The Nostalgia Chick/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

 * Like other... entitled members of the fandom, I was slightly disappointed when The Nostalgia Chick stopped doing just girly movies and started doing her own thing. "What's the point of a Distaff Counterpart if they don't the opposite kind of movies to each other?" But after watching more closely, especially the later episodes with Nella, it became clear that she and the Critic are more alike than ever. They both had Abusive Parents that they still have issues over, she got sexually abused while he got stalked and raped on his prom night. She abuses her friends to boost her self-esteem, he abuses his subordinates because he's ridiculously insecure. They both love fighting, they'll never stop poking at each other (while having small signs of affection between the Foe Yay), they both will throw away any morals to get power. She's a bitch, he's a douche, and they're both a therapist's wet dream. And their differences are interesting too; he's stuck like a openly emotional twelve year old boy, she acts like she doesn't care about anything. She's dominating and forever in control while he always ends up a submissive victim. You could do a paper on those two!
 * If you want to think possibly way too hard about it, her "why do I spend my life reviewing stuff?" Heroic BSOD is a nice counterpart to his. He's mainly known for crazy, she's usually known for low self-esteem but here the expectations are reversed; stupid movies drove her to madness while an armor piercing question triggered off his self-loathing.
 * Why is her usual reviewing style so low-key (most of the time) and acting like everything is So Okay It's Average? Because her ego makes her think she has to be better than her nerdy, Hot Blooded, fanboying colleagues.
 * She got a fair amount of heat for her gay jokes in The Fifth Element. But think about it, she's an obvious Yaoi Fangirl when it comes to attractive men (or Foe Yaying furries, whatever) and Lindsay said in her X-Men review that the Chick is supposed to be a parody of fangirls who hate themselves. It would make sense that she's an awful slash fan too, only being interested when she can get off to it and not at any other time.
 * The Nostagia Chick / Todd in The Shadows relationship. Not the real-life one (whatever it is), but the characters. It makes sense that Chick would be irrationally attracted to Todd, and not just because of the mirroring of his Obscurus Lupa worship. The idea is that she is portrayed as a highly insecure closet fangirl with...issues. So of course she would be attracted to the mysterious dark(ish) stranger that came out of nowhere who is emotionally unavailable and constantly dismissive of her feelings. It is a deconstruction of All Girls Want Bad Boys, only it is less "good girl" and "bad boy", and more just severely messed up people (the characters, mind you). This makes a hell of a lot more sense after the Grease 2 review, which highlights it beautifully.
 * Same troper here. I just got hit with a massive case of Fridge from her Top 10 Songs About F**king (from Musicals) video, where she says that people made note of all the recent musicals in her reviews. Of course, she angrily denies any connection to that trend and the presence of Todd in The Shadows.
 * Somewhat related, people are wondering why she suddenly Does Not Like Men when she's called out shows for Double Standards before. But think about it this way, the character is well-established as a Hypocrite who either doesn't know or doesn't care that her crap actually effects people, so just because she sees that other people are wrong doesn't mean that she sees it in herself. And secondly, this is a woman who has Daddy issues, almost no empathy, got molested by her uncle, owns a Sex Bot, makes prostitute jokes to a guy she's tied up for no reason and her way of dealing with the Critic (who, by the way, is probably her healthiest relationship with a male and that should tell you something) annoying her is to chloroform him, hinting heavily that it's sexually fun. You really think she's ever had a healthy relationship with the gender?
 * In the first Thanks For The Feedback, when it falls into silence and he tries to hold her hand but fails, a lady is singing hard-to-understand lyrics. It's "The Girl From Ipanema", but unlike most shows who just play the music for awkwardness, Lindsay chooses these lines: "But he watches her so sadly, how can he tell her he loves her. Yes, he would give his heart gladly." Critic's got it really bad.
 * Why does Dark Nella not deliver the expected beatdown to the Chick? Because ignoring her would do far more damage to her self-esteem and ego, which was what Nella is her friend for anyway.
 * According to the end of "What Women Want", Linkara wants to destroy Todd (missing the point that Todd wants nothing to do with NC) because he's in love with the Chick. Think back to "Linking Up With Linkara", while the Chick's cynical about all things romance, he's the type of person to believe Sex Equals Love.
 * Why didn't she go and find out what the Critic was thinking when she could read guy minds? Because she might hear something she wasn't ready to.
 * Out of verse it's because she's moved further away, but in-character it could be that Nella's Out of Focus is the cause of Chick getting lazy with payments.
 * Look at the Chick and Critic's faces when they're building up to the "gender war" song. She's nearly happy crying when he mentions their differences, and his eyes are tearing up badly when he says she doesn't return their calls or email messages. With all that's been said in-universe and out, it's fairly clear that they broke up, she's going after Todd partly because she doesn't want to admit she actually fits better with her Spear Counterpart, and Critic is still desperately in love with her.
 * Also a nice point: throughout the review there were a lot of shots where they're very close to touching. In the above conversation though, they're never in the same camera frame, like they want/need to be as far away from each other as possible. But then in the song, where they're comfortably arguing, they've gone back to their usual No Sense of Personal Space modes.
 * During this crossover and Moulin Rouge, the Chick has shown Todd's not even on her mind when she's with the Critic (in sharp contrast to every other time). He only got mentioned in the latter review because Critic expressed disbelief that a woman would act like an idiot to seduce a guy and called the Chick out on being a Bad Liar, and the former review just had her wearing his hoodie when she was alone.

Fridge Horror

 * More recently, the ending of the Dark Nella Saga,
 * In her Hocus Pocus review, she says that virgins should lose it when they come out of the womb... bleeding and screaming. She revealed much later that she had a Creepy Uncle, so that last bit may possibly be how she lost hers.
 * She is a woman who doesn't like to show weak emotion, treats people badly to make herself better and makes a lot of off-color sex jokes. She was also sexually abused by her uncle and generally mistreated by her parents. Cause-and-effect, much?
 * A slightly lighter example happens when Nella dies and the Chick says that she'd never thought she'd bury her under rocks. Um, lady? When have you thought of burying her before?
 * And then, in the X-men review, Dr. Tease suggests there are many convenient things about burying people under rocks. Perhaps not just for cloning...
 * From her initial reaction to Nella wanting to kill someone with no trace, it sounds an awful lot like she's had experience in that area...
 * So how long do you expect her to live with those issues, self-destructiveness and years of alcoholism?
 * Seeing as how the last time we saw the Sex Slave robot he was helping Dark Nella because he wanted to die, he hasn't even been mentioned since and Chick was even complaining about not having been laid for a while, he more than likely got his wish.
 * She praises her coffee in the You've Got Mail review as a glorious mix of stimulants and depressants all in one cup. Making a habit of mixing stimulants and depressants together (which you could see her doing) can result in coma, heart attack or death.
 * She's kidnapped Todd, at the very least sexually harassed him in his sleep, tried to kill Lupa, stolen his stuff, called him constantly when he's not interested, wouldn't mind making love to him if he were dead and broken her rules about not crying because it would smear her make-up. Just what exactly can she can do next that's even worse than the above list?