Pop Culture Favorites of 2022

Listward, ho!

The Pretty Damn Goods of 2022

Everything Everywhere All at Once

Seeing this in the theater last spring blew me away. Much like Daniels’ previous endeavor Swiss Army Man, Everything Everywhere All at Once is an astounding feat of creativity that’s only fulfilling if you lock into it and never look away. It’s a certainty you’ve never seen anything like it, and as far as first time watches go, there are fewer exhilarating cinematic experiences. I find that I’m more moved by what’s happening to the actors in the real world as this awards season plays out. Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan have had several interviews where you clearly see how much the appreciation and adulation of the performances and the movie itself means to them. As they’ve put it, Daniels gave them a chance to prove, if only to themselves, that they still have it. Daniels gave them a reason to believe in themselves. I think we all hope for something like that in our own lives.

"Outta Time" by Orville Peck

This is my favorite song that came out last year. There are other songs on Bronco that I’ve listened to almost as much, but there’s something about “Outta Time” I keep coming back to. There’s a swagger to its melancholy. It’s a great song to sing in the car with no witnesses to the failure of hitting the high notes. Orville Peck and his band are fantastic musicians and performers, and I’m glad to follow them on their journey.

"The We We Are"

The Season One Finale of Severance

Severance got off to a hot start with a tight plot that seizes your attention: employees of a mysterious corporation agree to have their work consciousnesses severed from that of the rest of their lives, effectively creating completely different versions of themselves who have no notion of what their “real” lives are like. It had the feel of old school 70s conspiracy thrillers like The Parallax View and The Conversation, this time with the stellar directorial eye of Ben Stiller, who I've been in the bag for for a long time. I admit my attention began to wander in the middle episodes, but as the season wound down to the finale, the show kicked into fifth gear. There are some core aspects of the show that I can’t bring myself to fully invest in or care about, but this finale gave me a rush unlike anything I’ve felt since the days when Lost was airing. As such, I would give this show a blanket recommendation to anyone for the sole purpose of watching the finale.

"Orange Juice, No Pulp"

The First Episode of The Rehearsal

Line of the year: "It's days like these that I curse the Chinese for inventing gunpowder."

The last five minutes of The Fabelmans

As a child of the 90s, I grew up with the idea that the release of a new Steven Spielberg movie was a special event. To put it bluntly, The Fabelmans is not special. Nailing an ending, though, is how you make anything memorable. The ending of The Fabelmans, for several reasons, is a home run. There is a cameo from one of my favorite human beings who ever lived, and he is a perfect fit for the person he's playing. I don't think you can tell from the picture who it is, if you don't already know, so I won't be spoiling it here. After that, though, is yet another brilliant moment. If Spielberg never makes another movie, the story of his own life won't be his best, but his final sentence will have been a master stroke.

Favorites of 2022

10. Sarah Goldberg in Season Three of Barry

Season three of Barry was quite a curveball. There have been several dark moments over the course of the show, but this season had an unsettling shadow cast over the whole thing from the jump. It’s still capable of delivering howling belly laughs, but with Barry’s mental descent that is seemingly beyond rescue and Sally’s irredeemable behavior, this show is evolving into an objective tragedy. When it was over, I wasn’t as quick to deem it as masterful as some others have, but for the rest of the year I could not get Sarah Goldberg’s performance out of my mind. Sally is the perfect example of the old expression "hurt people hurt people". In her desperate search for fame, she unfortunately gains notoriety from an incredible meltdown in an elevator that is one of the greatest fits of rage I’ve ever seen. I’ve watched the clip dozens of times. Command of one's own face is one reason why I stay in awe of actors, and Sarah Goldberg is up there with the best working today. I don’t think I could yell at someone like that even if I had reason to mean it. Knowing that Barry will be ending after the upcoming fourth season is bittersweet. It doesn’t seem like there are many more directions it can go, but if Bill Hader and company have proven anything thus far, we’re in for a wild ride to the finish line.

9. Andor

In the wake of The Rise of Skywalker, a movie I loathed from start to finish, I decided that Star Wars was no longer for me. I watched the Obi-Wan show out of respect for Ewan McGregor, and I couldn’t stand it. (I’ll admit that one scene with Vader’s broken voice toward the end was badass.) After that, though, I happily washed my hands clean of a realm of pop culture in which I no longer cared to participate. Then last fall, Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald of my favorite pop culture podcast “The Watch” could not stop singing the glowing praises of Andor, the new show from writer/director Tony Gilroy about former Rogue One character Cassian Andor and his leadup to the events of Rogue One. During the Christmas holiday I gave in. Cue the gif of Silvio Dante doing his Michael Corleone impression; just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. There are character depths explored in Andor that every other piece of Star Wars content did not have time for. There are scenes and arcs that are more exhilarating than some from the original film trilogy. I didn’t think I would care about the story of a guy whose fate we already know, but I found Andor gripping from start to finish. Though I am certainly out on every other piece of Star Wars content there is, I eagerly anticipate the second and final season of Andor to come.

8. "Crank Dat Killer"

Episode Six of Season Four of Atlanta

There are plenty of takes on whether the back half of Atlanta was a success or a failure, and I am not here to yell into that void. While Atlanta gave us plenty of head-scratching moments to chew on, it’s up there as one of the zaniest shows of all time. Season 4’s standout episode “Crank Dat Killer” captures that goofy yet ominous feeling perfectly. In the episode, it’s come to the region’s attention that there appears to be a serial killer who is dispatching anyone who ever posted a video of themselves doing Soulja Boy’s Crank Dat dance. Alfred remembers that he made one back in 2007 and he fears that he may be next. Meanwhile, Earn and Darius decide how far they’re willing to go to score new sneakers. The whole episode is juvenile in the best possible way. It feels akin to some of the old Derrick Comedy sketches that Donald Glover and company used to make in the late 2000s. Atlanta always expertly balanced sincerity and absurdity. Now that the story of Atlanta is set and complete, I think there is no better example of the latter than the tale of the "Crank Dat Killer".

7. Barry Keoghan in The Banshees of Inisherin

After two viewings, I'm still not quite sure how I feel about The Banshees of Inisherin. It went over my head somewhat the first time, and I was thrown because I thought I was getting something as zany as In Bruges, the first cinematic endeavor from the trio of writer/director Martin McDonagh and actors Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. There are plenty of hilarious moments, but I was not prepared for how sad it would leave me. Nor was I prepared for Barry Keoghan to steal every single scene he's in. He's been turning in some stellar supporting performances, at least since the first time I saw him in 2017's Dunkirk and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Keoghan's character Dominic is a boy who's been as battered as the coast of Inisherin itself. As such, he has difficulty connecting with anyone and is assumed to be a simpleton. It's in this movie that bills the great reunion of McDonagh, Farrell and Gleeson that Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon deliver one of the scenes of the year beside the "great auld lake." It takes tremendous talent to balance the lines of sweetness, innocence, awkwardness, sadness, stupidity and hilarity without the intention of creepiness. At any moment, Keoghan imbues Dominic with one or all of those qualities. Dominic is pure impulse, a boy who wants nothing more than love, but but doesn't know how to give it or get it.

6. Aftersun

Aftersun is emotion conveyed through cinema in a way I've never experienced. “Pure cinema” is a phrase I generally associate with film snobs, but there are fewer examples I can think of that are representative of that phrase than Aftersun. I wouldn't call it an art film, but it does rely on many moments of silence. It's a fill-in-the-blanks movie that gets more fascinating as you ponder it. It lets you put the pieces of an incomplete puzzle together, where you can still see the big picture even though there are pieces that you never have. (That may not make as much sense as it did in my head.) The ability to translate what you have in your mind to the product on screen is something I’m in awe of, and writer/director Charlotte Wells knocked it out of the park with her first feature. There's a scene involving a mirror that gave me chills when I saw it. Aftersun prompted me to think about my own life in the context of my parents' lives, specifically their existences at the age I am now. That's the kind of experience you get from great literature, and seldom receive from cinema. This is a very special movie.

5. Season Two of Reservation Dogs

Reservation Dogs is the intersection at which sincerity and hilarity meet. It is a depiction of a world that only a select few experience in this country, but it finds innumerable ways to connect with the lives of anyone. Though I am a softie, I am rarely moved to tears by episodic television. It's difficult to establish heartfelt emotion in 20-something minute increments. There is no show I've seen that can elicit such strong emotion so swiftly as Reservation Dogs. The fourth episode, "Mabel", had me legitimately weeping one minute and laughing through my tears the next. Then you have the eighth episode, "This is Where the Plot Thickens", which is an absolutely bananas descent into depravity where Big accidentally consumes an overwhelming amount of psychedelics. The case can be made with little argument that this is the best show on television. It's certainly the most genuine.

4. Season Two of The White Lotus

I think the second season of The White Lotus might be the Godfather Part II of the limited series medium. Perhaps there's recency bias in that statement, but it's an incredible achievement in depicting romantic relationships and the nature of trust. It’s a show for grownups. There's a level of enjoyment here that's unlike the experience of watching other shows, where you can enjoy living vicariously through the characters existing in the beauty of these exotic locations which they themselves can't bring themselves to enjoy. They're not even doing anything different than they would be doing at home or anywhere else.

The writing is second to none and the tone is deftly balanced. There's an menacing air to the whole show by the way it's set up at the beginning, but there are plenty of laughs. When things turn genuinely sinister, part of you expects some of the air to be taken out of the sense of danger that's building because somehow it still doesn't quite make sense in the show we've come to know. In my opinion, the last episode of this season is one of the great singular episodes in television history. We're getting another season of The White Lotus, and while I have no idea what to expect the third time around, I trust that creator Mike White knows exactly what he's doing.

3. Top Gun: Maverick

Its nearly 1.5 billion dollars in ticket sales proves that my experience with Top Gun: Maverick was not unique. Nevertheless, my experience was thus. Until Top Gun: Maverick, I’d never gone to a theater to watch a movie three times. The first time I took my dad. For many years, we’ve tried to catch every new Tom Cruise movie in theaters. Tom Cruise movies are a foundational bond between us. When the pandemic upended everything, one thought that kept my head above water through it all was, I hope we make it out of this so I can see Top Gun with my dad. When I rolled out of the theater, it was like, Oh, now I have to ensure that everyone I love experiences this great time. The second time I took my mom. When Maverick splits those guys during the “Won’t Get Fooled Again” training scene, she pumped her fist and almost jumped out of her chair. The third time I took my wife. She thought it was loud.

I think the release of this movie at this time showed us how certain movies can connect us, not only with our loved ones, but with the world at large. The antagonist country is nameless, and it doesn’t matter. The climactic setpiece is literally the X-wing run at the end of the first Star Wars, and it doesn’t matter. Tom Cruise is a certified madman, and it doesn’t matter. We may be experiencing a kind of sunset on the cinematic experience as we know it, but we can always look back on the one thing that did matter in the summer of 2022: ole Maverick.

2. "Stand Still Like the Hummingbird"

Episode Five of Season Two of Euphoria

I’m not crazy about Euphoria. It’s one of the toughest hangs in modern television, and it’s most effective at making everyone over 30 worry that high school parties look like the ones it depicts. I admittedly only watch it, or rather started watching it, because I didn’t want to miss out on what most of my favorite podcasts cover. But you spend more time with these characters, monstrous as they may be, you start to care about them. Some of them, anyway.

I don’t presume to know what the behavior of an actual addict is like, but in the most general terms, they are broken people. Never have I seen the portrayal of such a person as Zendaya in this episode. The full spectrum of frantic human emotion is on display. Fear, cruelty, love, sorrow, and the struggle to survive. Zendaya is an unbelievable performer. For the whole hour, I was transfixed and glued to the screen. This is to say nothing of the episode itself, which begins as an intimate domestic dispute, and evolves into what is ostensibly a chase movie through the alleys and streets of Los Angeles. It’s not necessarily a bottle episode, but it works as something you can view on its own without needing broader context of the show itself. The rewatch factor is incredibly high. When the bow is tied on Euphoria, this is what will stand out. This is what we’ll go back to. I would go so far as to say it’s one of the great dramatic television episodes of this century. I really wanted to make this number one on my list, but I couldn’t justify it usurping what was the best television of the year.

1. The Sixth and Final Season of Better Call Saul

There's a pervading take that doesn't seem so uncommon anymore, that Better Call Saul is better than Breaking Bad. I'm not so sure of that, or that it's even useful to discuss, because both parts equal a whole story. Now that the entirety of Better Call Saul can be assessed, though, it towers over its predecessor in several ways. The filmmaking and shot composition is god-tier, the best there is on television. Granted, the team had the quite a bit of experience already with the previous series under their belts, but the creativity with so many of the shots in this series is inspired. When you break it all down, the meat of this show came out of throwaway lines from the "Better Call Saul" episode of Breaking Bad.

"It wasn't me, it was Ignacio!"

"Lalo didn't send you? No Lalo? Oh, thank God! Oh, Christ!"

We didn't know who Ignacio and Lalo were, nor did the writers, but what was clear was that Saul was scared of someone. As creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould have said in the past, their writers room thrives when they put themselves into corners they must write themselves out of. They created a co-lead in Kim Wexler who you cared for deeply, as much as Jimmy, even though she was arguably capable of inflicting more pain than he was. The season was not without flaws, and I'm still not sure I loved the finale, but there is an absolutely bone chilling decision in one of the middle episodes that is the darkest thing I've ever seen on television outside of Wallace in The Wire and something that happens in the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad. It makes you look at a significant portion of Breaking Bad through a completely different lens. I would've loved to have been a fly on the wall of the writers room when they said "Oh, we're really gonna do this."

As the show headed toward its end, some things seemed inevitable, but there's no chance you could ever guess how it gets there. The nutshell feat of the show is that they turned a character of comic relief into one with depth and history, and made him the centerpiece of one of television's most affecting tragedies. It gave an established supporting character a new identity that cemented itself on top of that. For the longest time, when you saw the character Bob Odenkirk plays, whether in the course of watching Breaking Bad or seeing him on merchandise or in advertisements, it was unquestionably Saul Goodman. Henceforth? Nah. That's Jimmy.