Caroline Siede

[Photo: Justin Barbin]

With over a decade of experience in film and TV criticism, Caroline is interested in reclaiming girl culture, analyzing nerd culture, and embracing pop culture in all its forms. 

Best known for her A.V. Club columns When Romance Met Comedy and Women of Action, Caroline is a “top critic” on Rotten Tomatoes and a proud member of the Chicago Film Critics Association. She runs the Substack, Girl Culture, a monthly newsletter on pop culture, feminism, and all things girly.

Highlights from her career include recapping TV shows like This Is Us, The Crown, and Doctor Who for The A.V. Club, explaining Star Trek for Vox, visiting SXSW for FOX Digital, exploring the early history of female directors for Bustle, and writing about “kind movies” for Polygon. In her free time, she also co-hosts the movie podcast Role Calling with her friend Ned Baker.

After a brief interlude to attend some real-life figure skating and watch some fictional ice hockey romance, I’m finally back to reflect on the year that just was! And my biggest takeaway from 2025 is that this is the first year since the pandemic that I’ve felt… normal? Which seems insane to say given the state of the world right now, but I do think is true for me internally. Even if, ironically, this is also the year I finally got COVID for the first time. (I love to be late to a trend!)

One thing I’m still learning about myself in my mid-30s is that I often don’t realize how much anxiety, depression, and/or obsessive spirals are weighing on my life until they finally lift. But looking back, I can now see just how manic and discombobulated I’ve felt over the past five years—gaining a job that gave me my first ever sense of real financial security and then losing it in a way that sent me running away from my life in increasingly weird ways. (You should see the surprise song tracking sheets I made for the Eras Tour…)

In 2025, however, it felt like I finally got back on track mentally. I fell back in love with writing again, and firmly, fiercely rediscovered my passion for criticism. I didn’t want to escape from my work this year, I wanted to escape into it. And I mostly succeeded. As I’ve been telling anyone who asks about my career lately, I feel like 2025 is the year I found the ideal freelance workload for the perfect work/life balance. The trouble is, it only pays me about 85% of what I need to live on as a single lady in an increasingly expensive world…

Still, that’s a problem I’m feeling excited to solve this year. Part of that will hopefully come from launching my new column, You’ve Got Rom-Com, my first-ever paid subscription content on my Substack, Girl Culture. It was a leap I was frankly terrified to make—I was scared no one who wasn’t already a paid subscriber would want to join me. But, once again, you all really blew me away with your support. If you have particular rom-coms you’d like to see me tackle this year or if you know of anyone in your life who might also want to subscribe to the column, please don’t hesitate to reach out and share. (Stuff that gets posted to Reddit often seems to get a lot of traction if that’s helpful to know…)

I also started a second column about the history of Disney princesses, alongside the one about female-led action movies I was already writing for The A.V. Club. That means I got to spend this year writing about everyone from Michelle Yeoh, Pam Grier, and Uma Thurman to Snow White, Cinderella, and Ariel. (To quote Saoirse Ronan as Jo March, “Women.”)

I also had a lot of fun pop culture “reunions” this year—whether it was writing about the shockingly great new Bridget Jones movie or revisiting my beloved murder baby Matt Murdock in Disney’s new Daredevil show. And I really jumped back into the TV recap game, which has always been my absolute favorite form of criticism to write. From sitcoms like St. Denis Medical and Abbott Elementary to HBO dramas like The Last of Us, Task, and Duster to genre stuff like Doctor Who, Ironheart, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (plus sillier posts about Emily In Paris and With Love, Meghan) it was really fun to go in-depth on so many different facets of the TV landscape.

Outside of work, I also started figuring out a curly hair routine, saw Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour with my 72-year-old mom, went to an adorable college reunion for my old theater group, hosted a whole bunch of friends and family here in Chicago, watched 15 seasons of Survivor (I’m trying to catch up on the whole series before the 50th), and attended three gorgeous, unique weddings for some of my favorite people in the world. Plus I spent two weeks in New York City, where I managed to see 10 Broadway shows and visit the Statue of Liberty for the first time. Oh, and I’m also currently ranked as the 24th best Tetris player in Chicago on the official Tetris app, for whatever that’s worth.

With the table-setting of 2025 behind me, my main professional goal for 2026 is to push myself more as a writer. I can be a bit slow and self-indulgent in my writing process, which sometimes scares me off from looking for more work because I’m worried I can’t handle it. But, ironically, I actually think I do some of my best writing when my schedule is overloaded. So I’d love to spend this year worrying less about perfection and more about getting stuffed pitched and published without overthinking it. (Any editors reading this, feel free to reach out too!)

I’d also love to remain an active, engaged citizen as the U.S. continues to slip further and further into fascism. These are, frankly, terrifying times to live it. But it’s crucial to remain pragmatic without losing hope. (Here’s a great piece on how protestors in Minneapolis are doing just that.) For 2025 art that engages with the socio-political world in a meaningful way, I’d highly recommend the Russian documentary My Undesirable Friends: Part I—Last Air in Moscow, the Star Wars TV show Andor, and the Palestine-focused films The Voice of Hind Rajab and Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk. (You can find my full list of top movies and TV shows from 2025 here.)

As we head into 2026, I’ll leave you with wishes for a happy new year and a round-up of all the major writing I did in 2025. If you enjoy my work, you can support me on Substack, Kofi, PayPal, or Venmo. And for a little glimpse into the diary of my life, you can check out my past year-end wrap-ups since 2013.

You’ve Got Rom-Com

21 rom-coms you’ve (maybe) never seen before

17 queer rom-coms for Pride Month (and beyond!)

My new rom-com column kicks off with ‘Crazy, Stupid, Love’

‘Last Christmas’ is so close to being an amazing holiday rom-com

The Princess Diaries

Almost 90 years ago, ‘Snow White’ invented the Disney princess archetype

Disney’s ‘Cinderella’ isn’t passive, she’s resilient

‘Sleeping Beauty’ isn’t the lead of her own story—her fairy godmothers are

‘The Little Mermaid’ changed everything

Women of Action

An almost exhaustive guide to Michelle Yeoh’s early Hong Kong career

Pam Grier blazed a Blaxploitation trail for female action heroes

How Æon Flux became an infamous flop

Resident Evil remains the exception rather than the rule for female-led action franchises

The Black Widow movie was too little, too late

In Charlie’s Angels, girls just wanna have fun

Arnold Schwarzenegger played second fiddle to Red Sonja 40 years ago

The Woman King found something radical not in its history, but in the history of its genre

Through two Alien films, Ripley turned ‘70s and ‘80s action filmmaking on its head

Revenge is never simple—neither is the legacy of Kill Bill

Reluctant revolutionary Katniss Everdeen ignited a generation

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon finally welcomed the West to romantic action

Features

My 35 favorite movies and TV shows of 2025

Bridget Jones is the Peter Pan of rom-com heroines

To save the superhero movie, we need to bring back themes

Disney’s latest take on girl power is just monarchy

Drop is a loving homage to the underrated thriller Red Eye

James Gunn’s Superman launches a universe, not a character

The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ boldest choice is a pregnant Sue Storm

“Pick me, choose me, love me:” How Grey’s Anatomy found its voice

Some sleep deprived thoughts on Taylor Swift and ‘Freakier Friday’

The Life of a Film Critic

‘The Life of a Showgirl’ lacks sparkle

It’s been 75 years since All About Eve and its feminism is still sadly extraordinary

Spoiler Space: Was Wicked changed for good?

Eldest-daughter burnout is popping up everywhere in 2025

Only Timothée Chalamet could play Marty Supreme

Women finally took the lead in this year’s depression movies

Movie Reviews

Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun elevate the robotic sci-fi romance Love Me

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy reaches a mature franchise peak

‘Captain America: Brave New World’ never quite takes flight

Disney’s live action ‘Snow White’ remake is… fine?

Netflix crosses “sappy Lifetime weepy” off its list with The Life List

‘The Wedding Banquet’ is a rom-com charmer with a modern twist

Thunderbolts* is the reset Marvel needed

Chloe Fineman Takes a Teen to Sex Goddess Bootcamp in ‘Summer of 69’

‘Materialists’ is a modern successor to the true spirit of Jane Austen

Pixar’s New Alien Adventure ‘Elio’ Is the Studio’s Rare Miss

Bride Hard dies hard

‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ is mostly dumb, sometimes fun

The Old Guard 2 is half an entry to a flailing franchise

‘Superman’ embraces a new tone, but the same old overstuffed storytelling

‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ delivers some delightfully weird sci-fi

The Map That Leads To You’s romance only works if you don’t know any better

There’s more than murders in The Thursday Murder Club’s charming building

‘Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale’ Is a Perfect Goodbye Fans Will Love

Swiped charts the rise of Tinder and the arc of millennial feminism

Pure chemistry is the only science that sci-fi romance All Of You needs

“Hitchcock Lite” is just right for brisk mystery The Woman In Cabin 10

The greatest trick of Now You See Me: Now You Don’t is that its cast actually seems to like these movies

The bubble bursts in ‘Wicked: For Good’

Zootopia 2 is a stagnant sequel with one stellar subplot

Ella McCay resides in the emotional uncanny valley

Song Sung Blue finds a Neil Diamond impersonator in the rough

The past boldly sings, shakes, and quakes in The Testament Of Ann Lee

TV Reviews

‘Apple Cider Vinegar’ is an addictive addition to the scammer drama genre

‘Grosse Pointe Garden Society’ still has room to grow

Denise Richards Makes ‘Wild’ Return to Reality TV on Bravo

Everything that happens on Meghan Markle’s inane new Netflix show

‘Étoile’: ‘Gilmore Girls’ Creators’ New Ballet Series Twirls With Surprising Humor

‘Carême’ brings ‘yes, chef’ energy to 19th-century France

The 5 Reasons to Watch Tyler Perry’s New Netflix Show ‘She the People’

Netflix’s ‘The Waterfront’ Is ‘Yellowstone’ With Seafood

There’s Never Been an Adventure Series Quite Like ‘Washington Black’

Leanne Morgan’s Netflix Sitcom Really Wants to Be the New ‘Reba’

‘Outlander’ Prequel Series Has Two Sexy Romances for the Price of One

Cooper Raiff’s Hal & Harper is a bittersweet love letter to messy families

Every thought I had watching ‘Emily In Paris’ season five

Podcasts

It’s Tom-plicated: A Tom Holland Podcast – Pilgrimage (2017)

TV Recaps

Daredevil: Born Again

The Last of Us

Doctor Who

Duster

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Task

Ironheart

St. Denis Medical

As someone with an obsessive personality, I’ve learned that the only way to get myself out of a rabbit hole is to just keep on digging deeper until I finally get sick of it. And for the past two years, I think my obsessive rabbit hole has been… running away from my problems. After a rocky 2021, I got my first ever truly high-paying contract gig just as The A.V. Club was imploding. So when that gig ended suddenly at the end of 2022, I was left with a full bank account, no regular freelance work, and absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

So, naturally, I decided to make up for lost time with all the traveling I never got to do when I was living paycheck to paycheck as a freelancer for the first 8 years of my career. Across 2023 and 2024 I went to Disneyland twice, saw the Eras Tour three times, enjoyed a lovely family reunion in Palm Springs, spent a glorious week in London, visited the mountains of Boone, North Carolina, and took a spontaneous trip to Toronto. I also found the time to reorganize my apartment, reconnect with friends I’d lost touch with during the pandemic, and take on copyediting gigs outside of the world of cultural criticism. Most importantly, I found myself actually able to enjoy the things I was doing, unlike in 2023 where my mental health felt far more frantic.

Along the way a funny thing happened. I started to realize that I actually like being a film and TV critic—not just because it’s the career path I fell into out of college but because it’s something I find a lot of value and purpose and enjoyment in as a (newly) 35-year-old. It’s a realization I sort of came to last year, as I celebrated the first six months of Girl Culture’s existence. But I think I needed to really get sick of running away before I could realize just how much I enjoy the online world I’ve built for myself over the past decade.

It certainly helps that The A.V. Club is back in my life again. After Paste bought the company and rehired the wonderful Danette Chavez as editor-in-chief in July, I made the leap to return as well. That includes launching my brand-new column, Women of Action, in which I dig into the history of women-driven action movies one film at a time—a fun shift from all the rom-com writing I used to do in my old column When Romance Met Comedy.

In this second phase of my career, however, I’m trying not to tie my freelance work to just one individual site anymore. I’ve loved getting to write more for the smart, funny folks at The Daily Beast throughout 2024. I was also thrilled to start writing for The Boston Globe at the end of the year as well. I got to contribute to IndieWire’s 2024 critics poll of the best movies of the year recently. And I really can’t say enough good things about the community Myles McNutt has built at Episodic Medium, where I got to write weekly reviews of Echo, Doctor Who, Agatha All Along, and the new sitcom St. Denis Medical—assignments that are crucial to giving me a sense of structure and financial stability in the wild, weird world of freelancing.

This was also my first full year running my Substack Girl Culture and I’m really proud of the work I did there and the community I’m continuing to build with my readers. My goal was to publish at least one piece per month and I managed to write 19 reviews/features, plus a reflection on 2023 and a gymnastics schedule (remember the Olympics?!?). I wrote about big movies like Wicked, Deadpool & Wolverine, and It Ends With Us; tackled trending TV shows like Bridgertonand Emily In Paris; covered classics like It Happened One Night; weighed in on Taylor Swift’s latest album;and even got accredited to cover the Chicago International Film Festival on behalf of the site—a welcome dose of legitimacy for this burgeoning creative project. And while I kicked off 2024 not knowing exactly what I wanted Girl Culture to be, I’m heading into this year brimming with ideas for projects I want to take on. (Let’s just say some Disney princesses might be on the docket…)

I also want to take a moment to say how deeply grateful I am for all of you who support the work I do at Girl Culture. Though freelancing is my ideal way to work, it’s a hard way to make a living, even when I’m regularly getting published at various sites. I earn somewhere between $150-$300 for every full-length piece I write—including research-heavy projects that take days to work on. So even when I have a “full” workload, it’s obviously quite hard to get that to add up to a full income. Having Girl Culture as another piece of the puzzle has been a huge help this year. If you’d like to support the newsletter financially, you can become a paid subscriber here. Or you can always just share your favorite pieces with your friends! That really means a lot too and is one of the main reasons I’m committed to keeping my writing there free to all.

Of course, the woes of freelancing are nothing compared to the many horrifying problems in the world right now. I’ve spent much of this year thinking about the genocide in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, the ever-growing reality of climate change, the terrifying state of American politics, the impact of Hurricane Helene, and—as I write this—the devastating fires in LA. I also lost two beloved “grown-ups” in my life this year and navigating that grief alongside the even deeper grief of their immediate families has been a reminder of how important sensitivity, empathy, and community truly are. That’s the energy I want to bring into 2025, balanced with the righteous fury we need to make true political change.

With that, I’ll leave you with wishes for a happy new year (if that’s still something we say mid-January) and a roundup of all the major writing and podcasts I did in 2024. If you’d like to support my work somewhere other than Substack, you can find me on Kofi, PayPal, or Venmo, and follow me on Instagram, Letterboxd, and Bluesky. And for a little glimpse into the diary of my life, here are similar year-end wrap-ups I did for 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019,2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013!

Girl Culture

Reflecting on 2023

My 21 Favorite Rom-Coms Since 2010

Random thoughts on ‘Anyone But You’

Taylor Swift didn’t release the breakup album people expected

'The Idea of You' stays on the right side of ridiculous

On binging 'Bridgerton'

How a 90-year-old romantic comedy changed the genre forever

The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader conundrum

'Deadpool & Wolverine' and the current state of the MCU

Your full Olympic Gymnastics schedule

‘It Ends With Us’ blossoms in its smallest moments

Wait, is ‘Emily In Paris’ good now?

More is less in the uneven legacy sequel ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’

A guide to all the Audrey Hepburn homages in 'Emily In Paris'

'Joker: Folie à Deux' only has itself to blame

A moment with Gavin Creel

Chicago Film Fest, Dispatch #1: Nightbitch, Maria, and a Christmas short

Chicago Film Fest, Dispatch #2: Blitz, Better Man, and a moving abortion doc

Chicago Film Fest, Dispatch #3: The Brutalist, Memoir of a Snail, and a new Robert Zemeckis experiment

'Wicked' is a little bit of a miracle

The official Girl Culture Christmas movie canon

Women of Action

Sarah Connor redefined the female action hero forever

Jennifer Lopez finally had Enough in her schlocky action thriller

Wonder Woman was a beacon of hope during a dark political time

One of the best action movies of the ’90s is a Disney princess musical

The A.V. Club

The Umbrella Academy's dance sequences are its greatest legacy

Sophie Turner officially enters her grown-up era with Joan

Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth share the world’s most mellow romance in Lonely Planet

Dallas meets Downton Abbey in Hulu’s soapy British drama Rivals

Wicked’s best scene is a wordless dance number

The 25 best TV shows of 2024

The Daily Beast

Hillary Clinton Politics Get a Dose of CW Energy With ‘Girls on the Bus’

Christian Slater Is an Epic Bloodthirsty Ogre in New ‘Spiderwick Chronicles’

‘Longing’: Richard Gere’s Grief Drama Will Have You Mourning His Career

‘Land of Women’: Eva Longoria’s New Show Is ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’ With Mobsters

The Wild Highs, Lows, and Absurdities of Being ‘K-Pop Idols’

Reviews see-this From Hillary Clinton to ‘Heroin Chic’: The Secrets of ’90s ‘Vogue’

‘Brilliant Minds’: Zachary Quinto Plays a TV Doctor With Face Blindness

'The Remarkable Life of Ibelin': The Netflix Movie That Is Making Everyone Cry

‘The Diplomat’ Makes a Strong Case for Being the New ‘West Wing’

The Boston Globe

'Bad Sisters' is back, but some of the magic is gone

Grab your hot cocoa: These holiday movies deliver sweet romance

The top 10 TV shows of 2024, according to Globe critics

Block Club Chicago

Paralympian Katy Sullivan Becomes A ‘Badass’ Richard III At Chicago Shakespeare Theater

Podcasts/Radio

Cinematic Universe Podcast: Tick, Tick... Boom!

CBC Radio, Day 6: The Umbrella Academy’s dance numbers

CBC Radio, Day 6: The ending of The Eras Tour(which also got turned into a TikTok)

Episodic Medium

Echo

Doctor Who

The Umbrella Academy

Agatha All Along

2023 marked my tenth year as a professional critic, and it was also the first time I considered giving up the job all together. Like most people, I’ve found the past few years pretty tumultuous and anxiety-inducing. But for me, that all came to a head at the end of 2022, when I lost my swanky contract gig with FOX Digital and suddenly had to grapple with just how different my career looked from its pre-pandemic state.

I no longer had a connection with The A.V. Club, the site that served as my main home for nine years. I could no longer count on Twitter, which was once my biggest networking platform for finding new work. I’d driven myself into some hardcore burnout trying to run a podcast while building a new vertical from the ground up. And to top it all off, a close family member was hit by a car on New Year’s Day. Everyone was okay, thankfully, but helping them through a five-day hospital stay and several weeks of recovery was quite a dramatic way to start the new year.

I needed a break, and for the first time since I started my A.V. Club internship back in spring 2013, I gave myself one. I put my podcast on hold. I stopped keeping up with movies and TV shows. I took a full six months off from writing. I taught myself to embroider and started obsessively binging the back catalogue of the Boy Meets World podcast, Pod Meets World. (Shawn Hunter forever!)

In a lot of ways it was great. I desperately needed the time off and it inspired me to do fun, impulsive things, like visit Disneyland with my sister and take a road trip from St. Louis to New York with my parents. But looking back, I can also see just how manic and unmoored I felt during that time. I was living without a steady source of income, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be hired to write criticism again, and I wasn’t sure I even wanted to. The past decade of my career had felt like climbing a (sometimes wonky) staircase in a vaguely upward trajectory. Suddenly I was standing on a cliff with no bridge in sight.

I have two people to thank for getting me across that chasm. One is my old A.V. Club colleague Myles McNutt, who, probably more than he realizes, tossed me a life raft by inviting me to cover genre television on his excellent TV criticism site, Episodic Medium. Writing weekly recaps for a supportive audience was the perfect way to ease myself back into the world of criticism; to remind myself that even with a six-month break, I still had the muscle memory to write a review. And, more importantly, to remember that I really enjoyed doing it—even when covering a show as terrible as Secret Invasion. (And eventually better showslike Loki and Doctor Who.)

The other person I have to thank for my career revival is, unexpectedly enough, Taylor Swift’s publicist, Tree Paine, who for some inexplicable reason said yes when I pitched her on the idea of covering the Eras Tour as a way to launch a Substack about girl culture. “I'm willing to take the chance and hope it helps you kick off your new career path,” she wrote before sending me off to see night two in Kansas City. And I know she’s a good publicist because not only is she managing Taylor’s career, she’s apparently managing mine as well.

Without that vote of confidence from Tree, I sincerely doubt I would’ve followed through on launching Girl Culture—my longtime daydream of a way to continue and expand the work I used to do at my old A.V. Club column, When Romance Met Comedy. But I’m so glad I did. Though the idea of building a new audience in our overcrowded media landscape is terrifying, I was absolutely blown away by the initial support I received, both in people signing up to receive the newsletter and in offering to pay for it as well. While the money I make here isn’t anywhere close enough to live on (yet!), my total 2023 Girl Culture earnings wound up covering a month of my rent, which is a huge deal in an industry where I’m often scraping together a living one $100 assignment at a time.

Equally importantly, it’s been a huge mindset shift to have an online space that truly belongs to me. Where I can choose what I cover, and own my own writing in a literal sense, which has never been the case before this. For the past decade, I’ve fallen into the trap of defining my success based on the prestige of the sites I write for. Logging my first Girl Culture review on my official Rotten Tomatoes page helped me realize that I’m the one bringing value and expertise to my work, no matter where it’s published.

Of course, given Substack’s recent refusal to take a stand against Nazis, it’s difficult to uniformly praise the platform at the moment. I completely understand and respect anyone who’s stepping away from the site, either as a writer or a reader. But in a sea of imperfect options, I’m choosing to remain here for now—although I’ll let you know if that changes.

After getting back into a groove with writing over the summer, the second half of my 2023 was all about balance. My weird unemployment era at least gave me a blank slate to start rebuilding my career more intentionally. And with that mindset shift, I sought out higher paid consulting work, reconnected with old editors at places like Block Club Chicago and The Daily Beast, and got (somewhat) better at saying “no” to assignments I didn’t have the bandwidth to write—without feeling like I’d never be offered work again.

Personally, I also worked on rebuilding the sense of community I’d lost during the pandemic. I attended gorgeous weddings in Seattle, Brooklyn, and right here in Chicago, and actively worked on expanding and strengthening my support network of friends and family. And while I still have plenty of questions and anxieties about what the future of my career looks like (that’s freelancing for you!), I also feel a renewed sense of confidence in my identity as a critic and a renewed love of movies and television too. (Thank goodness!)

I even got it together to pick my 10 favorite films of 2023, which I’ll share below along with a round-up of all the major writing and podcasts I did throughout the year. If you enjoy my work, you can support me on Substack, Kofi, PayPal, or Venmo, or follow me on Instagram and Letterboxd. And you can expect much more to come from Girl Culture in 2024!

MY FAVORITE FILMS OF 2023

Asteroid City

Origin

All of Us Strangers

May December

Past Lives

Maestro

The Zone of Interest

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

Barbie

Rye Lane

MY 2023 WRITING/PODCAST ROUND-UP

Girl Culture

The effortless effort of the Eras Tour

Did 'Barbie' need Ken?

Random thoughts on 'Red, White & Royal Blue'

On camp, sincerity and 'High School Musical: The Musical: The Series'

‘Doctor Who’ rewatch: Season one ranked

The new ‘Little Mermaid’ is a tail of two worlds

‘Doctor Who’ rewatch: Season two ranked

‘Doctor Who’ rewatch: Season three ranked

‘The Marvels’ is really messy and really fun

‘Doctor Who’ rewatch: Season four ranked

Podcasts

Chatting This Is Us on the Peak Show podcast

Chatting Midsommar on It Pod to Be You

The Daily Beast

‘The Artful Dodger’: A Gory ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Meets Charles Dickens

Episodic Medium reviews

Secret Invasion

Loki, season two

Doctor Who’s 60th Anniversary Specials

Doctor Who’s 2023 Christmas Special

Block Club Chicago

Blue Man Group’s Sensory-Friendly Performance Returns Sunday After 4 Years

Green Living Comes To Life At Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum’s New Sustainability Center

Black Ensemble Theater’s ‘The Other Cinderella’ Celebrates 47 Years Of The Updated Fairy Tale

Phew! What a year.

2022 started with news of some disappointing corporate shake-ups at The A.V. Club — my main freelance home for the past nine years. After leaving the site in solidarity with my wonderful departing editors, I went all-in on a full-time contract gig with FOX Digital only for that to rather unexpectedly end in mid-November. Add in the tumult that has taken over Twitter in the last third of the year, and I’m ending this year without any of the pillars of stability that have propped me up for my entire career, not to mention nearly my entire adult life.

And, yet, remarkably, I also feel more rejuvenated and excited than I have since the start of the pandemic. After a challenging 2021 took a fairly drastic toll on my mental health, 2022 was filled with adventures that pushed me out of my comfort zone and reminded me that I’m capable of more than I think I am.

I started the year covering virtual Sundance, which was my first experience with a major film festival like that. Then in March I hopped on a plane for the first time since 2015 (!!!) to attend SXSW, where I saw a Dolly Parton concert, watched Nic Cage watch Nic Cage play Nic Cage, and just generally had 10 of the most surreal, exhausting, exhilarating days of my life.

May brought my first-ever on camera interview, with Cha Cha Real Smooth writer/director/star Cooper Raiff, who was in town for the Chicago Critics Film Festival. Then June took me to L.A., where I watched a dear college friend get married and took my first-ever trip to Disneyland! (I also dealt with my first major cancelled flight snafu and managed to have only a minor emotional breakdown in LAX.)

The adventures didn’t stop there, as I took a relaxing trip home to St. Louis in August, dashed around like a madwoman covering the Chicago International Film Festival in October, and took a semi-spontaneous trip to New York City in November, where I squeezed in five Broadway shows amongst catching up with friends old and new.

The year wasn’t all easy, of course, especially when it came to the major mental adjustment of switching from a freelance lifestyle to the structure and demands of a full-time job creating a brand new section with a two-person team.

And it was incredibly bittersweet to say goodbye to some of the long-time anchors of my career: My episodic recaps of This Is Us (my favorite show I’ve ever gotten to write about in such an in-depth way) and especially my long-time A.V. Club column When Romance Met Comedy, which came to a close after 101 columns totaling 187,227 words.

I’m especially proud that my final four WRMC entries (Roman Holiday, Win A Date with Tad Hamilton!, 2005′s Pride & Prejudice, and How To Be Single) really sum up the scope of what I was trying to do with this four-year project. And though it was kind of nice to take a break from writing about rom-coms for most of 2022, I feel like the genre is calling me back again in 2023. 

Other highlights of the year included celebrating Nathan Chen’s gold medal win at the Beijing Olympics (I’ve been following his skating career since 2016!), spotting Nate from The Bachelorette at my screening of Black Adam, re-hauling my wardrobe, getting my bivalent booster (a major turning point in pandemic safety — get yours today!) and reconnecting with friends I hadn’t seen in person in years.

I also created a public Instagram account, recapped “The Slap” Oscars, delved deep into the nerd-spheres of the MCU, Stranger Things, and House of the Dragon, and kept things going strong with my podcast Role Calling, where we covered the careers of Meg Ryan, Antonio Banderas, and Zac Efron, and released a series of Lord of the Rings specials that I’m especially proud of.

Oh and I picked my 10 favorite films of 2022, even though this is the first time in years that I didn’t actually publish any official year-end coverage:

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

Living

Cha Cha Real Smooth

Elvis

Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.

The Woman King

Aftersun

Everything Everywhere All At Once

Saint Omer

Turning Red

As we head into 2023, I’ll leave you with wishes for a Happy New Year and a roundup of all the major writing and podcasts I did in 2022. If you enjoyed my work, you can support me on Kofi or PayPal. Or you can just share some of your favorite pieces with your friends! That really means a lot. 

When Romance Met Comedy

Nearly 70 years on, Roman Holiday remains one of romantic comedy’s most delectable treats

Win A Date With Tad Hamilton! now has retro charms twice over

Joe Wright made Pride & Prejudice feel fresh all over again

Can romantic comedies teach us How To Be Single?

My last A.V. Club TV recaps

This Is Us season 6

The Doctor Who 2022 New Year’s Day Special

Op-eds and Features

At the SXSW Film Festival, Nicolas Cage watches Nicolas Cage play Nicolas Cage

Revisit the lighthearted nun comedy that won Sidney Poitier the Oscar

Awards show recap: The chaos Oscars

‘Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion’ is still timeless at 25

75 years of the Roswell incident — pop culture’s favorite alien conspiracy theory

Watch rare color footage of Queen Elizabeth II’s 1947 royal wedding

Interviews

Cooper Raiff on his new Apple TV+ indie rom-com ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’

Film Reviews

Say "maybe" to Jennifer Lopez’s Marry Me (my last A.V. Club film review!)

‘The Worst Person in the World’ might be the best movie of the year

Unfortunately, ‘Uncharted’ isn’t quite a national treasure

‘The Batman’ review: Why so serious?

'After Yang' review: Colin Farrell grapples with the loss of his android son

‘Turning Red’ is Pixar at its weird, wonderful best

‘The Lost City’ almost strikes gold at SXSW

‘Everything Everywhere All At Once' is transcendent and a bit exhausting

‘Morbius’ is a boring, bloodless bat man

In ‘Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood,’ nostalgia becomes rocket fuel

‘Dual’ review: Two Karen Gillans, one deadpan dark comedy

‘The Bad Guys’ review: Animated baddies make for a good time at the movies

‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ review: Marvel makes a messy horror movie

‘Downton Abbey: A New Era’ review: Mamma Mia, here we go again

‘Top Gun: Maverick’ review: ‘Top Gun 2’ is a gloriously corny nostalgia fest

HBO’s ‘The Janes’ tells the story of radically empathetic abortion activists

‘Jurassic World Dominion’ review: Just going through the dino motions

‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’ is a stellar new riff on a classic indie dramedy formula

‘Elvis’ somehow has both the best and worst performances of the year

‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ review: A surprisingly bittersweet romp

‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ lacks grit

‘Marcel the Shell with Shoes On’ is pure magic

‘My Old School’ is a wild, weirdly charming documentary

‘DC League of Super-Pets’ has delightful Saturday morning cartoon vibes

‘Bullet Train’ review: Brad Pitt’s thrill ride just barely stays on track

‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ review: A wickedly fun Gen Z slasher from A24

‘Not Okay’ and ‘Vengeance,’ two provocative comedies about narcissism

‘13: The Musical’ review: Broadway magic gets lost in Netflix translation

John Boyega gets a dramatic showcase in ‘Breaking’

‘Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.’ review: A megachurch mockumentary masterclass

‘The Woman King’ review: Viola Davis’ crowning achievement

‘Don’t Worry Darling’ should’ve worried more

‘Bros’ review: Billy Eichner is a glorious rom-com lead

‘Black Adam’ review: The Rock goes bad — mostly for good

‘Ticket to Paradise’ review: George Clooney and Julia Roberts grin and bear it

'Call Jane' review: An abortion drama with optimism

‘My Policeman’ and ‘Causeway’: Harry Styles and Jennifer Lawrence lead quiet new dramas

‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ review: A superhero elegy

TV Reviews/Recaps

‘Welcome to Flatch’ S1 (premiere + final recap)

‘Monarch’ S1 (premiere + final recap)

Streaming pick of the week: Hulu’s ‘Pam & Tommy’

‘The Dropout’ review: Amanda Seyfried leads TV’s latest scammer drama

Marvel’s ‘Moon Knight’ is promising but weirdly paced

‘Doctor Who’ review: A pirate-themed Easter special is a throwaway romp

Get ready to fall in love with ‘Ms. Marvel’

‘She-Hulk’ review: Marvel’s bold comedic experiment’

‘House of the Dragon’ review: ‘Game of Thrones’ is back and better than ever

‘Andor’ review: ‘Star Wars’ grows up, with a rebel yell

Explainers & Rankings

Oscars 2022: Where to watch the Best Picture nominees (and other movies like them)

Marvel second installments ranked — including ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’

‘Top Gun 2’: Film critic eats his shoe (literally) over ‘Top Gun: Maverick’

'Stranger Things' recap: Here's a refresher ahead of the season 4 premiere

‘Stranger Things’ season 4 storylines, ranked

Here's everything Marvel announced at Comic-Con

'She-Hulk': Three Marvel movies (and one TV show) to revisit before starting the series

The 11 best movies of the year so far: ‘Top Gun 2,’ ‘Turning Red’ and more

10 of the best streaming shows of the year (so far)

22 things we loved in 2022

‘House of the Dragon’ 101

‘Game of Thrones’ returns: Everything you need to know about HBO’s ‘House of the Dragon’

‘House of the Dragon’ 101: Who's who in this new game of thrones

‘House of the Dragon’ 101: What are the Stepstones and where’s Old Valyria?

‘House of the Dragon’ 101: What’s up with Targaryen incest?

‘House of the Dragon’ 101: That time jump (and those kids), explained

Festival Coverage

Sundance coverage part one, two, three, four, and five

The coolest, weirdest, best things at this year’s SXSW festival: Vol. 1

The coolest, weirdest, best things at this year’s SXSW festival: Vol. 2

The splashiest movies out of this year’s SXSW festival, Vol. 1

The splashiest movies out of this year’s SXSW festival, Vol. 2

Chicago International Film Festival preview, part one and two

Movie Previews

February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October

Role Calling Podcast

Meg Ryan: When Harry Met Sally, Joe Versus the Volcano, Sleepless In Seattle, Anastasia, You’ve Got Mail

Antonio Banderas: The Mask of Zorro, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Desperado, Evita, Pain and Glory

Zac Efron: High School Musical, Hairspray, Neighbors, The Greatest Showman, The Greatest Beer Run Ever

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King

Specials: One Year Anniversary Special, Thor: Love and Thunder, Halloween Ends, The Best and Worst Films of 2022: Letterboxd Special

Other Podcast Appearances

The Filmcast: The Tragedy of Macbeth

Culturally Relevant: Breaking Down the Films of Sundance 2022 

Travolta/Cage: Old Dogs/National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets

The Filmcast: The Lost City

The Filmcast: Morbius

Happy Harvest Horror Show: Hocus Pocus 2

I suspect I’m not alone in feeling like 2021 was an even stranger year than 2020. Last year there was at least a feeling of doing our part to get through a crisis that felt finite. This year just felt like being stuck in an endless waiting room decorated with bizarre surrealist art.

In rounding up my 2021 writing, I realized just how little concept I had of what actually happened when in this calendar year — partly because I didn’t properly leave my isolation pod at my parents’ house until May, which really made the first chunk of this year blend into the last one. And partly because who can keep track of anything time related anymore.

But, uh, I started a podcast!

It was a real joy to create Role Calling with my friend Ned Baker — the podcast where we talk about actors we love and the movies we love them in. We officially launched the show in late April and recorded, edited, and released 29 episodes since then. Quite the workload to add to our already crowded schedules, but also a very satisfying creative project to spearhead all on our own.

Indeed, one of the quirks of this year is that thanks to the podcast and the release schedule of the TV shows I happened to cover, my workload felt jam-packed all year-round, without the summer lull I’m used to.

That was certainly helpful for financial stability, especially once I took on a new more steady gig as a Fox Digital contributor in mid-November. But, coupled with the ongoing stress of the pandemic, it also left me more burned out than I’ve been in years. 2021 was pretty rough for me emotionally, culminating in a whopper of a Christmas Eve panic attack. But I’m grateful for the friends and family who helped me get through all the ups and downs of this strange, anxiety-ridden year.

Thankfully, the rest of the holiday break offered a chance for some much needed rest and rejuvenation. Despite having a million and one questions about what next year is going to look like, I actually feel unexpectedly focused and clear-headed as we launch into the new year.

I’m also immensely proud of the work I did in 2021, which included covering the final season of Supergirl (a real end of an era moment for me), staying up late/waking up at bizarre hours to recap Loki and Hawkeye, and reviewing a whole lot of films. I was also commissioned to write a short piece for Empire Magazine and invited to do a Twitter Space about the Loki finale with Rotten Tomatoes. Plus I feel like I really found my groove with my When Romance Met Comedy column, which I’ve somehow been writing for nearly four full years now.

Oh and I rewatched the entire MCU with my family, something I completely forgot about until I flipped back through my calendar for this post! (You can see my MCU rankings over on Letterboxd.)

As we head into 2022, I’ll leave you with wishes for a Happy New Year and a roundup of all the major writing and podcasts I did in 2021. If you enjoyed my work, you can support me on Kofi or PayPal. Or you can just share some of your favorite pieces with your friends! That really means a lot. 

My 15 favorite films of 2021

My 15 favorite TV shows of 2021

Role Calling Podcast

Christian Bale: American Psycho, Little Women, Batman Begin, The Fighter, The Prestige

Emily Blunt: The Devil Wears Prada, A Quiet Place & A Quiet Place Part II, Sicario, Mary Poppins Returns, Edge of Tomorrow

Summer Special: In The Heights

Dev Patel: Slumdog Millionaire, The Last Airbender, Lion, The Personal History of David Copperfield, The Green Knight

Jamie Lee Curtis: Halloween (1978), A Fish Called Wanda, True Lies, Freaky Friday, Halloween (2018)

James Dean: Rebel Without A Cause, East of Eden, Giant

Jeffrey Wright: No Time To Die, Basquiat, Shaft (2000), Angels In America, Westworld S1

Episodic TV Coverage

Loki S1

Hawkeye S1

Doctor Who S13 and the 2021 New Year’s Special

This Is Us S5

Supergirl S6 (the final season!)

Stargirl S2

Annie Live!

When Romance Met Comedy

Political rom-com Long Shot lost at the box office, but it’s poised to be an incumbent

Broadcast News broke the story on love triangles

At the dawn of a new era for hip-hop and rom-coms, Brown Sugar hit all the right notes

Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, and the bittersweet joys of puttin’ on a show

Failure To Launch comes so close to working as a bizarre meta parody of rom-coms

Runaway Bride reunited the stars but failed to recapture the magic of Pretty Woman

The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg is timeless proof that musicals can be enchanting and deep

The Oscars love a romantic comedy that’s not like other romantic comedies

About Last Night is a hidden rom-com gem twice over

What’s Your Number? didn’t rank in the summer of Bridesmaids

This Asian American lesbian love story is one of the best romantic comedies of the aughts

Raunch hijacked the rom-com after the runaway success of There’s Something About Mary

Yes, Gigli really is that bad

The genius of Legally Blonde has endured for 20 years

Long before Jungle Cruise, Hollywood mastered the adventure romance genre

Ryan Reynolds traded snark for sincerity in an underrated big-screen spin on How I Met Your Mother

Good luck, Netflix—there’s no replacing She’s All That

Ever After did the Cinderella story right

Twenty years ago, Monsoon Wedding served up a different kind of wedding comedy

Before there was Logan there was… the frothy, time-traveling rom-com Kate & Leopold?

Add a little romance and comedy to the Halloween season with the sparkling Charade

Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper starred in one of the most off-putting rom-coms ever made

Hard to believe the world once hated Harold And Maude

The best romantic comedy of 2021 doesn't have any romance

On falling in love with The Family Stone

A.V. Club Film & TV Reviews

Encanto upends Disney tradition with an adventure that never leaves home

Andrew Garfield shines as the creator of Rent in the Netflix musical Tick, Tick… Boom!

After We Fell is dreadful teen-franchise filler

Dear Evan Hansen is a misfire on just about every level

Camila Cabello leads a Cinderella for the Mamma Mia! crowd

TikToker Addison Rae promotes some brands in Netflix’s atrocious remake He’s All That

Pucker up for the lackluster finale to Netflix's Kissing Booth

Amazon Prime Video’s The Pursuit Of Love peaks in its stylish premiere

Gunpowder Milkshake is a better Jackie Chan homage than a John Wick riff

With Good On Paper, Netflix tries to subvert its own rom-com brand

Netflix’s Wish Dragon transports the Aladdin story to 21st-century China

Plan B is a winning addition to the raunchy teen girl comedy canon

The star-studded Noël Coward adaptation Blithe Spirit fails to enchant

Netflix’s To All The Boys series ends on a high note

France’s Oscar entry Two Of Us is a clandestine romance that plays like a horror movie

Netflix’s Firefly Lane gives Katherine Heigl her own Beaches

Fox Digital Film Reviews

‘The Last Duel’ review: A grim medieval epic with the bite of ‘Mean Girls’

Marvel’s ‘Eternals’ is worth a second look

‘House of Gucci’ review: Greek tragedy draped in high-camp couture

‘West Side Story’ review: A dazzling musical with a dimmed love story

‘Being The Ricardos’ review: ‘I Love Lucy’ inspires Aaron Sorkin’s best work in years

‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ review: The ultimate Spiderman sequel

‘The Matrix Resurrections’ is an absolute blast

The must-see movies of 2021

The essential horror movies of 2021

The essential comedies of 2021

The essential onscreen superheroes of 2021

The essential kids and family movies of 2021

The essential animated movies of 2021

The essential musicals of 2021

Op-eds and features

Birds Of Prey’s costumes changed the game for female superheroes

Wait, what happened in “The Matrix” sequels?

Back-to-back Olympics are an old-school throwback

The best Halloween rom-coms to warm your zombified heart

Seven perfect Halloween movie nights

Jason Statham and Guy Ritchie: A match made in bone-crunching action movie heaven

Around the world in 18 films

Podcast Appearances

Podlander Drunkcast: Bridget Jones's Diary

Cinematic Universe: Wonder Woman 1984

You Should See The Other Guy: Something Borrowed

Cannes I Kick It: The Forty-Year-Old Version and Promising Young Woman

Cinematic Universe: Blade Trinity

The A.V. Club Film Club: The state of movie musicals

Cinematic Universe: Loki

Happy Harvest Horror Show: Hocus Pocus

BuzzFeed Daily: Dear Evan Hansen

Cinematic Universe: Eternals

The Filmcast: West Side Story

The strangest thing about 2020 was how familiar much of it felt: Working from home, extended periods of isolation, weeks and months blending together. To a much lesser degree, those are things I experience each year as a freelancer. And while I suspect it will take awhile before the full extent of the trauma we’ve all lived through this year fully sets in, right now I’m mostly focused on gratitude. I’m grateful for the health of my loved ones. Grateful I already had a work-from-home routine to maintain during the pandemic. And grateful that I was able to quarantine with my family for much of the year—which had its challenges but also its rewards too.

In my 2019 year-end post I wrote about feeling like my career was finally on an upward trajectory after several years of plateauing. This year obviously offered some new wrinkles in that regard. I made significantly less money and felt familiar fears about how sustainable this career actually is. But having less work also gave me more time to focus on the actual craft of writing. I feel like I reached a new level in terms of voice, clarity, and the ability to self-edit. I'm the sort of person who constantly (arguably, obsessively) strives to be better, and it’s rewarding to feel like that hard work is finally slowly starting to pay off.

In addition to devoting my quarantine time to mastering a favorite curry recipe, getting really into the Enneagram, finally learning to French braid hair, and rewatching all of New Girl, I also had some really cool opportunities scattered throughout the year. I interviewed John Barrowman about his surprise return to Doctor Who, which felt like a real milestone for me. I also contributed to the Los Angeles Times’ list of TV shows to binge-watch during quarantine, which appeared both online and in print. And thanks to everything going virtual this year, I was able to attend a press panel for the fifth season of This Is Us, which is the sort of thing I’m not usually able to do as a Chicago-based critic. 

My career is always a juggling act between film and TV, and this year made me appreciate how valuable it is to be able to move seamlessly between both worlds. I took on new TV assignments covering the first season of Stargirl and the second season of The Umbrella Academy, both of which were a blast to write about. And while I didn’t watch quite as many films as I did in my insane catch-up year last year, I did fill in some more major blindspots. I also contributed to The A.V. Club’s list of the best films of 2000 and shared my own ballot over on Letterboxd. Oh, and I set up a Letterboxd this year too!

Elsewhere, I made my debut on Bustle and The Takeout, and ended the year with a Polygon article about “Kind Movies” that pretty much sums up my entire ethos on storytelling. I was also named a Top Critic by Rotten Tomatoes, which was a real honor. But the pride and joy of my career remains my rom-com column, When Romance Met Comedy. I devoted a whopping 49,000 words to analyzing 25 different romantic comedies this year. And I’m really pleased with how the column has grown and with the positive feedback I’ve received.

I have to admit, I sometimes worry that year-end highlight reels like this one can make my life seem easy or glamorous in a way that doesn’t reflect what it’s like to actually live through it. I'm tremendously lucky to get to do what I do, but I also struggle a lot—both with the logistics of this career and with bigger questions about what value it brings to the world. My goal is to approach 2021 with a greater sense of intentionality. I want to be more thoughtful in my career choices, more purposeful in how I use social media, and more active in my activism and politics. I’d also like to do 20 push-ups a day everyday for the whole year, but we’ll see how long that resolution actually lasts.

Finally, on a sadder note, one other defining experience of the year was the loss of my dear internet friend Seb Patrick, who I’ve known for years through the Cinematic Universe podcast. Seb created a wonderfully positive nerd space online, and was a big part of my early quarantine experience thanks to the Avengers watchalongs I did with the CU gang in the spring. I’m so grateful for all the fun pop culture chats we got to have throughout the years, several of which are linked below. Seb is tremendously missed, and there’s a fund for his family here.

As we head into 2021, I’ll leave you with wishes for a Happy New Year and a roundup of all the major writing and podcasts I did in 2020. If you enjoyed my work, you can support me on Kofi or PayPal. Or you can just share some of your favorite pieces with your friends! That really means a lot.

My 15 favorite films of 2020

My 15 favorite TV shows of 2020

Op-eds, Features, and Interviews

Women Pioneered The Film Industry 100 Years Ago. Why Aren’t We Talking About Them? [Bustle]

2020 is the year of the Kind Movie — and it couldn’t have come at a better time [Polygon]

Make a grocery store game plan for stress-free shopping [The Takeout]

What’s Going On: A primer on the call to defund the police [Medium]

Doctor Who’s John Barrowman on the return of Captain Jack Harkness [The A.V. Club]

Episodic TV Coverage

Doctor Who S12

This Is Us S4 and S5

Supergirl S5

Stargirl S1

The Umbrella Academy S2

The Crown S4

NBC’s Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch Musical!

When Romance Met Comedy

Is The Ugly Truth the worst romantic comedy ever made?

Working Girl’s message is timeless, even if the hair and the shoulder pads aren’t

You’ve Got Mail and the power of the written (well, typed) word

Love & Basketball was a romantic slam dunk

How did My Big Fat Greek Wedding make so much money?

America eased into the ’60s with the bedroom comedies of Doris Day and Rock Hudson

I can’t stop watching Made Of Honor

Notting Hill brought two rom-com titans together

It’s time to rediscover one of Denzel Washington’s loveliest and most under-seen romances

Something’s Gotta Give is the ultimate quarantine rom-com

20 years ago, But I’m A Cheerleader reclaimed camp for queer women

On its 60th anniversary, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment looks like an indictment of toxic masculinity

The Wedding Planner made rom-com stars out of Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey

After 25 years, Clueless is still our cleverest Jane Austen adaptation

William Shakespeare invented every romantic comedy trope we love today

Edward Norton made his directorial debut by walking a priest, a rabbi, and a Dharma into a Y2K rom-com

The forgotten 1970s romantic comedy that raged against our broken, racist system

His Girl Friday redefined the screwball comedy at 240 words per minute

Before Wonder Woman soared into theaters, the hacky My Super Ex-Girlfriend plummeted to Earth

Dirty Dancing spoke its conscience with its hips

The rise of Practical Magic as a spooky season classic

In a dire decade for the genre, Queen Latifah became a new kind of rom-com star

Years before Elsa and Anna, Tangled reinvigorated the Disney princess tradition

Palm Springs is the definitive 2020 rom-com

Celebrate Christmas with the subversive 1940s rom-com that turned gender roles on their head

The A.V. Club Film & TV Reviews

Netflix’s To All The Boys sequel charms, though not quite as much as the original

The Photograph only occasionally snaps into focus

Jane Austen's Emma gets an oddball, sumptuous, and smart new adaptation

Pete Davidson delivers small-time charms in Big Time Adolescence

Council Of Dads crams a season of schmaltzy storytelling into its premiere

In Belgravia, Downton Abbey’s creator emulates Dickens to limited success

Netflix’s Love Wedding Repeat adds some cringe to the rom-com

Netflix takes another shot at Cyrano de Bergerac with queer love triangle The Half Of It

We Are Freestyle Love Supreme is a feel-good origin story for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first troupe

Sara Bareilles’ melodic Apple TV+ series Little Voice is still finding itself

Netflix’s sexist rom-com sensation gets a minor upgrade in The Kissing Booth 2

With Howard, Disney+ movingly honors the lyricist who gave the Little Mermaid her voice

The Broken Hearts Gallery tries to find catharsis in heartbreak

Netflix’s ghostly musical series Julie And The Phantoms hits some charming tween high notes

After We Collided slides toward R-rated camp—but not far enough

Holidate is a bawdy start to Netflix’s holiday rom-com slate

Kristen Stewart celebrates the Happiest Season in a pioneering queer Christmas rom-com

Isla Fisher gets her own Enchanted in the Disney Plus fairy tale Godmothered

Podcast Appearances

Debating Doctor Who: “Orphan 55”

It Pod To Be You: The Wedding Singer

Reality Bomb: Defending Doctor Who’s “Closing Time”

The Televerse: Spotlight on Doctor Who Season 12

You Should See The Other Guy: The Ugly Truth

Only Stupid Answers: Stargirl’s season finale

Motherfoclóir: Ireland and the Hollywood Rom-Com

Called in to Nerdette’s Clueless retrospective episode

Cinematic Universe Appearances

Cinematic Universe: Superman IV: The Quest For Peace

Cinematic Universe: Birds of Prey

Cinematic Universe: Infinity War watchalong

Cinematic Universe: Endgame watchalong

Cinematic Universe: Terminator 2

Cinematic Universe: Josie and the Pussycats

Cinematic Universe: The Cuppies 2020 (Cuppies of Cuppies)

Not to get too New Age-y, but 2019 felt like a very ~transformative~ year for me. I turned 30, got a literary agent, and became a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association. After feeling like I’d hit a plateau in my late 20s, it was nice to experience a sense of forward momentum again, even if the lack of financial stability in this career is a constant background stress. Still, on the whole my sixth year as a full-time freelancer felt like a time where I kinda, sorta figured out what I’m doing. Instead of struggling in murky waters, I’m at least actively swimming in them.

I continued to write for The A.V. Club, The Spool, and Consequence of Sound, plus took on new outlets in The Verge and Polygon. I also had an article about romantic comedies published in Southwest Airline’s in-flight magazine and was asked to talk about Hallmark Channel Christmas rom-coms on Canadian radio. Speaking of rom-coms, 2019 was the second year (and first full-year) for When Romance Met Comedy, and I feel like the column really came into its own this year. It’s by far the biggest undertaking of my career (I’ve covered 47 films in total so far!), and I’m really excited to continue shaping its voice in 2020.

Beyond finding a regular fitness routine and seeing Cats onstage for the first time, the biggest personal project I undertook in 2019 was immersing myself in the world of film and film criticism—something I started in mid-2018 and really amped up this year. My goal was to watch 300 new-to-me movies this year, and I wound up watching 355! (Including 129 new releases.) Regular access to CFCA screenings and screeners allowed me to be a bigger part of the film critic conversation than I’ve been in the past, which was exciting. I also tackled a bunch of blindspots from the past decade and put together a list of my 50 favorite films of the 2010s, which you can see right here:

Over on the TV side of things, I bid farewell to the Netflix Defenders universe with binge-review coverage of the final seasons of The Punisher and Jessica Jones. Those Marvel binge-reviews were a big part of my early career, so seeing that universe come to a close was bittersweet. It’s always nerve-wracking when a semi-regular assignment ends, but I’m hopeful that new projects will pop up to take its place.

Putting together this year-end retrospective also made me realize I was on a lot of podcasts in 2019, including jumping in as a regular guest on the Cinematic Universe podcast in the latter half of the year. Podcasting is something I really enjoy (I find talking so much easier than writing!), and I’d love to do more of it in the future.

With that, I’ll leave you with wishes for a Happy New Year and a roundup of all the major writing I did in 2019. If you enjoyed my work this year, it would mean a lot if you would support me on either Kofi or PayPal. Or just share some of your favorite pieces with your friends!

My 15 favorite TV shows of 2019

My 15 favorite films of 2019

Op-eds and Features

“Rom-Com Revival” for Southwest The Magazine

Avengers: Endgame doesn’t earn its big “girl power” moment

An MCU breakup could be a terrific step forward for Spider-Man

“What is a weekend?”: A catch-up guide to Downton Abbey’s cast and characters

Nope, seeing Cats the musical will not help you understand Cats the movie

Let’s talk about the ending of Greta Gerwig’s Little Women

TV Coverage

Doctor Who’s 2019 New Year’s Special

The Punisher S2

Jessica Jones S3

The Crown S3

This Is Us S3 and S4

Supergirl S4 and S5

Rent: Live

Jane The Virgin fill-in

The Tony Awards

The Little Mermaid Live! 

When Romance Met Comedy

27 Dresses doesn’t deserve your hate and neither does Katherine Heigl

Bride & Prejudice weaves an impressive cultural critique into a Bollywood-inspired Jane Austen update

How does the original What Women Want hold up two decades later?

In 1990, Pretty Woman changed romantic comedies forever

For one brief, wonderful moment, Eddie Murphy reinvented himself as a romantic-comedy star

20 years later, 10 Things I Hate About You remains a model for how to do the teen rom-com right

Lloyd Dobler is Cameron Crowe’s original manic pixie dream date

We're just not that into He’s Just Not That Into You

Romance is the weakest aspect of one of the most celebrated rom-coms of the ’90s

To All The Boys and Netflix reminded the world why it’s smitten with rom-coms

Imagine Me & You gives a lesbian love story the classic rom-com treatment

Queer resilience thrives in this rom-com about love in the time of the AIDS crisis

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is bubbly and smart, just like Marilyn Monroe

The Best Man capped off one decade of black rom-coms and inspired another

Nicolas Cage romanced Cher in one of the weirdest rom-coms ever made

After a decade of discourse, (500) Days Of Summer is basically the Fight Club of rom-coms

It’s No Strings Attached versus Friends With Benefits in a rom-com showdown

Adam Sandler’s sweetness makes The Wedding Singer a rom-com worth growing old with

The Philadelphia Story delivered one of the most star-studded love triangles ever

13 Going On 30 made Jennifer Garner a rom-com star—and gave tween girls a sleepover staple

Celebrate Halloween with Warm Bodies, the film that tried to make zom-rom-coms a thing

In the 2010s, rom-coms went indie and saved themselves in the process

Sandra Bullock became a rom-com star with a cozy love story about crushing loneliness

With just two storylines, The Holiday paid tribute to the entire rom-com genre

The A.V. Club

The maudlin Five Feet Apart anoints a new pair of winning young stars

After thinks it’s beautiful, that’s what makes it tiresome

Teen Spirit has plenty of it

Ramy is a Muslim millennial comedy with impressively big questions on its mind

Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson’s new comedy The Hustle pulls an inelegant con

The Sun Is Also A Star turns a compelling premise into a lackluster teen romance

The Art Of Racing In The Rain is a doggone mess

You don’t need to love Springsteen to like the thoughtful crowd-pleaser Blinded By The Light

The well-meaning Brittany Runs A Marathon can’t quite go the distance

Renée Zellweger zings in a Judy Garland biopic that clangs

The Downton Abbey movie is as pleasant as a cozy cup of tea

Tall Girl’s familiar teen love story fails to reach new heights

The new Lady And The Tramp feels like a ’90s update of a ’50s classic

The Verge/Polygon

Tigers Are Not Afraid puts a Pan’s Labyrinth spin on a poignant Mexican drug war story

The gloriously surreal space epic Ad Astra is half a great movie

An AI affair fuels a midlife crisis in the eerie science fiction drama Auggie

The painfully generic new animated Addams Family deserves no snaps

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is boldly bonkers

Netflix’s apocalyptic teen comedy Daybreak is an exhausting sugar rush

The Current War is basically Amadeus for electricity

Is Playmobil: The Movie just a reskinned Lego Movie?

The Spool

The LEGO Movie 2: Everything is About Half as Awesome

Isn’t It Romantic: An Instant Postmodern Rom-Com Classic

The Aftermath: Sumptuous but Surface-Level Melodrama

Late Night: A Sparkling Comedy With a Lot On Its Mind

Plus One: An Indie Millennial When Harry Met Sally

The Farewell is A Poignantly Funny Goodbye

Where’d You Go, Bernadette: A whimsical mid-life crisis

After the Wedding: A grown-up drama that doesn’t trust its own story

Falling Inn Love: Love, New Zealand Style

Paradise Hills: Harajuku Gossip Girls

Consequence of Sound

Brexit Takes An Engaging But Ultimately Shallow Look At the 2016 Vote

What Men Want Flips the Script and Finds Mixed Results

Dumbo Delights Without Ever Fully Taking Flight

Someone Great Continues Netflix’s Romantic Comedy Revival

Aladdin Has the Animated Classic’s Songs, But Less of Its Personality

MindMeet Interviews

Nadine Hack and Global Citizens Circle: Creating Connectedness

Podcast Appearances

Filmography: When Harry Met Sally

Filmography: Tim Burton’s mature films (Ed Wood, Sweeney Todd, Big Fish, Big Eyes)

Debating Doctor Who MCU Edition: Avengers: Endgame

Cinematic Universe: Alita: Battle Angel

Hall of Faces: Friends

Cinematic Universe: Joker

Hall of Faces: The West Wing

CBC Radio: Hallmark Christmas movies

Cinematic Universe: The Wolverine

Cinematic Universe: Awards Special—The Cuppies 2019 (Part One)

2018 was one of those years where I felt like I was frantically treading water all year, only to look up and realize I’d actually managed to swim myself to shore. The previous two years somehow felt simultaneously tumultuous and like a plateau. At first, I thought 2018 was more of the same, but looking back it was way more of a transitional year than I realized. I’m ending the year on a higher note than I started it, which is a really nice feeling. I’m in an apartment I love, feeling a bit more stable, and I even developed the ability to do a full pushup for the first time in my life, which is by far my single greatest achievement of the year!

This was my fifth year as a full-time freelance writer, and I experienced a pretty big shift in the types of articles I wrote this year—fewer short news posts and way more long-form pieces that more truly reflect my voice and opinions. I actually didn’t realize it until creating this roundup, but good god did I do a lot of writing this year. No wonder I had some pretty severe moments of burnout. I’m incredibly proud of the volume of writing I did, although I’m also frustrated that I worked this much yet still frequently struggled to make ends meet. Thankfully, after a rocky year money-wise, I found a little more stability towards the end of the year. Here’s hoping I can carry that forward into 2019!

One of my big goals for 2018 was to immerse myself more in the world of film criticism, and boy howdy did I manage to manifest that one! I quadrupled the number of films I watched this year and filled in some big cinematic blindspots. I also began writing film reviews in a regular capacity, first at Consequence of Sound and later for The A.V. Club and Alcohollywood as well. While I’ll always enjoy writing about TV (and loved covering the shows I did this year!), TV criticism is something I kind of inadvertently fell into at the start of my career. Film has always been my first love, and I’m glad I found the courage and drive to shift into this new area of writing. It’s been lovely to start immersing myself in the world of Chicago film critics too.

But by far my biggest achievement of the year (beyond being able to do a pushup, of course!) is launching my column When Romance Met Comedy for The A.V. Club. I poured my whole heart and soul into the column, both in terms of each individual entry and in terms of shaping its overall voice and making sure to cover a diverse set of films within the rom-com genre. It’s been a lot of work (way more work than is actually cost effective for me, to be honest), but I’m incredibly proud of how the column turned out in its first year. It’s also been really lovely to get so much positive feedback, both from the commentary community as well as from my A.V. Club bosses. I started my writing career with a blog about rom-coms and I find it hilarious that it took me four years to think of actually pitching that as an idea elsewhere. I’m so glad I did, and I’m having a blast planning out my slate of films to cover in 2019. (If you want to stump for your favorite, drop me a line on Twitter!)

With that, I’ll leave you with wishes for a Happy New Year and a roundup of all the major writing I did in 2018. If you enjoyed my work this year, it would mean a lot if you would support me on either Kofi or PayPal. Or just share some of your favorite pieces with your friends!

OP-EDS

My my, what the hell is up with the Mamma Mia! timeline?

A timey-wimey guide to the modern era of Doctor Who

Star Wars: Episode IX can fill Leia’s absence by embracing its forgotten queen

From femme fatale to complex superhero: The evolution of the MCU’s Black Widow

All the songs from The Greatest Showman, ranked

WHEN ROMANCE MET COMEDY

Like the best romantic comedies, Bridget Jones’s Diary is about more than just falling in love

Bringing Up Baby and the screwball comedies that delivered romance via pratfalls

After When Harry Met Sally, almost every rom-com tried to have what Nora Ephron was having

The Big Sick lovingly updated the rom-com formula with a coma and a great 9/11 joke

Something Borrowed and the phenomenon of rom-coms that hate women

In a sea of unintentionally creepy rom-coms, the original Overboard goes, well, overboard

My Best Friend’s Wedding rewrote the rom-com happy ending

Will Smith’s lone rom-com muddled its message about pickup artists and romance

Breakfast At Tiffany’s is so much more than a fashionable proto-Sex And The City

25 years ago, Sleepless In Seattle found the romantic hiding in the cynic

Before palling around with Ant-Man and the Wasp, Peyton Reed was Down With Love

You can dance, you can jive, you can love Mamma Mia! without feeling embarrassed

Maid In Manhattan let Jennifer Lopez’s rom-com talents sparkle

Pair Crazy Rich Asians with this Hong Kong rom-com classic

Jane Austen provided the romantic comedy some Sense And Sensibility

How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days set the stage for the rom-com’s downfall

Romantic comedies (briefly) came out of the closet with In & Out

Pretty In Pink is a far superior riff on the Sixteen Candles formula

How Stella Got Her Groove Back is a sexy vacation romp that explores the line between fantasy and reality

The Devil Wears Prada pulls off the perfect romantic comedy look, even though it really isn't one

Enchanted, or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the Disney princess

Why are Hallmark Christmas movies so addictive?

Without hope or agenda: A defense of Love Actually

SEASON-LONG TV COVERAGE

Doctor Who S11

Daredevil S3

This Is Us S2 and S3

Jessica Jones S2

Supergirl S3 and S4

FILM REVIEWS

Crazy Rich Asians has so much rom-com razzle dazzle it practically sings

Ben Mendelsohn battles suburban ennui in Nicole Holofcener’s The Land Of Steady Habits

Michael Shannon is refreshingly ordinary in What They Had, a family drama with focus issues

Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne build an Instant Family in a comedy more touching than funny

After a clumsy opening statement, RBG biopic On The Basis Of Sex effectively argues its case

Jennifer Lopez’s overstuffed Second Act offers three movies for the price of one

The Girl in the Spider’s Web: Lisbeth Slander gets an action hero makeover

Widows: An Enthralling Heist Thriller with Some Less Interesting Gangster Drama Touches

If Beale Street Could Talk: Love is a Battle, Love is a War

6 Balloons tackles the everyday agonies of the opiate crisis

I Feel Pretty takes on identity crises while having one of its own

RBG examines the complex, inspiring woman behind all the memes

Book Club does a disservice to its gifted cast of legacy stars

Set It Up is a fine, breezy rom-com for the start of summer

Ant-Man and the Wasp takes a modest quantum leap for the series

Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind looks into the late comedian’s heart

The Spy Who Dumped Me is a fun but fairly disposable summer flick

Like Father uses the Netflix format to play around with comic conventions

Madeline’s Madeline blurs the lines of fantasy and reality

Life Itself is so bizarre it has to be seen to be believed

Private Life takes a personal, observant look at late-life reproduction

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is a CGI mess with an earnest heart

The Grinch goes CGI and gets a fluffy, sincere modern update

TV REVIEWS/OP-EDS

Grey’s Anatomy’s lengthy existence isn’t a joke, it’s a strength

This Is Us is obsessed with killing its dad

Three years later, Supergirl is still telling the best female-centered superhero stories

Even without a resurrection, John Legend rises in NBC’s electrifying Jesus Christ Superstar Live

Sara Bareilles and Josh Groban lend an infectious energy to the wonderfully earnest 72nd Annual Tony Awards

Iron Fist season 2 feels like an entirely different show—which is mostly a good thing

13 Reasons Why puts itself on trial but can’t give up its worst impulses in season 2

Sex dreams and explosive rectal surgeries—it must be the Grey’s Anatomy season 15 premiere

Pre-Air Review: Dietland offers an ambitious, unapologetic taste of something new

Season Two Review: The messages of The Handmaid’s Tale season two resonate now more than ever

Season One Review: AMC’s Dietland aimed wide and mostly hit its marks in a chaotic first season

PODCAST GUEST APPEARANCES

Cinematic Universe: Men In Black

Cinematic Universe: Independence Day

Filmography: Wes Anderson comedies

Debating Doctor Who: Favorite guest stars part 1 and part 2

TV Party: Let’s Solve Westworld Season Two

TV Party: Appreciating The West Wing’s “Two Cathedrals”

Plus some other episodes of TV Party including this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one.

MINDMEET INTERVIEWS

Bernard Avle: Human Beings Are Stories

The CyberCode Twins: A Blockchain Beacon of Hope

Jason Berlin and Tour de Crypto: A Pioneering Journey to Raise Awareness for Charity and Bitcoin

Oh 2017. What a hard, hard year. A post-election haze seemed to hang over the whole year. I struggled and frequently failed at figuring out how to use my voice and my social media presence in this current political climate. It’s something I’m still grappling with, in fact. Elsewhere, I settled into the apartment I moved into at the tail-end of 2016 only to discover a whole bunch of problems with said apartment. That eventually meant a (hellish) move into a (thankfully, much better) new apartment. An older member of my family passed away, I had a creepy experience with an eye doctor, and I had some scary personal medical stuff to deal with for the first time in my adult life.  All in all, however, I would say I came away from those experiences with a better sense of how much I can handle as well as a reminder that it’s okay to ask for help when you need it.

In terms of good things that happened this year: I attended the Women’s March in Chicago in January and participated in the Women’s Strike in March. I road tripped to a cabin in rural Illinois with my friends, saw a live taping of Pop Culture Happy Hour, witnessed a (very cloudy) solar eclipse, welcomed my sister back from a year in France, and got to see a whole bunch of wonderful people who came to visit Chicago throughout the year (as well as a whole bunch of wonderful people who live here all the time). I spent most of February and July in St. Louis with my parents and extended family, where I did my first ever Escape The Room, attended an anti-Trump protest, and showed off my town’s adorable Fourth Of July festivities to one of my good friends. I also directed a one act play (in just 12 hours!) and served as emcee for a jam-packed viewing party of the Star Trek: Discovery premiere. Oh and I turned 28 and didn’t even freak out about it (as least not too much). I also had an anti-Trump tweet go insanely viral and I still haven’t decided if that was a good or bad thing.

In terms of career stuff, I had my usual assortment of random gigs and side projects throughout the year, including a cool new job as a script reader. But most of my writing was centered at The A.V. Club. And there were some big changes there for me. In 2017 I wrote my final What’s On Tonight, my final Great Job, Internet! and my final Newswire. Though it was a little scary to end gigs I’d been doing since I was an intern back in 2013, I was also able to take on more TV reviewing opportunities, which was really exciting. Another exciting aspect of 2017 was deciding to launch both a Patreon and a Kofi account to make it easier for people to support my work. I’ve been both honored by and grateful for the people who’ve decided to invest in my career in such a tangible way. 

With that, I’ll leave you with wishes for a Happy New Year and a roundup of all the writing I did in 2017:

LONG-FORM PIECES

Stranger Things 2 keeps its “strong female characters” apart from one another, like every Hollywood genre property

Steve Trevor, Joss Whedon, and the men getting in the way of Wonder Woman

The joy of watching strangers’ boring lives on YouTube

“19 years later,” Harry Potter’s biggest legacy is how it shaped modern fandom

8 tips for becoming a freelance writer

EPISODIC TV REVIEWS

Supergirl S2 and S3

This Is Us S2 (and one ep of S1)

The Crown S2

The Punisher S1

Iron Fist S1

Sense8 (every other ep of S2)

Random thoughts on The Defenders (ep 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

Doctor Who’s Christmas special

ONE-OFF TV REVIEWS

A Christmas Story Live!

A pre-air review of Class

This Grey’s Anatomy discussion post

Reacting To Something on X-Men: The Animated Series and X-Men: Evolution

PODCAST GUEST APPEARANCES

Iron Fist with Cinematic Universe 

Dredd with Cinematic Universe

Girls with The Televerse

An Oscar preview with The National Podcast

Class with Debating Doctor Who

A Doctor Who S10 retrospective with Debating Doctor Who

2016 was a little bit of a personal and professional plateau for me, but in the end I found a balance between branching out with my writing and putting my nose to the grindstone to make a living. In terms of highlights, I got to write for some new sites, saw my article on Hillary Clinton published in a Spanish-language magazine, spoke at an academic conference about Star Trek, worked the CharacTour booth at Chicago Comic Con, spoke to a DePaul college class, directed a web series called Trolleyology, and even got to talk about Star Trek on the goddamn radio.

You can find some of my favorite pieces of the year below. Here are similar wrap-ups I did in 2015, 2014, and 2013.

THE A.V. CLUB

Kept reviewing Supergirl for the latter half of S1 and the first half of S2

Explained that I owe my career to the shitty movie Something Borrowed

“Velvet Goldmine captures the spirit, if not the biography, of David Bowie”

I reviewed Grease: Live

I reviewed Craig Ferguson’s new History Channel series

All of my dreams came true and I got to review half of Grey’s Anatomy twelfth season

“2015 was the year cinematic women broke out of prison”

“On Downton Abbey the more things changed, the more they stayed the same”

I binge-reviewed all 13 episodes of Daredevil S2 in three days

Contributed to this piece on Hollywood and body shaming

I reviewed Grace And Frankie’s second season

“Why Disney needs a gay princess”

This Is Us trailer shatters viewing records, probably thanks to Jess Mariano’s butt

“What The Walking Dead’s optimism reveals about Game Of Thrones’ cynicism” (officially my most hated piece of the year!)

“The Little Mermaid TV show let Ariel live up to her potential”

I contributed to this provocatively titled piece, “Stop jizzing all over journalism”

“Difficult People’s uber-specificity is tailor-made for A.V. Club readers”

“Forget Frozen, Lilo & Stitch is Disney’s best exploration of sisterhood”

“A simple baseball game revealed the Star Trek-ian spirit of Deep Space Nine”

I binge-reviewed all 13 episodes of Luke Cage in three days

I reviewed The Crown

I reviewed Hairspray Live!

BOING BOING

“To find Hillary Clinton likable, we must learn to view women as complex beings”

VOX

25 newbie-friendly episodes to make you a Star Trek fan

QUARTZ

Female heroes are even more important for boys than girls

On Game Of Thrones, race, and the myth of historical accuracy (my second most hated piece of the year!)

Does online fandom help or hurt our viewing experience?

Renée Zellweger is a walking metaphor for the shameful way we treat aging women in Hollywood

We need more angry women in pop culture

How Donald Trump’s misogyny inspired me to draw a line in the sand

Moana argues female leaders don’t have to fight to be strong

THE MARY SUE

13 diverse musicals to sweeten Lin-Manuel Miranda’s departure from Hamilton

CHICAGOIST

Since I’ve been seeing a lot of pointed praise about how peaceful and unified the Women’s Marches were, I wanted to put together a collection of images from the equally peaceful, loving, and family-friendly Black Lives Matter events I’ve attended in the past. In terms of why the Women’s Marches had fewer arrests than some of these previous BLM protests, you can read this Twitter thread about different policing strategies.

Taking Bernie Sanders out of the equation, here are the articles that make me genuinely excited to vote for Hillary Clinton as the next President of the United States. I’m with her not because of some pragmatic calculation, but because she’s the best candidate for the job, a kickass human being, a liberal leader, and an important feminist trailblazer. 

If You're Liberal and You Think Hillary Clinton Is Corrupt and Untrustworthy, You're Rewarding 25 Years of GOP Smears [Chez Pazienza, The Daily Banter]

“There are reasons you may choose not to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but one would hope they're policy issues rather than problems with her personality — because the "personality" that's been sold to the American electorate is largely manufactured, and not by Clinton herself (another facet of the smear: that she's a phony). The reality is that Clinton was one of the most liberal members of the Senate during her time there, ranking within ten points of progressive messiah Bernie Sanders and her history as a crusader for progressive causes is precisely what so motivated the GOP to destroy her in the first place. As far as the right was concerned, Clinton stepped far over the line when she pushed for healthcare reform way back in 1993 and her activist past informed a future as a ‘difficult woman.’ By the way, it hardly needs to be said but many of the conservative attacks on Clinton throughout the decades have been the product of rank sexism. Men rarely get labeled difficult or abrasive and their general likability isn't often called into question. Those are all buzzwords employed specifically to knock empowered women down a peg. And Hillary Clinton has been subjected to them — and so much worse — her entire political career.”

Hillary Clinton doesn’t trust you [Ezra Klein, Vox]

“Clinton's reputation, among people who've worked with her, is impressive. Even Republican staffers will admit they've never briefed anyone better informed. Stories abound of unsuspecting deputy assistant secretaries charged with running a meeting on some obscure sub-issue only to be peppered by detailed, knowledgeable questions from Clinton herself. During her time in the Senate she won over legions of ex-haters with her work ethic, her seriousness, and her pragmatism. Even people who didn't agree with her appreciated her no-bullshit attitude toward getting things done. Another way of saying that, though, is Clinton wins over even people who disagree with her by treating their ideas with respect — she takes the time to understand their arguments, she's honest about her counterarguments, and she is relentless in her efforts to find shared ground on which to make progress. The problem is Clinton doesn't campaign the way she governs. She often seems scared to tell voters what she really thinks for fear they'll disagree.”

Emails Offer Glimpse Into Hillary Clinton’s Private Side [Philip Elliott and Sam Frizell, Time]

“The State Department email batch details, in hour-by-hour fashion, Clinton’s first months as the United States’ top diplomat, always on the go but also always wanting to do more and know more... Clinton’s career-long focus on girls’ education didn’t end when she became Secretary of State. In August 2009, Clinton inquired about a Yemeni girl, Nujood Ali, who at the age of 10 had asked for a divorce; two years later, a news report indicated Ali was bitterly unhappy and not going to school. ‘Is there any way we can help her?’ Clinton asked the U.S. ambassador for global women’s issues in an uncharacteristically long email. ‘Could we get her to the US for counselling and education?’ Next week, she followed up. ‘That’s good news,’ Clinton wrote after finding out Nujood was indeed attending private school.”

Hillary Clinton Was Liberal. Hillary Clinton Is Liberal. [Harry Enten, FiveThirtyEight]

”Clinton has always been, by most measures, pretty far to the left. When she’s shifted positions, it has been in concert with the entire Democratic Party.... Clinton was one of the most liberal members during her time in the Senate. According to an analysis of roll call votes by Voteview, Clinton’s record was more liberal than 70 percent of Democrats in her final term in the Senate. She was more liberal than 85 percent of all members. Her 2008 rival in the Democratic presidential primary, Barack Obama, was nearby with a record more liberal than 82 percent of all members — he was not more liberal than Clinton. ... Clinton also has a history of very liberal public statements. Clinton rates as a ‘hard core liberal’ per the OnTheIssues.org scale. She is as liberal as Elizabeth Warren and barely more moderate than Bernie Sanders. And while Obama is also a ‘hard core liberal,’ Clinton again was rated as more liberal than Obama.”

The Case for Hillary [Zachary Leven, Medium] 

“My experience has been that whenever you closely examine the attacks on Hillary, whether they come from the left or the right, they break apart under scrutiny. That is, if you’re so inclined to scrutinize. Scant few are. Many, however, are steadfastly unwilling to view Clinton through anything other than the most severe and cynical lens. If one bit of evidence against her breaks down under examination, then another must be found. If that one fails to pan out, there’s always some other way to interpret her record that satisfies the harsh narrative we’ve chosen for her.” 

(NOTE: This article also discusses that “damning” Elizabeth Warren video: “Now I deeply respect and admire Elizabeth Warren — but it seems she left out some important details from her account. Clinton, in fact, worked with other members of congress to include amendments that addressed Elizabeth Warren’s concerns. And the bill passed 83–15. So why didn’t Warren mention this?”)

The Most Qualified Candidate For President In Our Lifetime [Dan Rayne, WBUR]

“Suppose I told you about a potential candidate for president, not now running, who had this background: Spent eight years in the U.S. Senate on the Armed Service Committee; Served on other committees on the budget, the environment, transportation, health, workplace safety, pensions, and children, families and the aging; Was honored as “a tireless voice for children” by the nation’s leading child advocacy organization; Was called by GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham “one of the most effective secretary of states, greatest ambassadors for the American people that I have known in my lifetime” in May 2012; Was named by Time magazine one of the 25 most powerful women of the past century. That last one gave it away. It’s Hillary Clinton, and if she runs she may be the most qualified candidate for the presidency in a generation.”

Why Sexism at the Office Makes Women Love Hillary Clinton [Jill Filipovic, The New York Times]

“ ‘A lot of the women I was friends with in college would have never called themselves feminists, but now that we’ve been in the workplace for 10 years, a lot has changed and they’re becoming more radical,’ said Aminatou Sow, a digital strategist and a founder of a support network for women in technology called Tech LadyMafia. They realize, she said, ‘that the work world and the world at large remains a place that’s built by men and for men.’ ”

Hillary Clinton wants to talk to you about love and kindness [Ruby Cramer, Buzzfeed]

Things have been quiet around Introverted Chicago this year, which is actually a good thing because I’ve been too busy with real (i.e. paid) work to keep up the blog. I’m a little bummed that I don’t have a nice photo journal of my past year, but I’m trying to be zen about the shift.

In that vain, here are some of the pieces I’m most proud of from the past year. I published even more op-eds at The A.V. Club, guest blogged for Boing Boing, wrote a social justice column for The Windy City Times, and worked with two new sites, CharacTour and Quartz. I may not have found a lot of time to leave my apartment, but I did help edit a Swedish role playing game!  

Here’s a similar wrap-up I did in 2014 and one from 2013 as well. I hope everyone has a healthy and happy New Year!

THE A.V. CLUB

My first long-term TV Club gig reviewing Supergirl

I binge-watched all 13 episodes of Jessica Jones in three days

I reviewed The Wiz Live!

I spent way too long brainstorming actors who should play siblings

Selma’s snubs speak volumes about Hollywood and the Oscars

Can intimacy save the movie musical?

The fascinating, flawed gender politics of Agent Carter

Leonard Nimoy was Star Trek’s greatest ambassador 

With great power comes themes of masculinity on Daredevil

10 reasons why you should watch the Tour De France

A beginner’s guide to the expansive Marvel Cinematic Universe

Lady And The Tramp is Walt Disney’s most grown-up film

The Astronaut Wives Club salutes the female astronauts that America wouldn’t

If you like Return Of The Jedi but hate the Ewoks, you understand feminist criticism

George Takei and Lin-Manuel Miranda shift the historical lens on Broadway

BOING BOING

Victims of police torture fight for reparations (and their historic win)

The naked hypocrisy of Game Of Thrones’ nudity

Patton Oswalt's epic Twitter rant and the fair weather ally

The entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, ranked

Check out these great female literary heroes for readers young and old

All of Disney’s “I Want” songs, ranked

Let the boys of Marvel teach you how to apologize (and how not to)

What if we limited the number of white men in film and TV?

QUARTZ

On diversity and this year’s Emmys

Keeping Up With The Kardashians is the sweetest family sitcom on TV

CHARACTOUR

Where Are They Now? – High School Musical Edition

Characters We Would Most Trust to Prevent The End of the World

WINDY CITY TIMES

How to be a better ally (from someone who’s still learning)

Black Youth Project 100 is changing the world one meeting at a time

Does voting actually matter?

What cats and dogs can teach us about intersectionality

Yes, diversity in our entertainment matters