(And I know I dropped the ball and didn’t review Halloweentown IV this past Halloween. I forgot but I will do it this year, especially as I’ve come to some realizations about it).
Anyway, I was introduced to That Guy With the Glasses when a friend sent me a link to Lindsay Ellis’ Nostalgia Chick review of Labyrinth. I loved it and watched her other videos before starting to explore the site’s other contributors, including the Nostalgia Critic. I remember watching Kickassia, eager for each part to be released each day, and discovering new people to watch (like Linkara) from it.
Then came To Boldly Flee, which featured the end of the Nostalgia Critic as Doug Walker (the man behind the glasses) wanted to focus on new, more original productions. While I was sad and knew I would miss the Nostalgia Critic, I wished him well. I even gave one of his new shows, Demo Reel, a chance—but soon found that it just didn’t hold my attention or strike me as particularly funny. There also ended up being long stretches between videos and while I understood that it was a more complex production than Nostalgia Critic, the long stretches were definitely more of a turn off. However, I was still watching other contributors on the site and kept going there almost every day.
Barely a year after To Boldly Flee ended the Nostalgia Critic, the last episode of Demo Reel brought the character back. I expressed my concern to some friends on a message board who also followed the site because I didn’t know if Doug was bringing the character back because he truly missed it or because they were losing viewers over Demo Reel, so they were just giving people what they wanted. I was concerned that he wouldn’t have the same passion as he had before. I’m not sure that didn’t happen—while I watched some of the new Nostalgia Critic videos, he started to do a lot more recent stuff that I had no interest in and eventually, I stopped watching his videos.
I did keep watching other contributors, particularly Lindsay, Linkara and Paw Dugan (also occasionally Todd in the Shadows) . So I was still going to the site almost daily.
