Consider This from NPR - BONUS: 12 Memorable Pop Culture Moments From 2020

Episode Date: December 27, 2020

At the end of every year, the hosts of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour like to look back on some of their favorite things from the last 12 months. In this episode, they revisit some of the TV, film and music that helped us make it through 2020.Here's the full list:1. Moira's wedding officiant outfit in the series finale of Schitt's Creek2. Ted Lasso and the year in escapism3. Uncle Clifford and Lil Murda in the season 1 finale of P-Valley4. Michael Jordan watching interviews about him on an iPad in The Last Dance5. Parasite winning best picture at this year's Oscars, portending the further rise of non-English-language powerhouses6. The first 10 minutes of The Invisible Man7. Kentucky Route Zero8. "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)" from David Byrne's American Utopia9. Fiona Apple chirping like a dolphin on "I Want You To Love Me"10. Cassidy Diamond (played by Shalita Grant) in the third season of Search Party11. "Uncle Naseem" (Season 2, Episode 9) of Ramy12. The Good Place series finaleLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, Consider This listeners, it's Sunday and we have a bonus episode for you. It comes from our friends at NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Every year they round up the best in film, TV, music, and more, and that's what we're bringing you today. So here's Pop Culture Happy Hour hosts Glenn Weldon, Stephen Thompson, Aisha Harris, and Linda Holmes to take it away. At the end of the year, even a year like this one, we look back on some of our favorite things from the last 12 months of pop culture. We revisit some of the moments,

achievements, and just plain delights that helped us make it through. This year, we went daily. We got a new host, and now we've got 12 more pieces of good tidings to share. I'm Stephen Thompson. And I'm Linda Holmes. We're talking about our 12 favorite things of the year on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Also with us is Glenn Weldon of the NPR Arts Desk. Hi, Glenn. Hey, Linda.

And joining us at the center of one of our favorite things to happen this year, it was the arrival of our newest co-host and her name is Aisha Harris. Hi, Aisha. Hello, Linda. It's so good having you here with us. It wouldn't be the same with just the three of us. Now there are four of us. We are going to dive right in. We're just going to go around the circle three times. Glenn, I'm going to start with you. Give me something that was one of your favorite things of the year. I went with the ensemble that Moira Rose, the character played by Catherine O'Hara, chose when she officiated the wedding of both within the show, the reality of the show and without, because it was going to be, for the viewers at least, the really last statement look that we'd get from a character who we had come to associate with a very distinct, very fashion forward sensibility. But it also had to do that Moira was delighted to and honored to officiate the wedding of her son. But it also had to show that Moira Rose, even though

all the changes she'd gone through over the course of the show, was still Moira Rose, still a woman who did not share the spotlight easily. Hence the Alexander McQueen white gown, the gold evening gloves, the gold Tom Ford boots. And, you know, had she ended there, that would have been very Moira. But, of course, she didn't because this is Moira Rose, a character who is given to wearing a wig atop another wig. A wig as a hat. which is a towering pope hat, a miter, whose brim itself is a coil of hair from the blonde wig she's wearing, the longest wig she wore in the history of the show. So, of course, she went full papal and not Francis papal, but Benedict papal, the Prada pope papal.

You know, we say a lot of times in the show that the best endings feel both unpredictable, you can't see them coming, yet inevitable when you look back on them. And they really nailed that outfit, that ending, that journey for Moira Rose. Yeah, I agree with you. That was a very, very good outfit. And I think it's one of those where, like, the minute that you saw it, you were like, oh, of course. Of course, exactly. All right.

Moira Rose's wedding outfit. Stephen, why don't you follow that up with something that was one of your favorites of the year? Well, I think Schitt's Creek kind of speaks to what I'm about to just kind of tap through and take in hours and hours of unstressful, warm-hearted entertainment. And the year kind of kept trying to dole that out to us to kind of varying degrees of success. You know, in video games, Animal Crossing scratched that itch. In TV, it was a little bit more of a mixed bag. I was a fan of Floor is Lava. Some of you cared less about it. For me, the perfect post-Schitt's Creek, post-The Good Place comfort food show was Apple TV Plus' Ted Lasso about an American football coach

who moves over to the UK to coach a major league soccer team, even though he knows nothing about soccer. And it's interesting in the critiques of this show that I've seen over and over again, the big central criticism of it is that it's not very funny, that it's a comedy that could use more punchlines, that could use more laughs. For me, that did not matter at all. This, to me, was the gentle drama about the pursuit of decency that I needed at the point in 2020 when it came out. I love this show. I have kind of started to revisit this show as one of my core rewatching shows. This show, to me, like, is it as funny as Schitt's Creek? No. But it's still hitting those

same buttons of people I'm really enjoying hanging out with. And for me, in 2020, that was an absolute gift. Yeah. And just for those of you who are writing an email right now, put it down. He meant Premier League soccer team. What did I say? I don't even know what I said. Major League soccer team. I said Premier League soccer team. I don't even know what I said. Premier League soccer team. That's a Ted Lasso move right there to get it wrong. Exactly, exactly. I think that speaks to how I'm coming into this show, which is with a very limited understanding of soccer. All right. Thank you very much, Stephen Thompson. Aisha Harris, give us one of your favorites of the year. Well, the show that I'm going to talk about now is sort of a form of

escapism, but it's also very dark and melodramatic. And it is a show that took us to the land of the valley where the girls get nakey as the theme song goes. And that is Pea Valley on Starz. It was such a delight and a surprise for me. A show about Chucaloosa, Mississippi, a rural town that is on the cusp of gentrification. And at the center of it is the strip club called The Pink or The Pank. I got to stop trying to do these accents. I'm not from this accent. I apologize. But the center of this town is the pink. It employs many of the women in this town. It employs a lot of people there, including Uncle Clifford, a non-binary character who goes by she, her pronouns. And she is about to lose this strip club to gentrification. And that's one part of it.

But the one part that I really, really loved about this show that I highly recommend everyone watch is her relationship with Lil Myrta, who is an aspiring rap artist, played by J. Alphonse Nicholson, and Uncle Clifford is played by Nico Anon. And they have a budding relationship that might be surprising to see in a Black rural town in Mississippi where homophobia might run rampant. They really connect and have a really loving relationship and connection towards the end of this first season. And then there comes a moment where Lil Myrta is about to become a star and he's realizing that he can't necessarily be a star and also be openly queer and gay. And so they have this moment. And let's actually listen to the scene between Uncle Clifford and Little Myrta realizing that they can't be together, at least not right now.

Now, LaMarcus, what a privilege it was getting to know him. What a joy. Because LaMarcus was ready this little murder cat that's the face you showed me first i don't know about him well you let me know where you are. Till then, you know where the dough is. So Lil Myrta's real name is Lamarcus. That's what Uncle Clifford is referring to. And what I love about this scene is the fact that while, you know, they have this relationship and Lil Myrta has decided, like, he can't necessarily be with Uncle Clifford.

Uncle Clifford is like, well, let me know when you're ready, but I'm not going to stand around waiting for you. And this is something that I think we don't often see. It's, I think, a really strong, powerful moment to see this queer character really assert herself and be confident in what she wants and who she wants to be with. And so I highly recommend P-Valley. Uncle Clifford is one of the best TV characters of this year, and everyone should check it out. The Last Dance, which aired on ESPN and then also Netflix. And it's about Michael Jordan and the Bulls and their kind of run of championships. And they got a really intense bunch of interviews with Michael Jordan in addition to practically everybody else who's involved in the piece.

But my favorite thing about it and the thing I want to single out is a technique that I had not seen before. You've certainly seen documentaries where the documentarian says, well, you know, I talked to this person and they said X. What do you say about that? In this one, what they do is they just hand an iPad to the person that they're interviewing and they say and they play them a clip. And I kept hitting him and banging him and hitting him and banging him. It took a toll on Mike. It took a toll. Michael Jordan reactions that have become gifs because he's sort of disbelieving or highly amused by things that other people are saying. There is a rawness to the reaction that I think you wouldn't necessarily get from any

other technique. So I was super, super into that. I could have watched a million years of just them showing Michael Jordan on the iPad clips of other people talking about him. That could have watched a million years of just them showing Michael Jordan on the iPad clips of other people talking about him. That could have been an entire series for me. So iPad use on The Last Dance. That is my thing. You get to watch him file away grievances in real time. It's true. And it really makes the series kind of plugged into today because what is a huge and growing genre on YouTube is reaction videos, just watching people watch things. It feels very of the moment. It's absolutely true.

All right. So those are our first four. We've got eight to go. We've still got eight favorite things from 2020. So come right back and we're going to talk about the rest. Welcome back to Pop Culture Happy Hour. We are one third of the way through our list of 12 favorite things of the year. We are back around the table to Steve and Thompson. Stephen, tell me another one of your favorite things of the year. amazed that they somehow happened less than 12 months ago has been a truly shocking experience to relive. In the calendar year 2020, the movie Parasite won Best Picture at the Oscars,

which was a rare moment of absolute triumph in which the actual best movie of the year got the Oscar for Best Picture. And to me, it seemed to portend in 2020, a certain embrace among American audience of non-English speaking entertainment in ways that I think really portend well for the future of entertainment as the world gets bigger. I think audiences embracing a movie that was entirely subtitled and really understanding and appreciating it, I think has kind of helped lead the way into a year. In which the American pop marketplace really embraced BTS. Even though it was for a single that was entirely in English. Bad Bunny had the first album entirely in Spanish.

To hit number one on the Billboard albums chart. I feel like as we watch the world get kind of bigger and at the same time smaller, that is really giving us opportunities for new experiences as consumers and viewers and listeners and watchers to just find amazing stuff. I've been watching a piece of anime that's been entirely subtitled.

And I just feel like I'm experiencing more and more of the world that is not in English. And I feel like that has made so much entertainment so much richer for me in 2020. Yeah. And I think also I would mention, given pandemic circumstances and various breaks in filming and production, I think for a lot of people the next year or so, one of the things you're going to have a chance to watch if you're looking for something new is some of the international acquisitions that they're putting up. They're making available to English speaking audiences on Netflix and Hulu and things like that. And in some cases, if you want something that's really, really highly regarded and available to watch right now, you will want to look to things beyond things that are made in English because you will find a rich, rich world of television and film.

All right. So, Aisha Harris, you are up next. So, one of the last movies I saw in a movie theater this year was The Invisible Man, which was a remake, of course, of, I mean, it's been adapted several times from the original book. And this movie actually takes a nice twist and uses a fresh reframing of this original story in a way that I think serves it well and doesn't just feel hackneyed. Essentially, Elizabeth Moss plays a woman who is trapped in an abusive relationship with a Tony Stark type, who is like a wealthy optics engineer who lives in like a lavish Oceanside mansion. And the very first scene to me was the highlight of the film. Elizabeth Moss in the very beginning of the

film for the first 10 minutes about it's about a 10minute sequence of her trying to escape her boyfriend's lavish mansion. And it is just so well done and well crafted. There's not a lot of sound or music that comes in. I think sometimes music especially can overwhelm moments that are supposed to be scary. And the soundtrack really holds back. And for the first few minutes, you just see her sort of getting up in the middle of the night, checking to make sure that the drugs that she gave him to make sure he was knocked out are fully working. Like, can he hear me? He can't hear me. Okay. And then you see like this tricked out house that she lives in and the way in which it has surveillance and all of his gadgets.

And it's just really creepy, really, really effective and really sets the tone for what it's like to be a woman trying to escape an abusive relationship in a way that is both entertaining, but also has that extra level of substance and just like, really, really layered thought into it. You know, I love dogs, but there's the dogs in the sequence really screw things up for her, unfortunately, if you watch it. So I highly recommend watching the whole movie, but especially that opening sequence is just fantastic. Yeah. And in a strange way, that film is more about the act of gaslighting than the 1940 film Gaslight is. Yes.

It's odd. It really is. That movie has really stuck with me and aged very well in my mind. I actually want to go do a rewatch of it because as I look back on the year, it aged very well for me too. So I'm going to go next. The thing I want to talk about, I played a lot more games this year. One of the games that I played was Kentucky Route Zero, which has been released in parts and chunks over the last like nine years or so. So they would put a piece out, you'd wait a year or two, they'd put a piece out, you'd wait a year or two. And they released the conclusion of it this year. And it's a very kind of melancholy storytelling, magical realism kind of story about a trucker who winds up kind of on this secret underground highway in Kentucky. And it becomes a story about everything from, I mean, it's sort of anti-capitalist more than

anything, I think. It's about the exploitation of workers and the many ways in which workers are manipulated and abused and taken for granted and kind of left to suffer. But it's also just formally very interesting. It has a whole bunch of, you know, it'll stop in the middle for a musical performance of a song that is not in English, it is in no language, it is subtitled. So it's sung in a language that is not in English. It is in no language. It is subtitled. So it's sung in a language that is kind of, I think, accessible to everyone. But it has all of these different chunks. It has chunks that are just weird. There's a telephone game that you can play. I really loved sinking into this, and I found the ending of it extraordinarily moving and touching. It's a point and click type of game, so it's not difficult to execute at all. It's a story game and I really, really, really, really loved it. Yeah, I love this game too. I should say I'm loving this game because on your recommendation, I checked it out and it is so beautiful and quiet and moody that I am

parceling it out. I don't want it to end right away. Yeah. So again, that's Kentucky Route Zero. You can get it on various game systems. Glenn, you are up next. Yeah. Well, I loved a great many things about David Byrne's American Utopia on HBO and HBO Max. It's a theatrical concert film that kind of spans David Byrne's career, including his stuff with the Talking Heads. I loved it because I'm a middle-aged white man, and that's the law. This movie, special, whatever you want to call it, gave me a live version of my favorite Talking Heads song ever that I never knew I needed. The song is Born Under Punches, parentheses, the heat goes on, close parentheses. It's from their album Remain in Light. It's a weird song.

It's long. It's almost six minutes long. It's complex. And it's got this driving, insistent, unstoppable beat. But woven into it is this hypnotic, very kind of haunting, sweet melody that kind of creeps in. While you've got Byrne calling himself a government man and insisting that you look at his hands. As for what it's about, I mean, that's the wrong question. With any of David Byrne's stuff, I mean, if you really pay attention, I'd say it's about overcoming something or persisting or breathing.

There's a lot in the song about breathing. All I want is to breathe. Won't you breathe with me? So maybe it's about group yoga. I don't know. Nobody knows. But until this year, if I wanted to listen to it, I had to go back to the album version, which is great. Here we get it fresh and it feels reinvigorated and it's bursting with that very specific David Byrne kind of affectless joy. And thank God it is just as weird as ever. God, just the percussive gifts alone. Oh, my God.

It's so good. So, David Byrne, American Utopia, available streaming from your HBO, your source of HBO. All right. Thank you very much, Glenn. We are back around to you, Steve and Thompson. Well, I definitely wanted to make a musical pick to pair up with Glenn's and I'm going to go with my album of the year, Fetch the Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple. Obviously a huge record in 2020, unless you are naming Album of the Year for the Grammys somehow. This record came out in April at a time when, it's easy to forget this, that in late March and April, not only were movies suddenly dropping off of the release schedules, but albums were dropping off of

release schedules too, because it was affecting how and whether bands could tour. And so there was this stretch early in the pandemic when other than television, we weren't really able to get new entertainment. Like suddenly you were excited about these albums and suddenly they were disappearing from schedules. And there really was a stretch where stuff was getting kicked to summer and fall. Well, Fiona Apple was supposed to put Fetch the Bolt Cutters out in October and decided there was this vacuum in April and suddenly just dropped it in the middle of April. And talk about like the album you need during a pandemic. You just have this like exciting, thoughtful, weird, joyful, personal, just distinct record. And I remember the experience of listening to it for the first time. And the moment that I want to talk about is right at the

end of the first song on this record. It's this amazing song called I Want You to Love Me. And you just know you're kind of strapped in for a ride. And then near the end of the song, Fiona Apple decides to chirp like a dolphin. She sure does. She's getting her yokel on. So I can translate that dolphin chirp for you. It is dolphin for strapping. Because this album is so wild and so inventive and just so Fiona Apple. You know, there are dogs barking on this record. There are chairs creaking. She recorded it in her house. It's just so personal to her. And at the same time, dolphin chirping aside, it's so incredibly accessible and quotable.

This record just gave and gave all year long. And I celebrate that weird moment of dolphin chirping every time I listen to it. Maybe we all have careers long enough to be reviewed with dolphin chirping aside. All right. Thank you very much, Steve and Thompson. Aisha Harris, you are up next. Well, Linda, what if you were on trial for murder and your lawyer spoke like this? How would you feel? So amazing, by the way. Amazing. Why, thank you.

Why, thank you. So my pick, my last pick, is from Search Party Season 3, which is a show that kind of changes over time over each season. It first starts as like a skewering of millennials with a bit of Nancy Drew murder mystery plot in it. And then the second season is a little bit more skewering of millennials, but with more about like paranoia and just feeling as though the world is coming down on you as this murder sort of ramps up. And then the third season is more like a obscuring of millennials with a courtroom drama. And at the center of this all is Dory, played by Alia Shokut, who is on trial for murder. And her lawyer is a rookie who sounds like Hillary

Banks, dresses kind of like Hillary Banks, and is only 30 years old. And this is her very first case. So good for you, Dory. And her lawyer is played by Shalita Grant. And her name is Cassidy Diamond. And she just gives this very pitch perfect performance that is so many layers. Yes, she's clearly this sort of entitled millennial. Because the only reason she even got this gig is because her rich parents bailed out Dory. And so in exchange for them bailing her out, she had to take her on as a lawyer. She's also just like clearly not up to the task, but like feels like she is. And so to see her take on this role and watch her interact with Dory, who is just very much like totally over it,

just deadpan. And to see them play off of each other is really fun. And there's one scene in particular that I really, really love in the courtroom where Cassidy is bringing out this evidence and the prosecutor, Polly Danziger, who's played by Michaela Watkins, who is just totally also not into anything that Cassidy's doing and looks down at her because she is this entitled millennial. They have this sort of back and forth that I just think is really brilliant and says everything it has to say about the Cassidy character. Let's give a little listen. This exhibit is being treated as evidence. And I'm sorry, but the defense could have easily planted this. And don't we agree

that the timing of this appearance is beyond suspicious. The timing of this incident was not manipulated. Ugh, I don't do that. It's called happenstance. And Your Honor, she's just jealous. Jealous. So I just really love her. She's also, there's a little bit of legally blonde in there. And the voice is everything.

And I really love the way in which this actress found her voice. But you have to see the voice with the movements because she's also very flamboyant and moves her hands every which way. So that is my pick. I loved it. Chalita Grant as Cassidy Diamond on Search Party season three. Awesome. I appreciated that clip very much. All right, Glenn, you are up next. Okay. My final pick is an episode of the series Rami on Hulu starring Rami Youssef. It's about a very secular American Muslim who is trying to become more devout and he's struggling with it, really, really struggling with it. And it's a series like nothing else on television and like few films that I've seen because it doesn't treat a character's faith or even their lack of faith as a shorthand, as a signifier

for everything you need to know about this character. These characters' faith is incorporated into their very essential beings in a very basic way, but they each have different relationships with that faith, which is very smart. So the best thing the show does every season in an episode or two, the character Rami, who is a guy who's very much in his own head and really self-obsessed. When the show shoves him into the background so we can kind of focus on, in the first season it was his sister

and his mother, we learn things about them that we never would have learned if we stayed in Rami's head because Rami would never take the time to notice them. This season we get an episode with his father and in episode nine of season two

on his uncle Nassim, who is played by Laith Naqli. Now, we've had 19 episodes to get to know this character. He's a jerk. He's rude. He's obnoxious. He's vulgar. He's very intolerant. He's very racist. He's very sexist and not for nothing violent. You don't like this character. But this episode unpacks him in a way that I don't want to spoil, although you can probably figure it out. It does not, importantly, excuse him. What it does is it explores what makes him the way he is, the conflict that's at his core. And, you know, it does so, I've read some criticism of this particular episode, it does so in a way that will be problematic to those who feel that we're still out of place with representing historically underrepresented

communities, that any representation should be in some way, not ennobling, but educational, empowering. And even if they wouldn't express it that way, they would say that this is a very messy representation. It's not clean. And I agree, this portrayal is messy. It's risky. And for that reason, I think it strikes me as truer than a lot of other representations I've seen. It is not admirable. That's not what it's doing. It is not empowering. And it isn't forgiving.

What it is, is it's humanizing this character. And that is not to excuse him in any way. What you can do is, particularly with this episode, you can admire the writing without admiring the character. The show does many, many smart things very well. This was the one that stuck with me. Yep. That's Rummy, Episode 9, Season 2. All right.

Thank you very much, Glenn Weldon. It will come as a surprise to none of you that my final pick is the series finale of the series The Good Place. I am a devotee of The Good Place. It's been a show that for me has been really funny, but also really, really inventive, really, really powerful work from the cast. And it just always it has such an undercurrent of meaning that I often find really affecting, but also many, many extremely silly jokes. And that is a combination that's been really, really hard for me to resist. And in some ways, I felt like they had set up something almost like the end of Lost, where it was going to be almost impossible to wrap up everything,

make everything make sense. But I am one of those people who likes the finale of Lost because even though I don't think I understand or accept or like every explanation they provided, emotionally, it to me was exactly the right finale. And that's a little bit how I felt about this. I think it was sort of flying around on the tracks at the end there in the last kind of three or four episodes. And I sort of was like, all right, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I can't even keep track of what's happening. But they came in, I think, and landed this extraordinarily correct finale. And the clip I want to play is from a conversation, I was trying to find a clip that was not too spoilery for people who haven't seen it yet. And so this is a clip in which the character of Chidi, who is played by William

Jackson Harper, is talking to the character of Eleanor, played by Kristen Bell, about a particular Buddhist idea of death. And I figured it wasn't spoilery since the whole idea is that the show is in the afterlife, that they were in the finale talking about death in one way or another. So that is what this clip is. Picture a wave

in the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through. And it's there, and you can see it, you know what it is, it's a wave. And then it crashes on the shore, and it's gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different wave of the water to be for a little while. That's one conception of death for a Buddhist.

The wave returns to the ocean. Where it came from. And where it's supposed to be. I just think that is such a lovely and wonderful scene. And I think it really drives home how seriously that show took trying to get philosophy right and trying to use the intersection of actual philosophy and spirituality in the emotional punch of the show. I just loved it. I love that performance by William Jackson Harper. I love that character. I loved that story. If you know kind of where that falls in the story, I love what they did with that story. Loved it. Love it. Yeah. I wanted to turn the video off on my Zoom so you wouldn't see me pulling back and welling up.

If my contact lenses are too dry, I need only think of that scene. One of the best endings of a show, I think, ever. Yep. It just really, really hits all the right notes. And I don't even know what to say. It's just chills. Yeah. I agree with Aisha completely.

I think it's one of the best series finales ever. And it really makes you think about what is a happy ending. Like, how do you end a story? Oh, man, I don't want to, yeah. All right. Verklumped. So verklempt. Thompson's going to fall apart.

All right, so that's my last pick, the Good Place finale, the final episode of season four. All the seasons are on Netflix now, so you can catch up with it if you never watched it. 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. Thanks to all of you for being here. And as Michael would say, take it sleazy. You too. Thank you. And of course, thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. We will see you all tomorrow when we talk about Christopher Nolan's would-be summer blockbuster Tenet.