The New York Times were forced to give a notable correction after an innocent blunder turned embarrassing.
Mike Hale of the Times reviewed Amazon’s new drama Goliath. Hale wasn’t impressed calling the show “needlessly complicated,” writing the “delayed gratification that keeps your attention isn’t particularly rewarding.” Hale criticized the show for its odd narrative structure and wrote he’d need to see all ten episodes of the show to give final judgment.
“The narrative juggling has the feel of stretching — of starting with a story suited for an episode of traditional TV or maybe a feature film and extending it to more than nine hours. Final judgment on that will have to wait until all 10 episodes are available,” Hale wrote.
There was one small problem with Hale’s critique of Goliath’s structure: It wasn’t as it appeared to be. Hale accidentally watched the first two episodes in reverse order, assuming the second episode was the pilot and vice versa. The New York Times issued the following hilarious correction on the review.
A television review on Friday about the new Amazon series “Goliath” included an inaccurate discussion of the show’s plot structure. The critic mistakenly watched the first two episodes out of order.
Shows airing out of order isn’t as strange as you might think. Fox has become notorious for airing soon-to-be-canceled shows out of order (Firefly being the most egregious example). But, in Hale’s case, it was the first two episodes of a series. Screeners surely identify which episode was which, so the fact he went on to publish a review in the Times without identifying his error was an easily fixable mistake. It makes for great comedy, but a misleading review.
[Mediaite]
