2022 Flashback: Television

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OK, I swear I watched a lot of TV this year. I just think most of it really sucked, so I don't have a lot of options as far as episodes to praise. As a result, I'm making an unprecedented move and doing a Top 5 Best Episodes and a Bottom 10 Worst Episodes, because this is the oasis I need in my cultural desert. 

Apparently we're in a peak TV era, and I've just made the wrong choices. But sue me, nothing about The Bear seems to my taste!

TELEVISION

2022 TV Shows I Missed That I Wish I Had Seen Before Compiling This List: Our Flag Means Death, Interview with the Vampire, A League of Their Own, The Sandman, The Rehearsal, The White Lotus, Sanditon, Severance

2022 TV Shows I Missed, Don't Regret Missing, and Will Go Out of My Way to Continue Missing Until the End of Linear Time: The Terminal List, Peacock's Queer as Folk, Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin

Top Five Episodes of 2022

#5 "Yasper" The Afterparty

The premise of The Afterparty is that each person's testimony in a murder mystery is presented in a different genre, and the one that combines star Ben Schwartz and a full-tilt musical couldn't help but be the best. 

#4 "Twenty Two and You" Big Mouth

Just when you think Big Mouth couldn't possibly get any more repulsive and hilarious, they up the ante. This particular episode, in addition to being a stellar exercise in pure vulgarity, is also a pristine sitcom setup, following the characters as they explore their roots and learn how the ways their parents' lives have shaped their own.

#3 "Genie" What We Do in the Shadows

The litany of mythological beings that What We Do in the Shadows has dragged into modern day Staten Island now includes a genie thanks to this hilarious episode exploring how badly the ancient vampire warrior Nandor understands his own desires.

#2 "Kiss" Heartstopper

Heartstopper is a show designed to make viewers squee at least three times an episode anyway, but this third episode is where they really open up the show and bring in the experiences of the characters around the central couple, becoming an intoxicating celebration of queer joy in many different flavors.

#1 "Death on Denial" Chucky

Chucky is a series that has its ups and downs, but this season the proportion leaned far more heavily toward ups. This Halloween special could have just coasted on the fact that it has Jennifer Tilly front and center, in addition to some terrific cameos from her Bound castmates Gina Gershon and Joe Pantoliano as well as her real-life sister Meg Tilly. However, it's top to bottom funny as well, and provides what might be the single most deliciously over-the-top Universal horror-esque shot in the series, where Tilly's screaming face is blasted out into the rainy night on an outdoor video screen that's part of a security system.

Bottom Ten Episodes of 2022

#10 Season 1, The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window

The show, which is meant to be a parody of Wine Mom thrillers like Gone Girl and The Woman in the Window, does have funny jokes. Unfortunately, it has about one of them per episode, and the rest of the time it runs viewers through an intentionally generic and hyperbolically boring plot that chokes itself out before the end of the first episode.

#9 "Return of the Mandalorian" The Book of Boba Fett

I don't see a way to review this episode objectively, considering that it is a random episode of The Mandalorian crudely wedged into a miniseries about Boba Fett. 

#8 "First Impressions" The Courtship

Look, reality dating shows have never been my thing. But Jane Austen adaptation fundamentally are, so I had to give this Regency-inspired dating show a shot. The heroine, upon seeing the show's stately manor for the first time, immediately shares her awe that "it's just like a Jane Austen movie." Movie, I ask you! The show goes on to compound that with a variety of bizarre errors about Austenian life and Austen in general (including explicitly referencing a time period that she literally wasn't even alive during).

#7 "Asylum" Moon Knight

After a promising pilot episode, Moon Knight quickly devolved into a bunch of Marvel nonsense. This episode is where it all comes to a head. It thinks it's delivering a fascinating study in subjectivity where we wonder whether the events of the series are all in the lead character's head. What it instead has to offer is a redundant, repetitive, tedious slog through smoke and mirrors with absolutely no stakes.

#6 "A Normal Amount of Rage" She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

I thought Moon Knight was messy, so imagine my surprise when the She-Hulk pilot episode spent an interminable amount of time showing She-Hulk sharing boring chats with her cousin Bruce before darting back to Los Angeles and showing a villain bursting through a wall who then doesn't appear for another four episodes.

#5 "Flipping the Pieces" Only Murders in the Building

Forget the bizarre plotting or ridiculous visual metaphor this episode insists on hanging its hat on, this episode is the second time the series attempts to tell the story of a deaf person and falls flat on its face, assuming that having Selena Gomez loudly scream her lines would be "funny" rather than seriously puzzling.

#4 "Brave" Love, Victor

Season 3 of Love, Victor was fine, but this too-pat series finale fundamentally misunderstands what was appealing about watching the show in the first place. And I'm not just saying that because he ended up with the wrong person, I promise.

#3 Season 3, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series

Sweet Jesus, Disney+ was not on its shit this year, was it? This summer camp season tries to pull a Midsummer Night's Dream switcheroo of its romantic couplings and ends up closer to that meme where Charlie Day is standing in front of a corkboard covered in knots of red string. 

#2 "Is This Not Real Magic?" She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

In this episode, She-Hulk revealed how vigorously the writers were willing to scrape the bottom of the comedy barrel. Not content to revel in the most basic and asinine "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" comedy punchlines that they'd been relying on in the first couple episodes, they had to throw in magicians and make a couple dusty cracks about them as well. While She-Hulk was convinced it was a sharp modern legal series, it was actually a hoary sitcom and this episode bears the brunt of the absolute worst of those instincts.

#1 "Chapter 2: The Tribes of Tatooine" The Book of Boba Fett

Disney+ has been doing their best to make inoffensive twaddle for several years now, so why on Earth or Tatooine did they think this bizarre retread of Dances with Wolves featuring the Tusken Raiders would be something anyone would be thrilled by in 2022?

Best New Show: Heartstopper

In addition to just being a totally adorable high school romance, Heartstopper is a series that uses graphic elements to heighten its romance with perfect delicacy. These elements, like the leaves sweeping across the frame in the photo above, both pay homage to the story's origins as a graphic novel and spin a delightful fairy tale universe out of a fairly straightforward meet cute story.

Worst New Show: The Book of Boba Fett

This is a mind-boggling object lesson in how not to craft a narrative. The overreliance on flashbacks that informed nothing interesting about the character's current exploits (current exploits which get about 5 minutes of screentime per episode) were bad enough, but then then sending its main cast offscreen for an entire episode revolving around The Mandalorian is an unforgivable mistake, compounded by the fact that its title character doesn't speak a single word in the following episode either, which is doing more or less the same thing. It's a repulsive exercise in branding over narrative, shoving as much Star Wars as it can down your gullet with no consideration as to what might be pleasant or interesting to watch.

Most Improved Returning Show: Never Have I Ever

Never Have I Ever has always been a totally pleasant show that hasn't gone out of its way to be particularly funny. However, this season was chock-full of laugh out loud moments, showing off a sharper and much more interesting perspective and making me much more excited for the impending season 4.

Best Streaming Show Not Already Mentioned: Ms. Marvel

Not only is Ms. Marvel the least messy Marvel show of the year, it's got an exuberant aesthetic that is pure candy to witness.

Worst Streaming Show Not Already Mentioned: Is It Cake?

This reality show based on the popular meme built around people making cakes that look like real-life objects should have been a "turn your brain off" slam dunk. Unfortunately, SNL's Mikey Day strains to find anything interesting about his hosting gig and the format is just off, forcing most of the contestants not to participate but nevertheless remain sitting in a line onstage the entire time. It must be torture for them, and it feels even more tortuous to witness.

Best Returning Show: What We Do in the Shadows

What We Do in the Shadows is nothing short of a miracle, providing a blast of pure comedy with every new episode and never skimping on the uncanny or bizarre.

Best Dramatic Actor: Brad Dourif, Chucky

Dourif has always been a terrific killer doll, but season 2 of Chucky has really allowed him to show off his range, playing a variety of different Chucky personalities that show off just how much he can do with his voice.

Best Comedic Actor: Mark Proksch, What We Do in the Shadows

Colin Robinson's arc this season was weird, as he slowly aged from a baby with a CGI face to a surly teen, and Proksch perfectly captures each stage of his development in a way that would be funny even without the uncanny valley FX sweetening.

Best Dramatic Actress: Lucy Boynton, Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

Boynton takes this stock character from a not-quite-classic Agatha Christie novel and runs with it, providing a sparkling vein of comedy while also grounding the romance and drama almost singlehandedly.

Best Comedic Actress: Tiffany Haddish, The Afterparty

Tiffany Haddish is an excellent comic actress, as her breakout role in Girls Trip proved, but this is the first  major role that has really challenged her to try something outside of her Thing in some way, and she knocks it out of the park!

Best Dramatic Supporting Actor: Ethan Hawke, Moon Knight

Although the series kinda loses track of its villain, Ethan Hawke is absolutely terrifying here, especially in episode 1. Between this and The Black Phone, he's really embracing the creep factor this year.

Best Comedic Supporting Actor: Corbin Bleu, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series

While the fact that the series is having Corbin Bleu play himself as a much bigger star than he actually is feels kind of mean, he's having such a blast playing "Corbin Bleu" that way that it's hard to feel too bad about it.

Best Dramatic Supporting Actress: Andrea Carter, Chucky

This character's entire job is to look at Devon Sawa and say "no, that's incorrect," but Andrea Carter breathes such life into it that she becomes one of the most powerfully human presences on the series.

Best Comedic Supporting Actress: Olivia Colman, Heartstopper

This particular honor is being awarded on the basis of a single reaction shot, but that's how powerful Olivia Colman is. Her split-second facial expression after her son attempts to explain not breaking up with a girl because her dog died is pure gold and probably the best TV moment of the year.

Best Actor Outside the Gender Binary: Lachlan Watson, Chucky

This might only have been the case for my Seed of Chucky loving ass, but Watson had big shoes to fill taking on the role of a grown-up Glen/Glenda. But they embrace the gender fluid glamour of the characters while making sure that at any given point while using subtle gradations of performance to craft two entirely distinct personalities, making sure you always know exactly which twin you're dealing with.

Best Couple: She-Hulk and Daredevil, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

Marvel cross-promotion scores a big win here, as Tatiana Maslany and Charlie Cox prove to have totally irresistible chemistry.

Worst Couple: Dean & Nora Brannock, The Watcher

Forget the stalker, the scariest thing in this series is the main couple's complete inability to communicate. Dean is a pissant at the best of times whose only approach to a problem is to scream at it, but Nora compounds this by constantly attempting to fix their marital issues by asking a clearly stressed out and busy man to have sex right when he's in the middle of something and then getting mad that it took him more than 6 seconds to warm up to the idea.

Least Couple: Charles and Joy, Only Murders in the Building

Why oh why hire Andrea Martin just so she can compliment Steve Martin two times over the course of two episodes? Hopefully they have something big planned for her next season.

Best Costume: The Farewell Mr. Big Dress, And Just Like That

Spoiler Alert: Mr. Big dies on a Peloton in AJLT, but you already knew that. To spread his ashes, of course Carrie Bradshaw flies to Paris, dons a dress worthy of Audrey Hepburn, and transfers her long-suffering husband's ashes into an Eiffel tower-themed carrying case for the occasion. Glorious!

Worst Costume: The Versace Gown, And Just Like That

This dress is brought back into the fold via a line where a woman basically implies that it's so good she would have sex with it. Reader, it's not good. Not at all.

Best Worst Costume: The Sun Hat, And Just Like That

Another not at all good look, but this one is making a statement, my friends!

Best SNL Sketch: "Meatballs"

Sometimes when SNL goes weird, everything just goes right. I don't think I can put into words what a transcendent experience watching this sketch for the first time was. 

Worst SNL Sketch: "Kitchen Staff"

Some other times when SNL goes weird, everything goes catastrophically wrong. Heidi Gardner is having the time of her life here, and that provides something of a boost, but the idea that the syllable "lur" can be in and of itself a punchline is an idea that completely escapes me.

Best Musical Performance: "Yeah Sure Whatever" The Afterparty

Ben Schwartz having fun in a musical! What can I say that I haven't already said?

Worst Musical Performance: "For the First Time in Forever/Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" High School Musical: The Musical: The Series

Say what you want about the show itself (and I have), the kids in HSM:TM:TS are a very talented bunch. So why on Earth did the show whiff this Frozen mash-up so hard? And I'm not talking about the intentionally bad auditions they threw into the montage. This is a scattershot, strained performance that reflects just how lazy the creators of the show got in general this season. And that final thirty seconds where it builds to a crescendo might be the most unlistenable work put out by professional singers this entire year.

Best Guest Star: Yalitza Aparicio, Los Espookys

Aparicio deserves so much more than this being her first prominent role since she starred in Roma four whole years ago. But at least Los Espookys understood what they had and gave her a juicy role as the literal moon.

Worst Guest Star: Mark Ruffalo, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

I really don't know what went wrong here. But every time he's onscreen in this series, Ruffalo delivers his lines in an affectless shout so intolerable that I wanted to fall on my knees and beg for Marvel to move on.

Best Line: "Oh my god, you have such a large penis, why do you always have to bring up Yale?" Reboot

A very fun reversal on expectations for a very annoying character.

Worst Line: "If I'm you, then I've got this too." Moon Knight

Basically a cheesy motivational poster for a character with dissociative identity disorder, which is less fun than it sounds.

Most Unhinged Commercial: "Taste So Good"

This is normally the spot I reserve for Best Commercial and Worst Commercial, but when it comes to this completely off-the-wall, star-studded music video/commercial for the cannabis-infused beverage Cann, there is no distinction between those two things. It really has everything. Gus Kenworthy looking hot as fuck in a skimpy green outfit while spectacularly failing to dance? Check. Patricia Arquette drinking a Cann and transforming into Kesha? Check. Sarah Michelle Gellar making a cameo for no apparent reason? Also check. What a wild ride this is.

2022 Crush: Aramis Knight

Not to be a backseat writer, but maybe Ms. Marvel could have gone to Pakistan in episode one so we could have more time to spend with Mr. Red Dagger, huh?

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2022 Flashback: Music, Books, & Misc.

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MUSIC

Top Ten Songs of 2022

#10 "HEY IT'S BETTY" Betty Who

Betty Who does this thing where her albums randomly have songs that are barely over a minute long and have absolutely nothing to do with anything around them. This one can't hold a candle to "The Valley," which was my #1 song of 2017, but I find something absolutely intoxicating about the almost "noise music" intro where her voice is distorted into oblivion then descending into an absolutely delectable hook that drills itself into your brain just enough for it to feel withholding when the song abruptly ends.

#9 "Silver Tongues" Louis Tomlinson

As far as One Direction solo acts have gone in the post-breakup era, public opinion would have you believe it's a race to the bottom between Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson. And sure, Louis was never the best singer in the band, as the opening 20 seconds or so of "Silver Tongues" highlights, but then it breaks into a raucous yet nostalgic celebration that's almost impossibly to deny.

#8 "ghost stories" vaultboy

vaultboy is an artist who came to my attention off the back of his viral hit "everything sucks," which is a charming confection in its own right. However, "ghost stories" is a newer single that shows how far he is progressing as an artist even just months after the release of that single. In addition to providing a deliciously sassy minor key synthline that - along with the lyrics - cements this song as a new Halloweentime favorite, this is the first track of his where he's experimenting with doing something slightly more interesting with his vocals. There's more to come from him on that front surely, but it's exciting to see how far he's already gone in such a short time.

#7 "Looop Lapeta" Jay Anand & Sidhant Mago

The title track from my #10 film of the year, "Looop Lapeta" underscores the fast-paced nature of the film's plot with a propulsive and freewheeling musicality that hops from genre to genre, including dubstep and R&B.

#6 "My Kink is Karma" Chappell Roan

Is there anything more delicious than a petty breakup song? This ode to reveling in an ex's failures is a sultry, slinky track that highlights the parody eroticism of the sharp lyrics.

#5 "Rush" Ayra Starr

There's something almost meditative about this track. Despite its bouncy drum beat (and its title), it's in no hurry to get anywhere and it's the perfect chillout vibe.

#4 "God is a Freak" Peach PRC

It's been a good year for songs with lyrics that are equally sexy and silly. Peach PRC airs her grievances with the way that organized religion wields God's will as a tool for preventing people from having fun, couched in a delectable Vocoder-laden track.

#3 "Keep Riding Me" ur pretty

This song has been circulating the gay Internet as something of a joke. And sure, it's clever and fucking filthy. But it's also just a rad pop punk song that is endlessly relistenable. The fact that it's about gay sex makes it feel more like a novelty, but this is very much in the family of the playful but artistically sound crudity of a track like "WAP" by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion rather than being a throwaway shock jock novelty like, say, "Sex Tonight" by Gillette.

#2 "Charlie Be Quiet!" Charlie Puth

If there's one thing I love in a song, it's a big chorus that's painted in bright, bold colors. If there's a second thing I love in a song, it's when that big chorus uses its musical elements to drag the theme of the song onto center stage. The lyrics of "Charlie Be Quiet!" are about Charlie warning himself not to express his interest in a new lover too soon or else she'll be scared away, but the entire story is being told through the musical production, as his emotions can't help but be anything but quiet, spilling over into the discordant guitar licks and that effeverescent (and incredibly ear worm-y) chorus.

#1 "When You're Gone" Shawn Mendes

As the boyfriend of an all-time Shawn Mendes fan, I'm exposed to a lot of the dude's music. But this is his first single that really grabbed me by the shoulders and forced me to sit down with it. The way the song toys with its own structure and keeps withholding the sprightly chorus until the absolute last second is incredibly playful, and the instrumental dropout beforehand is a wink to the audience that he knows exactly how much he's messing with you. Also "slipping through my fingertips a little bit" is some A+ pop music rhyming right there.

Best 2021 Song I Missed: "Good Ones" Charli XCX

I'm a huge fan of a synth line that sounds like it can beat me up, what can I say?

Bottom Five Songs of 2022

#5 "Victoria's Secret" Jax

The thesis of this song has a point, but it should be a Medium article and not a pop single. "Victoria's Secret" just has one layer and nothing else to offer. The one-to-one metaphor of the lyrics is just plain boring and not what I want from my quasi-feminist anthems, even though this one is admittedly just a little bit catchy.

#4 "[You Made It Feel Like] Home" Trent Reznor

This song is like somebody put Trent Reznor and Randy Newman into an AI song generator and these are the uncanny, vomit-inducing results. But it gets extra points off for being featured in Bones and All and proving for the third time in a row that director Luca Guadagnino should keep his hands off his movie's soundtracks, because he will jump at the chance to slather an important scene in whiny white boy music and absolutely destroy any pathos he could have generated. 

Also, fuck using brackets instead of parentheses in the title, that's just annoying.

#3 "Mon Amour" Stromae feat. Camila Cabello

Stromae is an artist I like quite a bit, and there are glimmers of his past work here, even though his verses are sonically messy in an off-putting way. But I don't know what the fuck Cabello is even doing here, and the breakdown where she gets Autotuned into oblivion is genuinely one of the most unpleasant sensory experiences I've had all year.

#2 "Almost Too Early For Christmas" Dolly Parton & Jimmy Fallon

Now, before you say "it's just a novelty song, it can't hurt you," I dare you to click play. Dolly Parton is talented, of course, and it's nice to hear her sing a saccharine Christmas tune, but then Fallon comes galumphing in with some of the worst Autotune this side of 2007 and just pisses all over the place like a cat with chronic anxiety.

#1 "Opening Night" Weezer

Every time Weezer puts out new music I think "hey, I should check that out," forgetting that their last good album was in 2008 and even that one kinda sucked. This track, which turns Vivaldi's Spring into a saccharine nursery rhyme grafted onto "Hey Jude" for some reason, is peurile and obnoxious from end to end.

Best Music Video: "Stacy's Brother" Mad Tsai

I'm not ashamed of how horny this list has been so far, or how this video makes it 8,000% hornier. Just go with the flow and live in the vibes of this sexy modern answer to "Stacy's Mom."

Worst Music Video: "Loser" Charlie Puth

"Loser" is a solid song (though I find critics' breathless need to point out how "loser" and "lose her" rhyme extremely exhausting), but it is absolutely drowned in this effortfully "comic" video that overpowers it with an inscrutable storyline and annoying cartoon sound effects. I'm a card-carrying Charlie Puth fan, but as one of those I know very well how little he tends to shine in the video space. No, thank you! 

Best Collaboration: "emo girl" Machine Gun Kelly feat. WILLOW

2022 turned out to be a pretty solid year for pop punk, huh? This extremely catchy and propulsive bisexual anthem to a largely bygone subculture is certainly a top 5 track for either artist here.

Worst Collaboration: "Hold Me Closer" Britney Spears and Elton John

I appreciate that Elton John will participate in literally anything, but please leave me out of this unfocused scramble that doesn't so much sample "Tiny Dancer" as it does throw it to the wind and watch it gently float away.

Best Guilty Pleasure: "Nothing for You" Heartthrob

I think this pop ode to submissive bottoming is a hell of a good time, but the fact that it came out in the wake of the Supreme Court's Roe v Wade decision made too many of the lines feel less like playful exaggeration and more completely tone deaf. Great costume design on that video though, damn.

Worst Guilty Pleasure: "I'm Good (Blue)" Bebe Rexha and David Guetta

Now, this song isn't a guilty pleasure because they made "Blue" by Eiffel 65 into a bop. No, it's a problem because "Blue" by Eiffel 65 was always a bop, but this sample will make it so easy for incorrect people to say that Rexha and Guetta "fixed" it.

Best Comeback: "Purple Zone" Soft Cell & Pet Shop Boys

Although Pet Shop Boys have been around, this feels like two comebacks rolled into one. It's the '80s synth collaboration we always needed, with Marc Almond's spacy vocals floating serenely over a bed of bouncy electronica, ripped straight from PSB's delirious cover of "Always On My Mind."

Worst Comeback: "Lift Me Up" Rihanna

The curse of good artists making their worst work for movies strikes again with this new track for the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack. No album in eight years and you show up with this snoozefest? How absolutely dare you.

Best Album Cover: Mellow Moon, Alfie Templeman

OK, maybe it's a little twee, but it's dreamy and full of lush color despite being a nightscape, and I love it.

Worst Album Cover: Un Verano Sin Ti, Bad Bunny

I get it that it's meant to look this way. But chalk this design up to yet another way I fail to understand the overall thing that Bad Bunny is trying to do.

2022 Crush: Charlie Puth

Look, when you make your entire Instagram feed a series of increasingly preposterous thirst traps, I pay attention. Sorry.

BOOKS

Top 5 Books of 2022

#5 Hello, Molly!, Molly Shannon

So, it turns out some truly harrowing stuff has happened to Molly Shannon, but she handles it with humor while discussing comedy with great seriousness, giving this memoir the perfect balance of tones.

#4 Queer Ducks, Eliot Schrefer

An examination of queer sexual and social behavior in animals that is secretly an examination of the human animal and our preconceptions around sex and gender. An absolute delight!

#3 Clown in a Cornfield 2, Adam Cesare

There were several books I read this year that had storylines inspired by the January 6 insurrection, but this gory slasher sequel is the one that best uses it as a tool for sharp satire and an examination of human psychological frailty.

#2 All That's Left in the World, Erik J. Brown

Somehow, All That's Left in the World makes a romance set in a post-apocalyptic world following a superflu not impossible to read in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. That's a treat enough on its own, and the fact that it's a thrilling read with a very sweet couple at the center is just the cherry on top.

#1 I'm Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy

I'm Glad My Mom Died is the Gypsy of the modern era, using the format of the celebrity memoir to explore the inner workings of an enormously complicated woman whose very human flaws caused a truly unbelievable amount of pain. McCurdy's story could easily have been a crushing and unrewarding laundry list of trials and tribulation, but she flexes her storytelling skills like she's had decades more time behind the keyboard than she has, breathing humor and pain into her memoir in equal measure.

Top 5 Books I Read for the First Time in 2022

#5 Gypsy: A Memoir, Gypsy Rose Lee (1957)

Oops, did somebody say Gypsy? The memoir that inspired the Sondheim musical that inspired the 1962 Natalie Wood movie is absolutely deserving of the outsized legacy it has earned for itself, telling a harrowing story of growing up under the thumb of the momager to end all momagers but always with an effervescent twinkle and endlessly delightful comic prose.

#4 The Honjin Murders, Yokomizo Seishi (1946, English translation by Louise Heal Kawai, 2019)

It's an absolute goddamn shame that it took so long for someone to start translating these post-WWII Japanese murder mysteries. I know we weren't on the best of terms at the time, but art is art! Yokomizo delivers a sharp mystery that combines a Japanese period setting and cultural markers with the best of his Western influences for a delightful locked room mystery.

#3 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Anita Loos (1925)

The source material for the classic Marilyn Monroe musical, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a frothy and delightful exercise in unreliable narration. Presented as a series of diary entries written by Lorelei Lee, this is a tremendously incisive satire of the lies that people tell each other and themselves when it comes to romance.

#2 World War Z, Max Brooks (2006)

This is the third book on this list that was later adapted by Hollywood, but by far the one that was worst served by said adaptation. I avoided this book for a long time because the movie was solid but bland, so imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a deeply chilling "historical" account that was freakishly prophetic in the way it evoked the global political response to COVID. Brooks is a dazzling writer who breathes verisimilitude into every word, imagining how a zombie virus might change behavior, language, and culture within a kaleidoscope of different strata of human society.

#1 Yours Cruelly, Elvira, Cassandra Peterson (2021)

I say any memoir written by a woman in the entertainment industry should automatically be shelved in the "Horror" section, but that comment goes double here! Peterson has been through a lot of highs and lows in her career as the Queen of Halloween, and her witty takes on her own trials and tribulation are a must-read.

2022 Crush: Sean, Out of the Blue

Out of the Blue wasn't exactly what I wanted it to be as a narrative, but the lead human character Sean (pictured on the right) is by far the cutest protagonist of the year and the cover artist brought him to life very well.

HERE'S SOME STUFF THAT I DID IN 2022

Screen Rant

Hey, that job I got writing movie and TV news for Screen Rant last year stuck! I'm still doing it, but now I've written over 1,650 articles. I need a nap.

Oh, and Jennifer Tilly shared one of my articles on Twitter, which was fun! Definitely the only positive attention I've got for writing entertainment news online (never look at the comments on anything you've ever written about a DC movie), and it couldn't have come from a cooler person.

Alternate Ending

I'm still writing and podcasting over at Alternate Ending too. And I got my own official caricature!

Other Podcasts

You can catch me talking about Romy and Michele's High School Reunion on This Ends at Prom, Godzilla and Scream 4 on Fright School, and Halloween 2018 on Friendchise.

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