Consider This from NPR - BONUS: 12 Favorite Moments Of 2021

Episode Date: December 19, 2021

NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast has a tradition to look back on some of their favorite things from the last 12 months of television, movies and music. In this episode they're revisiting the pop culture that thrilled them, moved them and kept them company during another challenging year. Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on NPR One, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, Consider This listeners, it's Ari Shapiro. And I know the news has been a little heavy lately. So to offer you a break, we have an episode from our friends at the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. Every year, they look back at their favorite moments in TV, movies, and music, stuff they found inspiring and comforting during another challenging year. Hosts Stephen Thompson and Linda Holmes take it from here. Every December, as the last pages of the calendar float to the floor, we like to look back on some of our very favorite things.

We'll talk about the television, movies, and music that thrilled us, moved us, and kept us company in our best and worst moments. I'm Stephen Thompson. And I'm Linda Holmes. And today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're talking about our favorite things of the year. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. Joining us today from his home studio is Glenn Weldon of NPR's Culture Desk. Hi, Glenn. Hey, Linda. And also here from her home on the West Coast is Aisha Harris. Hey, Aisha. Hello, Linda. Well, I want to say first that I Coast is Aisha Harris. Hey, Aisha. Hello, Linda.

Well, I want to say first that I don't know if pages of calendars float to the floor anymore. I don't know if people still do that. But it is the end of the year, and we are not going to do any messing around. We are going to get right to it. I am going to go first to Glenn. You have something you want to share. Yeah, it's a moment from a show called Succession on HBO. Heard of it? It's kind of a critical darling. Every Sunday night, it drives conversations on one very thin slice of Twitter so it can make it seem like it's a bigger hit than I

think it might actually be. It's about, of course, a family of awful people who run an awful organization, an awful corporation. I keep proselytizing about it because there are times I'll admit that I get what the naysayers about this show are saying. I delay watching episodes because I might not be in the mood for the dyspeptic churn of it all sometimes. But then a moment like this one I'm about to highlight comes along from the fourth episode of season three, when the character of Tom Wamsgams, played by Matthew McFadden, gets to give a little speech to his wife, Shiv, played by Sarah Snook. He is thinking he's going to be a kind of corporate scapegoat. He's going to be the public face of a scandal facing the organization. And he's thinking that he's going to go to prison. Now, he's volunteered for that, but now it's starting to hit home. He's doing research about prison life. And this is what he has to say. So I did a bit of research and I got deep into the prison blocks again, you know,

about toilet wine. And it turns out you can make it from fruit and ketchup, but you have to burp the wine bag as it ferments. And I thought, what if I forget to burp the toilet wine? But the truth is, I'm not going to get the wine. What if I forget to burp the toilet wine is when I stood up on my couch and thought, okay, this show is for me. Not just in the, I like this show, but this show is for me as in I feel targeted. I feel seen by this show, and I love it. It's one of those moments when the writing and the performance work, not just in tandem, but in synergy. There is something special about that moment for me. It's the guy's Emmys clip, guaranteed. I'm just picturing Glenn sitting on his couch

watching that moment and looking just like that meme of Leonardo DiCaprio when he's pointing and his mouth is a game. That's exactly. It's from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. That's me. Yeah. Pointing, pointing, pointing.

And before that, he says he has this whole thing about cold white wine, how much he likes cold white wine. The first one he gets home from work and it's like, oh, yes. All right. Thank you, Glenn Weldon. aisha harris what is your first pick well i'll turn us to a different hbo show um this is a black lady sketch show which is a really funny sketch show that i think has kind of flown under the radar but if you know you know and season two aired earlier this year the show if you haven't if you're not familiar with with it, it is created by Robin Thede and it features all Black women just commenting on so many different things about Black culture, about social media, about just our culture at large.

And I think it got really, really smart this season in terms of pinpointing some very specific things when it comes to Black culture, especially. The clip I want to point to, it involves a debate, two women on each team. And the final question of this debate is, which movie should Denzel Washington have won an Oscar for? The two teams have to make their case for the movie that Denzel Washington, who has two Oscars, but he's an amazing performer. He is a legendary performer. He is Denzel. We just know him as Denzel. And so they are trying to argue for which performance he should have won for. And I especially love this moment from Ashley Nicole Black.

I want you to just listen to it. Okay, what's the one with the racism? Remember the Titans? No, racism plus mustache. Come on, you know it. Remember we watched it at your house that time and we had to babysit your little cousin because her daddy was going to be home late for work. And we was eating bagel bites. We was watching a movie and I was watching. I was like, damn, Denzel look mad fine in these post-war clothes.

Remember? Ow! Devil in a blue dress. Devil in a blue dress. So I just love it because, I mean, I knew what it was, but it's fun to hear her describe it. And it's like the movie with the racism. It's like, that could have been any movie. It could have been Glory,

which he won the Oscar for. It could have been The Great Debate. Like there's so many movies. And I just really, I encourage everyone to seek out a Black Lady Sketch Show in general because with sketch shows, there's often hits or misses.

And I think that this show is batting a higher average than the average sketch show. Most of the sketches really work. And even when they don't, you at least see that they're trying to do something interesting or provide interesting commentary. So my first pick is A Black Lady Sketch Show. You can find it streaming on HBO Max. Thank you very much, Aisha Harris. All right, Stephen, you have chosen for something that I also enjoyed that we talked about. captured that moment. And I don't think any piece of culture that I have seen so far has captured the moment quite as effectively as Bo Burnham's Inside on Netflix. Bo Burnham is a comedian, an actor, a filmmaker, a former YouTube star. And so's full of funny and silly songs, but also a lot of ache and worry and spiraling and darkness. And it adds up to this really fascinating viewing experience. And,

you know, we're talking on this show about moments and the moment from this show that I have probably picked over more than any other over and over again is this moment from a song called White Woman's Instagram. He starts out by just laying out cliches from the Instagram pages of white women. And so he's kind of just teasing, like, here's this throw pillow with a saying on it. And here's this perfectly lit picture of my face. And so he's doing this thing where he's kind of lightly mocking the tropes of Instagram feeds. And then you get to this interlude. Still figuring out how to keep living without you. It's got a little better, but it's still hard.

Mama, I got a job I love in my own apartment. Mama, I got a boyfriend and I'm crazy about it. Now, if you could hear what he said as that clip trailed off, it was a goat cheese salad and then a backlit hammock, a simple glass of wine. So he's set up this song that is kind of a breakdown of what a very basic Instagram page looks like. But then there's a breakdown in the song where suddenly the woman he is channeling is paying tribute to her late mother and i it is such a rorschach test what like listening to the way that breaks down because it is very emotional and very sad and very beautiful but it is also mocking the way that we package our grief in such a digestible way. And so, to me, he's finding this remarkable moment of empathy in the song, but empathy and mockery are orbiting each other like a binary star. And you can see it as like looking at these kind of public performative expressions

of grief and how they all start to blur together. I'm so fascinated by how sophisticated that song is while also mocking people's Instagram feeds, which is just the easiest, biggest, fattest, juiciest target imaginable. There's just that turn in the song that is shocking. Yeah, I think I've definitely heard the complaints from people who find this to be both ultimately a guy being very unkind about the creative pursuits of women and also a guy who's trying a little bit to distance himself from whiteness in a way that maybe is not successful. But I agree with you, Stephen, that I think what makes it effective is that turn into the recognition that there's also some shared humanity in those kinds of Instagram feeds, despite their cliches. So my first pick, look, you know, the second season of Ted Lasso on Apple TV+, some people didn't like. I happened to love this season. of Ted Lasso set up a very wonderful but somewhat simple dynamic of this kind of bumbling coach who

comes in and impresses everybody and everybody learns that they really can trust him. And in the second season, they did a lot more to explain that Ted's relentless positivity. He's a soccer coach who was an American football coach and went over to become a soccer coach, a football coach in the UK. And I think his relentless positivity is something that they did. They brought in a therapist, a specialist therapist who was going to work with the team. And her name is Sharon Fieldstone. She's played by the wonderful Sarah Niles. And she is one of my favorite additions to any cast in any second season ever, which I think is particularly impressive given how strong that ensemble was in the first season. You know, for the most part, she is very, she's somewhat personally withholding with Ted,

which is hard for him because he wants to go in and be everyone's friend and she wants to maintain her professionalism. And then there's a moment where she has a bicycle accident and he is the one who winds up getting called to the hospital to help her out. And I want to play a little bit of that. I'm going to take you home right now.

Oh, he's not my husband. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ain't no ringing on these fingers. No, we're just friends. Colleagues. Friendly colleagues. I don't have a husband. Yeah, but not in a sad way.

You know, she's just fiercely independent. See what I mean? I'm sorry. Dr. Fieldstone, hospital policy states that head trauma patients, they cannot leave unattended. Let me help you out with that, sweetheart. Thank you. hospital policy states that head trauma patients, they cannot leave unattended. Let me help you out with that, sweetheart. Thank you.

I love this episode because it complicates this relationship between the two of them. And I love the way that they opened up this character who seemed a little bit, you know, literally began as a joke in a commercial in a bunch of NBC sports commercials and has become this really complicated dude. And I really admire the way they did that. And I loved this season and I am 100% pro Ted Lasso season two. Glenn, I'm going to go to you for your next pick. Lay it on me.

Okay. The show, the other two on HBO max, it's a joke factory and I love that, but it also has a very lived in very knowing sense of humor about a queer life. And I love that, but it also has a very lived-in, very knowing sense of humor about queer life, and I love that. In the second episode of season two, which is a kind of modern-day farce, the character of Carrie, played by Drew Tarver, and his new boyfriend, Jess, played by Gideon Glick, are settling into a very safe, vanilla, basic kind of relationship they end up meeting this other gay couple who are pretending to be father and son so they can go on drew's mother's morning talk show follow me here and have the quote-unquote son played by noah galvin come out to his quote-unquote father played by tuck watkins so they can take home a 25 000 prize so despite the two of them engaging in

errant fraud uh this twink and daddy couple are shown to be much more sex positive and healthy and communicative and just happier than Drew and Jess are. Because Drew and Jess are striving for this very complete heteronormative existence. And that is just fascinating for me to see and bracing for me to see. And then when Drew and Jess interrupt the Twink and the Daddy at a restaurant just a few minutes after the Twink and Daddy have gone on Grindr to find a third dude to take back to their hotel, the Twink and the Daddy then have to continue to pretend to be father and son because Drew and Jess think they are, and it's Drew's mother's talk show. So this clip picks up when the dad sees the third guy who's played by the very funny Noam Ash approaching the restaurant and goes out and says, okay, I'll pay you if you just say that you're my son, you're straight, and you're from Kansas.

I'm his son, I'm straight, and I'm from Kansas. Yeah, yeah, cool. What's Kansas like? You have a girlfriend there? Yeah, she has long hair and red nails. Expert girlfriend have her right there. Expert girlfriend have her right there. Expert girlfriend have her. Who among us? It's great.

What a great show, and what a great moment, and what a great episode. Really, that episode works, and we haven't even talked about any of the other plot threads in that particular episode, which are also just as fun. So that is The Other Two. It is streaming on HBO Max.

Aisha, speaking of things that you love, you have another pick for us. Yes, yes. Do y'all know Trish? Trish is a woman you can count on. Trish, at Christmas, forget it. She's buying gifts for everyone. So I loved Barb and Star, Go to Vista Del Mar a lot. I think it was a movie that more people need to see.

I'm basically picking things that we didn't cover in full on PCHH. And I want to make sure that people find out about. And so I highly recommend everyone go check it out. It's streaming on Hulu now. But what I love about Barb and Star, Go to Vista Del Mar, which is about two middle-aged women from Nebraska, played by Annie Mumolo, who plays Barb, and Kristen Wiig, who plays Star. Kristen Wiig also plays a few other characters as well.

But they decide to leave Nebraska, go on a girl's trip to Vista Del Mar in Florida. And on the way to Vista Del Mar on the plane, they concoct this very elaborate narrative about a woman named Trish, a woman that we, they don't know, but she exists. And so they list off all these things that she is. This is a like minute and a half-ish long gag that just keeps going and going in the best way possible and getting more and more ridiculous with each moment. And you realize once you've

watched the film that there is a payoff towards the end of the whole Trish story. But I want to hear just this banter that I think is just so emblematic of the whole movie itself and the real chemistry that Kristen Wiig and Annie Momolo have as these characters. Really? Trish loses one of her ears in a twister, but not her hearing. She's a storm chaser. Her mom does not want her to be. Well, their relationship is tough. Trish has always wanted to be a portrait hearing. She's a storm chaser. Her mom does not want her to be. Well, their relationship is tough. Trish has always wanted to be a portrait photographer.

She loves people. She would always say, a person's face says a lot about how they look. Oh, that's beautiful. Okay. It's just, it's so absurd. A person's face says a lot about how they look. Show me the line.

There's just so many great, fun gags in this movie that I think you, it's definitely the type of movie where you want to rewatch because you might not miss them all. It also features a great performance by J.B. Dornan, aka, you know, 50 Shades of Grey guy, but here he's getting to do his, like, Chris Hemsworth in Ghostbusters.

Like, he kind of is that sort of the guy who, the hunky guy who turns out he's quite funny, actually. And so I just love this movie so much. And I love Trish and I want to meet Trish. And it's just great. So that is Barb and Star, go to Vista Del Mar. It's streaming on Hulu. I'm so glad you picked it, Aisha, because we didn't get a chance to give this movie the love it deserves. And I had it on my list. And as soon as I saw you had it, I crossed it off because my way in was slightly differently. It was Jamie Dornan's calves, but you know, it made the list. That's the important thing. Thank you very much, Aisha Harris. Stephen Thompson, you have a musical selection for us,

as you are wont to do. Yeah, well, speaking of entertainers who had very, very good years, the R&B singer Jasmine Sullivan put out one of the best records of 2021. It was actually NPR Music's pick for the album of the year. And I can't really argue with that. It perspectives on sex and sexuality and class and race. And it weaves in these interviews as interludes and then weaves songs around them. My favorite song on this record is called The Other Side. And if you look at it from how it starts, it's a very simple concept. It is a poor woman who wants to be rich and her dream is to marry a rapper and move to Atlanta and, and, you know, kind of goes through that whole thing. And you think this is a song about the pursuit of wealth and the dream of wealth. And then it hits the bridge and takes a turn that just really blew me away. Let's hear it.

All of a sudden in this song, as she's laying out what she wants, she hits the lines, be a damn good housewife, two kids from a surrogate, fly mama, I'm a stay fit, getting facelifts. And all of a sudden you realize that to preserve the fantasy she has laid out for herself, she knows she's going to have to make compromises to perpetuate it. All of my picks today are moments of empathy that surprised me in songs. And this one, you realize just how sophisticated a project this is. An album just full of moments like that. Jasmine Sullivan's album Hotails, particularly this song The Other Side. All right. Thank you very much, Stephen Thompson. I want to talk about a movie that I did not think enough people saw this year, speaking of kind of what Aisha was talking about. This movie is called

Plan B. It is available on Hulu. And it's sort of like one of those out all night friends stories, kind of like, you know, book smart. It features these two high school students. One is Sunny, and she's played by Kuhu Verma. The other one is Lupe, played by Victoria Morales. And Sunny has her first sexual encounter right at the beginning of the movie. None of this is spoilers. It's very uninspiring and unhappy even before she figures out she's had a birth control mishap and she's afraid that she's pregnant. And so she goes and attempts to get plan B at her pharmacy, but the pharmacist refuses to give it to her for reasons of his moral judgment of whether she should be able to have it. So Sonny and Lupe set out for a Planned Parenthood clinic that they hope will be able to provide her with Plan B.

I was amazed by this movie in terms of how funny and silly and sometimes very raunchy it is. I will warn you, very raunchy. If you're thinking, maybe I'll watch this with my 12-year-old, just like nothing in it is bad for them, but it will give you that moment of like, hmm. But I was shocked how well it accomplished that. But also, it is this incredibly insightful film, I think, about sexuality and the fear of pregnancy for a girl like Sunny. There's a great examination of how she sees this bad sex very differently from the boy who was involved. Because to him, it's all about, how do I feel morally about the fact that we did

this? How do I feel ethically? Maybe maybe this is something I shouldn't have done, like from an emotional perspective. And she, in the meantime, is dealing with this massive logistical problem on top of whatever feeling she has about it. I just was amazed, absolutely amazed by the way that this movie balanced those two things, these very serious topics at this time when, you know, reproductive health and reproductive care are so much in the news. The fact that it balanced that topic with so much good humor and so much good energy and everybody in this movie is terrific. I love this movie. Again, it's on Hulu and it's called Plan B. Also directed by the lovely actress Natalie Morales. So very excited about that one.

Want everybody to watch it. Glenn, you also chose something from a movie as your third and final pick. Yep. The Power of the Dog is Jane Campion's latest film. We already did an episode about it. Benedict Cumberbatch is this malevolent, homophobic presence, a rancher on a ranch in Montana in the 1920s. And Cody Smith McPhee is this kind of cultured teenage kid who comes to the ranch and becomes Cumberbatch's target in a host of ways.

And at the time we talked about this, I picked out a moment that, you know, a thing that Benedict Cumberbatch does early in the film. As soon as he senses the presence of the kid, there's a look that he gets on his face. That's very telling. I want to talk about another look on another face, which is not a particularly podcast friendly thing to do, but bear with me. Late in the movie, something happens that abruptly changes how Cumberbatch approaches this kid who he continues to regard as soft, you know, and his words as a sissy, but now he seems to be taking the kid under know, in his words, as a sissy. But now he seems to be taking the kid under his wing for some reason, wants to teach him the ways of the men of the ranch. And I'll just say it's unclear as we're watching what's really going on here.

And it's also unclear if Cumberbatch's character realizes why he's switched his approach to the boy. They're out on their own. They're resting in the shade of a rock. And the kid seems to open up to Cumberbatch's character. He used to worry I wasn't kind enough, that I was too strong. You? Too strong?

I got that wrong. Poor kid. After Cumberbatch says, poor kid, there is a look that passes across Cody Smith McPhee's features. And you note it as it's happening, but only later do you recognize it for what it is. It's a kind of a quiet strength. It's a kind of resolve in that look. And it's also something that Cumberbatch's character could not and does not recognize. That look is one of many reasons this film ends up being about much more than it seems to be

at first and why I think this film works as well as it does. That's Power of the Dog by Jane Campion, which is in theaters and also streaming on Netflix. Yeah. I haven't had a chance to talk about that one because I was on vacation, but that movie is so good. It is so good. It is so creepy and it is so good. And I'm glad we got to talk about that. All right, Aisha, third and final pick. Well, Who Among Us hasn't been, you know, in college or just out of college, stuck at a family party, dinner or whatever, and having to field all these questions from your parents, friends about what you're doing, what's your major, what's your plan. And it is a nightmare. It is a horror show. And it's one of the many reasons I love the movie Shiva Baby,

which is a fun but also very scary short movie about a young woman named Danielle, played by Rachel Sennett, who is back home. She is going to a Shiva for a family friend. Her life is at a crossroads. She has a sugar daddy, and she also has an ex-girlfriend who all converge at this Shiva unexpectedly. And the whole movie is about her. It all takes place more or less in real time. And it's about her sort of navigating this world where both her sugar daddy and her ex are at the Shiva. And she's also having to deal with her parents and the fact that they worry that she's there is a baby, there is a screaming baby. And the screaming baby appears throughout the movie, adding a layer of menace and ominousness and just like overall, like anxiety to the film. And so we're going to hear that happening while Danielle is fielding

all these really just annoying questions from a family friend. I don't think you know the places. Do you still make those little videos? I always thought those were so fun. I haven't done one in a while. So acting is still your goal. No, it's like comedy, stand-up. What was your major again, sweetie? No, no, she doesn't have a major.

She makes it up. Also, as someone who is a theater major in college, I had to feel those questions of like, so what are you going to do exactly with that major? Like acting? Ooh, okay. I just love this. And it was actually, so the director and the writer is Emma Seligman. She is in her mid to late 20s now. This was her, it started off as her NYU thesis. And for a person so young, I'm just really in awe of the sort of craft that went into creating this very tense movie that is also very, very funny in many ways. And like I said, this, it is a comedy, but it definitely has all the horror notes. You hear those planks, which remind me of like any A24 horror movie. It reminds me of The Witch. And I highly recommend checking out Shiva Baby. It's streaming on HBO Max. And it's also about 90 minutes or just under 90 minutes. So it's like an easy pop it in and it's

done. Like just great, great pacing throughout the film. Very good. Thank you very much, Aisha. Shiva Baby available on HBO Max. When we come around to these favorites, I always try to look for the art that I thought was the most skilled, the performances that I thought were the most nuanced, but I also try to leave room for whatever absolutely punched me in the gut the most

and made me have the most feelings. And this year that was the movie CODA. CODA is an abbreviation that stands for Child of Deaf Adults. It's about a girl named Ruby, played by Amelia Jones, who is the only hearing person in her family. And she has her parents and her brother. And she lives in this fishing town, kind of, and the brother and the father work on a fishing boat. She works with them. She does a lot of interpreting for her family because she is a hearing person. She becomes kind of a conduit between the rest of her family and

the world of hearing people who refuse to learn any other way of communicating with them other than through Ruby. So she becomes interested in music, and she becomes interested in going to music school. And the question kind of arises, can she really leave? And does she really want to leave? Because it's going to put her family in some ways in a difficult position if she leaves home i loved this movie so much i think the dynamics of her family are so interesting her mother is played by the great and good marley matlin uh her father is played by uh troy kotzler i think this movie is so such a wonderful fat pitch down the middle of the plate for a person like me who loves a family movie, loves a fishing town, loves a music movie, loves a movie with an inspiring music teacher. So that's Coda. You can watch it on Apple TV+.

Stephen, bring us home with your last pick. All right. Well, I've got something that's just perfect for Glenn. It's a song with its spoken word with a saxophone. So, Glenn, I can see you being on board. I was skeptical, too. But this song absolutely blew me away. It's by a singer named Cassandra Jenkins, and it's called Hard Drive.

And in the song, she has a series of conversations. And the first is with a security guard, and then a bookkeeper, and then a friend who's been teaching her how to drive. And then she runs into a friend at a party who sees her and says to her, oh dear, I can see you've had a rough few months, but this year it's going to be a good one. And then basically the song functions as the pep talk we didn't realize we needed. Let's hear a little bit of it. I'll count to three and tap your shoulder. We're going to put your heart back together.

So all those little pieces they took from you, they're coming back now. They'll miss them too. So close your eyes. I'll count to three. Have you ever talked to a friend and the friend says, how are you? And that makes you burst into tears. Yes. And you had absolutely no idea that you had that emotion welling up

without realizing it. This song, for whatever reason, unlocks and unleashes that feeling of I really didn't know I needed to take a minute. And there's something about this song. It brings this deep, deep well of empathy and understanding and kindness. And there's something about this song. It brings this deep, deep well of empathy and understanding and kindness. And there's something just very forgiving about this song. If I need to recenter myself, this song has worked so wonderfully for it. And it really adds up to just deeper points about life. I love it dearly. It's from an album called An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, which is actually a quote from this song.

Again, the song is called Hard Drive. It's by Cassandra Jenkins. It's one of my favorite songs of the year. That is so cool, Thompson. I've never heard that before, and I would not have heard it had you not brought it to me as one of your favorite things of the year. Well, we want to know about your favorite things of the year. Well, we want to know about your favorite things from the year. Find us at facebook.com slash PCHH and on Twitter at PCHH. That brings us to the end of our show. Thank you so much to all of you for being here to talk about your favorites. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.