PBS and Politico offered a refreshing Democratic presidential debate with smarter, relevant questions

Variety

"At this point, six rounds into a seemingly endless and interminable election cycle, the Democratic debate routine appeared to be set," says Caroline Framke. "An assortment of candidates would take the stage to battle each other, the president, and the same spate of questions over and over again. For a primary that’s about as wide open as they get, the dance was nonetheless starting to feel awfully stale. The December 19 debate, held jointly by PBS and Politico, provided a surprising and welcome change of pace in the mere act of asking new and relevant questions, even as the candidates still found choice moments in which to go at each other’s throats. (This designation does not include the final question in which candidates were tasked with giving a hypothetical gift or 'asking for forgiveness' from another candidate, because the less said about novelty debate questions, the better.)"

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• PBS and Politico had a "goddamn" annoying moving background behind the candidates: "Throughout the three-hour debate, the words 'POLITICO,' 'PBS NEWSHOUR,” and the PBS logo crawled at a slow, nauseating pace behind the candidates," says Dylan Matthews. "At times the letters of the word 'POLITICO' even appeared to vibrate, nudging into each other like the strings on a guitar being played with vibrato. People tweeted complaints all night. We tuned into this debate to hear from the candidates, not to be taunted by malevolent typography. Just put up a big blue background or something! I don’t care. This is the easiest possible thing to get right and instead viewers were subjected to the year’s most baffling graphic design."