Channel Larry (EDIT: Channel Awesome renamed to just Nostalgia Critic)

[Lord Dalek]

To be fair James has only produced three videos in the last two years.

[Avaitor]

It does seem like he has quietly shelved the Nerd character from full-time to occasional, doesn't it?

[Foggle]

To be fair James has only produced three videos in the last two years.

He's working on a movie I think.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I do wish he would end on a better note, though. Scooby Doo is kind of a lukewarm end.

Yeah, its far from a great review, but the point is that the character has run its course. I do think that he had some gems in the past couple of years as the NC, and I completely disagree with Dalek that it makes his older videos seem less funny as well (I still enjoy them, at least), but like many others I've found the NC to be rather stale for about the 2nd half of his run. I think its a very smart move of Doug and the people running Channel Awesome to not completely kill off a good thing and just let it lay to rest while it still has a good sense of respectability behind it.

But I also think James should hang it up, too.

James has barely done any AVGN videos in the past 2 years. He's still working on post-production of the movie, but the regularly scheduled episodic AVGN releases have been done for a while now. Just like how Doug said that he may occasionally have the NC character appear once in a while for some special occasion, James only has a new AVGN episode once every few months (if that).

I don't really see how he needs to "hang it up" when he's already done that at least 2 years ago, for the most part.

[Goldstar]

Honestly, I wasn't surprised to learn that Doug Walker has decided to retire the Nostalgia Critic. He was noticeably burned out and this lack of enthusiasm showed during his last crop of reviews. He even expressed (in character) how tired he was of doing NC reviews at the beginning of his Scooby Doo review. The Critic's rant at the very beginning of Scooby Doo went on for too long and was too specific for it to be Doug just doing a bit; clearly, Doug was voicing his own frustrations through the character. I could tell that he wouldn't be doing NC for much longer. He was bound to run out of nostalgic material at some point anyway. Toward the second half of To Boldly Flee, it seemed obvious that Doug was going retire the Critic from regular use in some way, although he said in his video that he might pull the character out once in a while.

I completely respect Doug for knowing when to call it a series. His last group of NC reviews, while not terrible or even bad, just haven't been as enjoyable as the ones that he's done in the past. It seemed obvious to me that Doug's heart just wasn't in it anymore. He wanted to do something else. James Rolfe similarly knew to retire the Angry Video Nerd when he likewise admitted to feeling burnt out from doing it for so long and for so often. I wish that Matt Groening would had done the same thing with The Simpsons about 15 years earlier. I loved it when Doug said "Just because something is popular, that's no reason to keep doing it." It was like he was talking about The Simpsons, The Fairly OddParents and Family Guy directly. As an artist, I too am frequently looking for new ways to express myself, so I can understand Doug's desire to retire NC and start doing something else. I look forward to learning more about Doug's new project Demo Reel and I wish him and his team the best of luck with their future endeavors.

I'll still be watching That Guy With the Glasses for Nostalgia Chick, Atop the Fourth Wall, CR!, Tood in the Shadows, Obscurus Lupa Presents and Bad Movie Beatdown.

[Avaitor]

Yeah, there's still enough good stuff on the site to keep up with it. I recently fell in love with 80's Dan, myself.

I knew that even if Doug retired the Critic, that he wouldn't be away from the internet any time soon. He, Lindsay and Todd recently signed major contracts with Blip TV, which maybe means that they'll be involved with his new series, too.

[Nel_Annette]

There's still Todd, Linkara and CR, so I'm good. And Brad's funny in that awkward sort of way. I mean, the rest of them are awkward too, not in a funny way, just in a "these people are probably really awkward and/or annoying in real life." kind of way.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'll be honest in saying that I was never really able to get into any of the other series on the sites. Most of the stuff that other reviewers talk about are stuff that I just don't really care about or no next to nothing about, so it makes it much harder for me to appreciate the humor related to whatever they are reviewing (or in some cases I just don't find them funny at all, and possibly even annoying, like Film Brain).

I believe that JesuOtaku is the only other reviewer that I was really following on that site, but she posts her reviews really infrequently so its not something that'd get me checking up on the site every wee for updates (more like every month).

Anyways, I'll still be looking forward to Doug's next big project, but until then I'm probably not going to visit the site that frequently anymore. There just isn't enough there that interests me anymore.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I'm still an ardent supporter of Brows Held High, if only because I feel that he actually reviews things instead of making snarky remarks while playing a character.

[Spark Of Spirit]

That's why I enjoy Linkara and JesuOtaku because they feel like they're legitimately reviewing something (albeit in a sometimes humorous way) instead of mindlessly throttling it. I do wish Linkara would review more good things, though. His Blue Beetle review was a good one.

[Avaitor]

Todd's the same way, but his appeal is kind of limited if you're not into music. Even if you can appreciate his spoofing of modern pop songs most people can easily recognize, he pulls out a lot of references that you ma not be able to get.

I'd still recommend his stuff though, even if you watch one of his One-Hit Wonders or movie reviews instead of his main stuff.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Most of JesuOtaku's reviews aren't even meant to be humorous. They are usually legitimate reviews, which I personally enjoy watching because she goes into a lot of depth about each show that she reviews (even the bad ones), and gives you all the information you'd need to know on whether you'd enjoy the series or not, and she does that without ever seeming biased or too overly passionate about something (sometimes she can be guilty of doing that, but its pretty rare to see in her reviews).

Now, my main problem with JO is her tendency to go off on long tangents talking about one specific point, whether it be something controversial about the series or something that she thinks is really important to stress but that most people really wouldn't care that much about. I also don't quite like how she feels the need to analyze almost everything in the more "complex" shows that she reviews. Its fine to point out how complex and/or intricate a series is, but she ends up inadvertently going into too much detail about such shows sometimes that it can just turn people off of it altogether.

Those problems aren't that big or frequent in her videos, though, so I can let it go. Overall, I'd say that she's easily my favorite "serious" reviewer in the site.

Another reviewer that I like his Welshy. His comedy flat-out sucks, but the actual serious parts of his reviews and retrospectives on various horror movies or TV series are really insightful and interesting to watch and listen to, IMO.

Also, while he's not part of TGWTG, I love James Rolfe's movie pieces (whether they be reviews, retrospectives, or part of his Monster Madness videos). He's another one who goes into a lot of detail about the movies that he talks about, but he always manages to keep what he's talking about relative and interesting, and more often than not if he's reviewing a movie that I haven't seen (which happens a lot since he reviews a lot of obscure films, at least to me), he manages to make me want to hunt down a copy of the movie on DVD and watch it for myself, which really shows how good he is at selling any kind of film when he gives you his own thoughts and perception of it to make it more interesting to think about. I've always liked this kind of output from James Rolfe more than his AVGN videos, honestly.

[Avaitor]

JO really can go on and on about subjects, yeah. That's one of my main problems with her, but that's mostly prevalent in her Ghibli videos and movie talkbacks rather than her anime reviews.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Yeah, I think I'm out of my "angry reviewer" phase and am more interested in legitimate reviews.

Though that is becoming harder and harder to find these days with people writing contrary reviews just to get on RT or something.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Just watch SFDebris.

And contrary reviews can sometimes work. Certain classic movies wouldn't even be remembered if it weren't for contrarians trying to see the gems in their supposed flaws.