Thread by @Linkara19

@GreatCheshire WELP, just finished. A few things I can add as someone who was actually talking to Doug at the time.

ONE: Yes, the marketing was one of the worst aspects that played into Demo Reel's initial rejection by fans. Aside from not telling the other producers about the end (those of...

@GreatCheshire ...us who were in the cast of To Boldly Flee knew, of course), we ALL knew that introducing this as the big replacement to the Critic RIGHT AWAY was a bad call. It meant that he needed to hit the ball out of the park IMMEDIATELY. Doing the build-up to it was good, but NC was...

@GreatCheshire ...the cashcow and we all knew that it needed, NEEDED to be great if people were going to stick around. Even at the time people were saying they were going to leave and stop watching because they ONLY cared about the NC reviews. They didn't WANT original content. But hey, we...

@GreatCheshire ...supported Doug and we thought he might be able to make it work since NC had worked.

Aaaand of course it didn't.

Demo Reel should have been introduced earlier - a year or two before the end of the Critic, making occasional episodes instead of a full-on production. That way...

@GreatCheshire ...they COULD workshop the series as the eventual replacement, even tell fans "It's not like I'm going to stop doing videos! Here's Demo Reel, and here are some samples of recent stuff to show the cool stuff we're doing with it." What's worse is they apparently bought the...

@GreatCheshire ...studio LONG before they were actually going to use it, meaning it was burning money while not producing anything for them.

And I will say that I was encouraging him. At the time, the critical reaction from those who WANTED to give it a chance, myself included, was...

@GreatCheshire ...straightforward: the movie parodies are played out and choosing the Nolan Batman movies, a subject that even he had well-trodded out by this point, was a poor one. The behind the scenes action of the characters in the studio were far more interesting and funny, so focus on...

@GreatCheshire ...that. That of course led to trying to incorporate the movie parodies INTO the plot more - sure, they were still sweding films, but making a central parody be more story-driven for the characters. It's clear that he was trying to salvage the reaction to Demo Reel by...

@GreatCheshire ...becoming more character-driven stories, adding depth to them beyond their superficiality that he had defined about them... aaaand it backfired for the reasons you listed off. On the subject of the serious stuff, part of it is that Doug WANTS to discuss some of these issues...

@GreatCheshire ...but he doesn't understand them - either by ignorance or ego, he is incapable of recognizing why these are subjects he's not qualified to cover.

But yeah, I celebrated the shift, too, and felt the show got better... but even before I broke away I had zero desire to ever...

@GreatCheshire ...rewatch them. It was rather uncomfortable and weird and not really what I had gotten into Doug for initially, anyway. Since he was my friend, I wanted him to succeed and wanted to show support, but yeah - the writing was on the wall after a while that it wasn't going...

@GreatCheshire ...great.

When he told me they were stopping Demo Reel and bringing back the Critic, I actually STRONGLY told him not to - that it would be accepting that he couldn't do anything else but the Critic and giving in to unreasonable demands from a fanbase that wouldn't ever be...

@GreatCheshire ...happy and would assume they could demand ANYTHING from him later. What I later learned was that Doug himself wasn't actually aware of how bad Demo Reel was doing until the decision to cancel it. In another of those examples of facepalming concerning Doug, because he has...

@GreatCheshire ...other people who manage the business side of CA, he doesn't actually do anything with his own damn accounts. It was Blip back then, but same issue with analytics - he didn't upload, others uploaded. He didn't keep track of the numbers, and so didn't know just how much it...

@GreatCheshire ...had tanked. Sure, he knew the reaction was bad, but not so much that everything was sinking because of it.

In any case, great video examining this! Brings back a lot of memories.

Including the Bane at Arby's thing. It was real. It was hated. It was rightfully hated.