Doug Walker is a comedian/actor who self-publishes comedy sketches, reviews and other sort of videos online. By far his most famous fictional character role is "the Nostalgia Critic", which gained him and his small team enormous online fame (and huge amounts of income) since about 2007-2008. The Nostalgia Critic show concentrates on making humorous "reviews" of movies (for the longest time only movies from the 80's and older, hence the name "nostalgia" critic). He showed a great amount of talent at making these "reviews" interesting, entertaining and hilarious. He also made a few other shows with other fictional characters, some of them being quite good as well.
Then, in 2012, pretty much at the height of his popularity, he suddenly decided that he was tired of his Nostalgia Critic show, and decided to end it, and start an entirely new and unrelated show named "Demo Reel".
This didn't sit well at all with his audience and fans. Not only did he receive a huge amount of backlash for ending the Nostalgia Critic show (especially given how he ended it), but the "Demo Reel" show was universally panned and considered extremely boring and uninteresting, and just a very bad show. The criticism was so bad that he ended the new show after a mere 5 episodes, and started making Nostalgia Critic episodes once again (and has been doing them since then, as of writing this blog post.)
Anyway, here is what I'm really puzzled about his subsequent decisions in regards to that whole debacle.
Seemingly because he was pretty much swimming in money thanks to the Nostalgia Critic show and its popularity, he decided to make Demo Reel a more high-budget show and, among other things, hired two new professional actors for it, Rachel Tietz and Malcolm Ray (who, as far as I understand, was, and still is, actually a member of the Screen Actors Guild, so he's a bona fide professional actor). I'm guessing hiring two actors (at least one of them an actual professional actor) isn't exactly cheap.
His plan was most probably to make Demo Reel a long-lasting relatively high-budget show that would last for years and years, with probably dozens and dozens, perhaps even hundreds of episodes. Due to the huge backlash, however, it ended short, after a mere 5 episodes. So he ended it, and went back to making good old Nostalgia Critic episodes.
Except... he kept the two actors hired. For reasons I cannot even begin to understand.
I understand their need for the Demo Reel show, because it wasn't a review show, but a fully acted comedy sketch show, with lots of screen time for all actors.
However, he dragged the two actors into his Nostalgia Critic show... even though they don't have much to do there. In most episodes the two actors have like a few minutes of screentime (from an episode that's often over half an hour long.) In most episodes they are more like cameos rather than actual roles. In most episodes they play no significant role, and are pretty much superfluous.
In fact, with only a few exceptions, the more screentime they have in a particular episode, the more boring the episode tends to be. That's because these episodes are too reminiscent of Demo Reel (which, apparently, Doug is still trying to imitate to some extent, for reasons known only to him.) He has, in fact, made a few Nostalgia Critic episodes that are pretty much Demo Reel episodes, with no footage whatsoever of the film being "reviewed" (or in these cases parodied). These are some of the worst and worst-received Nostalgia Critic episodes ever.
As said, there are a few exceptions to this (eg. I consider the "The Shining" episode, where the two actors actually have considerable screentime, and contribute quite a lot, to be quite good), but they are extraordinarily rare. In most episodes they contribute pretty much nothing, and nothing of relevance would have been lost if they didn't appear at all.
What's even more puzzling is that after a couple of years one of the actors, Rachel, had to leave the show due to other commitments (which, if I remember correctly, required her to move to the other side of the country). What did Doug do? Hire another actress to replace her!
Why?
No offense to them (they are fine actors), but they don't contribute pretty much anything to the show! They are for the most part completely superfluous, only appearing in essentially short cameo roles and quick jokes (that are very lame and uninspired ones for the most part).
Why Doug keeps them hired is beyond my comprehension. Surely they cannot be cheap. He's pouring what's probably a rather significant amount of money for mostly some useless cameo appearances, often requiring just a minute or two of screentime that doesn't really contribute anything to the episode. And he has been doing this since 2012.
Even after all the #changethechannel controversy and the mass exodus and boycott of the Channel Awesome organization, which surely caused it a lot of lost revenue, he is still keeping the two actors in the payroll. For no discernible reason. The two actors haven't had a significant role in years (long gone are the times of episodes like the "The Shining" one. They have for a very long time been uninspired and boring, painted-by-the-numbers.)
I cannot comprehend what goes inside the head of this man.
Then, in 2012, pretty much at the height of his popularity, he suddenly decided that he was tired of his Nostalgia Critic show, and decided to end it, and start an entirely new and unrelated show named "Demo Reel".
This didn't sit well at all with his audience and fans. Not only did he receive a huge amount of backlash for ending the Nostalgia Critic show (especially given how he ended it), but the "Demo Reel" show was universally panned and considered extremely boring and uninteresting, and just a very bad show. The criticism was so bad that he ended the new show after a mere 5 episodes, and started making Nostalgia Critic episodes once again (and has been doing them since then, as of writing this blog post.)
Anyway, here is what I'm really puzzled about his subsequent decisions in regards to that whole debacle.
Seemingly because he was pretty much swimming in money thanks to the Nostalgia Critic show and its popularity, he decided to make Demo Reel a more high-budget show and, among other things, hired two new professional actors for it, Rachel Tietz and Malcolm Ray (who, as far as I understand, was, and still is, actually a member of the Screen Actors Guild, so he's a bona fide professional actor). I'm guessing hiring two actors (at least one of them an actual professional actor) isn't exactly cheap.
His plan was most probably to make Demo Reel a long-lasting relatively high-budget show that would last for years and years, with probably dozens and dozens, perhaps even hundreds of episodes. Due to the huge backlash, however, it ended short, after a mere 5 episodes. So he ended it, and went back to making good old Nostalgia Critic episodes.
Except... he kept the two actors hired. For reasons I cannot even begin to understand.
I understand their need for the Demo Reel show, because it wasn't a review show, but a fully acted comedy sketch show, with lots of screen time for all actors.
However, he dragged the two actors into his Nostalgia Critic show... even though they don't have much to do there. In most episodes the two actors have like a few minutes of screentime (from an episode that's often over half an hour long.) In most episodes they are more like cameos rather than actual roles. In most episodes they play no significant role, and are pretty much superfluous.
In fact, with only a few exceptions, the more screentime they have in a particular episode, the more boring the episode tends to be. That's because these episodes are too reminiscent of Demo Reel (which, apparently, Doug is still trying to imitate to some extent, for reasons known only to him.) He has, in fact, made a few Nostalgia Critic episodes that are pretty much Demo Reel episodes, with no footage whatsoever of the film being "reviewed" (or in these cases parodied). These are some of the worst and worst-received Nostalgia Critic episodes ever.
As said, there are a few exceptions to this (eg. I consider the "The Shining" episode, where the two actors actually have considerable screentime, and contribute quite a lot, to be quite good), but they are extraordinarily rare. In most episodes they contribute pretty much nothing, and nothing of relevance would have been lost if they didn't appear at all.
What's even more puzzling is that after a couple of years one of the actors, Rachel, had to leave the show due to other commitments (which, if I remember correctly, required her to move to the other side of the country). What did Doug do? Hire another actress to replace her!
Why?
No offense to them (they are fine actors), but they don't contribute pretty much anything to the show! They are for the most part completely superfluous, only appearing in essentially short cameo roles and quick jokes (that are very lame and uninspired ones for the most part).
Why Doug keeps them hired is beyond my comprehension. Surely they cannot be cheap. He's pouring what's probably a rather significant amount of money for mostly some useless cameo appearances, often requiring just a minute or two of screentime that doesn't really contribute anything to the episode. And he has been doing this since 2012.
Even after all the #changethechannel controversy and the mass exodus and boycott of the Channel Awesome organization, which surely caused it a lot of lost revenue, he is still keeping the two actors in the payroll. For no discernible reason. The two actors haven't had a significant role in years (long gone are the times of episodes like the "The Shining" one. They have for a very long time been uninspired and boring, painted-by-the-numbers.)
I cannot comprehend what goes inside the head of this man.
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