If it took you and ninjayeti multiple seasons (5 or 6) to start to agree with the NYT's review of GoT at season 1, I would argue you showed that the NYT was wrong. GoT was pretty impressive television. The fact that it declined at the end doesn't negate the enjoyment most of us received in the earlier seasons.
Exactly. Reviews apply to what exists, and unless they engage in prognostication, they don't
typically "become right" later. Given the NYT didn't say "GoT is a rushed mess of a show incoherently trying to shove too many plot points in" (i.e. season 7/8), but rather "GoT, like all fantasy, is dumb nonsense strictly for teenage boys", there is no chance of it ever becoming right.
Sometimes film reviews you do get some reviews which better reflect future attitudes towards a film though - usually when a film that later becomes a cult movie is panned by the majority of critics, there'll be at least a few who "got it", even at the time, for example. It's a lot rarer with books which is why Queenan's review is so accidentally funny.
I can't see enough of Queenan's review to know if it's accurate or not, but I will admit that I find Good Omens to be one of the most over-rated novels I've ever read. It's not bad, per se. I just find it very average for the genre.
I actually largely agree with your view of Good Omens, but that is not the grounds on which Queenan is attacking it at all. Instead he's basically coming at it as being fundamentally unfunny and dumb, which I think, even seeing Good Omens is fairly mid, as I do, is not a good representation of how it's mid. Nor does he really engage with "overrated", because in 1990 it wasn't - he doesn't even note either authors' other works IIRC (or acknowledge them in any way!).
There's a bit of classic NYT Anglophobia (the NYT is easily the most consistently Anglophobic news source in the US, even Fox News is less aggressively so) in there as well, apparently that's been going on since the 1990s or 1980s, I had no idea.
