God bless the goddamn Onion

Not saying anything one way or the other about the quality of RLM's criticism - just saying that I find some edutainment value in the little bits and pieces of film school 101 (or summer camp before film school) that they throw around, or how they made me able to articulate all the ways the Star Wars prequels were bad beyond the obvious stuff I'd been citing for years. And this is an edutainment value that I don't find in the AV Club stuff. That's all.

Their piece on how Adam Sandler movies are basically working as piggy banks for him was pretty smart too. Yeah yeah low bars, but Youtubes that cost $5 to make have possibly not found their Kael just yet.

The song hating section is one of the most repeatedly obvious things ever. I would have never guessed dudes in supremely hip bands don't like Nickleback.

A number of the heavier dramas send screeners out to the recappers for each episode, except perhaps the finale (which often leads to a significant delay in the posting of the recap). They've usually written it before the episode has even aired. Myles McNutt had a good article about recaps v reviews etc a few years ago, but I can't remember where it was.

I don't generally read recaps, but I like having them if there's a really interesting episode of a show. Not to defend all the writers there or anything, but I don't think they're en masse as terrible as has been made out itt. I much prefer Todd Van Der Werff's individual articles than I do his recaps (partly because I pretty much never read the recaps), and the dude is incredibly knowledgable about televisions, its workings, and its history. I can get how his writing might rankle as it's very apparent he came up through the MZS/House Next Door school, and that ain't for everyone.

quick turnaround is almost certainly a thing.

as well, there's what david simon complained about: instantly weighing in on something that's just one piece of a larger whole.

but i think what bugs me the most is the way they're written, as basically chronological, play-by-play descriptions of the episode with a little bit of peanut gallery commentary. imagine movie reviews were written like that...

There is quick turnaround, but it's usually a couple of hours I think. Certainly for things like Mad Men etc, for which they usually have screeners anyway.

I agree with David Simon to an extent, and that's certainly an issue for something like The Wire, but I don't think there are many shows that really consider each episode as a piece of the whole to that extent. One of things I've liked about recaps that I've read over the years has been breaking down each episode and highlighting the "episodic" elements. Nowadays I think they're less about individuals stories and more about thematic cohesion.

Film criticism is fundamentally different from this sort of thing though, so I'm not sure that's a useful comparison.

The Guardian did recaps of the Wire a couple of years after it ended, if I remember correctly.

I think the only recaps of a show I've read all the way through on the avclub were the first two seasons of Deadwood that they revisited a few years ago. I thought they were quite good.

there was a cool thing on slate where they had mafia experts recapping sopranos episodes

Robyn Hitchcock's song-hating piece was really thoughtful and intelligent and non-obvious, almost all the others are awful though.

Rabin's Simpsons recaps were more fun when they had multiple grammatical errors in each paragraph and were clearly written in under an hour, probably while hungover.

yeah. i dont buy that only a handful of shows 'deserve' scrutiny, but the problem with recaps is the turnaround is too rapid for them to say anything interesting - about subtext, about filmmaking, about storytelling. they can only, well, recap. and if the writer is sharp sometimes you get some kernels of insight, but it's a thin reward for reading every week

― turds (Hungry4Ass)

this is otm and also i think often their scrutiny when it attempts to delve into "what it all means" is often simply wrong-headed speculation about what's going to happen to a character, or something obvious and dumb like "well call me crazy but i think that thoughtless comment about rape made to so and so certainly affected her considering she was raped last season."

ya there's a lot of hunting and pecking for meaningful signs & symbols

The EW recaps of Lost were some of the most insane symbol hunting things ever. That Doc Jensen dude is certifiable.

ya was kind of a megaburn on him when the show ended and everybody realized it had all been make-it-up-as-you-go-along bullshit

i feel like sometimes the recaps break down into some kind of tearful sincerity about the show's quality, 'goddammit this is why it's great and means something, when they do things like this.'

wild speculation on lost recaps were p awesome and kind of better than the show itself tbh

yeah it was the main reason i kept watching

Robyn Hitchcock's song-hating piece was really thoughtful and intelligent and non-obvious, almost all the others are awful though.

― JoeStork, Thursday, March 7, 2013 1:40 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh god i forgot this feature is literally called "Hatesong"

steve albini's made me hate steve albini a lot more than i usually do, which was an accomplishment

The Posies actually have a song called "Hate Song," AVC missing out on some real synergy here.

I never watched Lost but I will say that wild speculation was really fun when it was episodes of Survivor ten years ago and there really was this a real creative energy put into sifting through a show that seemed to have been deliberately crafted for the clue-hunters at a number of levels. There was actually fun for the fan community in reverse-engineering the likely winner based on the editing cues. Don't know if they kept that stuff going, I bailed after season ten or eleven but it was pretty great dorky fun.

thats kinda awesome

http://www.theonion.com/articles/video-of-man-weeping-becomes-viral-hit,31710/

yep, watched the whole thing

http://www.theonion.com/articles/find-the-thing-youre-most-passionate-about-then-do,31742/

I had never seen this old one that got tweeted this morning:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/slightly-upset-woman-declared-insane,341/

dying

http://www.theonion.com/articles/find-the-thing-youre-most-passionate-about-then-do,31742/

― s.clover, Wednesday, March 20, 2013 1:04 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

hahaha *feels intense stabs of pain in lower abdomen*

haha, perfect.

And on the "Onion goes dark" front,

Christopher Walken

http://www.theonion.com/articles/find-the-thing-youre-most-passionate-about-then-do,31742/

― s.clover, Wednesday, March 20, 2013 1:04 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

hahaha *feels intense stabs of pain in lower abdomen*

― 乒乓, Wednesday, March 20, 2013 1:10 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

;_;

this one confused the hell out of me until i saw the byline
http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-am-old-and-confused-and-paralyzed-with-sexual-fr,31680/

every so often the Onion do pieces like that 'find a thing you're passionate about etc' one that pull off the dual trick of having a (near enough) universal resonance while also reading like whoever wrote is blowing off some personal anguish

It has been incredibly good for the last year or two. Wonder if the pay wall has helped boost quality.

Okay that pope one had me in tears, genuinely biggest laugh in a long, long time.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/gaypride-parade-sets-mainstream-acceptance-of-gays,351/

"They kept chanting things like, 'We're here, we're queer, get used to it!' and 'Hey, hey, we're gay, we're not going to go away!'" Orosco said. "All I can say is, I was used to it, but now, although I'd never felt this way before, I wish they would go away."

Like half my fb friends have shared that "nights and weekends" piece. seems to have really struck a chord.

Yeah same here. And I think it really does with all of us, which if you think about it is fucking depressing!

would be more depressing to not have those nights n weekends

yeah I dunno I had a solid 18 months of having no school and almost no work encumbering my time and I was pretty miserable and wasn't achieving any dreams.

good point.

well, poverty is probly a bit worse than pishing yr life away at pointless unsatisfying drudgery but i don't think that undermines the article any

obv some people will disagree but i don't think they're being more realistic

it is a bit depressing but it's also possible to make a real commitment to a hobby in the evenings and weekends. if you do find yourself wishing you could do it all the time that's not necessarily a negative. still a great wry laugh tho, most of us still need to work.

I think what it means to me is this:

I used to do music, and it was something that I gave a large percentage of my time to.

Now, similarly to the article, the best I could hope for would be 30 mins every other day, maybe a couple hours a weekend.

This is not enough time in bursts to get back to proficiency, or to produce anything worth the effort.

So, I don't.

My brane still writes songs / music unfettered, they are the finest songs ever, as long as I don't actually commit them to physical media.

I think more why I found it depressing was less the "I only spend X a week on my passion" than the "I spend most of my hours on this shitty job that I hate" part. I can think of very few people who genuinely love their job to the point they leap out of bed for it/put in extra hours/do it all the time cos theyre obsessed with it. The rest of us do what we do because it pays the bills, and for whatever fucked up reason, creative pursuits don't do this.

I think it's verisimilitude doing the work more than anything else, the article seemed very mid-period Onion in that they've never actually dropped off from having A+ funny ideas but they don't always have more in the article than "The Headline, Expanded". It seemed like they were acknowledging this when they brought in the front page stuff that was just headlines.

Trayce have you considered being Amanda Palmer, I am genuinely surprised at how many people don't consider this as a career option.

I think if I spent significantly longer on my creative endeavour, I'd want some sort of progress to happen to them...

i don't think the bigger issue is whether you should be able to make a living from your personal creative interests, what the piece nails is the relative time and energy people feel they're able to allot to what they have to do and what they want to do. for some people that's not problematic, it's LYFE, and for others it's terrible but you can disagree with where the fault lies, yrself or the society you belong to or some combo of both

i just think its good to remember that no side has a monopoly on truth there as to what's effed up with the world and if your world doesn't seem too effed up then good for you, carry on