Joe Reid’s Top 17 of 2017

The year-long ascent of Tiffany Haddish has been one of the most heartening pop-culture trajectories of the year. When the year kicked off, she was a supporting player (albeit one we looked forward to) on The Carmichael Show. We were slightly familiar when she showed up on Guy Branum’s Talk Show the Game Show and delivered a sparkling anecdote about taking Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith on a swamp tour she got on Groupon. It’s rare to watch someone become a star in front of your eyes, but Haddish’s insane magnetism while telling this story did the trick. Then Girls Trip happened, and in the press tour that followed saw an expansion and refinement of the swamp-tour story. This is not a woman who’s moment has come about by happenstance. She’s working for it. And she ready.

Where to stream Girls Trip

Holly Hunter and Ray Romano were justly singled out for their performances in The Big Sick after the film’s premiere at Sundance, and when the movie filtered down to the rest of us at sea level, it wasn’t hard to see why. This scene in particular (based in part on a real-life incident from Holly Hunter’s life!) gives Hunter a chance to go off and have her character let off some steam, but it’s Romano’s tightly coiled explosion at the end (“this elevator goes all the way fucking down!“) that really nails it.

Where to stream The Big Sick

Picking just one scene to highlight from The Leftovers‘ gorgeous, bizarre, ambitious final season was a herculean task. But truly, this is the one I always come back to. Laurie and Nora really only get this one episode to interact, but the forge such a tetchy, warring-sisters vibe in the short time they have together. Their big emotional moment comes almost from out of nowhere, when Nora finally lets her guard down and tells a story from her childhood. Laurie, shrink that she is, helps give her a little perspective, and it’s like they see each other for the first time. Laurie’s cutely transactional “Nora Durst, you are now my patient” is when the tears started coming for me, spurred on by my favorite piece of Max Richter’s beautiful score. It’s a touching moment of grace in a series that was full of them.

Where to stream The Leftovers

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend might be the most reliable show on television. Even when its narrative is taking you to some dark and daring places, you can always depend on it for great actors playing characters you root for (even when they are continually fucking up), and then rewards you for that loyalty with some of the smartest, catchiest songs directed right at your pleasure center. “Period Sex” was a web-exclusive payoff to a series of inside jokes throughout the second season of the show, winking nods to the audience about a song that never existed — and could never exist because the concept was too weird even for this show. But oh, how wrong we all were. Rachel Bloom, you mad genius.

Where to stream Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

We all figured it was going to be a big year for Madchen Amick because Twin Peaks was coming back. And it did, and it was. But for me, the biggest source of joy from Amick’s year in the pop culture spotlight came from her performance as Betty’s mom on Riverdale. Alice Cooper took a little while to make sense — she’s a journalist? And a prude? And maybe a murderer? And a former biker-gang moll? That Alice is all those things, plus righteously angry all the time only makes her a perfect fit for the always-too-much-all-the-time Riverdale. Amick must be having a blast playing Alice and all the wild dialogue she gets to serve up on a weekly basis (“enough of this Dr. Moreau experiment in breeding and eugenics!”; “If that beanie-wearing cad defiled you…”). Lord knows I am.

Where to stream Riverdale

One of the great surprises of the year was how thoroughly I loved Netflix’s animated series about how harrowing and disgusting puberty is. What a genius idea, to present this unfilmable concept as animation, heightening the terrors and giving some of the best and funniest vocal performances the chance to shine. Props to Maya Rudolph, John Mulaney, Jenny Slate, Andrew Rannells, Kat Dennings, and more for really bringing it, and to Nick Kroll, Andrew Goldberg, Jessi Klein, and all the writers for delivering something this warm and relatable while also being about how puberty is a monster that controls your life.

Where to stream Big Mouth

One of the things that made Big Little Lies the best television program of 2017 was that it wasn’t just this merciless story engine driving towards a mystery-box finale. Every episode along the way had detours and diversions that helped add to the bigger picture of life in Monterrey for these women. The birthday-party dance break where Laura Dern’s Renata and Zoe Kravitz’s Bonnie got down on the dance floor was one such time. The subtleties (that this children’s birthday party became yet another setting for adult friendship politics) and unsubtleties (the talking heads debating whether Bonnie was too sexy) mingled perfectly. But mostly this was just a fun, sexy time for all involved, with Kravitz in particular taking me into a time machine and reminding me that she is every bit her mother Lisa Bonet’s daughter.

Where to stream Big Little Lies

I fell head over heels in love with this web series from Saturday Night Live writer Sudi Green and UCB veteran/podcasting delight Matt Rogers. The selection of legendary male/female pairings span history (Caesar and Cleopatra), fairy tale (the wicked queen and her mirror), and pop culture (Britney and Justin), all presented in really surprising/satisfying ways. The ideas are brillz, but they’d be adrift without the comedic chemistry Green and Rogers bring to the table. Every line reading has a spin to it. I’ve watched these videos more times than I can count in only a few short weeks, and I see no sign of that slowing down any time soon. More please!

Where to stream Power Couple

Everything about the One Day at a Time remake was amazing, and I can’t wait for season 2, but if there was one thing that nagged at me, it was that the original series had the perfect theme song/opening credits, and much as I adore Gloria Estefan, and her version of the theme was perfectly on point for a show about a Cuban-American family, I still missed the originals. Someone at Netflix was hearing my pleas, it looks like. Now bring on that second season!

Where to stream One Day at a Time

In 2017, Gal Gadot went from being an actress who I deeply wanted to return to the Fast and the Furious franchise, even though her character died, because Gisele and Han are the one true pairing and death cannot stop that and hey they brought Letty back didn’t they and … anyway, she went from that to being a worldwise avatar for truth, justice, strength, and beauty. Wonder Woman was the year’s most encouraging blockbuster, and the movie rested comfortably on Gadot’s shoulders. But better than any action scene or training montage, the single best moment in Wonder Woman, and the scene that should be her Oscar clip if that ever happened (imagine it!), is when Diana tastes ice cream for the first time.

Where to stream Wonder Woman

David Lowery’s film about a man who dies and then lingers in the home that he and his girlfriend bought and he doesn’t even like very much is not usually a verbal triumph. This is a story about silences and quiet regrets and eating pies all by yourself and moving through the remnants of your life and then seeing what grows up around the shape of your absence and how the world moves on. It’s one of the best films of the year, but I’m not sure I could remember more than 10 words that either Casey Affleck or Rooney Mara say in the whole movie. Which makes the house party/kitchen table scene in the middle of the movie stand out all the more. It’s a pop-philosophical digression about the nature of human impermanence that plays as both drunken blathering by the kind of person you’d chew your arm off to get away from at a party, while also commenting on the ghost in our midst that no one can see. It’s riveting in its self-aware self-indulgence.

Where to stream A Ghost Story

Call Me By Your Name is a ravishing, evocative, deeply impactful movie that is probably the best thing that hit movie theaters all year, and if it were streaming anywhere, it would be all over my year-end lists around these parts. As it is, I will have to make do with the part of it that did blow up on streaming, this gorgeously goofy scene of Armie Hammer’s Oliver, carefree on a dance floor, moving that lanky frame around with abandon to the Psychadelic Furs. There’s a ton of character stuff within Oliver’s movement, in the way Elio (Timothée Chalamet) looks at him from afar but is careful not to look at him while they’re dancing in adjacent spaces. It’s also just a pure bit of fun to brighten any murky day.

“Myron/Byron” is a short little dad joke of a song that recurs at exactly the right time in the film and communicates a lot about the vibe of what it must’ve been like growing up in the Meyerowitz home (musicality; confidence as currency; aloofness as a way of life). “Genius Girl” sneaks up on you in that it doesn’t come at any kind of emotional high point the way you might expect it to. This devastatingly sweet song is what helps us to understand the bond between father and daughter, not to capitalize on it later. The lyrics — and the way they’re performed by Adam Sandler and Grace Van Patten — have a specificity that immediately carves out a detailed portrait of their lives. It’s also just beautiful to listen to.

Where to stream The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

Netflix’s series-length adaptation of Justin Simien’s promising indie debut is crackling with big ideas and bold humor, but where it really succeeded at its highest levels was by creating characters I loved and wanted to be around and follow and fight with. The students at Winchester University blast past all notions of safe spaces to show that reckoning with a nation’s racist past on the frontlines of its future is fearless business, but there is also a ton of humor and heart to these kids. Eagerly anticipating their return is how I’ll be kicking off 2018.

Where to stream Dear White People

Chris Gethard blends light and dark in his one-man show really gorgeously, never shying away from the realities of mental illness but also delivering it in a friendly, funny package that’s neither glib nor self-consciously shocking. Gethard’s mental illness doesn’t make him extreme. But his awareness of it and his ability to work his way through it on stage in a way that invites his audience in does make him pretty exemplary.

Bonus points for Gethard: this moment from The Chris Gethard Show, where he gets his assistant to perform a bit, only to see it rebound on him:

Where to stream Chris Gethard: Career Suicide

I’ve written about the RuPaul/”Call Me Mother” group routine about a billion times on this site, so I will talk about something else (just know that said group number is my favorite thing to have happened in this or any year). One of the great things about falling in love with So You Think You Can Dance all over again this past year has been once again having favorites I would ride or die for. Like 18-year-old bendy phenom Logan, whose massive array of talents cannot be overstated. The ways this kid can move are a gift possessed by the smallest fraction of humans on this planet, and that he chooses to use those gifts in order to bring something beautiful to life in the form of choreography will never stop being moving. And I will never stop bitching that he didn’t win.

Where to stream So You Think You Can Dance

Look at the way the live audience leaps to their feet when Sasha Velour lifts her wig up to reveal a cascade of rose petals at the climactic moment of Whitney Houston’s “So Emotional.” That’s what I did by myself in my living room. It was a wholly involuntary act, my body animated by an otherworldly feeling of joy and exhilaration. The best Drag Race finale ever (they finally figured out a format that combines high drama, real stakes, and an electric live atmosphere) peaked with this very moment, when a Lip Sync For Your Life gave that life right back to the audience.

Where to stream RuPaul's Drag Race