Even adding a little self-awareness to your story isn't so bad if you do it in nice doses. The reason The Cabin In The Woods works so well is that it comments on horror film tropes, but doesn't rely on that to be effective. Compare that to something like Scream 4, where hoping that you get the reference is all that that movie has going for it. The first two Scream films are neat little venture into the nature of horror movies and their sequels, but by the time Scream 4 rolled around, the series had looped back through its own butthole and out of its mouth again in order to prove that it was still relevant. And it wouldn't have had to do that if it had done the basic job of a movie, instead of relying on blistering self-awareness.

Community at its best was a show with so, so much heart. The love that the writers had for the characters bleeds through, and it's a passion project carefully disguised as a typical prime-time sitcom. And in its early seasons, the series pulled off self-awareness pretty effortlessly. And maybe it's due to the fact that Community began to lose core cast members starting in the fifth season, and the last half of the show was plagued with a shuffling creative team, but the self-awareness which had initially set it apart from regular shows became a crutch. The emotional stakes were lost, and in their place were constant comments about the nature of TV, which is like hearing your cheeseburger explain its own ingredients while you try to eat it.

Even vague self-awareness can be jarring if it comes out of nowhere. Kingsman: The Secret Service is a fantastic movie when it's not talking about the spy movies that it's borderline-parodying. If that scene in which Colin Firth was taking out the church full of bigots was still going to this day, I'd be okay with it. And don't act like there isn't a version of "Freebird" that is three years long. I know there is.

But slapped in the middle of the movie is a conversation between Firth and Samuel L. Jackson about the nature of spy flicks, as if they're assuming that the audiences that have not yet seen the movie are already a little "out of the know" about what it's trying to do. Come on, movie. Give us some credit.

How does it drop you from your cradle? Well, for one, it can bend the laws of time and space, forcing you to question why anyone would make a movie this way. Take the movie Hitch, for example, wherein Will Smith teaches dudes to talk to women, and teaches YOU to be more careful about picking out which Will Smith movies you go see. He teaches Kevin James how to dance in one scene, but starts his lesson by shutting off the music that's playing at a party in the future? Future humans were dancing to that song, Will. Don't cut a hole in the continuum of time when a motherfucker is trying to get down.

Will then puts on the song "Yeah!", which you might remember from it being more popular than oxygen in the mid 2000s. And then Kevin James dances to "Yeah!" both at Will's house and at this future party. My problem doesn't lie with the song "Yeah!" showing up at two different places at two different times, because, again, I've heard "Yeah!" more than I've heard the Pledge of Allegiance, the National Anthem, and "I love you" combined. It's just that this scene is edited in a way that makes you realize A) Hitch is a wizard, and B) this movie is a shallow attempt at getting us to like the song "Yeah!" more.

And sometimes a movie will feature a song that's performed by an actor in that movie. Like how Texas Chainsaw 3D plays the song "2 Reasons," and one of the characters listening to it and enjoying it is Trey Songz, the guy who sang "2 Reasons." That's not a slight wink and a nudge, filmmakers. That's a big invisible hand coming out of the screen to jar you out of whatever good things you might be feeling and reminding you to go download "2 Reasons," because the actor who fucking made "2 Reasons" in real life seems to really be enjoying "2 Reasons" in this completely fake life. If you want to give the audience a cue to simultaneously begin ignoring the movie and start playing around on their phones for a little bit, this one is as good as any.

The "events" I'm referring to are usually one of two things: musicians coming into town or pro wrestling events. And they're so awkwardly crammed into the plots that you can't help but feel your joy be driven from your body like a screeching ghost while you watch. Nothing says "No one wants to be here, especially the people on your screen" like a sitcom episode that features a rock star or a professional wrestler. For example, watch this clip of the time the band Anthrax showed up on Married With Children. But only do it if you want to see a dozen people lose their enthusiasm for the arts allllll at once.

If you watched that and found your sense of happiness to still be alive and breathing, watch Stevie Wonder's appearance on The Cosby Show, the kind of thing that only happens when the Devil is handling God's day shift. And if you still have any delusions about the positive power of fiction, dash them by staring into the abyss of any pro wrestler cameo on any sitcom ever -- cameos that are usually announced by characters who are suddenly into wrasslin'. This, as a wrasslin' fan, is absurd from the ground up. You don't just suddenly declare that there's a wrestling show near you and that you're into wrestling. You are into wrestling, and your family and friends spend their whole lives wishing that you'd shut the fuck up about it.

These episodes usually involve either a member of the cast and their stunt doubles clumsily recreating what a sitcom director thinks wrestling is like (like in Fuller House or The X-Files), or finding a way to work the fact that most wrestlers are seven feet wide into the plot (like in Boy Meets World or Smallville). Admittedly, the wrestlers usually seem like they're having a better time on the shows than musicians do. But nothing clips the wings of your flight into TV wonderland faster than the harsh introduction of pro wrestling logic into an otherwise normal show. "These five friends are on a mission to find success and love in the big city, and over the years, you will fall in love with their wit and their willingness to find pleasure in the small things in life. Oh, and meet their new landlord, Big Van Vader, who is roughly the size of a Woolly Mammoth."

Daniel is listening to "Yeah!", as it's the only thing that drowns out the loneliness. He is a brittle husk of a man on Twitter.

It sucks that your friends are always ruining movies for you, but you won't need friends anymore after you get the Amazon Fire stick with Alexa voice remote.

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