Winding down our coverage of the best pop culture of the decade, we’re turning our retrospective inward with a look back at some of the articles, essays, reviews, and interviews we’re most proud of from this past decade.
2010
January 11, 2010: “Oh, I’m chasing this guy? No, he’s chasing me.” 34 essential uses of voiceover in film
June 22, 2010: Nobody’s watching: The strange genius of the fourth season of ’Til Death | “Imagine for a second that you’ve been handed a TV show. It’s a long-running show, coming up on 100 episodes, yet it’s been off the air for almost a year. You have almost complete assurance that when this show gets on the air, no one will be watching it.”—by Emily VanDerWerff
September 15, 2010: Tasha Robinson interviews Philip Seymour Hoffman
2011
January 26, 2011: The very first For Our Consideration: 10 reasons you should be watching The Vampire Diaries | “Week in and week out, The Vampire Diaries is one of the most consistently entertaining shows on television”—by Carrie Raisler
April 19, 2011: Wendell Pierce stops by for a Random Roles “The seasoning I brought to the stew of [The Wire] was the same I bring in real life, which is that I’m such a soulful, funny motherfucker.”
May 18, 2011: Pop Pilgrims visits the church from The Graduate
May 24, 2011: The last action heroine: Why tough actions don’t always equal strong women | “It’d be easier to attach more significance to the increase in destructive dames if more of them seemed like they were written as women. But for the most part, these characters are engaged in a complicated act of ventriloquism.”—by Alison Willmore
July 13, 2011: Opryland confidential: Amusement parks, outside and in | “Just about anybody who’s ever been to an amusement park savors that moment when the family car comes around a curve on the interstate or crests a hill on the highway, and there, peeking through the trees a half-mile away, sits the top slope of a roller coaster, looking much taller and more imposing than it had been in the memory. That little peek is an essential part of the theme-park experience. It’s part of the show.”—Noel Murray
December 21, 2011: “Accept the mystery”: Notes on a quietly great year for movies | “2011 was an embarrassment of riches, full of lively, diverse, form-busting visions across all genres and around the world. And the best of them ask something of the viewer, offering rewards in exchange for an active engagement.”—by Scott Tobias
2012
January 5, 2012: Naughty By Nature discusses and performs “O.P.P.”
April 2012: Paul Feig walks us through Freaks And Geeks—parts one, two, three, four, and five
May 17, 2012: The all-time A.V. Club commenting record is set on Community’s third season finale recap (as of this writing, it stands at 223,051 comments)
September 12, 2012: Doug Ellin says he’s almost done with the Entourage movie script that we went ahead and wrote for him | There is an awkward silence. Vincent continues to half-smile vaguely at nothing to convey that he is alive.—by Sean O’Neal
November 28, 2012: We attempt the unpossible: summarizing The Simpsons in 10 episodes | “As it was with Saturday Night Live, choosing the 10 most ‘representative’ episodes of The Simpsons is a fool’s errand. How can one of history’s most acclaimed and feverishly adored TV shows—and the longest-running American scripted primetime series ever—be distilled into five hours?”—by Kyle Ryan
2013
February 22, 2013: Daniel Knauf tells us his plan for the end of Carnivàle
April 18, 2013: Why white critics’ fear of engaging Tyler Perry is stifling honest debate | “Temptation isn’t the first of Perry’s films with a jaw-droppingly offensive subtext, it just has a specific jaw-droppingly offensive subtext that makes white critics feel like they’re on solid enough ground to read Perry the riot act.”—by Joshua Alston
August 12, 2013: What happens when you win The Price Is Right? | “Everyone, at some point in life, has watched The Price Is Right and wondered, ‘What would I do if I won the Showcase?’ Andrea Schwartz actually knows.”—by Marah Eakin
September 29, 2013: Donna Bowman recaps the finale of the best show of the decade | “When Walt pounded the window of that stolen car with his fist, causing the snow to fall away, it was like the Fonz thumping the jukebox: a moment of supreme efficacy, endorsed by the universe. That’s what I wanted, one last time. And there it is. I’m grateful. Now I can say goodbye.”—by Donna Bowman
October 7, 2013: Christopher Plummer tells Will Harris about the greatest piece of direction he ever received
2014
January 27, 2014: My So-Called Life set the path all teen shows would follow | “My So-Called Life felt utterly and completely unique when it aired, and it feels utterly and completely unique now; if this show somehow found its way onto the schedule in the fall of 2014, it would almost certainly be just as hailed as it was in 1994, and it would almost certainly feel as fresh as it did then.”—by Emily VanDerWerff
March 10, 2014: Praise Helix: The strange mythology of a crowdsourced Pokémon game | “For those who remain uninitiated in the cult of the Helix, Twitch Plays Pokémon is a crowdsourced approach to Nintendo’s classic monster-collecting role-playing game.”—by Sam Barsanti
April 20, 2014: Rape of Thrones | “It’s hard to shake the idea that Game Of Thrones, the show, doesn’t see a problem with pushing a scene from complicated, consensual sex to outright rape.”—by Sonia Saraiya
October 20, 2014: Fake deaths, cheap resurrections, and dealing with real grief | “The point of the Orpheus myth is that Orpheus fails. He does everything he can, moves heaven and Earth, and in the end Eurydice stays dead. So when a man in fiction (and it is almost always a man, because there’s nothing as good for motivating a male character like killing off the woman he loves) earns his beloved’s resurrection through hard work or good deeds, it’s a slap in the face to all of us in the real world who would give anything and everything to have the people we need back.”—by William Hughes
November 12, 2014: Sesame Street is the perfect TV show | “Entertainment and education are forces that should seemingly pull in opposite directions, yet the show makes them work in concert, moving toward a common goal. Sesame Street’s longevity and enduring appeal speak less to what television wasn’t doing in 1961 and more to what TV could do in 1968, 1983, and today.”—by Erik Adams
2015
January 15, 2015: We run down the best sitcom episodes of the last 25 years, parts one and two
March 12, 2015: Terry Pratchett was fantasy fiction’s Kurt Vonnegut, not its Douglas Adams | “To be fair, Pratchett’s first few Discworld novels, The Colour Of Magic and The Light Fantastic, show their Hitchhiker’s influences proudly, especially in their amoral, cowardly hero, the failed wizard Rincewind.”—by William Hughes
May 3, 2015: The 28-hour Marvel Marathon nearly cost our writer his sanity | “When you’re dealing with a room full of people who have all paid about $70 for the privilege of sitting through over a day’s worth of superhero movies, one after the other, with only Junior Mints and 40 oz. Coca-Colas to sustain them, the idea of “sane people” has to be recalibrated. We are not sane people. We are Marvel people.”—by Alex McLevy
June 24, 2015: The good, the bad, and the decadent: Behind the scenes of our weirdest E3 meetings | “The experience of covering gaming’s annual spectacle is rarely that straightforward.”—by Matt Gerardi and Ryan Smith
July 27, 2015: Dear Mongrel Media: No, I didn’t call your shitty movie a “comedic masterstroke” | “You owe me an apology. Sorry to just come right out and say it, but I really don’t know how else to proceed. You know what you’ve done. Isn’t it time to come clean and make amends?”—by A.A. Dowd
October 15, 2015: Nathan For You’s star confronts the A.V. Club mom who scorned him | “Rather than a typical interview, Fielder wanted me to moderate a conversation between him and my mom. His goal: convince Mom to like him.”—by John Teti
2016
January 29, 2016: A History Of Violence begins with one incredible car chase | “Even though Bullitt’s famous car chase only arrives two thirds of the way through and doesn’t have that much of an impact on its plot, it’s the part of the movie that everyone remembers. That’s no accident. It seems like McQueen had that scene in mind when he started putting it together.”—by Tom Breihan
February 12, 2016: The best love stories on TV are between two women | “As women started to run their own shows and gained a foothold in the writers’ room, television shows stopped seeing their female characters as wives and mothers, and started portraying them as fully fledged characters, with their own inner lives that needed to be fleshed out and made whole. A best friend, not necessarily a man, is what made these women complete.”—by Molly Eichel
April 28, 2016: Beyoncé’s Lemonade isn’t a breakup album, it’s a black album | “While many of Beyoncé’s earlier feminist anthems walked right up to the line of a specifically black experience—‘7/11,’ ‘Feeling Myself,’ ‘Flawless’—Lemonade wants you to know the line has been crossed and you’ve been offered a rare glimpse to the other side.”—by Ashley Ray-Harris
July 8, 2016: Stop jizzing all over journalism | “Ladies, what the fuck. National female voices like Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren and Ruth Bader Ginsburg appear stronger than ever. At the same time, personality journalism appears to be gazing longingly backwards toward an era full of Playboy bunnies and Stepford wives.”—The A.V. Club
October 5, 2016: Elvira on her date with Elvis and the fish recipe she got from Vincent Price. | “At this point, Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark needs no introduction… But not as many people know Cassandra Peterson, the former Las Vegas showgirl who co-created the punk-influenced, pun-loving vampire Valley girl for a local Los Angeles TV station and grew the character into a multi-decade, worldwide media empire.”—by Katie Rife
November 9, 2016: The internet is not funny | “There is mourning to do. There is a reckoning to be had, for the media, for voters, for our government, and for our education system. The next four years, like the previous 25, will be incredibly ugly on the internet. But with luck, and effort, they can also be productive.”—by Clayton Purdom
November 28, 2016: My Girl delivered death in an unbearably precocious package | “A more realistic depiction of illness, death, and change might have been too much for its young audience—though only the most innocuous of films would settle for as rosy an ending as My Girl does.”—by Laura Adamczyk
2017
March 30, 2017: America’s gangland: How Chicago became a cultural capital of crime | “The city with a fiery creation myth grew into a blue-collar metropolis with the help of oily, feudal political machines and assorted local species of crook, leaving a deep, ugly legacy.”—by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
March 31, 2017: “A great time to be alive and own a guitar”: Chicago’s 1990s alt-rock explosion | “For a brief period in the mid-’90s, the city famous for blues but not much in the way of rock was swarmed by A&R reps looking for talent to sign.”—by Gwen Ihnat
July 18, 2017: George Romero didn’t just invent the zombie movie, he changed filmmaking forever | “To merely call Romero the father of the modern zombie, as immense of a contribution as that is, is to underestimate his influence. In fact, Romero himself would tell any interviewer who asked throughout his career that he was capable of more than undead mayhem.”—by Katie Rife
August 15, 2017: You can’t take a picture of this, it’s already gone | “There’s a therapeutic quality to pop culture that’s often glossed over, but is very real. It can be escapist, obviously, but it’s also cathartic, allowing us to confront our fears by watching made-up people deal with them instead.”—by Sean O’Neal
August 21, 2017: Joss Whedon was never a feminist | “A lot of us trusted Whedon and his characters and, yes, even his performative feminism. His work has plenty of male gaze and women in refrigerators and some narratively pointless rape scenes—it’s all right there, in hundreds of hours of television and film—but boy, it sure is a lot more comfortable to listen to a guy tell you he’s a feminist than listen to a lot of women telling you he’s not.”—by Laura M. Browning
September 21, 2017: The good places: The uncommonly decent TV worlds of Michael Schur | “The good places in the Michael Schur catalogue aren’t impenetrable fortresses, and the shows that are set there aren’t guaranteed escapes from the demons, the cranks, or the racist cops that populate our world. But even at the bottom of the deepest, darkest pit, there’s bound to be sincerity, emotion, and honesty.”—by Erik Adams
October 5, 2017: We rank the 35 best science-fiction movies since Blade Runner
October 23, 2017: Exploring the legacy of Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes with Open Mike Eagle
2018
April 13, 2018: Something Borrowed and the phenomenon of rom-coms that hate women | “Like a lot of rom-coms made between 2000 and 2012, there’s a soulless, factory-produced quality to Something Borrowed.”—by Caroline Siede
April 13, 2018: Here’s a look at the Chicago city block that Hollywood loves to destroy
June 9, 2018: For the women of Claws, time’s been up | “Studies continue to show that there’s a disproportionately low number of well-rounded women characters on TV, which is why Claws’ five female leads and their distinct personalities are groundbreaking.”—by Danette Chavez
July 26, 2018: Our picks for the 50 greatest special effects movies of all time
October 8, 2018: Another Star Is Born: Why Hollywood keeps returning to this tragic Cinderella story | “[A Star Is Born is] a classic story with many elements of myth, but Cooper improved on the preceding 1976 version with vulnerable performances and dialogue that seems almost improvisational, and more intimate.”—by Gwen Ihnat
October 10, 2018: Beyond the joint, past the pipe: The fanciest new ways to get high in the year 2018 | “Welcome to the world of smoking pot in 2018.”—by Alex McLevy
October 31, 2018: The 35 greatest horror games of all time | “The A.V. Club’s trip through the history of horror games found endless tensions to unpack: playability versus difficulty, spooky-fun versus truly terrifying, historical importance versus modern appeal.”
2019
March 7, 2019: The Passion Of The Christ was the blunt-force weapon evangelicals were looking for | “It’s true, especially in hindsight, that The Passion wasn’t a recruitment tool so much as it was a weapon of reaffirmation, one that tapped into wells of emotion that many Christians weren’t finding at church.”—by Randall Colburn
April 7, 2019: A beginner’s guide to 40 years of robots, rivals, and sci-fi pacifism from Mobile Suit Gundam | “Since the original show launched, the Gundam brand has raked in money from video games and model kits, all while Japanese animation studio Sunrise has continued to crank out over a dozen sequels and spin-off shows.”—by Sam Barsanti
May 14, 2019: An all-time 11 Questions from director Werner Herzog, who never looks at himself in the mirror, but can catch a trout with his bare hands
June 3, 2019: Kick off Pride Month with The A.V. Club’s queer country playlist | “There is no singular ‘queer country’ movement, but rather a robust, sonically (if not racially) diverse group of artists pursuing paths that either directly align or occasionally intersect with country-western sounds.”—by Kelsey J. Waite
July 25, 2019: Niecy Nash on DMing her way to an Emmy-nominated role and why her Reno baby hairs were vital | “Before becoming Florida’s premier manicurist-slash-crime boss on TNT’s Claws, Niecy Nash was a mainstay within the comedy landscape.”—by Shannon Miller
August 6, 2019: 1999 was Cash Money’s turn to shine | “With all due respect to Death Row, no rap record label has ever consolidated and celebrated its power the way Cash Money Records did in the final year of the 20th century.”—by Marty Sartini Garner
September 5, 2019: Re-reading Stephen King’s It and confronting my own personal Derry | “What the book understood is that childhood can be a nightmare even if you’re not being stalked by an immortal fear monster.”—by A.A. Dowd
October 16, 2019: From Selena to Undone, Constance Marie has been the matriarch of many an American Family | “Constance Marie couldn’t have anticipated it when she first made the move from dancing to acting, but she helped raise a generation of American film and TV fans through her many memorable depictions of motherhood.”—by Danette Chavez
120 Comments
I don’t have time to read all that – is there any way you could turn it into some kind of video?
Best AVC memes of the decade?-Bellona: Who?-when you someone eat it-BONG
****Faints dead away***
Those don’t even crack the top 10. For one, there’s no mention of the sweet Laurel Canyon sound…………OF COCK
Man, cancerAIDS was pre-2010, wasn’t it?
CancerAIDS is forever.
That’s a very 2009 perspective. With modern treatment, cancerAIDS can be reduced to almost undetectable levels. Side effects include gay panic, disliking Ghostbusters, and MANIMAL.
Me no mean to start with exhaustive list, only to start cookie rolling.
Dawes. Absolutely has to be this one.
Now that every writer from the Golden Age of AVC is gone, I hope somebody can go on the record and admit that the Dawes thing was sponsored content.
It was just the dumbest fucking thing and one of those moments which really made you question the judgement of management for running it at all.I mean, at the time they were shilling hard for any old shit indie band but the Dawes thing was a blatant advertorial.
And they always got snippy with commenters when called on it, like commenters were always accusing them of being paid to write positive reviews. But this was a random, unusually enthusiastic, unusually short post about a band the site had never cared about before, and that IIRC echoed some of the band’s press materials. Fess up people–it’s not like most (all?) of those Hear This articles in later years weren’t sponcon.
Then they went and only gave it a B+ when they got around to doing an actual review.
I got a Community notification for this?
*Spike Lee angrily tweets list of top 10 Jezebel memes*
DAWES
Should we still fap whenever we see Anne Hathaway?
ONLY IF YOU DO IT IN ALL CAPS.
wtf is starz lol
I miss Hormel Black Label Bacon.
Wolf Eyes!
You still look soft.
(Mastrabulates)
If you can make me laugh and call me a pretty, pretty princess, I’m yours.
The Agent name game taking inspiration from MST3K Space Mutiny was pretty good if that counts.
Best of the Decade: Anything by Sean O’Neal, Scott Tobias, Keith Phipps, Tasha Robinson, Nabin, Noel Murray, Donna Bowman, Genevieve Koski, and the rest of the OGs.
Emily VanDerWerff should be included in that list, imo.
Aside from her Girls recaps, which were horrifying.
Girls itself was pretty horrifying. But in a fun way sometimes.
It was a slow realisation that a lot of my favourite articles turned out to be written by VanDerWerff. I miss her contributions.
VanDerWerf’s Mad Men reviews were great. I oft disagreed with them, but they were well thought out.I still read them on Mad Men watch throughs.
As someone absolutely obsessed with ‘Mad Men’, I appreciated that I could find someone equally into the series whose insights I could read and engage with. (And I’ll also often go back to the reviews here during my many, many rewatches.)
Just finished watch through number 12. It’s still glorious.
Will Harris’ Random Roles. All of them.
ZMF referring to Noel Murray as NOEL BITCHASS MURPHY is still something I taunt him with from time to time on Facebook.
The fake Leonard Pierce review really needs to be on here.
Leonard Pierce predicted it in 2005.
Only one Random Roles by Will Harris and yet there’s two pieces by Sam Barsanti? Shame on you AV Club, shame on you.
The list does seem to emphasize recent years more, so a naive newcomer might think AVC is actually getting better. I would wager that 10 articles chosen at random from 2012 would be better than anything published in 2019
You know, instead of wasting time with a bet the other party is absolutely certain to lose, you could just demand money.
Why didn’t I get a Community notification for this!?
1. Kinja2. Univision3. Terry Bollea4. Jim Spankfellater5. The inexorable march of time6. Content mills7. “Pivot to video”8. “Stick to ___” (Also content verticals)9. Dumb fuckers making snide comment lists10. Kinja
I would throw our buddy Ernie from the Kinja Fan Club on there. He really helped me learn how wrong I was about the awfulness of Kinja. Extremely helpful guy.
It was the way he leavened his condescension with ham-fisted attempts at humour that convinced me I’d been wrong the whole time.
Can I just add to that list of great developments: ‘The Star Wars Prequels Don’t Deserve Your Hatred,’ by Jesse Hassenger?
You certainly may.
The comment section to that one was pretty wild, so I almost give the article a pass.
What about ‘Dennis Perkins hates SNL’? Wait, that’s more of a theme than a title of a post.
Damn hard to track down in this featureless expanse, but I always liked Patrick Lee and Nick Wanerski’s drawn FOC:https://games.avclub.com/heather-mason-is-the-only-silent-hill-hero-worthy-of-th-1798285810https://film.avclub.com/know-your-post-apocalypse-warlords-1798279832
Hey, thank you! That sincerely means a lot to me.
That rundown of Silent Hill 3 is great. I haven’t played it in a long time, but I’m glad they pointed out the character’s freckles. How many video game protagonists have freckles? That said, I’ve played SH3 from beginning to end, and their description of the plot was completely foreign to me. Either I forgot, or it’s a little opaque. However, with THAT said, I do remember the carousel doppelganger fight, which is one of the best bosses in gaming history.
Here’s to the best of AV Club gimmick commenters (mostly) past and (some) present. Here’s to Cookie Monster, who can drop insightful comments on whatever topic is at hand in the perfectly rendered diction of the blue-furred crumbly dessert fiend. Here’s to ZMF, who taught me all about ownage, and what Statham movies are and are not acceptable. Here’s to the Elegant Victorian Lady, who showed me what is and is not proper behavior, and that no matter how many times you faint dead away, what matters is how you get back up from that fainting. Here’s to Dikachu, who reminded me that even a genital-faced pocket monster had a lot to contribute to a conversation. Here’s to all of the beautiful bastards who were mostly killed by the Kinjapocalypse who I still miss every day on this website. Feel free to add anyone I may have missed (I’m sure there are many) in replies.
Leslie Knope Headlines. Damn those were good.
The entire damn Parks and Rec Reviews ecosystem was brilliant!Ben Wyatt Fanfiction, in particular
Too bad Kinja happened.
When I think “gimmick commenter”, I usually think of the “reposted comment” accounts. But if you’re talking actual writers, another worth mentioning is Nureador Viking the Third[?], who I think arrived later than most of those.
Thank you! I couldn’t for the life of me remember Nudeador’s name. His posts towards the end were a genuinely Lovecraftian short story. They were great.
BONG! on 4ever, you beautiful bastard!
Who?
There was a comments section where RepostedAvengedSevenfoldFan got into a long-running thread with another gimmick account (I want to say RepostedDailyMail?) and it was like the consummation of a glorious destiny that we were all privileged to behold.
I still think about Horsefellow and laugh quietly to myself from time to time.
All great … even better when we could post with different, made-up user names every time if we wanted for great username-comment synergy. Also, Dawes rules. CancerAids to the Kinjapocalypse.
There was a “Riker” commenter who recounted lewd backstage bacchanals from STTNG in the DS9 recaps.Cookie Monster and Golden Agouti Gerbil were revealed to be staffers.
Rappin’ Jake Sisko brought the straight fire to the DS9 recaps.
But why didn’t I get a Community alert for this article?
Internet eating sensation David Chang eating a whole bone-in canned chicken should be #1.
Oh Jesus, that thing. The photo of the burger-in-a-can was bad enough. Then they started doing videos. Which I happily watched, mainly because it was fun to see the “repurposed industrial” style of the avclub offices (my wife used to work in a building like that) and to randomly see Genevieve Koski pop up in the background.
I wanted to hang out in that kitchen with the cool kids so bad.
I wish the Dissolve had an opportunity to prolong its existence by selling tickets to visit their office and pretend you know everyone. I was in California, but I would’ve jumped at the chance to pretend I understood all of Keith Phipps and Tasha Robinson’s inside jokes. Preferably while eating a Lunchable in a little desk like a middle schooler shadowing the big kids.
I also dug that little round room that they had bands play in. And the jovial mailman who became their mascot.
How about we just present a Lifetime Achievement Award for John Teti’s Project Runway recaps…? (Future TV reviewers – here’s how you write a review) Exhibit A:
https://tv.avclub.com/project-runway-there-is-an-i-in-team-1798165829
Yeah, these are at the top of my personal list.
Also, Teti’s Six Feet Under recaps, which sadly he never finished
Pour one out for Rappin’ Jake Sisko.
Now do the best A.V. Undercovers of the 2010s. Also do more A.V. Undercovers
Everything is Free by Sylvan Esso w/Flock of DimesGlory Days by Basia BulatNo Diggity bf JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound
Shearon von Ettenwatter, ‘Refugee’
TMBG and/or GWAR.
It shows how much turnover there’s been that this best-of list doesnt include that They Might Be Giants ‘Tubthumping’ Undercover with the AVC staff singing along. It’s really cool but for awhile it seemed like they were inventing reasons to repost it
Also my favorite AV Club Undercover was the one where that indie singer took an upbeat 80s song and sang it as a dirge
I too liked Wye Oak’s ‘Mother’
That AV Club no longer exists.
My favorite is still Kate Nash singing Merry X-Mas Everyone for Holiday Undercover, but that might have been 2009.
I loved Trampled by Turtles’s cover of Rebellion (Lies)
“Just like Christmas” – Craig Finn and Esme Patterson“Fox on the Run” – The RegrettesCloud Nothings’ “Clocks” is either the best or the worst one; probably both.Gwar launching into “People who Died” at the end of one of “West End Girls” made me cry.
TL + Rx – “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”First Undercover = best Undercover.
I remember reading most of these articles, but seeing the timeline is weird. I’ve lived in five different states since 2010. Ugh.
This list is missing the incredible 2015 Tommy Wiseau interview which gave us such lines as:AVC: The Room goes to such extremes. There’s an extreme drug scene and there’s an extreme scene with all the fights. This pilot was kind of the same way.TW: I want to present that different relationship, like you have a black, you have a Chinese, you have a pregnant, you have this, you have that, et cetera.VC: There’s a gay character, too.TW: Yeah, there’s Don. Actually he’s bisexual. And you see, that’s the society way of right now. Let’s say we talk about 10 years ago, people would not accept it very openly. Because you talk about Chinese, you know, rednecks, and all this crap. We live in America, one of the good things what we have with all the people is we have dialogue. So that’s my message a little bit, you know? So, don’t be a redneck, don’t be this, but you know what? We have that. So I’m contradicting myself right now because this eventually will get better. As a whole, you know what I’m saying?VC: What happened to your other assistant, John?TW: Well, I have dozen of assistants. I have four assistants. Move on, next question. Yes?AVC: There is no John, is there?TW: Why you say such a thing? Don’t insult me right now, because the meeting is over in one second right now, okay? Okay, you leave right now, okay? Because that’s how it will be.AVC: No, but you told me that you don’t care about criticism.TW: Yeah, I did, but how do you know how many employees I have? I have in my business 12 Johns, for your information. You dig that? Okay? And if you insult me one more time you better leave. I think the meeting is over right now. I think that’s the best way. Because we’re not on the same page, my friend.[At this point Wiseau stood up and gestured for the interviewer to leave.]AVC: Okay.TW: Okay? Because it seems to me you don’t understand the entertainment business. Who are you? Tell me who you are. Who are you?AVC: I’m nobody, Tommy.TW: You’re a prick!
Kinda related, but every Will Harris Random Roles should be listed above.
The phrase “a pregnant” haunts me to this day.
I miss Dikachu
That 2015 sitcom episode artwork is so bad it goes from funny to depressing. What on earth happened that this website decided to post that?
Most bizarre AV Club moment of the decade: the obituary for AV Club commenter E. Buzz Miller who, it turns out, was not at all dead.
Rest in peace, E Buzz. You know, because it’s Thanksgiving, and there’s no need to get up early.
Embarrassing display of vulnerability incoming: Of all the nostalgic and happy and sad and angry feelings I have about this place and my involvement in it for more than a decade, it’s weird that what dominates my feelings is the yearslong catfishing that we all “got” to experience and how it genuinely fucked me up quite a lot. It’s impossible for me to think back on everything this place was without those feelings completely dominating the reflection.
“…it’s weird that what dominates my feelings is the yearslong catfishing that we all “got” to experience…”What are you referring to here?
Buzz and OperaPunk. I assumed everyone from the old days knew.
Oh, is this the E. Buzz Miller faking his own death thing?
Faking his whole existence more like.
I never really heard the whole story, but I did know that there were some shenanigans involving E. Buzz Miller turning out to be alive several months after it was announced that he had died. Or something to that effect…
http://tolerabilityindex.freeforums.net/thread/5149/buzz-miller-operapunk
Thanks for passing that info along. That’s some crazy shit…
HIpsterDBag found love for real though, right?
To the best of my knowledge, yes.
I did love that MSCL article. And I’m actually revisiting those old Vampire Diaries episodes at the moment, and yea- it was really addictive in those early days! The plot never slows down.Man, I miss the TV Club 10s, which got me into The West Wing, among other greats. In the past decade, I guess I’ve become a fan of Caroline Siede’s work, reviewing the Marvel Netflix shows and her When Romance Met Comedy series. Even if I don’t always agree, her opinions are well-argued. And this year alone she’s got my vote for the best AVC article of 2019:Avengers: Endgame
Some of the funniest comments ever were in a piece which concerned a picture of Robert Downey Jr and a young child, who burst into tears on meeting him, leaving RDJ looking quite distressed. Utterly hysterical. God knows if it still exists.
Did Nathan even go for Breakfast with John Tetti’s mom?
I got a Community notification for this?
I’m surprised this didn’t make the list: https://news.avclub.com/let-s-talk-about-the-a-v-club-switching-to-kinja-1798264810
The best part is how they said they would take notes and try to implement changes in Kinja. That was funny.
Also, there’s definitely going to be more support to help weed out spam and abusive commenters.
I also loved the interview with Paget Brewster where they dug up her old stint on local access tv.
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for Rowan Kaiser’s Babylon 5 reviews.
Question to the community: would anyone find of genuine use an archive of the Disqus comments across AV Club history (which still exist, they just have different URLs now since the Kinjapocalypse)?
Dunno if I’d find them ‘useful’ but maybe interesting.
I dunno, the article telling us about the switchover to Kinja and the comments that followed, as disqus died was a highlight.
I feel really old, that classic Dawes article was in 2009
Nope, 2011.
https://news.avclub.com/we-love-the-new-dawes-album-and-heres-why-you-should-1798225885
So I am. So why isn’t this the best of the decade damn it!
That William Hughes article from 2014 about the death of his fiancee and how it changed his perception of pop culture was absolutely crushing. Reading it 5 years later still has the impact it did back then.Still the most touching thing I’ve ever read on AV Club.
Needs more Vishnevetsky.
A shout-out to Allison Shoemaker for her heroic recapping of ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ for four years of that decade.