The website that helped popularize the Video Review Show has been subject to several controversies over its history, to say the least. Multiple members, current and former have expressed their regret for things they did during their tenure, whether that be individual videos or jokes, or (in the case of former members) the entire time they spent on Channel Awesome. This page is divided between multiple creators who share the same regrets, and more specific regrets held by individual creators.
Regrets involving multiple creators:
- Almost everyone who was a contributor on Channel Awesome from 2008-2015 regrets ever having anything to do with Doug Walker or any of the higher-ups of the website due to mistreatment and abuse they suffered
while working on the website. Most have stated to the effect that they will never work with the Walker brothers again. The only exceptions are Brad Jones, who not only stayed with the website but has really doubled down on his support for it since the document came out; Noah Antwiler, who said that he didn't like Channel Awesome's management team but misses working with Doug and Rob; and, to a lesser extent, Lewis Lovhaug, who says that he did consider Doug and Rob friends and had a problem more with Mike Michaud than he did with them (However, considering The Walkers ended their friendship with him once he quit the website, he's changed his mind about that).- Especially pronounced with Allison Pregler, who not only regrets anything she did with Doug and Rob but Brad Jones as well. While she initially stayed friends with Jones despite the latter's decision not to leave Channel Awesome, after Jones went on an interview with Double Toasted where he dismissed the controversy and said things like "Apologize, even if you don't mean it!" and "Well, Logan Paul filmed a dead body and he still has a career", she immediately ended her friendship with him. Whenever she has mentioned him since, it has not been pretty. It has gotten to the point where she has either deleted reviews they were in together or edited him out of reviews, and called the movies she was in that he directed "shitty". She's gained a reputation of lashing out and blocking not only anyone who mentions Doug and/or Brad on her Twitter, but anyone who merely follows them on the site.
- Lindsay Ellis has stated that she has no good memories of her time as The Nostalgia Chick. She says that no one should watch any of her work from before 2015 (although she says she still likes the Freddy Got Fingered review). Her old videos are available (under the mocking title "Nostalgic Woman") only to those who subscribe to her Patreon, and the only reason they're even available there at all is because there were so many unauthorized reuploads across the internet that she knew she wouldn't be able to get rid of them entirely. More broadly, she believes that her videos as the Nostalgia Chick, and the output of Channel Awesome in general, helped to popularize a toxic brand of online media criticism in the 2010s, one that was characterized by snide, bad-faith arguments and an air of smug superiority to the material they were discussing. The only Nostalgia Chick videos that she doesn't seem thoroughly embarrassed about are her videos on Freddy Got Fingered and The Lord of the Rings, going by the fact that she has reuploaded to her main channel.
"It was around 2011 that I started to really realize what a toxic form of criticism we were helping to build when I realized how bad my review of Dune was. Like, I still don't like Dune, but my approach to it was just so smug and lazy. Genuinely my nadir, and I've had a few. ... I'm not proud of it. I had a hand in the foundation of the SinemaCins landscape of today." - Especially pronounced with Allison Pregler, who not only regrets anything she did with Doug and Rob but Brad Jones as well. While she initially stayed friends with Jones despite the latter's decision not to leave Channel Awesome, after Jones went on an interview with Double Toasted where he dismissed the controversy and said things like "Apologize, even if you don't mean it!" and "Well, Logan Paul filmed a dead body and he still has a career", she immediately ended her friendship with him. Whenever she has mentioned him since, it has not been pretty
- Unrelated to quality, but when he committed suicide, a number of tributes to Justin "JewWario" Carmical were made. However, when the #ChangeTheChannel movement happened and Channel Awesome's attempt at a response resulted in it being revealed Carmical was a sexual predator, a number of producers, who only learned about it through making the document, ended up regretting doing their tributes:
- Kaylyn Saucedo, who composed the document at the heart of the movement, originally made Farewell, FamiKamen Rider as a tribute movie. She contemplated taking it down, but kept it up because she felt it would have been unfair to everyone else that worked on it, though she also added a disclaimer in the description, disowning the movie.
- Lewis Lovhaug moved up the review of Gameboy #3 when it was originally scheduled for a bit later. Like Kaylyn, Lewis edited the description of the YouTube upload for the Gameboy #3 review to say he wouldn't have done the tributes if he'd known. While he doesn't come outright and say it's the reason why, just that it's been a very long time before he returns to the Gameboy comic and that "it invokes bad memories," in an unboxing video he uploaded in late March 2024, it seems that the truth about Carmichal has soured him on the Gameboy comics as a whole, including his other videos about it.
- Many others, including Phelan Porteous, are pulling the Un-person treatment on Carmichal, taking down videos with him in it, or reediting them to either remove or replace him. Lovhaug and Bennett White also removed JewWario hats they'd kept in honor of Carmichal. In some cases, like William DuFresne's review of Pokémon: The First Movie, there's even been outright redoing the videos.
- The Uncanny Valley:
- Rob told Uncle Yo pretty soon about the Executive Meddling of being ordered by Michaud to rush something out, and Doug's Fandom Nod-heavy Critic review of the special calls this his "fuck you I'm tired and I have nothing else to offer" follow-up.
- MikeJ revealed in 2018 that he'd only been offered the chance to make his video when several other reviewers had already declined, he wasn't reimbursed for his efforts, and he made precisely zero money from its inclusion on the DVD.
Regrets specific to individual creators:
- Doug Walker:
- He loves doing Ask That Guy with the Glasses, but due to the ultra-Black Comedy style, can't watch any of the videos without hating himself.
- Although he may be slightly embarrassed by one of his first works, starring himself as a cowboy, he uploaded it to ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com anyway for all to laugh at.
- His poorly received sketch "Melvin: Brother of the Joker". The Channel Awesome re-upload of it outright referred to it as "one of Doug's worst sketches ever" in the video description. Doug ended up killing the character off during a donation drive, and later shared a fan-video where the Joker himself reacts violently to Melvin's video.
- His highly obscure character "Emo Jones" may also count, having only received one sketch and having gone virtually unmentioned since.
- He has a bit of disdain for his very early Nostalgia Critic videos as well. In particular, he spends the entire commentary track for his Cartoon Allstars To The Rescue review openly criticizing his own performance, while when discussing his "Top Eleven Favorite Nostalgia Critic Videos," he mentions that he doesn't understand why his Batman & Robin review is so popular among fans. The Christmas with the Kranks review sends most of his 2007/2008 output to the garbage dump.
- The Nostalgia Critic's Let's Play he did of Bart's Nightmare fell under this rather quickly, primarily because a) it was too angrishy and b) he was on vacation and wanted to give the fans something other than commentaries. In the following episode, the Critic ended up going to prison (one symbolically placed right next to a location from the movie he hates more than any other) for making the video and publicly apologized to the masses who wanted his blood.
- This trope was exploited In-Universe by Mara Wilson. She showed Doug's old videos as a kid in order to get revenge on him for mocking her work as a kid. In his commentary for that very review, Doug said that he picked the very worst movies he made, as a response to people thinking the previous Old Shame childhood movies he showed clips of weren't so bad.
- Rob Walker was never interested in Demo Reel, and only agreed to put the show into production because Doug had wanted to do it for five years.
- While he admits that the video was funny, Doug regrets how he quit his old job because of how unprofessional it was.
- During interviews and episodes of Radiodrome, Brad Jones has expressed embarrassment over his early videos as The Cinema Snob. Not only was most of his early stuff shot in very poor video quality and lighting, but he also feels his presentation was too much negative ranting and not enough comedy. Also, because he originally posted them on YouTube, they're often only under 8 minutes long. Despite his embarrassment, Brad just leaves the videos as they are and actually enjoys poking fun at them in his newer, better videos.
- Todd in the Shadows admitted in 2011 (while still a part of the site) that he wasn't proud of his first two reviews. He also apparently isn't fond of his Ke$ha videos either, viewing them as misogynistic in hindsight.
- Allison Pregler does not think highly of To Boldly Flee. Aside from the writing problems (including believing that the Walker brothers can't write women very well), there were more than a few problems on set that made the entire film not worth it. She has gone on to say that her experience with the Atop the Fourth Wall movie was much preferable.
- The Spoony Experiment
- Spoony starts his review of Final Fantasy XIII by apologizing for his negative review of Final Fantasy VIII. He says that even though he still thinks that Final Fantasy VIII is not a good game, he feels that it was better than later installments in the franchise and that he let his personal history with the game cloud his judgement. He also apologized for opening the review with a cheap gay joke at Zell's expense, saying "I don't know what I was thinking; I deserve every bit of flak I got for that".
- Final Fantasy X featured Spoony saying that anyone who liked the game should be hunted down and killed. He later did a commentary video over the review, admitting that while it was always intended as a joke instead of his actual opinion, Spoony now feels the line was going way too far. While he still considers Final Fantasy X to be a series low point, he was much kinder to people who liked the game.
- Bennett the Sage:
- According to the Channel Awesome Wiki, he retired his "Masterpiece Fanfic Theatre" series because it "wasn't enjoyable for him anymore and he didn't want to spend the energy editing and producing it."
- In 2022, he released a two-part revisit of Neon Genesis Evangelion, focusing on an in-depth examination of Hideaki Anno and the Rebuild of Evangelion movies. He closes the second part with an admission that he's deeply dissatisfied with his previous Eva videos, along with most of his reviews prior to 2017, citing his being part of the "vitriolic internet reviewer" theme that was so prominent back then and compromising research for the sake of jokes. That said, he makes clear that anyone who likes any of those reviews shouldn't stop liking them just because he doesn't anymore.
- Linkara:
- Judging from this Twitter conversation, he is not a fan of the Angel Armor book series he wrote as a teenager, and was especially disappointed to learn that both books can be found on Amazon.com.
- He's admitted, in his episode on Sinnamon #1, that he hates most of the badly lit/blurry early episodes like Sinnamon #11.
- He also regrets his earlier attitude in attacking creators directly rather than criticizing writing and art decisions. This is why he changed the theme song in episode 600 and made it official starting in 2021. He's stated that the only time it's appropriate to call out a creator is if the book has things like misogynistic or racist themes, and even then it's important to limit commentary to pointing out why it's wrong and not engage in attacks on the creator or other otherwise promote toxic fandom and entitlement, which he's ashamed of having done in the past.
- Judging from this Twitter conversation
- Brows Held High
- Kyle wound up taking down his review of The Girlfriend Experience about a month after it went up on Channel Awesome, citing that he didn't care for some of the implications that he made about adult film stars and decided he didn't want it to represent him as a critic. He uploaded a commentary of the review instead, explaining the reasoning behind this.
- Kyle has since grown dissatisfied with his older episodes, which were straight reviews, in favor of his newer format, which analyzes films from a particular angle. Only a few of these older reviews (some branded "Brows Held High Classic") remain on YouTube.
- Phelous doesn't like his first review, Mac and Me, as detailed in the episode's commentary and his April Fools' Day video of him reviewing the review.
