YouTube most iconic double trouble, the Dolan Twin, released a video on February 18th titled “Losing a Best Friend.” Now I’m not going to lie I hadn’t seen any of their other videos until this one. A friend of mine suggested one hour and thirty-minute documentary to me since she believed it to be a masterpiece. Let’s just say, after watching this documentary, I am proud to call myself a subscriber. This video was a one-year update on the twin’s mental health and family/friend life a year after the passing of their father, or as they call him, their best friend. So, since this video is the same length as a movie, most people probably don’t have the time to watch the whole video, or maybe you just don’t feel like going through a whole box of tissues like me. So here is a quick recap of all the documentary and all that it entailed. Just as a declaimer, I will be talking about death, mental illness, depression, anxiety, and sensitive family material, so if such topics easily trigger you, I don’t recommend watching the video or reading any further.
Really quick, just so you are caught up, the Dolan Twins, Ethan and Grayson are 20-year-old boys from New Jersey that typically make adventure style videos since 2014. The boys have 10 million subscribers, making them quite a popular channel among people ages 15-28. The twins have been open about their father, Sean Dolan, and his cancer diagnosis back in 2016. In a video called “You’re Not Alone”, the twins talk about their father’s diagnosis and state that they have had a hard time digesting the situation. On January 19th, 2019, Sean Dolan lost his battle with cancer just a few years after his initial diagnosis. Ethan Dolan put on his Instagram a tribute to his father as seen here.
On the first anniversary of their fathers passing the Twins decide to start going to therapy, and this is where the video begins. The twins state that they are having a hard time feeling emotions and have been experiencing panic attacks along with guilt and shame for not feeling upset. Grayson says that he is afraid to get emotional because his father never let his illness bring him down and he knows that his father would be upset seeing Grayson down. The therapist recommends that the boys go and look through some old photos to spark some emotions and to allow themselves to be vulnerable. Once they do this, we find out that their father was a principal of a couple nearby schools along with being a coach of several footballs and baseball teams. The boys also find some images of their fathers’ band and joke about how the never received their fathers singing genes. Grayson becomes upset at the sight of his father looking healthy and happy and he begins to cry. Not going to lie, I lost it here, I was reaching for my tissues! The boys allow themselves to cry in front of each other, something that they had never done as a means of healing.
After this moment we see the twins going around from school to school asking their fathers old collogues about his life at school as a principal. The twins get some stories about their father that they never heard before, which allowed for the twins to gain some more knowledge about the man that their father was. After talking to faculty, they talk to some of the coaches and players that Sean used to work with. Everyone that the twins talk to describe how much of a role model Sean was. A player of his baseball team talks about how coach Dolan was there for him after his father’s diagnosis with cancer, and soon after losing him, coach Dolan was there to support him the whole way through the year. Some of the members recall Dolan co-signing on cars and allowing for students to pull him aside and let them rant about their lives.
The twins then move onto talking with their family and close friends. We see them talking with Sean’s parents, their grandparents, and how they are still affected by Sean’s passing before their passing. We see the twins talk with some of their father’s fraternity brothers, and they talked about how Sean never let his illness get in the way of his life. They recall going kayaking with Sean while he had cancer, and his buddy in the kayak with him was smoking the cigarette. The other friends exclaimed that he should smoke around Sean because it would “give him cancer”, to which Sean broke out into laughter showing that nothing could bring him down. We get to see Sean’s uncle, he states how he was always a badass, and he wishes that he could be a tenth of Sean’s strength for putting up what he went through. Lastly, we see Sean’s wife, the mother of the Twins. She is asked to share some memories of their father but instantly breaks into tears, their family then talks about how depressed and unreal the whole situation feels. The twins get to share with their mother how they have been doing emotionally over the past year, and the whole family ends up giving a group hug as they all sob into each other’s arms.
The ending of the documentary has the twins talking about a charity foundation that they started in their father’s name called Love From Sean, in which all the money raised will go to various cancer charities. Along with this tribute, Ethan decides that he was going to shave his head to represent how his father felt when he had to shave his head due to the chemotherapy. Ethan talks about how his father only ever felt self-conscious when he had to shave his head and seeing how weak he was made Ethan want to feel what his father had to endure. So, there you go, that was a basic overview of the Dolan Twins latest documentary. I hope you got a good sense of what the video was about. I recommend, if you have the time, watching the video fully, since there are some beautiful cinematography clips and scenes with some heart-breaking emotion. Let us know what you think about this documentary, and did you donate to their fundraiser? I have to say, this documentary really was a great way for people to understand what kind of a Father Sean was, and it even was a way for me to learn a few things about the grieving process. Content like this is what YouTube needs, they need to see their creators being humans and not just content machines. So, thank you Dolan twins for being so open and raw about something we all will eventually endure.