 Day 30 of 30. Review suggested by both Marocat and Marie Taylor. While Kojo's suggestion of the lovely Paddington 2 received the most votes and would have been a really pleasant way to end this project, review came in a solid second and just felt more right. So for the final time in January of 2022, let's roll that intro. I've never known how to talk about review on this channel. I'm sure I've mentioned it here and there over my 150-something videos, but I've never given it the time it deserves because, frankly, there's too much. Where I really get started on the thing that was there the moment the week air review popped into my head during that sermon at the Fourth Universalist Society in the City of New York, where could I stop? I didn't know in the summer of 2018 that John Green had beaten me to the punch by a few months, or that YouTuber Gamezilla had rebranded as the Infinite Review earlier that year. But I did know that Andy Daley and Ko had done it in 2014, and so if I wanted to really talk about the show, I'd have to say everything. But with my mythical review of the Anthropocene Reviewed now slated to be a live reading in London at some point this year, it's clear that I've lost my way on those. Here, though, I've got a strict delivery date, a word limit, and 29 reviews posted over the last 30 days swirling in my head. Now, Forrest McNeil, the fictional host of review, would never have considered any of those for his own show. Nor this. In the introduction, he makes clear that he is a reviewer, but not one who reviews food, books, or movies. He reviews life itself, a much more noble cause than mine, to be sure. And like, I have a the life I review intro. It's the one that I will inevitably use for the wrap-up video I do on this past month, but I don't know, doesn't quite feel like life to me. Certainly not in the way that sleeping with a celebrity is, which McNeil is tasked with in episode 4. I talked 16 reviews back about why I don't really vlog like I'd intended to with the channel's conception. And well, no one needs to see that, and I don't think anyone's sad that they don't. It has certainly limited the scope of this channel, and the week air review is less interesting for that. I got literally hundreds of suggestions for potential review subjects over the past month, and only a few fell outside the general purview of media. And honestly, that made me kind of sad. Only one of them made it through, and that wasn't life. It was food. And look, I liked reviewing mushy peas, even if my toe still hurts from the 12-pound weight that fell on it as I set up my lights. But watching review again makes it all feel really insubstantial, and that's stupid. This is a fictional television show about a man who is absolutely not a role model. In the very first episode, he develops a cocaine addiction, and by episode three he has divorced his wife and completely blown up his life, yet the show must continue, and so he does. That I find it aspirational at all is about as red as a flag is going to get, but also I understand the cautionary tale. The fundamental lesson of the show is that blind dedication is a bad thing. That the obligations you may believe you have to suffer for the enjoyment of others are bullshit. I thought about that a lot in the third week of this whole thing, which is when the exhaustion really started to hit me, and when it began to affect other parts of my life. For example, I gave up on fully taking down my lighting setup between videos, instead of leaving things on their stands over here, further cluttering up this little area of this little apartment and making my girlfriend, who's already irritated by my general disorderliness, even more unhappy with the state of things. I dread the fact that when this video is complete, I have to finally deal with the shit that's been piling up here over the month. Maybe that's what kept me going. Has any character ever been as committed to their bit as Forrest McNeill, willing to lose everything for some vague notion of societal improvement by way of a patented five-star rating system? The things he reviews are often like the first and final dishes in a Good Mythical Morning Will It episode. Do you need to know that going to space is good, or that being a racist is bad? Not really. Though sometimes things are a little grayer, and there is some value in learning that orgies are kind of complicated. But the reason that you watch is to see such a deeply bland human being throw himself into all of this shit that you generally don't want to or simply can't experience. McNeill is stereotypically wholesome, not charismatic, or even interesting, and that incongruity keeps you coming back. It's a trainwreck, and you can't look away. Of those many, many suggestions I received, one stood out as the type of thing that could have been featured on the show because of the guaranteed discomfort and the ways it could have spun off into weird conflicts. And the fact that I'm glad it wasn't selected laid bare the fact that The Week Air Review could never have been as interesting as I wanted it to be. That the idea of reviewing life experiences is kind of beyond me. The suggestion came from Julia, a lovely person so dedicated to our occasional discord voice chats that on Friday she risked not only her life, but that of everyone else on a plane by joining us over her phone's data connection during takeoff. And for that, we salute her. She suggested that I review prolonged eye contact with strangers on public transportation. Someone asked if that was safe. And I mean, I periodically think about the man who threatened to slash someone's face open and ruin his fucking life if he didn't just walk away, but also I don't think I have the vibe of a victim. Someone might say something to me, but they're unlikely to start something. And so my concern instead is that I just don't like being uncomfortable and I don't want to make random people uncomfortable. Maybe that makes me a better person, but it makes me a less interesting creator. I've always tried to bring myself into my work, even the simplest review says something about the critic. And I want to embrace that. But as I think about all of this, everything I have done against everything this bad fictional man has done, I wonder if there's space for me to bring more life into it as well. I don't know if there is or what that would look like, but if review was truly one of my influences, I should probably start acting like it or drop the pretense entirely. Four and a half stars. Thank you so much for watching and thank you particularly to my patrons, my mom, hammering Marco, Kat Saracotta, Benjamin Schiff, Anthony Cole, Elliott Fowler, Greg Lucina, Kojo, Phil Bates, Willow, I Am The Sword, Riley Zimmerman, Claire Bear, Taylor Lindy's, Andrew Madison Design, and the folks who'd rather be red than said. If you like this video, great. If not, too fucking bad. If you want to see more, there won't be one tomorrow. But there's a whole lot that I just did. I'm going to take a little break. But I'll be back on Saturday when I do a live stream where I watch all of these in a row. So that'll be fun. I have plans for February. I don't really know what happens after that. But for those who stuck with me through all of this, thank you. For those who didn't, okay, I get it. It was a lot. Time to edit.