Slate Articles on Criticism

I don't read many television reviews or keep up with the top TV critics, my favorite information is the ratings. However I did find Josh Levin's articles interesting and thought provoking. It was nice to get a simple explanation of how television criticism worked. I always assumed that there were different types of critics for television but having Levin use the restaurant analogy helped explain the situation further. I thought it was interesting how critics play a role in a television show. When it comes to Sepinwall I had no idea that Community cameoed him or that he was such an advocate for keeping Chuck alive (thank god he did). It is interesting to find out how shows are affected or effect critics.

I clicked on two links sort of crucial to my understanding of the article. For example one link was when Levin was summing up Sepinwall's career. I had no idea what NYPD Blue was. After clicking on the link I found that it brought me to Sepinwall's website on the show NYPD Blue. It looked very complete and full of information, if I had seen NYPD Blue before I may have been more interested in looking into the website. The second link I want to talk about is the Community link. Sepinwall had a cameo on the NBC show Community and I clicked on that to find out more. Having seen the episode and having a fairly good memory about it I can say that Sepinwall didn't have a large role, but I'm sure it was an exciting experience nonetheless (tying in Levin's concern about objectivity or duty towards a show).

When it comes to responses to this topic everybody has an opinion and a lot of people have voiced it. Looking at the comments from the assigned readings people have a fairly open mind about their opinions and are having discussions in the comments section. (Then there are those people that comment only about Lost...) What I think is important out of the responses is the idea of where the critics are posting from. There are two totally different expectations when you pull an article from NYTimes and The Onion. I'm sure that the reasoning behind this applies to subjective sites that criticize media.

I want to add my own response to Josh Levin's thoughts about television criticism and the idea of critics feeling obligated to say one thing or another based on extraneous experience. I think that Josh Levin and others are too focused on keeping a traditional sense of criticism. When all the cards are down it comes down to what people want to read. Criticism is just a persons opinion in the first place, what adds or subtracts from their opinion is not foul play as long as the reader knows about the factors. In the case of Sepinwall he has openly explained what happened and that he was in an episode of Community. Viewers should understand that his experiences with the show will effect his thoughts ergo writing. People should not scold Sepinwall for having an experience or a change in opinion, it is inhuman to remain the same all the time.