Every site writes a too-long preamble to their year-end top-whatever lists, so I won’t. But I will say that I particularly like constricting lists to top 5 because a) they fit well on Twitter, but also b) for the sake of conversation. Whittling your list to 5 makes it hurt a little bit. Which it should! Especially when we talk about what really, truly impacted you, personally, and is gonna stick with you long after the year ends.

#2018TOP5 MOVIES

1 – SORRY TO BOTHER YOU – Wildly original, dense with ideas, perfectly performed, and hilariously weird, but never loses its anti-capitalist thread (even at the point everyone seems to think it does, and I will fight on this).
2 – A FUTILE AND STUPID GESTURE – David Wain directs an extraordinary cast, led by an outstanding Will Forte, in a funny, moving origin story to the particular sense of absurd humor that has shaped my entire life.
3 – WIDOWS – An artful, thoughtful, politically aware (but still badass!) take on the heist genre that deserves to live alongside Heat and other classics, but with the visual care and performances of a Terence Malick film.
4 – BLACK PANTHER – A ripping Marvel blockbuster that still takes on ideas as big as colonialism vs revolution, and where every supporting character is as memorable as the lead.
5 – ANNIHILATION – Wonder and beauty mix with dread and horror to create an unsettling and surprising feast of unforgettable images and philosophical quandaries to chew on long after the film ends.

NEARLY MADE IT – Eighth Grade, The Favorite, Into the Spider-verse, The Death of Stalin
DEFIANTLY ABSENT – Roma

#2018top5 TV SHOWS

1 – THE GOOD PLACE – Even in its not-best season, a deeply kind show this joke-dense, intelligently written, and in which every character is so lovable and expertly performed, is 100% still the best thing on TV.
2 – HIGH MAINTENANCE – No other series shows such a deep empathy for such a wide range of characters just trying to get through a life that can be lonely and sad but never without moments of beauty and joy.
3 – WILD WILD COUNTRY – This (almost unbelievable?) cult documentary confronts viewers with its conflicting ideologies, forcing us to examine our own beliefs, whose side we’re on, and why, like nothing I’ve ever seen.
4 – AMERICAN VANDAL – How this show pulls off a cutting true-crime satire AND a genuinely heartfelt story about teenage life, while remaining an actually-compelling mystery story, continued to blow my mind in year 2.
5 – ALTERED CARBON – The premise of portable identity unlocks so much, but the future-noir setting, martial arts action and gorgeous production sealed the deal. Thoroughly enjoyable and constantly thought-provoking.

NEARLY MADE IT – Killing Eve, Succession, Atlanta, Legion, Better Call Saul, Big Mouth (whoa I watch too much TV)
DEFIANTLY ABSENT – Sharp Objects, The Americans, Ken Burns’ The Vietnam War (I know that wasn’t this year but man I want those 20 hours back)

#2018top5 BOOKS

*note: I do not read fast enough to make book lists by year of release, so this, like most normal people’s I imagine, will be books READ this year instead.

1 – EXIT WEST by Moshin Hamid – Profound yet lighthearted, a pleasure to read while tackling the toughest challenges of refugee living, this magical realist world and the love story at its heart moved me deeply. A must read.
2 – THE POWER by Naomi Alderman – In a world where men have to fear women for once (they can electrocute through touch), everything changes, and this story digs deep into the many myriad effects that has. Loved it.
3 – MS MARVEL VOL 1 by G Willow Wilson – I haven’t fallen so hard so quickly for a main character in ages. Quirky, nerdy, teenaged Kamala Khan dealing with newfound powers in this punkish, witty comic is a delight.
4 – ALTHOUGH OF COURSE YOU END UP BECOMING YOURSELF by David Lipsky – Spending time with a genius offers you the privilege of a peak into his incredible mind, but also forces you to face your own insecurities as someone who will never be one. DFW was a treasure.
5 – SEA OF RUST by C Robert Cargill – This pulpy Mad Max-but-with-robots future story also conceals all kinds of questions about the conflicts that arise when AI start governing themselves. (I would love to see an anime adaptation.)

NEARLY MADE IT – IQ by Joe Ide, LESS by Andrew Sean Greer, THE VISION by Tom King
DEFIANTLY ABSENT – THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING by Joan Didion, MANHATTAN BEACH by Jennifer Egan, ANNIHILATION by Jeff VanderMeer

#2018top5 GAMES

*similar note applies because damn are almost all games too long, meaning one can only play so many the year they’re released.

1 – RETURN OF THE OBRA DINN – Unique stippled art and elegant design made this game beautiful. Clever plotting and an ingenius mystery-solving mechanic made it unforgettable. A tight, intriguing, somber masterpiece.
2 – INTO THE BREACH – Removing the element of chance makes each tactical mech battle a perfectly intellectual puzzle-solving exercise that’s so satisfying to play and eventually conquer that it’s impossible to put down.
3 – MARVEL’S SPIDER-MAN – The most gorgeous game of the year. Not just for its city, its fluid web-swinging animations, and its thrilling action set-pieces, but for its earnest hero and sympathetic villains. One of the best Spidey stories ever put to screen.
4 – FEAR OF LOATHING – Game writing tending to the eye-rolling, this stick-drawn western RPG succeeds on its laugh-out-loud (honestly! the jokes are that good!) writing but gets extra points for balancing depth with fun.
5 – WHAT REMAINS OF EDITH FINCH – More games should be comfortable with the artistic, the abstract, and the emotional in their storytelling. This beautiful short story of a game tries weird, crazy things and opens new doors to what games could look like.

NEARLY MADE IT – God of War, Goragoa, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
DEFIANTLY ABSENT – Red Dead Redemption 2

#2018top5 ALBUMS

1 – HISTORIAN by Lucy Dacus – The mix of introspective lyrics, beautiful voice, and loud-quiet-loud guitars are what I look for in most music, and this album stayed in my rotation all year long for nailing it so well.
2 – HOPE DOWNS by Rolling Blackouts, Coastal Fever – When most straight-up indie rock is either seemingly absent or sad bastard dad stuff, a power-pop record with this kind of energetic bounce is so, so welcome.
3 – HEAD OVER HEELS by Chromeo – These dudes are unapologetically horny and I love it. Every song is about wanting to make sweet love in a charmingly silly, totally catchy, perfectly pop way.
4 – FUTURE ME HATES ME by The Beths – Girls and guitar riffs was a huge theme of most of the music I loved this year, and this one just happened to do that wonderful mixture the best out of many. Punky good fun.
5 – LP5000 by Restorations – The best songs off this short album were the ones that got stuck in my head the most this year. A throwback to full-throated, unapologetic feeling in simple, soaring indie rock shout-alongs.

NEARLY MADE IT – ORDINARY CORRUPT HUMAN LOVE by Deafheaven, DANCE ON THE BLACKTOP by Nothing, SOME RAP SONGS by Earl Sweatshirt, EVERYTHING MATTERS BUT NO ONE IS LISTENING (QUIET SLANG) by Beach Slang (the best band working)
DEFIANTLY ABSENT – I’ll forever love both of them, but the new albums by CHVRCHES and DECEMBERISTS didn’t reach their previous heights, for me.

So, what were your #2018top5 picks?

Netflix’s Altered Carbon is an A+ sci-fi premise in the body of a B+ TV drama, but make no mistake, this is a compliment.

Yes, the performances occasionally feel stilted, the dialogue sometimes drifts into corny; a writing shortcut here or an egregious nude scene there hold it back from the Blade Runner heights it aspires to. But the show builds a fascinating world at such a high level of production, it’s hard to look away. And by setting a pulpy detective story in such a complex future — where identity is fluid and mortality is negotiable — the philosophical questions it raises are so much more mind-bending than the mystery it exposes.

In Carbon‘s vision of the future, each individual’s consciousness is stored in a “stack”, a mini-disc-sized data device embedded at the base of the brain; while bodies are referred to as “sleeves”, mere containers for the individuals who inhabit them. Some characters have inhabited a number of sleeves in their lifetimes. Some use other sleeves temporarily for subterfuge. The richest upper classes have their sleeves cloned and their stacks backed up to the cloud, so they can live for hundreds of years, cycling through body after rejuvenated body, in an uninterrupted aristocracy — with predictably dystopian results.

Throw in a few other weighty ideas like the humanity of AI (consciousnesses who never even get a sleeve), the potential for virtual manipulation (consciousnesses ripped out of their sleeves against their will), or the fragmentation of the individual (copying one consciousness to multiple sleeves) and the implications of this technology alone make the show a worthwhile speculation.

This only scratches the surface, as the show continues to find thought-provoking new implications to explore, amid a murder mystery filled with gun fights, flashbacks, grimy fantasies and brutal violence. It’s existential dilemma wrapped in guilty pleasure, but don’t let appearances fool you.

If you could transplant your consciousness into a new body instead of dying, would you?

Would you want a fresh copy of your own body, in peak condition, at whatever age you prefer? What would you choose?

Or would you experiment with living in totally different bodies? Which ones? Why?

 

Chuck Klosterman’s I Wear the Black Hat collects a dozen or so essays about how we see certain figures in society as good or evil, and how sometimes the differences we feel so deeply aren’t as clear-cut a distinction as we might think. What we forgive in one person, we villify in someone else. Or the ways and reasons we remember some of our heroes ignore what other figures are hated for, often depending less on what they’ve done (or believed), but how they presented it to the world. Lots of good conversation (or at least chin-scratching contemplation) fodder, as is usual with Klosterman.

One passage in particular jumped out as a good reason to turn the lens back on myself, especially in the shadow of recent events:

Clear, unsubtle satire on TV shows like SNL and The Daily Show and The Colbert Report can succeed as entertainment, but they unintentionally reinforce the preexisting world: These vehicles frame the specific power holder as the sole object of scorn. This has no impact beyond comforting the enslaved. Power holders — even straight-up dictators — are interchangeable figureheads with limited reach; what matters far more is the institutional system those interchangeable figureheads temporarily represent.

So what does this mean, outside of an academic discussion about power? Well, maybe this: If you want to satirize the condition of a society, going after the apex of the pyramid is a waste of time. You need to attack the bottom. You need to ridicule the alleged ideological foundation an institution claims to be built upon. This is much, much more discomfiting than satirizing an ineffectual prime minister or a crack-smoking mayor. This requires the vilification of innocent, anonymous, working-class people.

As happy as I am to see The Daily Show in particular continue doing good work poking the giant, it may be a way for me to go on feeling superior while laughing at those in power. I sit on my couch venting my frustrations through comedy, while they go right on running-slash-ruining the world.

 

Does satire ever actually change anything for the better, or is it just a way to feel better about what’s wrong with the world?

 

Which satires are the most effective? What would make others more so?

 

Are the biggest fans of satire the people that are actually doing the least to make a real difference in the world?

 

Emily Nussbaum is one of the best people writing about television, and in a recent New Yorker piece on the relationship between shows and advertisers, she examines the faustian deal between creators and the brands that want into their shows.

There’s a common notion that there’s good and bad integration. The “bad” stuff is bumptious—unfunny and in your face. “Good” integration is either invisible or ironic, and it’s done by people we trust, like Stephen Colbert or Tina Fey. But it brings out my inner George Trow. To my mind, the cleverer the integration, the more harmful it is. It’s a sedative designed to make viewers feel that there’s nothing to be angry about, to admire the ad inside the story, to train us to shrug off every compromise as necessary and normal.

She acknowledges the need to pay for art somehow (“Perhaps this makes me sound like a drunken twenty-two-year-old waving a battered copy of Naomi Klein’s “No Logo.””), but on a deeper level, asks if we’ve given up too much of the art’s integrity in the process.

 

Do you perceive product placement as it happens? Does you perceive it as a violation? A distraction? Or an easily ignorable part of watching television?

 

Understanding that the creation of entertainment, and TV in particular, has to be paid for somehow, is this an acceptable trade-off?

 

If so, what do you think the effects are on you as a viewer?

 

If not, what other arrangement would you prefer between you as a viewer and the makers of television (and potentially, willing sponsors) to finance the production of the shows you enjoy?

 

Rick and Morty practically deserves its own section on this site; every episode raises a deep existential question or moral dilemma then skewers it mercilessly through insane sci-fi comedy.

A recent episode in particular dealt with a hive-mind called “Unity”, which assimilated all the individuals on a planet, where they lived peacefully and prosperously. The kids, thinking they were liberators, freed some of the assimilated… who then went on to spark a race war. Tricky stuff.

In light of the current racial violence plaguing the country, it’s tough not to wonder if a little reprogramming would be helpful enough to make it worth the obvious violation. So:

 

Scientists discover a foolproof way to brainwash/reprogram the minds of every American to eliminate racism. It’s painless and has no other side effects. To make all our lives easier, they want to make this mandatory, as long as it passes as a ballot measure in the next election.

 

Would you vote for this measure?

 

Would you feel like you were giving up some meaningful freedom by doing so?

 

If for, how would you convince those resistant? If against, how do you defend your side?