2024 recap posts

Another year in the books! I moved these posts over to Egregious last year so they would be more broadly accessible, and I liked it, so here we are again.

I don’t have much to say about this series of posts yet—I’ve only written the TV recap as of its posting—but feel free to check my main Oscars post from last year to see all the links to 2023’s recaps (with a bonus Oscars-recap post if you feel like wondering how it went down). I went with TV first because I had to pull the TV shows I watched from memory, versus most other kinds of media, where I had some kind of externally-constructed recap to help me out. (Plus, in 2023, I was diligent about logging and rating every episode of TV I watched in Notion. I was less diligent in 2024. Oops.)

TV in 2024

I can’t talk about last year in US movies/TV without mentioning the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes from 2023. The echoes can still be felt in so many ways. Practically, movies have a bit more cushion where that’s concerned; bigger blockbusters can be pushed back, and there will always be indies to fill the gaps. (Plug “2024 movies postponed” in a search bar and see how many articles you find.) TV shows following the old network format, with seasons and airings every year, have less flexibility. TV following the streamer format in a good year can disappear into the ether, and while I was hoping more would be able to stand out in a quieter year, that doesn’t seem to have happened.

On a more conceptual level, the strikes happened in large part because the big money in Hollywood is bad at their jobs, and that problem hasn’t gone away. It existed before streamers—I could always name more unsatisfying, canceled TV shows than successes—but the disposal model from tech companies has made it so much worse. US TV is low on my list of media priorities these days because of it. A bad Netflix movie eats two hours of my life. A bad Netflix show, or a good one that gets destroyed or canceled because of bad decisions, can be twenty hours or more.

Despite everything, I have a list of fifteen shows I watched this year. (The actual number was a little higher, but there were a couple shows I basically don’t remember at all.) A lot of the TV shows are old. It’s for the same reason people marathoned the USA show Suits a couple years ago; why bother with anything new when likable, consistent TV already exists? But I did try to keep up with some shows, and there were a couple of new surprises as well.

Old favorites

Friends (full), The Office US (a couple episodes), and various background sitcoms

I do my best with TV when I watch with other people, whether in-person or online. Sara is the person I watch TV with the most these days, and she’s always watching sitcoms. A lot of TV I was around this year wasn’t even anything I was actively watching; I was in Sara’s office while it played, or in a nearby room while others watched. Shows of this nature include Community, Brooklyn 99, The Good Place, and probably more that I’m forgetting.

Friends was the one I watched actively the most. (Sara wrote a horror novel based largely off of it. It’s sick and twisted and I love it!) I don’t like a lot of the writing on Friends, but it stays consistent basically until the last season (at which point it falls off a cliff), and the ensemble is so good, they elevate what’s there. Plus, Chandler and Monica are one of my favorite fictional romantic couples of all time, basically? I get pumped to rewatch the show so I can watch them fall in love all over again.

(Everyone who thinks Friends is too white is absolutely right, though. No excuse for that.)

2024 was also the first year I watched any part of the US version of The Office. The type of comedy is too cringe for my tastes, but Sara showed me a couple full episodes at the end of the year, and I enjoyed them a lot. I’ll never seek it out on my own, but I won’t leave the room if it’s on, either.

Mad Men (full)

I actually watched the bulk of Mad Men as it aired, but not for Don Draper; Mad Men was always about Peggy and Joan and Betty and Sally and most of the actresses who ended up onscreen. (I talked about how much I liked Dawn once on Twitter, and Teyonah Parris liked my tweet!) It had been a couple years since I rewatched, and I had access to AMC for Interview with the Vampire, so I gave it another pass. I wasn’t sure I would enjoy it because of what I learned about the behind-the-scenes environment, but again, the female characters were really compelling. It’s also always really interesting to see something years down the road; I was closer to Peggy’s age then, and I’m closer to Joan’s age now.

A partial rewatch of the early Simpsons

At several points in the year, I needed a show I could watch without worrying too much if kiddos walked in. The Simpsons was one of those choices. Not only did I rewatch a few Treehouse of Horrors around Halloween, I bounced around this list of best-ranked episodes. It seems silly to ask, “Hey, did you know The Simpsons was really good once?” when I was a child of the 90s raised on The Simpsons. Still, I always seemed to catch the same handful of episodes in reruns during that period, and I got to see some new-to-me ones this year that really knocked my socks off. For example: “Bart on the Road”, when Bart takes off on a road trip with Milhouse, Martin, and Nelson, featuring a cute sideplot with Homer and Lisa.

I’ll definitely continue with the list in 2025. Older TV like this is really good for random, short watches, and maybe I’ll see more episodes I haven’t before.

Gilmore Girls s1-6

I have a real love-annoyed relationship with Gilmore Girls. I initially watched the show in reruns with my mom and older sister, and chatting with family and having opinions over characters is exactly the way to watch this show. The early seasons are so solid, too; one through three has good teen moments and passable adult relationships (I think the Lorelai/Max thing dragged on way too long), Stars Hollow is a large presence in a way that feels natural, and the mood is just right. I like seasons four and five less, but having Paris go to Yale and the initial Luke/Lorelai relationship mostly keeps things going.

I honestly meant to quit this watch after season three, but I wasn’t ready to let go. I honestly didn’t mean to watch the show at all in 2024! I just read Kelly Bishop’s memoir—and I highly rec the audiobook, which she read herself—and I got a real urge to watch Emily Gilmore being her messy, complicated self. The way Kelly Bishop and Lauren Graham play off each other in particular! Can I retroactively throw Emmys at people?

The show after season five declines pretty hard for me. I really don’t like the Rory-steals-a-yacht storyline, but getting a resolution to it usually keeps me watching past the point where I’m having fun. (And I admit, the part where Emily and Richard find out that Rory has had serious boyfriends and not remained a virgin is so funny to me.) The switch to season seven, though? It was easy to bail out, despite finding the Rory/Logan relationship pretty worthwhile in that stretch.

I briefly considered writing an essay about the class fantasy behind Gilmore Girls, but I just watched a Princess Weekes video that covered a lot of what I thought. And her opinions about Rory’s romances (Dean getting thrown under the bus for being more blue collar, Logan being the guy who meets her where she is) are very correct, although I disagree about Max. Really, looking back, I wish Lorelai had met anyone better.

New to me

Doc Martin (full)

I had never seen this British classic, featuring a doctor with a blood phobia living in a remote, coastal town, but the group I watched it with ate it up. For good reason! Doc Martin is a show that is largely kind to its characters, has some delightfully silly moments, and has a long-running romantic relationship at its heart. Despite my complaints about TV in 2024, watching Doc Martin and yelling about the episode’s mystery or the latest relationships was easily one of the high points of the year, with any media. I could watch it all again and be just as delighted a second time.

The Boys and Gen V (both in their entirety)

I have a lot of familiarity with a different Eric Kripke show: Supernatural. (The show way outlasted his tenure as head writer, but he certainly left a legacy behind.) That familiarity plus knowing the crass levels of The Boys left me a little cold on the concept of watching this show in its entirety. But Sara really likes it, so we did a full watch of The Boys and Gen V in 2024. And…I liked it too? No one’s more surprised than me. I know a lot of people thought the latest season wasn’t as good, and I get why, but watching it all in one gulp made it a little better.

I don’t know that anything in the last couple years with a wider reach portrays the relationship between people and large corporations/large systems as well as The Boys has. More importantly, I don’t know that anything with a wider reach is as honest about how violent large systems are against regular people, both within and without. (Excessive levels of gore gets the point across very well.)

Quick shoutout to Jack Quaid for being a part of two of my favorite TV experiences this year. Nepo babies can have rights!

We Are Lady Parts s1-2

I really enjoyed Nida Manzoor’s film Polite Society in 2023, so it seemed like a no-brainer to pick up her TV show in 2024 as one of my kids-can-walk-in activities. Turns out, “Muslim women in a punk band” is even more to my tastes than “Muslim women in an action movie”! I played the show’s songs a lot throughout the latter half of 2024; I think Bashir With a Good Beard was in my top-played songs of the year? (Check in again whenever I write the music recap post.) More directly relevant to the show, season two got more visually experimental, and I loved that it did. I hope there’s more episodes of this eventually, but the end of season two wrapped up nicely if there aren’t.

Returning favorites

Star Trek: Lower Decks s5

I hate that Lower Decks ended, but having a firm end on it means I can say that it’s not only one of my favorite Star Treks of all time, it’s one of my favorite shows of all time. Lower Decks managed playful poking at the sillier elements of Trek with sincere love for its roots, and, in the penultimate episode, balls-to-the-wall fanservice that was also a critique of the bigoted side of Rick Berman’s tenure in the franchise. This was a Trek that loved its starships, loved its shenanigans, and loved its characters and viewers most of all.

I’ll probably still watch Strange New Worlds, and maybe I’ll catch up on Discovery if I get bored, but I’m really mourning the lack of a new Star Trek that understood Star Trek. Paramount didn’t know what they had! (Or maybe they were too broke to keep it. Either way.)

Interview with the Vampire s2

This isn’t the hottest take of this post, but it is probably a hot take in the fandom: I liked season one of Interview with the Vampire better? Having said that, though, season two was basically better than almost every other show in 2024, and despite having to take some time to get used to the switch in location, it really achieved greatness once it settled in. I loved the end of the season in particular. Very few shows are good at payoff, but Interview with the Vampire definitely is.

I love all the cast—special shout out to Delainey Hayles for doing the tough job of taking over an already-established Claudia and making the role her own—but Jacob Anderson did something I thought was impossible; he made me love the character of Louis, despite all his foibles! (I tried rereading the book in 2024 and had to bail out because I can’t stand book Louis.) As much as I’m a forever-Lestat person, I’m actually a bit wistful that we’ll be switching to a Lestat focus in the near future. Wild.

Heartstopper s3

I was curious how the Netflix adaptation of Heartstopper would cover this part of the story before it happened. (I read the comic long before a real-life adaptation was on anyone’s radar.) Practically, I thought they did a decent job! I didn’t like it as much as the last couple seasons, but when everyone’s aging and Netflix is tight-fisted, it’s hard to keep things consistent. The balance in the ensemble’s stories felt a bit off, but not in a way that turned me off from the show as a whole. This is also just a tough segment of the story to cover, with one of the lead characters going through a serious mental-health crisis.

Still, if we don’t get any more of this show (I never trust Netflix), I think it ended in a good place, with the core group starting to age into adulthood and heading off into uni, and the relationships evolving to match the maturing characters. I’ll be interested to see how the comic ends, too!

Pleasant surprises and disappointments

Disappointment: What We Do in the Shadows s6

I thought the quality of What We Do In The Shadows had fallen off decently in season five, but there were still arcs and important character moments happening. (Guillermo’s arc ended in a particularly satisfying way.) Season six basically gave up on telling a story entirely, which would be fine if the comedy was funny. And it largely wasn’t. I was left wishing they had used a season five episode to wrap everything up, and the finale was so full of nothing that I felt mostly dead inside watching it (which, surprisingly enough, is not how you want a comedy to end). Oh well, it’s over now.

Pleasant surprise: X-Men ’97 s1

I loved the original X-Men animated series from the ’90s when I was a kid. It really formed my tastes in so many ways; subtextual leftist queer melodrama, but everyone flies around and uses powers to fight? Yes please! I didn’t have any hopes for the reboot show, so I was shocked when Sara was like, “No, you really need to watch this.” And I did. And she was right. It took everything from the ’90s show, made it less subtextual, and grew it for an aged audience. What a delight!

Special shout-out to episode 1×05 for being one of the most devastating (in an earned way) fortyish minutes of television I’ve ever watched. Just thinking about it gives my skin goosebumps and brings tears to my eyes, and it’s just an echo of what I felt actively watching it.

Disappointment: Bridgerton s3

Honestly, I’ve never been a huge fan of the Bridgerton show. The reason I picked up season three was because I usually find it a baseline level of watchable, and I really liked the chemistry of the season 2 main couple. I waited until all of the episodes dropped (I’m not playing this half-season game, Netflix) and went through them quickly. And I did manage to watch the entire season—not a bar every show cleared this year—but I found it pretty boring. The books are solid regency romances, but the show is trying to be both sexy and melodramatic and don’t really pull either of them off. It’s a shame because I really do like Nicola Coughlan, but the Lady Whistledown stuff in particular was a complete bust for me. Still, the queer threesome made me laugh with its weird timing, so it wasn’t a complete waste.

Disappointment: Umbrella Academy s4

Another show that I feel like I never fully clicked with—and, sorry to Gerard Way, but I’ve never fully clicked with the comic either—but wow, I kind of want to apologize to earlier Umbrella Academy because at least it wasn’t this.

I could complain about the structure and decisions made in the season as a whole, but the finale had one of the most abhorrent end messages of any show I’ve ever seen. When the premise of your show is “traumatized siblings in a dysfunctional family try to make their way”, going out of your way to say that it’s better that they didn’t exist in a way that didn’t even make sense in the universe? Terrible. I’ll be avoiding anything this showrunner makes in the foreseeable future.

Surprise and disappointment: Part of The Acolyte s1 and part of Andor s1

Let’s close out with my hottest take, possibly ever: I liked what I saw of The Acolyte a lot, and I found Andor boring and overrated.

Both of these surprised me, but it meshes with my personal tastes. The Acolyte was a critique of the Jedi; the only part of Star Wars that I am bulletproof interested in is the Jedi Order, their mishaps, and how Force users can exist in that system and outside of it. The Acolyte had a lot of actors I like, and good fight scenes (with women; I am so cheap for female-led action). I only watched the last few episodes, so if there was anything dragging at the beginning, I didn’t have to worry about it! Manny Jacinto was hot, there was a bunch of Force witches…what more could I ask for? (The only thing I didn’t really enjoy was the shoehorned “look at this legacy character” in the end, and that was a blip.)

It’s so funny to say that my favorite modern Star Wars entries are The Last Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and The Acolyte. Oh, and the Jedi video games (Jedi: Fallen Order and Jedi: Survivor). See what I mean about liking Jedi?

Andor, on the other hand, was a no-powers prequel to Rogue One. It’s not an automatic bounce off my tastes; I liked Rogue One quite a bit. But while Andor looked good, the story was boring at best, and annoying at worst. Some of the ideas Andor had were interesting, but I didn’t like the execution, and I finally bailed out at episode six. I’m absolutely not watching the next season.

Bonus!

If you liked this post, consider subscribing to my Patreon and reading a bonus 2024 recap post talking about productivity tips and tricks. Either way, thanks for reading, and there’s plenty more 2024 recap posts to come!