The Nostalgia Critic



The Nostalgia Critic is the creation of Doug Walker, who specializes in reviewing movies (and a few television shows) from the 1980s and 1990s, the time period his generation grew up in. The show has long been the anchor online show of thatguywiththeglasses.com and has been considered by many online viewers and fans to be the standard for online review shows that many others have tried to emulate.

Creation A resident of the Chicago area and former Circuit City employee who was laid off when the store chain went under, Doug and his brother Rob began making videos and posting them on YouTube while Doug worked as a graphic designer. His first actual video was reviewing the first Michael Bay Transformers movie, in which he actually gave it a glowing review in a hyperactive tone similar to what Walker would later use for the character Chester A. Bum in Bum Reviews. His first actual review as "The Nostalgia Critic" involved the 1990 anti-drug PSA special "Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue." It was here he began developing the character, from his standard dress - black suit jacket over a white shirt with a loosely worn red necktie and a black cap - along with his persona. The Nostalgia Critic's character was meant to represent an extreme characiture of the embittered geek who spends most of his time dissecting movies, TV shows and other forms of entertainment, pointing out and complaining about the errors and plot holes within the media. Doug has always maintained that the Critic was meant to be someone audiences were meant to laugh at for how pathetic he was rather than always wholeheartedly agree with everything he says.

After Doug's YouTube account was suspended over accusations of copyright infringement, Mike Michaud approached him about using the videos for content on his new website, and thatguywiththeglasses.com was launched with the videos now being posted via Blip TV. Doug's other videos, like Ask That Guy and Bum Reviews, became part of the site as well, and the administrators began looking for other talent to add to the site like That Dude in the Suede and The Spoony One.

Rivalry With the AVGN After fans pointed out that both The Nostalgia Critic and the Angry Video Game Nerd had reviewed some of the same things like the first Ninja Turtles moves and The Wizard, Walker and James Rolfe decided to play off it. They began releasing videos with their characters calling each other out for reviewing the same thing, and whenever they visited the same convention, they made a video of them fighting each other. This eventually culminated in the first major crossover special to commemorate TGWTG's first anniversary, where the Critc and his team of reviewers took on the Nerd and his fellow gamers (including game reviewers who defected from the Critic for this battle). The Critic and the Nerd called a truce by agreeing to review something together, settling on the "Coming Out of Their Shells" video for the Ninja Turtles rock band.

Crossovers After releasing the crossover special in April 2009 to commemorate TGWTG's first anniversary, Walker, Michaud and the TGWTG staff produced other specials to commemorate the site's anniversary each year. Subsequent specials were turned into full feature-length movies, released in multiple parts within the course of days. The second year special was titled "Kickassia" and was about the Critic and his fellow reviewers conquering the micro nation of Molassia within Nevadaand the other reviewers then having to overthrow the Critic when he became power mad. The third year special, "Suburban Knights," had the group searching for an ancient mystical artifact called the Hand of Malachite, needing to play a treasure hunt game dressed as characters of fantasy in order to find it.

The End of the Critic

In August 2012, The Nostalgia Critic reviewed the 2002 live-action Scooby Doo movie; the review used a storyline where Doug reviewed it alongside versions of himself from the past and future in a tribute to the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The tone of the video led viewers to suspect this was the final episode for the show. Right after its posting, the website released its annual crossover movie special, To Boldly Flee; at the end, the Critic became one with an intergalactic anomaly (dubbed a "plot hole") in order to save his universe. After the movie's last part aired, Doug posted another video announcing that The Nostalgia Critic was indeed coming to an end but that it wasn't the end for TGWTG, as he and the rest of the website's staff had a number of new shows in development and had in fact recently procured a great deal of new studio space for production.



 The Return

Much of the remainder od 2012 had Doug working on the show "Demo Reel," which portrayed him as an extremely low-budget Hollywood producer looking to make very cheap ripoffs of Hollywood blockbuster films. The new show did not receive as much popularity and drew a lot of criticism from fans pining for the return of the Critic. In addition, it appears that, having now stopped making reviews, Doug began to recall the fun he used to have making them; the burnout he had been feeling was essentially from the pressure of making one review a week combined with the limit to films/shows prior to his 2000 cutoff date. All of this was tackled in a meta video where Doug himself is seen battling his decision to cancel the show and debating with the spiritual manifestation of his creation. Doug ended up telling The Critic (and thus the viewers at the same time) that he would bring back the Critic on the grounds that he would only do a full review video every two weeks and that his only restriction would be to not review movies currently in theaters. With that, the video had him ending Demo Reel and restoring the Critic from the plot hole in a way that tied them together. The Nostalgia Critic returned on February 5, 2013, with his review of The Odd Life of Timothy Green.

With the Critic's return, the review videos have added more details, like a full title sequence and new characters like Satan and his daughter, who are portrayed by the actors Doug had hired to play the remaining cast on Demo Reel. In the weeks wheer a review video doesn't appear, he posts a "Nostalgia Critic Editorial," where he analyzes some aspect of pop culture.