Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/UnNews:Alabama hospital launches controversial program
UnNews:Alabama hospital launches controversial program[edit source]
Please don't hurt my feelings. --EMC [TALK] 02:30 Mar 28 2010
- I think I'll try this. ~
04:36, Apr 7, 2010
| Humour: | 6 | I think this is a good concept, however, one flaw (mid-sized) stopped me from enjoying the rest of your article. This flaw is found in the introduction, and I think there might be many factors contributing to it. Firstly, I expected this to be a satire on America's healthcare debate, as usual. This was not the case, which is actually sort of good, because it's more original. However, this means that all my contextual knowledge became moot. For the first few paragraphs I struggled to figure out what you're actually satirising. When I finally did, I thought it was a good concept, but I missed all the opportunities for laughter while reading through your article for the first time. I didn't laugh when I reread it for the second time, because I rarely do, unless it's an article that's really, really good. So that was why I didn't enjoy it as much as I potentially could. Second point is that I did not think I have the background knowledge to know if what you're satirising in the article is actually the case in real life. I am somewhat familiar with the Australian health system, since I will work in it in a few years if everything goes well, but I don't actually know much about the American system other than the most publicised aspects. For instance, I don't know if Alabama patients are known for making unreasonable demands, because I didn't think normal patients are usually like that. Even though I understand you're exaggerating. Third point, I don't understand, and your article did not make this clear, how fulfilling outlandish wishes will cut costs or increase profit. Is one much cheaper than the other? Is the hospital going to ship in the severed elephant trunk, while charging the patient the same as they would for a full round of chemo? It's just these little cause and effect details that bother me, so I guess I'm more of a content freak than I thought. Also I don't understand why, in the first half of the article you say that doctors are not going to bother treating patients anymore, just fulfill their outlandish wishes, because this will be save money. Then in the second half of the article you say, the hospital encourages unhealthy practices because this will generate more patients, and treating them will make more money for the hospital. This, imo, is a contradiction. "the GDP goes up" - GDP I believe stands for gross domestic product, the measure of economic output for a country - I think you mean hospital budget here, or something of that nature.
Ok, that seems like a lot of criticism, but they are not criticisms of your humour, just criticisms of your details that prevented me from enjoying your humour. This article is not actually that bad, and concept number 1 and concept number 2 are both pretty good. But since it is in my opinion that they contradict each other, I would suggest you just focus on one and tone down the other. I personally like concept number 2 better, and I will deal with this further in concept. I think most of your detail problems stem from an introduction that's not strong enough. It doesn't establish the context, and doesn't tell the reader about real life elements that this parodies. When writing articles it's very good to drop details as if they are truths, and let the reader build on those assumptions. An article that does this exceptionally well is West Timor, which seems to satirise real life events, but actually does not, but is written in such a way that an uninformed reader who reads it will assume that it's representation of West Timor (as a Muslim dictatorship) is the truth. I'm not saying to follow it's example, but if you're building your jokes on facts that not many people are sure if they're true, you should establish them in such a way that the reader would believe you. This art is actually very hard to master. |
| Concept: | 7.5 | 7 for concept number 1, and 8 for concept number 2. Why I don't think CN1 is as good as CN2 is this: I don't think making fun of patients is a good angle, because HTBFANJS says somewhere that making fun of already powerless people is not usually funny, but taking powerful people down a peg usually is. Which is also why I think CN2 is better, because it makes fun of the hospital more. However, I sort of like the absurdity of CN1, which is very creatively interpreted. If you decide to stick with CN1, I would like to see the focus shifted on parodying the patient's absurd demands, to parodying the fact that doctors let the patients do this just because they want to make money (still not sure how the money is made). I mean, making fun of terminally ill patients can only be that funny. As for CN2, I think that logically, doctors would run themselves out of business try to make patients as healthy as possible. If our hospitals are run by coporateheads, or, say, microsoft, a patient will have to change their pacemaker every few years because the old one would become slower and slower. But anyway, hospital administrations are focusing less on the patient and more on cutting costs, and this is a good aspect to parody. I can see that this is what you set out to do with the article in the first place, but I feel that you could better achieve this with CN2 than with CN1. |
| Prose and formatting: | 8 | Red links hurt my eyes. I'm also someone who cares a lot about the aesthetics of a page (I think this is just me, not applicable to other users), so your red, blue, bolds and italics make the article very messy to look at. However I know that they're a formatting requirement. I couldn't find any spelling or grammar mistakes, but that might just be because I wasn't looking carefully. Anyway, as usual, read the article out loud to yourself to spot any mistakes. |
| Images: | 6 | They were ok. But why do they have a yellow tint? Anyway, you have the right amount of images in the right places, and they fit the article nicely, but they are not an independent source of humour for me. They just compliment the article somewhat. It's easier said than done when I tell someone to "find funnier images" or "get funnier captions", but I'm gonna tell you anyway. However, most UnNews images are not funny unless that article is really good, and a lot of feature articles have images that are not that funny, saved by the humour in the text. |
| Miscellaneous: | 6.5 | My overall enjoyment of the article, mainly from unrealised potential. It seems like these days my reviews are made up of "I don't understands". Should I start educating myself before reviewing something? Nah... |
| Final Score: | 34 | Find me on my talk page. |
| Reviewer: | ~    07:11, Apr 7, 2010
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