YMMV / Black Friday

• Accidental Aesop: Have sensible store policies in place so the burden of customer service doesn't fall on the retail employees. When Sherman buys all the dolls, Frank Pricely is too oblivious to see the consequences as Linda and the other would-be customers argue that they've been waiting in line for hours. Safe to say that if there had been a purchase limit from the start, Frank wouldn't have inadvertently started a riot.
• Accidental Innuendo: Linda says Gerald isn't allowed within 1,000 feet of a Cinnabon, and that she does not believe he "only wants to smell them." The Langs have said this was only meant to be a dig at Gerald's Weight Woe, but many fans interpreted as him being barred from Cinnabon due to an... incident.
• Actor Shipping:
  • Fans who've been shipping Joey Richter and Lauren Lopez since their duet in A Very Potter Musical were very excited to see them have the first scene they've acted in with just each other since then, and it turned out to be a scene absolutely laden with sexual subtext too, with Joey as Uncle Wiley turning on his seductive wiles full blast to try to fully corrupt Lauren as Linda fully to the cause of evil. This was only intensified by a throwaway moment later on, during "Adore Me", where Linda sings "Kiss my toe" and Joey as the Crazy Homeless Man actually does it.
    • Furthered when Lauren and Joey announced their engagement in July 2020, as well as the fact that they'd been dating for eight years.
  • Shippers of Robert Manion and Mariah Rose Faith — who didn't really have any significant scenes together in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals — were really looking forward to them singing together on "CaliforMIA" in this show, only to be crushed when Mariah had to bow out and Lex was recast as Angela Giarratana. This was more than made up for by the sheer amount of chemistry Robert as Ethan and Angela as Lex had together, with "CaliforMIA" turning out to have some of the most infectious romantic energy of any Starkid duet (the two almost legitimately burst out into giggles on "We'll know we're righteous, babe/We survived the crisis, babe").
• Adorkable: Hannah's wacky improvised dance moves during "CaliforMIA" pretty much made the whole audience instantly fall in love with her character.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Hannah tries to warn Lex not to shoplift the doll in her backpack, saying it will bring "fire and blood". Lex kindly tells her that a disaster won't happen, and Ethan gives Hannah his lucky hat. Has Hannah been wrong before with her prophecies or inaccurate rather since it's along the lines of Vagueness Is Coming?
  • Alternative prop interpretation, but many have theorized that the hat that Ethan gives Hannah really is magic. Whether this is due to the general weirdness of Hatchetfield or because Hannah believes it'll protect her — or both — is up for debate.
  • Frank is definitely a Mean Boss, but his behavior towards Lex has made some wonder if he's also sexually harassing her on top of everything else.
  • Hannah definitely is heavily coded as autistic. Does her behavior stem from the fact that she's psychic, or is it incidental? The fact that Lex also has psychic powers, albeit ones that manifest differently than Hannah's, imply Hannah's disorder (be it autism or something else) and her connection to the Black and White are independent factors, and one didn't cause the other.
  • Becky and Tom (the "Barneston" ship) are obviously intended as the Official Couple of the show, but fans are hotly divided on whether a relationship that's explicitly based on both of them fantasizing about how much happier they were when they were teenagers in high school can possibly be, especially on Tom's side (where he makes it very clear that he hasn't even really started dealing with how fucked up Jane's death left him). This is definitely influenced by fans of the Beta Couple Lex and Ethan being unhappy they got so little stage time by comparison and their relationship is unceremoniously cut off by Ethan's death, but a reasonable case can be made that Becky and Tom getting together is even portrayed as a bad thing in the show — the song "What Do You Say?" is one long joke about how immature the town's obsession with Becky/Tom as an OTP is, Becky and Tom have sex right before they become Wiggly-possessed villains in "Do You Want to Play?" — and yet the show as a whole still wants us to root for them to get together. This plays a major role in people's song rankings either putting "Take Me Back" near the top or near the bottom depending on how they feel about the ship.
  • There's a minority of fans who've pushed back on what they see as the Fanservicey nature of capitalizing on Gen. MacNamara's Memetic Badass status in fandom to make him and the forces of PEIP the unambiguous Big Good of the Hatchetfield setting. The original MacNamara in TGWDLM ended up being a cautionary tale about Eagle Land values being a gateway to fascism, and hearing the "America Is Great Again" theme as a wholly positive heroic theme song in this show rubbed some fans the wrong way. Even in the context of this show, there's a lot of room to debate whether PEIP are as badass as advertised or if they're Failure Heroes who get a lot of Character Shilling, considering the whole subplot with the portal just makes them Wiggly's patsies who played into his hands at every step. It's this disagreement as much as disagreement over how much people like Jeff Blim's falsetto that's led to "Monsters and Men" and its reprise being such polarizing tracks, ending up on the bottom of a lot of fan song rankings.
  • The Wiggly brainwashing seems to bring out the worst in people, even from perfectly nice and selfless nurses like Becky. On the other hand, it's implied that everyone has flaws and a tendency for selfishness, and the Wiggly mind control may remove your inhibitions.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The word "sniggle" is a real world, referring to a form of fishing for eels (or the hooks used for this kind of fishing), based on the obsolete word "snigs" to mean eels.
• Anvilicious: Did you know that Nick and Matt Lang think Capitalism Is Bad, and that Conspicuous Consumption, mob psychology and entitled fandom are worse? Almost certainly, if you know anything about them, and if you didn't the whole basic premise of this show would've told you. But the plot of the show goes ham on making sure you have no doubt about the writers' politics, escalating from the relatively obvious Trend Aesop making fun of the Retail Riot trope to directly having the Devil in human form give a speech about how the thoughtless consumption that drives free-market capitalism will inevitably destroy both the human spirit and the world. This isn't really a problem for most of the fandom, who are on the same side of the issues as they are, but some fans (including the minority who don't consider themselves political progressives) have been taken aback by the vehemence.
  • Ironically, most Starkid shows have an entry under Anvilicious for the tongue-in-cheek over-the-top swipes at organized religion. ("God is a vicious two-faced prick!") This show really doesn't spend any time on that at all, although the fact that the closest thing to a deity in this setting is Wiggly might be a mildly anti-religious take. Really, though, the show if anything comes off as a far harsher attack on the secular "religion of capitalism" that's replaced traditional religion, with the Tempting Fate Foreshadowing of Frank gleefully blaspheming by singing Christmas carols with the references to Jesus replaced with Wiggly and openly calling Black Friday "the holiest day of the year" for retailers.
• Art Evolution: In terms of the filming for the YouTube release of the show this was a huge budget upgrade over any Starkid video release in the past — rather than the standard three-camera setup they've used in the past as is typical for a filmed version of a stage show, this video is filmed like a movie, with a single dynamic camera moving around for cinematic tracking shots, closeups, and even some FX shots done especially for the video (like Linda's Boom, Headshot!). No Starkid show has ever looked so much like a film. (Although see They Changed It, Now It Sucks! below.)
• Awesome Music: Despite its divisive reception, the show's soundtrack has, overall, been very well received, with particular praise going to "Black Friday", "Take Me Back", "CaliforM.I.A", "If I Fail You", "Feast or Famine", "Our Doors Are Open", "Made in America", and "What if Tomorrow Comes?".
  • Special mention should go to "What If Tomorrow Comes?", the first track completed for this show which was considered good enough to put on the trailer in its scratch track version. It's complex, artistic and experimental in a way few Starkid tracks have been before, and many are calling it the masterpiece of Jeff Blim's composing career. When Hannah starts singing it, her voice becomes stronger and more hopeful than we have heard for the entire show. She motivates the scared but determined survivors to join in, and ask, "What if tomorrow comes, to bring the dawn and scare the dark away?" They gather together with gorgeous harmonies, before counting down the seconds to midnight. You can see why they cast Hannah's actress because her voice brings the house down, not with horror but with cautious optimism and hope.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The song "Deck the Halls (of Northfield High)", and anything related to the Show Within a Show Santa Claus is Goin' to High School.
• Bigger Is Better: Black Friday is a major contrast to the almost minimalistic The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals, and is a throwback to the big casts, long running time (a half hour longer than TGWDLM), and ambitious ideas of shows like Starship and Firebringer, as you can probably tell by the size of these trope pages.
• Broken Base: There was some grumbling about the decision to hold a combined Kickstarter for Starkid: Homecoming and Black Friday, removing control from fans who wanted to fund one but not the other (primarily from fans upset that the Homecoming concert would be one night only in Los Angeles, would never be released on YouTube and would only have DVDs available upon hitting a stretch goal, thus meaning some fans wanting to support Black Friday might instead be paying for a show they'll never see).
  • There were also fans demanding that the next show be the Show Within a Show from The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals, Workin' Boys, despite Nick Lang repeatedly pointing out it was an intentionally bad, unworkable idea for a musical. The addition of a stretch goal to the Kickstarter to create a short film about Workin' Boys was a response to this.
  • Now that the show is out, as you can probably tell from the number of negative/critical YMMV entries on this page, there's a pretty harsh division between those still fully on board the hype train for the Hatchetfield series and those who feel let down and that Starkid's admirable ambitions may have been biting off more than they could chew.
  • One particular divide between old Starkid fans and the massive fanbase that came in with The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals is the use of long, sentimental ballads without backup singers or choreography meant to highlight one singer's solo chops, like Dylan Saunders' "What Tim Wants" and "If I Fail You". These have always been a Starkid staple from Day One — the Mood Whiplash of Jaime Lyn Beatty singing "Harry" as a massive Tear Jerker in the middle of a goofy series of Butt-Monkey jokes about Ginny's unrequited love is what made people fall in love with A Very Potter Musical in the first place — but TGWDLM was notable because the core conceit of the show meant that it didn't have any, since all the songs are ironic Villain Songs. (The closest thing TGWDLM has to a ballad is "You Tied Up My Heart", which is more of a Played for Laughs cruel parody of one.) There's been some really harsh arguments between fans of Dylan Saunders' crooning who think "What Tim Wants" and "If I Fail You" match or outdo his performance on "If I Believed" in Twisted, and newer fans who loved TGWDLM because it didn't have any slow or "boring" interludes.
• Continuity Lockout: A mild example, since the plot of Black Friday is perfectly comprehensible without having seen The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals— arguably more comprehensible because you don't have to adjust to the idea that Alternate Universes are a thing — but there's quite a few Call Backs that just seem like weirdly emphasized random moments if you haven't seen the first show. (The "wear a watch" conversation, the "Smoke Club" dance move.) Exacerbated by the fact that it's a recording of a live show, and the Studio Audience is almost all TGWDLM fans, so newcomers will be left extra confused at the reaction to Paul and Emma simply saying each other's names or Emma mentioning Professor Hidgens.
• Crack Fic: The tone of this show is so serious compared to the last one that some Starkid fans have been drawn to Trollish Canon Defilement. The most striking one is probably people mildly annoyed by Becky's character — and who jokingly headcanon that Emma, who canonically dislikes Becky, can never be wrong about anything — coming up with Manipulative!Becky, a Yandere Stalker with a Crush obsessed with Tom who framed her husband for abusing her, murdered him, crashed her car into Tom's to kill his wife Jane, and now finally has Tom to herself.
• Crack Ship: A particularly divisive ship that's come out of this show is the "Barnroe" ship, a Les Yay ship between Linda Monroe and Becky Barnes — which is controversial given that in canon Linda's only interactions with Becky involve being an abusive bully.
• Crosses the Line Twice: It's a Starkid show, so this is to be expected.
  • Paul mentions how much fun bumper cars are to Tim, whose mother died last year in a car wreck. The icing on the cake is when Tim sadly replies that he doesn't like getting hit by cars anymore.
  • Frank's smug disregard for basic decency in the name of profits is amusing, at least before the shit hits in the fan.
    We're not liable for anyone who dies!
  • Sherman's monologue about what he intends to do with the 850 Wigglys. One of them is apparently for "bath time".
  • Linda's sheer Alpha Bitch energy in her first interaction with Becky.
    Linda: One? Oh, no, no, I need four [Wigglies]. I have four boys. Four beautiful blonde boys. They're not going to share one like some junkie children with a needle.
    Becky: Linda. Do you really think your children are better than everyone else's?
    Linda: (offended) In so many words, yes! (crowd reacts) Oh, shut up! I hope you don't get a Wiggly! I hope you fucking die. What are you doing here, anyway? You don't even have children... thank God.
    Becky: For your information, I am here for the patients of St. Damien's pediatrics wing. Kids who are gonna be spending Christmas in a hospital bed.
    Linda: (wrinkles nose) Ew.
    Becky: There's a little girl there, Bridget, she lost her eyesight in an accident, a horrible accident—
    Linda: Well, my children were accidents, you don't see me pushing my problems onto everyone else.
  • Linda indulges in disturbingly realistic and uncomfortable Victim-Blaming in regards to Becky's abusive husband. Followed by angrily having to tell Gerald to stop crying because she wasn't talking to him.
  • It's not really a funny moment, but it's twistedly awesome in its way how utterly shamelessly evil Linda is, even when it comes to whether she Would Hurt a Child.
    Linda: (opens Hannah's backpack to find no doll) What?... Is this some kind of a jooooke? Where is he?! ANSWER ME! (draws boxcutter) OR I'LL OPEN YOUR MOUTH WITH MY FUCKING KNIFE!
  • The Black Comedy over characters who Would Hurt a Child arguably reaches its peak in the Oval Office scene with the Secretary of Defense openly threatening the Secretary of State's family over a doll:
    No! He's MINE! Back off or I will send a laser-guided ballistic missile to your house in Denver! You'll be scraping what's left of your kids off the fuckin' pavement!
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Ethan Green has become an instant fan favorite, in part due to Robert Manion's performance as an endearing delinquent with a heart of gold, who is dedicated to helping his girlfriend Lex leave their abusive home life and has sweet moments with her sister Hannah before dying relatively early in the show. Many fans bemoan the fact that Lex doesn't find out he died, let alone have time to mourn him. The fact that Robert is consistently an Ensemble Dark Horse in every show he's cast in has really intensified his fanbase calling for him to get a lead role soon.
  • Another mention should be given to Kendall Yakshe, who was hired as Starkid's first child actor, and whom fans were wildly impressed with, especially when she brings down the house with "What If Tomorrow Comes?" to end the show. Even though she was cast to convincingly and realistically play a character her own age, her voice is so strong and controlled in her solo a lot of people were convinced she must be Dawson Casting.
  • A more minor example, since he doesn't have the same amount to do in the show, but James Tolbert was a bit of a show-stealer making his Starkid onstage debut after having served as a choreographer off-and-on since A Very Potter Sequel. Aside from bringing impeccable dance skills to the stage, he also turned out to be really great at acting, including a ton of Funny Background Events in various scenes, especially his facial expressions all throughout "What Do You Say?", and the "wiggle" dance in the song "Wiggle" (which live audiences were pretty upset was cut from the YouTube recording).
  • There's been a surprising amount of love for Gary Goldstein, attorney-at-law, who isn't that much of a character and seems to exist mainly to give Jon Matteson something to do onstage when he's not voicing Wiggly, but who's still incredibly memorable — especially as a contrast in the opposite direction as Wiggly from Jon's introduction to Starkid fans as a Straight Man.
  • Gerald Monroe, who doesn't even show up onstage, has become a favorite for fanfic, mostly due to the hilarious Running Gag of Linda constantly talking at him on the phone, and the presumed saintlike patience he'd need to put up with her.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • The whole show is one, by opening up the backstory and worldbuilding of the "Hatchetfield universe" so much. Popular topics include the backstory of PEIP, Wilbur Cross and General MacNamara, the high school days of Linda Monroe, Tom Houston and Becky Barnes when they were all in the same year, and, most of all, the life and times of Linda's longsuffering husband Gerald, including the story of why exactly he was served a restraining order against coming within 1,000 feet of a Cinnabon. (Word of God is the latter is just a misunderstanding of a joke about Gerald's Weight Woe and this is the one topic fans latched onto that Team Starkid hasn't actually written anything about.)
  • What were the characters from Black Friday doing during the events of The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals?
• Fan Nickname: No name is ever given for the Bit Characters played by James Tolbert, Robert Manion and Curt Mega, but one genius.com transcript of the lyrics to "What Do You Say?" named Robert's character (the Man in a Beanie) "Twinky Boy", which went viral to the degree that many fans mistake it for an official name. Robert himself weighed in to say the only name in the script was "Shopper #4", although based on his outfit the character did get the on-set nickname "Kevin McCallister".
• Fanon:
  • A few amusing bits of fanon have arisen from this show, like that the Crazy Homeless Man wasn't actually infected with the musical virus in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals and just wanted to fit in with the crowd, and similarly in this show has no idea what a Tickle-Me-Wiggly even is (and obviously can't afford one), just stood in the line to have something to do, and got swept up in events entirely naturally with no idea what was going on.
  • There's also the similar fanon that both Ethan and Lex Never Learned to Read (or, at least, read very well) and the idea behind the song "CaliforMIA" is they think the pun with "MIA" makes sense because they literally think that's how the word "California" is spelled.
  • Nick Lang and Corey Dorris both denied that Frank Pricely is an intentional Expy of Mr. Krabs from Spongebob Squarepants, both of them admitting they're too old to know anything about the show, but the flamboyant behavior, the over-the-top money obsession and the red shirt are all so dead-on that the fandom has declared this true regardless.
  • The fanbase seems to agree that Hannah is autistic, and much of her unusual behavior would've been present whether she was a Mad Oracle or not.
  • The fact that Ethan says his baseball cap was "gifted to him by a great warrior", and that MacNamara later prophesies that "there is a great warrior who has fallen into a deep sleep", which seems to refer to Tom, has led many to conclude that Tom was a Cool Teacher to Ethan as well as Lex and gave him the hat as the result of some kind of manly bonding incident.
  • Despite the fact that Word of God says that Lex was a loner before dropping out, many fans like to think that she would have been friends with Alice and Deb through Ethan, who fans believe either was or is in the Smoke Club based on his dancing during CaliforMIA.
• Genius Bonus: Borders on a Stealth Pun, but this show is a very literal depiction of the Marxist concept of "commodity fetishism", i.e. making a "fetish" (i.e. an idol) of commercial products, and delusionally thinking they have value in and of themselves outside of the labor it took to make them and the use they have for the people who need them. (Note that people like Sherman Young may make a "fetish" of products in a more directly perverse sense.)
  • When Lex is searching for a term to describe Wiggly's Creepy Cute cult around a children's toy, she calls it "the cult of comfort", which is a real-life term that's been used by Marxist critics since the early 20th century to describe bourgeois morality.
• He Really Can Act: One for the whole cast, who get the chance to tackle more dramatic material than usually seen in a Starkid show. Joey Richter in particular stands out — not that he didn't get the chance to do dramatic acting in previous roles, but Uncle Wiley is a particular departure for him as a sexy, charming and thoroughly, unironically monstrous villain. The most notable may be Jon Matteson as the voice of Wiggly, with many fans expressing surprise at finding out it was him, and that the voice was done live with no post-processing. After the role that introduced him to Starkid fandom was a guy defined as a straitlaced everyman hearing him fully embody a grotesque Creepy Cute cartoon character was an amazing transformation. (A video was shared to Instagram of him getting into character as Wiggly backstage that is truly disturbing.)
  • A special Shout-Out should also go out to Dylan Saunders for his starring role as Tom Houston, which doesn't just show off his vocal chops as usual, but is a serious acting tour de force. It's not that he hasn't played a lead before in Twisted, but Ja'far was in his Starkid wheelhouse as an Adorkable Nice Guy like Dumbledore. Tom Houston is a wild left turn into a raw, serious portrayal of a Shell-Shocked Veteran with a genuinely scary Hair-Trigger Temper and a genuinely unsettling Thousand-Yard Stare in his eyes, that actually make him clawing his way back out of despair in the end feel like a genuine victory. (A few people have even said that with the — real this time — Beard of Sorrow, they almost didn't recognize him.)
• Harsher in Hindsight: Given the dark tone of this show, there are some moments that come off as possible Call Backs to past Starkid shows in this sense:
  • There's a hilarious Overly Long Gag in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals with Bill threatening to kick Ted's ass but, being a straitlaced dad, censoring himself to saying "kick your... head!", with Ted launching into a lengthy trolling rant about Bill's amazing martial arts skills letting him pull off a crane kick against his enemies. Come Black Friday, and a bunch of random untrained rioters are able to kick Ethan in the head... by shoving him to the ground first, and doing it brutally and repeatedly until he can no longer move, and dies a few seconds later of his wounds. It's a Gut Punch moment to the degree that once someone points out this connection to you the previous joke almost isn't funny at all.
  • Ethan's death scene itself is, of course, a Call-Back to the memorable and hilarious One-Scene Wonder death scene Robert Manion had as Abdul the guard who choked on fertilizer in Twisted, only played as an entirely straight Tear Jerker this time. The fact that he was equally effective at both has led fans to joke about Manion becoming Team Starkid's version of Sean Bean.
  • Not to mention that shortly after their big duet in "CaliforMIA", Ethan does go MIA, from Lex's perspective, and the show ends before anyone bothers to confirm that he was in fact KIA.
  • A more blatant example is the Crossing the Line Twice Canon Defilement joke in A Very Potter Senior Year, reducing the reveal of Dumbledore's Dark and Troubled Past in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to "Sometimes you accidentally kill your family. It's nothing to beat yourself up about." It's possibly only because seven years have passed that Dylan Saunders saying "I killed my family" works as a dead serious Tear Jerker.
  • A brief and subtle one of these is a moment in "Feast or Famine" where Linda gets accidentally smacked in the face as the Homeless Man pushes past her and gingerly touches her nose in shock and offense that she's bleeding, mimicking "Am I — am I bleeding?" gag with Draco in A Very Potter Musical.
  • Then, of course, there's the fact that the YouTube release of the show was only days before the global COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, making the apocalyptic feel of the show feel all the more relevant and depressing. It's especially striking that a few weeks after Black Friday was released online, everyone started hearing stories of real-life Retail Riots breaking out over mundane items like toilet paper and hand sanitizer on a daily basis.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Lex sings that she wants to be an actress, to "sell people hope" in "CaliforM.I.A.". This musical would become Angela Giarratana's Star-Making Role after she and her sister serve as the Hope Bringer for the survivors of Black Friday.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Six years after Tessa Netting and Curt Mega did this parody of "I Wanna Be" from Starship, and three years after they became Starkid-adjacent actors with the Tin Can Bros. show Spies Are Forever, Curt Mega is finally a fully Promoted Fanboy with his first Starkid role.
  • For people who were avidly following the livestream previews of the show, the fact that when the scratch track of "What Do You Say?" was revealed, Lauren Lopez got really into the track and openly reacted with disgust and disapproval to the way the Gossipy Hens in the song behave, especially the song "Tommy's put on some weight". Of course, in the final show she plays Linda Monroe, who's the character egging on this behavior in everyone else and who relishes singing that particular line.
  • Peanuts the Pocket Squirrel's appearance in the finale means that this is the second time he survives to the end of a Hatchetfield Horror Comedy.
  • Lauren Lopez's turn as Jingle, Chris Kringle's Fairy Companion in Santa Claus is Goin' to High School, has her using the exact same voice she used as Buggette in Starship. It's also, of course, the second time she's played a tiny adorable elf, after the revelation about Draco's parentage in A Very Potter Sequel.
  • Not that it undermines Uncle Wiley's point in "Made In America" all that much, but if you take Paul's lecture at the beginning seriously and look up the history of Retail Riots and Flash In The Pan Fads, you'll find that the trampling of a retail worker over a Tickle-Me-Elmo doll, which is clearly the main inspiration for the Tickle-Me-Wiggly in the show, happened in Canada.^note Which isn't culturally that different from the United States but does, contrary to Uncle Wiley's point about social safety nets being key to Wiggly's apotheosis, have single-payer healthcare.
  • At one point, Linda refuses to put Gerald on speakerphone, saying, "No one wants to talk to you." Now that the show's out, we find out that couldn't be further from the truth!
  • Paul noting that Tom is "a bit of a Scrooge". In A VHS Christmas Carol, Tom's actor Dylan Saunders plays Ebenezer Scrooge himself. Also applies to Corey Dorris playing Scrooge's Christmas-loving nephew Fred in that show after he played the Scrooge-like "Principal Humbugger" in this one.
• Hype Backlash: See Tough Act to Follow below. With the YouTube release officially out, a lot of the fandom has arrived on the consensus that in contrast to TGWDLM, which was a whole new kind of project for Starkid that set mild expectations and then wildly exceeded them, Black Friday came in with so much hype it was bound to be a letdown to some degree, and the pressure to satisfy the TGWDLM fandom led to some bad decisions. Namely, the show is generally agreed to be overstuffed with too many ideas for its running time (cf. the mixed reactions to Starship back in the day) and the sheer number of Fanservice Call Backs to TGWDLM felt like pandering after a while.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • We immediately soften our opinion of Tom, despite his massively Jerkass Establishing Character Moment, when we get a peek into his psyche with the song "What Tim Wants" and realize just how fucked up with self-loathing and despair he's been inside since Jane died, and how his self-imposed isolation has only made it worse and worse.
  • Lex is a cynical jerk with a chip on her shoulder but it's clear that life hasn't been easy for her. Having an abusive alcoholic mother (with her father nowhere in sight) has forced her to act as the family breadwinner and parental figure for her disabled sister and she dropped out of school. Over the course of the show, her boyfriend is killed and her sister is tormented by Wiggly. She's also forced to watch as her boss get his throat slit.
• Love to Hate:
  • Linda Monroe, mistress of the Wiggly cult and delightfully horrid person. Many fans have said they'll adore her any day.
  • Frank is also very popular, with much of the fun coming from how horrible he is. His catchy Villain Song doesn't hurt, either.
• Moral Event Horizon: Linda's obviously already totally lost to Wiggly madness when she comes out as the leader of the cult and declares herself Wiggly's prophet, but she really cements there's no coming back from this when she murders Frank Pricely in cold blood by slitting his throat, simply because he offends her with his unbelief and he's of no further use to her.
• Older Than They Think: This isn't even close to the first time that Starkid has gotten political in a show. Class warfare has been there in its mild Slobs vs. Snobs form since the very beginning with Little White Lie and A Very Potter Musical, and an explicit theme since Twisted. Holy Musical B@man! throws in a song, "The American Way", that's about the exact same theme of American ideals vs. what America uber capitalism is really like that "Made In America" is. The Mood Whiplash of suddenly putting deadly earnest dramatic themes in a goofy show has been part of the brand since day one, e.g. Voldemort and Quirrell's tragic romance, or The Trail to Oregon! suddenly having a song about "Slippery When Wet" wrestling with whether to have an abortion. Firebringer was also about a fairly deep Green Aesop about the human struggle to balance our desire for a better life with the harm we do to the world along the way. The only thing Black Friday really did was turn the knob on the message ratio to the point where people who'd been ignoring the political content up till now were forced to acknowledge it.
  • It's especially worth noting that the accusations of Hypocritical Humor in Black Friday — Starkid brutally mocking Sherman Young for being a member of an adult Periphery Demographic for children's media, when Starkid themselves got famous because they were a Periphery Demographic of college students parodying the Harry Potter books for children — were already addressed in A Very Potter Senior Year, with the character of Lockhart an extremely harsh Take That! on the ongoing commercialization and milking of the franchise ("T-shirts! Bedsheets! Video games! Action figures! And, in time, a theme park! A theme park — in sunny Orlando, Florida, at eighty-five bucks a head! How about a real Butterbeer? It's just cream soda, you f***ing idiots!"), Hagrid a commentary on adult fans who won't let go of their interests as kids until it becomes creepy ("When you love something so much, and you see it slipping through your fingers, Harry, you've just got to hold on tighter"), and Voldemort's final speech being a mission statement for not relying on the Periphery Demographic fandom thing anymore ("You know, there comes a time when you have to move on, Quirrell, a time when we have to let even Harry Potter go. And that's okay").
  • On a behind-the-scenes level, it might surprise people to learn that The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals is the newest of the three shows that make up the originally known lineup of the Hatchetfield series — Nerdy Prudes Must Die was the first idea for the series, and Black Friday is an even older idea retooled to be part of Hatchetfield, but TGWDLM was a broadly funny concept for a musical that seemed like a good way to introduce people to the Hatchetfield shared universe.
• Pacing Problems: Probably the most consistent and well-thought-out critique of this show from those who disliked it. It's already a very long show by live theatre standards, and there's so much stuff they have to get through the pacing of the show is wildly inconsistent — people have commented all of Act 1 feels like an expository prologue telling us who the characters are and what the situation is, and Act 2 is then a rollercoaster of blowing through all of the actual plot points before time runs out, which is the main reason for awkward writing decisions like having no time to deal with or mourn Ethan's death in Act 2, having no time to set up Tom and Becky's abrupt Face–Heel Turn when they meet Hannah, and never letting Tom actually reunite with Tim after he sings a whole big song about doing so.
• Sequelitis: A lot of criticisms of Black Friday are similar to those of other franchises that started with one big hit that then became a series, like The Matrix or Pirates of the Caribbean — a cleanly written, self-contained gem of a story gets followed up by the creators taking the chance to pile on lore and backstory and create The 'Verse. While the fandom was generally super hyped for the "Hatchetfield universe" before the show came out, there's now been a bit of Hype Backlash over whether all the worldbuilding made for a good show in execution or not.
• Spiritual Adaptation: This show comes off a lot like a musical version of Stranger Things (notably with Hannah as an Expy of Eleven and Tom an Expy of Hopper, and with the Black and White as the Upside-Down), with a dash of older works like Twin Peaks and IT to boot (with Uncle Wiley as Killer BOB, Evil Ethan as Pennywise and Wiggly as IT).
• Spiritual Successor: This play is one to Little Shop of Horrors. An entity comes from another world, tempting people to want it and demanding loyalty. The few good people who fight back are outnumbered by a bunch of ordinary folks who succumb to their flaws and selfishness. Willy talking to Linda, convincing her to join his cause, is similar to Audrey II persuading Seymour to murder for him. This entity also succeeds in causing the apocalypse, albeit without a beebop finale. 
• Suspiciously Similar Song: A few people have pointed out that the tune of the bridge ("I will destroy everything") of "Adore Me" is very similar to the chorus of "Splattack!" from Splatoon. Given the reference to Fortnite elsewhere in the show, this could be intentional.
• Tough Act to Follow: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals was so much of a Sleeper Hit that anticipation and speculation for this show was through the roof, with tickets selling out within two days (whereas TGWDLM itself never fully sold out during its run). As a result, initial reviews being somewhat mixed was inevitable, although most remain strongly positive.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Given that this show is the biggest shift in tone and themes from any previous Starkid show up to this point, it was bound to trigger this kind of reaction. Even though most of the fandom supports the show and Starkid's new direction, there's still a lot of comments about just how much Darker and Edgier the show was even than its immediate predecessor The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals, going past a Black Comedy with dramatic moments to a straight up Dramedy, which arguably makes the goofy surreal comedy moments more jarring than they were before. The Downer Ending in particular hit many fans pretty hard, especially those who argue that as ambiguous as they tried to make it, it's very difficult to imagine any future for these characters that isn't at best incredibly depressing.
  • Not everyone was a fan of the "upgrade" in filming quality the YouTube release got, with purists feeling like the fancy camerawork was distracting and that filming of a live stage show shouldn't try to add so much information, instead letting the viewer decide what to focus on the way they could if they were physically in the audience. (And it is true that a few Funny Background Events ended up mostly invisible in the YouTube release.) Of course, those fans have the digital ticket release with a much simpler more traditional filming to watch if they want, but that costs money.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Although Lex and Hannah Foster were well-received characters, they don't have a lot of focus, and could've been the main characters of the story.
    • Lex and Hannah's connection to the Black & White could've been explored further, with either of them being the ones that General MacNamara had sent to meet Wiggly.
    • It would also allow Lex and Hannah's relationship with Ethan to be explored further. The musical already establishes Ethan as a brotherly figure to Hannah, giving her his hat as protection. Lex and Ethan's relationship would become stronger which would make his death more heartbreaking. As it is, it's almost unforgivable that Act 2 is so overstuffed Lex never even finds out about Ethan's death or reacts to it.
    • Lex and Tom would develop a father and daughter relationship, which is shown a bit in the musical.
  • Similarly, Tom's son Tim is a One-Scene Wonder (a practical necessity since he's played by the same actor as Hannah) which somewhat takes the air out of Tom's epiphany that being with Tim is more important than anything else, since they never physically reunite before the end of the show.
  • Many of these complaints seem to result from the decision to add the Washington DC scenes to the show, with fans complaining that President Goodman really isn't interesting enough of a character to justify taking so much time away from the characters we're supposed to care about and breaking the Closed Circle concept the show was originally written as.
  • As a more minor complaint, it's noticeable that Jaime Lyn Beatty doesn't get any solos or even any significant singing parts, and as though to rub it in her most major character, Sherman, has an intentionally unpleasant Hollywood Tone-Deaf Creepy High-Pitched Voice we get treated to in "What Do You Say?" It's not that she's never played a prominent role in a Starkid show in the past, of course, but this has led to her fans renewing their complaint about how she's been in every single Starkid season since the troupe started and still hasn't actually been the lead of her own show.
• Unexpected Character: The creators played it very cagey about whether there'd be any returning characters from The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals, with each appearance of such played as a big reveal and applause moment:
  • The very first scene establishes the Alternate Universe with Paul and Emma reappearing.
  • The President and his Cabinet are saved from Wiggly's influence with a Big Damn Heroes moment from Gen. MacNamara, who is the real primary character Jeff Blim was cast as.
  • The climax of the show reveals that Charlotte has become one of Linda's cultists, and the denouement over "What If Tomorrow Comes?" has more shocking reveals that Bill, Ted, Mr. Davidson, and the Hot Chocolate Boy are all survivors of the riots, and even has a Ship Tease with Charlotte and Ted embracing each other. There's a huge applause line when Emma announces that Prof. Hidgens also exists in this timeline and, once again, suggests his Crazy Survivalist bunker as a place for the survivors to hole up.
  • A more minor example is the bridge of "Take Me Back", where after Tom and Becky's intense, serious dialogue and love duet, the characters from Santa Claus Is Goin' to High School come back onstage and take over the vocals as Tom and Becky stare into each other's eyes, revealing that the movie is in fact still playing and "Take Me Back" is actually a song from the film.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: The spike in numbers for the Starkid fandom after The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals and a lot of the fans being younger has led to problems along these lines. A large number of TGWDLM special features (and features from older shows like Firebringer) only intended for Kickstarter backers and DVD purchasers were leaked on YouTube in the leadup to Black Friday. This culminated in people widely sharing bootlegs of the digital ticket recording of Black Friday itself, something that's never been a serious problem for Starkid before even though they've had digital ticket rentals since the 2014 season of Ani and The Trail to Oregon!.
  • To their credit, the fandom vocally condemned the bootleggers, especially since anyone who wants to watch the show for free just needs to wait a few months for a professionally edited official YouTube update, but unfortunately Nick Lang has hinted that the inevitability of a minority of bad actors might make it impossible to offer digital tickets in the future.
• The Woobie: Hannah. Even before all the chaos starts, she's a disabled (probably autistic) girl who's stuck with an abusive mother, and things just get even worse for her as the musical goes on. Most exemplified in the "Not Ethan" scene, where she's alone and facing Wiggly.