Critical Drinker
Oh. So everybody's a little bitch in this.
this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2026
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Yeah, going on the critical drinker's podcast in the first place is a monumentally bigger red flag than the part where he said he thought Star Trek is shit.
Yeah, the choice of podcast is a red flag all on its own.
It's hard to imagine a world in which writers are not allowed to express any harsh criticism of the work of other writers. I guess it would produce some really bad writing. If that's really how it works in American film and television, perhaps it explains a few things.
It depends on context. A random podcast is not a venue for harsh critique
Is he criticising mordern Trek though or basically just pushing the "its woke" nonsense narrative?
Like, there are critisims. Discovery felt incredibly out of place before they time traveled. Academy spent 4 of its 10 episodes on metaplot and ignored several of its characters (reminder, Tarima has a brother). All of it has too much "ThE gAlAxY iS At StaKe" overpowered plot constructs.
That is criticism.
Being angry they have gay Klingons is stupid.
Also I can only imagine his pitch.
"What if a white dude Starfleet Officer gets stranged in the Delta Quadrent alone and has to make poop potstoes alone to survive!".
Are there a lot of fields where the professionals regularly tear into each other? Aside from politics, none come to mind.
Music
Heh, fair enough. Not sure I agree that recording industry beef is a model to be followed (and it would open up a whole 'nother conversation about how much of that is genuine), but fair enough.
Not just beefs. Artists and critics talk shit about music they don’t like all the time.
This stuff happens in creative fields. It doesn’t happen in other fields, because those generally involve tasks with predefined goals and ways of going about achieving them, and everyone is pretty much producing the same kind of output.
and critics
That's an interesting thing to bring into the conversation - Weir certainly isn't one.
He’s an artist
Law is a pretty adversarial field, though the tearing may mostly happen in the context of the practice itself.
Any sort of contest based profession usually has some large and clashing personalities that do some trash talking.
Scientists will go after each other's research if that counts. Dead fish MRI comes to mind.
Coding. "Who the hell wrote this crap code?" Checks blame. "Oh, me." See also Linus Torvalds mean phase.
Writers stand up for other writers. It’s how and why the Writers Guild was formed. And you don’t take your moment in the sun to attack another writer because they didn’t buy your pitch.
Grab your popcorn...
Don Winslow can speak from his own success, and seems to have a significant and longstanding social media following.
It’s interesting that he’s chosen to use his platform to weigh in on this and say that Weir owes Kurtzman an apology.
I’ve said enough about my own reaction on another thread. Winslow’s reaction makes me wonder if Weir’s transparent retaliation may make studios and production companies unwilling to hear his pitches in future.
My career was in a very different hierarchy but I was always told to be ‘nice to others on my way up if I expect them to be nice to me on my way down.’
Winslow’s reaction makes me wonder if Weir’s transparent retaliation may make studios and production companies unwilling to hear his pitches in future.
In all honestly, I doubt it - this industry tends to like money above all else, unless someone becomes a highly public liability. And I don't think this comes close to rising to that level.
Let’s compare this to Tarantino, Sussman, and many others that have made pitches on the film and television side over the past decade.
They’ve all felt they had a great idea, they’ve been quite public about having pitched it, and they’ve attempted to build up fan interest and momentum.
If Weir had just done the same, I don’t think there’d be any adverse effect. Likely, the opposite in the current environment.
Instead, he took his moment in the sun not to pitch his idea to the public, or say that he had an idea that wasn’t viewed as fitting with where the franchise was then but perhaps it might be reconsidered: He took his moment in the sun to retaliate.
Why would a producer want to risk hearing a pitch from him in future?
He sounds like a total douchebag with sour grapes. He took time to punch down at people who aren’t as privileged as he is.
Here’s the full quote:
And here’s another thing: I pitched a Star Trek show to Paramount and I was on Zoom with the showrunners with all the shows and spent a lot of time talking to [Kurtzman]… He, as a person, is a really nice guy. But at the same time, those shows are shit. He is a nice guy, but they didn’t accept my pitch so, you know, fuck ’em.”
Imagine having a movie directed by Ridley Scott, a massive Ryan Gosling hit, millions of dollars… and you still spend time complaining about not being hired as a Star Trek writer.
Plus you’re so insecure about yourself, you have to describe the shows as “shit.” On a podcast called Critical Drinker.
It’s pathetic and shows what Andy Weir is really made of.
Unfortunately, there’s an entire cult of fanboys for his work, so this will affect nothing.
If you're on a podcast called Critical Drinker maybe calling a show "shit" is just the expected level of banter. I've certainly leveled harsher criticism at better media while drinking! And while sober, to be honest.
This kind of seems like a nothingburger.
Oh no, the shoe is not called that because they are drunk on it. Critical Drinker is an online persona and… well, we'd all be better off if he was just a drunk spouting bullshit into the internet. Instead he is a culture war grifter.
Oh that's unfortunate!