Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/My Mother the Car
My Mother the Car[edit]
An article about an actual TV show from the '60s. It's main problem is that it's kinda disorganized and boring in places. If you could help me with that, that'd be great. Thanks! • <Apr 06, 2008 [0:52]>
| Humour: | 8 | For the type of humour that has been applied here, I feel this is extraordinarily good, but it's the type of humour that lets it down a bit, which is a concept matter, so I'll discuss it there. As an opener, I'll say that just glossing over this as a preliminary review, the {{blink}}ing can get a bit irritating to look at, and it could use an opening, but everything else looks fine.
Now, onto the more in-depth review. I'll start by doing "The Show"'s opener, as well as its "Characters" section. The opening lines are, as intended, very in-your-face with the forced humour, and that is good for this article. The line as a vehicle of ground-ular transportation made me laugh out loud at the word ground-ular, which is rare now for an Uncyc article, so it gets good marks. What this section could use is a bit of expansion in front of it, explaining what the subject matter is, and then that first paragraph can get bumped up to become the blurb. This gets a 8 from me, just needing a bit of expansion to capitalise on the humour style. The "Characters" section, that I said I would do with "The Show" but decided to do seperately instead, I feel is still good, but a bit worse than the opening. The [[Rape|Inundated]] joke starts to wear thin here, as a reader that actually thinks to hover links probably smiled weakly the first time, but didn't this time. Try changing it to a different, but related article to link to. The best line here is probably but were far from limited to, the mother, the car, and the son, within which you can just smell the sarcasm in the piece as the article goes on to explain...those three characters. In the actual character sections, these feel like they have a bit of filler in them, and despite the overall tone of the article, this bit needs some more original twists in it to liven it up. There are definitely some great bits there though, especially the car listed in the credits was not a mother, but was instead a non-sentient hunk of metal, which just stands out with its pure obviousness as a stark reminder to others of how to use this humour format. This section gets a 6.5 from me, and this I would say is the least humourous part of the article, mainly due to the filler. It just needs a bit more originality and it should be fine. One more point - this feels like it's a bit too early in the article - maybe consider moving it after "History" and "Creation"? Next up in this review are those two aforementioned sections (History and Creation). The content included in these is very good, and I'll say why in a moment. The main (and only, really) criticism I have here is that they are the wrong way round (this is where your disorganised comment comes in). Switch them round, and then this should be pretty much done, as the actual writing here is in-your-face humour at its best. Lines such as was made during the onslaught of shows like Bewitched and I Dream of Jeanie, both of which actually might have had good episodes in them and Instead of being 30 minutes of well-choreographed car jokes, The Car now had a personality which it inflicted on its son are just classic, and other than just giving it a bit of expansion, I honestly don't know how to improve it. These are your best sections, and warrant a 9.5 score here. The next sections I'm reviewing is the "Notable Episodes" section, and all subsections contained in it. The "Lost Episode" section, which I'm getting out of the way first due to its length, is basically a wash one-liner that has its chuckles, but is a fairly predictable joke, so you may not get everybody to laugh at that. For the rest of it, the epic line here is definitely mother expresses her feelings by running over pedestrians for several episodes, which stands out even though I'm not sure why. I also appreciated the Alabama quote (probably my next article after I'm done with my Mario rewrite). The "Last Episode" section isn't as good as the "First Episode", but it's still alright. This is where the style starts to fade off, and this section also seems a lot more serious and down-to-earth than the rest, with fewer jokes in it. This section gets a score of 7.5, due to the style fading off a bit, but you've overcome that somewhat with your writing. The "Last Episode" section needs a couple more jokes to make this section great, too, as it reads too Wikipedia-ish at the moment. In this section, I'm going to go over the rest of the article, as "Awards" and the references don't really deserve their own section. The "Spinoffs" section is a welcome change to the style of the article, as it reads less abrasively and more smoothly than the rest of the article. It is also one of the funniest sections, with the supposed to be an uplifting dramedy, like Scrubs, but far more uplifting and funny line being the best line in the article (but that's because I actually watched Scrubs). I would, personally, get rid of the awards section if it isn't needed, as it just seems to be taking up room and the one line it contains doesn't really give off the essence of humour. The references are very good, tying in with the rest of the article very well and providing yet more comic relief, being good one-off jokes in their own right. This final section gets 8.3 overall, partly to get the average score up to 8, and partly because it gains back some of the allure that the previous section loses, making it feel fresh again. The awards section does lower this, however. Overall, the averaging of the scores has given you a 8 for humour, and that overall was about what I was thinking. Over the span of the entire article, there are some classic lines in there, and the whole thing works together well...but the style does start to rub off on the reader, and it can make it a little annoying at times. Still an excellent read though. |
| Concept: | 5 | The concept here is the main problem why this isn't brilliant. The way you've gone about this is parodying how obvious the jokes are in My Mother the Car, and the way that this kind of humour has to be written makes it rather abrasive to read, making it normally wear thin very easily. However, with your writing you've managed to keep it alive much longer than most, and due to that I feel you've gotten pretty close to the maximum potential allowed by this concept. |
| Prose and formatting: | 8 | The writing here, as is usual for someone who won WotM, is very good, no spelling errors, very good grammar and whatnot. Things like italics and emboldening are used well, as are most of the templates (except one, which I am about to go through). Two things are holdong you back here - the lack of a major blurb at the top of an article giving basic information (which I have already touched on) and the fact that the top infobox, in my opinion, needs some kind of background or table - the text feels loose, not attached to the actual box. Other than that, very good here. |
| Images: | 9 | The images here are all fantastic, in my opinion. If it wasn't that I think 10 should always mean absolutely perfect, I would be considering giving you one here. All of the images are well thought through, relative to the article, funny, and have almost perfect, linking captions. The only thing I'll say here is you need to capitalise "It" in the last image caption. |
| Miscellaneous: | 7.5 | n/a |
| Final Score: | 37.5 | I'm not sure if this would pass VFH – the abrasive, quick hitting nature of the article would garner a few againsts I would think – but it's more than funny enough. It just needs tidying up around the edges methinks, and possibly inserting a few more lines. I definitely enjoyed reviewing this, very good article. |
| Reviewer: | –—Hv (talk) 6/04 11:33 | |
I definitely agree with what you're saying. This was one of my hardest articles to write that didn't fail automatically. I'm going to have to think about how to do this... • <Apr 06, 2008 [14:00]>