After a ten-episode first season of The Walking Dead: World Beyond, the endgame has finally snapped into focus. After previously hinting that Iris was the “asset” that the CRM and Elizabeth were seeking, we learned in the two-hour season finale that it’s actually Iris’s sister, Hope, that CRM wanted all along. Why? Because Hope is secretly a genius, even though it was Iris who gave her school’s valedictorian speech when the series kicked off, which was all part of a ruse to make us think that Iris was the more important character to CRM.
What is the importance of Hope’s genius? Recall that the CRM is collecting “A”s — who are test subjects to be used in experimenting with a zombie cure — and “B”s, who are useful in creating the future of civilization. Rick Grimes is a “B,” and so is Hope, although her “genius” seems to extend mostly to the ability to crack rudimentary codes and make homemade wine, which maybe isn’t something to dismiss so quickly, considering how difficult it has been to create palatable beer on Fear the Walking Dead.
What CRM is doing is not eugenics, exactly; they’re not trying to create a master race through genetics. They are, however, trying to assemble only those whose skills might prove useful to the continuation of the species. Everyone else is expendable. That is why the CRM massacred (most) of the Campus Colony in the opening episode, and why Elizabeth — now in possession of Hope — essentially put out a kill order on the rest of them: Silas, Elton, Felix, and even Hope’s sister, Iris.
The other twist, however, is that Hope is not exactly the genius they believe she is; her “genius” is only compatible with her sister. They’re a good team, but their parents too often gave secret credit to Hope while publicly acknowledging Iris’ intelligence. In the end, Hope — who figured out that Huck was a CRM spy — allowed herself to be captured, because she reckoned that she could take CRM down from the inside while working in tandem with her sister, Iris, from the outside.
So why the season-long journey? This is maybe the silliest aspect of the entire season. Huck planted messages to make it appear as though Hope and Iris’ father was in danger, and Elizabeth (the lieutenant colonel of the CRM) left a map to the CRM headquarters in New York for Hope to find. Elizabeth wanted Hope to journey across the country with her daughter, Huck, so that she could gain some experience in the world outside of her sheltered Campus Colony. That experience, combined with her intelligence, is what Hope such a valuable “B.”
There’s another aspect, too. Hope and Iris’ father, Dr. Bennett, is working for the CRM, but he obviously doesn’t know about the arrival of Hope. Dr. Bennett’s girlfriend, Dr. Lyla Bellshaw, is not only privy to that information but also engaged in human experimentation that Dr. Bennett obviously would not appreciate. Dr. Bennett, meanwhile, is growing suspicious of CRM’s motives, and in revealing that to Dr. Bellshaw at the end of the episode, Dr. Bennett may have inadvertently put himself into danger.
Meanwhile, Felix’s boyfriend, Will, appears to have assembled some survivors from the Campus Colony, and it is strongly suggested that Felix and Iris will join them in an attempt to take down the CRM with the help of Hope (and potentially Dr. Bennett) from the inside. Silas — captured by CRM soldiers at the end of the episode — may help from the inside, too, while Elton and Percy (who escaped the CRM) may join Felix’s new group and help them take down the CRM from the outside.
It all essentially sets up a second season in which Hope and Iris and their alliance will be pitted in an “All Out War” with the CRM.
Even though the streaming wars are heating up and every studio/network seems to be building their own platform, Netflix still has, arguably, the best movie library of them all. They’re getting better at categorizing them too, but when you have a film library that big, it’s hard to make sure all of the worthwhile titles get seen. That’s where we come in. Let this must-watch list be your guide to the overcrowded streaming landscape and an end to the mindless scrolling through Netflix’s movie catalog. There’s something for everyone here and it’s all good.
The Indiana Jones franchise has been housed on Amazon Prime for a while now, but it’s finally making its way to Netflix with the streaming platform hosting all four feature films. Of course, nothing beats the original, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and as far as travel and adventure go, this movie has everything you could possibly want. A hero with a love for archeology and whips? Check. An adventure to recover a stolen artifact with destructive powers? Check check. Harrison Ford beating up Nazis while uttering sarcastic one-liners and with a twinkle in his eye? Did movies even exist before this?
Jack Nicholson stars in this dark drama about a criminal who cops an insanity plea to avoid jail time and finds more than he bargained for at his court-ordered psych facility. Nicholson plays McMurphy, a delinquent who hopes to serve the remainder of his prison sentence in a cushy mental hospital. His plans are thwarted by a strict, manipulative nurse in charge of the facility against whom McMurphy actively rebels. He recruits his fellow patients in his plot to cause chaos at the facility, liberating some, dooming others, and ensuring he meets his own tragic fate. The film has been hailed as one of the best of all time, and it’s certainly one of Nicholson’s best performances — both reasons enough to watch.
Daniel Day-Lewis stars in this gritty, Oscar-winning drama from Paul Thomas Anderson playing a turn-of-the-century prospector, who risks his faith and his family for oil. Daniel Plainview is a shrewd, callous businessman who adopts the orphaned son of a dead employee to make himself look more appealing to investors. When he hits oil in California, he wages a war with a local preacher and his family who stand in the way of Daniel’s progress. Violence and yes, plenty of blood, follow.
The Oscar-winning animated film follows a young kid named Miles, who becomes the web-slinging hero of his reality, only to cross paths with other iterations of Spider-Man across different dimensions who help him defeat a threat posed to all realities. Mahershala Ali, John Mulaney, and Jake Johnson make up the film’s talented voice cast, but it’s the striking visuals and daring story-telling technique that really serves the film well.
Martin Scorsese delivers another cinematic triumph, this time for Netflix and with the help of some familiar faces. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino team up (again) for this crime drama based on actual events. De Niro plays Frank Sheeran a World War II vet who finds work as a hitman for the mob. Pacino plays notorious Teamster Jimmy Hoffa, a man who frequently found himself on the wrong side of the law and the criminals he worked with. The film charts the pair’s partnership over the years while injecting some historical milestones for context. It’s heavy and impressively cast and everything you’d expect a Scorsese passion-project to be.
Before FX gave us some spectacular follow-up formatted for TV, the Coen brothers introduced us to the cold, weirdly-accented world of murder and cover-up in Fargo, a thriller continues to stand the test of time. The premise is probably familiar by now: a criminal mastermind’s plan goes awry thanks to the ineptitude and bungling of his henchman and the persistence of a dogged policewoman (the unfairly-talented Frances McDormand). Still, it’s worth a rewatch.
Oscar-winning writer/director Alfonso Cuaron delivers what may be his most personal film to date. The stunningly-shot black-and-white film is an ode to Cuaron’s childhood and a love letter to the women who raised him. Following the journey of a domestic worker in Mexico City named Cleo, the movie interweaves tales of personal tragedy and triumph amidst a backdrop of political upheaval and unrest.
Casino Royale marks Daniel Craig’s first James Bond entry, but he plays the suave MI6 agent like he’s been doing it for decades. The film gives fans of the spy franchise a soft reset, as we’re introduced to the new Bond when he sets off on his first mission as 007. Bond’s tasked with catching a private banker funding terrorist operations by beating him in a high-stakes game of poker in Montenegro, and he’s joined by Vesper Lynd (a terrific Eva Green), an MI6 accountant with a secret that threatens to derail the mission and may cost Bond his life.
Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, and Cybill Shepherd star in this Martin Scorsese crime thriller about a veteran with mental health issues who works a night job, driving a taxi around New York City. De Niro plays Travis Bickle, a Vietnam war vet who moonlights as a cap driver to cope with his insomnia. During a long shift, he contemplates assassinating a politician to help out the woman he’s fallen in love with (Shepherd) and killing a pimp after befriending an underage prostitute (Foster). It’s a wild ride, full of darkly comedic moments, and an even more harrowing looks at the consequences of war.
Public scandal often makes for good drama, but that’s not why Todd McCarthy’s biographical re-telling of one of the most shocking cases of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church makes this list. Yes, the film has a famous list of names attached, including Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Michael Keaton. Yes, it’s a true story about a group of Boston Globe investigative journalists, who uncovered decades-worth of corruption and molestation accusations buried by leaders of the church. Yet with McCarthy’s restrained direction, the film rejects the trope of glorifying its heroes and sensationalizing its narrative to instead give us an accurate, detailed, and unbiased look at history.
Guillermo Del Toro’s fantasy war epic focuses on a young girl named Ofelia, who grows up during a time of political unrest in her native Spain after a brutal Civil War ravages the country. Ofelia escapes the horrors committed by her stepfather when she accepts a challenge from a magical fairy, who believes her to be the reincarnation of Moanna, the princess of the underworld. If she completes three tasks, she’ll achieve immortality. The film is a play on folklore and fables from Del Toro’s youth, but there’s an undercurrent based in reality — the real cost of war — that grounds this film and makes it even more compelling.
Another Quentin Tarantino classic, this violent visit back in time to America’s era of slavery carries major Western vibes and gives Lenoard DiCaprio a refreshing turn as the film’s big bad, a plantation owner named Calvin Candie. Tarantino favorite Christoph Waltz plays a German bounty hunter who teams up with Jamie Foxx’s Django, a former slave looking to free his wife (Kerry Washington) from Candie’s clutches. There’s a lot of gore and uncomfortable dialogue and over-the-top action, really, everything you’d expect, but DiCaprio, Waltz, and Foxx make it all worth it.
Dame Helen Mirren gives one of the best performances of her long career in this British biopic about the country’s most beloved monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. Michael Sheen and James Cromwell join as then Prime Minister Tony Blair and Prince Philip respectively, but this is Mirren’s show and she carries it, delivering a nuanced turn as an embattled public figure struggling to revamp her image after a devastating tragedy.
Spike Jonze imagines a world in which Artificial Intelligence can become something more than just a personal assistant program. Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore Twombly, a depressed introvert going through a divorce who starts up a relationship with an OS named Samantha. Things get serious before Theodore begins to realize that romance with an A.I. is more complicated than he thought. What follows is a thoughtful exploration of love, relationships, and the ways human beings find connection in a plugged-in world.
It’s hard not to watch this Aaron Sorkin-penned, David Fincher-directed masterpiece and have your viewing experience colored by Facebook, and founder Mark Zuckerberg’s, many political misdealings. Jesse Eisenberg plays the boy genius, an outcast whose brainchild is the product of a bad breakup and sexism. He partners with Andrew Garfield’s business-minded Eduardo Saverin and the two create the famous social networking site before Zuckerberg outs his friend and alienates himself. The story isn’t new, but watching it play out is still thrilling, mostly because Eisenberg is just so damn good at being a dick.
John Singleton’s directorial debut is this dramatic masterpiece about life in the gang-ridden hood of Crenshaw and how one young man hopes to escape the endless cycle of violence that surrounds him. Cuba Gooding Jr. plays Tre, a smart, capable kid who struggles to stay clear of gang wars and his criminal friends while working towards his dreams of college. His buddies — gang members, former inmates, track stars — all navigate the bloodshed on the streets of their hood with varying results but when a tragedy brings them together, Tre’s forced to make a choice between the life he wants and the one he’s stuck in.
Aaron Sorkin’s star-studded courtroom drama is finally here, and besides carrying some serious Oscar buzz, it’s also delivering a handful of ridiculously good performances from its impressive cast. That cast includes everyone from Succession’s Jeremy Strong to Sacha Baron Cohen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Keaton, Eddie Redmayne, and Watchmen breakout Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. The film follows the true story of a group of anti-Vietnam war protesters charged with conspiracy counts and inciting riots during a demonstration at the 1968 Democratic Convention. We heard that Strong asked Sorkin to tear-gas him for this thing so, yeah, it should be an intense watch.
The early aughts action-comedy borrows elements from famous Kung Fu films of the ’70s and pairs them with a completely ridiculous plot and some impressive cartoon-style fight sequences to produce a wholly original flick that we guarantee you’ll marvel at. The film follows the exploits of two friends, Sing and Bone, who impersonate gang members in the hopes of joining a gang themselves and inadvertently strike up a gang war that nearly destroys the slums of the city. Of course, the real draw here is the absurdist, over-the-top comedy that takes place during some of the film’s biggest action sequences. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, but only if you check your brain at the door.
It wasn’t over and it still isn’t over… our love for this sticky-sweet melodramatic romance from Nicholas Sparks that is. Netflix knows what the people want — a rain-soaked Ryan Gosling professing his undying love for Rachel McAdams — and the streaming platform is giving it to us. The movie is a staple of the romance drama, and, whether you love it or hate it, Gosling and McAdams have chemistry and talent that’s undeniable. Be warned though, as sweeping as this love story is, it’s also devastatingly heartbreaking, and there are more than a few scenes that require an abundance of tissues as a viewing companion.
Keira Knightley stars in this dramatic adaptation of a beloved Austen novel. Ask any British literature fan, and they’ll tell you the best interpretation of this story is either the ’90s mini-series (with Colin Firth) or this Joe Wright masterpiece. There’s no middle ground. Knightley plays Elizabeth Bennet, an independent, quick-witted young woman, who resents her mother’s schemes to find herself and her group of sisters’ husbands to advance their station in life. She also, ironically, ends up falling for a wealthy, aloof lord named Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfayden), and it’s their contentious, electric romance that fuels much of the action.
Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz star in this dark, absurdist comedy about a man searching for love under some very strange circumstances. Farrell plays David, a man whose wife recently left him. David is sent to a hotel where he’s told he must find a mate within 45 days or be turned into an animal. While there, David witnesses strange rituals and must follow strict rules in order to find love, but it’s not until he ventures into the woods, where the “loners” live, that he pairs up with a woman (Weisz) who may be his soulmate. It’s weird, eccentric, and the perfect Farrell-starring vehicle.
Edgar Wright’s 2010 action comedy about a hapless boy, who must defeat evil ex-boyfriends in order to win the hand of the girl he loves, is a fast-paced ride that bombards the senses. Michael Cera plays a loveable goof in the titular hero, a young man enamored with a woman named Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). In order to be with his lady love, Scott must fight her evil exes (six guys, one girl), who challenge him to truly strange contests. The film is a cinematic mash-up of Japanese anime and gamer culture, intended for the crowd who grew up on Nintendo and comic books, but it brings plenty of laughs all the same.
Greta Gerwig’s love letter to her hometown of Sacramento, California follows Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf as they navigate the often-frustrating relationship between mother and daughter. Ronan plays “Ladybird,” a young woman attending Catholic school who longs for the culture and change of scenery that New York City promises. Her mother, Metcalf, is overbearing and overprotective, and the family’s lack of money and social standing contributes to a rift between the two. Some hard truths are explored in this film, but watching Ronan manage teenage angst, first love, and everything in between will give you all kinds of nostalgia.
Charlie Kaufman’s latest film is based on a book of the same name and stars Chernobyl’s Jessie Buckley as a young woman meeting her boyfriend’s parents for the first time, which normally would be a happy event except she’s secretly been planning to break up the with the guy. That guy is Jesse Plemons, who seems to be in everything these days, and along with Toni Collette and David Thewlis who play his parents, they make for hellish dinner mates. There’s a sinister vibe permeating everything about this straightforward plot so if you think you know how this ends, let us be the first to tell you: You don’t have a clue.
Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight will always be remembered for winning the Academy Award for Best Picture after a mix-up that initially named La La Land as the winner. But that’s just an asterisk attached to a momentous coming-of-age story set over three eras in a young man’s life as he grows up in Miami, grappling with the sexuality he feels will make him even more of an outcast while searching for guidance that his drug-addicted mother (Naomie Harris) can’t provide. The film is both lyrical and moving and won justifiable acclaim for its talented cast, including a Best Supporting Actor award for Mahershala Ali as a sympathetic drug dealer.
Noah Baumbach’s star-studded divorce drama is pure Oscar bait, but in the best way. The film takes a look at messy breakups with Scarlett Johansson playing an actress and mother named Nicole, who is intent on separating from her stage director husband Charlie (Adam Driver). Laura Dern and Ray Liotta play their hard-hitting lawyers, who don’t help in diffusing the tension and resentment building between the pair when Nicole moves herself and their son across the country. It’s an intimate look at the emotional wreckage of a divorce and the struggle to put a family back together again, and it’s carried by some brilliant performances by Driver and Johansson.
This adventurous mindf*ck starring Adam Sandler finally landed on Netflix, and our only advice before watching this criminally-good romp is this: prepare yourself for a wild, over-the-top ride. Sandler gives one of his best performances, and the Safdie Brothers prove they’ve got a knack for crafting thrillers textured with grit and a realness that just can’t be beaten.
This time-hopping drama set in the backwoods of West Virginia is basically an excuse for director Antonio Campos to assemble his own Avengers-style squad of Hollywood A-listers. Seriously, everyone’s in this thing — Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Bill Skarsgård, Eliza Scanlen, Sebastian Stan, Mia Wasikowska, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Haley Bennett, that kid who played Dudley in the Harry Potter franchise. The whole gang’s living in shacks and picking up hitchhikers only to murder them later and speaking in tongues and falling victim to generational trauma. It’s a heavy watch, and there’s not really a happy ending, but boy does Pattinson deliver a batsh*t crazy turn as a perverted preacher.
Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet star in this sci-fi romance about a couple reliving their romance following a painful break-up. The movie stars Winslet as the free-spirited Clementine, who decides to have her memories of a past relationship with beau Joel (Carrey) erased. Once Joel learns of this, he too decides to erase their time together, and the film is a reverse narrative of their love story, charting their break-up and all the things that led up to it. It’s a quirky romance, one that ends on a hopeful note and has just enough futuristic tech to feel worthy of the genre.
Before he scored his own MTV show, filmmaker Nev Schulman was exposing cons on the internet in this documentary, that basically introduces the term “catfish” to the cultural lexicon. The film captures Nev’s growing online-only friendship with a young woman and her family, exposing the secrets and lies they’re keeping along the way and reminding us all: you really can’t trust people.
This beautifully animated French fantasy film follows the story of a young man named Naoufel, or rather, his hand which has been severed from his body and spends most of the film escaping labs and trying to get back to its owner. The film flits between the past and present, watching Naoufel’s life unfold from a young orphan to an accidental carpenter’s apprentice — which is how he lost his appendage — all while exploring themes of love, loss, and destiny.
Any Spike Lee joint is worth a watch, but this genre-bending thriller about a group of black Vietnam War vets returning to the battlefield decades later feels especially timely. That’s because Lee manages to shed light on a little-known part of our shared history: the way our country treated Black soldiers returning from the war, but he also raises the stakes with a subplot that includes a buried treasure hunt and a heartwrenching mission to retrieve the remains of a fallen comrade. The cast, which includes Black Panther’s Chadwick Boseman, is brilliant, the story is gripping, and you’ll probably be seeing more talk of it come awards season, so go ahead and watch it now.
This teen comedy officially put Emma Stone on the map, handing her the lead in a modern-day retelling of The Scarlet Letter — just without most of the Puritanical bullsh*t and witchcraft slander. Stone plays Olive, a fairly clean-cut student who sheds her good-girl image when she pretends to have sex with a friend at a party. She starts trading imaginary sex for clout (and gift cards) but her growing reputation begins to wreak havoc on her friendships and romantic life. Stone has enviable leading-lady status here and she’s supported by a terrific cast.
Jake Gyllenhaal stars in this truly bonkers crime thriller from Dan Gilroy about a con-man who muscles his way into L.A.’s crime journalism scene and very quickly becomes the star of his own reporting. Lou Bloom (Gyllenhaal) is a petty thief who stumbles his way into the stringer profession — photojournalists who chase crime scenes to sell the footage to local TV stations. As Lou begins to record more exciting crimes, demand for his work grows and he starts staging scenes, obstructing police investigations, and inserting himself in high-speed chases to get the best shot. It’s a twisted, depressing look at the ethics of journalism and the consequences of consumerism, and Gyllenhaal has never been better.
Netflix spent much of 2017 trying to establish itself as an alternative to movie theaters as a place to find quality new films. The results were mostly strong, and none stronger than Mudbound, Dee Rees’ story of two families — one white and one black — sharing the same Mississippi land in the years before and after World War II. Rees combines stunning images, compelling storytelling, and the work of a fine cast (that includes Jason Mitchell, Carey Mulligan, Garett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, and Mary J. Blige) to unspool a complex tale about the forces the connect black and white Americans and the slow-to-die injustices that keep them apart.
Matthew McConaughey’s Dallas Buyer Club is a searing look at how the world failed the LGBTQ community during the devastating AIDS crisis. McConaughey stars as Ron Woodruff, a man diagnosed with the disease in the 80s during a time when the illness was still misunderstood and highly stigmatized. Woodruff went against the FDA and the law to smuggle in drugs to help those suffering from the disease, establishing a “Dallas Buyers Club” and fighting in court to the right to aid those in need. The story is all the more powerful because it’s true and McConaughey delivers one of the best performances of his career as Woodruff, a man who changes his entire outlook on life after being dealt a tragic blow.
Chris Evans stars in this sci-fi thriller from auteur Bong Joon-ho. The film, set years into the future following a devastating ice age caused by mankind, follows Evans’ Curtis who lives in poverty on a train that continuously circles the Earth and contains all that remains of human life. Curtis is part of the “scum” that the people relegated to the back of the train while the “elite” enjoy the privilege of wealth and status that comes with living in the front. Curtis sparks a rebellion that ends in bloodshed and a devastating reveal when he makes it to the train’s engine room and discovers just how the elite have been fueling their operation. It’s a dark, grimy action piece that should give fans a new appreciation for Evans’ talent.
This documentary, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, is based on the unfinished manuscript, Remember this House, by James Baldwin. The author and civil rights activist recounts the history of racism in the United States through personal observations and his relationships with friends and leaders like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. It’s a beautifully-shot, sobering reminder of how far we have yet to go when it comes to equality.
Writer/director Trey Edward Shults followed up his unnerving family portrait in 2015’s Krisha with a look at another family under the most desperate of circumstances. After an unknown illness has wiped out most of civilization, a number of threats — both seen and unseen — come for a family held up in their home out in the wilderness. It’s a subtle, dream-like tale that stars Joel Edgerton and Christopher Abbot as two patriarchs intent on keeping their families safe, no matter the cost.
Michael Sheen and Frank Langella deliver award-winning performances in this biopic from director Ron Howard. The film covers the series of post-Watergate TV interviews Nixon (Langella) did with British talk-show host David Frost (Sheen) and how they served as a public trial of sorts for the world’s once most powerful man. Frost is the empathetic underdog here trying to score the story of his career while Langella plays Nixon with a cheeky, knowing authority that makes you glad you aren’t in Sheen’s shoes.
Salma Hayek turns in an inspired performance of the famed revolutionary artist Frida Kahlo in this early aughts biopic. Hayek plays the visionary in her later years, as she navigates a tense, passionate marriage with fellow artist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina) and works to define her voice amidst crippling health problems. There’s plenty of joy to be found in her triumphs, but Hayek is at her best when the film asks her to display her emotional range, focusing on Kahlo’s lowest moments to paint a full portrait of a woman who would one day make history.
Robert De Niro and Nick Nolte star in this Southern crime thriller about a convicted rapist who’s release from prison after serving a 14-year sentence and decides to use his newfound freedom to stalk the family of the lawyer who convicted him. Nolte plays Sam Bowden, a lawyer and family man who made sure his client Max Cady (De Niro) was convicted for his heinous crimes. Cady comes back with a vengeance, using his knowledge of the law, knowledge he gained while in prison, to hunt down those closest to Bowden in order to get revenge on his former attorney. De Niro plays a particularly nasty bad guy, but Nolte is more than up for the challenge here.
It seems almost perverse to think about watching The Hateful Eight at home, given how big a deal Quentin Tarantino made of its 70mm format at the time of its release. And while it looks great on the big screen it’s not like that’s an option right now. And, in some ways, the film feels just at home on the small screen, since it’s at heart a chamber mystery that brings together a collection of unsavory characters (Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, and Jennifer Jason Leigh among them) as mystery and murder unfold in their ranks.
Patricia Highsmith made her name with dark, misanthropic thrillers like The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. But her early work also included The Price of Salt, a novel about the relationship between a shopgirl and an older married woman. Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett bring this doomed romance to life, playing a pair of lovers kept apart by societal conventions. Their heartbreaking romance ends as well as can be expected, but the journey definitely involves some tears.
Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce play off each other in this fictionalized comedy about two of the most powerful men in the Catholic Church. Hopkins plays Pope Benedict XVI near the end of his tenure as he struggles with the disillusionment of his role and his faith. Pryce plays Cardinal Bergoglio (who would later become Pope Francis) who’s also going through a crisis of faith and wishes to leave his post. What follows is two hours of two of the greatest actors paling around with each other, delivering some laughs as they get deep about the philosophical leanings of these two great men.
Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence star in this drama that’s equal parts rom-com and a harrowing look at mental illness. Cooper plays Pat Solitano, a former high school teacher who recently completed a stint at a mental institution. Things aren’t going well for Pat. He’s moved back in with his overbearing parents (a wickedly-funny Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver), his now ex-wife cheated on him, he doesn’t get along with his therapist, and he’s operating under the delusion that if he gets fit and gets his sh*t together, he can get his wife back. Lawrence plays Tiffany, a young woman with problems of her own. She’s depressed after the death of her husband and prefers sex with strangers to drown the pain. The two strike up a friendship that pushes both to their mental and emotional limits. It’s a messy, complicated love story, which makes for a nice change of pace if sappy-sweet rom-coms just aren’t doing it for you.
Carey Mulligan stars in this 1960s coming-of-age drama from screenwriter Nick Hornby. Mulligan plays Jenny, a bright, gifted young woman with plans to attend Oxford University after completing her studies. She meets and falls for an older man named David (Peter Sarsgaard) who treats her to the finer things in life. Believing him to be a man of taste and means, her parents allow Jenny to travel with David, even become engaged to him before the truth about his past is revealed. As disappointing as the ending of this film is, it’s an interesting look at a young woman’s introduction to the world and to love.
Walking Dead alum Steven Yeun stars this psychological thriller from South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong. Yeun plays Ben, a rich millennial with a mysterious job who connects with a woman named Shin Hae-mi on a trip to Africa. The two journey back home together where Ben meets Shin’s friend/lover Lee Jong-su. The three hang-out regularly, with Lee growing more jealous of Ben’s wealth and privilege while he’s forced to manage his father’s farm when his dad goes to prison. But it’s when Shin disappears, and Lee suspects Ben’s involvement, that things really go off the rails.
Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams take on the planet’s most-watched singing competition with this campy comedy about an Icelandic duo named Fire Saga, who are set on achieving glory on the world’s biggest stage. Ferrell and McAdams play Lars Erickssong and Sigrit Ericksdottir, artists chosen to represent their nation in the Eurovision Song Contest, a real competition that features musicians from all over the world, who are often performing in wild get-ups. Dan Stevens almost steals the show while Pierce Brosnan and Demi Lovato make appearances. We’re calling it now: “Volcano Man” is going to be a bop for the ages.
This coming-of-age indie is based on a beloved book, but if fans were worried that the story of a depressed teenager who finds friends and a sense of belonging in a group of lovable misfits wouldn’t translate on screen, they shouldn’t have been too concerned. Stephen Chbosky wrote the novel, but he also penned the screenplay and directed this flick, which sees Logan Lerman play Charlie, the social outcast, and Emma Watson play Sam, the alt-pixie-dream girl he falls for. Everyone’s good in this, but it’s Ezra Miller’s Patrick who really stands out.
Is your town’s economy inexplicably dependent on a Christmas-themed event? Are you a white woman in finance, law, or publishing forced to return to your small town and rediscover the meaning of the holidays? Has your hyper-masculine ex-boyfriend/crush who cuts his own wood and runs a Christmas tree farm become a distracting obstacle in your company’s mission to take over the town and build a mall? If you answered yes to any of these, you might be in a Hallmark, Lifetime, or Netflix Christmas movie.
It’s that magical time of year when the various networks release their latest batch of Christmas catnip: a lineup of formulaic romance dramas set in snowy small-towns that are obsessed with the yuletide season and always in danger of something. A mom-and-pop shop being shut down. A single dad never finding love again. The town festival not having a jolly Santa Claus. A baking competition gone wrong.
Sure, you’ll rarely be surprised by any of the conflict or conclusions to these sweet-as-sugar-cookies stories, but there’s something familiar and comforting about them, especially this year. That’s why we’ve done the fairly easy, noncommittal work of ranking the holiday movies streaming in 2020 by only their plot. That’s right. We’re judging before we watch (if we watch at all), and honestly, we’ve been pretty fair and understanding about the whole thing. Here’s a completely biased, incredibly unresearched ranking of (most) of the Christmas movies coming to TV this year. Do with it what you will.
Hallmark
20. A Nashville Christmas Carol (2020) — Hallmark
The Plot: A workaholic television producer in charge of a country music Christmas special deals with the return of her childhood sweetheart, and she receives a visit from the ghost of her recently deceased mentor, Marilyn warning her about her dark future. The ghost recruits both the Spirit of Christmas Past and the Spirit of Christmas Present to help her get back on track.
Why It’s Here: Wynonna Judd is the Spirit of Christmas Future. Enough said.
19. Christmas on the Vine (2020) — Lifetime
The Plot: A young marketing executive is assigned to help a struggling family-owned winery in a town that has lost its Christmas spirit due to a large wine conglomerate.
Why It’s Here: Hallmark might be all about saving the small-town Christmas tree farms and Bed & Breakfast Inns but Lifetime ain’t about that nonsense. No, Lifetime knows the true Grinch of the holiday season are these massive wine conglomerates snatching up family-owned vineyards across the country. Will there be booze? Yes, and that means we might also get some drunken catfights and a subplot with an Australian hunk from Yellowtail romancing an alcoholic grape farmer. The possibilities are endless.
18. USS Christmas (2020) — Hallmark
The Plot: Maddie, a reporter for a Norfolk newspaper, embarks on a Tiger Cruise during Christmastime where she meets a handsome naval officer and stumbles upon a mystery in the ship’s archive room.
Why It’s Here: Hallmark told Lifetime: “We see your unconventional vineyard and we raise you a military-themed cruise complete with a Murder-She-Wrote who-dunnit.” We only have one question: is the mystery in the ship’s archive room COVID-19? Is it?!
17. Cross Country Christmas (2020) — Hallmark
The Plot: Former classmates Lina and Max are traveling home for the holidays, until a storm hits and they have to work together to make it home in time, no matter the mode of transportation.
Why It’s Here: I know they’re not going to be cross-country skiing to get home in time for Christmas. I know that. But, what if they did? What if the only way to make it back to their remote, snow-covered hamlet in Wisconsin after all other forms of transport have been grounded because of the “surprise” blizzard is to strap on some skis and bicker their way across miles of uncharted terrain?
16. Love, Lights, Hanukah (2020) — Hallmark
The Plot: As Christina prepares her restaurant for its busiest time of year, she gets back a DNA test revealing that she’s Jewish. The discovery leads her to a new family and an unlikely romance over eight nights.
Why It’s Here: I’m sorry, if you don’t laugh out loud at the idea of a white woman learning she’s Jewish from a 23 and Me test and then reexamining her complicated feelings about the holiday industrial machine, I just have one question. Who hurt you?
Lifetime
15. Feliz NaviDAD (2020) — Lifetime
The Plot: David (played by Mario Lopez) lost the holiday spirit after his wife passed, and now his daughter and sister are determined to bring it back. Their solution: Set him up on a dating site and bring new love into his life.
Why It’s Here: Is your single-dad still mourning the untimely death of his one true love? Is his grief just ruining your Christmas cheer? Do you want him to find a meaningless, temporary sex-buddy to keep him occupied so you can just enjoy your eggnog and Michael Buble in f*cking peace?! This is what I imagine the promo for this movie looks like.
14. The Christmas Lottery (2020) — BET
The Plot: The Davenport sisters have drifted apart over the years but when their Dad wins the lottery all he wants is to have his girls home for Christmas. Getting over years of resentment proves a big task but it’s pushed aside when their mother suffering from dementia loses the ticket. They put aside their differences to help find the ticket and in doing so get over their differences and finally learn to come together.
Why It’s Here: It’s like is Succession did a holiday episode and played a Christmas-themed game of “Boar on the Floor” but instead of a sausage link, everyone had to oink for a lottery ticket.
13. The Christmas Waltz (2020) — Hallmark
The Plot: A woman dumped by her fiancé a month before her storybook Christmas wedding decides to take the series of ballroom lessons intended for her wedding dance.
Why It’s Here: Lacey Chabert is the Meryl Streep of Hallmark Christmas movies and this one might give her the chance to dive into her dramatic side. It’s an incredibly depressing premise tied in a holiday bow and sure, it’ll end with Chabert falling in love with her dance instructor, but if she wants to go dark for a bit — maybe do some lines of cocaine and strip in the backroom of a dive bar — we wouldn’t hold it against her. Not in 2020.
12. The Christmas Chronicles 2 (2020) — Netflix
The Plot: Kate Pierce, now a cynical teen, is unexpectedly reunited with Santa Claus when a mysterious troublemaker threatens to cancel Christmas – forever.
Why It’s Here: Do you know what this holiday season really needs? It’s not gingerbread men or mistletoe, it’s Santa Claus Snake Plissken surfing a snow-tsunami, defeating the Belsnickel, and saving the world. This movie might give us that future.
11. Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (2020) — Netflix
The Plot: Set in the gloriously vibrant town of Cobbleton, the film follows legendary toymaker Jeronicus Jangle whose fanciful inventions burst with whimsy and wonder. But when his trusted apprentice steals his most prized creation, it’s up to his equally bright and inventive granddaughter (and a long-forgotten invention) to heal old wounds and reawaken the magic within.
Why It’s Here: Any movie that has the gall to give a main character such a blatantly fictitious, wholly ridiculous name as Jeronicus Jangle is sipping the kind of Christmas-flavored Kool-Aid I want to be high on this year. Will this movie lean into its chaotic-good roots? Will it give us a steampunk-themed Willy-Wonka holiday adventure? Is Jeronicus Jangle the new Grand Moff Pascal Tarkin? So many questions need answering from this plot.
Hulu
10. Happiest Season (2020) — Hulu
The Plot: A young woman with a plan to propose to her girlfriend while at her family’s annual holiday party discovers her partner hasn’t yet come out to her conservative parents.
Why It’s Here: Because the Gays deserve Christmas miracles too!
9. Christmas Comes Twice (2020) — Hallmark
The Plot: A top newscaster who has achieved her career dreams but still has regrets about the guy who got away five years earlier goes on a ride around the carousel that magically takes her back in time to the carnival five years before… giving her a second chance at love before she must return to Christmas present.
Why It’s Here: Despite the time travel and the potential for Jackee to spontaneously appear, this is, surprisingly, not the carousel-themed-Christmas-romance we’re most excited for. Still, a possible Jackee guest spot ranks it high on the list.
8. Holiday Heartbreak (2020) — BET
The Plot: Karma hits hard at Christmas when a loving father discovers that his womanizing past is coming back to haunt his daughter after a curse destroys her love life.
Why It’s Here: Black magic and an orgy-loving dad who can’t keep it in his pants long enough for his daughter to find romance? This ain’t your grandma’s Christmas movie.
7. The Christmas Set-Up (2020) — Lifetime
The Plot: New York lawyer Hugo heads to Milwaukee with his best friend to spend the holidays his mom who is also in charge of the local Christmas celebrations. Ever the matchmaker, Kate arranges for Hugo to run into Patrick, Hugo’s high school crush, who has recently returned after a successful stint in Silicon Valley. As they enjoy the local holiday festivities together, Hugo and Patrick’s attraction to each other is undeniable but as Hugo receives word of a big promotion requiring a move to London, he must decide what is most important to him.
Why It’s Here: It’s a Christmas movie for the Gays, but with Fran Drescher. Your move, Kristen Stewart.
Hallmark
6. Time For Us To Come Home For Christmas (2020) — Hallmark
The Plot: Five guests are mysteriously invited to an inn to celebrate Christmas. With the help of the owner Ben, Sarah discovers that an event from the past may connect them and change their lives forever.
Why It’s Here: There’s a 5% chance this thing ends with a group of strangers getting murdered in a Christmas-decorated B&B. The parting shot will be the townsfolk adding their bodies to a mass grave disguised as a Christmas tree farm. A Mariah Carey jingle will play us out as the front desk receptionist takes a reservation for next year’s festivities. We’ll learn later that Jordan Peele produced.
5. Just Another Christmas (2020) — Netflix
The Plot: After taking a very nasty fall on Christmas Eve, grinchy Jorge blacks out and wakes up one year later, with no memory of the year that has passed. He soon realizes that he’s doomed to keep waking up on Christmas Eve after Christmas Eve, having to deal with the aftermath of what his other self has done the other 364 days of the year.
Why It’s Here: On a first pass, you might write this movie off as a Christmas-themed Groundhog’s Day comedy but look again. This dude lives a whole year, loses his memory of it, and must piece together what happened on Christmas Eve as everyone else is rushing around doing their holiday business. It’s the holiday version of Chris Nolan’s Memento, y’all.
4. A Sugar & Spice Holiday (2020) — Lifetime
The Plot: A rising young architect returns to her small hometown in Maine for Christmas where her Chinese-American parents run the local lobster bar. Following the loss of her beloved grandmother who was a legendary baker in their community, Suzie is guilted into entering the local gingerbread house competition. Teaming up with an old high school friend Billy Suzie must find the right recipes and mix of sugar and spice-infused with her cultural traditions to win the competition and perhaps find some love in the process.
Why It’s Here: (Insert Stefan voice here) This Christmas movie has it all: culturally diverse casting, a town-wide baking competition, the death of a sweet old grandma, a big-city-hotshot rediscovering her roots, an up-to-code lobster bar.
3. A Christmas Carousel (2020) — Hallmark
The Plot: When Lila is hired by the royal family of Marcadia to repair a carousel, she must work with the Prince to complete it by Christmas.
Why It’s Here: Where did all the manic pixie dream boys go? To Hallmark, where they play royal heads of state in nondescript all-white European countries with nothing better to do than fix a run-down carousel. Let the swooning commence.
2. The Princess Switch: Switched Again (2020) — Netflix
The Plot: When Duchess Margaret unexpectedly inherits the throne to Montenaro and hits a rough patch with Kevin, it’s up to her double Stacy to save the day before a new lookalike, party girl Fiona foils their plans.
Why It’s Here: So this sequel requires a bit of a plot primer. Vanessa Hudgens played a baker and princess in the first film. Her baker is doing well, being married to a prince and all, but her princess is having boy trouble so, of course, they’re going to It Takes Two-s it again. But they’re also adding another lookalike to the party. You can’t tell us this whole holiday franchise isn’t just an elaborate ruse for Hudgens to indulge her multiple personality fantasies but the real reason we’re interested is because we NEED to see where this ends. Will we make it to five lookalikes? Or six? Will we one-day reach The Princess Switch: Switching Teams, where dozens of alternate Hudgens fight against each other in a Hunger-Games-arena-style bake-off competition?
Netflix
1. Dolly Parton’s Christmas On The Square (2020) — Netflix
The Plot: A rich and nasty woman, Regina Fuller, returns to her small hometown after her father’s death to evict everyone and sell the land to a mall developer — right before Christmas. However, after listening to stories of the local townsfolk, reconnecting with an old love, and accepting the guidance of an actual angel, Regina starts to have a change of heart.
Why It’s Here: Dolly Parton as a benevolent angel intent on rescuing a small, inconsequential town? Christine Baranski doing her best Miranda Priestly impersonation? The villainous caricature of malls, the unacknowledged scourge destroying the fabric of society, making us slaves to oversalted pretzels and Yankee Candles? Yes to all.
With Ron Howard’s high-profile awards movie, Hillbilly Elegy hitting Netflix this past week, just a few months after the lower-profile release of the much better The Devil All The Time, hillbilly movies are suddenly all the rage. For my money, the best hillbilly movie is Winter’s Bone. But long before that we had Deliverance, if not the “original” hillbilly movie, arguably the original prestige awards-bait movie about hillbillies.
The 1972 best picture nominee embedded the phrases “squeal like a pig, boy” and “you got a purdy mouth” so deeply into the fabric of pop culture that I knew them long before I ever saw the movie. Those lines, along with “Dueling Banjos” and the “inbred” banjo boy, have been homaged and parodied so many times that Deliverance‘s status as “the squeal like a pig movie” has long since eclipsed anything else about it. But is that all there is? How has the legacy of Deliverance affected the cinematic portrayals of hillbillies we get today?
The film follows four friends from suburban Atlanta — Lewis, Ed, Bobby, and Drew (played by Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox) — on their trip to canoe down the Cahulawassee River in north Georgia. It’ll be their last chance to see it before a new dam turns the whole area into a lake. The film was an adaptation of a John Dickey novel, and Dickey’s Cahulawassee was supposedly inspired by the Coosawattee, in the Blue Ridge mountains, which was dammed in 1974. Thus the four are the proverbial city boys traveling into America’s heart of darkness searching for Eden, only to find an indifferent mother nature and primordial evil, in the form of inbred hillbilly rapists.
Within that structure, Lewis (Burt Reynolds) and Drew (Ronny Cox) are a sort of middle-aged Jack and Ralph from Lord Of The Flies; Lewis as the dog-eat-dog hunter survivalist Jack, and Drew as the literal guitar-carrying Ralph, who just wants to play his music in the sun. Beatty’s Bobby, meanwhile, plays the Piggy, an insurance salesman who Lewis instantly nicknames “Chubby,” even though, by 2020 standards, Beatty is barely overweight. They stop at a gas station along the way, where they spot a handful of flea-bitten locals (“talk about genetic deficiencies, isn’t that pitiful?” says Bobby) who are at least smart enough to recognize the condescension radiating from their city betters. Drew starts a jam session with the inbred-looking “Banjo Boy” in the famous “Dueling Banjos” scene (the song won a Grammy in 1974), leading us to believe that maybe this whole getting back to nature thing is going to work out just fine.
It was obvious even then that with these obvious parallels to Heart of Darkness and Lord of the Flies, Deliverance was trying extra hard to do a symbolism. In his original two-and-a-half-star review in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert wrote, “Dickey, who wrote the original novel and the screenplay, lards this plot with a lot of significance — universal, local, whatever happens to be on the market. He is clearly under the impression that he is telling us something about the nature of man, and particularly civilized man’s ability to survive primitive challenges.”
Storytellers tend to fall back on symbolism when their story feels like it’s missing something in terms of either import or believability, and Deliverance feels that way. After cocky macho guy Burt Reynolds — who appears to be wearing some kind of wetsuit vest, which seems like a self-defeating choice of clothing on few different levels — pays filthy yokels the Griner Brothers to drive their cars downstream, the group sets off down the river. Everything is going just fine until a different set of filthy, toothless hillbillies holds Ned Beatty and Jon Voight hostage in the woods with a shotgun, raping Beatty and about to force Jon Voight to perform oral sex just as Burt Reynolds finds them and shoots one hillbilly dead with a bow and arrow.
With the benefit of hindsight, there seems to be more going on than just the overt modern vs. primitive conflict that audiences would’ve noted at the time. Arguably even more obvious in 2020 is how much Deliverance feels like “Easy Rider on the water,” to use a Hollywood shorthand.
In his recent book, The People, NO: A Brief History Of Anti-Populism, historian Thomas Frank positions Easy Rider as the defining film of “The New Left,” a movie about free-loving, dope-smoking drug runners getting murdered by bigoted rednecks. It was released in 1969, at a time when the counter-culture was consciously beginning to distance itself from the rural and working class, who had traditionally been part of the Democratic coalition but who the counter-culture had come to blame for the Vietnam War. It’s a fairly uncontroversial point to make about Easy Rider, considering its screenwriter, Terry Southern, said as much himself. As Southern described the ending, he intended it as “an indictment of blue-collar America, the people I thought were responsible for the Vietnam War.”
It’s hard not to see Deliverance, released three years later, as reactionary in many of the same ways. It portrays human hillbillies as inextricable from mother nature, basically part of the landscape, and representatives of the primitive. “Za ovahwhelmink eendeefference of nature,” as Werner Herzog describes the bears in Grizzly Man.
Toothless, inbred, and perverse, the yokels are sort of mindlessly predatory. Whether out of envy or genetic predisposition, it feels a bit like the sixties hippie equivalent of “they hate us for our freedom.” And why not, it’s easier on the ego to assume that everyone who doesn’t like you is an unchangeable state of nature rather than a human being with free will who has made a rational decision that you suck.
Of course, Deliverance‘s anti-working class theme isn’t the only thing going on in it, and in some ways it’s softer than Easy Rider‘s. Thomas Frank notes that Easy Rider, starring Peter Fonda, whose father was in Grapes of Wrath, was an explicit rejection of the previous generation’s politics. Yet it’s notable in Deliverance, that, after being raped and savaged by dangerous yokels, the surviving group does arrive in town to find that the Griner Brothers have indeed parked their cars for them right where they promised. There’s even a group of “nice hillbillies” nearby, with the family belongings stacked atop a pick-up bed and a kid sitting on top in a chair, a clear echo of Grapes Of Wrath.
Still, when a local notes that everything in the town is about to be drowned underneath a lake, he says “that’ll be about the best thing that ever happened in this town.” The Sheriff gets more or less the final thought, saying “I’d kinda like to see this town die peaceful.”
In that way, Deliverance is an actual elegy to a hillbilly lifestyle that Hillbilly Elegy is not. It’s hard not to be taken by the romanticism of it. The church cemetery featured in the film actually is now hundreds of feet underwater, just like the movie said it would be. It actually is the literal glimpse at a lost landscape it says it is.
It’s hard to believe Hillybilly Elegy would exist if Deliverance hadn’t, that JD Vance would’ve felt compelled to write his memoir if he didn’t feel the sting of city slickers thinking his home people were all toothless raping hillbillies. Hillbilly Elegy feels to some extent like it grew out of a perceived slight, responding reflexively and defensively and using the same language of movie tropes. Thus it feels trapped in the same cycle of reheated culture war recriminations, which is maybe part of why it’s been so poorly received.
Yet you don’t get much sense that Vance has lost anything once he goes to Yale in Ron Howard’s movie. He’s simply outgrown the other hillbillies. He’s pulled himself up by the bootstraps and now he’s gone. It’s a statement of identity more than anything else. Deliverance is at least romantic about the landscape, even if it couldn’t quite see the people in it. When Ned Beatty’s character says that there’s something about the woods that we’ve lost in the cities, Burt Reynolds’ answers, “We didn’t lose it. We sold it.”
Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.
The South Korean pop group BTS have had quite the 2020. They’ve released two albums this year: Map Of The Soul: 7 , from February, and the new Be, which dropped earlier this month. Now the latter has a deluxe edition, and its release has nabbed the No. 1 spot on the Billboard album charts.
The deluxe Be sold 242,000 equivalent album units, of which 177,000 were album sales and 30,000 streaming equivalent album units. Its first-week total is the most any group has posted since their own previous album, Map Of The Soul: 7. That means they’ve had five chart-topping albums in the last two years. The last artist to accomplish this feat at a faster rate was Future, who landed five No. 1s in one year and seven months, spanning from 2015’s DS2 to 2017’s Hndrxx.
Megan The Stallion took the No. 2 spot with her debut, Good News, which logged 100,500 units. The album is now the rapper’s highest-charting release, surpassing her projects Fever and Suga, which debuted at No. 10 and No. 7 respectively. Good News also the most-streamed album of the week, thanks to 115.85 million on-demand streams of the album’s songs.
You can revisit our review of Megan The Stallion’s Good Newshere.
Star Wars has a new, Lego-themed holiday special out, and it’s been well-received — unlike the original Star Wars Holiday Special, which has been considered a bad TV classic since it aired in November 1978. The notorious one-off spin-off is the stuff of legend, no less because it’s never been officially released on home video, forcing the morbidly curious to subsist on bootlegs and YouTube uploads. While it’s amused and horrified many over the decades, those who were actually involved feel very differently — among them one of its stars, C-3PO actor Anthony Daniels.
Daniels was one of many from the original cast who were obligated to do the special, and unlike the clearly not-having-it Harrison Ford, he at least had a metal helmet to block his winces. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he said it was clear from the shoot that what they were filming wouldn’t be an instant classic, at least not in the good sense.
“This thing was meant to be a happy Life Day,” he told EW, referring to the bizarre, hazily defined holiday the characters were meant to be fêting. “Then we’re in this giant set draped with black, it was just awful.”
Daniels continued:
It was like being at a weird funeral, you have to watch it on YouTube for the full horror. Watch the last 10 minutes, and you’ll see why [the new show] contrasts rather well and is rather fun. Poor Mark, poor Carrie, poor Harrison – you can see it on their faces! They’re gritting their teeth and it shows; they’re like hanging onto each other. I think people learn their lesson, and I think we may be on track to make a regular Life Day holiday special, and why not?”
Forty years later and Daniels is still playing C-3PO, including on the Lego Star Wars Holiday Special. In fact, the English actor, now 74, has no plans on retiring with his most legendary gig.
“Until I choose to retire, I would not be comfortable with [somebody else playing the character] because it wouldn’t be Threepio as I have known him for 40-something years,” Daniels said. “I don’t want that to happen while I’m still cognizant and able to do it because — and this is not me aggrandizing myself — he’s the way he is and he’s the way he is is because of me. And if I’m around, that’s the way it should stay. Eventually, I will leave this planet, and I want him to go on and somebody will take over as that’s the nature of show business. I would not like him to disappear from the galaxy, even though I have.”
In the meantime, it is the holidays, so it might do you good to track down the original Holiday Special, and bask at such sights as Bea Arthur tending bar, Harvey Korman cooking, several minutes at a time of unsubtitled Wookiie-speak, The Jefferson Starship rocking out for some reason, and Carrie Fisher singing John Williams’ main Star Wars theme, this time with lyrics. Shooting it may have felt like being at a funeral, but it didn’t exactly kill the franchise. But not for lack of trying.
When it comes to the best-selling whiskey brands, Jameson ranks in the top three — only slightly behind Jim Beam in global sales. (Jack Daniel’s is the world’s best-selling whiskey by a solid margin.) That makes Jameson is the best-selling Irish whiskey in the world, and its legion of fans are every bit as vocal as those of Jim and Jack.
Jameson has nine core bottles available on the U.S. market. The beauty of the brand is that these are all easy to source nation-wide. They’re liquor store stalwarts, available on most shelves. They’re also all pretty dang affordable for imported whiskeys. The prices for these expressions mostly range from $30 to $70, with only one ringing in over $100.
We didn’t really have to consider price on this list — the bell curve here is pretty tight. So we stuck solely to flavor. Using that metric, there was a clear winner. Find out what it was below!
Jameson combined their classic triple-distilled Irish whiskey with cold brew coffee. The idea behind the expression is to help enhance the Irish Coffee experience. In this case, it’s a bit reversed. Instead of getting a small dose of Irish whiskey in a creamy coffee, you get a small dose of bitter cold brew in your whiskey.
Tasting Notes:
You’re hit with that cold brew up top with a nice bitterness, creamy vanilla, and mild nuttiness. The coffee really dominates the palate as hints of malt, nuts, vanilla, and slight oak peek through. The end is short, sweet, bitter, and warming.
Bottom Line:
Okay, this technically a “flavored” whiskey and maybe shouldn’t be on this list. But it is a new standard for the distiller and very enticing. Let’s put it this way, if this were a flavored whiskey ranking, it wouldn’t be anywhere near the last place.
Jameson is the classic tripled distilled Irish blend. The juice is a blend of single pot and grain whiskey. Those age in oak — primarily ex-bourbon barrels with ex-sherry thrown in too — until they hit that classic sweet spot.
Tasting Notes:
Notes of citrus, malts, and spice lead the way. The sip leans into the spice, adding layers of vanilla, nuts, and a hint of sherry woodiness. The end is short, sweet, and warm.
Bottom Line:
This is a go-to workhorse whiskey. You can shoot it, mix it, or just sip it over rocks in a big ol’ tumbler. Though we have to say, the classic highball of ginger ale, Jameson, and lime is a crowd-pleaser.
This is a fairly new release, having only hit the U.S. market in 2017. The process behind the expression is well-used. Jameson sends out barrels to local craft brewers in the Cork area (around the Midleton Distillery, where Jameson is primarily made) for those brewers to age their IPAs. Once those beers are bottled, the barrels are sent back to Midleton and filled with Jameson Irish Whiskey.
The result is an IPA-tinged whiskey for beer lovers.
Tasting Notes:
That signature Jameson nuttiness is there and accentuated by floral and citrus notes that do remind you of hops. The citrus leans towards grapefruit with a rush of wildflowers next to light woodiness. The fruit picks up on the end with a nice dose of spice and maltiness as it quickly fades out.
Bottom Line:
There’s a thinness to this one that leaves us wanting, hence its place on the list. It’s a great gift for an IPA lover though.
Aging stout in whiskey barrels has a long tradition in brewing. Then there’s the whole tradition of stouts in Ireland that go hand-in-hand with drams of Irish whiskey. So aging Jameson in whiskey barrels that held stout beer makes a lot of sense.
In this case, the aged juice spends an extra six months in the stout barrels, giving the whiskey that little something extra.
Tasting Notes:
Apple orchards and bails of hay mingle with almonds, spice, chocolate, and a hint of lemon oil. Dark chocolate and a note of spicy wood dance on the palate as creamy sweetness balances everything out. The end brings about a note of butterscotch next to a milkier chocolate texture that quickly drops off.
Bottom Line:
This is a very easy drinking whiskey that has enough depth for making solid highballs with fizzy water and plenty of ice.
This is a masterfully crafted blend of whiskey. The blend leans more towards the single pot still whiskeys than grain whiskey. The whiskeys are aged in a combination of ex-sherry and ex-bourbon for anywhere from eight to 16 years. Then, the juice is finished in an extra-charred ex-bourbon barrel, bringing about the “Black Barrel” moniker.
Tasting Notes:
Dark chocolate cut with creamy vanilla sits next to a rich and buttery toffee with a note of citrus. The palate amps up that vanilla with a dusting of Christmas spices and fatty nuts. The end is medium-length with the warm oak coming in late to say farewell.
Bottom Line:
This might be one of Jameson’s best cocktail mixers. In an old fashioned, Manhattan, whiskey sour, or boulevardier, this whiskey works really damn well. It also works as a sipper with plenty of ice in a pinch.
This is the first bottle from The Whiskey Makers Series, which dropped in 2016. The whiskey was developed by Jameson’s fifth-generation Head Cooper (barrel maker), Ger Buckley. The juice is aged new American oak, bourbon seasoned barrels, and Spanish sherry barrels before it’s married into the final product.
Tasting Notes:
Dried roses, ripe stonefruit, and soft cedar greet you. A hint of bourbon vanilla leads towards more of that fruit with a nutty, plummy, sherry-wood body that runs deep. The vanilla keeps on as a slight spiciness leads towards more charred oakiness and a hint more of the florals on the long end.
Bottom Line:
This is a hell-of-a-sip of Irish whiskey that really leans into the beauty of varied barrel aging. We’d recommend sipping this one with a little water to really let it bloom in the glass and then blossom across your senses.
Sticking with The Whiskey Makers Series, this expression is the creation of the Head Blender, Billy Leighton. The blending of whiskeys is the point of this expression, with Leighton utilizing single pot and grain whiskeys aged in ex-bourbon and ex-sherry. The juice is then bottled at a slightly higher ABV and is non-chill filtered.
Tasting Notes:
You’re greeted with big notes of fruit leaning toward tropical fruits with an interesting counterpoint of almost jammy sherry and oak. Creamy notes and sharp spices mingle with the fruit in the taste as an almost vinous hint arrives with more oak. The end is deliberate and long-winded, with the sweetness of the fruit slowly fading out while spicy oak notes blip in and out.
Bottom Line:
This is just really interesting and versatile. It works wonders in a citrus-forward cocktail. It’s also bold enough to drink on its own with a little ice or water.
This is more than just 18-year-old Jameson. It’s a masterful blend of hand-selected 18-year-old whiskeys aged in ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks. That juice is then married and finished in first-fill bourbon casks until it’s just right.
Tasting Notes:
This has a bold-yet-dialed-in nose, with bourbon vanilla, soft cedar, orange oils, rich toffee, and subtle spice. The taste delivers on those promises and adds in leather, hazelnuts, and a dusting of dark chocolate (especially with a little water). The end is slow and combines the cedar, toffee, and spice in a wonderful balance.
Bottom Line:
This is a very solid sipper that needs little more than a rock or a few drops of water. Yes, it’s pricy. But we’d argue that it’s worth it.
The final drop from The Whiskey Makers Series highlighted the palate of Midleton’s now-former Master Distiller, Brian Nation. The juice in the bottle is all about the distiller’s prowess and knowing how to “cut” the whiskey coming off the stills. That is, the distiller knows the right section of the new distillate to use as it pours off the stills to make the absolute best final product. In this case, those prime cuts were combined, aged, and bottled to make this whiskey.
Tasting Notes:
Brown sugar malts dance with summer florals, savory herbs, decadent marzipan, bright grapefruit, and a hint of peppery spice. The palate holds onto that caramel maltiness and counterpoints it with cinnamon, orange oils, and more of that almond-forward marzipan. The end is just the right length, with a focus on the orange oils and malts as it fades.
Bottom Line:
This is just a fine bottle of booze all around. It’s also the last of its kind from former Head Distiller Brian Nation, meaning you should grab a bottle or two now — one for sipping with a little ice or water and one to stash away for later.
To truly appreciate Deftones’ legendary status in 2020, consider that they would’ve had an incredible year even if they released no new music at all. May would have brought the 20th-anniversary celebration of White Pony, their game-changing masterpiece of progressive, shoegaze, and trip-hop-inflected metal that bore an obvious imprint on two of the first quarter’s most acclaimed rock albums, Higher Power’s 27 Miles Underwater and Loathe’s I Let It In And It Took Everything. We would have likely also seen the third iteration of Dia De Los Deftones, the daylong San Diego festival whose curators’ massive reach previously allowed sensible lineups to be created out of artists ranging from Rocket From the Crypt, Vein, Hum, Future, Chvrches, Doja Cat, JPEGMAFIA, and Megan Thee Stallion.
But instead of simply taking a victory lap, Deftones went on another title run. Their ninth studio album Ohms arrived in September to the most thunderously positive reviews of their entire career, and it has already topped Revolver’s Best Albums list of 2020. In two weeks, the long-rumored Black Stallion finally sees the light of day, a full-on White Pony remix album featuring DJ Shadow, Mike Shinoda, Squarepusher, Clams Casino, Purity Ring, and Robert freaking Smith himself. It’s enough goodwill to make up for a couple of bum notes — the pandemic-induced shutdown of their planned tour with French metal giants Gojira and post-internet provocateur Poppy, as well as guitarist Stephen Carpenter’s rather, um, tone-deaf views on COVID-19 (amongst other things).
25 years after their debut Adrenaline, it’s worth taking a step back and appreciating how all of the above came from a band that spent even their commercial heyday getting browbeaten by a label that expected them to be Limp Bizkit or Papa Roach. Of course, bands like Deftones and their ilk already had enough trouble being taken seriously in the critical sphere — guys with goatees and dreads playing pointy guitars and turntables, hailing from cities like Bakersfield, Sacramento, Des Moines, and Jacksonville that were punchlines for New York and Los Angeles. Some of them actually dressed up like clowns.
I don’t know whether to blame Spinal Tap, Motley Crue, or just lingering anti-German sentiment, but when Americans see an umlaut, that cues the laugh track. But just say “nü-metal” out loud — “new metal.” From the jump, Deftones and their peers envisioned creating a novel form of metal completely divorced from a tired, blues-rock lineage that encompassed basically every form of popular guitar music to that point. The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Velvet Underground, Neil Young; these weren’t Deftones heroes, at least not publicly. From the jump, Deftones’ catholic tastes drew from quiet storm R&B, Bay Area funk-metal, The Cure and The Smiths, trip-hop, crate-digger rap, shoegaze, 4AD… at this very moment, most forward-thinking metal bands in the streaming era still sound like a lot like Deftones.
It’s been over 30 years since Chino Moreno, Carpenter, and drummer Abe Cunningham linked up at Sacramento’s C.K. McClatchy High School and created an embryonic version of Deftones; bassist Chi Cheng would join two years afterward, with keyboardist/turntablist Frank Delgado joining permanently during the making of White Pony. In the time since, Deftones’ consistency has made a deep dive somewhat forboding – the variance in quality between their consensus peaks (White Pony, Around The Fur, Ohms) and their less essential works (Deftones, Saturday Night Wrist) is shockingly narrow for a band that’s been as dependably productive over the span of 25 years. But for the unfamiliar, where to begin? There are usually two answers. One is to start with White Pony, although that recommendation has been compromised by Spotify’s unfortunate choice to feature the “reissue” version that begins with “Back To School,” an embarrassing rap-rock remake of the closing “Pink Maggit” that Maverick forced Deftones to make in order to juice what the label saw as underwhelming sales (Moreno claims he wrote it in a day just to spite them). But I’d personally recommend starting at the beginning and hearing them gradually accrue confidence to build on a foundation that was already solid from the start. For those who prefer a sampler, here’s one man’s choice of 30 Deftones songs — it’s hard to say whether they’re the best, but taken together, they’re a comprehensive overview of one the 21st century’s most rewarding bands.
30. “Pink Cellphone” (2006)
Deftones were supposedly fined a million dollars by their label for missing the deadlines on their 2003 self-titled. Its follow-up was an even bigger ordeal, as Chino Moreno struggled with addiction, divorce, and questioning his commitment to Deftones while completing the Team Sleep debut. Meanwhile, as Maverick continued to pressure the band after Deftones sold less than half of White Pony, the band cycled through song doctors, at least four studios, and a small battalion of producers, including Failure’s Ken Andrews, Ric Ocasek, Dan The Automator, and Bob Ezrin. The end result, Saturday Night Wrist, isn’t a particularly good Deftones album. Many think it’s their worst, though Moreno prefers calling it their “most fragmented” – and there’s evidence of a band exhausted enough to let their weirdest ideas take shape. For example, “Pink Cellphone,” a bizarre mix of old school hip-hop clatter, proto-EDM sub-bass, and deadpan guest vocals from Annie Hardy of Giant Drag… who spends the last 90 seconds relaying a monumentally disgusting theory about British dental hygiene that was cut from certain CD versions only to return on Spotify. Honestly, this probably isn’t actually one of Deftones’ best 30 songs, but definitely the one that most needs to be heard to be believed.
29. “Gore” (2016)
Gen X rock critics who grew up reading Rolling Stone have likely made a nerdy joke about how every U2 or R.E.M. album over the past 25 years will be hyped up as “their best since Achtung Baby/Automatic For The People!” and then casually dismissed by the next “return to form.” I suppose Deftones have reached that rarefied level, since the near-universal acclaim for Ohms has strangely come at the expense of its predecessor Gore, which wrestled the “best since White Pony!” title away from its own predecessor, Koi No Yokan. This is likely due to Moreno’s claims that Carpenter wasn’t fully engaged during the writing process of Gore and since he was there and I wasn’t, I gotta take his word for it. But nobody would’ve guessed that from hearing the title track (and really, anything from Side B), which pits Cunningham’s most daring drum rhythms with a chorus that pummels harder than anything they’ve done since Around The Fur, leaving the last minute for “Gore” to stagger in a pool of its own blood.
28. “Engine No. 9” (1995)
I once read that Madonna introduced Candlebox as “my grunge band” upon signing them to Maverick, and like most apocryphal stories I picked up from a mid-90s music magazine, the internet will not confirm whether it’s real. But I think about this every time Deftones talk about their time on the label, which mostly seems to involve getting berated at A&R meetings — “I remember [Maverick] sitting me down and pointing [out that] Papa Roach and Linkin Park had sold six million albums while [White Pony] hadn’t sold a tenth of that,” Moreno recalled in a 2010 interview. It’s likely that Madonna viewed Deftones as “my nu-metal band,” and expected them to put up Candlebox numbers, and in fairness, the fuck-the-pit-up Adrenaline highlight “Engine No. 9” gleefully smashes enough adolescent angst buzzers — Parents! Peers! Lyrical rap! — to make Maverick believe they were getting constantly robbed of a “Break Stuff.”
27. “Headup” (1997)
Korn’s self-titled debut transformed the state of alternative rock in the 1990s more than any album next to Nevermind and that still might be underselling it. Sepultura were one of the few veterans who welcomed metal’s latest “evolve or die” moment and thrived, tapping producer Ross Robinson, Korn’s Jonathan Davis and David Silveria, DJ Lethal, and Mike Patton (not to mention the Brazilian Xavante tribe) for their monumental 1996 album Roots. Max Cavalera and Deftones linked up a year later on “Headup” and its maniacal groove and call-and-response vocals make it a veritable Roots bonus cut, likely because Dana “D-Low” Wells would’ve wanted it that way. Wells was Cavalera’s stepson and a close friend of Moreno before he was tragically killed in a car accident in 1996 and the bridge pulls from some lyrics his family had found on a flier in his room. It’s an unusually cathartic and celebratory encomium for a fallen friend, and unfortunately, it would not be the last song of its kind that Moreno would have to write.
26. “Minus Blindfold” (1995)
At this point, there are exponentially more people who preemptively deny that Deftones are a rap-metal band than there are people who still believe that they are one. Real heads though, we can admit that Deftones totally were a rap-metal band — witness Chino getting on his “scientific lyrical miracle” shit with “Engine No. 9,” or their cover of Ice Cube’s “Wicked” with Korn or, sigh, “Back To School.” But it’s this Adrenaline underdog that proves Deftones were really onto something even in their earlier, more guileless days, doing the lord’s work of seeing the Judgment Night soundtrack as a conversation starter, aligning Lollapalooza and Smokin’ Grooves until Ozzfest could finish the deal.
25. “Elite” (2000)
Deftones’ first and only Grammy nomination came in 2001, and despite the Academy’s notoriously conservative tastes, the one throwback thrasher on White Pony got the nod for Best Metal Performance. That “Elite” actually won will never be the biggest shock of the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards — recall this was the year where an unbeloved Steely Dan album bested Kid A and The Marshall Mathers LP. But as much as “Elite” rips (dig the vocoder on the bridge!), I don’t think even Deftones believe it should’ve won over “Wait And Bleed.”
24. “Urantia” (2020)
Chino’s the artsy weirdo trying to make Deftones into a synth-pop act and Stephan Carpenter is the “metal guy” — this is the narrative that plays out publicly on every Deftones album despite Chino’s constant attempts to correct it. And it’s just so easy to apply to a song like “Urantia,” which kicks off with a piston-picked thrash metal riff before veering off into a vast, pastel-hued chorus. But lest we forget, Moreno recently pointed out that Around The Fur was his favorite Deftones album and Carpenter claimed he was listening to Depeche Mode’s Ultra on repeat throughout its creation — “Urantia” might not remind too many listeners of Around The Fur, but try to telling that to the guys who made it.
23. “Tempest” (2012)
Deftones have undeniably altered the sound of modern alternative rock and have maybe one just-OK album to their name in 25 years. Yet they will forever be denied the same level of tastemaker appeal of their heroes because their latter-day albums are still capable of soundtracking auto-erotic action scenes in Fast And Furious. For me, that’s a feature, not a bug — Deftones have long proven that they can make eerie, electronic art-rock, but would Vin Diesel ever load up his guns to a Radiohead song?
22. “The Spell Of Mathematics” (2020)
In the lead-up to Ohms, Deftones talked about the importance of returning to “The Spot,” a Sacramento studio/crash pad that they hadn’t occupied since Chi Cheng’s accident in 2008. Even if they refer to their early, formative hangout sessions together as “jams,” they never made anything that would remotely qualify as “jamband-esque” until “The Spell Of Mathematics,” the loose and luxurious centerpiece of Ohms that tails off into a literal human percussion circle — a dozen of their friends, including local Death Grips/Hella madman Zach Hill, all letting the groove ride as they snap their fingers together. Not the sort of thing they could’ve done last time they were making music at The Spot, but Deftones have been around long enough to earn their “if it feels good, do it” moment.
21. “7 Words” (1995)
“Y’all don’t know what it’s like / Being young, middle class and white” — these were the words of Ben Folds, a wealthy white man from Chapel Hill known for “ironic” piano-pop covers of “Gin & Juice” and a song with an “ironic” chorus of “give me my money back, you bitch.” Folds’ nü-metal baiting “Rockin’ The Suburbs” might be the worst alt-rock single of the 2000s, but it at least laid bare the classism frequently baked into superficial criticisms of the genre, whose artists and fans were quite often not male, not white, and from the most downtrodden parts of America. I’d expect Folds had a song like “7 Words” in mind, given its chorus is “SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK IT YOU B*TCH.” Yes, Moreno wrote this song when he was 16 and it’s about the exact thing you’d expect a teenage skate-punk of color to write about: how much they hate cops. The title refers not to George Carlin, but “you have the right to remain silent,” which they’ve righteously waived for 25 straight years — “7 Words” continues to show up in Deftones setlists and I doubt 2020 has changed their minds.
20. “No Ordinary Love” (2000)
Whether or not Deftones’ cover of “No Ordinary Love” is actually good is sorta besides the point. Here’s a metal band with every incentive (and often, direct orders) to relive their rap-metal past doing a straightforward rendition of a Sade song – at least a decade before loudly proclaiming one’s affinity for Sade became standard operating procedure for cool bands. In fact, with tracklists featuring Duran Duran, The Cure, The Cars, The Smiths, Japan, Cocteau Twins, and Sade, one could argue that Deftones’ cover compilations were Pitchfork 1980s lists in chrysalis. But they also contain Helmet and Drive Like Jehu covers, so naturally, their take on “No Ordinary Love” disturbs the aquatic, soothing production of the original with depth charges of detuned guitars, turning the devotion of the lyrics into something more unsettling. For the record, it’s a great cover.
19. “Mascara” (1997)
As to be expected with a popular band going strong into its third decade, Deftones concerts are frequently Date Night for couples who’ve aged alongside the band and maybe have matching White Pony ink. But it’s not “7 Words” or “Elite” that’s liable to kill the vibe; it’s the one that culminates with a mantra of “it’s too bad you’re married to me.” Latter-day Deftones albums are rife with Chino Moreno’s more lurid romantic dreams — his most brutally honest song about commitment actually shows up very early in their catalog. “I hate your tattoos / and your weak wrists / but I’ll keep you,” Moreno mutters over the desolate, desiccated lurch of “Mascara,” an Around The Fur fan favorite that airs out the resentments and self-loathing that can fester underneath a love you want to last forever.
18. “Korea” (2000)
In the parlance of Dia De Los Deftones headliner Future, “The Cocaine & Stripper Joint.” While White Pony is a celebrated realization of Deftones’ heretofore-subdued art-rock ambitions, this debaucherous and sorely underappreciated deep cut reminds us it was also borne of a lot of drugs, sex, and druggy sex. Bonus points for the bridge where Frank Delgado’s record scratches sound like someone trying to scrape the last bit of blow off a mirror in the champagne room.
17. “Rosemary” (2012)
I recently came across a Facebook group that coined the term “accidental shoegaze” — an imperfect but useful rubric to consider bands who evoke some of that genre’s classic tropes (heavily processed, swirling guitars, cooing, textural vocals) without being able to pass even the most lax purity test — i.e., Deftones’ preferences for clean production, maxed-out vocals, and cargo shorts. I can think of an album’s worth of material that can make the case for Deftones as the greatest accidental shoegaze band of all time and “Rosemary” would undoubtedly be its centerpiece. Quite possibly the slowest Deftones song ever made, just shy of the longest (that honor goes to “Pink Maggit,” “MX” isn’t really 37 minutes) and certainly the most swoon-worthy, if “Rosemary” is what happens when these guys accidentally make shoegaze, imagine if they committed to do it on purpose.
16. “Teenager” (2020)
For most of White Pony’s first half, Deftones have made an impressive leap from Around The Fur that’s both incremental and logical — the choruses are bigger and brighter, the song structures are more adventurous, but they’re still a band based in drop-C chunk and Moreno’s vaporous, searching melodies. And then “Teenager” happens, where Moreno coos in falsetto about a crippling high school crush over Delgado’s skittering drum patterns and almost nothing else — no bass guitar, no live drums, and the only guitar is an acoustic sample looped throughout. Deftones never tried something so overtly emo (at least in sentiment) ever again, nor did Moreno’s actual electro-pop side project Team Sleep. Then again, this is a song about a crippling high school crush — it’s not a feeling you can ever really capture twice.
15. “Hexagram” (2003)
For a self-titled album, Deftones found a band struggling to figure out who they truly were in 2003. The experiments were modest compared to those of White Pony, as were the hints of retreat back to their rawer, noisier past. There is nothing tentative about its opener “Hexagram,” which darts from a maxed-out, shrieking waltz into a bonkers chorus where all five members seem to be recreating the tollbooth scene of The Godfather in different time signatures — a promise of an abrasive, “freak out the squares” album that unfortunately never came to pass.
14. “Swerve City” (2012)
Each new Deftones album brings a slate of extremely badass and allusive song titles – “Xenon,” “Xerxes,” “Battle-Axe,” “Bloody Cape,” “Goon Squad,” and many other deep cuts that aren’t here on this list that bear no indication of what the song sounds like or is really even about. And then there’s the riff on Koi No Yokan’s opener — I don’t know how they could’ve called “Swerve City” anything else.
13. “Bored” (1995)
Rock music rarely evolves as the result of brilliant bursts of invention — it mostly occurs when bands break down arbitrary boundaries between their influences. Given what came after, it can be hard to remember “Bored” initially being viewed as state-of-the-art genre-blending in 1995, the product of an era when impressionable teenagers could absorb Helmet, The Cure, and Dr. Dre simply by watching MTV for fifteen minutes. Revisiting Adrenaline 25 years later, the guitar tones are hella dated, Moreno is still finding his footing as a vocalist and there are unfortunate lyrical lapses — but anyone who wants to understand the true essence of Deftones can just start at the beginning.
12. “Acid Hologram” (2016)
We’ve talked about drugs a lot so far — mostly weed and cocaine, perhaps some speed during the Saturday Night Wrist era, lots of alcohol throughout. For the most part, Deftones embody the usual side effects of these intoxicants — paranoia, irrational excitability, delusions of grandeur, fits of mania. But leave it to the one song with “acid” in its title to be only time they’ve ever gotten trippy. The retroactive critiques of Gore tend to focus on Carpenter’s absence and the presumptive, resulting lack of tr00 metal, without recognizing how the prismatic, effects-heavy layering of “Acid Hologram” opened up possibilities Deftones honored by with the psychedelic overtones (“The Spell Of Mathematics,” “Genesis”) littered throughout the more-beloved Ohms.
11. “Genesis” (2020)
In the grand scheme of things, Deftones’ Nick Raskulinecz Trilogy has to be considered a massive success. From Diamond Eyes through Gore, they were a band that gracefully endured tragedy and terrible writer’s block with renewed vigor and clarity, ready to reestablish themselves as vital contributors to popular metal rather than elder statesmen that could coast on their immeasurable influence. That said, there was always something missing in the production — too clean, too maxed out — that with Ohms bringing Terry Date back to produce, they finally said the quiet part out loud. Unlike every other Deftones opening track, “Genesis” does not immediately go the f*ck in, letting a synthesizer drone for 52 seconds. There’s a lot going on in this track but the one sound that sticks out to me is what happens before Carpenter busts out a nine-string riff that could literally flatten the entire earth. It’s the simple click of Abe Cunningham’s drumsticks that honors their promise of getting back to the old way of doing things — five guys in a room, all fully engaged.
10. “Sextape” (2010)
Chino Moreno, on the meaning of Around The Fur, “I picture fur as being very glamorous and very beautiful. But around the inside it’s skin. And it’s ugly. So it’s somewhat of a metaphor for the music.” Ever get so drunk you fall asleep on your arm and suffer nerve damage? That’s his explanation of Saturday Night Wrist. Dude has a way of accidentally writing phrases that sound extremely sexual, so kudos to him for outright giving a very sexually suggestive song the title “Sextape.” But while the term “sextape” itself brings to mind something corrupted, cheap, and exploitative (granted, having a video of two women making out underwater raises the same question of the Around The Fur and Saturday Night Wrist covers, i.e., did Deftones think the clip was subversive, evocative, or just hot), “Sextape” itself is the most unashamedly sensual and enveloping Deftones song, holding back on any of their usual metallic defense mechanics disturbing the oceanic groove.
9. “Knife Prty” (2000)
The “New Rock Revolution” of the early 2000s was not-so-subtly framed as an actual revolt, ostensibly bringing sex, drugs, and the real New York City back to rock ‘n roll after years of suburban nu-metal, surly post-grunge, and emasculated pop-punk dominating the charts. I can only assume no one in Meet Me In The Bathroom had listened to White Pony centerpiece “Knife Prty” — if Maverick had their way, “Back To School” would result in millions of sheltered kids hearing the best Jane’s Addiction song Perry Farrell never wrote, an ode to sexual bloodsport blatant enough to make Lou Reed blush.
8. “Diamond Eyes” (2010)
After an unprecedented four-year break between albums, Diamond Eyes confronts the absence of Chi Cheng in a most brutal way — by recreating the 2008 car crash that put him in a coma for the next five years. Yet, brutality and beauty rarely exist on their own in Deftones songs and “Diamond Eyes” features some of the most evocative imagery of the band’s career: a broken windshield recalls “diamonds rain[ing] across the sky,” souls realigning in due time, a Meshuggah-inspired eight-string guitar recreating a jaws of life. Perhaps the band assumed that Cheng would’ve wanted his tribute to slam as hard as anything he made with the band, but when I saw them play “Diamond Eyes” at a celebration of their 30th year of existence, Chino was too choked up to make it through the chorus.
7. “Feiticiera” (2000)
Only one thing’s for certain when Deftones open up their masterwork White Pony — “F*CK I’M DRUNK!” For the next three minutes, “Feiticiera” is all sudden plot twists and key changes, with Moreno’s perspective changing with seemingly every line. Is he a hostage? Is this a kidnapping or role playing? Is this “Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away)” recast as a horror story? Why is this song named after a Brazilian fitness model? (A: “the name itself is some Brazilian name that I read in a magazine and just liked.” Possibly related: Joana Prado of “In Shape With Feiticiera” posed for Brazilian Playboy three times, including its best-selling copy of all-time). Everything that would get fleshed out on White Pony gets introduced here: post-hardcore riffs turned into pop, a head-on collision between violent and sexual impulses. But most of all, the narrator on “Feiticiera” is in a state of surrender, ready to let their darkest fantasies take them wherever they lead.
6. “Minerva” (2003)
In hindsight, Deftones is commonly acknowledged as the band taking its first L – merely going gold after Around The Fur and White Pony went platinum, met with cautiously positive and indifferent reviews rather than raves or even confusion. But flashback to May 2003 and there’s Deftones debuting at No. 2 on Billboard, still their highest to date. And that’s because we only had “Minerva” and Deftones’ most unapologetically soaring and populist chorus — “AND GOD BLESS YOU ALL!” For four and a half glorious minutes, we could imagine a very real possibility that Deftones would spend the rest of the year, and maybe even their career, going toe-to-toe with Foo Fighters, or at least judging from the video where they soundcheck to an empty desert landscape, headlining Coachella. And then everyone pressed play on “Hexagram” and heard a band that would lose its first battle, only to win the Loudness Wars years later.
5. “Hole In The Earth” (2006)
From all accounts, Saturday Night Wrist was the end result of the most difficult and divisive recording process Deftones would ever endure. So perhaps everyone was too drained to talk Moreno out of getting all meta on the bridge and airing out the band’s dirty laundry: “I hate all of my friends / They all lack taste sometimes.” Indeed, the fluttering waltz beat and “Heaven Or Las Vegas” guitar lead suggests Chino’s attempt to make an actual Cocteau Twins song, and it keeps getting shut down by the piledriving drop-D riff on the chorus. In other words, a quintessential Deftones song, an artistic stalemate leading to explosive alchemy.
4. “My Own Summer (Shove It)” (1997)
“Best Side One Track” will be an eternally entertaining bar game for music geeks as long as the album format exists, but I like to get more specific — S1T1 on a sophomore album where a previously slight band lets you know within the first few seconds that they are not f*cking around — “Silent Shout,” “Planet Telex,” “An Introduction To The Album.” If only YouTube reaction videos existed for “My Own Summer (Shove It)” – in the years following Adrenaline, Deftones paid their dues opening for bands like Korn, White Zombie and… KISS, and I imagine they learned the importance of making an immediate impression. Do not underestimate how much work went into the snare hit that introduces Around The Fur — Abe Cunningham claims he used a different snare on every single song. The verses presage the dank, dub-metal of Massive Attack’s Mezzanine and all of their weed-fueled paranoia gets frighteningly actualized on the chorus; 90% of the video looks terribly dated, but at least having them play on an ice floe surrounded by live sharks works as a concept. Over the past 20 years, Deftones have expanded upon the art-metal template set by White Pony to great acclaim, but there’s a reason that a wide swath of Deftones fans and even Moreno himself holds Around The Fur in even higher regard – “My Own Summer” is what happens when a young band starts to realize the extent of their own confidence and there’s no way they’ll ever make it again.
3. “Change (In The House Of Flies)” (2000)
And now, a word about Deftones’ music videos: meh. Mostly consisting of serviceable performance clips and half-realized abstract art pieces, Deftones’ filmography has never felt commensurate with their mighty catalog. There’s one major exception and it’s not “Back To School,” even if you can argue that it’s their most successfully executed concept. “Change (In The House Of Flies)” wouldn’t have been served by a video of Deftones simply playing along in an interesting-looking studio space; it’s too slow, too tense. In Liz Friedlander’s gorgeous and spot-on treatment for a very sexy, very sinister song, Deftones are mingled amongst wasted models in a Hollywood Hills estate that looks part Eyes Wide Shut, part The Ice Storm, part Boogie Nights. They blend in with their surroundings, but don’t quite belong, as none of the band members seem to be acknowledged by anyone they’re playing for, with Friedlander occasionally cutting away to them jamming out alone in the living room. Leading up to White Pony, Deftones were living out their teen dreams on houseboats in Sausalito and recording in the same studio where Rumours was made, but they were also driving producer Terry Date mad by indulging in marathon sessions of Tony Hawk Pro Skater. No matter how much Deftones immersed themselves in rockstar excess, they were still just a couple of guys from Sacramento and the “Change” video held true to the song’s themes of unnerving voyeurism — of feeling a witness to physical and moral decline even as a participant.
2. “Digital Bath” (2000)
All I knew about cocaine in 2000 were things I picked up from albums like Be Here Now or Tusk or Billy Joel’s “Pressure” – i.e., it was only accessible to rich assholes and it made them even bigger assholes. I didn’t even know how someone would acquire it — it was hard enough to come across shwag weed and wine coolers while growing up in suburban Pennsylvania. If the cover art and title of White Pony weren’t overt enough about Deftones’ vices, there’s “Digital Bath” – the blinding sheen of the production, the numbing tingle of Delgado’s drum programming, the part where Carpenter’s guitar ruptures and the rush kicks in… look, I’m not saying that cocaine even really needed much of a sales pitch. In a literal sense, the subject matter of White Pony is insect metamorphosis, kidnapping, bloodletting, and, in the case of “Digital Bath,” a woman being lured into a bathtub and electrocuted. But really, as far as what White Pony and Deftones were about, it’s the chorus — “I feel like more.”
1. “Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away)” (1997)
Where are Deftones in 2020 without “Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away)”? If, say, “Mascara” or the title track served as Around The Fur’s second single instead, perhaps Deftones soldier on as a respected cult act that never escaped the shadow of Korn. Maybe they try to make White Pony anyway and Maverick is even less supportive, unaware that an audience exists for Deftones’ more melodic and sensitive side. There’s nothing else on their first two albums that does more than simply imply their professed love for The Smiths or The Cure, and even “Be Quiet And Drive” itself doesn’t sound much like either of them (not even that one Ross Robinson-produced Cure album where they tried to sound like Deftones). But it showed that Moreno truly understood why songs like “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” or “Just Like Heaven” hit different — when bands are otherwise dedicated to all-consuming miserablism, the stakes are inconceivably high for the outlier love songs, where one car ride or one night together can counterbalance the otherwise hopeless state of existence. If not, what’s the point of it all? And so this is the song that had to top this list — it’s the reason we can make one in the first place.
Deftones is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
There are plenty of good TV series on Netflix. Too many, in fact.
It’s a good problem to have but if mindlessly scrolling through streaming platforms is taking up too much of your time these days, and, well, we’re here to help. We’ve curated over 65 of the best shows on Netflix right now (including some of the best Netflix original series) and we’ll be updating them regularly, adding new seasons, removing expired titles, and dropping the latest offerings you’ll want to add to your queue. If the goal is to constantly be binge-watching great TV, you’re in the right place.
You don’t need to love chess to get obsessed with this drama from Scott Frank. That’s because the board game is just the setting, the battlefield where all the real maneuverings and suspense take place. Anya-Taylor Joy and her mesmerizing stare are front and center here as she plays Beth Harmon, an orphan and chess prodigy whose quest for greatness is only eclipsed by her life-destroying addictions. It’s a coming-of-age story wrapped disguised behind pawns and Sicilian defense tactics and it’s one of the most captivating, thrilling series to land on the streamer in a long time.
Even though this sports-centric docuseries was just released earlier this year, it already feels like a defining entry into the genre. That’s because over the course of 10 episodes, this show peers behind the curtain of one of the biggest sports dynasties in history: The Chicago Bulls, but it doesn’t take the path you might expect. The battles off the court, the complicated player relationships, the media’s influence, and the backdoor dealings of executives within the organization all come into play here, but the most gripping part of this series is how it humanizes a God-like figure in basketball for the generations that grew up in his shadow.
Netflix is giving this true-crime series a reboot which is good news for all the murder mystery junkies out there. UFOs, missing husbands, and a murderous French count still on the run are the highlights of the show’s first six episodes. Get your sleuth hats ready.
Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal is a perfect series to binge-watch, given that the ability to watch back-to-back episodes evens out some of the slow pacing. Hannibal is dark, macabre, and brilliantly creative, and while it has many of the same characters viewers know and appreciate from the movie/book series, it also has an entirely different and unique tone (some would even say better). The murder scenes are equally gruesome and gorgeous, the series’ long arc is as disturbing as it is engrossing, and the acting from Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelson, and Laurence Fishburne is superb. It’s a slow, morbidly addictive burn, and viewers must stick around for Michael Pitt’s Mason Verger in season two, if only for one of the most beautifully unsettling sequences ever seen on network television.
Has there ever been a sitcom as downright clever as Community? Aside from the gas leak year, Community was quicker than nearly every other comedy out there, with jokes flying fast but also taking seasons to reach a punchline. After getting caught with a phony degree, former lawyer Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) heads to Greendale Community College to get a legitimate degree. There he gets into increasingly hilarious hijinks with his Spanish study group. Between paintball wars, zombie outbreaks, and the increasingly ridiculous presence of Senor Chang (Ken Jeong), Community is never, ever boring. Quit living in the darkest timeline and get to watching.
Comedian Mae Martin stars in this feel-good dramedy series about a stand-up performer (named Mae), who falls for a young woman named George. Mae’s a recovering addict; George has just emerged from the closet. Sparks fly between the two, but Mae’s past drug use and George’s reluctance to come out to her friends and family threatens to break them up.
There are stories too bizarre, too mind-boggling to be true… and then there’s this seven-part docuseries. Cults, queer romance, exotic cats — this true-crime binge has it all. Is Joe Exotic, a gay, gun-loving conman running an exotic zoo out of his home in Oklahoma, a criminal or an American hero? Did animal rights activist Carole Baskin murder her husband and feed him to her tigers? Why are so many zoo employees missing limbs? These are just a few of the questions you’ll ask while watching this train wreck. Have fun, kids.
Good news: Narcos is back. Even better news: Mexico is basically an entirely revamped show, which means you don’t need to be familiar with past installments to enjoy the wild ride. Diego Luna plays the new big bad, a drug lord looking to expand his reach, while Michael Pena plays the fed tasked with busting his operation. Luna looks to be thoroughly enjoying playing the sleazeball gangster-type, and since this installment is set in the 1980s, expect plenty of decadence, a killer soundtrack, and a ton of cocaine.
Henry Cavill leads this fantasy epic based on a best-selling series of books and a popular video game franchise. The expectations are high, but they’re more than exceeded by Cavill, who plays a mutated monster hunter named Geralt. Showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich laid out for us the changes she made from page to screen, introducing key characters like the sorceress Yennefer and the destined princess Ciri early on, changes that take this show to the next level. It’s a cross between a police procedural and a Lord Of The Rings-style adventure. You’ll love it.
The only thing better than a series starring Paul Rudd is a show starring two Paul Rudds. The funnyman leads this new original series while playing a man named Miles, who seems pretty dissatisfied with his life so far. After agreeing to participate in a mysterious spa treatment that promises a better, more successful life, Miles is left with a practically perfect doppelganger intent on taking his life from him. It’s dark and weird, and did we mention the two Paul Rudds?
Director Ava DuVernay’s limited series about the wrongfully accused men in the Central Park Five case is an emotionally heavy reimagining of a truly tragic event in our history. The series sheds light on racial profiling and corruption in the NYPD as a group of young Black men are targeted for a heinous crime and put on trial with little evidence. It’s a gripping, heartbreaking retelling, but one that feels sadly relevant.
Saturday Night Live and Detroiters alum Tim Robinson creates and stars in this 15-minute sketch comedy series that is perfectly happy to offer up a few irreverent laughs without all of the post-comedy commentary that weighs down other funny shows in 2019. It’s a mixed bag of unconnected stories about toddler pageants and old men out for revenge and how Instagram has warped our social interactions in hilariously bizarre ways. What each of these skits has in common is Robinson’s particular brand of comedy and his unrivaled ability to make you laugh.
Ali Wong and Tiffany Haddish voice the stars of this animated comedy from BoJack Horseman artist Lisa Hanawalt. Wong plays Bertie, a 30-something songbird thrush with debilitating anxiety, a knack for baking, and a truly toxic work environment. Haddish plays her best friend Tuca, a loud-mouthed toucan who loves to party and hates the thought of settling down. The friends try to hold on to their single days, even as Bertie takes the next step in her long-term relationship and Tuca struggles to find her place in the world. It’s a more colorful, comforting world than BoJack, but it’s got the same great humor and surprisingly-thoughtful musings.
Christina Applegate returns to TV with this grief-com about a woman trying to pick up the pieces after her husband is murdered in a horrible hit-and-run accident. Applegate plays the angry, grieving widow with equal parts humor and empathy while Linda Cardellini plays her sunny, optimistic best friend. The two meet in a grief group and navigate the challenges of moving on after loss while also solving a murder mystery. There’s no way you’ll know what to expect here, which is half the fun of watching and the show dispelled any worries that it couldn’t keep up its cliffhanger-heavy intrigue with a second season that saw Applegate and Cardellini involved in a new, just-as-illegal cover-up.
Natasha Lyonne stars in this Groundhog Day-from-hell remake about a woman who’s forced to relive the last day of her life over and over again. It’s been done before, but this series stands out thanks to its mix of dark humor and a tinge of the supernatural. Lyonne is one of the often-overlooked OITNB stars, but it looks like this series is giving her a chance to show off her comedic chops as her character, Nadia, endures a constant loop of partying, dying, then waking up to do it all over again. As bleak as the premise is, Lyonne manages to find a silver lining, a universal message that basically read, “The world is sh*t, let’s help each other out if we can.”
Superhero team-ups are a dime a dozen, but the TV adaptation of this award-winning comic series created by Gerard Way — yes, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance — feels wholly unique and thus, totally refreshing. The show follows the story of seven kids, all born on the same day to mothers who didn’t even know they were pregnant. They’re adopted by a mysterious billionaire and trained to use their supernatural abilities to fight evil in the world, but when they grow up, their dysfunctional upbringing catches up with them, and they’re left struggling to live normal lives. In season two, that means time-jumping to the 60s, starting doomsday cults, and seriously f*cking with the assassination of JFK. It’s all kinds of weird, which is exactly what the genre needs right now.
Kiernan Shipka stars in this witchy revival of a sitcom classic. This Sabrina Spellman is darker than what millennials are used to. As a half-mortal, half-witch, Spellman is an outcast with the magical community and the first season explores the cult-like fervor of magic users, their worship of Satan, and why Sabrina is being pressured to sign her name over to the Dark Lord. The show also tackles issues of romance, friendship, and sexism in clever, crafty ways with a season two storyline that put Sabrina in a darker version of Hogwarts and explores her familial ties to Lucifer. The show’s latest installment sees her teaming up with Satan’s mistress — that isn’t a dig, she’s literally working with Lilith — to balance her duties in hell with the pressures of teenage life. It’s all weird, gothic, Craft-like nonsense and it’s addicting to watch.
The UK’s most popular new drama has made its way across the pond. The procedural thriller stars Game of Thrones’ Richard Madden as David Budd, a military vet turned police officer tasked with protecting a high-profile politician during a, particularly dicey time. There’s plenty of suspense and action to string you along, coupled with a vulnerable performance by Madden, who ditches his King of the North swagger to play a man conflicted by his past and his present duty to his country.
Mike Flanagan knows how to do horror, and his latest series for Netflix, The Haunting of Hill House, is proof of that. The show, like the book off which it’s based, follows the fractured Crain family as they try to make peace with their dark and twisted path. Of course, through some carefully-timed flashbacks, we see why the Crain siblings are so messed up: They lived in a haunted house as children, a house that eventually caused the death of their mother. There are plenty of frights to keep horror fans interested in this thriller, but the real point of this show is investigating trauma and its lingering effects. Makes sense that horror is the best way to do that.
Not just the best series on Netflix, Breaking Bad is the best series of all time. There’s no debate about that. Unless you’ve caught onto the Better Call Saul hype. Then there might be a debate to be had. Still, this series proved what a dramatic powerhouse Bryan Cranston was and launched the b*tchin’ career of Aaron Paul, two good reasons to give it a re-watch — or a first watch. No judgment.
Not enough people on the Internet have explained that BoJack Horseman is not what it might seem like. Not enough people raved that it was an often very funny, often very heartbreaking meditation on depression. It’s an animated sitcom about a washed-up horse, and somehow, it’s also an incredibly profound look at deeper themes. It’s amazing, but it may also leave you in a depressive funk for days afterward. Its fourth season even placed it among our best TV shows of 2017, and it’s just never left that list, not in its fifth or final sixth season, which ended as poignantly and darkly funny as you’d expect it to.
A throwback and love letter to the early 1980s movies of Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter, the Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things feels both familiar and new. It’s about a boy named Will (think E.T.‘s Elliot) who is captured by a The Thing-like creature and trapped in a Poltergeist-like world. His mother (Winona Ryder) recruits the local sheriff to investigate Will’s disappearance. Meanwhile, Will’s dorky, Goonies-like best friends take to their bikes to do some sleuthing of their own and eventually befriend an alien-like girl with telepathic powers (the E.T. of the series). Season two continued that vibe as the show dove deeper into government conspiracies and alien monsters intent on wreaking havoc on small-town Indiana while the show’s latest season let its magnetic young cast grow up a bit, giving them more complicated villains to fight and a Soviet conspiracy to uncover. It’s great PG horror/sci-fi, like the blockbusters of the early ’80s, and even if you didn’t come of age in the era, there’s something for everyone to enjoy.
The original UK version of The Office mainstreamed Ricky Gervais’ awkward, uncomfortable humor, but the American version of the comedy series succeeded mainly because it diluted that (some), layered in one of sitcom’s greatest romances (for four seasons, anyway), and surrounded Steve Carell with a remarkable, quirky supporting cast. The first four seasons still stand as the best workplace comedy in American sitcom history, even if the final four seasons were increasingly mediocre — though the series did redeem itself in the end.
AMC’s 80s-centric tech drama is a seasons-long look behind the invention of the World Wide Web and the tech boom that came to define that era. Lee Pace plays Joe MacMillan, a smooth-talking salesman who worms his way into more than a few tech ventures over the course of four seasons. He’s joined by a couple of married computer engineers and a gifted programmer (Mackenzie Davis) in his bid to control (and make money off) the invention of the internet. Even if the more technical aspects of this series fly over your head, watching this kind of tangible human drama play out amidst a backdrop of Silicon Valley start-ups is more than enough reason to watch.
The series lost some of the mystique it had gained after its cancellation because Netflix’s season four wasn’t to everyone’s satisfaction — though it flowers with repeat viewings, especially with the recut version of it. Arrested Development still stands as one of the funniest, most inventive, and most influential sitcoms of the generation however and it’s got an unbelievably watchable cast in Jason Bateman, Michael Cera, Will Arnett, Jessica Walter, and David Cross. Seriously, you can’t go wrong here.
One of the best original shows on Netflix, this prison dramedy is a deeply human, funny, moving, realistic, progressive show about life and the bad decisions we’re all destined to make. OITNB humanizes the dehumanized, transforms labels — felons, thieves, murderers, embezzlers — into real human beings and reminds us that, even in prison, life isn’t put on hold. Life is being led. It’s a remarkably excellent series, and addictive as hell.
In its first season, Better Call Saul quickly put to rest any fears anyone might have had about a spin-off from arguably the greatest drama of all time, Breaking Bad (which sits atop this list). Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould return as showrunners, and they continue to bring the same level of complexity, intensity, and character development to Saul as they did for Breaking Bad. What’s most remarkable about the series, however, is that they managed to transform the Saul character into someone humane and sympathetic while staying true to the same character in the original series. Indeed, Saul is the most detail oriented and perhaps the smartest show on television, and one hell of an intense, suspenseful drama, which is all the more impressive because we know roughly where it will end up.
Ryan Murphy’s horror anthology on FX is an unpredictable tour-de-force that, when it sticks its landing, is one of the best shows on TV. The series chronicles truly terrifying, mind-warping plots across multiple seasons, connecting some, ignoring others. What grounds these outrageous storylines involving haunted hotels, murder houses, insane asylums, cults, and covens is the cast, most notably Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, and Evan Peters. Murphy relies on their visceral portrayals of individuals unhinged to sell this whacky, nightmare-inducing rollercoaster and sell they do.
At first glance, this bodice-ripper from Starz reads like the television adaptation of a dime-store paperback romance novel. It’s got time travel, sexy Scottish men in kilts, an arranged marriage, even a bit of witchcraft. But the show, starring Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan, elevates itself beyond those tropes, touching on everything from love and loss to the politics behind some of history’s most infamous conflicts. From the highlands to the French court and eventually the New World, the series delivers awe-inducing visuals, career-making performances, and the kind of drama to keep you hooked.
Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, and Seth Meyers have created something truly unique with their riff on our culture’s obsession with docu-style TV series. The SNL alums mock the stylistic choices and subjects of other shows of its ilk, with episodes dedicated to everything from Grey Gardens to The Thin Blue Line. And the guestlist for this thing is unbelievable.
In Mindhunter, Jonathan Groff plays Holden Ford, a character based on the real-life John E. Douglas (the inspiration for Jack Crawford in the Hannibal series). The series itself is based on the origins of an actual behavioral science unit in the FBI used to study serial killers in the 1970s and 80s. Ford is a young FBI Agent who takes a keen interest in psychology which, in turn, grows into an interest in the psychology of sequential killers. It’s a fascinating exploration into the origins of what now seems commonplace, a science that has inspired dozens of police procedurals. What’s more interesting here, however, is that while Ford is studying serial killers (all of whom are based on actual serial killers from that era), Ford develops his own obsession with serial-killers that mirrors the obsession serial killers have with their victims. It’s engrossing and fascinating. The series comes from Joe Penhall and executive producer David Fincher (who also directs several episodes), and fans of Fincher’s Zodiac will appreciate Mindhunter for its same attention to detail, and the same dedication to character and research over surprising twists and reveals.
If small-town murder mysteries full of camp and supernatural phenomenon are your thing, well then why wouldn’t you watch (or re-watch) Twin Peaks? The series, crafted all the way back in the ’90s by David Lynch, is a cult-favorite and for good reason. With Kyle MacLachlan playing Special Agent Dale Cooper, a poor schmoe who’s called in to investigate the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer, he’s met with more than he bargained for. Conspiracies theories and otherworldly beings, time travel, and dwarves in red business suits soon follow. The original series may have ended with cliffhangers and unexplained plot-holes, but with the more recent Showtime revival, now’s as good a time as any to catch up on all the strange events that seem to plague this sleepy town.
This Tina Fey-produced sitcom — which was originally supposed to air on NBC before the network agreed to give it to Netflix — is as dense and irreverent as 30 Rock, but it’s also immensely life-affirming. It’s funny, fast-paced, chock-full of pop-culture references and maybe the easiest Netflix original series to binge-watch. And, like 30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt also includes a lot of fun — and unexpected — celebrity cameos and pop culture references throughout its four seasons.
The Walking Dead is an up-and-down show. When it’s good, it’s phenomenal; when it’s not, it can be a slog (especially in the earlier half of the series, when Frank Darabont was showrunner). Greg Nicotero does fantastic work, and the series is particularly compelling because no one — no matter how high they are listed in the credits — is safe from the zombie apocalypse. Some of the binge-watching value, however, is lost because it’s so difficult to avoid being spoiled to plot points of one of the most talked-about series on TV. Nevertheless, unlike almost any television drama, up until the sixth season, The Walking Dead improved with age, Beware of the cliffhangers, however, in season six, and a precipitous fall off in quality thereafter.
Although the original trial took place 20 years ago, and despite the fact that anyone watching the series already knows the outcome, The People vs. O.J. Simpson somehow remains a tense, suspenseful watch. Buoyed by incredible performances (the season was nominated for over 20 Emmy Awards, winning 8), The People vs. O.J. Simpson recreates the events following the murder of Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson and recasts them in the light of what we know now. In its second season, the shows moves focus on the assassination of design legend Gianni Versace by Andrew Cunanan. While not as strong as the amazing ensemble in Season 1, Season 2 boasts memorable portrayals of conflicted, complex figures by Darren Criss, Penelope Cruz, Édgar Ramírez, and (surprisingly) Ricky Martin.
Sherlock is the best iteration of Sherlock Holmes ever to air on television. There, we said it. The British series from Steven Moffat stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, and despite the fact that it has been updated, it brilliantly captures the same spirit of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic stories. It’s fast-paced, engrossing, brilliantly acted, often very funny, and frequently tragic.
Intimate, funny, warm, and kind, Master of None confidently tackles issues of sex and race from a perspective original to mainstream television. Creator, writer, and star Aziz Ansari loads the sitcom with smart observations and wry humor, and when it comes to dating as a thirty-something, Ansari just gets it. Sweet, sentimental, but never sappy, the mold-breaking Master of None may be the most thoughtful and well-considered dating sitcom on television.
Packed full of hairspray, ’80s nostalgia, leotards, and neon eyeshadow, GLOW surprised us all with a comedy about a group of unconventional women wrestling with stereotypes in and out of the ring. Led by Alison Brie and Marc Maron, the show is both a subversive commentary on issues of gender equality and sexism, and a raucous imagining of what goes on behind the scenes of an adult women’s wrestling league. In other words, it’s a damn good time. Brie carries the series, playing a struggling actress forced to take a “role” in this televised nonsense, but she’s by no means a heroine. In fact, it’s her battle to find her character and herself (while making amends for her bad behavior along the way) that’s so entertaining. Well, that and some good ol’ fashioned body slamming. Season two focuses the spotlight on the supporting cast as the women ready for their television debuts and contend with sexual harassment and misogyny in the workplace and the show’s third season felt like it was setting up a satisfying conclusion to the rich story these women share. Unfortunately, it looks like the pandemic has taken that away from us too.
Riverdale is a dark teen comedy based on characters from the Archie comics. It mixes in elements of a conventional teen drama — romance, small-town life, and the high-school ecosystem — with a compelling, adult murder mystery. The series takes place in a small-town with a 1950s vibe (despite being firmly set in the present) where a high-school teenager is found dead under mysterious circumstances that implicate much of the community as suspects. Riverdale is powered not just by the mystery, but by characters who are instantly likable (Betty, Veronica, and Jughead are all standouts) and easy to invest in. The mystery is so incredibly intriguing that it’s almost impossible not to get wrapped up in it as the storyline guides us through numerous red herrings. It’s a madly addictive series, occasionally campy, and just self-aware enough not to take itself too seriously.
5 seasons, 22 episodes + interactive film | IMDb: 8.8/10
It cannot be stressed enough how amazing Britain’s Black Mirror is. It’s severely biting social commentary about the current and future technological age in the form of twisted, dark Twilight Zone episodes. It’s an incredible (and incredibly short) five seasons of television, and episode for episode, perhaps the best series on this list boasting a wide-ranging list of talent and digging into some heavy sh*t with increasingly futuristic sci-fi storytelling. Trust us, one episode, and you’ll be hooked.
Netflix’s original series Dear White People builds on the foundations laid by Spike Lee’s drama of the same name. The show kicks off during the aftermath of an event that happened in the film – a blackface party held by a white fraternity on a fictional college campus. Sam, a radio personality and student at the school, covers the fallout for her listeners and serves as a pseudo-narrator to all the goings-on at school. There are brief moments of humor and plenty of satire, but watching these kids deal with racist learning institutions and police brutality and ignorance from the privileged peers feels uncomfortable real and relevant. It’s a must-watch, not only because the acting is superb, and the storylines are rich, but because you’ll probably learn something you didn’t know but should.
Rectify is maybe the best series on television that no one watched. Aden Young, in a soulful performance, plays Daniel Holden, a man locked up and put on death row nearly 20 years ago for raping and murdering his girlfriend. However, DNA evidence has come to light that casts doubt on his guilt, so the court system has no choice but to release him. Is he actually guilty? Or is he innocent and misunderstood? That’s the question at the heart of the series, and the question the people in his small town, including his family, have to ask themselves. Is this man we’re letting back into our family a murderer and a rapist, or is he the kind, thoughtful man he appears to be? Rectify is a beautiful show about appreciating life that manages to perfectly straddle the line between bleak and hopeful, and quietly features some of the best performances on television.
Exec produced by Steven Soderbergh and written, directed, and created by Scott Frank, who wrote Logan and Out of Sight, Godless, is equal parts a feminist Western and s a show about fathers and sons. The series is set in the 1880s in the small mining town of La Belle, where nearly all of the town’s men have died in a mining accident. Enter Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell), a charming gunslinger on the run from the mentor he double-crossed, Frank Griffin (Jeff Daniels), who — along with his crew out desperadoes — had already murdered everyone in another small town for harboring Goode. The series ultimately pits a town of mostly women against a brutal, merciless outlaw gang. Scoot McNairy, Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Sam Waterston play lawmen, but the standouts in Godless are Downton Abby‘s nearly unrecognizable shotgun wielding pioneer woman Michelle Dockery and Merritt Wever, a bisexual woman all out of f–ks to give. It’s a tremendously good series buoyed by beautiful cinematography, poetic language, a few great shoot-outs, and fine performances from the entire cast. It’s one of the best Netflix series of 2017.
Daredevil is unquestionably the best superhero series of all time. It has the addictive qualities of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it’s darker and more intense than any of those films. It’s harsh, with brutal eye-popping fight sequences. It has an excellent cast (led by Charlie Cox as the title character) with tons of chemistry, and nails the tone of the source material. It’s a shame Marvel’s deal with Netflix ended because the show’s third season was a masterclass in how to act like a tortured hero from Cox and it set up some interesting storylines we’re still dying to see play out.
Television’s all-time best political drama The West Wing is Aaron Sorkin at his absolute best, working with one of the finest ensemble casts in television history. The show wavers after the fourth season (when Sorkin left), but it picks back up in its final season (with Jimmy Smits and Alan Alda). Here’s a celebration of the greatest fictional President of all time to get you warmed up for it.
The animated, coming-of-age comedy from Nick Kroll is full of familiar voices and even more familiar life problems. Centered on a group of pre-pubescent friends, Kroll voices a younger version of himself, a kid named Andrew who’s going through some embarrassing life changes like inconvenient erections and strange wet dreams and bat-mitzvah meltdowns. All these traumatizing and hilarious happenings are usually caused by Maurice, Andrew’s own Hormone Monster (also voiced by Kroll) who takes pleasure (literally) in abusing the poor kid. As painfully accurate as the show is, if you’re lucky enough to be removed from that angst-ridden era of life, you’ll probably appreciate the humor in all of it.
As an episodic series, Jessica Jones occasionally falters in its three seasons-run but it always provides an unfiltered, refreshingly honest look at trauma, its aftermath, and choosing to do better. Jones is a private detective with certain special powers, but the series doesn’t put her P.I. talents to much use, instead focusing on one storyline surrounding the big bad, Kilgrave (David Tennant) for the show’s first season before pivoting to flesh out the character’s backstory and family ties in its two follow-up installments. Still, it’s a captivating, thematically-rich series that covers ground no other superhero series would dare to explore, and while that doesn’t make it the most entertaining Marvel series, it is the bravest and most unique among the Netflix originals.
In theory, American Vandal sounds silly and sophomoric, and it is, but it’s also a genuinely brilliant, incredibly clever, smartly written satire of true-crime documentaries. It plays just like any other true crime docuseries — interviews, investigations, multiple suspects, and numerous conspiracy theories — only the crime here is not a murder. In its first season, it’s a high-school student who has been accused by the school board of spray painting dicks on 27 cars, a crime that threatens his ability to graduate. It’s a brilliant whodunnit that just happens to also be the best parody of 2017, and it even took home a Peabody Award. The show’s follow-up season trades dick picks for explosive diarrhea which is just as fun, if not ten times as gross.
Maybe the wittiest, pop-culture rich drama ever, Gilmore Girls has nevertheless managed to hold up incredibly well over the years. It’s a great show to watch with a new generation of television viewers, it’s a great show to watch while bingeing on food, and it’s a great show to re-watch many times. The relationship between single mother Lorelai and her daughter, Rory, never gets old.
A young boy is found dead in a seemingly idyllic small town, and the detectives charged with solving the case turn up twist after twist in tracking down the murderer. Despite its familiar premise (see also: Twin Peaks, The Killing), Broadchurch relies on its ensemble cast — specifically the impeccable David Tennant and Olivia Colman — to keep viewers caring after each red herring is tossed back into the ocean. The first series centers on the hunt for the killer while the second is on both the suspect’s trial and a reopened case from the past, but they both don’t let up in intrigue. A word of warning, though: This isn’t one of those TV dramas you should binge even if you want to. It gets heavy and emotionally exhausting, and unrestrained streaming kinda negates the effect of the show’s mysteries.
Set in the afterlife, The Good Place sees a lazy, entitled selfish, Arizona woman Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) enter into “Heaven” only to discover that — due to a mixup — she was incorrectly assigned. With the help of her new friends and, Shellstrop endeavors to be a better person and earn her place in Heaven. In the early goings, the high-concept premise feels like it’s going to run out of runway, but Mike Schur (Parks and Recreation) continually finds new directions to take the show and the characters, as the show humorously and sweetly tackles an array of moral dilemmas before arriving at a surprising twist ending. It’s a charming, clever and delightful series with a freshly-imagined approached that only improves as the season progresses and new wrinkles are explored, while Ted Danson is his usual remarkable self. It’s a fantastic comedy, one of the best TV shows on network television in recent years.
The long-running Showtime series understands better than any other drama on television what it’s like to be poor in America. Set in Chicago, Shameless follows the lives of the Gallagher family as they struggle beneath the poverty line to make ends meet. The family is afflicted with alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness, poor decision-making skills, and the kind of terrible luck that so often follows poor families, but they’ve also got each other, their resilience, and a determination to break the cycle, but in Shameless, impoverishment is the boogeyman that always comes back, hilariously and heartbreakingly.
Another British import, Peaky Blinders is roughly the Netflix UK equivalent of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, taking place in the same time period and covering similar terrain. Peaky has one thing that Boardwalk does not, however, and that’s the piercing, intense Cillian Murphy. The show also features Tom Hardy as a phenomenal recurring character debuting in season two (along with Noah Taylor) and it manages to seamlessly blend roughly-accented melodrama with historical events so everything feels timely and modern.
At once intimate and sweeping, The Crown presents an inside view of the ascension of Queen Elizabeth II, played by Claire Foy, and the first few years of her reign. John Lithgow is featured as the indomitable Winston Churchill, struggling with the ignominy of age at the end of his career. Churchill’s support and mentorship of Elizabeth, despite his limitations, creates an important emotional center around which various historical events turn. Elizabeth’s relationship with her husband, Prince Phillip (Matt Smith) is also wonderfully explored; his role as consort is one that he by turns delights in and rebels against. And because the show has committed to exploring Elizabeth’s length reign, we’re treated to different versions of these characters throughout their lives. In season 3, Olivia Colman picks up the crown while Tobias Menzies plays Prince Phillip and Helena Bonham Carter comes on board as Princess Margaret.
The Great British Bake Off (and this slightly retitled American version) is guilty pleasure binge material for so many that it’s no wonder it shows up here. If I watch other cooking shows to travel to exotic places and vicariously experience strange foods, GBBS is kind of the opposite of that. Its strength is that it’s goofily charming. And we’ve become so accustomed to camera-hogging reality villains and performative not-here-to-make-friendsing that a show featuring charming grandmas and shy Brits is really a breath of fresh air. It almost works more like a mockumentary than a cooking show.
Based on a Spanish telenovela, Jane the Virgin plays more like a brilliant but genial satire of conventional telenovelas. Gina Rodriguez plays the virgin here, who is impregnated through an accidental artificial insemination. Matters are complicated, however, because she has to break the news of her pregnancy to her deeply religious family, as well as her fiancé, with whom she has never had sex. Jane also develops feelings for another man who just so happens to be the baby’s father. It sounds like a premise that could not sustain itself beyond 5 episodes, but the writing is so good and the characters so delightful that Jane never gets bogged down by its premise. It’s a genuinely delightful, heartwarming show, and Gina Rodriguez lights up the screen every second she is on it.
Fox’s comedy about a quirky girl who moves in with three male roommates quickly evolved from a pretty straightforward premise to become one of the best shows on TV. Zooey Deschanel plays Jess, a teacher who’s forced to room with three other guys, Nick (Jake Johnson), Schmidt (Max Greenfield), and Winston (Lamorne Morris) after she discovers her boyfriend’s been cheating on her. For the next seven seasons, the gang grows to become close friends — getting married, having babies, experiencing sympathy PMS, and getting stuck in Mexico, among other disasters. Still, it’s the chemistry between the four mains that makes every outlandish episode work.
House Of Cards, Netflix’s first major foray into original programming, is worth every cent of its $100 million production budget, featuring searing performances, a droll sense of humor, slick writing, engrossing plot-lines, and Kevin Spacey chewing the face off the scenery. The first season is phenomenal, but the show rapidly goes downhill with some sparks of life in scattered seasons, with the final season focused on Robin Wright’s Claire Underwood being cluttered at best.
Michael C. Hall is absolutely terrific as a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami police department who moonlights as a serial killer and tries to keep his two lives separate. There’s a great opening season, a fantastic fourth season, and in between the two, a couple of decent ones. Do yourself a favor, however, and don’t bother with Dexter‘s final four seasons. It’s a testament to how good the first and fourth seasons were that it still gains a place upon this list, despite a deeply disappointing finale.
A musical series about a woman who leaves her prestigious job in Manhattan to follow an ex-boyfriend to a small town in California, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is like no other show on a show on television. The premise is not unlike that of Felicity, but the tone is unique: Quirky and hilarious on the surface, but dark and subversive underneath. As co-creator (along with Aline Brosh McKenna) and star, Golden Globe winner Rachel Bloom provides catchy songs with irreverent lyrics that offer dark meditations on depression, insecurity, and the challenges of balancing careers and love lives. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is funny, feminist and infectious.
Once the Wachowskis’ underappreciated sci-fi series establishes its characters, there’s at least one profoundly moving moment in every episode. Sense8 is rich with brilliant ideas, and, though they’re not always executed with perfect logic, the chemistry between the characters is undeniable. It’s impossible not to root for them, to feel and experience their ups and downs, their confusion and heartbreak, and, most of all, their love. The Wachowskis first foray into television is at once romantic, life-affirming, and thought-provoking.
It’s rare that older women get a chance to shine on a half-hour comedy series, but if your stars happen to be Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, you’d be insane not to have all the action center on them. Grace and Frankie follows the pair as they discover that their husbands have been carrying on an affair with each other. The news throws life into chaos, forcing Grace and Frankie to room together and pick up the pieces. Along the way, there are family squabbles, online dating drama, and a battle over the ladies’ organic lube company but at the heart of the show are these two women who bond after a devastating ordeal and support one another during a time of change and growth. Did we mention organic lube? There’s that, too.
Travelers is a sci-fi series co-produced by Netflix and a Canadian television network Showcase starring Eric McCormick (Will & Grace). It’s a light sci-fi drama about people from hundreds of years in the future whose consciences are sent back to the present day to take the place of others who are already about to die. They’re sent back, a la Terminator, to prevent a bleak future from taking place. In the present day, this group of people is tasked with missions to prevent the future dystopia from happening, but they also have to acclimate into the lives of their host bodies. It is a quintessential Netflix show: Easy-to-binge, madly addictive, fun as hell, and immediately engrossing. While it certainly borrows heavily from other sci-fi shows and movies, it does an excellent job of shaking it up and bringing fresh life to the genre.
A remake of a 1970s sitcom produced by 94-year-old iconic television producer Norman Lear, One Day at a Time manages to not only match its predecessor but miraculously improve upon it. This new version centers on a Cuban America family headed by a single mom (Justina Machado) raising three kids with the help of her mom (Rita Moreno). It’s broad jokes and laugh track feels somewhat out of place on the streaming service, but the jokes still land and more importantly, the characters connect in an honest way as they attempt to live on a modest nurse’s salary and maintain their Cuban heritage while adapting to modern progressivism (much like Fresh Off the Boat). It’s more poignant sitcom than it is funny, but it’s a warm, loving look at difficulties of single parenting that resonates as much today as it did in the ’70s.
Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara star in this Canadian sitcom about a wealthy family forced to scale down their extravagant lifestyle with hilarious results. Levy plays Johnny Rose, a rich video-store magnate who loses his fortune when his business manager fails to pay his taxes. O’Hara plays his wife, Moira, a former soap opera star who, along with her husband and their two pampered children, must move to a town called Schitt’s Creek. The show finally started to get the critical attention it deserved in later seasons so rest assured, the quality of humor and storytelling never drops with this one — nor does the outlandish verbiage of its leading lady.
Ryan Murphy’s fashionable ’80s drama imagines the rise of the world of ball culture. Murphy focuses on warring houses in the scene, painting a myriad of queer portraits about gays, lesbians, and trans warriors, forging their own path amidst bigotry and hatred in New York City. There’s couture, there are catfights, and there’s plenty of vogueing, but there’s also nuanced, heartfelt portrayals of figures who paved the way for the acceptance of this fringe community.
Recent Changes Through November 2020:
Added: Hannibal, Pose, Unsolved Mysteries, The Last Dance, Halt & Catch Fire, Great British Baking Show
Removed: Mad Men, Happy Valley, iZombie, Happy, Parks & Rec, Living With Yourself
Learning how to make your own potato chips sounds like a daunting task. It’s not, but that’s part of the appeal. Everyone thinks it takes tremendous effort. First, there’s the matter of slicing potatoes paper-thin without losing a finger. Then there’s the whole frying-in-boiling-oil aspect. Make these from scratch without sustaining significant injuries and you’re a legend.
With a whole new wave of lockdowns starting, now is as good a time as any to master making chips. The only specialty kitchen tool you need is a mandolin, which you can get easily for around $20. Besides that, you need a heavy-bottomed pot or wok to fry in, or a deep fryer, if you have one. The rest is pretty low-impact, albeit a little time-consuming.
In the scheme of “foods you can make at home which are insanely cheap to just go out and buy,” chips are actually way easier than making your own fries. And the rewards are equally high — especially when you create distinct flavors via spices. Follow our recipe once and you’ll have this snack in your permanent repertoire to trot out any time you want to impress folks.
I’m using Queen Anne’s because that’s what I have in the kitchen at the moment. You can also use Yukon Golds. You want a potato that’s both not too starchy and not too waxy. That being said, if you want to experiment, have at it!
Method:
Zach Johnston
The first step is to wash your potatoes. I washed three but I ended up using only two.
Next, I added the cold water and vinegar to a large bowl. The vinegar is a key ingredient at this step. It helps to draw the starches out which then helps the chip get nice and crispy when it fries.
If you want to make salt and vinegar chips, use a 1:1 ratio of water to vinegar. Then you’ll just need to add salt once the chips are cooked.
I like to halve my potatoes. It just makes for easier slicing on the mandolin. They’re easier to handle and generally come out a little more even the whole way through.
I place my mandolin on its thinnest setting, balance it over the bowl, and start slicing. It takes less than a minute to slice through two potatoes.
Zach Johnston
I then place the bowl in the fridge for about 2-ish hours. I’ve let them rest for an hour before and they were fine. Some recipes say they should rest overnight but I’ve never had the patience for that.
After about two hours, I fetch the bowl from the fridge. I set up a kitchen towel-lined baking tray and layer the raw chips as close to a single layer as possible. I then use another towel to press down on the wet chips to draw out as much of the water as I can. You can do all of this with paper towels, by the way. You don’t have to get all the water out, just as much as you can without mushing the raw chips.
Zach Johnston
Step 2: Fry The Potato Chips
Zach Johnston
Ingredients:
1.5 liters/50-oz. Neutral Oil
Salt
Method:
Zach Johnston
I get my wok on the flame and pour in the bottle of oil. I’m using sunflower oil but you can use peanut or canola, too.
Once the oil has reached 350f/175c, we’re ready to fry.
I gently drop the raw chips into the oil using the skimmer spoon about 15 to 20 at a time. You want to make a full layer but avoid complete overlap.
I use the skimmer to keep the potato chips moving around the oil. Industrial potato chip friers use metal paddles for this. The point is to keep them moving so they don’t stick or burn. There’s a very narrow window from them being done to crisp to burnt, so you need to stay focused.
The sweet spot for removing the chips from the oil is then the edges just start to brown. Remove the chips to a wire rack for cooling and oil leeching. Hit them with salt immediately. If you want, you can go wild here with flavor. Our editor uses a mix of mustard powder, onion powder, and black pepper. Paprika always works well, too.
Once seasoned, the chips will continue to brown on the rack until they’re golden. I end up making three batches — taking around 15 minutes in total.
Step 3: Serve
Zach Johnston
Once cooled, I transferred the chips to a basket for munching. Truth be told, I was snacking on these chips the whole time I was frying them too. They were freaking delicious. Imagine a chip that’s thinner than a Kettle Chip but with more heft than your average industrial Lay’s.
It’s just the right amount of chip and it nails that perfect balance of crunch and salt. Full disclosure, I ate the whole basket for my lunch. I regret nothing.
Zach Johnston
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