Brett White’s Top 10 of the 2010s: Nothing Will Ever Beat ‘Cheers’

The 2010s were the streaming decade, as seemingly every corporation and network decided that they too were rich enough in content to charge roughly $5.99 a month for access. But even with the dozens or hundreds of services (I’ve lost count), I’ve really only needed one: Hulu.

As Netflix radically shifted focus from licensing content to creating original shows, Hulu has been there to catch nearly everything Netflix tossed out. 30 Rock, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia–Hulu stuffed its shelves like a pop culture hoarder and I am grateful. The impression I’ve gotten during my decade-ish with Hulu is that it’s a streaming service that actually cares about television. Where else can you stream classics like The Dick Van Dyke Show alongside The Golden Girls and RuPaul’s Drag Race? This is the only streaming service I need.

Stream Hulu on Hulu

I could easily fill this list with under appreciated comedic masterminds, because we absolutely do not talk about Lisa Kudrow in The Comeback and Laura Dern in Enlightened nearly enough. But there’s a lot of ground to cover on this list, so I have to go with the best of the best: Kaitlin Olson.

As far as I’m concerned, no performer of the 2010s packed as much ferocious and fearless funny into as much work as Olson. The way she attacked her roles in 9 seasons of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and 2 seasons of the unjustly canceled The Mick prove she’s without peer. No one punches punch lines as hard as Olson, and no one puts themselves through the physical comedy wringer like Olson. From screaming at Mac to get in the car to swaying with an inflatable man, to agreeing about the feasibility of opening a leather shop in Arizona, to basically every single scene of The Mick (dear god, people, watch that show!), Olson continually proved herself to be the most visceral comedic performer of the decade and it’s past time we celebrated her like the living legend she is.

Stream It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia on Hulu

Stream The Mick on Hulu

Veep is the best comedy of the decade and this small, stupid moment (as well as the larger, stupid moment that follows) rank as the funniest of the decade. After spending almost 3 seasons scheming her way into the White House, Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) learns the president is resigning. This is everything she’s been fighting for, and it’s just… happening, suddenly, derailing all of her plans. Her response is so human: she tries to manufacture other other obstacles to plot against, but all she can come up with is “Where’s POTUS gonna live, though?” And then we get the scene.

There was nothing funnier in the 2010s than a cackling Julia Louis-Dreyfus waving some tampons at a bloody Tony Hale.

Stream Veep "Crate" on HBO GO

This was the Marvel decade and, as a lifelong Marvel fan, the 2010s therefore felt like my movie decade. I honestly felt so catered to that, by the time they were putting Elastica in Captain Marvel trailers I had to be like, “Hey, whoah, why are you obsessed with me?” But through it all, there’s been Black Widow and my diehard devotion to this scarlet-haired (okay, and blonde that one time) hero.

I’ve loved her throughout the entire decade, from her scene-stealing debut in 2010’s Iron Man 2 to her (quite frankly offensive!) role in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. But she’s on this list because of what she did in between those two films, as every appearance revealed new layers to this perennial supporting player, low-key developing her into the most complex hero in the entire MCU. Nothing beats her character arc, from a hardened and reluctant superhero in Marvel’s The Avengers to a passionately protective team leader in Avengers: Infinity War. Natasha Romanoff never had the kind of super-powers her teammates had, but you never doubted her capabilities (the same can’t be said of Hawkeye). She just had a pair of pistols, a wry smile, and a steely determination. That’s all she needed to save the universe.

Stream Marvel's The Avengers on Disney+

Stream Captain America: The Winter Soldier on Disney+

It’s impossible to do a list like this one without examining how you’ve changed over the course of the decade, and how certain aspects of pop culture have influenced very personal decisions you’ve made. That goes for movies and TV shows, sure, but it also—if you’re me—goes for the red carpet looks of Mr. Martin Freeman.

Freeman has had a stupendous decade, from starring in the Hobbit trilogy to the entire Sherlock phenomenon to joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe. All of these projects have kept him out in front of cameras at red carpets and press events, and my life would not look the same without these looks.

I love clothes. I love dressing up. So of course I love a star that also—unlike a lot of other male celebs out there!—is unabashed in his love for clothes and dressing up. I’ve spent the decade clocking all of Martin’s looks and incorporating them into my personal style, even for a big event like my wedding. As a fellow gray-haired man of 5’6″, these are all attainable style goals for me (albeit on a non-movie-star budget), and I lived for them.

I started out the decade with a very concrete and dismissive opinion of RuPaul’s Drag Race, one forged by cautiously streaming Season 3 on Netflix (that tells you how long ago this was!). I paid the show no mind for the next five years, not coming around until it was time for Season 9.

My decade can kinda be split into two halves: pre-and-post-Drag Race. The show became an obsession for my husband and me, as it helped us embrace and celebrate our queerness just as the light of the world started to dim (Season 9 aired in 2017). Season 9 will forever hold a special place in my heart, for being sickening but also for  being responsible for deep personal growth. And also it has Sasha Velour’s season finale lip sync.

After not seeing Sasha lip sync all season long, we finally got to see her do her thing in the most intense way possible: going up against her Season 9 BFF in the first lip sync duel for the crown, to Whitney Houston’s “So Emotional,” no less! The reveal, a cascade of rose petals falling from her fiery wig down her passionate face, was quite possibly the most artful and culturally transformative moment in the entire season, if not the series.

Where to watch RuPaul's Drag Race

I have always loved Bob Newhart. I was introduced to him early via Nick at Nite in the ’90s, and The Bob Newhart Show was daily viewing ahead of my college classes in the ’00s. But my appreciation for this mild-mannered man quadrupled in 2016 when, because of everything being awful, I impulse bought the entire Bob Newhart Show on DVD (thankfully it is all now streaming on Hulu).

There are layers to this love, as Mr. Newhart and The Bob Newhart Show has impacted my life in quite frankly surprising ways. He’s validated my experience as a dapper guy with an anxiety problem, he helped me cope with not spending Christmas with my family, and he was even (super indirectly, decades later) the LGBTQ ally I needed at a time when I really, really needed it.

On top of all of that, Bob Newhart has been personally kind to me, going above and beyond not only for a celebrity, but especially for a 90-year-old legend who really doesn’t have to spend time thanking people for writing kind things about them on the internet. Thanks for everything, Bob.

Stream The Bob Newhart Show on Hulu

After spending, I dunno, close to 30 years as a completely obsessed diehard Star Wars fan, it was getting to be hard to be surprised by the franchise. That was the case with 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a crowd-pleasing phenomenon that I hold close to my heart (even if the movie did stab my all-time favorite character in all of fiction through his heart). And then there was Star Wars: The Last Jedi, a movie that could have rhymed with The Empire Strikes Back to the same degree that The Force Awakens echoed A New Hope. I expected to love The Last Jedi, as I’m pre-conditioned to love Star Wars, but I didn’t expect to be surprised by The Last Jedi.

This movie, my favorite movie of the entire decade, made me an anxious, tear-soaked, hyped-up madman for its entire runtime. This movie was Star Wars as frantic chase film, with a relentlessness that I’ve rarely experienced. And unlike so many other big movies of the decade, the end goal of Last Jedi wasn’t for the heroes to win so much as to just survive. But woven into the story were richly resonant character arcs, tightly constructed by writer/director Rian Johnson—a man that loves Star Wars so much he covets vintage AT-AT toys and keeps books of Jedi lore in his home office. This film, the throw down in Snoke’s blood-red throne room to Admiral Holdo’s sacrifice and Luke’s evolution into a legend, is what modern myth-making looks like.

Stream Star Wars: The Last Jedi on Disney+

The common thread throughout this list is that the 2010s were the decade in which I finally grew up. I got a career, a husband, an apartment with a washer/dryer in unit, and I got a new all-time favorite show to match this leveled-up version of myself (one that still loves Star Wars and Marvel, but also dresses better) in Mad Men.

This show about bitter, complex, morally gray adults just trying to do their damn job well became my comfort food, the show that I’d just rewatch on a loop, fully aware that this new habit was evidence of something broken inside me. But if you think I can’t watch Season 4’s “The Suitcase,” which aired in 2010, and feel every bit of Peggy’s anger in my bones, you’re as wrong as every choice Harry Crane ever made.

Maybe I find Mad Men—a show wherein one of my favorite characters committed suicide by hanging himself in his office—so pleasant because of its retro visuals and enviable style (especially as the show’s men started flirting with that gorgeously gaudy late ’60s style). Truly, if you want to know what the inside of my head looks like when I’m happy, it’s the Season 4 Christmas party. But Mad Men was about so much more than hot men (although good lord). It was about the existential pain of reaching, clawing, striving to be the best, and all of the messy successes and failures that follow.

Stream Mad Men on Netflix

In 2013, in the middle of the worst month to live in New York City (February), I went through sinus surgery and went home with no antibiotics due to a mix-up between my doctor and the hospital (I don’t see that doctor anymore). I spent a week out of office recovering, with the TV as my only medicine. I had big plans. I was going to get into Homeland, Game of Thrones, Adventure Time, all the buzzy shows of 2013. Instead, I discovered Cheers on Netflix.

I didn’t watch Cheers when it originally aired, as I was just too young and the show was so drab looking. But the best shows come to us when we need them most, and I didn’t need Cheers in the ’90s. I needed Cheers in the 2010s. I binged three seasons of Cheers in three days, and spent the rest of 2013 watching all eleven seasons. It felt like I’d unlocked something in my DNA, like I was a mutant discovering my superpower (that power being finding ways to write a lot about Cheers for work 25 years after it went off the air). I’m so glad that I got to discover “Coach’s Daughter,” “Fairy Tales Can Come True,” “Thanksgiving Orphans,” and “An Old-Fashioned Wedding” as an adult, one with decades of sitcom studies under his belt. Watching this show for the first time felt like being an archaeologist digging up a dino skeleton for the first time (and everyone else being like, “Duh, yeah, how have you not heard of dinosaurs before?!”). This show became more than a show. It became a home.

Stream Cheers on Hulu