Here at the end of 2023, it’s safe to say this year has been a minefield of joy, horror, shocking twists both fictional and in real life, tragedies cosmic and mundane. But here we are, now, rounding up some of the things that made us happy, because if we don’t sing about our joy when we find it, the Swamps of Sadness will win the day. You’ll notice that much of this year’s list is based in television? That probably means something, but it’ll be another year or two before we figure out what it is.
Below you will find: MUSICALS. QUEER PIRATES. A CHONKY DRAGON. MULTIPLE MEET-CUTES. FRIENDSHIP.
The Magic of Good Omens
Getting to spend more time with Aziraphale and Crowley is always something to be thankful for, especially since the first season of Good Omens covered everything from the original book by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Good Omens 2 delivered the goods—giving text to the subtext of the angel and demon’s romance, performed to perfection by Michael Sheen and David Tennant respectively. Each episode of the second season brought me joy, with the minisodes (the Nazi zombie magician one was a particular favorite) being the whipped cream and sprinkles on an already delectable viewing experience. And now that Amazon’s given the greenlight to a third and final season, even more magic (and presumably the Second Coming) can ensue.
—Vanessa
When Jim Met Spock
I want Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to do its own thing, not just play prequel connect-the-dots. Truly. I swear that I do. But there are things that matter to me, points of clarification and history that need addressing. Chief among those was: How did Kirk and Spock meet?
It needed to be something casual, of course; no swelling score and heightened drama to signal its import. We rarely get so obvious a cue when meeting the people who change our lives. But I needed to see it, and the writing on Strange New Worlds gave me hope on that front—namely by allowing James T. Kirk to behave like himself instead of the depressing Zapp Brannigan-ized headcanon that the character has become to so many. Look at this weirdly charismatic bookworm who must help anyone who looks even slightly sad! He can’t stop himself from trying to play that Vulcan’s chess game from across the bar. He’s not gonna inappropriately flirt with Uhura, but he will bring her a cookie. He can sense that La’an is tuning into him, even if he can’t understand why. That’s the guy I remember.
But the show did one better by setting up an antagonism between Spock and Jim’s older brother, Sam. The two scientists never got on particularly well, but in the lead-up to our legendary meetcute, we see Spock getting aggravated with Sam for minute-but-incredibly-irritating things, namely being messy and never clearing his dishes. So when Jim and Sam have a fight in front of Uhura (over their dad and legacy and who is the favored son, which Sam should be talking about with said father instead of his little brother, by the by), Jim is understandably embarrassed and a little miffed at his brother’s behavior and his storming off—
—leaving Spock the perfect opening to clear Sam’s dish in annoyance and instantly bond with soulmate life partner t’hy’la future captain. Uhura introduces them and grins, as though she knows she’s just done something momentous. Jim invites Spock to sit with them. It’s mundane. It’s silly. It’s absolutely dazzling.
—Emmet
The Second Joyous Gorgeous Season of the Ongoing Miracle That Is Our Flag Means Death
LET’S TALK ABOUT JIM. As a queer, nonbinary person of Puerto Rican descent, I really never thought I’d see a queer, nonbinary Puerto Rican on TV. It’s too niche an identity for TV Executives to bother with, I figured. Sure, there have been major strides made in terms of Latinx representation in media (Wednesday! Andor! Anything Pedro Pascal is doing!) but for a character to be Latinx AND queer AND gender nonconforming seemed like too big of a gift to ask for.
And then, there was Vico Ortiz.
Granted, Jim isn’t specifically Puerto Rican on the show, as OFMD exists in a kind of vaguely Victorian Era Atlantic Ocean liminal space. But Vico is Puerto Rican, Vico’s accent is Puerto Rican, and that matters. Like, remember when Diego Luna was doing the press tour for Rogue One and was talking about how important it was that a Star Wars character was allowed to have his Mexican accent? It’s the same thing. They aren’t anglicizing the way the actors speak, so there are Mexicans in space and Puerto Ricans on the high seas.
Specifically, really hot queer nonbinary Puerto Ricans on the high seas. Because this season, Jim was allowed to have short hair and a polyamorous relationship and a drawn-on mustache. We got to see Jim as part of Blackbeard’s crew in a sexy, bondage-y leather-and-rope situation. We got to see them kiss people and stab people and saw off Izzy’s leg and it’s just ALL SO SEXY. Like, how am I even supposed to concentrate on anything else when a character like Jim exists. Maybe this isn’t nerdy joy, maybe this is nerdy yearning, but whatever. We are blessed for having a character like Jim on TV both for Representation reasons and for horny reasons.
—Christina
I’ve never met a fictional Purgatory I didn’t love, but OFMD’s Gravy Basket might have vaulted to the top of my list. The lighting, the inexplicable pig, the need for a reasonably priced inn, the Thinking Cliff—it all adds up to a great netherworld/peek into Ed’s tortured psyche.
—Leah
Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi was a popular fantasy release this year, so I don’t think I’m breaking any new ground by talking about how excellent it is. Amina’s infamous pirate days are behind her; she’s dedicated to being a mother now, and protecting her family by staying out of the limelight. But when she’s blackmailed into a quest to find the missing daughter of a wealthy noble, she finds herself more willing to return to her old ways than she would like to admit. The twelfth-century cities along the Indian Ocean are richly imagined and heavily researched, and Chakraborty weaves together whimsical characters and high stakes with a mastery recognizable to fans of her previous Daevabad series. But our main character, Amina, is a fantastic centerpiece: torn between the need to protect her family and her own habits towards recklessness, Amina is a rare protagonist, and one I’m looking forward to following through the series.
—Bailey
The Carousel Ride in The Last of Us
I don’t have any particular nostalgia for shopping malls—they weren’t a big part of my teenage life—and yet this scene, set in an extended flashback in which Ellie and Riley spend a night in abandoned and decaying mall, has stuck with me all year. Maybe it’s down to the Cure (a band that was very much a part of my teenage existence). Not only does this mall have a relatively pristine carousel in working condition (something the malls I grew up with definitely did not have), but as it starts to whirl the opening notes of “Just Like Heaven” chime out and suddenly I was fully drowning in nostalgia. Turns out, not even the apocalypse can dim Robert Smith’s mopey romanticism… It’s the perfect song to sell this moment, capturing the giddy joy and awkwardness of these two friends/crushes, uncertain about everything except their happiness at being together again.
In the middle of an ultimately devastating episode, this scene carves out precious space for these two teenagers, whose lives have been defined by danger and loss and strict rules for survival, to bask in the warm lights and just enjoy being together as the carousel spins and the familiar song plays. And I love that it’s not rushed: it all lasts just a little under two minutes, with roughly 30 seconds in which they simply ride in companionable, tipsy silence, reveling in the moment as the music surrounds them, and it’s perfect. It can’t last, but within the world of The Last of Us, these moments of joy feel so triumphant and so hard-won that they resonate for me in a way that outshines everything else.
—Bridget
Launching Koroks Across Hyrule
This was another excellent year for video games, and while I spent my fair share of time with smaller indie games—Dredge, Sea of Stars, Cocoon, and the surprisingly SFF-tinged Powerwash Simulator to name a few—I sunk at least 400 hours into The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Like its predecessor, Tears of the Kingdom shows you the end goal (defeating a particularly ghoulish version of the ancient evil know as Ganon), but encourages you to meander your way to the finish line. And meander I did. Investigate rumors about the missing princess with a reporter who also happens to be a pelican? Sure! Follow a group of pitchfork-wielding locals into battle? You betcha! Rebuild an entire seaside village? It would be my pleasure. But it was the task of reuniting several hundred adorable, bumbling forest spirits that brought out the best and worst in players, including myself. The first few times I came across a korok with a too-big backpack, I treated them with care, building a makeshift cart to safely deliver them to their friend across the field. Then I realized I could attach the korok directly to my horse’s hitch and bounce on down the road, the korok “oof”ing all the way. By the tenth time, I noticed that the game designers often left building materials near the stranded korok—including rockets. And thus the Hyrule Aeronautics and Space Administration was born…
–Sarah
“Dear Alien Who Art in Heaven”, from Asteroid City
In this year of extraordinary films, I would argue that Asteroid City was one of the best. (In fact, I’m going to argue that, soon, in essay form.) And “Dear Alien Who Art in Heaven” is a perfect encapsulation of why: on the surface it’s silly and catchy, almost lighthearted. But it’s also a group of children processing the terror of the unknown, in a song, while their teacher desperately tries to stick to her script and ignore that her understanding of reality has to change. This is happening while the kids’ parents are being told lies by their government in another room—even though at least some of the truth has already come out in the papers. And then the parents see their kids performing this musical number through a closed-circuit TV, even though they’re only a few feet away and could just come outside to watch.
There’s so much going on here, and the song is good, and Seu Jorge is back in the Andersonverse! The alien’s in their heaven and all is right with the world.
–Leah
Dressing Up for Ren Faire
I’ve always been too timid to throw myself into the earnestness of cosplay or Halloween costumes without a clear theme, but for my first trip back to a Renaissance Faire in a decade, I had to at least make an effort. It helped that I was joined by the boundlessly creative Tor folks—not to mention the perfect Etsy find in a secondhand dirndl that was exactly my size and adorned with edelweiss (my Oma’s favorite flower) buttons. Walking through the Ren Faire in a swishy dress that fit like a glove and fit the brief made me feel like saying “hurra” (apparently “huzzah” in German).
—Natalie
David Tennant Owes Me Money for Making Me Feel Too Many Feelings
David Tennant has been many things over his career. A duck with far too much money. The literal Casanova. One of the most frightening Marvel villains. A detective who can’t seem to shave for his depression, stuck in a seaside town full of secrets. But, of course, he gained prominence in the public eye by playing the starring role on Doctor Who when the show came back from the dead in the 21st century. As his iteration is my Doctor—being the person who is your favorite, or even the fundamental version of the character in your eyes—I was heartbroken when he left. And I’ve enjoyed many of the projects he’s been a part of since (Scrooge McDuck has never been more lovable, which is a weird thing to think at any point in life), but I always assumed that the Doctor would be the role he was forever tied to in my mind.
Then he became Crowley in Good Omens, based on one of my favorite books. And he was absolutely perfect. How rude of him. Oh, and a cameo in a very good spate of Clone Wars episodes turned into a full co-starring role as keeper of all lightsaber knowledge on Ahsoka, the ancient droid Huyang.
This year conspired against me—the second season of Good Omens was arriving mere months before Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary, with Ahsoka smack in between them. David Tennant was set to play the Doctor again, alongside one of the show’s greatest companions, Donna Noble, a character who’d received a decidedly unjust fate at the end of her tenure. I was already prepared for the emotional wallop of having the Doctor and Donna back, but before I could even reach those summits, Good Omens slid in out of nowhere and K.O.’d me with a love confession from Crowley to millennia-long best friend Aziraphale that goes decidedly awry. I gasped. I cried. I might have genuinely had a panic attack out of surprise? It was glorious.
Two months later, there’s a robot (I should mention that I am always emotionally compromised by robots) voiced by David Tennant, giving Ahsoka Tano advice about her relationship with former-Padawan Sabine Wren. David-Tennant-the-robot telling the duo not to separate and, when they don’t follow his advice, David-Tennant-the-robot openly grieving in the wake of their possible deaths. And there’s me, sobbing again over robot feelings.
Then there was David Tennant several weeks after that, back as the reminted (and justifiably confused) Fourteenth Doctor, immediately reunited with his best friend who can never remember him, Donna Noble. Of course that problem got fixed, as it was always meant to, but this Doctor noticed some interesting changes in the midst of all that. He was quicker to say that he loved people, attuned to Donna’s moods, constantly holding onto her as though separation might kill him. Just two best friends, clinging to one another in a reunion they knew couldn’t last forever until… it did. He broke me a third time.
I just don’t think that one actor should be allowed to shove me through a meat grinder of emotions on multiple television shows in the space of less than six months. David Tennant owes me money.
—Emmet
Chuck Tingle Takeover
Chuck Tingle took over this very site! And it was magnificent! Go check out the index if you missed any of it, and read Dr. Tingle’s excellent horror novel, Camp Damascus.
—Leah
Everything About Reservation Dogs
Reservation Dogs wrapped up its third and final season in September, and while fans might be tempted to mourn or wish for more, this is a show about how to say goodbye, and how the things and people we love are never really gone. And it does so with incredible humor, intelligence, and earnestness—it absolutely made me cry throughout its run, but not nearly as often as it made me laugh out loud, or left me beaming and feeling happy to be alive.
If you haven’t seen the series, please give it a chance at some point (it’s currently streaming on Hulu). It’s such a special show—I could go on and on about the wonderful cast (impossible to pick a favorite, though it’s fun to try!) and how perfectly the overall arc of the narrative resolved in the final episodes, but mostly I just want to thank creator Sterlin Harjo and everyone else who worked on the show for making television that’s not quite like anything else I’ve ever seen before; I’m so excited to see where this cast and creative team go in the future.
—Bridget
Levi’s garden in Scavengers Reign
Scavengers Reign took me completely by surprise, both because I had seen zero advertising for it before it appeared on HBO Max, and because it’s a wholly original and engrossing science fiction epic. It’s a brutal tale of shipwrecked space-haulers fighting to survive and escape a mostly-hostile alien world populated by telekinetic salamanders, giant parasitic crabs, and other fascinating perils—so where is the joy, I hear you asking. Among the survivors is Levi, a robot that finds itself slowly changed by the planet, its circuits altered by symbiotic spores. It is primarily through Levi that we’re able to occasionally slow down and appreciate the beauty of this world, as the robot begins to wonder and even dream for the first time.
–Sarah
Big Door Prize
Did no one else watch The Big Door Prize? A perfect cast, a lightly goofy premise, a lot of teen and adult drama, a great moment of tension involving a Ferris wheel, and the long-underappreciated Josh Segarra playing the owner of a kind of weird restaurant? (Segarra was so dour, so serious, on Arrow, and I am loving the way Big Door Prize and She-Hulk let him branch out.) The whole idea here is that a weird vending machine appears and if you give it your details (including your SSN, which, no thank you!) it will give you a card that tells you your destiny. This works out for people in all kinds of ways. Also there are weird moles, and Chris O’Dowd, and I really just think you should try it.
—Molly
James Urbaniak in Oppenheimer
As my group chats can wearily attest, I’ve talked of little else but Oppy since July. I’ll be writing about the movie more in the new year, but for now, for this list, I want to give a shout to the pure joy of seeing Dr. Rusty Venture himself, James fucking Urbaniak, appearing as mathematician Kurt Gödel, walking through the Princeton campus beside Tom Conti’s Einstein. In real life, Einstein once claimed that he stayed at Princeton: “Um das Privileg zu haben, mit Gödel zu Fuss nach Hause gehen zu dürfen” (more or less “to have the privilege of walking home with Gödel”—but even kinder than that in a way that doesn’t quite translate) and it made me so happy to see him included in the movie.
—Leah
Loki Gave Birth to the Multiverse Because Loki Is a Mom
Apologies, but I’ll never stop yelling about this particular thing. So many excellent bits about the second season of Loki aside, this part had me screaming at my television. Because the Loki of Norse mythology has done all sorts of fun things, and one of those things was having a truly ambiguous gender. Another one of those things was giving birth to a bunch of really cool animals (Sleipnir, anyone?) So Loki is a trickster god and a cosmic problem and a multifaceted being, but Loki is also a mom. Unfortunately, the MCU didn’t much like those aspects of the myths, and made Asgardian culture pretty sexist, or at least very into gendered norms. And yet…
Loki goes fully arcane at the end of season two and saves the multiverse by literally pulling the cords of all timelines together, dragging them to the End of Time, and using sheer force of will to weave them into a tree (that looks an awful lot like Yggdrasil, of course). The act is clearly arduous, painful, demands every bit of his strength—and at the end, the multiverse is born. It can’t be any clearer than that.
LOKI IS OUR MOM. THANKS MOM.
—Emmet
(Spoilery) Moments from Mrs. Davis!
Jay’s Sandwich
Jay’s whole thing is that he feeds people. He runs his decrepit diner out in the desert, and any time someone stops in, he makes them a plate and listens to their sorrows if they want to talk. He gives and gives and gives. The moment when Sister TK comes in, makes him sit at his own bar, and makes him a simple TK was one of the most moving artistic moments I had this year. I had to pause. I might have cried. (I do not cry.) There are Reasons for that, and I’m not gonna talk about them. But it makes me happier than I can say that this ridiculous show went there.
—Leah
“The wings… are LITERAL.”
Of all the revelations on the delightfully bonkers Mrs. Davis, from Jesus Christ to the Holy Grail sneakers ad, this was the one that had me absolutely cackling: Nun Simone has no love lost for the universally hailed AI known as Mrs. Davis, yet even she is disillusioned to discover that this do-good algorithm, which has transformed into a modern religion, was based on a Buffalo Wild Wings app. People have sacrificed their lives, often literally, for a chance to be granted “wings” via app filter, and they aren’t even poetically metaphorical—gah, it’s perfect. And the fact that it was delivered in conversation with Ashley Romans as app developer Joy—a welcome return to television after her short-lived brilliance in Y: The Last Man—was the spicy buffalo sauce on top.
—Natalie
…Everything!
Mrs Davis is a show that encompasses an unbelievable number of things, and I was entirely in for everything: cell phone smashes, Betty Gilpin’s determination, exploding heads, Jesus making all kinds of delicious food, a screwy heist, and Shohreh Aghadashloo in a role that no one should ever spoil for anyone else, ever. Magic sneakers! Never-seen commercials! A really special roller-coaster, literally! I can’t talk about this show with anything approaching coherence, but it was the most inventive, most unexpected, most itself thing on television this year. Let Leah tell you more.
—Molly
Welcome to… Schmicagoooo!
While I enjoyed season 1 of Schmigadoon!, I couldn’t keep up with all of the classic musicals lampooned (though of course I appreciated Jane Krakowski’s riff on the Baroness from The Sound of Music), but season 2’s shift to Schmicago! was right up my musical theater nerd alley. Titus Burgess as the Narrator; Alan Cumming and Kristin Chenoweth showing us what would happen if Sweeney Todd and Miss Hannigan fell in love, then decided to grind some orphans into sausage; and, yes, Krakowski stealing the spotlight again as a gender-swapped Billy Flynn in lawyer Bobbie Flanagan. It was a smorgasbord of superstar cameos and sly winks that I was delighted to catch.
—Natalie
The Appendix to Matt Singer’s Opposable Thumbs
Opposable Thumbs is a co-biography of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. It’s one of my favorite things I read this year, and among its many great moments, singer includes an appendix titled “Buried Treasure That Siskel and Ebert Loved”—a chronological list of 25 movies that the critics championed, but that, for whatever reason, never landed with audiences. It’s such a cool and big-hearted gesture to use the last pages of this book to spotlight these movies, and I think S&E would have loved it.
—Leah
Madeline Usher’s wig in The Fall of the House of Usher
There was a lot to enjoy in Mike Flanagan’s camp horror miniseries The Fall of the House of Usher: Carla Gugino’s performance as a demonic entity, abundant references to Edgar Allan Poe’s canon, and the dramatic monologues we’ve come to expect from Flanagan’s work. But every time Madeline Usher (Mary McDonnell) stepped into the frame, her silver wig became the central focus. I cannot emphasize enough how positive this comment is. There’s a great scene later in the show when we encounter an emotional climax for Madeline’s character, and when she reaches up, we’re expecting her to take the wig off, a metaphorical shedding of the armor and chilly exterior she’s worn all season. But she just unclips the bangs. Excellent.
—Bailey
The Ending of Killers of the Flower Moon
DO NOT READ THIS BLURB IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE.
OK?
The moment when Martin Scorsese takes us to the set of a radio program (The Lucky Strike Hour, a real show from the 1930s) to show us the immediate mediation of the white supremacist terrorist murders of the Osage—all of whom are voiced by white actors—is breathtaking. The moment when he himself steps out to read the obituary of Mollie Kyle, taking us into what can only be the future from the radio station’s perspective, to show us that after everything we’ve seen, the killers outlived those they wronged, and that now Scorsese is calling himself out for being complicit in the ongoing mediation of a terrorist nightmare, is one of the greatest cinematic moments I have ever seen.
—Leah
Justice for Ro Laren and Donna Noble
You know how you watch a show that purports to be (sometimes) about empathy and decency, and then something horrible happens that seems to undermine those themes and it’s just left hanging there? Because that was how it felt to watch Ensign Ro and Donna Noble’s last episodes on their respective shows, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Doctor Who. In Ro’s case, it was always particularly painful because the show, at the time, clearly sided with Picard’s hurt feelings over her desertion to the Maquis. How could she do that to him? He had placed his trust in her, a man who never did so easily, and that betrayal was going to haunt him for the rest of his life. With Donna, it was even easier to see where the story was falling down—not only did the Doctor forcibly block Donna’s memory without her consent, but it was done on a narrative level to make the Doctor really sad.
When Jean-Luc confronts Ro Laren in the final season of Picard, it makes no difference that she returned to Starfleet some time ago and was reinstated (after a lengthy rehabilitation process that he knows nothing about). He is still angered by her actions, unwilling to trust her. And finally, thirty years after her defection aired on television, Ro gets the chance to counter this narrative… because Jean-Luc betrayed her, too. She questions his loyalty to institutions, calls him out for his entirely conditional support, tells him that he confused morality with duty. Jean-Luc may still be heartbroken by what happened, but he doesn’t have more right to that hurt than Ro Laren does. He never did and, in fact, the fault for this hurt lands equally at his own feet. And though Ro does die shortly afterward (having given Picard information essential to the Federation’s survival), she does so on her own terms—and Picard is left with the knowledge that his own pride prevented him from healing this wound a long time ago.
In Donna’s case, the ending is much happier, but no less emotional; The Doctor knows that Donna will die once he releases the knowledge in her brain and they save London together. Donna, once restored, tells him these are the best sixty seconds of her life, and dies in his arms. The Doctor tells the Meep’s forces that they were defeated—”by the DoctorDonna.” But a moment later, Donna gasps back to life, and everything is fine. Donna Noble gets her story back, her memories back, and everything that she deserves. And it happens in a snap because that’s how easy it should be. Television gets pulled together quickly and often in a hodgepodge state. It’s great to hit the Undo button now and again.
—Emmet
Grimm! (yes, the TV show from 2011)
My year began with a very weird time in which I couldn’t do anything. (Recovering from surgery is a trip.) And so I watched Grimm. I watched all seven seasons of it, all the patently absurd character twists, the shift from fairy-tale monsters to elaborate otherworldly schemes, the relationships that made no sense and the … listen, I still don’t really understand what happened with Juliette, but I’d probably watch a whole show about it. I watched Grimm partly just to watch Portland (while I was stuck inside, not being in Portland), but also because a magical procedural is a ridiculous and perfect idea. Please give me another one. Twenty-two episode seasons and all. Please.
—Molly
Dungeons and Dragons Rolled a Nat 20
There was a lot of trepidation around the original announcement of a Dungeons of Dragons movie. While the tabletop game has had a large impact on the fantasy landscape (as well as a generally improved image in the eyes of the public), its vastness in scope and generally complicated ruleset make it difficult to sell. But this movie does it justice—charming, funny, heartfelt, and imaginative, bolstered by a cast that commits to their performances (Regé-Jean Paige as Xenk Yendar and Michelle Rodriguez as Holga Kilgore come to mind). Honor Among Thieves balances introducing new viewers to an unfamiliar world with callouts that players will recognize and appreciate. There’s an attention to detail here that points to a genuine love for Dungeons and Dragons and enthusiasm for sharing that love with others. I would watch a sequel. I would watch 10 sequels.
—Bailey
THEMBERCHAUD.
–Leah
In a year full of excellent movies, Honor Among Thieves may have been the most fun. It’s hard to pick a favorite moment or character or even an easter egg—but I see you, Bobby the Barbarian!—because it all fits so perfectly together as a whole. And that’s because everyone commits to the bit. The performances are all pitch-perfect, and the characters are recognizable “types” without being cliche (okay yes, the tiefling has a predictably tragic backstory, but a sorcerer who lacks self-confidence? COMEDY GOLD!). The meta-references are clever, but never overshadow the story. And best of all, the writing is funny, but never mean or snarky—this movie loves DnD, and it wants us along for the ride.
–Sarah
Wait okay, also: “Oh, Jarnathan…”
—Leah, again
Taylor Swift Friendship Bracelets
The Swifties are a fully realized fandom. There is a plot, a mythology, layers of backstory you have to know in order to get all the references. You can analyze Taylor Swift the same way we analyze Lord of the Rings. One day someone will publish the Swiftmarillion. I’m right and you know it.
The Swiftie friendship bracelets quickly became a key element of her record-breaking Eras Tour this year, with fans exchanging homemade bracelets featuring lyrics and references with each other at shows. It’s a beautiful way to connect and share in each other’s excitement, but the cutest part of this is that the fans just…started doing this, and it spread. Taylor had nothing to do with it beyond a throwaway lyric in her song “You’re On Your Own Kid”. It’s one of the truly great parts of being in a fandom—someone does something really stinkin’ cute and it catches on like wildfire. Everyone is being creative in a way that’s relatively accessible and easy to participate in, and you don’t actually have to go to a show to participate (fans are mailing each other bracelets, or exchanging them at screenings of the Eras Tour movie, too). And it’s just so goddamn sweet, you know? (Made even sweeter knowing that Taylor’s new boyfriend, Travis Kelce, got her attention after making a bracelet for her with his number on it. WHAT A MOVE.) From what I hear, it’s spreading to other fandoms too. So get yourself a bead kit now, especially if you plan on being at WorldCon in Glasgow next year–I’ll have an arm full of nerdy bracelets to share with you.
—Christina
That Time Tech Tried Riot Racing Exactly Once and Won on The Bad Batch
A lot of great Star Wars stuff happened this year; droid bars became a thing; Din and Grogu got a house; Ezra Bridger pretended to be a stormtrooper again; Anakin Skywalker’s spirit teased Ahsoka into not dying; nightsisters were everywhere. But much of the best drama and comedy in that galaxy far, far away belonged to The Bad Batch. For most traumatizing entry, I give the award to “The Outpost,” a devastating short war film that finally breaks Crosshair of his loyalty to the Empire at great cost.
On the flip side, we had the early season episode “Faster,” in which half the Batch (Omega, Wrecker, and Tech) are dragged off by their employer Cid to a world called Safa Toma, where she has a droid pilot involved in a sport called Riot Racing. The droid in question is played by Ben Schwartz doing what he does best (self-aggrandizement via flawless delivery), but he’s offed by one of Cid’s criminal business associates who is hoping to collect money for her bad racing bets. This leaves Tech to step in and race in the droid’s stead… mostly because he’s interested and because Omega said they had to help. (You do what little-big sister tells you. It’s their only hard and fast rule.)
Riot Racing is basically Mario Kart, with added Star Wars flavor, but because it’s a bit slower and grubbier than podracing, there’s even more room for deadly shenanigans and it’s easier to see what’s happening on the track. And because Tech is incredibly intelligent—and more than a little autistic, as this season helpfully highlights—he handles the race with his usual straightforward unflappability and keen focus, while Wrecker worries at him over the comms. If you’re into competence porn, this is where it’s at. The fast and criminal nature of the sport overlaid with Tech’s utter calm makes the episode a very special kind of fun because it’s never about the tension of winning so much as the puzzle of how he will manage it. Tech’s perplexity on learning that Wrecker and Omega didn’t believe he would survive (“You sound surprised,” he says when Wrecker cheers over the fact that he won) makes the victory that much sweeter.
Is it even funnier that this occurs while the group is trying to keep a low profile and their most cautious members (Hunter and Echo) are on a cargo haul? Yes. Yes, it is.
—Emmet
Deadloch: The Greatest Feminist Comedy Crime Series to Ever Come Out of Australia
Deadloch tends to be described as a “feminist noir comedy” or a “black comedy murder mystery,” but it’s incredibly difficult to capture what makes the show so brilliant without digging into everything that happens across its eight hour-long episodes. The creators of the series called the project “Funny Broadchurch,” but it goes so far beyond a straightforward parody or wacky Australian spoof of the ultra-grim British/Nordic crime genre—it’s hilarious, but in genuinely surprising ways, while also weaving together some deeply compelling (and also very goofy) characters into its central mystery.
Set in the titular Tasmanian town, the story follows two mismatched female detectives as they investigate the homicide of a local man—at first the spoofing of conventions (one detective is a hyper-organized straight shooter, the other is a foul-mouthed trainwreck) feels relatively safe, even as it smartly calls out some of the more troubling tropes we’ve seen play out a million times (the sexist police commissioner automatically assumes the murder victim must be a woman, and seems offended to find that he’s wrong). But as the series goes on, it becomes clear that the show is operating on a much higher level—the humor isn’t a veneer, it’s the entire point: startlingly irreverent humor as both a survival mechanism and a way forward, veering from the goofy to the absurd, from endearingly silly to absolutely savage in its takedowns of everything from the casual misogyny and homophobia of the locals and police brass to the hypocrisy and entitlement of the town’s wealthier and supposedly more enlightened residents.
But even that doesn’t do it justice. I finished watching Deadloch a few weeks ago and I can’t stop thinking about—both in terms of ridiculous and amazing bits of dialogue that cracked me up and the perfect balancing act it manages to pull off, in the end. The series is likely not for everyone, but it’s brilliant, and one of my favorite things to happen all year—it’s available on Amazon Prime if you want to check it out!
—Bridget
Characters Who Are Actually Allowed To Age and Still Be Rad
Ahsoka Tano. Stede Bonnet. Una Chin-Riley. Donna Noble. Blackbeard. Captain Christopher Pike. Hell, even Brother Day. And every character played by Pedro Pascal, everyone’s favorite middle-aged adoptive dad. It was a really, really good year for remembering that adventures, stories, lives don’t end at 40, 50, or beyond.. (Am I going to note here that there are still more men getting good grown-ass roles than anyone else? I sure am. But this year, unlike so many others, gave me a little bit of hope that it doesn’t always have to be like that.)
—Molly
Everything Is a Musical Now, Dammit
It’s no secret that I love musicals, and generally wish they were in more things. And sure, sometimes we get lucky, and the world provides. Buffy has a rightfully famous musical episode, after all, and I have the Quantum Leap Man-of-La-Mancha episode to keep me warm when the winter is particularly foreboding.
But I want more, and I deserve to be accommodated for no reason other than significant complaining. (That’s not true, the real reason is that I’m empirically right about musicals being a fascinating art form to port over into every other art form. I will never stop insisting this.) It must have worked, too, by the varied evidence this year.
“I’m Just Ken” was easily one of the best parts of Barbie, and contained endless homages to movie musical history therein. The Marvels went to a planet where people sang instead of speaking, and choreographed dance breaks ensued. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off offered layers of meta-reimagining to its source material, but the final form of Scott’s original story? A musical. The Enterprise crew accidentally activates an improbability fold on Strange New Worlds, causing everyone in the crew to break into song when their feelings are running high. BOOM. Musical. I have won my debate with no one. Thank you.
—Emmet
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Those are our picks—be sure to share your own moments of joy in the comments!
