What's in a Grade?: On the Difficulty of Assigning Grades and My Process

I’ve actually found the back-half of the 8^th season of How I Met Your Mother to be much better than the first half of the season. But everywhere I’ve turned I’ve seen people tearing to shreds episodes that I may not have found to be the show’s finest work, but also didn’t perceive as the worst offenders either.

Perhaps I should grade the series more harshly, but since HIMYM has already so significantly disappointed in the past, I go light with the critical heat when the series may be middling but isn’t glaringly awful. 

A show has to go severely off course and lose all sense of self in order for me to actively despise it, which is why The Office is privy to my most damning reviews, whereas HIMYM gets off more easily.

But then again, the grades I assign are essentially arbitrary. I’m sitting on a cloud of judgment handing down qualitative markers that, when it comes down to it, don’t mean crap. 

I’ve never felt comfortable assigning grades, even when I was doing it early on (and perhaps more so then because I had a worse grip on it). It comes down to a gut feeling and my opinion is wont to change. Plus grades are just so completely loaded in the first place.  

I choose to give out grades to challenge myself and to add another facet to the review to make it more interesting. I could do it in a non-letter grade format, but the letter grade format ultimately feels like it’s the most challenging method to dole out grades with, and hence why I chose it. With numbers and stars you can split hairs more easily. 

My general approach to grades is this: If it’s anything below a B- it’s probably pretty bad. If it’s a C+, it may not be the worst thing in the world, but the film/episode has significant enough problems that any of its noteworthy qualities (if any) are mostly overshadowed. Anything below a C- is highly unseemly and deeply disappointing. It doesn’t have to be poorly made; it can be a high quality production that’s purposefully mediocre. And, well, hopefully I never watch anything in my free time that gets the dreaded F.  

A’s are exceptional and should be given out sparingly. I know I’ve given a Pandora’s Box’s worth of A’s out lately to the films I’ve watched, but that’s because I’m purposefully watching films I know to be/have heard to be good. Even for these films though I’ve been tough on a couple of them that others would say I judged too harshly or didn’t understand (I’m thinking: Eraserhead, Re-Animator, Last Year in Marianbad. All of which I actually softened the blow of my review for.)

Generally speaking, a work should aim to land somewhere between an A and a B+. The B+ is often times more niche, more curio, more cultish, and/or falls short here or there, but is still usually brilliant. B+’s for me tend to be movies I deeply enjoyed but aren’t as artistically significant or holistically masterful as A’s and A-‘s. 

The line between grade to grade is string thin. While a work may be obviously in the A-range or B-range or C-range, the distinction between one grade and another is just what feels right. 

I’m talking about art, and art is subjective.