I never looked very far into the background of Television Criticism until this article so I found it very enlightening. My favorite example from the first article was the metaphor of television criticism verse restaurant criticism. In this metaphor, I really saw how television criticism has evolved. It is silly to go to the same restaurant every week so why has it become this in terms of weekly reviews? Shouldn't all reviews just be by reviewers and recaps just be by recappers (or Tosh.O)? I wish television reviews were more simplistic like book reviews or movie reviews, just overview and give an opinion on the movie instead of analyzing every little aspect of the show. The line that really spoke to me was when Levin wrote that certain weekyl reviewing critics simply "validate your interest in the shows you're already watching" which doesn't really make much sense at all in the big picture. I see there is a fine line- if any- between a review and their opinions. A critique is a personal testament to liking or disliking something so it makes sense these reviews come with strings attached. Almost no writing is objective in the end anyways which was the point of the follow-up article.
One link I followed was one of Alan Sepinwall's reviews of one of the final episodes of FNL. Texas Forever- I clicked on this purely to see if this man had a heart of Texas after watching FNL for season after season and alas it did. It took me through a truly poetic version of a pretty emotional FNL episode I watched last year. The writing was definitely a mix of commentary as well as articulating the plot points in a very stylistic and artistic way. His critique is very conversational and feels like gossiping on the phone with a friend.
The second link I followed was Myles McNutt's cultural learnings blog. I clicked on it out of curiousity of what a pop culture scholar was (and how can I become that?!). I immediately liked his choices in shows and started to go further into his reviews on Parks and Rec- one of my newer favorites.
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