#and his theories weren't even that bad at the beginning of the modern era

[chipistrate]

Augh- how do I word this,, I don't want to get too deep into this cause it's not something I care enough to talk too deeply about, especially not publicly.

Prefacing this with; I have absolutely nothing against Matpat and this isn't about WHAT he says in his theories, it's about how he theorizes.

He gets stuff wrong. Like- a lot. Not that his theories are wrong- but he gets details about stuff blatantly wrong and uses the misinformation to support his theories, and a lot of what he gets wrong is from the books, which makes people believe him more easily cause not as many people are going to take the time to actually read them and instead just listen to what Matpat has to say.

He uses stuff from media that we've been explicitly told to not use to form the very base of his current theories, and he's so insistent on using the stuff from said media in all of his theories, whether they're about the games or the movies.

He bases his theories off his previous theories and sometimes makes wild leaps to try and justify his them, he theorizes as he plays the games, he grabs the tiniest details to try and say he was right, and he never really takes a step back from the web of theory upon theory to try and look at the series from the viewpoint of what it is, instead of what he's crafted it to be.

I won't say he's objectively wrong in the theories he ends up with, because truly we don't know for a fact, but what he's crafted from the misinformation to the using stuff from media we're not supposed to use is wildly different from what we're being shown in the games and it can be hard to listen to,,,,

And it sucks because I subscribed to him ages ago specifically for his fnaf theories- hell, he was the reason I got into fnaf in the first place. But how he's been theorizing recently has been hard to watch as a long time fan.

MatPat makes one video for each of his four fucking channels every week is it fair to call him a content farm like DUDE GIVE IT A FUCKING REST YOUR THEORIES ARE GARBAGE AND WOULD BE BETTER IF YOU ACTUALLY TOOK TIME ON THEM

[klysanderelias]

So 4 episodes into Night Stalker - I do feel like the plots of each episode are better, and that makes for a more watchable show overall. It's definitely much easier to watch because it's more modern in taste, cinematography, etc, so it makes perfect sense to me, visually. I also feel like there's something going on with the horror - whether or not it's going to pay off (it won't), there's at least something to chew on as a throughline.

Which is to say, the fourth episode Burning Man is actually pretty solid! I think the ending is kind of dogshit, and there's a lot of misdirection that amounts to nothing (and more importantly, I think it compounds my problem that I as a viewer just have to wait for things to be explained instead of getting to figure it out for myself), but it IS saying something. The entire episode works up to a moment where Kolchak has to confront that like, yeah, you stare into the abyss, blah blah blah. It makes the character confront the possibility that his obsession with this stuff is going to make him just as dangerous down the road. Do I think it's a GOOD story? Not really, but again, it's more than the original did with its plots.

It's also a thing where the show has abandoned some of the major constraints of old Kolchak 1974 - the team is all pretty much on board with Kolchak's supernatural theories, and the police really don't pose any sort of barrier, and they've really dropped any consequences for Kolchak. In episode 3 he burns a haunted house down, and it's just a cool shot for the ending sequence. Kolchak 1974 would have him get booked for arson, and this one just completely abandons that.

And to be fair, I'm not sure these changes are BAD - I definitely chafed at some of the as Kolchak 1974 went on - but it feels... well, it feels like they've dropped it for convenience's sake, like they just weren't interested in those aspects. It feels like Kolchak basically works with the police as a contractor, Adrian Monk style. And I think that it definitely makes more sense in a certain way - in the culture of the 2000s, a reporter trying to lie his way into evidence lockers and witness testimony looks bad, and it definitely doesn't fit the copaganda of the post 9/11 era. But y'know, it's also disappointing, because it's not really Kolchak at that point, and it's also just a police procedural with a different veneer, which I'm morally opposed to (mostly joking).

But also I've read a little about the long-term plans for the show, and it's not encouraging - they wanted to expound on the idea behind episode 4, and reveal that maybe Kolchak is a monster too - which is like, okay, in what way? Like, 1974 Kolchak murdered a lot of monsters, so it'd be understandable for the show to start moving in a direction of 'he who hunts monsters', but 2005 Kolchak... doesn't? In episode 1, he rescues a little girl from dogs, in episode 2 the bad guy is stabbed to death in prison, in episode 3 Kolchak burns a house down but the evil ghost just kinda stops on its own, and episode 4 when he confronts the killer the guy commits suicide in front of him.

2005 Kolchak's hands are pretty fucking clean so far! I think the most he could be seen as culpable for in terms of killing monsters is hitting a fucked up dog with his car once.

And making that list it kind of hit me - episodes 1 and 3 both just kind of have the monster stuff vanish? They rescue the little girl but no one else is attacked, even though there are more dogs out there, and there's no explanation to where they came from, or the shadowy figure at the very beginning. And in episode 3, it seems like the ghost only gets one shot to do fear murder, so if you grab the guy in the middle of it, then you've broken the spell?

(arguably you could say that burning the house down ends the ghost's power too, but I don't feel good about that answer - it doesn't resolve why the ghost kid was showing up in photos, and it feels more like 'well it's time for the episode to end now')

I also feel like the resolution in Burning Man just didn't feel good - they were trying really hard to keep you from guessing it, which isn't quite the point of these shows I think, but in doing so it felt like there were way too many loose threads left over. I think thematically it worked, but I was really prepared for like, the other reporter, or the pathology guy (because the takeout guy looked slightly similar), or the FBI guy's wife, etc etc, because you could make the argument for a lot of them, but it just doesn't pay off. It's too many red herrings. It also leaves open whether or not the original guy was the actual killer, or how the killings actually happened (because it's supposed to be some sort of biochemical that turns people into explosive torches, but one, that doesn't make sense, and two, there's explicitly mention of times when people were either exposed and didn't burst into flame, or weren't exposed and DID).

Overall it's an easier watch, y'know? I can kind of just vegetate and let the show slide over me, but I don't feel great about it the more I think about it. There's a lot of criticisms I could make about the way they treat Gabrielle Union's character, and the way they tend to rely extremely heavily on fridging women, and I think that even in comparison to the 1974 show, this show is really failing to have a diverse cast. And also, I think that the procedural aspect of the show leaves a LOT to be desired, and the long term plot is pretty bad, and the characters kind of suck because they're so flat and boring and annoying, but...

I'm comfortable watching it, y'know? And maybe it's because I grew up watching a lot of these early 2000s mystery/scifi type shows, and there's something familiar about them. It might also be that especially after Kolchak 1974, it's just easier to watch a show with better effects and lighting and framing - there's better storytelling in the action sequences and camera movement, and I can't not appreciate that. I also feel like the choice of 'monsters' is much better - it's like, Charles Manson and the Unabomber instead of 'racist half-remembered mythological beast'.

But I do miss old Kolchak, the character and the show. This isn't a detective show by any stretch of the imagination, this is a USA network type thriller. And it's messy in a different way from Kolchak 1974, but it turns out that I'm willing to grant a certain amount of leeway just based on a competent lighting director.