History Website / AVClub

The AV Club served as the big break for a couple of critics who have gone on to other work. Most famous is the film critic Creator/NathanRabin, who coined the term ManicPixieDreamGirl before moving on to The Dissolve- he returned to The AV Club after The Dissolve's unfortunate demise. Current Vox critic at large Emily St. James began as a TV critic at The AV Club, where she was known for the passion, depth and staggering quantity of her work.

* QuoteMine: A.A. Dowd was the victim of this, when the promotors of a crummy movie took individual words from Dowd's scathing review and cut them together to sound like praise. Dowd wrote a column calling them out. While sympathetic to Dowd, the commentators mostly found the whole thing really amusing, because humorous quote mining had long been a RunningGag in the comment section for negative reviews. And, naturally, the comment section for Dowd's column included a thread of people cutting together words from the column to make it sound like Dowd was praising the movie.

*** '''The AV Club''', placed above an out-of-context quote describing something completely different, like, "A wretched hive of scum and villainy."

The site also birthed the unofficial SpinOff, Website/TheAvocado.

The AV Club served as the big break for a couple of critics who have gone on to other work. Most famous is the film critic Creator/NathanRabin, who coined the term ManicPixieDreamGirl before moving on to The Dissolve- he returned to The AV Club after The Dissolve's unfortunate demise. Current Vox critic at large Emily [=VanDerWerff=] began as a TV critic at The AV Club, where she was known for the passion, depth and staggering quantity of her work.

** Emily [=VanDerWerff=]. Given she had to review ''Series/TwoBrokeGirls'' with a BrokenPedestal mindset and ''Series/{{Glee}}'' while the show was going through SeasonalRot earned her sympathy points from readers.

** Emily [=VanDerWerff=]'s reviews of ''Series/TwoBrokeGirls'' are also cited as an example. She started out by calling the pilot episode "one of the best" from network TV for that season, only to gradually grow more and more disenchanted with the show as its first season progressed, to the point of giving it C's and D's frequently. It's joked that it caused Emily to lose her mind.

** Todd [=VanDerWerff=]'s ''Series/AGiftedMan'' reviews ended with ''The Adventures of Frank Fisticuffs''.

** This is also invoked in [[https://www.google.com/amp/s/film.avclub.com/the-gentleman-s-f-and-the-scourge-of-deliberate-medio-1798235981/amp "The Gentleman's F"]], which declares that there's a grandeur to having an F - it immediately suggests to the audience, "you have to see this shit." As a result, the site tends to reserve F's for SoBadItsGood productions, and ones that fit more clearly into the "just bad" pile are more likely D-minuses.

While The AV Club often features a snarky, irreverent tone, it is not satirical or parodic in the vein of its more famous sibling. In fact, the site is one of the more highly respected centers of criticism on the internet, especially its TV coverage. It also boasted one of the more pleasant and respectful comment sections anywhere on the web... at least until the redesign that saw the site switch their commenting system to Kinja, which brought a mass exodus of the regular commenting community.

Originally part of ''Website/TheOnion'', AV Club features, reviews and interviews were included in a separate section of ''Onion'' print issues before started publishing exclusively online.

* '''For Your Consideration:''' Long essays, usually opinionated, on some pop culture issue

* '''For Your Consideration:'''Long essays, usually opinionated, on some pop culture issue

[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/avclub_logo213b4c20c89f.png]] Sister publication of Website/TheOnion, ''[[http://www.avclub.com The AV Club]]'' is a website dedicated to the full range of popular culture. The site features frequent reviews and long-form pieces on television, movies, music, videogames and books.

AV Club features, reviews and interviews were included in a separate section of The Onion's print issues before the paper started publishing exclusively online.

While The AV Club often features a snarky, irreverent tone, it is not satirical or parodic in the vein of its more famous sibling. In fact, the site is one of the more highly respected centers of criticism on the internet, especially its TV coverage. It also boasted one of the more pleasant and respectable comment sections anywhere on the web...until a recent redesign that saw the site switch their commenting system to Kinja.

* ShowWithinAShow: ''The Adventures of Frank Fisticuffs'', Todd's rejected detective novel that he put at the end of his ''A Gifted Man'' reviews, operating under the assumption that so few people would actually care enough to read his reviews that he could put in snippets of an unpublished detective novel and no one would be any the wiser.

** Todd [=VanDerWerff=]. Given he had to review ''Series/TwoBrokeGirls'' with a BrokenPedestal mindset and ''Series/{{Glee}}'' while the show was going through SeasonalRot earned him sympathy points from readers.

** Todd [=VanDerWerff=]'s reviews of ''Series/TwoBrokeGirls'' are also cited as an example. He started out by calling the pilot episode "one of the best" from network TV for that season, only to gradually grow more and more disenchanted with the show as its first season progressed, to the point of giving it C's and D's frequently. It's joked that it caused Todd to lose his mind.

The AV Club served as the big break for a couple of critics who have gone on to other work. Most famous is the film critic Creator/NathanRabin, who coined the term ManicPixieDreamGirl before moving on to The Dissolve- he returned to The AV Club after The Dissolve's unfortunate demise. Current Vox critic at large Todd [=VanDerWerff=] began as a TV critic at The AV Club, where he was known for the passion, depth and staggering quantity of his work.

The AV Club served as the big break for a couple of critics who have gone on to other work. Most famous is the film critic Creator/NathanRabin, who coined the term ManicPixieDreamGirl before moving on to The Dissolve- he returned to The AV Club after The Dissolve's unfortunate demise. Current Vox culture editor Todd [=VanDerWerff=] began as a TV critic at The AV Club, where he was known for the passion, depth and staggering quantity of his work.

*** "SIIIIIMS", an affectionate TakeThat aimed at David Sims whenever he writes or does something particularly noteworthy.

* TheAlcoholic: A running joke in the comments section is that Sean O'Neal, the site's senior editor and the man responsible for most of the hilarious breaking news pieces, is a raging alcoholic.

** This is also invoked in [["The Gentleman's F"]], which declares that there's a grandeur to having an F - it immediately suggests to the audience, "you have to see this shit." As a result, the site tends to reserve F's for SoBadItsGood productions, and ones that fit more clearly into the "just bad" pile are more likely D-minuses.