The Top 10 Worst Pop Culture Bits Of the Year
Everyone's doing Top 10 Lists this time of year! About movies and TV and stuff! So I figured I should too. But just one list, that encompasses everything. Everything bad. Enjoy!
10) The Hills, MTV's reality muck about TV and the sad things it does to young people, is full of faux-existential angst that's fun to write about, to be sure. But it's also terrible, terrible, terrible and worst of all doesn't seem to show any signs that it's ending, ever.
9) The Mentalist—a show about a fake psychic (he's really just super-observant!) that's a rip-off of an even terribler show, Psych—was this season's only new breakout hit TV series. It's on CBS of course. Sigh.
8) The Office kind of stopped being as funny. I mean, didn't it? Do you worry about things like: How sustainable is the credibility of the idea that this "documentary film crew" has been following these people for four years? I try not to. But, y'know, Ricky Gervais mighta been onto something with that whole two seasons only thing.
7) John Leguizamo and Jeremy Piven not knowing their lines on Broadway. They were both in David Mamet plays—Leguizamo as the fast-talkin', foul mouthed Teach in American Buffalo; Piven as the fast-talkin', foul mouthed Hollywood suit in Speed the Plow—and it was such an agony watching them struggle to find their words. Like, they're being paid a lotta money here. To not bother to learn the script is just rude.
6) Kath & Kim. Not that it's awful, that you're not watching it. It's actually kind of funny once you get used to its weirdness.
5) That Fred Armisen's spot-on Barack Obama impression on Saturday Night Live was maligned because he's not black. Yes, absolutely, the show needs a much more diverse cast than it currently sports, but Armisen's take on the president-elect is pretty damn good.
4) 27 Dresses. The entirety of Katherine Heigl, actually.
3) The nickname "Sasha Fierce" that Beyonce gave herself so she could release a double album and make more money from us. Don't get me wrong, "Single Ladies" is a bodacious song, but didn't anyone in her camp tap her on the shoulder and show her a photograph of Chris Gaines?
2) The Dark Knight hoopla. For all its pomp and circumstance, the film was really only good because of Heath Ledger's insanely brilliant and scary performance as the Joker. Think about it. The Harvey Dent plotline was featured too prominently and was really over-serious (why so?). Christian Bale's Batman growl was laughable and, worse, distracting. The city didn't look anything like what Gotham should look like. It looked like exactly what it was: modernist Chicago in late afternoon. The whole "let's blow up the other boat" climax was a groaner. And, they used up two good (well, could have been good in the case of Two Face) villains in one movie that didn't need them both. The movie was entertaining, yes. But best picture of the year material? You must be joking.
1) Everything about the Twilight freak fest that came to a thundering climax when the shitty movie (didn't pay, watched it for free online) came out last month. The books, about chaste teen vampires and the sad anti-feminist teenagers who love them, are terribly written and play into some really creaky ideas about sex and gender that are probably doing some damage to the series' obsessed kid fans. Though, you know what? I might hate Twilight most of all because it lead to Caitlin Flanagan's utterly horrifying think piece crapstravaganza in The Atlantic. Read it. Become enraged.