2022 Round-Up: Part 1
Joel & Andrew talk the year over
For the last month, people all over the internet have widdled down their lists and shared their opinions on the “best” 2022 had to offer in entertainment and media.
We at Ponytail Press also felt obligated to give our perspectives and summarize 2022, but both of us couldn’t bring ourselves to assume that the tiny sliver of music, film, TV, and reading material we digested from this year could in any way encapsulate the year itself. So instead, we chose a simple, honest format: the conversation.
Here is Part 1 of the results of that chat/email correspondence for your reading pleasure.
-AK & JB
The Primary Medium: TV
AK: My first question for you:
Of the media forms we cover (music, television, film, books) which one stood out the most for you this year? Which form did you engage with the most? Why?
JB: Weirdly enough, the media form that's stood out to me the most this year—and if you counted the minutes, I'm sure would be the most engaged with—has been one that I don't think I've written about at all: TV. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, but in what felt like a busy and tiring year, TV provided the low-energy and low-commitment option for media consumption that I needed.
A re-watch of Seinfeld was the lowest of the low in both of those aforementioned categories. No stakes, no character development, just goofy antics and trivial but engaging conversations. The occasional dash of homophobia or misogyny was the one thing that made it a little less easy watch. Bob's Burgers was another "easy TV" highlight for me of 2022. Such a fun show with its multifaceted characters, goofy puns and songs, and some real feel-good arcs in a lot of episodes.
What about you?
AK: I was going to say TV, too, but my thoughts went in a whole different direction. Maybe not in terms of time spent watching, but in terms of time spent in my mind, thinking, I was definitely impressed with TV in 2022. I've thought for days about what I would highlight from the year, but I've got to say, I think it will go down as one of the best for sheer number of excellent shows.
I don't know if I could feel satisfied with a particular ranking, but no matter where the rest fell, Severence would end up in the #1 spot every time. It was the most whole and original series of the year, in my opinion. The writing, the set design, the acting, everything came together so perfectly. In some ways, it reminded me of the best parts of Mad Men, where an episode seems to tread across the screen so slowly and then whacks you! in the face in the last moment before the credits. It also reminded me sometimes of Twin Peaks in the way it created its own, enclosed system of metaphor and language, and left you without any idea of what to expect.
Other highlights included The Bear, Only Murders in the Building (Season 2), Andor, Stranger Things (Season 4), and The Old Man. I can't say these were the best shows available this year, but they were the best ones I watched. The best new ones, anyway. (I, too, rewatched Seinfeld from start to finish this year.)
JB: Damn! This "golden age of TV," as I've heard some people call it, that began (at least in my cultural consciousness) with shows like Breaking Bad really seems to keep extending into this limitless future with shows like you mentioned, and countless others I've heard friends and family rave about! As someone who's more of a movie guy (and when I do watch TV it's the under 30 minutes kind, as I alluded to before), it feels like there's a billion shows I've missed out on! I still haven't seen the aforementioned Breaking Bad or Mad Men, for example. Severence seems super cool though. I'd probably place that high on my "to watch" list.
Stranger Things is one show I've gotten into the last few years (a bit behind the times). Currently making my way through Season 4, and it's been the most emotionally devastating season so far, I would say! Also the one that feels most like a straight up horror movie.
AK: Don't get scared off too much by the good reviews. A lot of my highlight reel stuck to a short-episode format: The Bear and Only Murders in the Building, especially, but even Severence and Andor kept things in bite-sized chunks for the most part.
Also, I forgot one important highlight: ATLANTA! I had missed this show until this year, and caught it just in time for the last season. I only have a couple episodes left, but it's another medium-altering and thought-provoking series that's definitely worth watching AND has short episodes.
So. Much. To. Watch.
JB: Ah yes, Atlanta! With Donald Glover! Heard great things about that one. And I love art that tests and plays with the boundaries of its own medium, so that definitely sounds up my alley.
The Music Attached Forever to 2022
AK:
What did you find yourself listening to this year?
JB: HAIM would once again be near the top of my most played artists list. I started listening to their music in year one of the pandemic and they remained in constant rotation this past year, especially during the summer! Easy and catchy upbeat tracks that provide great mood music for a road trip or dance party at home (my daughter's big into those).
Taylor Swift's Lover was another album getting lots of play in my apartment and in my car! On a bit of a different note, I also really got into Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher this past year (again, late to the party haha). Perfect for those moody night drives or moments of existential crises while making sandwiches at midnight for your lunch at work the next day. Geotic's hypnotic Traversa was another night-drive album that sticks out for me.
I'll ask you the same question but will make it a bit more specific:
Given how music can really become attached to moments and seasons of life, what was one song or album or artist that will remind you of 2022 (or at least a certain part of it) in years to come?
AK: To answer your more specific question, I would have to choose Tim Baker and his new album, The Festival. Erica and I had an incredible trip this summer in the Atlantic provinces and started in Baker's home of St. John's, Newfoundland. To wrap things up perfectly, we went to a very intimate brewpub show of his (opened by Cape Breton's Villages) in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia, two nights before we left for home. The memory of it will be locked away in my brain forever.
Tim's new album wasn't out at the time, but we caught him in Calgary in November, a month after the official release of The Festival, at the Bella Concert Hall. He had Georgia Harmer (the niece of Sarah Harmer) open with just her guitar (magical) and then blew the house down with the band we saw in the summer, plus a two-person horn section that really added the right amount of juice to the show. It was, again, incredible. I tip my hat to Mr. Baker, and give him 2022.
Besides that, I didn't follow new music this year as much as I usually do. I let go of streaming services and focused on my record collection instead which turned out to be good company while I working from home. Organized it autobiographically like a nerd.
I started paying more attention in the last month or two to look for shareable songs for Fresh Tracks and caught Alvvays' new album Blue Rev thanks to that (and my little brother Nick). Erica and I plan to also commemorate that one with a live show in the new year (she bought me tickets for a Christmas surprise!).
JB: I'm so glad you had an album and an experience all ready to go for my question. That's such a great feeling when you have a great live show (or two in your case!) to associate with a great album.
Movies that Stood Out
AK: I want to hear more about your movie-viewing now though, since you hinted lightly at it earlier.
What stood out to you this year, new and old? Anything you caught yourself watching more than once in 2022? Which stories stuck to your brain-matter the most? Give me the full picture.
JB: I'm still quite behind on watching all the notable 2022 releases, but I'm glad to say that I've seen at least one 10/10 one, and that was Everything Everywhere All at Once. It's one of those movies that really dives into those big, juicy themes like the power of love and the devastating weight of existence that get me all teared up while still being supremely entertaining. Like they were able to do to a lesser extent in Swiss Army Man, the Daniels were somehow able to evoke genuine emotions from even the silliest of cinematic situations, which in this case (being in a multiverse and all) included one with rocks with googly eyes and another with people with hotdog fingers.
Park Chan-wook's Decision to Leave would be my #2 movie of 2022 so far. A sensual, layered mystery that's fantastically filmed and edited.
With my ongoing movie review project, I'm a little uptight about never watching movies that I've already reviewed (there's already too many that I haven't reviewed yet!), but occasionally with friends or family I'm thrust into those situations, and I'm ultimately glad for it! With my partner Rachel, I rewatched a few of my favourites that she hadn't seen yet—O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Little Miss Sunshine—and it was a delightful feeling being reminded of why I fell in love with those films in the first place, and upon rewatch they nuzzled into my heart even further, all cozy-like.
I also watched 2021's The Mitchells vs. The Machines for the first time this year, and then again a couple times after that with my 7-year old and other family members. It's a perfect family movie—colourful, action-packed, hilarious in many different ways, and of course about a family, quirks and all, itself.
Other highlights of movies watched in 2022 include the mesmerizing and layered study of grief Drive My Car and the gorgeous and intimate Belfast.
Any movie highlights for you?
AK: My movie-watching was pretty limited this year, especially when it came to new releases (I have yet to return, post-COVID, to a theatre). But three 2022 films really stamped themselves into my psyche.
I will probably remember Jordan Peele’s Nope as my favourite movie of the year. It helped that my friend Kaleb invited me over to watch it with the explicit purpose of talking about it afterward. I went into it primed to give an interpretation of it right away, so I watched it with my antennae on high alert. Boy, did it live up to the scrutiny. I knew very little about it going in, only that it was about aliens. I’d watched Get Out and Us already, so I was waiting for racial commentary and got it. But Nope felt like it transcended Peele’s other two films by being less forward with its message. In a similar vein to Severence and Twin Peaks, it felt like Peele let the story fall out of his imagination more naturally, and so you can come at it from multiple angles as a result.
In a similar way, Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry, Darling kept me thinking about it long after the final credits. The story maybe wasn’t quite as tight as Nope, but the way it tackled its subject matter allowed me to find new characters and moments to focus on as I turned it over and over in my mind. The militaristic agenda (implimented by female authority) for the female characters to maintain “beauty,” whether in their physical appearance or the appearance of their homes, revealed something sick in our society in a way I hadn’t seen before in a film. It also explored loss in a unique way, focusing on what we potentially sacrifice when we give into the feelings that accompany it. A lot of my personal “suffering” this year came from the feelings of loneliness and low self-esteem that gig work and working from home can instigate, so Harry Styles’ performance was particularly poignant for me, especially near the end of the film. “Poignant” might be how I would describe the film in a word, actually. Poignant and/or “timely.” I could write a long essay about it. (Should I?)
The third one went down much easier, but still managed to make a lasting impact: Cooper Raiff’s Cha Cha Real Smooth. This one felt like a call-back to the era of Garden State with its directionless, millennial central character that you root for no matter how many poor choices are made. Its plotpoint issues (there’s no way that a young, male stranger would be left alone to support a teenage female with disabilities!) are easily overlooked or forgiven because it’s just so jam-packed with charm that you don’t care. I want to see more movies like this—movies that are fun to watch, that traffic in emotion, and are filled, for the most part, with people you walk away liking. About Time is another, slightly more current example. Sometimes, I like unpacking a complexly structured piece of art like Nope. But sometimes, I just want to relax and have a good time, too. Cha Cha Real Smooth gave me that this year.
JB: Yeah, Nope was intense and just filled to the brim with subtext. On my initial watch in theatres I couldn't quite put all the pieces together in my head, so it didn't have quite the impact I was hoping for, but fortunately I went to see it with my much smarter brother Adriel (check out his reviews here), and he was able to lend some insights on the drive home that made it sit a little better for me.
Haven't seen Don't Worry, Darling yet, and after all the controversy and middling reviews my high hopes for it had all but gone, so it's nice to read a thoroughly positive review for it from a trusted voice! Cha Cha Real Smooth, meanwhile, was on my watchlist and will certainly remain there!
Words from 2022 to live by
JB: I know you're quite active on Substack not just for writing with Ponytail Press but for reading other newsletters.
Did your discovery of Substack for this latter purpose only begin in 2022 with our arrival on the platform, or was it earlier? If it was earlier, what are some newsletters you only started getting into this past year?
AK: 2022 was definitely the year of Substack for me. I discovered the platform at the tailend of last year, so I can't exactly distinguish 2021 from 2022.
I've highlighted a lot of my favourites through Ponytail Picks this year—
, , , , —but the defining newsletter would still have to be . It helps that it's the only one I consistently paid for throughout the year, but the community that's developed around it through the comments has made a huge impact on me and the way I see myself as a writer. I will be eternally grateful to George for facilitating it. For the first time, I feel about a living author the way I felt about my favorite bands as a young person: a true and loyal fan. I now own more books written by him than any other living author. I think that says it clearer than anything else.One area of Substack I've enjoyed a lot this year but haven't had the chance to direct attention towards is comedy. Besides
, which I mentioned at some point, I've come to rely on a few other newsletters for laughs throughout 2022. Amran Gowani's was consistently hilarious (check out his pitch-perfect update to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for a good example), as was Michael Estrin's . There are also a few great comic strip Substacks I found that help get me through the week: Sofia Warren's mixes self-deprication with advice; Liza Donnelly, a cartoonist at The New Yorker, shares her work on ; and gathers cartoons each week from nine different artists based on themes ranging from poetry to dinosaurs—so fun!I could go on and on, but I’ll add one more thing: across genre, I felt a kinship with a few Substack writers throughout the year.
, Zamudio, , Nikhil Rajagopalan from , Holly Rabalais from , and of course, from On Repeat all encouraged me with their comments, advice, likes, and recommendations. I'm looking forward to connecting with more Substack writers in 2023 because of the camaraderie I felt from these folks.I’ll turn it back to you now.
What words and writers stuck with you in 2022?
JB: That's awesome you've found such a cool community here on Substack, enriching both in its content and its encouragement of you to make your own content! At this point in my life I just don't have the capacity to engage with the platform in the same way (and I feel a tad guilty about that) but I do want to make it clear how grateful I am for all the engagement we've received so far here at Ponytail Press, and I want to take this opportunity too, to thank you, Andrew, for your leadership and initiative in getting our newsletter off the ground and beyond that, sustaining it and helping it grow! I love writing but I often need a little push, so I'm so grateful to have this project provide that for me.
To your question. Most of my active reading is of books, and I actually kept track of the ones I read this year for the first time ever. There weren't that many, but two that really stuck out to me were Willy Vlautin's The Motel Life and Douglas Coupland's Microserfs. I've been a fan of Coupland's novels for a while now, but hadn't read that early work of his yet. I expected lots of quirky cultural commentary and certainly received hard drives full of that, but what I didn't expect was just how emotionally powerful it was. Amidst all the talk of technology and computers and silly Seinfeld-if-it-was-set-in-Silicon-Valley-esque conversations, there's a poignant and very real thread of humanity through it all that bursts forth in a number of tear-jerking scenes throughout.
The Motel Life, meanwhile, was a thrift store find (just thought it looked pretty cool) that I couldn't get enough of! I was enraptured by Vlautin's writing style--no fanciful language or extended metaphors, just bare-bones first-person narration of two brothers on the poverty line trying to survive in a gritty Americana landscape.
Thanks for including me here! I'm in some high company, and I appreciate that. I'm glad we were able to connect this year, and hope that continues (I haven't forgotten I owe you an email)!
TV-wise, I didn't watch a whole lot, but I sure fell hard for Yellowstone. My wife watched Only Murders in the Building, and I think I'd have gotten more into it if I'd sat down and watched it all the way through. Definitely not a show you can float in & out of.
The fantastic Mr. Fox was on pretty much nonstop when my oldest son was younger. If pushed, I'd bet he can recite most of it. We should probably watch it again one of these days just to test drive that theory.
Motel Life is a great book. Based on your like of Motel Life, I suggest Breece D'J Pancake's stories. He has only book. He died young.