Bottom Shelf Liquor

Mike Dang and friends sample the cheap liquor (well, at least their idea of cheap):

Mike: How about vodka?
Lawrence: Vodka is different from whiskey in that whiskey is supposed to have different characters, while vodka, ideally, is supposed to be neutral. It's not supposed to taste like anything but distilled alcohol and water, which is what it is. Smirnoff is as good as about anything for $13, and it actually won in a pretty exhaustive New York Times blind tasting some years ago.
Mike: If that's the case, let's try something cheaper.

I judge cheap liquor by three tests:

Do crappy bars use it as well liquor, do college students buy it, and does my grandpa buy it?

For vodkas, Kamchatka, Popov and McCormicks are on the low end, and are well down the drinkability scale.  Popov and McCormicks are so low, I haven't even seen a bar using them, I've only seen them at grandpa's and in college dorm rooms.  I used to get grandpa some Grey Goose or Absolut, but now I just get him Smirnoff, because he was using the Absolut to make his Popov more drinkable. 

Anyway, I.'ll just leave the hard stuff to others and stick to my beer.