Tennesse didn't care for the ending... He found the fight at the end melodramatic—that from Tennessee, whose heroes, when not castrated, are eaten alive by small boys in Amalfi.
—Gore Vidal on The City and the Pillar
[W]hereas the characters in previous Final Fantasy games would feel right at home in the pages of 1970s Marvel Comics, Final Fantasy VIII's cast seems better suited for Apartment 3-G or Mark Trail.
—Pat R., "A Series Discovers Its Crack Pipe"
Oh Jeri Taylor you poor deluded woman, is this really what you think people want to watch? One soap opera plot line that is so manipulative in its nature they could hold up cards that say CRINGE/LAUGH/CRY at the appropriate moments and it would be less subtle than the material on offer.
David: Any time Lois said something serious about family, I wanted to vomit. If I had to hear one more schmaltzy speech about spending time with your family or the ties that bind or any of that crap, I was gonna explode.
Chris: No kidding. To everyone who told us 'Oh, Smallville hasn’t really been a CW teen drama for years,' you are all a bunch of liars.
Chris: No kidding. To everyone who told us 'Oh, Smallville hasn’t really been a CW teen drama for years,' you are all a bunch of liars.
In case you didn’t get Helen is the wounded flower trying to make the marriage work and Charles is an evil prick then just wait another five minutes. In the following scenes Charles moves Helen’s stuff out of his mansion and moves in the woman he is currently having an affair with. Of course, he doesn’t tell Helen until he takes his new girl home to knock boots in their old bed. Charles then tells Helen to get in the U-HAUL truck where he paid the driver to take her anywhere in the country and physically DRAGS HER OUT OF THE HOUSE KICKING AND SCREAMING AND LOCKS THE DOOR BEHIND HIM!!! Holy crap! Could you make that scene any more melodramatic and over the top? The only way I can is if Helen stated she was pregnant and Charles said 'Oh no you don’t' and booted her in the stomach.
David Cage only has one tool in his arsenal and it's a giant sledgehammer with the word "MMMELODRAMA!" written down the side. His stories always play out like rampant human misery simulators, as written by someone who has never met any human beings. [...] And just because a story's depressing, doesn't mean it's deep or complex.
There's the criticism that the film is melodramatic, which I also find odd because the melodrama of the situation is why we remember the Titanic disaster at all. It was the largest moving object in the world built by human hands at the time, as well as the apex of Edwardian glamour, it was to be the captain's last voyage before he retired, and the ship sank on its maiden voyage. Any publisher would throw that concept out for being wayyyy too over-the-top if it had not actually happened. It is a fundamentally melodramatic historical event, so there's not really anything tonally off about having a big emotions romantic epic on board the ship right before it sinks.
