Lights Off: Shower Thoughts (LO:ST)

Look, I don’t love using numbers to assign quality or emotional values to pieces of media. Art is messy and imperfect, and my feelings about many pieces change all the time. Giving out grades never feels right, especially considering how nuanced these reviews can be. And making art a cold numbers game might be a bit too overbearingly capitalistic…

But in order to communicate some notion of how I feel about these things to strangers on the internet, I’m going to use numbers. Just because you are familiar with them and so am I. That doesn’t mean ignore the review, the review should be what you come for in the first place and actually care about. The numbers are really more for organizational purposes and to give you a sense of how I felt all compartmentalized into singular units.

And, I’m going to be using what might be considered “modern reviewing” conventions of grading where a 6-7 is my average more than a 5. It’s because we are all used to it alright, and it’s what school trained us to understand. But if you want to know the details of what my numbers mean and how I go about things feel free to check these out as well as the Links section for my spreadsheet of scores.

• I try to only watch/play stuff I think is around a 7 unless for a reason stated otherwise
• I recommend stuff over an 8.
• These reviews are pretty casual compared to my long-form work, scores change on occasion.

In general, this is how I score things.

10: Masterpiece (not always perfect)

9: Moving and inspiring

8: Pretty good

7: Solid

6: Average/Might not be worth your time

5: Mediocre

4: Underwhelming

3: Bad

2: Offensively bad

1: A systemic problem in our society

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