About a week had passed since Mike had agreed to help Cody film another video, the majority of which Cody had spent alternating between job hunting and watching TV. It was only two days before he and Mike were set to meet that Cody realized that the endeavor would only go nowhere if he didn’t figure out what film he was going to review.

           The only thing that Cody knew for sure was that most people found bad reviews to be far more entertaining than good ones. While he didn’t have any hard evidence to back this claim up, it seemed to be the general trends based on what he’d seen get popular recently. The way he saw it, there were two ways he could go about finding a movie, either he could look up “worst movies ever” online and pick something off whatever list Google spat out at him, or he could check the showtimes at his nearest theater and see what was getting the worst reception.

           As tempting as it was to become the millionth person on the internet to complain about the ice jokes in Batman & Robin, Cody knew he’d have to do something different if he wanted to get any attention. Everyone was doing old shit, if he wanted to stand out from the crowd, he’d have to cover something new.

           Cody did a search for the theater listing in his area and within the half-hour had settled on The Invasion, an alien movie with Nicole Kidman that had been described by critics as “Soulless” and “A muddled mess”. Satisfied as he could be with his choice, Cody ran outside and just barely managed to catch the bus headed toward the theater.

           Considering his financial situation, Cody didn’t feel the best about laying down the cash for a film ticket, but he justified it to himself as an investment. “If this goes well, it’ll be the best $7 I’ve ever spent.” Cody thought to himself as the lights went down and the Warner Bros. logo filled the screen.

           100 minutes later, Cody exited the theater, feeling as disappointed at having paid money for the film as he was grateful he had plenty of material to work with. By the time his bus had arrived back in his neighborhood, Cody had already had a rough sketch of what the finished video would look like. Walking back into his apartment, Cody contemplated taking some time to flesh his ideas out more, but ultimately decided against it. After all, the first video had just been him drunkenly rambling into a cell phone, and that had done well enough.

           What he did want to work out, however, was a costume. Whenever he saw someone doing reviews of stuff on YouTube, they always had some sort of special hat or shirt or something that they wore in every video. Cody figured that finding the right costume would do wonders for his memorability, but struggled to find anything suitable in his wardrobe, which largely consisted of jeans and graphic tees that Cody was finally starting to agree with Mike on.

           Nevertheless, Cody was far from discouraged. The next day, he got up a little earlier than usual and made his way to a thrift store that he occasionally visited when he needed to kill some time. The store was run by some sort of Christian charity group, Cody had no idea how evangelical they were, but he’d seen a copy of Bound in the VHS section once, so he figured they couldn’t be too hardcore.

           Cody walked into the store and made a beeline for the men’s clothes section, making his best effort to ignore the sound of soft Christian rock being pumped into the store from an old boombox. As he made his way down the aisles of clothing racks, Cody thumbed through the hangers in search of something that cast off the right kind of image. He briefly entertained the idea of purchasing a pastel red suit jacket he’d found he thought sort of looked like something De Niro would’ve worn in Casino. Trying it on, however, Cody found it to be a good few sizes smaller than it was labeled, rendering it impossible for him to wear without bursting a few seams.

Disappointed, Cody hung the jacket back up and returned it to its spot on the rack, only to quickly find another article of clothing catching his eye from a few feet down the aisle. Walking over, Cody pulled it from the rack and found himself immediately impressed.

Held in Cody’s hands was an old tweed blazer, its fabric thick enough that one could easily mistake it for worn-out carpeting. It looked like the sort of thing that you’d see a professor teaching at a fancy college wearing (no elbow patches though). Taking it off the hanger, Cody found the blazer to have a faint musty smell to it, but figured it to be nothing he wouldn’t be able to get out once he could afford to visit a dry cleaner, so he tried it on regardless.

The blazer had a noticeable heft to it unlike that of any other jacket Cody had worn. Wearing it felt more akin to body armor than any type of formal wear. This was exacerbated by the fact the blazer fit slightly too large on his frame, though by a small enough margin that it didn’t look too awkward. At the very least, the tweed was nowhere near as itchy on his skin as he’d anticipated, the fabric rubbing against his arms with noticeable but minimal discomfort.

Despite its many flaws, there was something drawing Cody towards the jacket. Just wearing it seemed like enough to give Cody the impression he was someone who knew what he was doing, and not just an unemployed film school dropout making a desperate clutch for relevancy. Any remaining doubts he had about purchasing the blazer were washed away with a look in the mirror.

Cody ended up purchasing the blazer for $20, which he once again justified to himself as an investment. As he walked home with it on, Cody paid close attention to the expressions of passers-by to see if he could catch any admiring the jacket. No one seemed to care much though, and the foolishness of wearing such a thick jacket in the middle of August soon began to make itself apparent, leading Cody to make the last half of his journey home with it draped over his shoulder.

Once he’d arrived back at his apartment, Cody immediately hung the blazer up in his closet, hoping to keep it looking as tidy as possible for the shoot the next day. Sitting back down at his computer, Cody opened up Outlook to check for any responses from potential employers, only to find his inbox empty save for a few bits of spam from his ISP. Lightly sighing, Cody opened up YouTube and searched for recent film reviews, hoping to learn something through observation.

After about an hour of viewing his soon-to-be contemporaries, it became clear that a good portion of them were operating under the same production model Cody was prepared to undertake prior to doing any research. That being to sit in front of a camera and record themselves rambling about whatever film they were covering for 10 minutes, occasionally cutting away to film footage if they felt like putting a little more effort in. That other people were working in the same style he was going to use was of little concern to Cody. What was worrying him, however, was their view counts. It seemed that for most reviewers using the sort of basic format he’d anticipated working in, views quickly began to taper off around the 3rd or 4th video, only managing to recover once they started to show an increase in production value.

Cody hummed lightly under his breath. While he did feel that the novelty of him being on camera would manage to draw in a good number of viewers from the original, he had no clue how he was going to sustain that momentum for any significant amount of time. Shutting the browser window, Cody reasoned to himself that it would make most sense to wait and see how his next video would do before he started making any big plans for the future. Cody walked over to the TV and threw on his copy of The Twilight Samurai, silently hoping a sudden flash of inspiration would hit him and give him the sort of idea he’d need to leave a significant mark on the culture.

As it was, though, nothing came to him. The movie ended, and as Cody leaned forward to grab the TV remote off the coffee table, he caught a glance of his microwave and noticed to his surprise that it was only about 8:30 in the evening. He’d gotten so caught up worrying about whatever difficulties he might’ve run into in the future that he’d assumed it to have been far later, midnight at least. Not that he was so much tired as he was eager for the next day to begin so that he and Mike could begin filming. He would’ve done it himself if he could, but he’d never had any reason to own a webcam until he was too broke to afford one, and the digital camcorder he did have was missing its tripod on account of an accident on the set of his ill-fated student film. Unless he wanted to be holding the camera away from himself like some sort of hiker, Cody was pretty much forced to make do with Mike as a cameraman.

Pulling himself up off the couch, Cody began pacing around the apartment, trying to think of a way to pass the time. “I could always beat off.” he thought to himself briefly, but truth be told, he always had a hard time getting it up while the sun was still up. He supposed he could just throw another DVD on, but at two hours long, the film he’d just finished was just about long enough to dampen his enthusiasm to watch another movie. A part of him felt that he should probably be taking this time to look some more for employment, but with the amount of fucking applications he’d sent over the past week to no response, it was hard to work up any motivation.

He decided if he didn’t have anything else to do, he might as well kill a few hours on the PlayStation. As he opened the drawer containing his game collection though, what little enthusiasm Cody had worked up quickly faded away. He hadn’t even put a disc in the console yet and already he could tell it wouldn’t do anything to take his mind off the impending video shoot. Cody shut the drawer and looked back at the microwave. 8:43. Cody let out a soft groan and fell back down onto the couch.

He squeezed his eyes shut in concentration, trying as hard as he could to think of either something that would ensure his channel’s long-term success or something that would make it not seem to matter so much. Eventually, he reopened his eyes, only to realize from the sunbeams shining through his windows that he’d fallen asleep without noticing. With some effort, Cody pushed himself upwards into a sitting position, wiping a line of drool from his lower lips. A glance at the microwave showed it to be half past ten in the morning, meaning Cody had more than enough time before Mike arrived to prepare for the shoot.

Forcing himself off the couch, Cody made his way over to his bathroom and got himself cleaned up. Once he’d managed to make himself look somewhat presentable, he opened up his closet and began digging around, eventually managing to pull out the old Sony digital camcorder he’d purchased for film school. Flipping the screen open, Cody pressed the power button to make sure its battery was still charged, turning it back off and setting it on the coffee table once confirming that was the case.

Returning back over to his closet, Cody stripped off the blue jeans and Jurassic Park t-shirt he’d been wearing since the last day and got to work finding something a little more dignified. 10 minutes later, Cody was now dressed in an old plaid dress shirt that was missing its lowest button, and a pair of black khakis that Cody assumed would look close enough to dress pants when seen on video.

Looking at the blazer hanging up in the closet, Cody mentally debated if he should put the jacket on right away, or wait until they were about to film, to avoid messing it up. Eventually, he decided that with how thick the blazer was, he would be best off breaking it in as soon as he could, and slipped it on over his shoulders, taking care to haphazardly smooth out any wrinkles he hadn’t noticed.

With his fair share of the preparation work done, all that was left for Cody to do was wait for Mike to show up. He said he’d try and get there at sometime around 4 pm, meaning Cody had once again been put in the position of needing to kill time. Gingerly sitting down on his sofa, Cody turned on the TV, having already resigned himself to spending the next few hours anxiously flipping through channels.

4pm eventually came, and Cody was still sitting on the couch, his attention divided between the front door and an episode of Deal or No Deal. About 15 minutes later, a knock was heard from the door, leading Cody to bolt up from his seat to unlock it.

Opening the door, Cody was greeted by a fairly unenthusiastic looking Mike, who, after giving his outfit a quick look over, asked him “Why’re you dressed like Kramer?”

“It’s my costume.” Cody explained proudly, only to be met with a confounded stare from Mike that indicated further explanation would be needed. “Y’know, like the Angry Video Game Nerd.”

“Who?”

Cody’s eyes raised briefly, surprised at Mike’s lack of knowledge. He managed to brush his emotions off quickly though, eager to get to work. “Nevermind, just come over here.” Cody led Mike over to the outermost wall of the apartment, grabbing his computer chair and moving in between the two windows. Moving back into the living room, he grabbed the camcorder from the table and switched it on before bringing it over to Mike.

Cody held the rear of the camcorder up to Mike and pointed to the record button. “Alright, basically all you need to do is press that record button when I tell you to. That and make sure you hold it steady.” Cody handed the camcorder over to Mike, who held it awkwardly, but gently, like it was a newborn baby.

“Why exactly did you need me to do this again?”

“I told you, my tripod’s busted.” Cody said indifferently as he took his place in the computer chair. “You ready?”

“Yeah.” Mike responded. He was about to press record when Cody spoke up again.

“Wait a second.” he said abruptly, practically jumping out of the computer chair and running into the kitchenette. Opening the fridge, Cody retrieved a can of Natural Light and cracked it open, provoking a confused look from Mike. Taking a small sip as he looked back at him, Cody explained “It’s a prop. I’m supposed to be “The Drunk Critic”, aren’t I?”

Seeing no fault in his logic, Mike remained silent as Cody made his way back over to the computer chair. Still holding the beer can, Cody sat down and made himself comfortable. After another moment’s thought, Cody purposely let himself slouch down a few inches in his seat, hoping to project a somewhat slovenly aura from his character. His final adjustments completed; Cody gave the signal.

“Alright… Go.”