I've heard it referred to as "trunk-based development". I think it's not so much subpar as contextual. If there's a team of 2 developers pushing as hard as possible to get something out, I completely agree with OP that code reviews are a waste of time (unless requested). If there's a team of 100 developers, I can't imagine the insanity of pushing directly to the shared branch without review.

Somewhere between those the context is such that the benefits of code reviews outweighs the costs. Do you think otherwise?