The Nostalgia Critic cleanup

Sounds good to me!

Edited by harryhenry on Jul 3rd 2021 at 5:57:25 AM

I noticed back in March 2020, a paragraph in the show's description about the incorporation of clipless reviews was removed supposedly because "The split is so lopsided it’s not even necessary." While the clipless reviews are few and far between, I don't think mentioning them is a problem because they're definitely integral to the modern show's reputation. Maybe just work them into a bit about the modern format's increased studio budget and reliance on sketch comedy?

How many of these entries are valid and how many are just straight-up Shipping Goggles? I'll provide my own input below.

• Threesome Subtext:
  • Critic, Chick and Brentalfloss in the Moulin Rouge! review. You've got Floss calling Critic "baby" when they're alone, Floss and Chick dancing together and her spanking him in "El Tango De Pretense" and a basic confirmation that Chick and Critic have had sex (real sex, not g-rated fairy rape) when he recognizes her bedroom immediately. It also doesn't help that all three of them prove throughout the review that they have No Sense of Personal Space when it comes to the others. I might maybe count this one if only because the movie's pretty sexually charged so it makes sense for the review to be too, but IDK. I think "knows what her bedroom looks like = has definitely had sex with her" is a bit of a stretch but that could have plausibly been the joke since they were Ship Teased back then.
  • Pointedly averted with Critic, Rachel and Malcolm (their Demo Reel incarnations were built on the trope), as they try to grope him in a 8 Crazy Nights porn skit but he slaps them off. That's a defiance not an aversion.
  • Partly because they're all on equal ground for once, the Critic/Tamara/Malcolm Triang Relations becomes this for the Fantastic Four (2005) review. They lie around on a couch together being shitty people, she gets/eats food out of Critic's man cleavage, and Malcolm creates fanservice characters for them all to enjoy. They're even all holding hands and skipping together at the start. Malcolm joke-confirmed on twitter 2018 that Critic, the Tamara character and the Malcolm character are in a poly relationship. Citation needed on the twitter thing because I do not remember that, though I wouldn't put it past Malcolm either as he's pretty chill with this stuff. I don't think the Fantastic Four review has too much subtext in it, though.
  • Teased in the behind the scenes of The Smurfs, as Rob jokes “Critic and Tamara going to the storage closet is one for the fanfic writers”, and Doug adds that Malcolm is there as well. Valid cuz at least it's lampshaded.
    Rob: Ménage à trois.
  • Despite Hyper Boner also being really popular on its own, Devil Boner/Hyper/Benny is essentially canon by the end of Cinderella Old vs New, and in Evil Dead Old vs New, Benny completely forgets about saving Critic so he can bond with Devil Boner and Hyper over the Evil Dead movies. By the time of Hyper's Q&A, Benny is living in their basement. Later appearances feature the three of them just as much as (if not more than) Hyper and Devil Boner by themselves, and Spider-Man has Hyper and Benny appear together without Devil Boner, frequently calling each other "dear" and "darling" to boot (albeit as part of their overly-sophisticated act). I added a bit of this and I'm actually unsure how valid it is. They're definitely all friends, but there's also deliberate Homoerotic Subtext humor with Benny and DB in the Cinderella review.
  • Played with regarding Hyper/Devil Boner/Critic, as he wants nothing to do with them, but kidnapping him is their kink, and she stims for both of them in her wedding. For the record, kidnapping Critic isn't necessarily framed as a "kink," but a bonding exercise between the two. Hyper's not interested in Critic by this point and DB has never really been teased with Critic in-universe even as a joke. So I think this is a stretch.

There's a Ship Tease section too that has similar issues but I may come back to it later. I wanna see if anybody has feedback here.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 11th 2021 at 9:42:31 AM

emeriin deleted this from... I believe Franchise Original Sin?

• One of the most base-breaking aspects of the post-2013 videos are the Mid-Review Sketch Show cutaway gags, with many feeling that they take too much time away from the reviews. However, sketches are nothing new to the series and have been featured since the early days, and some episodes from what's considered the "classic" era like Home Alone 3 featuring recurring segments that wouldn't feel too out of place in the modern videos. The difference is that sketches in the earlier reviews were used more sparingly and not in nearly every episode; they were also much shorter, lasting up to half a minute at most, and also only focused on Critic himself, while modern sketches are in most reviews, can take up to a few minutes, and focus on gags between new additions Malcolm and Rachel (later on, Tamara), which could often extend a review to over 40 minutes. With all this new focus on sketches, one could say that post-revival Critic is a Spiritual Successor to his now-scrapped show Demo Reel, which received a lot of backlash even from fans.

Their juxtaposition being "there were whole episodes dedicated to sketches, Ruxpin for example (others can deal with the rest, but I know this isn't true)"

I don't know if I fully agree, because even the older sketches in episodes were never as extensive production-wise as the modern-day ones, and there were fewer sketch-heavy episodes and the Teddy Ruxpin one was more of an outlier. Franchise Original Sin has also dropped the "why it wasn't as bad before" requirement so they easily could have just rewritten this to cut that bit, though I guess they didn't know cuz the trope page hasn't been fully updated.

Maybe run it by the “Is this an example?” thread.

I figured I'd ask here first because people familiar with the show in the past and present are better suited to answer.

I think the example seems valid, but maybe ask others as well.

The Ship Tease entries like a gushy mess, even in the context of actors like Tamara and Malcolm doing Alter-Ego Acting.

• Ship Tease: First with the Nerd, and then with The Nostalgia Chick, Spoony and Linkara, followed by most other producers. He's not the Fandom Pony for nothing, y'know. Fandom gushing on main page.
  • In Pixels, when he says this review isn't going to be 50 Shades of Grey, Tamara's offscreen shout of relief and Critic's response of trying to tell her that being in bondage is fun, gives off the impression that they've had this conversation quite a few times since Jurassic World. I never got the impression that they did bondage together or anything. Tamara just didn't wanna play Ana for the review. And she doesn't know that he's apparently tried ballgags so it's not like they did anything together there.
  • Malcolm/Tamara (the characters) had a lot of it in Disney Afternoon, mostly from her side as he's too busy being in pain, but when she's getting abused by Critic he also shows plenty of sympathy. You know that friends can show concern for one another without being romantically inclined, right?
  • Even when Malcolm and Tamara are warped in Food Fight to enable Critic and find things that'll get him money, at the end they're still more interested in squeeing over cute kids together, which leads into Critic's Selina “oh wait I'm not married” impersonation. I never got any shippy vibes from there. Just two friends gushing about a meme together, barely saying anything about each other.
  • In The Matrix, Tamara's catsuit rips and Critic immediately checks her back to see if anything private is showing. Maybe?
  • In even earlier lampshading of how all her characters seem to be in love with him, Reloaded has Tamara out of nowhere tell Critic that she wants to jump his bones. He's upset at the random and unwanted groping, but also disappointed that he's not the only one she has the hots for. Sounds explicit enough to keep.
  • Tamara lampshaded the fact that every character she plays is in love with a Doug character here. Probably a keeper, or maybe it can go elsewhere for being Word of God?
  • In the Shark Jumping crossover of Glee, Beth and Critic look pretty intensely into each other during the duet about hating jukebox musicals. All the Shark Jumping videos are gone so I can't verify this offhand but I don't think they're meant to be shipped, because Beth is with Tim and the crossover reviews don't really contradict this.
  • The Cinderella Old vs New episode gives the impression that either Benny's into Hyper and she hasn't noticed, or they had a thing but it meant nothing to her. Keep, the way the episode sets up the conflict has always felt analogous to a love triangle to me.
  • Critic/Tamara again in Alvin and the Chipmunks, as she's wearing his tie for no reason, and they get the closest in their dancing at the end of the review. She's wearing his tie because she's dressed up as Brittney, who wears a tie in her outfit. They get close in their dancing because that's the same choreography as in the movie. Nothing really shippy here.
  • As with most of their crossovers, Snob/Critic get going pretty early on in Dear Santa, with Critic empathizing with Snob's also abusive childhood and Snob flirting that he never gets off easy. Plus they tell the gay best friend parody (who literally calls them "lover boys") that they're doing fine and don't need break up advice. In the bloopers, when Snob mentions the abusive wooden spoon indentions on his ass, Critic takes a look. The "lover boys" comment is the only one that might count. Snob's not necessarily flirting at that "never get off easy" comment, he's just making a dirty joke that Critic barely responds to. They don't even really bond over abusive childhoods, Snob makes a joke about having a Hilariously Abusive Childhood and Critic just goes "the fuck was your childhood like?"
    • In the same episode, Santa Christ blushes from a sassy smutty letter from Fat Grandma. This can count.
  • Hyper's Q and A vlog has her change her "how much does Critic charge for a kiss" answer from "take it!" to "ask first", giving the implication that he kisses her when she asks him to. Mayyyybe? The same video also confirms that she's entirely over Critic, so this could just be a call back to when she was stalking him.
  • Malcolm created the Benny/Critic ship by saying at a con Benny has similar to Hyper feelings for Critic, Critic at least likes/trusts him better and Benny smiles at Critic during the Hyper Boner wedding. More Word of Gay, and simply smiling isn't enough to make a relationship. The most recent episode to feature Benny might have a stronger argument for being here but that's more for Ho Yay or Homoerotic Subtext.

Edited by mightymewtron on Aug 6th 2021 at 12:41:42 PM

Pretty much all of those assessments seem accurate (I haven't seen the show in awhile, so going off the entries themselves). A fair bit of these seem to be the editors wearing Shipping Goggles?

• In addition to being fandom gushing (which is honestly pretty telling), the first part is rather setting itself up to be dated if it hasn't already, so that should probably get changed.
• Would have to see the Matrix video to accurately judge.
• Checked the link where Tamara said that. I wouldn't say it's Word of God because she's just reacting to gifs of two of her characters saying flirtatious things to Doug. I'm also not sure it furthers or itself qualifies as Ship Tease so I'm not really sure what to do with that.
• I'd just remove the shark jumping thing if it's not available anymore. It sounds like it was a case of someone with Shipping Goggles and there's really no way to be sure.
• Would remove the Q and A part, that seems like a stretch honestly and seems more like Character Development than anything else (unless I missed something).

It blows my mind how the Critic has three subpages dedicated to his character. Even Richard III's character page isn't that detailed.

It's a lot of speculation and mining tropes from throwaway lines. I have a cleanup sandbox for them if you wanna contribute (on my troper page). I think I'm on the last one but the other two might have some edge cases I missed.

Edited by mightymewtron on Aug 22nd 2021 at 4:06:56 AM

Character pages are more an indication of troper investment in a series, not how deep or complex a character is.

On What Beautiful Eyes!: I haven't seen these bloopers in a while, if ever. Can somebody explain what that "very close and very horny" thing means in context. I'd hope it's not speculating on a real life person being horny. (I don't even think Doug/Critic's eyes are significant enough to be the trope anyway.)

• The Nostalgia Critic's huge blue-green eyes. Lampshaded by the Moulin Rouge! review bloopers.
  Lindsay: [very close and very horny] Your eyes are so blue!
  Doug: I know. I just look at you and...

Necro time~

Came across the sandbox while wick cleaning. I ended up deleting pretty much all of the subbullets from the Actually Pretty Funny example for not actually fitting the trope, or for lacking context.

Neato, thanks! Sorry for abandoning the sandbox, it was overwhelming when I wasn't watching the show.

Bumping this thread to talk about some meta-troping stuff.

While doing some wick clean-ups, I took a closer look at the Dude, Not Funny! page. Some of the entries are stuff I feel is appropriate, like the Critic getting offended at a joke within the context of the show itself.

But there are multiple entries that talk about behind-the-scenes videos and amount to "Doug makes a tasteless joke, and the rest of the cast feel uncomfortable about it". Unlike the ones from the reviews, these aren't scripted and a lot of it feels like stealth-complaining about the jokes themselves. It's edging too close to real-life troping and I think they should be cut, but I wanted a second opinion first.

So, should they be cut?

I can support cutting these. The suicide one especially sounds like complaining as it doesn't have anybody in-universe actually call those jokes unfunny, and a few others are just about fans complaining, but not in-universe.

I found this goober in Fridge.The Nostalgia Critic and figured I'd dig up this thread:

• The "periods are vile and unnatural" joke in Full House makes perfect sense when you remember he's canonically trans and would hate periods, and was raised in an abusively religious family.

Yeah I pretty sure a throwaway line about crossdressing as a child does not make one "canonically trans".

Unless there's more lore there, cut.

Plus, he wasn't speaking from experience in that Full House bit. It's another case of "Critic exaggerates a dysfunctional family in-character as a character from a movie and people read too much into it."

That sounds like a stretch to me.

I noticed that HePannedItNowHeSucks.The Nostalgia Critic includes several examples from reviews that he didn’t do in character as the Critic. Do those belong on this page?

Edited by costanton11 on May 16th 2023 at 10:56:30 AM

No, they wouldn't.

I noticed that the second entry on the page refers to several of his review series collectively. How should that be handled?