Letters to the Editor
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Evalio, it's a matter of knowing your subject.
If you are truly passionate about a field and care to see it improved, you know things like this. I'm better than Havrilesky (which isn't saying much) but there are many people who could beat me hands down.
Several years ago I listened to Harry Knowles of "Ain't It Cool News" at a convention. I didn't even ask a question. He was talking to other people at his autograph table and I eavesdropped. He showed knowledge of movies, foreign and domestic, that was both deep and wide; foreign films I'd never heard of and intricate details of schlock films. I concede that he might have bamboozled me on his knowledge, and his critical integrity is very tarnished. But from what I saw, he knew his stuff more thoroughly than many published critics, and he was smarter in person than he is in print.
The more you know about entertainment and its different forms, the more you can see parallels in it, how history may repeat itself, and how an individual work may be part of a bigger trend. In this case, the big, friendly, clean, intelligent Navy officer puts the best face on the American military at a time when it is a questionable career choice (to say the least). That happened in the 1950's with No Time For Sergeants, stuck between Korea and Vietnam, and with Gomer Pyle USMC, the only Marine who would ever think "frag a gook" was one of them modern dance steps for Saturday night.
And enough knowledge can save you from mistakes. For instance, when I first saw this Doctor McPoopdeck, I thought of the old Jackie Cooper series Hennesey, a program lost to TV history about a Navy MD - and arguably the first dramedy, which didn't have a laugh track and occasionally slipped into serious drama. But Dr. Hennessey was a lot smarter, working at the top of his intelligence all the time, and this Bachelor dude was too golly-gosh about everything. He wasn't a Hennesey, but I wish he would take Hennesey's place way down in the depths of the memory hole.