Fiction
Anime & Manga
"What an amazingly mediocre rap! I can't imagine how much practice it took to become this average!"
— Hayasaka, Kaguya-sama: Love Is War
Literature
He strained to listen for what was missing, and felt that the music was like a flightless bird that didn't even know what capacity it had lost. It walked very well, but it walked where it should soar, it walked where it should swoop, it walked where it should climb and bank and dive, it walked where it should thrill with the giddiness of flight. It never even looked up.
Live-Action TV
"That's good. That's like a forty-degree day. Ain't nobody got nothing to say about a forty-degree day. Fifty? Bring a smile to your face. Sixty? Shit, niggas is damn near barbecuing on that motherfucker. Go down to twenty, niggas get they bitch on, get they blood complainin', but forty? Nobody give a FUCK about forty!"
— Stringer Bell berating his gangsters, The Wire
Music
You're sort of everything I ever wanted
You're not perfect, but I love you anyhow
You're the woman that I've always dreamed of
Well not really, but you're good enough for now
You're not perfect, but I love you anyhow
You're the woman that I've always dreamed of
Well not really, but you're good enough for now
Tabletop Games
When nothing but second best will do.
Webcomics
It's mediocre. I'm not overwhelmed or underwhelmed. I'm just whelmed.
— Mulberry's 2009 Fall TV Preview
Nobody hates Weekend at Bernie's! The WAB films are generally regarded as so unremarkably mediocre they don't even attract any trolls who care enough to shit on it. Believe me, I've tried to get in debates with people about it!
— Jake English, Homestuck
Western Animation
"He's colossal! Stupendous! One might even go so far as to say-! ...he's mediocre."
Real Life
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On Anime & Manga
"It may be kind of stupid, but not nearly as stupid as Wicked City, and it may have some good action beats, but not nearly as good as Ninja Scroll. (This review is gonna be scintillating, isn't it?)"
"Record of Ragnarok is nowhere near as bad as what I was told to expect, yet at the same time it's clear that the work is simply not to the caliber that the source material (and fans) are so clearly crying out for. It's not bad enough to revile, nor good enough to recommend. Perhaps, then, mediocrity is the greatest sin of all."
— Grant Jones
on the Record of Ragnarok anime adaptation
on the Record of Ragnarok anime adaptation On Film — Animated
"So, while the last try may have been memorably awful, at least it was memorable. This one is primed to vanish from memory even faster than it takes to watch the entire original special. It's the definition of inoffensively bad. There's not really anything seriously "wrong" with it because there's nothing seriously "with it", period."
"Being the first theatrical release from Cartoon Network, this superhero beat-em-up got an astounding okay response from critics, and received an amazingly adequate box office, and the response from viewers was a phenomenal '...cool'."
You are like reviewing my breakfast this morning. It was fine. It was fucking cereal. What do you want from me Bongo, what more can I give you? It was cereal in a bowl with milk! How do I make that funny, Bongo?
On Film — Live-Action
"If Hollywood produced five times as many films as it does now, it would still not meet the demand. There is space for the mediocre!"
— Menahem Golan, 1986 interview
"It's not the best, it's not the worst. It sits somewhere in the boring middle, which in a sense is almost the worst thing a movie can be: completely boring, predictable and forgettable."
— I Hate Everything on Demon Island
"...a movie that's destined for good, perhaps even the goodest of good, but in its goodness, and its attempt to achieve goodness, its badness goes badder than bad to create a sort of goodbad."
I like this movie about as much as it's possible to like a movie with a two-star rating. Given its materials, it couldn't have been much better, but it's every bit as good as it is, if you see what I mean. Once you realize it's only going to be so good, you settle back and enjoy that modest degree of goodness, which is at least not badness, and besides, if you're watching Rush Hour 3, you obviously didn't have anything better to do, anyway...If you are trapped in a rainstorm in front of a theater playing this picture, by all means go right in.
— Roger Ebert, reviewing Rush Hour 3
Rush Hour 3Endgame is a monument to adequacy, a fitting capstone to an enterprise that figured out how to be good enough for enough people enough of the time.''
— A. O. Scott, on Avengers: Endgame
Avengers: EndgameOut of all the movies ever to be released, Morbius is definitely one of them.
"Poor Insurrection. It isn't loved like Two, popular like Four, prescient like Six, exciting like Eight. It doesn't have people rushing to defend it, saying it's cerebral like One, significant like Three, ambitious like Five, landmark like Seven, or theatrical like Ten. Insurrection stands alone: bad enough to be hated, but not bad enough to be loved."
Dominic Noble: Minority Report hit theatres in 2002 to a resounding cry of...
Movie-goer 1: Well that was... pretty good.
Movie-goer 2: Yeah, pretty good... You, uh, wanna grab dinner?
Movie-goer 1: Sure, I could eat.
Movie-goer 1: Well that was... pretty good.
Movie-goer 2: Yeah, pretty good... You, uh, wanna grab dinner?
Movie-goer 1: Sure, I could eat.
On Live-Action TV
"If we were to chart my taste in media, it would follow this curve right here◊. At the highest end of both quality and enjoyment, we would have something legitimately great like Cowboy Bebop, but on the opposite end, we'd have something like the infamously terrible film The Room. However, despite the ocean of difference in the two's quality, both rate as highly enjoyable; Bebop because it's, well, it's a fucking masterpiece, and The Room because through its sheer awfulness, it becomes this bizarre and fascinating portrait of the person who created it. It might not be traditionally great art, but goddamn is it entertaining. But then there's this section in the middle right here, and this is the dreaded "Mediocre Valley", and it's here where I would place season one of Riverdale; a series that simultaneously has nothing to say while never being brave enough to be terrible."
◊. At the highest end of both quality and enjoyment, we would have something legitimately great like Cowboy Bebop, but on the opposite end, we'd have something like the infamously terrible film The Room. However, despite the ocean of difference in the two's quality, both rate as highly enjoyable; Bebop because it's, well, it's a fucking masterpiece, and The Room because through its sheer awfulness, it becomes this bizarre and fascinating portrait of the person who created it. It might not be traditionally great art, but goddamn is it entertaining. But then there's this section in the middle right here, and this is the dreaded "Mediocre Valley", and it's here where I would place season one of Riverdale; a series that simultaneously has nothing to say while never being brave enough to be terrible." On Music
"I think the highest and lowest points are the important ones. All the points in between are, well, in between."
"Man, this [Artist Name] song sure does exist, doesn't it?"
"It was moderately good. Got them a moderate amount of success. They weren't overrated or underrated. They were...they were rated. They were perfectly rated."
"A C is a record of clear professionalism or barely discernible inspiration, but not both.''
— Robert Christgau, explaining his grades for 1969-89 music reviews.
. On Video Games
"It's okay, but that's the problem. It's so 'okay' that it's not even worth existing. So bland and mediocre that it's hard to even come up with legitimate complaints."
For the price, though, you could do a lot worse than Ford Racing. Of course, for 10 more bucks, you could do a lot better, too. Remember, Gran Turismo 2 is a Greatest Hits title.
— Greg Sewart, Electronic Gaming Monthly #142, giving budget-title Ford Racing (PlayStation) a middle-of-the-road 5.5 out of 10.
Yes, Telenet's quality control was lacking. For every Exile series, the company churned out twice as many unremarkable titles... It wasn't as though the typical Telenet release was even memorably bad; it was more the game equivalent of unflavored oatmeal.
You know what? Before we move on, "good games yay, bad games boo" is all very well, but what about the third category? For the first time, I'd like to introduce a third Top 5 list, celebrating the games that did nothing interesting, took no risks, pushed nothing forward, and were generally to the year of gaming what Martin O'Malley was to televised debate. Without further ado, here's my fifth blandest game of 2015.
On Western Animation
"These guys clearly know how to write good stuff. But maybe they don't really do it that much because they don't have to. People will still watch this show no matter what. IGN will still rate the episodes at 8 and up. Kids are still getting their favorite show. But if someone's looking for fulfilling storytelling, they're not gonna get it here. They're not gonna get much satisfaction at all because it's just so empty and forgettable. It's so immensely frustrating to watch a whole episode a whole five episodes a whole season of a show... just to forget it immediately afterwards. To be left with no lasting feelings. It feels like you wasted your time. It's like where you're having a dream where you're eating something, you know, you could have a big banquet you could be eating your favorite food in the world and you eat and eat but you feel weird you feel that weird empty feeling because you're not actually eating anything. And then you wake up wanting that food but you're still fucking hungry because it wasn't real. And you know what happens to most of the dreams that you have? You forget about them."
