Month: December 2020

Remember at the beginning of this year when the big story in sports was what was going to happen in the fallout of the Houston Astros cheating scandal? It was a simpler time when people could be outraged by the prospects of a team stealing signs and signaling them to batters in the box by way of banging on trash cans — with some wild conspiracy theories that branched out from that, such as shock signals being sent to players wearing sensors on their bodies.

None of Houston’s players ended up being suspended for their actions, but manager A.J. Hinch was fired and suspended for a season and the organization faced some penalties and fines. The revenge tour other teams would go on against Houston was once considered the story of the baseball season, but being 2020 that quickly shifted to the sport trying to navigate the pandemic and, while it became something of a storyline in the postseason, it mostly fizzled away.

Still, the folks at Family Guy apparently aren’t so easily discouraged from making a joke that might be old news, as this week they took aim at the Astros in a brief non-sequitur involving a TV investigative segment on the cheating scandal that joked the culprit was simply Oscar the Grouch being on the team.

This probably would’ve landed much better back in February or something, but you have to get your jokes off when you can and your new episodes are airing, so here we are. Astros fans are surely tired of the jokes — and in some ways I think even a lot of baseball fans have moved on — but it’s never going to fully go away and this is further evidence of that.

Last week, Hugh Grant blurted out that he’s starring in a new mockumentary about the year 2020 from the creators of Black Mirror, and now, we’ve got some more details about the mysterious project including a star-studded teaser. Or at least the names of stars anyway.

Appropriately titled Death to 2020, the comedy special will be coming in hot as the teaser reveals that project is still in production, which jibes with Grant’s revelation that he only just started filming the mockumentary. But whenever Death to 2020 arrives to satirize the absolute nightmare of a year, it will be boasting one hell of a stacked cast including Samuel L. Jackson, Leslie Jones, and more. Here’s the official synopsis from Netflix:

2020: A year so [insert adjective of choice here], even the creators of Black Mirror couldn’t make it up… but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a little something to add. Death to 2020 is a comedy event that tells the story of the dreadful year that was — and perhaps still is? This landmark documentary-style special weaves together some of the world’s most (fictitious) renowned voices with real-life archival footage spanning the past 12 months.

Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Hugh Grant, Lisa Kudrow, Kumail Nanjiani, Tracey Ullman, Samson Kayo, Leslie Jones, Diane Morgan, Cristin Milioti, Joe Keery and more, Death to 2020 is the cathartic comedy event you’ll never forget about the year you really, really don’t want to remember.

While not much is known about who the other stars will be playing, Grant did give away his role when he accidentally revealed the project. “I am a historian who’s being interviewed about the year,” he said. “I’m pretty repellent, actually! And you’ll like my wig.”

(Via Netflix)

It has been a historic year for international music on the Billboard charts. This summer, BTS’ “Dynamite” became the first song by an all-South Korean group to top the Hot 100. Now, Bad Bunny has further broadened Billboard‘s horizons with his latest achievement: His new album, El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo, has debuted on top the Billboard 200 chart dated December 12 and has therefore become the first all-Spanish chart-topper in Billboard 200 history.

This new accomplishment has also broken another chart record that Bunny himself previously set not that long ago: El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo topped YHLQMDLG, which debuted and peaked at No. 2, to become the highest-charting all-Spanish album ever. Bunny’s two aforementioned albums are also two of only four all-Spanish records to ever top the Billboard 200, following Mana’s Amar Es Combatir (which hit No. 4 in 2006) and Shakira’s Fijación Oral: Vol. 1 (which also reached No. 4, in 2005).

It’s unsurprising to see Bad Bunny pop off like this, considering he was the most-streamed artist on Spotify globally in 2020. All this comes after a bit of a health scare for Bad Bunny, who tested positive for COVID-19 recently. The good news, though, is that he seems to be doing fine now, as he told James Corden, “I feel great, thank God. I already tested negative, so I’m so happy. I feel great. I feel perfect.”

As the United States began to acclimate to potential life in lockdown after the start of March, Wayne Coyne joked that he’d long shown the world exactly how to self-isolate and entertain at once. For years, the pied piper of The Flaming Lips’ fabled onstage extravaganzas had crowd-surfed in a clear plastic bubble, careening above a few thousand of the momentarily happiest people on the planet. “I’ve been prepared for a while,” Coyne captioned a photo of himself, riding a wave of countless outstretched hands against reassuringly blue skies.

“We thought quarantine was going to last a month,” Coyne admits eight months later on an afternoon in late mid-November, sitting in his 15-year-old Toyota Prius in the driveway of his Oklahoma home. “We thought this was just a moment in time, and we’d all be back to doing what we do.”

As the weeks turned into months, it became clear to Coyne that this wasn’t the time for quips — life, and especially Flaming Lips shows, wouldn’t be returning to normal for the foreseeable future. The Lips stayed home in Oklahoma City. They scrapped concert sprees. They delayed the June release of American Head, arguably their most best album in nearly two decades, until September, when its bittersweet reflections on aging out of wonder and the occasional sadness of strange trips felt timely.

But the joke slowly began morphing into surreality, as often happens for The Flaming Lips. They performed “Race For The Prize” on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert in June, the audience and the band alike clad in bubbles just like Coyne. He wore latex gloves and appeared strangely triumphant, his wife, Katy, and their toddler, Bloom, bound by bubbles and dancing in the front row. More television performances followed, as did a video for dreamy American Head standout “Assassins Of Youth.” Watching the Lips deliver a battle cry for reclaiming innocence from the grip of power and peril amid a pandemic was a balm, a galvanizing reminder of art’s ability to lift us over the shifting obstacles and exigencies of existence.

On January 22 and 23, more than ten months after Coyne’s Instagram tease, The Flaming Lips and their fans will indeed step into the bubbles for two full performances in Oklahoma City, both of which sold out nearly as soon as they went on sale. But it likely won’t be the end of this experiment for some of music’s most beloved pop tinkerers. “There have been a lot of details to figure out, and what if this thing ends in a couple of weeks?” Coyne says. “But if it keeps going, we keep going.”

We talked to Coyne, a new father and new husband, about what he’s learned from staying at home in 2020 — and how he’ll feel about pressing forward when the time comes.

What’s the best thing that’s happened to you in 2020?

In the very beginning of the pandemic, there was the fear that people were just going to be dying in the streets. We included ourselves in that. But after the first couple of weeks, that subsided. It didn’t feel like you were going to walk out in your front yard and find dead people. So we got used to not traveling and not having obligations. We’ve been lucky that we’ve been able to stay home. The Flaming Lips have been successful enough to be pretty busy since 2002. We’ve never really had a minute to do too much other than play shows and make records. It would be different to stay home if the rest of the world was still going 1,000 miles an hour, if everybody else was playing and making lots of money.

Katy, my wife, and I both just say “Yes” to everything, even though we don’t really want to — an art opening, a band, a birthday party, drinks, all at the same time. We always feel like we’re lucky to be invited, but by the time most weeks end, previous to this, we’re wishing someone canceled, because we’re doing too many things. I never like to say we were having a good time during the pandemic, because families are struggling and people are dying. But on that one level — we can’t go anywhere, and there’s nothing to do even if we wanted — we’ve never had that. You don’t realize you’re missing that element of time.

You spend so much of your life traveling. Has it been restorative to have that space and time as a family, especially with a newborn?

We would be doing everything together, anyway, like traveling to Australia with our little baby. We’re one of those families you’d see living up in the mountains, just throwing the baby on the back and climbing across the glacier.

What have you realized you don’t miss from life on the road right now?

You get used to there being no routine — waking up in a different hotel in a different city, going to a different airport. There’s a lot of time spent just getting somewhere. You’re on an airplane. You’re trying to get to a hotel. It’s fun and exciting, but you’re spending a lot of energy just getting from place to place. We had conditioned ourselves to be always on the move.

It took us a little while to remember that we can’t just go get on a plane and fly to Hawaii if we want. But once we got used to it, it was a relief not to even have that choice. We don’t realize the torture in choices. That is one of the dilemmas of modern life: If you’re not living in poverty, there’s a lot of choices. When you make a choice, part of you is glad, but part of you regrets it. You still want to know what’s out there. Most of us have found a joy now in never having to decide. It’s a little adjustment to get used to there not being anything to do — just cooking at home, watching TV. You don’t realize how valuable that kind of routine is.

What’s something you’ve learned to cook during quarantine?

Actually, Katy is a pretty good cook. We didn’t really do that much cooking out before, but we have a big grill. We do that three or four nights a week now — fish, sometimes steak. We haven’t really gone to any restaurants. If you had told me that back in March, I’d be like, “You’re crazy! How can you live without restaurants?” We’ve gotten all that time back, too. How much time do you spend finding a parking spot? Going in, waiting for food, paying? It’s a lot of time where you’re doing nothing. I don’t know if I want to go back to using my energy for that.

It sounds like you’ve found some new fulfillment in being more concerned with necessities rather than luxuries. Lots of us have, right?

Being concerned about the same things that everyone in the world is concerned about, that’s something that really hasn’t happened in my life. I’ll be 60 in January; suddenly, the whole planet is worried about the same things at the same time. That’s really cool.

Even in the past couple of weeks, there’s been the coronavirus. And we had an ice storm where, in the entire city, all the electricity was out for a little over a week. For the first couple days, it was frustrating, but again, you kind of get used to it. When the power came on, we didn’t quite know what to do. And within all that, there was the election. I remember going to bed a couple nights when I had to get gas for the generators while worried about the election and the virus. I was just very tired at 10 p.m., and I said, “This is really one of the great luxuries of life — that you are completely working and occupied until you are exhausted, and then you go to sleep.”


It’s like you’re reverting back to life as a cave dweller.

A farmer, maybe. It requires a lot of work, maintenance, care, energy, and time. You really are what you get used to.

Are you worried at all about overcoming this newly comfortable inertia when, say, the time comes to get back on the road?

No, because everyone wants to play music and make money. We’re glad to have the great jobs that we have and fans. We’d always be jumping at opportunities — not thousands of opportunities, but enough to keep you doing plenty.

You mentioned finding solidarity in shared anxiety. Given that feeling, were you ever worried that putting out a record would feel like an unwelcome distraction, that you’d be asking people to pay too much attention to you and not, like staying alive?

I like the word you used, solidarity. That is a good way to put it. The record of ours came out in the beginning of September. It was first scheduled to come out in June. March came along, and we were very relieved that we weren’t promoting a record: “Pay attention to us, and not your dying family!” We’d see other artists having an agenda, like, “Hey, my song came out!” Hey, we don’t care. We were glad not to be in that quagmire. But after a couple of months, it didn’t seem that weird. We were very glad that Netflix was still on, that we still had cable and internet. Once we got past watching headline news 24/7, we were glad to be entertained. You already know what the news is — you don’t have to watch it all of the time.

Was there the sense, by September, that people could “use” American Head? There’s a sense of bittersweet longing and a little redemption to it. Did you hope that might come in handy?

We put out quite a few songs before the record came out. We did get a sense that people were embracing them, that it felt good to listen. Steven Drozd and I are the main songwriters, and we’re worriers, anyway. We’re always worried about stuff. That’s just part of being a sensitive weirdo. That’s in our music, whether there’s a pandemic or Trump. When the whole world is a little bit more worried, we’re not so isolated. I feel like sometimes the rest of the world is partying and doesn’t give a fuck, and I feel like our music is sensitive and sad. In these times, I feel like people want something that is true and warm and speaking about real things and real life. That’s the greatest thing that music can do. Music is you. It is reflecting you.

The Flaming Lips are a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Matthew McConaughey isn’t exactly known for being a celebrity who leaps into political discussions, so it was pretty unusual to see him talk about the 2020 election results and “liberal hypocrisy” with actor/comedian Russell Brand. While stopping by Brand’s”Under the Skin” podcast, McConaughey joined his host in slamming Hollywood’s treatment of Trump voters, particularly those who are still clinging to hope that the president’s “Elite Strike Force” lead team led by Rudy Giuliani will flip the election results away from Joe Biden.

“There are a lot on that illiberal left that absolutely condescend, patronize, and are arrogant towards the other 50 percent,” McConaughey opined after Brand said that he doesn’t like hearing “offhanded” remarks about how Trump or Brexit voters are “dumb.” McConaughey then chastised his liberal friends who refused to believe that Trump won in 2016, but are mocking Trump voters for doing the same. Via Page Six:

“I’m sure you saw it in our industry when Trump was voted in four years ago, they were in denial that was real. Some of them were in absolute denial,” McConaughey said. He suggested that it would now be hypocritical for them to expect Trump voters to give up on challenging President-elect Joe Biden’s win.

“[Now] it looks like Biden’s our guy. Now you’ve got the right that’s in denial, ’cause their side has fake news. And I understand, they’ve been fed fake news. No one knows what the hell to believe, right? So they’re putting down their last bastion of defense.”

In a move that’s sure to go over well on social media, McConaughey ended his remarks by calling for his Hollywood friends to meet in the middle. “Let’s get aggressively centric. I dare you,” he said.

(Via Russell Brand on YouTube)

Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.

This week saw Rico Nasty’s long-awaited debut, new tunes from Lil Baby, Mariah Carey return to her Christmas wave. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.

Rico Nasty — Nightmare Vacation

In Rico Nasty’s new Uproxx digital cover story, she told us of working on her new album with Kenny Beats and 100 Gecs’ Dylan Brady, saying, “Because Dylan and I are both so weird and sh*t, we don’t criticize each other. We just work out like that and try to fix it. But I can be in a booth with Kenny and he’s like, ‘Nah, bruh, you can do this better.’ So we could go back and forth, low-key arguing. Both of them are totally different, but I probably wouldn’t be who I am today if I didn’t have such amazing people in the studio letting me do what I want to do and then also giving me constructive criticism.”

Aminé — Limbo (Deluxe)

Deluxe editions of albums have become a new beast in 2020, and Aminé is the latest rapper to hop on that train. Instead of dropping it right after Limbo‘s release, though, he waited a few months and put out what is essentially an album of new material.

Lil Baby — “On Me” and “Errbody”

Lil Baby just capped off a tremendous 2020 (as tremendous as anybody’s 2020 can be, anyway) by celebrating his 26th birthday. He marked the occasion by dropping a pair of new songs, “On Me” and “Errybody,” the videos for both songs equipping the rapper with Fast And Furious levels of transportation options and intensities.

Juice WRLD and Benny Blanco — “Real Sh*t”

Speaking of birthdays, Juice WRLD would have celebrated his 22nd a few days ago, and Benny Blanco observed the day by dropping “Real Sh*t,” a song they worked on together before Juice’s death. In a message accompanying the release, he revealed the song was the first one they ever recorded together and noted, “It was the first time I saw his magic.”

Mariah Carey — “Oh Santa” Feat. Ariana Grande and Jennifer Hudson

There’s no way Mariah Carey was going to let a Christmas pass without putting her stamp on it. This year, she dropped a new holiday special and the Ariana Grande-featuring single “Oh Santa,” which proved to be perfect meme material for Grande.

100 Gecs — “Sympathy 4 The Grinch”

On the opposite end of the Christmas music spectrum sits 100 Gecs, who introduced a characteristically warped new brand of holiday music with “Sympathy 4 The Grinch.” Like the character referenced in the title, they too have a bone to pick with Santa and the season of which he is emblematic, so they plan a nasty surprise for the jolly one.

24kGoldn — “Coco” Feat. DaBaby

24kGoldn has been one of the year’s biggest rising stars and has a No. 1 single on “Mood” to prove it. Now he has linked up with another young hip-hop stud in DaBaby for “Coco,” on which the pair try to get inside a romantic interest’s head and figure out what it is they’re looking for.

Run The Jewels — “The Ground Below (Royal Jewels Mix)” Feat. Royal Blood

El-P and Killer Mike make the most of the guests they get to work with them, and they’ve done so again on the “Royal Jewels” remix of “The Ground Below.” They got UK duo Royal Blood to put a hard rock edge on the track, and RTJ’s in-your-face style works beautifully against a backdrop of aggressive guitar and punishing drum work.

Drakeo The Ruler — We Know The Truth

This summer, Drakeo The Ruler dropped a truly one-of-a-kind album with Thank You For Using GTL, for which he recorded his vocals over a prison phone system. Now that the rapper is out from behind bars, he has returned with his first post-prison album, which impressively was released less than a month after he was free.

Death Cab For Cutie — The Georgia EP

If you’re just hearing about this one now, you’re too late. The Georgia EP was only available on Bandcamp for 24 hours last week, and it saw Death Cab cover a handful of songs by Georgia-based artists (like the project that Jason Isbell has promised), including R.E.M., TLC, Cat Power, and a couple others.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Bob Dylan’s library of music could go up against anybody’s. Under his belt, he has legendary singles like “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” and “Like A Rolling Stone” and albums like Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde. Even his latest album, this year’s Rough And Rowdy Ways, has received overwhelmingly positive critical reception. Now, all of that music has a new owner, as Bob Dylan has sold the publishing rights of his song catalog to Universal Music Publishing Group (UMG) in a huge new deal.

The sale includes over 600 copyrights that span about 60 years, with features material ranging from 1962’s “Blowin’ In The Wind” to this year’s “Murder Most Foul.” Variety reports that while the terms of the deal were not disclosed, a source told the publication the deal “was easily in nine figures,” which isn’t a huge leap to make considering 80 percent of Stevie Nicks’ catalog sold for about $100 million within the past week. Variety speculates the Dylan deal “probably drew a number well above that.” For additional context, Taylor Swift’s Big Machine master recordings sold recently for $300 million.

UMG chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge said in a statement, “As someone who began his career in music publishing, it is with enormous pride that today we welcome Bob Dylan to the UMG family. It’s no secret that the art of songwriting is the fundamental key to all great music, nor is it a secret that Bob is one of the very greatest practitioners of that art. Brilliant and moving, inspiring and beautiful, insightful and provocative, his songs are timeless — whether they were written more than half a century ago or yesterday. It is no exaggeration to say that his vast body of work has captured the love and admiration of billions of people all around the world. I have no doubt that decades, even centuries from now, the words and music of Bob Dylan will continue to be sung and played — and cherished — everywhere.”

Aside from Grainge, Dylan has also received praise recently from Paul McCartney, Barack Obama, and Uproxx’s Steven Hyden; See where Rough And Rowdy Ways ranks on Hyden’s list of favorite 2020 albums here.

When in doubt, go to the math. That’s what we’ve done here with our list of best television shows of 2020. Five of our writers submitted their personal top ten lists, and then we assigned point values based on each entry (10 points for each person’s top choice, 1 point for their tenth, with the scores descending in between), and then we added it all up, and then we had our collective list of the 10 best shows of the year, which actually contains 12 shows because of ties. It’s kind of a mess, honestly, but at least the cold hard numbers give us an excuse for our inability to follow our own simple guidelines. And it should be a mess this year. Everything was a mess this year. All things considered, our top 10 shows of the year containing 12 shows might be one of the more normal things that happened in 2020. And it gave us the ability to add more good shows, which was nice, because there were so many good shows to watch and talk about this year. In a way, we’re doing all of you a favor, really.

So what we’re really saying here, if you get right down to it, is that you are welcome. Unless your favorite show didn’t make our list. In that case we are very sorry. It was out of our hands. Because of the math.

10. (tie) Betty (11 points)

Television shows can be funny, or thrilling, or sexy, or scary, but they’re rarely “cool,” the way your favorite indie band that no one has heard of is “cool.” HBO’s Betty is cool. It’s almost intimidating how cool it is (have I crossed the street to avoid loitering teens, because I don’t want them judging me, someone who is decidedly not cool? Yes). But the real-life skateboarders that Betty follows, whether it’s Kirt and her rat or Indigo and her Gucci coat, are so inviting and charismatic that they would welcome your dorky self into their cool-as-hell skateboarding troupe (no guys, though). Betty will make you long for sweltering summers spent with your friends, where the only item on your to-do list is “skateboard,” but mostly, it will make you feel cool. — Josh Kurp

10. (tie) Umbrella Academy (11 points)

This show’s second season proved to be a twist-filled blast that improved upon its predecessor (RIP Pogo and Mary K. Blige’s hitwoman). Yet it’s surprising that it all worked so well, really, because the world truly did not need any more dysfunctional, superpowered protagonists (and especially not a family full of them); yet this show turned out to be much more than that framing device. Like Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba’s comic book series, it gave these siblings a lot of heart. They’re self-tortured and loathing, and simply want to stop feeling so much emotional pain while, yes, stopping the apocalypse. As much as the audience does love to see them get down with their energy-slinging selves, too, the show blossoms the most when the characters struggle and succeed at battling their emotional demons. And the Texas time-travel thing added an expansive historical backdrop that fueled a ton of socially relevant plot points without being heavy-handed. It’s no wonder the show’s so beloved, and thank god Elliot Page is still on board because Vanya kicks ass; and Robert Sheehan, boosting his drug-addled, sexually fluid character who communes with the dead into fan-favorite status, remains the coolest. — Kimberly Ricci

10. (tie) Harley Quinn (11 points)

One of the nicest developments of this year was Harley Quinn moving from the DC Universe streaming network to HBO Max. It was nice for a bunch of reasons, too, starting with the thing where it gave lots of people access to a show that had quietly been very good for two seasons. It’s funny and foul and sweet, filled with cussing and delightfully stupid jokes and surprisingly tender moments between its characters, who grow and change and learn in a way you probably wouldn’t expect from a cartoon spinoff series about a Batman villain. It is so good. This cannot be stressed enough. Harley and Poison Ivy develop one of the best relationships on television. Kite Man, a man whose quote-unquote superpower is “flying a kite well,” becomes an integral figure in the action. Bane is reimagined as an insecure doofus who spends large chunks of the show trying to angle for a nicer chair at the Legion of Doom. It’s a whole thing. You could do a lot worse in a show. Chill out and watch Harley Quinn if you haven’t. Come on. — Brian Grubb

9. The Boys (12 points)

You know what’s more fun than worshipping superheroes? Dumping on them, which is what The Boys continued to do in its second season. In fact, the show perfected its driving theme, giving us new villains that felt disturbingly relevant, over-the-top violence so visceral it made us nauseous, and Karl Urban driving a speed boat straight through a humpback whale. Eric Kripke and his writing team doubled-down on the best parts of the show’s first season – the destructive megalomania of Anthony Starr’s Homelander, the weird, beautiful friendships of characters like Frenchie and Kimiko – while adding antagonists powerful enough to shake up their world. Crude and crass, filled with nightmarish visuals of grown men slurping breast milk and human gills being voiced by Patton Oswalt, season two gave absolutely zero f*cks and that kind of brazen storytelling deserves to be celebrated. — Jessica Toomer

7. (tie) The Crown (14 points)

Consider the challenge faced by The Crown as it runs toward the present with increasing speed, facing greater foreknowledge of the history and personalities that fill up the screen. Simply put, while some in the viewing audience may have had a passing understanding of who and how Churchill and the young Queen Elizabeth were thanks to history books, many have a crisp idea of Prince Charles and, specifically, Princess Diana and their doomed marriage. From news reports of the time to the mountain of books, documentaries, and interviews that have been generated since the ‘90s, a tabloid forest fire became an eternal flame that many still can’t look away from. Because of this, The Crown’s fourth season ran the risk of exhaustion or unoriginality. And yet it went down as a triumph, playing in the margins of a convenient but at times legitimately sweet courtship before turning sour largely thanks to Charles’ cruelty, sense of entitlement, and the dysfunctional suffocating burdens of his family and title. Is it all true? I don’t know, but it was captivating and felt true to the story as we know it now almost 30 years later. — Jason Tabrys

7. (tie) I May Destroy You (14 points)

Michaela Coel, man. She created, wrote, and starred in a fearless show and wasn’t afraid to take risks by spiking a very serious subject — sexual consent in many, layered contexts — with pitch-black humor, and she pulled off the gutsiest finale of the year (fight me). Watching her character whip through a nightclub, limbs flying everywhere, announcing herself as a “twisted Firestarter” to her rapist (before serving him comeuppance) was astounding. What I appreciate most are the wonderfully imperfect characters drawn by Coel as she built toward the end. Arabella is fully-dimensional, rather than defined by her trauma; she’s flawed and damn proud of that fact. And as twisted as this sounds, I do re-watch the finale episode every now and then because it’s electrifying to relive all of those alternate endings building toward vengeance and, eventually, a cathartic and meditative resolution. — Kimberly Ricci

5. (tie) The Queen’s Gambit (15 points)

Well, guess what: There’s a show about chess on this list. Can you believe it? Can you believe a show about chess was riveting and compelling enough to beat hundreds of flashier options, many with pedigrees that look better on paper? It’s a little startling, really, unless you watched The Queen’s Gambit, in which case it makes perfect sense. What a terrific show this was, largely thanks to its star, Anya Taylor-Joy, and the lasers she stared through a rotating crew of overconfident chess dopes. She took the character on a twisting ride from adolescence to adulthood and from troubled youth, uh, slightly less troubled adult, and made the whole thing fascinating even as she pushed the… horsies across the… chess table. That was the other nice thing about the show: it worked even if you had no idea what was going on in the very intense matches she was winning against those dopes. Almost a magic trick, really. — Brian Grubb

5. (tie) How to With John Wilson (15 points)

So much of How To With John Wilson’s goodness is amplified by the timing of its release (when we most needed a reminder of humanity’s endearing quirks). But it’s more than an anthropologically valuable snapshot of life before the pandemic. The layers that Wilson explores when it comes to the mundanity of life and the lessons we can learn if we examine that behavior is the kind of thing that’s built for all seasons, making this not just one of the best shows of 2020 but one that should be reexplored (and hopefully continued) in 2021. — Jason Tabrys

3. (tie) Lovecraft Country (20 points)

No one knew what to expect when J.J. Abrams and Jordan Peele got together to executive produce with Misha Green in the series creator seat, but damn if this show didn’t come through at exactly the right time. Audacious and astounding and full of gleeful genre-bends, this year’s season culminated by killing the hero and taking out the ultimate Karen. The show also proved itself to be a worthy (if probably similarly a one-season pony) successor to Watchmen and even performed its own retelling of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Across the board, the ensemble cast — including Jurnee Smollett, Jonathan Majors, Michael K. Williams, Abbey Lee, and Wunmi Mosaku — crushed their roles, all to reinforce how Black history and horror are often interchangeable terms. And we got a lot of pulpy lit and Jackie Robinson metaphors, along with a freaking pet monster after monsters ate bad guys. We got space-and-time travel and exorcisms and a bionic arm. It was simply nuts, and I loved all of it. — Kimberly Ricci

3. (tie) Better Call Saul (20 points)

The most recent season of Better Call Saul premiered in February, continued through March, and ended in April. I remember almost nothing from the early days of quarantine because time is meaningless now, but I do remember how much I loved Saul. This is true of every season, but especially this season, the show’s finest to date. The desert episode, the room service burger, the glass bottle tossing, the return (debut?) of Hank and Gomez, the least romantic wedding ever, the pee chugging (I would like to forget this one), the ants and the ice cream (this one, too), the finger guns, the Lalo jump, the failed assassination attempt on Lalo (poor Nacho), basically everything Lalo did. It was an unforgettable season for one of TV’s best shows, and the rare spinoff that might be better than the original series. If only the Emmys were paying attention… — Josh Kurp

2. Ted Lasso (28 points)

Ted Lasso shouldn’t be as good as it is. Its plot isn’t particularly inventive; its main character is derived from a commercial skit that mined laughs from mocking stereotypical culture clashes. And yet, in 2020, it became the show we all needed. Most of that has to do with Jason Sudeikis, who gives a pitch-perfect performance as a fish-out-of-water football coach crossing the pond to try his hand at helming a new team for an entirely different kind of sport. Full of puns and dad-jokes and surprisingly philosophical nuggets of wisdom, his Ted Lasso is basically a teddy bear in human form. But the half-hour comedy also benefits from an impressive supporting cast and a team of writers who know what to do with them. More than that, there’s an unapologetic optimism to the humor here – you’ll see slapstick spit-takes and snappy one-liners, but you’ll never see characters punching down for the sake of laughs – something we didn’t realize we were lacking in our workplace comedies until now. And if Sudeikis’ reaction to that “Caesar you later” pun didn’t leave you literally lol-ing, you’re just lying to yourself. — Jessica Toomer

1. What We Do In The Shadows (32 points)

Jackie Daytona. That name alone, the one used by Matt Berry’s character, Laszlo, in the episode titled “On the Run,” in which he flees a threat from guest star Mark Hamill and starts a life as a toothpick-chawing, volleyball-loving Pennsylvania bartender, might have been enough to get this show into the top 10. It was, and is, that good. And if that had been the entire legacy of this season, it would have been a fine one. Thankfully, however, the episode also shined a big bright spotlight — no sunlight, please — on what was quickly becoming the most reliably funny show on television. And it convinced more people to double back and check it out. And those people were in for a treat. The show’s second season was absolutely littered with great gags and great performances — Mark Proksch is a genius as “energy vampire” Colin Robinson, who feeds on boring and annoying people and has his own standout episode where he goes to work in an office — and a lovely little arc that tied it all together. When 2020 started, you probably didn’t expect a show about bumbling vampires in Staten Island to top this list. But a lot of stuff happened this year that you probably didn’t expect. This is one of the good ones. One of the best ones, some might say, whether they’re television critics or viewers at home or regular human bartenders. — Brian Grubb

Bill Lawrence, the former showrunner of Scrubs and Cougar Town, among others, is currently killing it as showrunner of Apple TV’s Ted Lasso, arguably the best new show of 2020 and — along with Mythic Quest — the best reason to subscribe to Apple TV. Lawrence, however, has had a tumultuous history with network television, so he’s probably very happy to be working in an environment with far fewer restrictions, especially now that Ted Lasso has been renewed for two more seasons (and according to Lawrence, Lasso is a planned, three-season TV series).

That freedom did not always exist for Lawrence, and back in his Scrubs days, he had to deal with Standards and Practices, otherwise known as the TV censors. The way that Standards and Practices applies the rules has always been a little inexplicable, but in this week’s episode of the “Fake Doctors, Real Friends” podcast, Lawrence provides an example of one of the more absurd applications.

It involved Scrubs‘ Christmas episode in 2004, “My Rule of Thumb,” and what Standards and Practices did in this episode “drove [Lawrence] insane.” The episode centers on a patient with terminal cancer, and as originally written, Elliot and Carla were “out and about” trying to help the cancer patient deal with the pain by finding her some marijuana (this was before medical marijuana was commonly available). When Lawrence handed the script in, however, Standards and Practices told him they couldn’t air an episode where a “physician and nurse are driving around trying to find someone they can buy pot off of.”

Baffled, Lawrence offered another suggestion, which would both offer an “easy fix” and reveal the “hypocrisy” of Standards and Practices. Instead of having the cancer patient search for weed, “we had the woman who was dying be a virgin and Elliot and Carla go look for a man-whore so she can get laid.” When Lawrence turned that into Standards, they said, they said laughed, said it was funny, and that it “was fine” to air.

“So, even though it’s proven by so many medical studies that” marijuana is effective for patients dealing with the side effects of chemo, “doctors can’t go get a patient who is dying some marijuana, but they can go anywhere to get them a man-whore so she can have sex in a hospital.” TV censorship is weird.

Side note: It’s probably worth tracking down this episode of Scrubs, because it was the one where Kelso introduced his most famous catchphrase: “What has two thumbs and doesn’t give a crap? This guy.”

Source: Fake Doctors, Real Friends

Dolly Parton’s version of her biggest song, “I Will Always Love You,” performed well on the country charts back in the day. It became an enduring global hit, though, when Whitney Houston recorded her version. Now, Parton thinks that a modern star could do something similar with another classic song of hers from the same period, “Jolene.”

Parton told The Big Issue, “‘Jolene’ has been recorded more than any other song that I have ever written. It has been recorded worldwide over 400 times in lots of different languages, by lots of different bands. The White Stripes did a wonderful job of it, and many other people. But nobody’s ever had a really big hit record on it. I’ve always hoped somebody might do [that] someday, someone like Beyonce.”

In the piece, she also wrote about the song’s background, revealing (as she has before) that it was possibly written on the same day as “I Will Always Love You,” saying, “‘Jolene’ and ‘I Will Always Love You’ were on the same album [1974’s Jolene]. In fact, they came from the same cassette, so it is possible that I wrote those two songs in the same day. ‘Jolene’ is a song about… you know, I’ve got my pride and I’ve got my strength. But when I write a song, I’m vulnerable at those moments. I leave my heart out on my sleeve. I’ve always said I have to leave my heart open in order to receive those kind of songs. I have to feel everything to be a real songwriter. And yes, a lot of my songs are kind of melancholy. Some of them are sad, and some of them are pitiful. And I mean for them to be pitiful, those really sad songs like ‘Little Sparrow’ or ‘Jeannie’s Afraid Of The Dark.’ I have a big imagination and I become whoever I’m writing about. It’s like starring in a movie; I am that character in that song. So when I wrote it, I was ‘Jolene.’”

Read the full piece here.