KATHRYN VANARENDONK: It's the end of the year a time of reflection, of reconsideration, of looking back on the last several months of our lives and thinking, Oh holy God, what did I even watch? Every year, I try to keep a list because otherwise I will simply forget. This time, looking back on that list felt more like a memory trip than usual. In particular, there were a few months when everything I watched felt about 70 percent as catchy or appealing as it should've been. There was an onslaught of Emmy-bait projects this spring (The Girl From Plainville, Gaslit, The Staircase, The Essex Serpent, Candy), all of which seemed to be straining for culture-defining relevance. And yet so many of them landed with an "eh."
ROXANA HADADI: It was a weird, disordered year. We had that mad dash of Emmy wannabes in the spring, summer sort of calmed down before The Boys and Stranger Things came back, then the fall IP onslaught hit: Andor, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and House of the Dragon. When I started drafting my best-of-TV list for this year, I had an immediate top-two slot. There was no second-guessing my choices. It was more difficult to fill in Nos. 3 through 10. There are a number of shows I liked because of their performances, but the writing felt inconsistent or raised interesting questions the narrative didn’t ultimately deliver on. Or the pacing was stilted, and that colored the whole project a certain way. The latter was the case with one of my runners-up, The Rings of Power. And while Ms. Marvel might be my favorite thing the MCU has done in a long time, it had a villain problem, in that I watched this whole show and I do not remember the villains.
Denne historien er fra December 19, 2022 - January 01, 2023-utgaven av New York magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra December 19, 2022 - January 01, 2023-utgaven av New York magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Early and Often: David Freedlander - Momentum vs. Machine The Trump and Harris campaigns battle it out for every last vote.
WIth two weeks left to go, the contours of the 2024 presidential election are clear: Both campaigns need voters who usually don’t vote, and Kamala Harris needs to bring the Democratic coalition, including its Trump-curious members, back home.While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs.
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
Can the Media Survive?
BIG TECH, Feckless Owners, CORD-CUTTERS, RESTIVE STAFF, Smaller Audiences ... and the Return of PRINT?
Status Update
Hannah Gadsby's fascinatingly untidy tour through life after fame and death.
A Matter of Perspective
A Matter of Perspective Steve McQueen's worst film is still a solid WWII drama.
Creator, Destroyer
A retrospective reveals an architect's vision, optimism, and supreme arrogance.
In Praise of Bad Readers
In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
First, he nearly dropped out of Oscar hopeful A Real Pain. Then he convinced Jesse Eisenberg to change the way he directs.
The Funniest Vampires on TV
What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
