corrections happen to the best of us

New York Times Critic Commits Every Binge-Watchers Greatest Fear, Views Episodes Out of Order

Photo: Amazon

Writing for the internet involves constant self-monitoring, a hyperawareness employed at least in part out of the fear that one’s mistakes will be noticed and captured forever for posterity. And then sometimes you just … kinda lean into it. The New York Times’ Mike Hale criticized Amazon’s Goliath in his review for the “needlessly complicated structure of the initial episodes,” only to later realize he had accidentally watched the series’ second episode first. Unfortunately, that mistake explained, oh, a lot of the problems he had with Billy Bob Thornton’s legal drama. “The nature of the case McBride has taken on (involving a suspicious suicide) is revealed slowly and cryptically, a bit of writerly delayed gratification that keeps your attention but isn’t particularly rewarding,” Hale wrote in the piece,  which has since been edited. “Then, presumably because the first episode leaves so much unanswered, the next jumps back in time to fill in the history of the case — and when the second episode ends, the story hasn’t even caught up to where it started.” If the idea of making this mistake doesn’t cause chills to run up your spine, clearly you do not write about TV on the internet. The Times has since added a correction which reads: “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.” Then again, it could have been way worse. He could have absolutely loved it.

NY Times Reviews Amazon’s Goliath Out of Order