168 - The Nostalgia Critic

I think that the most astonishing thing about The Nostalgia Critic is the sheer fucking inability to improve in any regard, even on the most basic technical levels. Everything about the series is frozen in time, and even with all the money and new people they bring in throughout its entire existence, nobody ever improves the editing, the filming, the fucking sound, nothing. And this isn't even mentioning the writing. All of his criticisms are completely valid and lack any real understanding of the text or intentions of the filmmakers, to the point that you have to really wonder if he even understands what makes movies work. I think that Folding Ideas put it best when he said that Doug is a fundamentally incurious person, that he wants to make art like the movies he enjoyed when he was a kid, but he lacks any real creative intuition or desire to improve on his skills. Doug himself seems to be a perfectly decent person, but there's just a fundamental lacking in every aspect of his creative abilities. I do actually agree that The Show Must Go On is by far his best creative work, partly because he is working off of his own ideas and insecurities for inspiration, and that he's making something genuine with it, but also because he's ripping off another actual work which is actually competent. It's him working through his feelings of failure and inadequacy, and how by going back to the formula which is unoriginal and uncreative but which is successful, he has to betray his desire to be an actually creative person. It is in a lot of ways a horror story where the protagonist is fully defeated and gives into banality and failure. It's brushed with quality, but immediately loses it. Also, as a huge fan of The Wall, an album that meant to much to me as an emo teen, it feels like a violation to hear the Nostalgia Critic version. It's just so fucking stupid and bad and just shits all over this thing that I love in the most asinine ways possible.

NowhereMan661

As someone who still actually follows Cinema Snob but (also still) finds Doug Walker nauseating, I was very disappointed when Doug was in the Black Christmas 2019 review and I couldn't watch it. I still think about it every day.

LeechWife

I'm not gonna lie... I always loved JonTron. And then I listened to this episode and I rethought like everything I've ever supported... Besides this show obviously!!

Jacob Lowdermilk

Coming soon to NBC at 8pm (7pm central): Vaggle & Foobie. This zany new comedy duo will have your sides aching!

Gorbant

Broken Pixels was the name of the 1UP show.

murt pie

Grinning and tearing up at once at the end there AJ, thanks all of you for being yourselves and sharing that. It’s incredibly special and makes me think more carefully about the world

Donovan Miller

I heard you guys on Lions Led By Donkeys last week and was instantly hooked to subscribe when I saw this topic. Great stuff!

Corey Bushle

You've got to a least admire the insanity of making a whole terribl musical "parody" with corey taylor for a movie you feel completely indifferent about like why the wall to do a review musical of. I'm sure theres got to be other options, I really wanna know why the wall specifically but feel like the answer is gonna be something stupid like corey taylor or his son mentioned he liked pink floyd

Dylan Lewis

AJ did not have to but he didn’t even flinch. Heroes are all around us

Andrew Ryan Kirksey

I’ actually kinda curious how the Corey collab happened. I don’t listen to Slipknot, so my main impression of him is his appearance on QI. He comes across as an adorably awkward introvert who is *trying* How that might play into relationships to his kid, and then The Wall vid is …. Intriguing if not necessarily a question for media crit.

Rob F

🤾‍♂️🍪

Asha

I am always saying this

Robert Heilman

Your greatest episode yet

A Gaggle of Geckos

Teaboos are fascinating and deserve more rigorous study.

Amy Godliman

Corey Taylor’s kid used to be a regular at a coffee shop I worked at and he would always come in and loudly sing along to music he was listening to on his headphones while in line and then he’d order a vanilla shake in a fake English accent, ending the interaction with "thanks, bruv."

Josiah Sutton of the Fruitless Podcast

You guys need to watch area 88

Dave Urda

I was in the middle of work when I listened to this this morning and had to fuckin pause where I was for a hot second when that drive-by mention of HAWP happened because it sent me back 15 goddamned years

Jay V

Brand hecking new patron here - that ending had my heart.

Loquin Britton-Herndon

Mentioned in passing

John Leavitt

My dad who is at the VERY oldest side of Gen X got me into homestar runner in the 2000s. It’s a great resource for autistic echolalia bits that get the whole family going

Adi

Please tell me it was Sleazy Michael. I need to know more about Sleazy Michael.

Rob F

I am exactly the right kind of elder millennial that I’m scrubbing through the episode to see if the tangentially-related person I had a quasi-date with is mentioned

John Leavitt

Surely it would be called The Worst Of All Possible Girls?

John Leavitt

First you referenced the kayfabe of AVGN Vs The Critic and later you talk about how he's parodying a guy while also being that same type of guy. That is *also* wrestling. Ric Flair wasn't a good guy flaunting his money and talking about all the women he'd slept with, but slowly he unironically became that guy, completely losing his self awareness. Also you just got me to watch the first 10 minutes of Gervais meets Shambling and omg does this kid get destroyed by Gary.

FunkyWeapon

He's more of a charge card guy

The Worst of all Possible Worlds

Brutal

Tom and Joe made me give them money to play their game and now I, Teagan, am anime sickos canon. I'm gonna live forever!

They gave him a bat credit card!

Radio Free Tote Bag

this is pandering like hell

The Worst of all Possible Worlds

Love to be the final collaborator, the audience, with TWoaPW

Anne Huston

Greatest interstitial of all time, oh my god

Aaron Whitehouse

23:45 I paused immediately because I thought I knew who that was. So much of that review was written with the same weird phrasings and pointless adverbs you can find in Ben Shapiro's writing

Ilian Petit

🍪

GusDeWit

Also, I insist on posting some of my best greenlights here: 1. 'Swaziland in uproar over the stolen leopard-skin cape of King Mswati III. No word on his tigerstripe slingbacks with the six-inch heels' 2. 'Hell's Angel's store in Charlottetown, Canada closed by police. Authorities now stuck with hundreds of Hummel figurines of "Getting his Red Wings," and "Stomping His First Squealer" 3. 'Ugandan man-eating croc captured after claiming 80 lives. Will be punched hard, sail up into air, come back down as fine luggage' 4. '6.2 earthquake hits Kamchatka, totally spoiling plans to attack Alaska, thus depriving opponent of five armies per turn'

AngryOldManYaddaYadda

Some of us are still on FARK. And I think it's worth pointing out that Drew Curtis decided many years ago that exploitative soft porn, homophobia and other negative content did not belong on his website, and got rid of them.

AngryOldManYaddaYadda

Mopetuah, Pander on that hell

Evan Hawkins

Film Cow (Charlie the Unicorn, Llamas with Hats) are still going strong though.

Ijon Tichy

The Brothers Chaps truly did a great Jörb back in the day

Ijon Tichy

This showed up in my inbox, like "oh NOOO!"

Anghellik9

Truly, the good times are over

Jordan Clementi

Don't worry Brian, /I/ was impressed by and envious of your All State Choir brag

OLO

God I have way too many thoughts about this shit.

Amy Godliman

As someone who watched too much of this stuff way back when I’m fascinated by Doug(and his team)’s lack of progress, the anniversary films in particular. Whilst Kickassia isn’t good, the basic idea – a group of friends invade and take over a country, but it’s just a weird micro nation in Nevada – isn’t bad, I could imagine an old Danny McBride property using a plot like that. Suburban Knights is less inspired, but the basic plot of a LARP accidentally getting involved in real magic is the plot of several (likely also bad) small budget nerd movies. Finally you hit To Boldly Flee and it’s just…nothing, it’s an Epic Movie, just a series of references to other movies with less coherence than a sketch show. No wonder this one was the last straw for so many involved, I can’t imagine coming back year after year to a project that gets worse each time, even aside from the terrible treatment many were subjected to.

Amy Godliman

I like it when Brian screams

Dergon

Holy shit that essay reveal hit me like a ton of bricks. That was very brave, AJ

Dergon

I never cared for Nostalgia Critic or AVGN. Any Homestar Runner people here? That was my jam, and unfortunately(?), my entire sense of humor for years.

Dergon

YouTube went from 10 minute videos to an eight hour essay on an isometric horror game. Damn, run times have really inflated over the years

Noblesse Oblahaj

the MST3K comparison really confirms my suspicion that all of the good parts of our modern culture started on minneapolis public access TV

Teddy k.

Well finished the whole episode. It was very good, felt actually really balanced even though the vibe overall wasn't a positive view. Don't know if that makes sense, this is what I get for just putting comments about this out into the abyss as they come.

Peter Larkin

Yippee yippee!!

t o r t

Thanks for this episode though, I, like AJ, am cursed with so much knowledge about the roster of TGWTG and their accompanying lore. Like when someone there invited The Amazing Atheist to do a trailer review show and he couldn’t get through two episodes without being so racist he had to be immediately dropped. An odd, odd time in culture.

Amy Godliman

I like the idea of a Worst of All Possible Chicks but there is a risk they might progress stylistically really fast and end up being a Hugo nominated essayist with a legitimate career as a fiction writer and…I dunno, it’d make for some really weird comparisons.

Amy Godliman

oh my god. oh my god it's happening

Peter Paul Rubens' Muse

Nostalgia Critic and I go waaaaay back. I watched him after my relative told me about him; she probably thought I was a good audience for his content. Why? I was watching Irate Gamer at the time 😭😭. No other episode is making me itchy to talk about this with the fellas!!

HollyBroWoo

🍪 toss

Nick Gully

This is going to be roughly as much of group therapy for my childhood as the Adventures in Odyssey episodes.

Jordan Clementi

Or the one on the Nostalgia Critic

Jordan Clementi

Every time that Spoony and Brad Jones get mentioned and swiftly not discussed (fair enough it's a long episode) all I can feel is pity and derision in that order. The former had issues, got help and is seemingly a better person. The latter was and by all accounts remains a grade A prick. Which sucks cause a lot like AJ was, when I was younger I was a huge fan of all things Channel Awesome related. Can't even simply ignore it because, frankly, without the friends I made via the community to do with Channel Awesome I'd have killed myself by now. A bit maudlin perhaps, but any discussion of this topic tends to bring it out of me. Either way, the first half has been fantastic, hope Josh doesn't murder the other two as I'm looking forward to the second.

Peter Larkin

Sam Milne

Nearly three hours on the Nostalgia Critic? Well I know what half my workday is going to be listening to.

Peter Larkin

🫴🍪

Leo Curtis

I received Chuck Norris' autobiography when I went through confirmation at my church.

Ann Vagueness

This feels like a topic designed specifically to exorcise the cringiest parts of me

NobodyNewt