We’re closing out the first week of our best of the 2010s coverage with a question from web producer Baraka Kaseko:
What is your favorite pop culture memory of the decade?
Shannon Miller
In the very early morning of December 13, 2013, I randomly recalled a song that I wanted to download for a road trip. Knowing that I would likely forget if I didn’t act quickly, I launched my iTunes app and sleepily searched for a tune that is now a distant memory. Suddenly, the app shuttered—a common glitch with my crappy phone—and when I relaunched it, the entire interface was freshly plastered with Beyonce’s face and pink lettering against a black backdrop. She had released a brand new, self-titled album with a music video for each track. No marketing, no prior validation, zero warning, just the confidence that the world would lose its collective mind. I’m still blown away by how distinctly powerful a move that was.
Sam Barsanti
Maybe it’s recency bias, but I don’t remember anything that made me freak out like a big nerd more than Captain America summoning Thor’s hammer in Avengers: Endgame. It’s a payoff to a gag in Age Of Ultron, where the rules of who can lift Mjolnir are discussed at a party, but the fact that the significance of it wasn’t really explained in Endgame means that it was also a gift to the MCU fans who remember Chris Evans in that CG body talking about bullies and Thor losing his hammer back in 2011. Plus, it was just so rad.
Nick Wanserski
I was wary of Mad Max: Fury Road when I first learned George Miller planned on revisiting his most important series of movies in twenty years. Road Warrior was such a perfect, foundational archetype of the post-apocalypse movie, and the 2000s had such a bad record with listless reboots, that even Miller’s total involvement in the project could shake my feeling it just wasn’t a great idea. Lord, was I ever wrong. When the first trailer dropped with the lurid, operatic notes of “Dies Irae” punctuating every bombastic explosion and grimace, my heart, Grinch-like grew three sizes. And somehow, the movie managed to surpass even my very new, very high expectations. There are so many ways the film could have gone sour—from a muddled vision or external meddling—that part of the joy of watching it is seeing how it steers, seemingly effortlessly, through the flaming wreckage of roadblocks that could have stopped the film short. Whether we want to or not, the years tend to calcify us and bury us under layers of distance from things that used to ignite immediate pleasure. Watching Fury Road in the theater managed to capture that intense, electric thrill of youth, while still showing me something wholly new.
William Hughes
I’ve probably written about as much about virtual reality as any single person should—including longish ruminations on whether I, myself, am a sap for loving these digital spaces and clunky, expensive headsets as much as I do. And yet, I still remember the giddy thrill the first time I slipped an HTC Vive headset over my eyes in a Portland-area VR arcade (now defunct), and felt the world suddenly disappear, and a new one blink in. Even with the massive improvements the hardware has seen over the last 10 years or so, VR is still glitchy, cumbersome, and incapable of backing up the illusion it’s selling you in full. And yet, the sense of slipping into another world, of being on the edge of something new, was, and remains, exhilarating. As I fired arrows from nonexistent bows, slashed at virtual bad guys, stacked up purely fictional blocks, I couldn’t keep the childish laughter in my chest from bubbling up out of me. I love novelty, the sense of doing something I’ve truly never done before. My first VR experience was transformative and transportational, and I can’t wait to see where the field goes in the next 10 years.
Danette Chavez
Thanks to screener privilege and the overwhelming amount of TV, I rarely watch anything live anymore. But from 2005 to 2014, I tried to be in front of my TV, four nights a week, the moment that The Colbert Report began. I’d followed Stephen Colbert’s career from Strangers With Candy to The Daily Show to his very own pundit parody show, so you can imagine how thrilled I was to attend a live taping of the Colbert Report in March 2013. I traveled with my sister to New York, stood in line for a few hours before we were ushered into an antechamber; I was slightly delirious from a fever all the while but hellbent on getting a good seat. A stand-up comedian warmed up the crowd and encourage us to be boisterous because “Stephen feeds off that energy” during the taping. He also said that Colbert would do a quick Q&A first, and that we should ask him something we were sure he’d never been asked before. I blame the fever, sort of, for what happened next. Colbert ran out on the stage and asked us to hit him with some questions. My hand shot up, and I found myself babbling about Jimmy Fallon doing the Polar Plunge at (former) mayor Rahm Emmanuel’s goading. I then asked Colbert if he’d do the Naked Bike Ride in Chicago if invited by the mayor. We joked back and forth about the… specifics of riding a bicycle while naked, then the taping began. And in the midst of a segment on “Women’s Herstory Monthstration,” Colbert ad-libbed a bit about the Naked Bike Ride, which elicited a huge cheer from the crowd—not because we’re perverts, but because it was a callback to all of 30 minutes ago, when we were all just a bunch of strangers in a studio.
Randall Colburn
My wife and I spent two lovely, profound weeks in Japan a few years ago, wandering the streets and shrines of Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and Takayama while eating and drinking everything in sight. There were innumerable highlights—wrestling, cat cafes, and La Jetee, among them—but the most magical happened late one night in the Tokyo district of Kōenji, where we stumbled into a very, very tiny record store/bar where a young jazz trio (with their own projection artist!) was about to start playing. Considering we’d have had to walk through the band to leave, we decided to buckle in with the six other people in attendance, all of whom appeared to be diehard fans. We still don’t know the name of the group—their English was as limited as our Japanese—but the buoyant, joyous set was unforgettable. The best kind of surprise.
Gwen Ihnat
This is not as heartwarming a story as some of my colleagues’, but there’s one video I’ve watched more than any other clip this decade: Tom Holland performing Rihanna’s “Umbrella” on Lip Sync Battle in 2017. I’m a total musical lover, and here the current Spider-Man gets a chance to show off his Billy Elliot-honed dancing skills, kicking off with a version of Gene Kelly’s “Singing In The Rain” before transforming into some kind of performance turbo force in “Umbrella.” It’s just so unexpected: Under an indoor rain shower, he treats gravity like it’s not even there, balances his entire self on one arm, and ends by flipping his entire body into the air to land flat on his back. LL Cool J and Zendaya can’t believe it, and neither can I, no matter how many times I watch it.
Laura Adamczyk
I must have watched Kristen Wiig’s farewell from Saturday Night Live about 50 times when it aired in 2012. At the end of her final episode and seven years as a cast member, while Arcade Fire sings “She’s A Rainbow,” Wiig takes a turn dancing with her fellow performers, one after the next. Host Mick Jagger twirls her. The other female cast members surround her and give her a kiss. With each admiring peer, she gets a little more emotional. It’s Bill Hader who pushes me over the edge. No special move, no goofy dance—he just takes her in his arms, she buries her face in his shoulder, and he sad-smiles like he’s watching the woman he loves marry another man. She folds her lips together to keep from crying. Jason Sudeikis looks absolutely wrecked after his turn. I’m convinced every single one of them was in love with her. The whole thing is honestly beautiful, more so because such sendoffs on SNL are rare. But given how singular and memorable of a performer Wiig was, it was the perfect occasion for the show to break character.
181 Comments
Randall, your Japan story reminds me of one of mine. 2011, sitting in an upstairs bar in Shinjuku on our honeymoon listening a string trio or something. Seated next to us was a Japanese couple intrigued by Mrs. F’s phrase book. She indicated she wanted to see it and we sort of struck up a conversation with them through our Chinese waitress who also spoke American. Many rounds of sake later we had discovered they were our Japanese dopplegangers. Same age difference (16 years) … met at work … recently engaged … it was a special night in a special city.
I came here to say how it reminded me of a night earlier this year. My friend and I were having a drink in a fairly fancy bar, and a man and woman walked in. Judging by the… let’s say discrepancy between them, I assumed he was loaded. We ended up talking to him, and he turned out to be Mark Carter, owner of Old Carter bourbon. We mentioned that we had never tried his bourbons, given they’re around $300/bottle. His wife declared herself to be the Mary Poppins of bourbon and pulled out a purse filled with half a dozen bottles. They let us sample every single one, including a few that had not yet been released. It was a hell of a night.
I’m trying to give up alcohol myself, but Good Story.
That’s one of those stories that is almost as delightful to hear as it must have been to experience, and I don’t even know who Mark Carter/what Carter Bourbon is.
who also spoke American
Hey, you guys have jazz and westerns. Let the English have the language.
Yeah, that was a slip of the mind. I was thinking American / Japanese as far as where we were from. Of course we were speaking English as was the Chinese waitress.
There is that old saying about England and America being two countries divided by a common language.
The first Avengers movie.I grew up on superhero cartoons, and always wanted to see a big budget superhero team up movie. Iron Man 2 already gave me everything I wanted in an aerial superhero battle and The First Avenger was the perfect Captain America film, so the fact that Avengers was actually happening felt exciting.And they didn’t screw it up. Avengers was literally everything I have ever wanted out of a comic book movie. There was a lot of superhero fights. No brand new character used as an audience surrogate. They used their abilities and powers liberally. Lots of snark and witty banter. A story which raised the stakes but didn’t get in the way. That goddamm circle pan shot. Infinity War and Endgame are higher in my personal rankings, but the first Avengers film was just pure joy from beginning to end.
My general answer is also the first Avengers movie, but I’ll be more specific: The Battle of New York. There had been lots of great moments in the Avengers (and the MCU in general) up until that point, but the climactic battle is for me the moment when comic book movies showed that they could completely capture the grandeur, kinetic energy and anything-can-happen nature of the source material. There are so many incredible moments in that battle:-Banner’s “I’m always angry”/Hulk one-punches a Leviathan-The team circling up
-Cap calling out orders to everyone-The tracking shot of each member fighting
-”Puny god”
As superhero action scenes go, The Battle of New York is so well-staged, and pretty tough to beat. And the amazing thing is, they are just fighting a bunch of CGI nonsense we shouldn’t even care about. But we do care about what’s going on, because the action is driven by character. This would become a trait of the Marvel’s movies, specifically the Avengers ones, where the character beats shine. (Civil War’s airport battle is a master class in this.) And it’s one of those strikes against other superhero teams like the Justice League or X-Men flicks, where once the fighting starts, their personalities disappear.
There are so many character-driven moments and decisions that drive that fight. Cap protecting civilians and nearly getting killed doing so. Loki arrogantly catching the arrow (which then literally blows up in his face, as his plans tend to do). And so on. And you’re even more right about Civil War-it’s amazing that you have a battle scene with literally a dozen characters, and they all fight and interact in ways true to their characters: Clint and Nat are friends and professionals and can thus fight but “still [be] friends”; Cap shows admiration and concern for the kid from Queens; “I’m Hawkeye” “I don’t care.” Spider-Man and Ant/Giant-Man each being thrilled at being invited to fight next to their respective heroes. So great.
I’ll also give props to War Machine, the straight-down-the line military man, being frankly over the whole thing as soon as it begins, but still getting a few good one-liners. (“Tiny man is big now. Tiny man is big now!”)And on a sadder note, you have Falcon, who really just wants to be a force for good, apologising to Tony for War Machine going down, and getting a blast to the chest for it.
I’ll get even more specific, and focus on just that tracking shot in the Battle of New York where the camera pans from hero to hero. As a lifelong comic geek I was amazed the movie even existed, but as much as I enjoyed the whole movie, that one moment felt like a double splash page come to life. Other parts made me laugh, other parts were exciting, but that couple of seconds made me truly giddy and I felt like I was seeing my childhood dreams on the big screen.
You’re so very right. That was probably my favorite moment of the whole film when I first saw it (well, that or Hulk rag-dolling Loki). The genius is that, instead of Whedon trying to literally recreate a splash page on film (something that he does in the opening of Age of Ultron to lesser effect), he figured out the cinematic equivalent that would capture the spirit of the splash page but do so in a way that took advantage of the different medium he was using to tell the story.
Yes! I remember seeing the opening of Age of Ultron and thinking he was trying really hard to re-capture/top that moment, but in the first movie it was unexpected but earned and felt effortless (even as I assumed it was very complicated technically to pull off).
Comic book movies are filled with missteps as people try to recreate the comic page on the screen. (Ang Lee’s ‘Hulk’ “panels”, anyone?) The ‘Age of Ultron’ splash page shot is one of them, but the ‘Avengers’ tracking shot is an example of how to do it right. You’re still making a film, so keep the filmic language, but consider how you can translate that comic book grandeur into the moving image.
Tag on this.One of clearest memories is the night of the season six finale.Watching reactions on Twitter during the first 20 minutes as everyone can tell something big is about to happen because of the new music piece but don’t know what what is going to happen.Watching twitter for those 20 minutes until the Sept exploded was crazy to see people lose their minds in real time.
That was a cute little sparring session and all, but it’s a wet fart compared to Brienne and the Hound’s fight:
I know it’s kind of in to sort of “erase” GoT due to the last season , but the show was such a behemoth and very often exceptional that you can’t really do this kind of list without including it. It was pop culture for much of the decade. Everybody has at least one moment that made their jaw drop.(I would have gone with Danny shouting dracyrs” at Slavers Bay”. That was awesome)
Yeah. With respect to the first few years where Breaking Bad was just killing TV until its end and a few memorable highs from other series, the decade of TV easily belonged to GoT and it’s not even close. That doesn’t mean it was always “the best” but in terms of favorite specific memories, realistically, at least 1o of the top 20 are GoT.
Yea. GoT had these benchmark moments where it felt like it kept out-doing itself, which, for me, is rare to see any show to pull off. I’m used to television, even the great ones, having peaks and valleys. But Thrones kept leveling up. This was not normal. Baelor blew my mind. The Red Wedding blew my mind, and then in S5, Hardhome happens, and the show just becomes, like…God-Tier.
I still love this stupid, stupid show about dragons and corpses fighting each other! Awful ending be damned! I’m naming some dogs after direwolves!
There were a lot of big moments but the Mountain popping the Viper stopped me cold, daaaaaammmnn
This takes the cake. The best moment in the history of television:
Whine all you want… but there has never been a more stirring rebuke to a special sort of people who are always easily drawn to power fantasies, ideological thinking, absolutist black & white morality and cults of personality.‘’Dany would never harm innocents…’’
Oh, yes she would. She wanted to, in Mereen, before Tyrion talked her out of it. But don’t let that stop you from venting on D&D.
The triumphant return of Tom Baker to Doctor Who.
I squealed like a little girl when I heard the voice of my youth.
I don’t know how I never noticed until now that the other wall is covered with the interior of Baker’s control room.
The whole Doctor Who turns 50 celebration was a lot of fun. The docudrama about the shows creation and the big special with three doctors. Shame Eccelson wasn’t interested in coming back
And they waited until the VERY END for him to show up. I was primed and ready to go full on tantrum because he hadn’t shown up, but then? There he was. And all was right and good.
There are plenty that rival it, but for me nothing outright tops the “With or Without You” montage from the series finale of The Americans:The rising tension, the ambiguity, all capped off by what is for me one of the most bittersweet reveals of all time:A perfect ending to a nearly flawless series.
SPOILER: Hopefully we’ll never know (meaning I hope TA is never revisited, i.e., that the finale just stays right there), but I found myself wondering what would become of Paige. She couldn’t go back to the spy network, because it was essentially broken up and she wouldn’t be accepted without her mom anyway (AND her mom was persona non grata). She would lack the wherewithal to live life on the run, under false identities, etc.. The way I saw it the ONLY option she had was to cooperate fully with the U.S. gov’t and hope they wouldn’t go too hard on her—which would also open her up to retribution from those of the network who remained.That’s how I read her going back to the apartment and drinking: she looked pretty out of place doing so (even laughable), but you can almost see the wheels turning where she’s thinking, “Oh man, I am soooo fucked.” For Paige that’s definitely not a happy ending.
I originally wrote “one of the most devastating reveals,” but I was flipping back and forth between windows on mobile to get the URL for the second clip and Kinja refreshed, and I lost my original post. When I was typing out my response again I went with “bittersweet” instead because I remembered back when the finale first aired someone made a pretty persuasive case that Paige had chosen her own path and taken back her agency. But yeah, for me personally seeing Elizabeth’s and then Phillip’s reactions to seeing Paige was devastating—I’m tearing up just thinking about it. And it follows what was already one of the most cathartic moments in television history with Stan confronting the three of them in the parking garage. For six seasons you wonder if he’s ever going to figure it out and, if so, what will he do, and then that moment finally comes and it itself is a heartbreaker. Now I want to watch the whole series again.
I picture her eventually being recruited by Treadstone.
I figured Beloved Character Actress Margo Martindale would find Paige and get her a new assignment and cover story somewhere else in the States. What I really wonder is what happened to her once the Cold War wrapped up.
Henry. 🙁
In my head canon Stan adopts Henry. Then a refurbished Mail Robot joins the family and all is well. Until Renee short circuits “M.R.” and recruits Henry for post-Soviet Russian intelligence because DAMMIT SHE WAS KGB ALL ALONG WASN’T SHE? WHY CAN’T STAN CATCH A GODDAMN BREAK?!?
They definitely adopt Henry and he ends up outing her to Stan (whatever the actual outing ends up being). Alternately, it gets really dark and she kills Henry to avoid being outed at which points Stan realizes and kills her and/or himself.
I’m honestly curious: Has any television show risen to such a climactic crescendo as The Americans did in this scene? Everything is so perfectly timed to knock the wind out of you. EDIT: The closest competitor for me, at least in this decade, is probably the “I wanted to save the world” scene near the end of the first season of Mr. Robot.
It’s the in the class of Breaking Bad and The Sopranos as far as a build up and payoff. GoT pretty much swung and missed. There are other finales that do reach climatic endings from the perspective of character arcs vs. specific plot like Six Feet Under and, arguably, Mad Men. The Wire fizzles out and basically ends without ending. Most of the other good series that come to mind either ended prematurely and didn’t have properly planned finales (Deadwood, Hannibal) or went on so long that the original story lines had already concluded and it didn’t matter as much (most of the network shoes like E.R., The West Wing, Friday Night Lights, and whatever happens with TWD).
This song is on my iPhone and I still have “a moment” when “With or Without You” plays on it. (To be fair I can’t listen to “Tainted Love” without thinking of Matthew Rhys beating the shit out of some guy on a greyhound.)
Sideways scrolling Kinja. Genius. Instead of going down like everybody else, we’ll go right into infinity.
‘Sideways scrolling. Genius. Instead of going down, we’ll go right into infinity.’Some fools/tools believe it’s only just more useless “Pi in Sky” daydreaming.
‘Well, don’t believe in people who say it’s all been done. They have time to talk because their race is run.’ — David C. Berman [Advice to the Graduate, Starlite Walker, Silver Jews, 1994]
Ooooohh, so THAT’s why you’re focusing on the 10s, because we’re less than two month away from leaving them for the 20s.Off the top of my head (probably forgetting more significant moments) I’d say my favorite pop culture moment was the premiere episodes of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the opening season when it was still a fresh, radical, subversive experiment in TV making. In half an hour I’ll probably be back saying “Oh, I instead meant THIS moment!”
I loved CEG all the way thru (so far, still finishing the back half of the last season), but yeah those first few episodes were really a breath of fresh air. My immediate school-boy crush on Rachel Bloom and the fact that I was SURE it would be cancelled by mid-season meant I treasured every second those first few weeks. I even watched each episode multiple times and left them running on Hulu while I did other stuff, hoping to make some tiny dent in the ratings.
It was brought up elsewhere in the thread but Day of The Doctor was the most satisfying bit of nerdy fan wank I’ve ever watched.
Probably Mad Max: Fury Road. I’ve seen plenty of good films and TV shows over the last ten years, but Fury Road was the only instance in which I left that theater convinced I’d just seen a future classic that one day, I’ll tell young kids that I actually saw in theaters when it first came out. I felt like I was actually a part of something, like the people who first saw Star Wars in ‘77, or Gone With the Wind in ‘39 to ‘40.
Fury Road is the only movie I have seen twice in theaters in like 15 years. And even after watching it multiple times at home, it still gets me choked up at the emotional parts and just awe-struck by the mad audacity of the action scenes. Its an insane action spectacle that also has amazing storytelling, an emotional heart, and resonant themes, and I doubt I will see anything like it again soon (until I watch it again for the 6th or 7th time, that is).
I feel the same way about Blade Runner 2049.
Oddly, considering it’s one of my nation’s great pop culture contributions, I’d never made the effort with the ‘Mad Max’ franchise before. I wasn’t even planning to see ‘Fury Road’, but then the manbaby backlash hit and I decided to see it out of spite. It really is just an amazing cinematic – yes, I used that word! Bite me, Marty! – feat, a near flawless combination of direction and practical effects and performance.
The thing about Fury Road, is it proves that genre pictures CAN also be great cinema. I think where some take issue with the Marvel films is that they largely lack a higher purpose or motive than to spend obscene amounts of money for spectacle that revels in fascistic superheroics without a heart. I’m actually reminded of “Brave New World” where cinemas consist entirely of action driven spectaculars, the quieter, more thought provoking films done away with in the planned world economy and culture Huxley envisaged.
You look at Fury Road, and it really represents a call to a purer kind of cinema. There is a brilliant piece on youtube that examines why the action scenes work so well, and a large degree of credit goes to the simple fact that they’re composed well, and centrally oriented for spacial awareness.
And when you look at the story structure of the film, the narrative, it bears an uncanny resemblance to “The General” which is also a film about a chase that reverses itself in the third act. Ultimately, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I don’t watch Marvel films, or any superhero films barring unusual exceptions like Nolan’s films, but I don’t begrudge those who do enjoy them. I just wish there were more films like Fury Road, that revel in action and adventure and heroics, but not at the expense of higher purpose.
I agree with everything you said, but really appreciate the mention of The General. I forgot about that film and it’s on my watch list for the next week. Haven’t seen it since it came out; also just realized that John Boorman directed it.
I forgot there was more than one film called “The General.” The one I was speaking of is the Buster Keaton, from 1926.
Ha, I went through a silent movie phase in the mid-90’s and that was one of my favorites. Keaton was gold. I still think Chaplin was overrated, but he knew his crowd and worked it. Pickford and Fairbanks, they knew their stuff. Lon Cheney was the shit though. Grew up going to the Ohio Theatre and their summer movie series, which was nothing but classics, but they would only do one, maybe two silent films a season. I had to drag friends and family out to see The Phantom of the Opera and 25 years later I still get told about how great it was.
Too many to even sort through much less pick a favourite, but the end of The Leftovers and Carrie Coon vs Regina King in season two both quickly sprang to mind, along with Don Hertzfeldt’s It’s Such a Beautiful Day.
You could argue that the correct answer to the thread’s question is: Carrie Coon. All Carrie Coon.
No doubt.
Excellent excellent grabs.
Jon Stewart’s final Daily Show. Colbert’s finale was great too, but that didn’t feel as much to me like the end of an era as Jon’s.
and the final ep of “breaking bad.”
That one right there. There’s been lots of great stuff this decade, but if there is a high point, Breaking Bad would be it.
I watched both Stewarts’ and Colberts’ final shows, but the one that really got to me was Letterman. I grew up watching him in the ‘80s and ‘90s, being one of the kids I knew that “got” late nite talk shows and all my friends thought I was weird for knowing that Johnny Carson even existed. That Dave managed to maintain some kind of cultural influence over 30+ years says a hell of a lot. Plus he got the Foo Fighters to perform on his final show.
The Americans finale has already been mentioned, and it was incredible. I have no way to binge watch it here in Canada sadly, so I’ve only seen it a couple of times. Seeing it again kills me.One of the other two finales that had a profound effect on me were Person to Person, the Mad Men finaleThe music, the reveal about Joan, Pete and family on their way to Wichita, Roger finally finding happiness with Megan’s mom, Peggy and Stan, it had everything. Plus, Don writes the most iconic commercial ever.I have watched Mad Men 11 times (I’m on number 12 now) and it still makes me cry like a baby. The other is the finale of Halt and Catch Fire. Donna and Cam talking about a possible future. Donna’s amazing speech about being a woman in a male dominated field, Joe’s reinvention as a prof, the music. OK, time to start watching it again…..
I’ve just finished my most recent ‘Mad Men’ rewatch, as it’s one of my favourite TV shows of all time, if not number one. And that finale – actually, the whole final season – is just such a beautiful conclusion to the themes of the show. The characters don’t get happy endings so much as happy beginnings; they’re now on pathways where they can pursue what truly matters to them, even if, like poor Betty studying psychology as her life rushes towards its end, there’s no guarantee they’ll get there.
Honorable mentions: The opening number from La La Land, and that time I discovered Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox.
I want to say “Fury Road” because – as mentioned above – it’s one of those long-delayed, past-its-cultural-sell-by-date projects that just never works out. And then it did work out. It worked so fucking out that it may be the best movie of the 21st century (so far) and seeing it in the theater for the first time was an absolute joy. But it still only takes second place to the reveal of Thanos at the end of The Avengers. I grew up with Marvel comics (I was 14 when the original Infinity Gauntlet was published,) had really enjoyed most of the first string of solo MCU flicks, and spent most of the film’s running time in excited amazement that holy shit they were actually making it all work together. It was a triumphant exclamation point capping off a years-long project that had no business succeeding as well as it did. By the time the credits started rolling, we knew to expect a post-credits scene, but there was an atmosphere in the audience that we’d just seen the series’ peak (its endgame if you will,) that we should look forward to entertaining sequels against maybe the Wrecking Crew or the Thunderbolts. Then they threw motherfucking Thanos at us. It’s impossible to overstate how ballsy that was, not to mention how rewarding it felt. It was ambitious (you almost expect Thanos to say “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” in an Al Jolsen voice) and it also reassured existing comic book fans that the filmmakers knew they had an enormous sandbox to play in.
Wonder Woman stepping out of the trenches into No Man’s Land. My entire theater started cheering and a lot of it (including me) started crying.
It was perfection that it was WWI – almost as if it had to be set there. WW in Vietnam or WWII … too many living memories would have bitched about it. Plus the sequence had the thrill of feeling improvised, much like the other great action scenes of the decade (mentioned before) – The Highway Overpass fight in Captain America Winter Soldier & the Final Run in Mad Max: Fury Road.
Oh yeah. This is it without a doubt. I still year up every time I see that scene.
I could say playing my two favorite games, Bioshock Infinite and The Walking Dead count. How both were emotional rollercoasters that made me think long and hard about the development cycle. But I might go with meeting my big idol, Paige O’Hara the voice of Belle. Cheating I know but it was at a convention in 2016. Nicest person ever, talked for like five minutes. She’s like Mr Rogers, couldn’t say enough nice things. Best moment of 2016 by far for me.
That first Walking Dead game was really something. It hits me best in Episode 2 (“Starved for Help”), when everybody sits down to dinner…. Where’s Mark?
I played it when it came out. My cat died the day after episode 5 came out. Used to talk to my mom about the game seasons constantly. Finished the last season after her passing. What a series.
Spider-man:into the spiderverse.I hated the animation when seeing the trailers for this. I went to see it at alamo draft house with my brother and had seriously low expectations for it, and then was blown away at how great it was. This is literally the best film i’ve seen in theaters in 25+ years.
I wish I could be friends with the crowd I saw Into The Spider-Verse with. It was opening day, and the room was sparse but everyone in it was savvy and recognized everything. When the blonde first popped up in Miles’ school, I heard a woman whisper to her boyfriend two seats above, “GWEN.” When the credits rolled, everyone got up and clapped. Those were cool people, and I regret we only got to be together for 120 minutes or so.
I think Spider-verse might be my favorite superhero movie ever. It really was pure joy from start to finish for me. I was weary of the animation after seeing the trailers also, but damn did the movie put that to rest. Great comic book action, different styles for each alt-Spidey, kinetic camera work, narration boxes, motherfuckin’ Kirby-crackle on the big screen! The animation/directing/sound/music was so on point it even made the freakin’ PROWLER into a bad-ass!
The only other superhero film I’ve seen to capture the sheer love for the genre as well as ‘Spider-Verse’ is ‘The Incredibles’. That’s good company to be in.
I still have never actually seen The Incredibles, its been on my list forever. I saw recently that Netflix had Incredibles 2 and thought “awesome, they must have the first one now!” but nope. It will be something to look forward to when I eventually cave and get a month of Disney+ to watch all the Marvel shows.
I was pretty decently excited for Into the Spiderverse but nothing prepared me for the pure dopamine hit as my brain caught up with my eyes in the theater and realized that yes that absolutely was a 1 second clip from Community cartoonized for this movie.It was details like this (and just how damn hilarious and beautiful that film was) that made it exceptional
Playing through Resident Evil 5 and 6 with my sibling, before they left town to study. Not the best games, but brilliant memories.Honourable mention to Endgame, of course 😛
Gah, it’s so hard to just choose one. So I’m not going to, and will instead go with:
Twin Peaks The Return: “I am the FBI”
The Good Place – That season one twist.
Game Of Thrones – The Red Wedding.
Doctor Who – The entirety of the fiftieth anniversary special.
Jon Glaser Loves Gear – “Oh, I know, I know”
Review with Forrest MacNeil – Clovers
Nathan For You – “Have you seen this woman?”
Re: Twin Peaks. The computer I’m typing this on is named Mr. Jackpots
HHEELLLLLLOOOO!
Got a light?
oooh, Review is definitely a good choice for some of the best pop culture of the decade. I would go with “Pancakes/Divorce/Pancakes,” myself.
The reveal of “There All Is Aching” is one of the greatest pay-offs to a set-up I’ve ever seen on TV.
Yeah, if I had to choose just one “moment” the pay-off to “There All is Aching” could go toe-to-toe with Forrest triumphantly finishing the second “Pancakes” review.
I’d been feeling blue for awhile when I watched One Cut of the Dead, and it turned out to be exactly the kind of joyful, punk rock experience I needed. It’s so suffused with passion and love for the craft of filmmaking that it’s almost impossible to come away from watching it unhappier than you went in. I can still watch the trailer and get a little teary eyed.
My heart was pounding in my chest. John William’s “The Spark” kicked in. Eight movies (give or take) had led to this:
Luke and Leia’s theme from RotJ has always been one of my favorite pieces of his from any of the movies and it’s never gotten a lot of attention. He doesn’t do it very often at concerts and I’ve always thought it was criminal that George didn’t use it when the twins were born in Revenge of the Sith. So when Luke appeared and walked up to Leia and that music cue started, I lost it. The first time a Star Wars movie actually moved me to tears.
Me too. I’m in my 40’s, my son was with me, he was 17 at the time … he thought I was nuts.
omg, same. their acting during that scene just slays me and i’m a teary-eyed mess every time. you can tell that they are acting, but also REALLY feeling the moment as shared characters and also life-long friends.
I’m gonna go the other way with this, but first, full disclosure: I’m not the biggest Star Wars fan. But when it was announced Disney bought the IP, I still thought it was genuinely the worst pop culture news I could ever hear, to say nothing of the decade (it was only 2012). I knew how this was going to go, and lo behold, everything has been playing out exactly as I expected. So I admit one of my favorite pop culture memories of the 2010s was simply fan reaction to The Last Jedi.
I appreciate that. I empathize with people who don’t or won’t buy in to franchise behemoths. If someone or a group of someones harangue you into watching something, the constant harangue can become so annoying that said behemoth is already starting out in a hole. Sample argument: my sister is a music teacher at an elementary school. She’s a nut for Broadway musicals. When I found Reefer Madness: the Musical, I begged her to watch it. “Please watch this! It’s so good. Please, you’ll love it.” I gave her shit for not giving it a try. She never watched it. She never will. My begging flipped a contrarian switch in her head and I’m sad because she and I will never share a love for this thing. I’ll advocate for something. But I’ve been too burned in culture and politics to pressure, screed, or harangue anyone to do anything anymore.
I was stoked, probably one of my favorite p-cul memories was the anticipation of a new star wars movie, but once the lights dimmed and it went straight to the Lucasfilm banner rather than the old familiar 20th century fox fanfare, it just hung the first pall of many over the new franchise. not that I didn’t enjoy TFA but I knew deep down it wasn’t going to be the same.
It honestly makes me sad that your favorite moment was a bunch of internet drama that led to actors getting death threats and having to delete their social media accounts.Please try to enjoy things more.
I just can’t deny it. The drama was like “Get your popcorn ready!” And quitting Twitter is probably good for the soul, anyway. Twitter is the worst. But I hear you, and I will try. (That Midichlorian show on Disney+ looks really good, actually)
The Holdo Maneuver and the moment of silence that follows it is perhaps the greatest movie moment I’ve seen in a cinema this decade.
Galactica launching Vipers while jumping into New Caprica’s atmosphere remains the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.
Agreed. That was fracking awesome!
I was very disappointed by the Galactica finale’s ending, but the moment where the final 5 are all linked together and Tyrol finally sees what Tory did to Cally and loses his shit and murders her was the high point of the series for me. My wife and I felt the show had really been miserable and nasty to all of our favorite characters for the last season or two (including Cally and Tyrol), and seeing him possibly damn the future of both humanity and the Cylons to choke that bitch out literally had my wife and I jumping out of our seats cheering.
Seconded on Fury Road. Between initial release, IMAX re-release, and the black & chrome release, I saw that film in theaters ten times and it never got any less thrilling.Not just because I’m a fan of balls out, bombastic, gorgeously filmed, over-the-top action – I mean, I am and I love that part of it – but also because as a lifelong action fan who is also a woman, I can’t even describe how starved I was to see a character like Furiosa.
The only problem I have with Fury Road is that it came out after my mom passed away. She was a kick-ass woman, and she raised me on sci-fi and Sarah Conner, Ellen Ripley, and even Tank Girl were all a huge deal for her. As a little’un, seeing characters on screen that reflected my tough-ass mom helped reinforce that as a NORMAL THING, “your mother wears combat boots” is supposed to be an insult but it just made me think “yeah, so she can stomp your ass if she has too.” She passed away about 5 years ago, and all I could think after seeing Gravity and later even more so after seeing Fury Road was, “man, my mom would have fucking loved this.”
Dang, if we can include bits form‘Happy Endings’ and ‘Community’ on the list (though the latter really started Sept 2009) then the ‘favorite moments’ are too many to mention!
I had never heard of Rachel Bloom before Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Then the night it premiered, I saw the title on Hulu and thought “that’s gotta be terrible!” I happened to be on the AV Club at the same time and noticed they had a review. After less than a paragraph I decided to give it a chance. By the end of the cold open/”West Covina” I was in love with Rachel Bloom and found my new favorite show that I assumed would be cancelled immediately. I can’t believe we got all 4 seasons the creators intended.
Yeah, I reckon Rachel Bloom/the show owes the AV Club for quite a number of their die-hard fans, because like you I had ZERO interest in watching a show with that title, and only relented after the nonstop discussion about it in the AV club comments of all the other shows I *do watch. And then … BLAMM! … I was hooked. Fortunately Netflix UK would have the latest EPs the morning after they aired on US TV … So my Saturday morning ritual was breakfast and West Covinaaaa!It’s amazing a show like Crazy Ex Girlfriend even existed. Or Happy Endings – which I’m still missing! I recently rewatched some episodes and was amazed at how densely packed each 20minutes+ ep is with gags and throwaway lines that keep you laughing at them days afterwards. Three way tie with The Good Place for my favourites of the decade!
I will take my tiny piece of credit then also, as I was one of the commenters who insisted on big-upping the show in every comments section here! That first season I would watch every episode after work when it hit Hulu at 1am, then watch it again later in the week with my wife. Second season it stopped streaming on Hulu, and we had to use the terrible CW app, which was such a nightmare (constant freezes/commercial glitches/restarting episodes) that for season 3 and 4 we just waited for it to come to Netflix after the season ended. But for that first season I was all over the comments for each episode, and it was awesome getting to see in real time as other AV Clubbers got into the show as the months went on and I would keep getting new likes/responses on the old reviews. Going from like 5-10 likes on a comment to 50-60 or more over a couple of months and seeing others engage with the show as much as I did was great.
I could talk a lot here about movies and TV shows that I’ve loved, but really my favorite memory of this decade was playing World of Warcraft with my granddad. Granddad was a big outdoorsman. He loved hunting, camping and especially fishing. In 2010, when he was 80 he broke a hip which led to him not really being able to get around like he used to. My wife and I were big WoW players at the time (well, kinda still are) so we introduced him to the game pretty much on a whim, thinking this was a way he could get some of that exploration experience that he loved so much in real life. I didn’t really think he’d be interested, but to my surprise he really took to the game. He made a human hunter, named it after himself and spent a lot of time in game. He eventually tamed a cat pet and named it after his RL cat. His favorite thing to do was to find out of the way bodies of water and just fish away. I would often get texts from him saying something like, “I found a good fishing spot, come see it.” I would join him even though I don’t really love fishing in WoW, because it made him happy. Granddad would never do dungeons or anything like that (because “Why would I play with people I don’t know?”) but he dutifully bought and played through every expansion. I don’t think he canceled his sub even once. My granddad died in 2017, shortly after the Legion expansion came out. He had been excited about it, but soon after it came out he got too sick to play anymore. My grandmother asked me to go through his computer for pictures to print out and all that, and I found a folder with dozens of screenshots of our characters together. I like to think that somewhere in a secluded corner of Azeroth, there’s a human hunter and a cat named Percy sitting beside a quiet lake, still fishing.
That’s a lovely story. Of course it’s sad that your granddad passed away because he was a person who mattered to you, but I’m also sad he never got to play ‘Breath of the Wild’, because from the sounds of him he’d have loved it.
He probably would have. Getting to use a controller might have been a challenge though! I’m also kinda sad he never got a chance to play Red Dead Redemption 2, because that game is like everything he loved most. Westerns, hunting, fishing, rudely accosting passersby…Maybe not that last thing. But still.
Thank you for this. I’m a complete mess at work and it isn’t even 9AM yet…but thank you.
I’m glad you found some value in it. I’d like to stress that I don’t think of this as a sad story. I’m really grateful that I got a chance to bond more with a notably taciturn man before his death.
“I am the FBI.”
Brendan Frasier’s clap and laugh gif from the Golden Globes is the best pop culture moment of the decade
This is kind of a hard decade to discuss pop culture wise because thanks to streaming, what one person’s favorite pop culture moment is could come from some third tier Netflix show that only five people watch. Anyways:1)At one point having a Thursday night block of the Office, Parks & Rec, 30 Rock and Community2)Discovering Doctor Who, especially the 11/Amy Pond era (still the best)3)Realizing you kinda think Taylor Swift’s 1989 is a good album and going online to discover even the hipsters agree4)Having TDS/the Colbert Show on back-to-back- I realize that TV is littered with comics making political jokes but nobody matched those two in terms of outraged, intelligent snark. Even though I know Jon Stewart richly deserves his retirement, I still wish he was on air to help us with our Current Troubles-Game of Thrones. Even the finale. It was one hell of a fun ride when it was at it’s peak-The Americans and the Leftovers- the two best dramas of the decade-Being able to turn on the TV and to constantly feel reassured by the calm intelligence and deep decency of a President. And with it, that lack of five alarm emergencies constantly breaking out on the news every other hour day after day after day.
This is an impossible task and it’s a rainy Saturday, so…I immediately thought of GoT since no other show/film/album/book came anywhere close to claiming the amount of real estate in my brain this decade. It’s in it’s own category not because it was objectively the best at any point but there were just sooo many moments so one probably has to be my answer by default. I think of the big ones by episode in “The Rains of Castamere,” “Blackwater,” “Hardhome,” “Battle of the Bastards,” “The Long Night,” etc. If I have to pick one, I’m going to pick two: The mostly dialogless cold opening to “The Winds of Winter” and Sean Bean getting Sean Beaned in “Baelor”—the latter of which sets up the entire ride that I didn’t realize was coming (as a non-book reader) at the time. Others already mentioned The Americans finale. Others that come to mind: True Detective S1 had some great moments (especially the tracking scene). Transparent S1 was a revelation at the time. As was Atlanta S2 with some of the most memorable non-GoT/Breaking Bad episodes (“Teddy Perkins, “Woods”). I will never get over my love for Louie Anderson as Christine Baskets. Fargo, FFS. The proper answer should probably from S3-5 of Breaking Bad but there are too many to narrow down. It’s a cliche at this point, but this is certainly still burned into my brain as much as any:
My music memories were largely of the nostalgic variety (I’m old enough now that all of the “good” music already happened, you see): Pavement reunion shows in Central Park and Berkeley (followed by reunion shows of nearly all of the 90s bands: American Football, MBV, Low, Ride, Slowdive, Mercury Rev). A couple of remarkable Sigur Ros shows. D’Angelo’s come back tour. Seeing Rakim for the first time. Most of the big comic property moments were lost on me and my favorite memories are mostly of dramas. Certainly Boyhood, Moonlight, Inside Llewyn Davis, Spotlight, The Master come to mind. Harry Potter coming to an end. Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Maybe my newfound affinity for the “new horror” as a genre (Get Out, This is Us, It Follows, The Babadook, The Witch, Hereditary, etc.). Two specific memories from probably my two favorite films of the decade that still stand out vividly:
The shots of the plane gliding to a landing specifically. Related, Elio’s extended conversation with his father in the book is crushing.
You have good taste. In like, everything.
Yeah, CMBYN might be it for me. I saw the premiere at Sundance at the beginning of the year, and then saw it twice when it went into normal theatres. Crushed me every time.
Thinking back on a decade with a ton of change for me, there are really a few moments that stand out.I’ll never forget the first episode of Game of Thrones. I was working at Barnes & Noble at the time, and all of my buddies had read the books. About a year before, one of our co-workers mentioned he had the board game based on those books. As we chatted during that game he mentioned there was a show in the works. That night of the premiere, all of my friends gathered at my crappy college apartment to watch. Not all of us were fans, but we were all Nerds with a capital N and there was a definite feeling that this was a game changer. 8 years later and our stupid facebook group The Brotherhood Without Banners lit up after every episode with jokes and references. We were all in different cities and at different points in our lives, but we all reconnected for that show.Getting out of Avengers at like 2 in the morning. My roommate and I had waited in line outside of the theater for tickets (remember when you had to do that)! He was so pumped, not about the movie, but about the post-credits scene. That was the first time I heard the name Thanos and got a crash course in who he was, why he was important, and what was to come. My roommate’s favorite comic character is Thanos, so he was completely pumped.And then the theater experience for Endgame opening night. I don’t think Endgame is the best Marvel film, and I actually have a lot of complaints with the story, pacing, etc. But in the theater that night, everyone was on the same wavelength. Nobody was upset that kids were asking parents who X was and we all cheered at the same moments. A personal favorite for me was the complete silence when Cap entered the elevator in the 2012 time travel scene. The theater was dripping with anticipation. I don’t think I’ll ever attend a movie like that ever again. It was more akin to a live concert experience than anything else.
“Hail Hydra”**BOOM**
That the Cap “Hail HYDRA” scene pretty much exists to be the standing cinematic “fuck you” to the comic book arc of HYDRA Steve makes me so happy.
It really is a great moment in a movie filled with nods to comic fans.
The unsurpassably cool scene from Arrow s2 when Oliver as the Arrow and Sara as the Canary first suit up together for the first time (plus Nyssa is in it…)
The moment “I Remember You” first aired on Adventure Time, and the world was formally introduced to Rebecca Sugar.
Dunno why, but the first thing that popped into my head was Fallout 3…so I’ll go with that.
I traveled to Toronto to Rush on their final tour. Kind of a pilgrimage thing, I guess.
There are tons but Adam Sandler’s tribute to Chris Farley. I reluctantly watched the Adam Sandler special expecting nothing and was surprised at how much I laughed but when he did that tribute it was instant tears. Clearly meant for a beloved friend and not for attention. I’ve lost a lot of loved ones over the last few years and that tribute was so pure it hit my emotions big time. I’m willing to bet he wrote that song years ago but couldn’t perform it.
The world of 2010s is the world of pop culture fragmentation. You only see this movie if you subscribe to this service, you only see that TV series if you subscribe to that service. That hit radio program only shows up on a for-pay channel. In 1983 virtually all of America watched ‘The Thorn Birds’. In 2015 not half a million people watched ‘Girls’ despite the thousands of lines of copy written by reviewers about it. The biggest pop culture event for me was probably discovering the universe of ‘K-dramas’ for the first time around 2013. That’s a pretty darned ‘niche’ pop culture event but it seems EVERYTHING these days is ‘niche’.
TWIN PEAKS FUCKING CAME BACK.
Seeing the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 in theatres. At certain points all you could hear was sniffling. I was 21 at the time and it has stuck with me throughout my 20s.
Ok, I’m cheating because it premiered in 2008, but Fringe is still my favorite pop culture television experience.Although Cleverman and Orphan Black are close seconds.
IMO Fringe’s best episode was “White Tulip” and that aired in 2010, so it counts for me!
That was amaaazing (and Peter Weller!).
Peter Capaldi as The 13th Doctor playing guitar over the opening credits of the Doctor Who theme.(Remember, he was once in a punk band with Craig Ferguson…)
One of my most beloved pop culture memories: Splinter.
In movies: Marvel’s The Avengers, naturally, but the memory is bolstered by having watched the film in a theater with this weird D-Box technology, that made your seats move along with the action in the film. Thought it would be grating, but it was actually quite fun. A unique experience, that I haven’t had with anything else.
In music: I don’t know what this says about me, but hearing Adele’s “Hello” for the first time driving home one night was something that has really stuck with me. So much hype for her followup to the smash hit 21, and all that talk about her voice, or retirement, or the baby, and she comes out with one of the most epic vocal performances I’ve ever heard.
In television: My anticipation was at a fever pitch for The Legend of Korra. A sequel series to one of the best animated shows of all time? After 6 long years? Sign me up! Just off the first image released, I knew I couldn’t miss this. But I didn’t have any way of recording it at the time, (I balked at buying the season on iTunes) and I was working on the weekend it debuted. So I resorted to what anyone would: Did some sneaking, some lying, and I broke into my boss’ fancy office and watched the whole damn thing on his flatscreen.
Misc: The decade kicked off with the final season of LOST, (which I loved- SorryNotSorry) and I wanted to shout out to the articles I enjoyed from EW’s Jeff Jensen. His writing brilliantly analyzed so much. (And on the official podcast, Damon Lindelof credits Jeff for helping him get started on HBO’s Watchmen!) Also want to mention the pilot of AMC’s The Walking Dead. A year before Game of Thrones, this was as big as TV got. The television landscape was changing for sure. In games, I’ll never forget the ending to , or how much fun it was putting folks on railroad tracks (can we not do that anymore in RDR2?). And in live events, watching Shane McMahon jump off a Hell in the Cell right in front of me at Wrestlemania 32 was pretty unforgettable.
Two for me. Basically, the two most impressive, full-theater energy movies I’ve been at in the last decade.The first was The Force Awakens. I know it’s hip to hate on TFA’s marketing campaign for not having much of Rey in it at all, and to shit on JJ Abrams and his Mystery Box bullshit… but they kept that motherfucking secret of Rey being the Force-sensitive tight. My now-wife (then-girlfriend) who was up on spoilers had no idea.And then, sitting in a theater at the first show at the only true IMAX screen in New York City, we get this:John William’s Force theme kicks in, Rey’s stunned, she ignites the lightsaber, the ENTIRE MOTHERFUCKING IMAX THEATER erupted. I had literally not encountered a theater reaction like that in my time this decade. Not The Avengers with “I’m always angry,” nothing.And I wouldn’t again until Avengers: Endgame. I know Sam posted the Mjolnir scene, and — for sure — my theater erupted, but that wasn’t it for us. No, what was it for us is what we’ve been waiting for *since* The Avengers:This doesn’t quite do it justice, but it’s close. The portals opened, everyone showed up — I mean everyone showed up — and everyone knew this was what was coming from Cap. And the theater went silent. Pin-drop quiet. “Avengers… *assemble*.”And we collectively fucking lost our minds. I yelled. And I hate uttering noise in a theater.
I avoided the rush for Endgame and watched it on a Monday during matinees (had the day off). Only other people in audience were senior citizens. No one reacted during that moment and it felt like I missed out on something lol.
Same story, but my senior citizens were boisterous.
TIL that in-theater reaction videos are a thing. Also, I don’t go to the right theaters.
I mean, they aren’t really (kids, definitely DO NOT record in theaters!), but it does happen sometimes, generally for things that would make the cut for this type of article!
I know that this is a smokin’ hot take but that Mjolnir thing was stupid. If Cap could just lift it and smash Thanos with it in order to rescue Thor that’d make sense – he was *nearly* worthy in Ultron (fuck whatever the Russos say) and became worthy enough to lift it via everything that he’s been through in the films since then. But suddenly he’s able to summon it, control its flight, and produce lightning with it? He’s a superman, sure, but not a Norse god.But this bit… I’ve just teared up at my work desk watching it again, even with crappy quality and a bunch of people shouting over it.
First off, I just had a scary realization, to me at least. I have been husband and father this entire decade! You may think “why does that matter” but my pop culture consumption has been highly dictated by those facts I think, for me, getting to take my oldest son to see The Force Awakens is my favorite pop culture. Getting to see him see the crawl on the big screen for the first time makes me smile thinking about even today.
Oh I have a second. “Hulk…Smash”The Avengers in general was such a huge thing for a comic book lover like me but that line. “Puny God” is a close second.
In Guardians of the Galaxy 3, when Rocket took on Eson the Searcher single handedly. ( it didn’t work, but for a few seconds it was pretty badassed.)
“Favorite Pop Culture Moment”. I had to think for a sec, aaall the way back to 2010. It’s the Bad Romance song/video (first time I heard the song was with the video, and they’re inextricably tied for me). It MOVED me, and the video in particular SPOKE to me. I don’t know still what exactly it said, but it changed me somehow.
…
ba… by…
Shark doodoo doodoo doodoo! 😀
The entirety of Adventure Time existed within this decade, but that finale left me bawling like I was still a child.
Who wants to tell Wanserski that he’s ten years older than he thinks he is?
Deadspin being murdered for the stupidest possible reason.
My favorite movie of the decade is Inception. Favorite TV show would be The Venture Bros (the long breaks between seasons are brutal but the quality has been top-notch). And favorite concert was either Glass Animals (saw them in a 200-300 person venue and they were amazing) or Muse (have seen them many times, always great).
Twin peaks in general, I couldnt believe it was really happening
“We dug coal together.”“That’s right.”
For me it was probably listening to K-Pop for the first time after reading a Cracked article on North Korea.
The first time I watched Jordan Schlansky videos(he’s a Conan staffer for those unfamiliar). I think the first one I watched was the espresso machine incident, but I immediately watched several more. Dude kills me.
New Twin Peaks, first episode. I was mesmerized. Nothing could have prepared me for how strange & dark it was. I didn’t quite understand what I had just watched, but I knew it was something special and that what was to come after it was going to be bold & different. I was not disappointed. I love the original Twin Peaks & I am so grateful they took the opportunity to not try & repeat the past, to instead take the viewers on this new, entirely uncompromising path & trust them so deeply to go along with it (I know it wasn’t for everyone, but for me, it really went beyond my wildest expectations).
Lawnmower Dog from Rick and Morty, but not because it was the best episode of the show. The pilot was good, but it was this second episode where the show fully crystallized, setting the template for the great stuff to follow.
If I can do concerts/music festivals, my friend and I went to the second weekend of Desert Trip and that might be one of my favorite memories in general. Though I guess it’s technically the pop culture of the 60s-70s 😉 I’d seen Paul and Neil before but it was my first time seeing the other four acts and it was such a fun fest. It was also three weeks before the 2016 election so I feel like it was the last time I had any hope about the world.
a decade seems like an impossibly long time to sift through.The Snap in Avengers: Endgame“Sarah Lynn?” in Bojack HorsemanThe third run in NieR: Automata“The ArchAndroid” by Janell MonaeWye Oak covering “Mother” on AV UndercoverThe “The Adventure Zone” finale
Upvote for ArchAndroid. Janelle Monae did good, and still is, with her merging of soul, R&B, and sci-fi.
“I am inevitable.” “And I am Iron Man.”-An Anonymous Nerd
Even though it was the culmination of an event in the preceding decade (the 2009 NFL season), since Super Bowl XLIV itself happened in 2010, I’ll go with this:
I’ll second Fury Road. I went through the same cycle of “meh” to “okay maybe” to “HOLY SHIT WHAT AM I EVEN SEEING” (in the good way), and it’s now one of my favorite movies. It’s a go to for whenever I need something playing while I do needlework and there’s nothing new to watch.
In the order I thought of them:
– Crossing into Mexico with “Far Away” playing in “Red Dead Redemption”.
– Michael’s cackle on the season 1 finale of “The Good Place”.
– John Shuster’s 5-point 8th end to clinch Olympic gold for the US men’s curling team.
– Carli Lloyd’s goal from midfield in the 2015 World Cup final.
– The incredible “Futurama” episode “The Late Philip J. Fry”.
– “Limbo”. The whole game.
Into the Spider-verse. I love the Black Panther, but Into the Spider-Verse is the best movie about a black superhero, possibly the best Spider-Man movie and certainly one of the greatest superhero movies ever made. It rewarded a lifetime spent reading comics and deconstructing them, years spent hoping for representation in superhero fantasy, and a love of hip hop culture, anime, animation, mash-up and collage. All of that in a tightly constructed story that captured the verve, lovableness and quietly revolutionary nature of the Bendis comics character.
Logan, The Dark Knight, and Into the Spider-Verse are the 3 best superhero movies this century so far, I think.
Agree, with Winter Soldier in fourth place, and GotG and Thor:Ragnarok battling for fifth.
I’m a WoW player and I think the release of the Mists of Pandaria trailer was a big one for me – it was one of the first times they created “New” Lore, instead of just relying on WC II/III villains, and it had the most awesome trailer. Some of the best raids in the game, gorgeous setting, tight game play, and the omni-present tears of whiny edge lords who think Pandas ruined eberything.
I probably can’t actually contextualise a whole ten years of pop culture and pick just one moment that is the highlight, so I’ll go with the first thing that comes to mind: “A Head Full of Snow”, the third episode of season one of ‘American Gods’. I read that book every year during winter, and as excited as I was for the adaptation I wondered how well it could do matching my image of that world from so many readings. That episode got it the most right, and has some of my favourite scenes. The meeting of Salim and the Djinn alone was a masterpiece.
Deadspin.Also, fuck Jim “The Herb” Spanfeller, you turkey necke’d little dicke’d dunce.
I literally cried.
In 2011, my friend and I had nosebleed seats to see Leonard Cohen and were happy to have them. However, as we entered our section to find our seats, the usher took us aside and instructed us to follow her. She led us down to the eighth row center on the main floor, indicated two empty seats and said “Mr. Cohen would like you to have these seats.” Not sure why my friend and I were randomly chosen to not have to sit in the upper balcony, but it sure was swell. And Cohen didn’t disappoint – a true prophet was also a true gentleman who obviously loved and appreciated his audience.
Every goddamn episode of Peaky Blinders.
Randall, that set could easily have been set to an episode of Cowboy Bebop and no one would have ever noticed. I want them to play every party ever.
Watching the first Pokemon Direct on YouTube in early January 2013. Granted, it was mostly a history lesson about the games starting from the mid 90s, leading to the reveal of X and Y for the 3DS. But it was all about watching this spectacle with thousands of other people too, learning together about the new starter Pokemon instead of the non-Japanese community having to gleam this via leaks and promos. It was just an amazing feeling right then, to learn information about Nintendo’s upcoming games first-hand and simultaneously with others.
It also introduced me to Nintendo’s then president, Satoru Iwata, who headed the Pokemon Direct. I then looked online about him, reading about his charm, kindness, and love for games and all gamers. A great man gone too soon.
Mine is really random and specific, but I thought the premise of Baby Driver seemed a little too high-concept until I saw the opening scene as a teaser. The movie did not disappoint. It doesn’t hurt that I’m from Atlanta and one of my former office buildings is in the background while he’s waiting for the crew to rob the first bank. The movie as a whole is great, but the first five minutes are pure joy.
– The world only finding out about the existence of “10 Cloverfield Lane” like two months before its release- The bombshell news that Disney bought Lucasfilm- “Too Many Cooks” being unleashed on society in the middle of the night- The first “one shot” fight scene in Daredevil- My enthusiastic audience for the first viewing of “The Avengers”- The news that Brandon Routh will get to play Superman one more time 13 years after “Superman Returns”- Weezer’s performance of “Island in the Sun” when I saw them in concert last year. It was immensely cathartic – “Baby Yoda” proving there’s still good in the world and that there are some things everyone can agree on.
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