained in a Reddit AMA, "But we are so used to it, it's never personal." If that isn't an ultimate statement of the joy of friendship, we aren't sure what is, honestly. It must have been fate for the four of them to spend their mortal lives doing this to each other, and it couldn't be more charming to watch.
