TV

Age of Umbra
1x04 The Rampart and Beyond [2nd half]
Halfway through this miniseries now, and it's been almost a whole month since I watched any of Campaign 2, so I probably ought to check back in on that next.
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]

Critical Role Cooldown
Age of Umbra Episode 4
[Watch it (again) on Beacon.]

Level Up! | Age of Umbra
After the cooldown, the cast's Age of Umbra characters increase from Level 1 to Level... 2, obvs.
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]

TV

Age of Umbra
1x01 Desperloch [remainder]
It's been fairly widely commented upon, but combat really does flow so much more smoothly in Daggerheart than D&D. The latter makes it feel like a minigame: you stop, roll initiative, then everyone takes it in turn to do their combo of action / bonus action / movement. In Daggerheart, it just... starts. Okay, here Matt goes off to get a map, so it is still demarked in that sense, but it's only a slight pause. I can see how a less respectful or controlled table could turn it into chaos and/or one or two people dominating, but when played as intended, there's an ebb and flow that keeps it more engaging. Coupled with the different damage system in Daggerheart, which makes every strike more impactful, and I think overall it works much better, certainly as a viewer.
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]

Critical Role
Tag Team at the Teeth: Prologue
A nine-minute setup for their two Australian live shows. Watching this now feels a bit like taunting myself, because who knows how long it’s going to be before I can actually watch the shows proper? (I’m not in Australia, so can’t see them live. I’m not in the US or Canada, so can’t see them in a cinema later this week / next week. Presumably they'll be on Beacon shortly afte Age of Umbra, but they’re set after Campaign 3, so really I’m a couple of hundred episodes off getting to them.)
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]

Critical Role Cooldown
Age of Umbra Episode 1
[Watch it (again) on Beacon.]

Critical Role Live Show: Sydney || LIVE Beacon Backstage Pass
So, while it's going to be a while before the show itself is on Beacon, they did do this backstage livestream beforehand. It's just hanging out with the cast, doing things like improv warmup and eating Vegemite for the first time, but that's fun in its own way (for some us, at least).
[Watch it (again) on Beacon.]

Videos

Critical Role
2x106 A Fog Lifted [1st half]

With this episode, I’m three-quarters through Campaign 2 — the kind of milestone that has me thinking where I'll go next (not because I'm especially near the end — there's still 169 hours to go — but because, well, that end will come eventually).

CR recently started their Daggerheart-based Age of Umbra miniseries, which runs until the end of July; and by then they’ll have a backlog of live shows to share, which could well fill their August streaming calendar; so Campaign 4 almost certainly won’t start until September at the earliest; some believe it won't begin until 2026 now. Will I have finished Campaign 2 by then? September: probably not; especially as I plan to watch Age of Umbra (I would've started it already, but my free time was unexpectedly upended the past few weeks). The end of 2025: I really should have.

Either way, I’m increasingly certain my plan is to go straight from C2 to C4 (either when I finish C2 or overlapping with the end of it), and then possibly go back to C1 and/or C3 if (when?) once-a-week new episodes are not enough for my CR fix.

[Watch A Fog Lifted (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]

TV

Age of Umbra
1x07 Escape from the Reach [1st hour]
Any thoughts I had of finishing Critical Role Campaign 2 before Campaign 4 starts have long since vanished (there's less than three weeks to go, and I still have something like 30 episodes of C2 left), but there's really no reason I shouldn't be able to get through the remainder Age of Umbra before then (this is the penultimate episode, after all).
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]

TV

Age of Umbra
1x06 The Unforgiving City [1st half]
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]

But before that...

Critical Role Cooldown
Age of Umbra Episode 5
[Watch it (again) on Beacon.]

TV

Age of Umbra
1x07 Escape from the Reach [remainder]
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]

Critical Role Cooldown
Age of Umbra Episode 7
[Watch it (again) on Beacon.]

TV

Age of Umbra
1x02 The Lost Monastery [2nd half]
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]

Critical Role Cooldown
Age of Umbra Episode 2
[Watch it (again) on Beacon.]

TV

Age of Umbra
1x05 Ages of Pain [1st half]
Back to Age of Umbies for a bit. Heck, I'm not going to finish C2 before C4 anyway, so I may as well try to finish this miniseries at least.
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]

TV

Critical Role
2x110 Dinner with the Devil [1st half]
Following the announcement at the weekend, there's just 59 days until the start of Campaign IV. Once upon a time, me completing C2 by the start of October wouldn't have seemed impossible; but I've been a bit sluggish the last couple of months, including allowing time for Age of Umbra (and I've still got half of that to go) — at this point, I'd have to watch something like 2½ hours every single day to get through what I need to in time for the beginning of C4... and then I'd probably be left bereft because I'd bump right down to one episode a week! So, there may well be some intermingling come October.
(Not that literally anyone cares about this but me. But then, I don't believe anyone but me looks at this site, so it's ok.)
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]

Friends
9x09 The One with Rachel's Phone Number [6th or so watch]

TV

Age of Umbra
1x01 Desperloch [1st hour]
As I've reached a very convenient end-of-story-arc point in my Campaign 2 viewing, I'm making a start on their currently-running Daggerheart-based miniseries. It's still the same players and GM playing a story-focused TTRPG, and yet the system switchup somehow makes it feel fresh and exciting. Interesting.
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]


Ever since I started watching Critical Role, I’ve debated where to categorise it. Some would just say it’s TV, but I started watching it on YouTube — that’s not really TV, that’s just online video slop, right? (I get that this is a generational thing, and I’m definitely of a generation that doesn’t respect “YouTubers”.) I don’t even watch CR on my TV, but on my computer or tablet, something I would never dream of doing with real TV (this is less generational, more just being a purist — or, if you prefer, snob). But it sits uncomfortably under the “Video” heading too — that was created more for short-form disposable stuff.

Anyway, after (too) much reflection, I’ve decided to ‘upgrade’ CR and its associated content, and the start of their newest miniseries seemed as good a changeover point as any. Funnily enough, tomorrow this will include their backstage pre-show livestream from Sydney, which immediately threw me into a conundrum: a livestream is definitely more “Video” than “TV”. But I don’t want to split their stuff up like that, so I guess it’s all TV now!

Maybe I should just call it “Content”. My Content Experience. Ugh.

TV

Critical Role
4x01 The Fall of Thjazi Fang

Campaign 4, here we gooooo!

A big moment for me as a Critter, because this is the first CR campaign I'll be watching 'live'. I stayed up for this premiere episode, even, which I certainly won't be able to do every week (it starts at 3am my time). Another complicating factor is I still have 30 episodes of Campaign 2 left, and I absolutely intend to finish it*, so we'll see how all this goes with scheduling and whatnot.

But anyway: what an amazing start. Shakeups to the format that don't break it but keep it exciting. A tonne of characters all well introduced and established, plot threads and mysteries set in motion, and some good laughs and memorable moments already. Can't wait to see where this all goes over the years to come.

* Even though it's been almost two months since I watched any (gasp!) I wanted to focus on getting Age of Umbra finished first, and then it seemed fruitless to try to pick C2 back up with C4 so close.

[Watch it (again) on Beacon, Twitch, or YouTube now if you're a member, or free on YouTube from Monday.]


Critical Role Cooldown
Campaign 4, Episode 1
[Watch it (again) on Beacon.]

Videos

Age of Umbra
Session Zero Creating Characters Matt Wants to Kill
You feel like a Session Zero should be a great tool for players, but probably not much fun to actually watch. Not so here — it's a delightful mix of learning about the background to the world of the miniseries (whether or not, and how much, that will also be covered in the series proper, who knows) and just getting to hang out with these guys. Yeah, I'm one of those people who enjoys that.
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]

Fireside Chat LIVE With Matthew Mercer and Elise Rezendes!
Answering questions about Daggerheart — or, quite often, not being able to answer them while clearly being excited for what they can't reveal yet.
[Watch it (again) on Beacon.]

TV

Critical Role Live Show: Melbourne || LIVE Beacon Backstage Pass

Where the Sydney pre-show was defined by Vegemite, this one is mostly stories of their trip to Melbourne zoo. So that's... nice.

These backstage livestreams are kinda pointless, but also kinda fun. I guess they know there's a chunk of their audience that just likes hanging out with the cast, even if they're not really doing anything, and this plays to that demographic.

The only thing approaching 'genuine information' was they said they're planning to announce/reveal a bunch of stuff at San Diego Comic-Con, which is only about a month away, so that's exciting. In fact, it's the weekend after the Age of Umbra finale — could we finally get some Campaign 4 news?

[Watch it (again) on Beacon.]

TV

Age of Umbra
1x04 The Rampart and Beyond [remainder of 1st half]
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]

Live Aid at 40: The Concert
Didn't watch anything like all of this, but had a significant chunk of it on in the later evening.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Age of Umbra
1x08 The Tomb of the Heretic Saint [season finale; 1st hour]
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]

TV

Age of Umbra
1x05 Ages of Pain [2nd half 1st hour]
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]

TV

Age of Umbra
1x08 The Tomb of the Heretic Saint [season finale; 2nd hour]

I'm not deliberately stretching this out, I'm just not finding the time between things like work and spending an hour-and-a-half playing card games.
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]

TV

Age of Umbra
1x08 The Tomb of the Heretic Saint [season finale; final hour]
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]

TV

Cobra Kai
3x07 Obstáculos
3x08 The Good, the Bad, and the Badass
This is still a good show, but man, they've spent nearly the entire season on the fallout from the season 2 finale. It was a major event that definitely deserved some focus and 'dealing with', and some of the repercussions are right to be longer-lasting, but to dwell on it for the whole season? In fairness, that's not all this season has done, thank goodness, but it has been quite dominant. I feel like there must have been a better balance to have been struck between giving it due significance and making it feel like the story was progressing.

Critical Role Cooldown
Age of Umbra Episode 3
[Watch it (again) on Beacon.]

TV

Age of Umbra
1x05 Ages of Pain [2nd half 2nd hour]
The fact that it's taken me all week to get through this one episode is ridiculous. Bloody day job actually taking up my working hours... And even now, I finished the episode so late that its Cooldown will be listed tomorrow.
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]