For IMDb user ratings, at least, no. Not unless you consider “America” to comprise primarily MRA dudebros who base their opinions of a film or TV show on how badly it triggers their misogyny rather than its actual quality. Walt Hickey at Fivethirtyeight has done some articles that compellingly suggest IMDb ratings to be badly skewed by the sort of person who uses their twitter egg avatar to say “well, actually” a lot.
Also informative: the absurdly-skewed IMDb review of “An Inconvenient Sequel”:
Bottom line: averages of IMDb user reviews are hot steaming horseshit, so conclusions based on analysis of same should be regarded with skepticism.
I too think The Principal and the Pauper is a good episode. While it’s usually described as a “shark jumper” I think that’s the entire point of the episode-- how weird can we get with this show? Unlike the episode of Happy Days where Fonzie actually jumped a shark on his motorcycle waterskis (thus providing a name for the concept) and it was supposed to be serious, The Principle and the Pauper knows it’s jumping the shark and has fun with it.
There were multiple times when The Simpsons made minor allusions to the self-referential “this is a cartoon, it’s not reality” idea, but The Principle and the Pauper took it to a level some viewers didn’t like. I’m actually more disappointed that in a later episode they mention Armin Tamzarian again, despite Judge Snyder’s verdict that nobody mention him ever again “under penalty of torture.”
The one time I recall was amidst another bit of continuity winking. Lisa manages to kill off her black cat Snowball II . . . and his three (four?) replacements. As the episode closes she finds an exact duplicate, saying something along the lines of “I’ll call you Snowball II just to put this behind us!” Skinner walks by, says something like “That’s awfully convenient!” Lisa’s snide response references Tamzarian, to get him to shut up.
Yes. This is the episode I was thinking of. I kinda felt like she didn’t even need to say his name, the whole “Armin Tamzarian” thing is such a point of contention among viewers that all she really needed to do was look at him with a steely glare, or perhaps say “I’m not sure you’re the best one to judge this situation” and leave it at that.
Movies with a political agenda, or that have caught the attention of some politically charged schism, have politically motivated voting scores? Act more surprised.
For the vast majority of shows, the scores are good enough to do analysis. The outliers are rare enough that the results are still useful.
That, yes. But also, movies and TV shows written by, starring, and intended primarily for women (and men not intimidated by them) have user ratings that are badly skewed by a user group that is woefully non-diverse and systematically biased in its assessments. Which is the point that I made quite clearly, that the linked articles made quite clearly, and that you have, for some reason, chosen to deliberately elide.
Any system relying on such a skewed and biased demographic of respondents is necessarily skewed and biased. There are better data available.
