- The Uncanny Valley: Dragonbored | Dragged In | The Reviewers | Internet Dating and Me | Darkside of the Internet
The Reviewers is Brad Jones' (The Cinema Snob, Paranoia, 80's Dan) contribution to The Uncanny Valley.
Andy and Jeff live together with Jeff's girlfriend Michelle and spend their days working dull, low-paying jobs to the extent that Michelle pays the bulk of the household bills. In their spare time, they like watching Internet reviewers; after discovering that some people earn a living off such videos, they decide to make that their careers.
This turns out to be harder than it looks. The two face an uphill task just trying to get noticed in a sea of other people broadcasting their videos far and wide, coming up with ideas, making time to shoot videos, and meanwhile Andy is having trouble at his day job. Yet, throughout it all, they never lose sight of their ultimate ambition, to make a living doing something they enjoy.
Watch it here
. You can see behind-the-scenes featurettes here and here. A year after its debut, a sequel, "Shooting Space", was released, starting a new series of episodes involving these characters. You can watch that here
In 2014, behind the scenes drama resulted in Jake Norville being fired from Stoned Gremlin Productions, prematurely ending the series after only six episodes. While there are no plans to revive The Reviewers, a spinoff has been announced called Jesus, Bro! involving The Rickhead having a near-death experience in parody of exploitive Christian drama films.
It provides examples of:
- Accentuate the Negative: Rickhead's reviews of web videos are extremely harsh. Even towards a video of Lloyd.
- Affectionate Parody: Jeff's series is one of Mid-Review Sketch Shows, especially Atop the Fourth Wall.
- Blasphemous Boast: Andy explicitly wishes to be as big as the Messiah. Subverted in that the "Messiah" he was talking about is an internet personality with that same name.
- Canon Immigrant:
- Space Lancer Steve originated as a joke by Linkara about The Cinema Snob not having an analogue to Ensign Munroe
- Also, the character of the Messiah originated in The Cinema Snob's review of The Tormentors, and later made appearances in his reviews of Maniac! (1980) and The Helter-Skelter Murders.
- Can't Take Criticism: Unlike Jeff, who understands that no publicity is bad publicity, Andy is overly sensitive to his image, even wanting to tear down a wall and completely remake it because The Rickhead noticed the set change (both sets a white brick wall in a basement) and made a big deal out of it.
- Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: One of the Rickhead's videos has him complaining about how there are people who find Ghostbusters (2016) at least
So Okay, It's Average ,only to admit at the end that he hasn't seen the movie for himself.
- Expy: Mr Trinkett of Red Scare Video, who does 90-minute reviews of movies like Fraternity Vacation while recounting his own depravity.
- Former Child Star: Brad Jones's character, Nicholas Pike, was the star of the 1989 movie The Genius.
- Hitler Ate Sugar: In "Shooting Space", when The Rickhead complained about beanbag chairs that don't last (due to running out of material to complain about), he said that Hitler was the only person who liked uncomfortable seats.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Rickhead is, of course, a massive dickhead, and he spends most of what we see of his review spouting homophobic slurs and being needlessly cruel, but he's not exactly wrong about their videos being unfunny. It's not much of a point of course, since he's a tool.
- Narcissist: Andy seems to see himself as a tortured artist with ambitions of stardom, when really he is just a whining Know-Nothing Know-It-All with delusions of grandeur, hence why Michelle hates him way more than Jeff.Andy: Why don't you like me, Michelle?
Michelle: Easy. You're condescending, you're arrogant, you think you're smarter than everyone else, you think you're better than everyone else, you laugh at jokes you don't even get and even your laughter stops to smell its own farts. - No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: In-universe, Jeff feels this way towards negative comments on online videos.
- Opinion Myopia: In-Universe, The Rickhead pretty much fails to comprehend any opinions that aren't his own, hence his sign-off "I say it because you think it".
- Orphaned Series: With the very nasty departure of Jake Norville from Stoned Gremlin Productions, there are no plans to continue this series.
- The Pilot: The short serves as a potential pilot for a new series by Brad Jones and his crew.
- Precision F-Strike: Andy messes up his recording of an episode as Count Thomas Howl and does this.
- Shout-Out:
- Once again from Brad Jones, his description of the short is: "A coke head cop is brought out of suspension in order to trail a local prostitute who may become the next victim of a serial killer known as The Scalper", the plot of Midnight Heat, a film he made in 2007.
- Count Thomas Howl is a pun on the actor C. Thomas Howell.
- Show Within a Show: The videos the main characters make, as well as the various other internet review shows.
- Stealth Pun: Hmm, what rhymes with "Rickhead" that also fits his personality? Also helps that Rick is short for Richard. What's another shorter-name for Richard?
- Straw Misogynist: The Rickhead is shown in the videos meant to promote Jesus, Bro! to be this to the point of being a Men's Rights Activist.
- Stylistic Suck: Jeff's
No Budget show is this, even for an internet review show. His spaceship is his car (no attempt to even doll it up), and his nemesis is a sock worn as a puppet (not even good enough to be a sock puppet)."Greetings, earthling! I'm Lord Penis from the planet Ass!" - Take That!: Rickhead defending his trolling as "criticism" is one towards the general negative attitude in regards of their venomous insults.
