Episode 54

### Title

EFAP #54: Checking out "Is The Last Jedi THAT Bad?" and a gander at some memes with Aydin Paladin

### Guests

Jay Exci
 Aydin Paladin

### Next Episode

Episode 55

**EFAP #54** is the fifty-fourth episode of the Every Frame A Pause podcast.

## Important Events

* First appearance of Aydin Paladin
* Return of Quinton
* First appearance of Fennah
* Discovery of the Isle of Man flag
* Discovery of the Trap Question Debate between Freudian and Bigideas
* Foreshadowing for Ralphthemoviemaker

## Plot

MauLer, Special Guest Rag's, EFAP Manager Jay Exci, and new arrival Aydin Paladin prepare to face a foe long thought vanquished: Quinton. With a video once again praising TLJ, the Toxic Brood has a long and exhausting fight ahead. But will everyone come through alive...or awake? Also featuring brand new memes, a ship borne of a shared love of *Buffy*, and a flag that shall bring the Longman to his knees.

## Synopsis

MauLer was introduced to Aydin Paladin when he was recommended her video analyzing Quinton's Contrapoints video, and invited her onto **EFAP 54** (unaware that she and Rags had actually already known each other for a year prior, and played a Pathfinder campaign together), where she, MauLer, Rags, and Jay witnessed their first true Quinton Review. After some small talk about how YouTube has begun editing people's thumbnails without the creators being able to see the changes, MauLer asked Aydin The *Star Wars* Question, to which Aydin answered that she thought the Evil Rey seen in the trailers was bullshit.

The first topic of the night was the responses to Nostalgia Critic's *The Wall* review, to which Aydin commented that it was cringe but only *as* cringe as every other Nostalgia Critic video. Rags agreed that the review was cringe but felt that people were using the fact that it was cringe to write it off entirely rather than explain why it was cringe, which Aydin explained as a result of group psychology since people only have so much brainpower to dedicate to their lives, and so if something is universally deemed cringe it is easier to simply write it off as cringe rather than go into deep thought as to why. Fennah, who animated a segment of the review, joined the call to give some insight into its creation. After Fennah's departure and a look at some memes, MauLer asked Aydin if she was familiar with Bigideas, which she of course was, as he was one of the greats, even if he was more involved in philosophy than psychology. She was similarly familiar with the works of Freudian. 70 minutes in, Chat started pressing Q for Quinton, but Jay was promised memes, and so memes they watched. After witnessing a dramatic reading of a conversation between Freudian and Bigideas, the gang finally turned their attention to Quinton.

The gang finally turned their eye to his video "Is The Last Jedi THAT Bad?", which had been watched previously but not on EFAP. Aydin mentioned that she initially started watching Quinton when she stopped watching *Doctor Who*, because his *Doctor Who* reviews were good - Jay concurred. They also discussed the timeline of events surrounding Quinton's unlisting of his Contrapoints video. Quinton began his video by stating he initially didn't want to give his take on the movie, as he didn't know what the general consensus would be on it. He came to believe that the only reason that the "dark side of the commentary" hates the movie is because it became a meme to hate the movie (based on the fact that there is a KnowYourMeme page on the event), comparing it to people who ate Tide Pods, to which Aydin asked wouldn't it make more sense that the memes came from people hating it already rather than the other way around.

Quinton stated that "when you take away nitpicks about the story, thoughts about the characters, and if it fits into canon, which is all basically just fan stuff, there is very little that I have to say about how this movie was actually bad," leaving the roster baffled as to how he could consider so many of those major elements of the film to simply be "fan stuff," and his argument boiling down to "if you ignore the bad stuff, there's no bad stuff." It was brought up that Quinton had expressed that Palpatine being brought back for *Episode IX* weakens the ending of *Return of the Jedi*, even though that's just fan stuff. Aydin went on to elaborate that people who hate something are usually the ones who initially loved it the most, as they were the ones who were invested enough to care about it in the first place, and somebody who didn't care about it wouldn't be upset at it. Quinton claimed he could write out pages of constructive criticism on the movie, and gave several legitimate criticisms of the worldbuilding in the sequels, but said that those things didn't really matter as they had no bearing on his enjoyment, and said he couldn't place why the movie would be seen as bad, after also having previously highlighted the "fan stuff" that people found bad. He also found the space battles boring, as they were limited by trying to mimic World War I and II battles, and he wrote off the existence of lightspeed tracking as something the film wasted time on, likening it to the prequels' explanation of midichlorians, asking "Like, you think we care?", to which the gang responded that many people cared about both those things a good bit, as they have massive implications on the rest of the story and the world. Jay imagined Quinton applying a similar logic to someone pulling a knife on him, and asking “Why am I supposed to care that a knife exists?”

Quinton also shrugged off complaints that Admiral Ackbar was killed offscreen unceremoniously because Ackbar was "boring and lifeless" anyway and is just a "2000's meme," so killing him was good. He claimed that Ackbar, a bit character from a previous film, was better off replaced with Holdo, a brand new character with no prior history, because Ackbar is just Holdo with orange skin, and being a different skintone doesn't add anything of value to a character.

Quinton argued that the pointless parts of the movie like the casino planet were just excuses to give the characters something to do, to which MauLer agreed that it is possible for a movie to have a bad plot but good characters, and that that makes more sense than having a good plot with bad characters, though the issue came in that the characters in *The Last Jedi* weren't good either. Quinton found the character of Rose "interesting enough" and found it too harsh to compare her to Jar Jar. He praised the film for casting an Asian actor in a lead role, then mentioned how he knew bringing it up as something exceptional defeats the point, prompting the question of why he even brought it up. Jay commented that "you get to look at Asians."

Quinton described how Poe's "cowboy heroism" (destroying the fleet-killer ship that was going to kill their fleet) almost got everyone (the fighter pilots who were engaged in combat with the enemy) killed, and brought up how some people thought the character of Admiral Holdo sent a feminist message, citing an Alex Jones clip, which he finds preposterous, even though he himself cites Holdo's hair color as “tumblr hair” implying it has a link to real life discourse. He then concluded from that that there wouldn't be as much disagreement with her if she were a man, and therefore none of the criticism is valid. Rags was reminded of how Joshathan Joshajosh also argued Holdo and the other women in the film sent a feminist message, but considered it a good thing.

Quinton compared Finn's hatred of the casino planet to the “that's why I hate sharks” line from Sharknado, even though a shark killing someone is a bad reason to hate every species of shark as a whole, while finding out a society is currently engaging in slavery is a very good reason to hate that society, especially for Finn, who was a slave up until two days ago. Quinton criticized the codebreaker subplot for being about shutting down the tracker to defeat the antagonists, which he doesn't care about, then criticized that the only reason we know what the characters feel was because they say how they're feeling, to which MauLer says that it makes sense seeing the way the planet is run would provoke Rose to talk about her issues with it, which should provoke Finn to relate it to his own past. Quinton argued that Canto Bight was ultimately fine since it was just setup for things happening in the later part of the movie, prompting the question of wouldn't that description apply to everything in the movie that isn't the ending. Quinton figured that much of the plot was setup for other stuff that will get paid off in *Episode IX*, to which MauLer said if anything it ends its story and doesn't leave *Episode IX* with much to continue off of.

Quinton loved what they did with Luke, arguing it was the perfect bookend to his character because he made a big mistake and decided he needed to cut himself off from the Force because being a Jedi was bad. He argued against people saying Luke trying to murder his nephew in his sleep was out of character because he swung a sword at Vader in the middle of a swordfight after Vader intentionally goaded him into attacking him by threatening his sister. He argued that made sense for Luke to seclude himself because he realized that him making even one mistake can lead to death of millions, but MauLer pointed out that the seclusion is what caused his mistake to lead to the death of millions. The scenes of Luke... training Rey blew him away, because to him they explained the Jedi Order without being too pandersome. Quinton claimed that Rey makes the same mistake as Luke, because her trying to help Kylo turned him from morally ambiguous (he blew up five planets) to the leader of an evil empire, to which MauLer brought up that Rey's actions also led to the death of Snoke, himself the leader of an evil empire who was more evil than Kylo. Quinton argued that Rey associates the lightsaber with Luke, while Kylo associated it with Anakin and therefore Vader, which MauLer said was a better idea than what was portrayed in the actual movie. He praised the lightsaber fights for fitting better with George Lucas' original vision of them being heavier than they looked, saying they felt deadlier in this trilogy, even though the lightsabers in the sequels barely damage anybody whereas before they were regularly chopping off limbs.

Quinton praised the Crait scene where the characters' stories intersect (in other words, where everybody sort of conveniently ends up), and Finn tried to sacrifice himself, Poe learned to not be steadfast, and Luke tried to rectify his mistakes by still not showing up. Quinton, who previously argued that the movie not connecting to previous films was just fan stuff, stated that *The Last Jedi* was the first Star Wars movie to make the movies all feel connected, causing MauLer to break. Quinton went on to say he didn't know what was going to happen next, to which MauLer answered that's because it left the series with nowhere to go. It occurred to the roster that Quinton did not answer the question, “Is *The Last Jedi* really that bad?”

MauLer wondered why Quinton was using art rather than actual movie clips in his video, to which Jay asked if the movie was out on DVD yet, leading MauLer to realize the video was released in February before it was available, and thanked his conscience (and not Jay) for clearing that up. Jay demanded Quinton thank him for protecting him against being strawmanned. Also discussed on the stream was the time Quinton said the Star Wars sequels are only sequels if you interpret them as such, which caused her brain to shut down. Aydin also brought up Quinton blocking her for mocking his Contrapoints video, leading to talk of Quinton trying to be a BreadTuber and then of him having previously tried to be a Channel Awesome reviewer and a Skeptic tuber, and what exactly a Skeptic even is (and if Rags or Aydin even count).

Also discussed were Aydin's hatred of the JJ Abrams *Star Trek* movies, the Absorbaloff episode of Doctor Who, and most importantly MauLer and Aydin's shared love of *Buffy the Vampire Slayer*. During a meme break where the gang looked at Batman-Shrek-Sonic pregnancy fanart and discussed Loompaland Lore, Aydin fell asleep on stream, thus making this EFAP the first ever ENAP. Going back to an earlier topic, MauLer brought up a shot from *The Last Jedi* and described what he liked about it, then asked Jay's thoughts, to which Jay said he liked the shot and wished more of the movie had that shot's color scheme. Glib, who also didn't like the cinematography, said in Chat that it looked poorly composited. Jay told the story of the guy who responded to his response to Shaun the Skull's *The Last Jedi* video and why he took the video down, then expressed desire to see Jar Jar in *Episode IX*, but if they mistreat him Jay would be upset. Aydin woke up from her ENAP and decried discrimination against the Welsh, leading MauLer to praise the Welsh flag and Jay to find a variant of the Welsh flag with a lobster in place of the dragon. This culminated in the famous discovery of the Isle of Man flag, whose triple-legged triskellion proved a natural predator for Jay due to its proficiency at kicking. After a debate about parenthesis and MauLer's story about the schoolmate who thought you don't pronounce the P in Simpsons, the gang reached the time cap for streaming and had to start a new stream for superchats.

## Quotes

* “Chat's pressing Q for Quinton.” - Rags
* “The people who actually ate the Tide Pods were... troglodytes okay” - Aydin
* “Damn, EFAP has a guest that speaks woman?” - Chat member
* “I wouldn't wanna be in Quinton” - Jay
* “Apparently Quinton has released his sex doll video.”
“What.” - MauLer and Jay
* “Remember when I was like, 'make EFAP,' and that happened?” - Jay
* “Christ... okay, uh I clicked another link. Someone sent me a Rule 34” - Jay
* “[John Boyega]'s great in *Attack the Block*” “That's your opinion... that I agree with”
- Jay and MauLer
* “I stopped you from being strawmanned Quinton, thank me.” - Jay
* “Hey cucks.” - Jay
* “His newer videos have shown improvement”
“Um, compared to what?” “Well certainly this.” - Jay and MauLer
* “So, D for us means divide. What does N mean?”
“Can't say that on stream.” - MauLer (thinking that PEMDAS is PENDOS) and Jay
* “But here's what's really important to me - when you take away nitpicks about the story, thoughts about the characters, and if it fits into canon, which is all basically just fan stuff, there is very little that I have to say about how this movie was actually bad.“ - Quinton
* “I love this film's take on Luke Skywalker.”
“Oh god, you're so terrible.” - Quinton and Rags

* “Poop spelled backwards is poop [laughter]” - Rags
* “No! We can't TALK now, Father! We're talkin about Kyle Ben!” - Rags
* “I fuck cock, and my cock fucks” - Rags
* “I'm in love with a beautiful girl!” - Rags
* “There's no leading the audience to anything really, it's just open. And some might say that's good... I wouldn't.” - MauLer
* “If all of the flags were personified into creatures, and made to fight each other [laughter], the Welsh flag just looks at this three-legged creature like- [laughter] the Welsh flag would just be confused, like 'why do I have to fight this?'” - MauLer, on the Isle of Man flag
* "What does it MEAN, Rags?" - MauLer, on the Isle of Man flag
* “We spent a solid four minutes laughing at the Isle of Man flag”

> “You say that as if we've stopped, look at this! What is this?”
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> - Jay and MauLer, before unveiling the sentient Isle of Man Triskelion
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## References

1. ↑ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11371294/?ref\_=ttep\_ep4