What Makes A Good Critic?

Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season. Got something you wanna contribute? Email the Roo. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it.

“Everyone’s a critic” has been a lament my entire life, but the advent of the internet rendered it literally true. Anyone can review anything online, from new albums to tubes of toothpaste. But just because you can review something doesn’t mean you’re doing criticism. It’s easy to conflate the two nouns, especially now that the occupation of professional critic is all but extinct. Every critic out of a job has been replaced by an endless crowd of civilian reviewers, which means fewer enlightening pieces of cultural criticism. That sucks for a lot of reasons, but above all, it leaves the culture at large unable to understand what good criticism looks like, or even what criticism is.

Because criticism isn’t just me telling you “this was great” or “this sucked.” A good critic provides necessary context to whatever it is that they’re evaluating. My favorite music critic ever is Stephen Thomas Erlewine, who used to review albums for AllMusic before the site cut him loose and he was forced to open up his own Substack. Erlewine knows far, far more about music than I do. He's listened to every previous album/B-side an artist has put out before reviewing their newest release. He knows the background story of how that album was made. He knows if the lead singer and lead guitarist stopped talking to each other a week into the recording sessions. He knows the producer of the album, and he’s heard all of the other albums that producer has made. He’ll render a final judgment on a work, as the job requires, but he’s done enough homework to make certain that his is an educated judgment.

That’s what makes a good critic. A good critic doesn’t just recommend a work, but illuminate it. Deepen it. Before reading this Pitchfork retrospective of Bob Marley’s Legend compilation, I didn’t know that greatest hits album was explicitly curated to sell to white audiences (mission accomplished). And this week, I checked out the site’s revisit of U2’s Pop, the album that represents the last time that band actually tried, where I learned about a cutting room track called “Holy Joe” that I ended up really liking, a song that was perhaps the best indicator of where U2 could have gone post-Pop instead of where they did go. These were not reviews that were seemingly engineered to be hate-read. They were just great reads, from critics who knew their shit.

One last example. When I first listened to Alice In Chains’ self-titled album (sorry for the dad-rock example, that’s just what I usually listen to), I didn’t know that lead singer Layne Staley was so hamstrung by his heroin addiction at the time that he barely ever showed up to the recording sessions. I also didn’t know that Staley, on every AIC album, would ask to be surrounded by curtains anytime he laid down vocals, so that he felt like he was singing only to himself. I only learned all of that after the fact, and from reviews. So when I listen to that album now, I understand it far better than I did when I first bought the cassette in 1995. Even the album’s flaws, which are numerous, become interesting to me when I understand the story behind them. I wouldn’t have had that kind of enriched listening experience without critics, scholars, giving me the fuller picture.

That doesn’t mean their copy has to be dry. My favorite movie critic, Vince Mancini, will gleefully wedge in cheap jokes where he sees an opening. But in between all of those jabs, he’s telling me shit I didn’t necessarily know about the movie in question. Roger Ebert was a similarly valuable critic. I want a movie critic who knows movies, same as I want my NFL beat writers to know football. I want an expert.

There’s work in acquiring such expertise. You have to be familiar with an artist’s canon. You have to know the influences that drove the creative forces behind a movie or show. You have to know if powerbrokers meddled with the final product, and how. You can write an effective review that’s centered on your personal reaction to the work in question, but you better be good enough with a pen to make that reaction feel visceral, to make me care about why the piece affected you the way it did. There’s no accounting for taste of course. A critic won’t necessarily like the same things you do, but that’s fine. People are supposed to like different things, and you and I live in an economy that, given how centralized its power structure is, very much wants us to all like the same things. A good critic helps keep standards high, but also fosters more diversity in taste and not less.

And a good critic knows an art form nearly as well as the artist does. It’s no coincidence that Ebert tried his hand at screenwriting. Writers of his caliber are very much right there in the arena, as willing to bear judgment as they are to judge. Many of them, like Ebert himself, have failed in their attempts at creating art, because of course they have. People fail at stuff all the time, but smart people are eager to learn—out of curiosity more than jealousy—why they failed, and why other artists succeed. That eagerness, and the knowledge that follows in its wake, is what grants a critic true authority, much more than any star rating does.

A shit critic, by contrast, does none of that legwork. A bad critic peacocks while standing atop their self-built pedestal, treating their own opinions like holy writ. Old Pitchfork’s worst reviewer, the infamous fabulist Brent DiCrescenzo, was this kind of critic. The kind of critic that makes you want to hate something they love (or vice versa) just to spite them. I venerate Kid A by Radiohead. It’s a great album, in addition to being a seminal one. But reading DiCrescenzo's review of that same album makes me want to not love it, because I don’t wanna be in cahoots with that kind of preening, self-impressed asswipe. God, that guy was a troll.

I have been both kinds of critic. I have written reviews imbued with plenty of background knowledge of everyone that was involved in the work I evaluated. At the same time, I’ve reviewed movies strictly from just watching the trailer. A considered review adds something to the experience, whether you agree with it or not. The other kind of review is masturbatory, and often exists strictly for audiences on a confirmation bias hunt (it’s a large audience). There’s fun to be had in that kind of hack job review, but it’s ephemeral. You’re not gonna take anything from it with you after you’ve read it. You’re not gonna learn anything, and that’s the difference between good criticism and bad. A good critic, a true critic, is a professor at heart. You might even dare say that a good critic is an artist in their own right.

The Games

All games in the Jamboroo are evaluated for sheer watchability on a scale of 1 to 5 Throwgasms.

Five Throwgasms

Panthers at Eagles: I did not rate this game as a five-star affair in this week’s All Ball ep, but this weekend’s miserable slate demands that I re-grade it on a more generous curve. Just remind me to skip watching every Eagles offensive series. That shit is eye poison.

Four Throwgasms

Cowboys at Packers: Every election season makes me imagine myself as a Democratic campaign strategist. Would I be good at this job? No. Would I better at it than most current Democratic strategists? Yes, but only by default. So here now are two talking points that I, Drew Carville, envision working wonders on the American electorate.

•“Fire the cops.” A snappier alternative to “defund the police.” All of our worst politicians and op-ed columnists will fight it tooth and nail.

•“Turn off the hate machines.” For abolishing Meta, X, and all AI platforms. I might even throw the gambling sites into the mix under this rubric, even if it doesn’t quite work.

Those are my formal campaign recommendations to any cool Democrat. No, I will not read your objections to them.

Seahawks at Broncos: No one is lining up to give Thursday Night Football accolades, but I do have to give them credit for being the first broadcaster (that I know of) to run detailed, animated graphics of a knee surgery that X player just underwent. That shit is genuinely informative and useful. More surgery cartoons, please.

Three Throwgasms

Bills at Raiders: Here is Tylan Grable’s new facemask, and here is the Radiohead bear logo. Coincidence? I think not. I think Grable listens to Amnesiac before every game to get himself fired up. Again, I will tolerate no objections.

Saints at Giants: Given my age, I now contract a nagging cough that lasts for roughly seven months any given year. So I asked my RN what I could do about it. She told me to use a saline spray. One toot up each nostril before I go to bed, she went on, and I should be fine. And HEY PRESTO! No more cough. Not only do I make fewer noises when going to sleep at night, but taking a hit off that spray makes me feel like an '80s movie producer. I live for the danger.

Two Throwgasms

Chargers at Chiefs: I had family in town last weekend and lemme tell you: Nothing brings me and my loved ones together more than plopping down on the couch, turning on a game, and seeing a washed-up Megan Fox hawking mail-order boner pills. Why it felt downright Christmassy in our house that night.

Texans at Jaguars (London)

Jets at Patriots

Bears at Falcons

One Throwgasm

Commanders at 49ers: In case you missed it last week, here’s a clip of Niners WR Mike Evans owning the unholy shit out of Seahawks CB Trevon Diggs by pulling an “And you are?” move.

Now that is a quality taunt. It works even better when the target is a former big contract guy who was long ago exposed as a common scrub. Ruthless shit. No one is stopping these 49ers, not even the substation.

Cardinals at Rams: At this point I can’t tell if the Cardinals hate Jeremiyah Love, if he hates them, or if he’s just not a very good player. Could be all three!

Steelers at Bucs

Ravens at Browns

Titans at Colts

This Week On All Ball

Before we recorded this episode on Tuesday, I had to get up at 4:15 a.m. to take my daughter to the airport. I’d like to think that I wasn’t too groggy when Arif and I went deep into this week’s miserable slate of games, but 4:15 a.m. is 4:15 a.m. Truly an inhuman hour. The things I do for love, man.

Also, I did everything in my power to cut down on the Vikes chat this week (they’re on a bye, after all), and then Arif goes and names their stadium as one that could potentially be iconized down the pike. OY! I’m the insufferable fanboy here, Reefer! Don’t be like me! America won’t stand for it!

Pregame Song That Makes Me Wanna Run Through A Goddamn Brick Wall

“Public Witness Program,” by DC’s own Fugazi! From John:

In On The Kill Taker turned 30 in June so I figured why not. This is on my jogging playlist and it's impossible not to go all out when it comes on.

Love it when an “Oh hell yeah time to break into a gallop” song comes up in the queue. Makes me feel like I’m housing a kickoff return.

Get In Shape With Dr. Cam Skattebo, A.S.U.!

“My biggest regret about fumbling the ball in overtime last week was getting a flu shot just before the game. I, a licensed staminologist, know full well the danger that all vaccines pose to innocent people. But a friend I won’t name talked me into getting one anyway. STUPID. I go to the clinic, and the nurse tells me that she usually gives the shot in your non-dominant arm. So I tell her bro, both my arms are dominant. That’s how I excel out there in the arena of combat. She picks my right arm at random and guess what? Yep, same arm I fumbled the ball with. Let that be a lesson to you and your children.”

Fire This Asshole!

Is there anything more exciting than a coach losing his job? All year long, we’ll keep track of which coaches will almost certainly get fired at year’s end or sooner. And now, your potential 2026 chopping block:

Jim Harbaugh*
Nick Sirianni*
Matt LaFleur
Shane Steichen*
Todd Bowles*
Dan Quinn*****
Robert Saleh*
Brian Schottenheimer

(*potential midseason firing)

Even after Green Bay crushed the Bears on Sunday, I can’t bring myself to remove Matty LaFleur’s name from this list just yet. It just looks so pretty up there, you know?

Gameday Cookin’ Corner

Reader Catfish John offers up this recipe that at first glance appears disgusting, but probably works out real nice. Such is the case with most party dip recipes. Take it away, Catfish.

This barely counts as a recipe. But given that so many of us will be attending football-watching parties in the next few months, I wanted to contribute a tried and true favorite that's easy to put together and is always a crowd pleaser. I think I got the recipe off a box of cream cheese?? Can't remember for sure (I'm also approaching 50!).
Catfish John's easy BBQ bacon dip
Ingredients:
Good quality cream cheese, softened
Good quality BBQ sauce
Real bacon bits (not the crunchy ones, the real ones that cost more)
Finely shredded sharp cheddar cheese
Green onions, sliced on the bias so they look fancy
On a serving platter, spread a layer of cream cheese. Top with a generous layer of BBQ sauce (don't skimp, you'll want that sweetness to cut through the salty). Top the BBQ sauce with the bacon bits. Top the bacon bits with the shredded cheese. Top the shredded cheese with the sliced green onions. Serve with sturdy crackers, I like Wheat Thins. Give it a shot, I promise it'll be a hit.

Sounds good, although I have found that Wheat Thins are best eaten plain, like I’m eating Cheetos. For a more functional cracker, my go-to is always a nice, hearty Triscuit. Original. Flavored Triscuits all taste weird.

Gametime Cheap Beer Of The Week

Elk Brew! From Sue! Hey, that rhymed!

I'm not a beer drinker, but Elk Brew caught my eye while I was browsing the aisles at Systembolaget, Sweden's state-owned liquor monopoly. According to a Beer Advocate reviewer, it's, "exclusively bought by high school students and certifiable alcoholics," and, "tastes like dishwater and vodka." The label is fun, though!

It is! Gotta watch out for those elks crossing the road when you pay a visit to Fjordennsentörd!

Gameday Movie Of The Week For Titans Fans

Sidney Lumet’s masterful 12 Angry Men, which you can watch for free on Kanopy if you have a library card. When you make a movie out of a stage play, and the entirety of that movie is set inside of a single room, it’s hard to make that movie feel like, you know, a movie. That’s when having a legend like Lumet behind the camera makes a difference. I’ve never wanted air conditioning more than I did watching this bad boy. Four stars.

Gratuitous Simpsons Quote