The Critic: The Complete Series

Sween's right - our lack of progress on our backlogs has been downright embarrassing. I've been working on this twenty-three episode set for over a week now, but today I decided to finish it once and for all, giving us just the fourth logging of the month. The Critic aired two seasons in 1994 and 1995, and it certainly felt dated. All kinds of references to early '90s films were made, and though I've seen most of the important ones, it still all felt too old for my taste. Combining The Silence of the Lambs and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids may have been humorous and topical at the time, but now it just seems like an awful joke. And that was my biggest problem with the series; when you make too many contemporary jokes, neglecting timeless subject matter for the sake of a topical laugh, you sacrifice your show's long term comedic value. Worst of all, the show's final episode was a clip show. Yuck. Apparently in 2000 the show was "renewed" for a brief ten-webisode run on the Internet. This too was included on the disc and I watched it in its entirety. I kind of liked it. This time around, references were made to late nineties films. It made all the difference in the world to me. Sure, ten years ago isn't much more recent than fifteen years ago, but the references worked so much better for me personally. Maybe it's because I was too young during the original run to appreciate or understand the films being released, whereas I can vividly recall the hype and lead-up to many late nineties and turn-of-the-century movies like Titanic, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Patriot, Shrek, and Pearl Harbor. I'll give The Critic the benefit of the doubt, then, and call myself just a bit too young to appreciate it. Still, it was nothing special. But hey, at least now I'm one step closer to backlog completion.