Best of 2020

When you self-isolate for the better part of a year, your relationship with art and entertainment intensifies.  Not only do you consume more of it, but the act of consumption is performed with more vigor and purpose.  Stripped of this ability to seek fulfillment in many of the ways you previously did, you grant exaggerated significance to what you have left.  This is what remains.  This is the best of 2020.

Best Album - "Inlet" by Hum (link)

The past several years have had enough surprising new releases from long-dormant nineties acts that it's no longer actually a surprise when another one resurfaces.  The good news is that almost none of these bands have embarrassed themselves in an attempt to reclaim their former glory.  Most of these reunions end up about the same, producing perfectly good records that nonetheless fall a little bit short of what made the band great in the first place.  "Inlet" is not one of those records because it far exceeds any reasonable expectations one might have had.  Where Hum's previous output was a intriguing mish-mash of alternative styles, "Inlet" synthesizes all those ideas into their platonic ideal of riffs, texture, and layered sounds.  Think Jesu's "Conquerer" but with more melody and bombast, and it's from the band that was previously most famous for this.

Best Reissue - "Black Moon" by Valium Aggelein (link)

For me, 2020 was The Year Of Duster.  The space rock trio's recent resurgence reeled me in, and had me hooked on everything from their magnum opus "Stratosphere" to old bootlegs shared by one of the band members on a message board.  I remarked on this some here, but they've been at the top of my playlist from when I first "discovered" them in January (when there was hope) to now (lol) so their methodical depression-rock is really a sound for all seasons.

In that previous piece I mentioned how Duster's back catalogue is pretty small and I was remiss to blow through it all quickly.  That was a very foolish sentiment because there's a comical amount of Duster-adjacent goodness out there if you look for it.  Clay Parton was part of the similar-minded Calm before joining Duster and he now releases some solo work as EIAFUAWN.  Drummer Jason Albertini is part of the perfectly fine Helvetia.  But my favorite side project is one that's barely a side project at all.  Before formally convening as Duster, the same trio made a Kosmische-adjacent album under the name Valium Aggelein.  Because of the nascent Duster hype, this album got re-released in August complete with a bunch of bonus goodies.  It is quite swell.

The record itself is not all that dissimilar from the rest of Duster's output.  An actual Duster song ("The Landing") even shows up as a stray track.  But from the beginning of opener "Here Comes the Black Moon," it's clear that we're operating in a different enough space to warrant the distinction.  The sparse atmosphere and lightly-plucked guitar are quickly joined by a signal of sorts, leading into a seeming crescendo that never quite reaches its peak.  "Liftoff in Stereo" takes a gentle rhythm to the point where a Duster song almost breaks out but stops just short.  And "Triumph of the Metal People" loiters about until it swells into something almost terrifying, the likes of which I haven't heard elsewhere from the trio.  Imagine an alternate universe where post-rock legends Mogwai originated from California instead of Scotland.  There, behind the black moon of that world is where this record came to be.

Best Book - The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World by Vincent Bevins (link)

"Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence of a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported—what the rich countries said, rather than what they did. That group was annihilated."

The American memory of the Cold War often leaves out the critical role of the Third World in the conflict.  That is, the cat-and-mouse game of determining whose "side" each nation was on led to us treating them as pawns at best, or active enemies to be destroyed in proxy wars at worst.  This selective amnesia is likely not accidental, because our actions in this area are quite frankly tantamount to genocide.  Luckily it is now fairly easy to re-educate yourself if you choose to do so.

Enter the work of journalist Vincent Bevins.  There are other tomes that lay out the scope of these atrocities as well or better than Jakarta Method does, but this book is specifically useful (and even perhaps essential) for two reasons.  One is that Bevins consistently frames the United States as purposeful, active belligerents in this effort against Third World communities.  He does not center his analysis through any sort of fealty to American imperialism, nor do his arguments take the form of weak apologia.  Instead the events are laid out in stark, objective detail which grants the narrative a clarity rarely seen in mainstream analysis.  The second is that the story Bevins tells is organized around dozens of interviews with survivors of these campaigns.  This lends the story a human touch and a specificity that allows for more relatability and introspection than a simple list of atrocities can.  If you want an easy entry into anti-imperialism, this book is a great place to start.

Best Podcast - Blowback (link)

The now-dominant ideation of the Iraq War in the pundit-sphere is that it was a most peculiar "blunder."  This theory essentially posits that a bunch of well-meaning, democracy-loving leaders simply goofed up and functionally destroyed a nation for a generation.  This understanding is so pervasive that President Obama based his foreign policy strategy at least in part on this premise (eg. "don't do stupid things").  

The problem with this narrative is that it's almost entirely wrong.  The Iraq War was the logical outcome of several decades of American imperialism, not some trillion-dollar mistake, and understanding this difference (and why those in power obscure this distinction) is crucial to moving forward.  There is no better (and more entertaining) vehicle for understanding this than the first season of Blowback.  Noah Kulwin and Brendan James' ten piece series (plus some added bonus goodies) is comprehensive and far-reaching in its scope, clearly evocative of an anti-imperialist worldview, and finds the right balance between its humorous moments and the somber ones.  No part of the American war apparatus is spared here, from collaborators in the Middle East to the media to politicians of all stripes (a "fun" activity is to compare the tenor and the message of the Reagan speech at the end of the first ep to the Clinton speech at the end of the second).  Taken as a whole, it's both harrowing and essential.

Best Football Game - Tie between Notre Dame 47, Clemson 40 and Coastal Carolina 22, BYU 17

The 2020 college football season should not have happened.  But as anyone versed in the history of college football might have guessed, everyone pushed forward anyway.  This led to the most fractured, pointless, and at times boring season of the sport I can remember.  But nonetheless, I'll still keep drinking watching that garbage.  And as luck would have it, a few bright spots still managed to shine through.  In a manner indicative of the ridiculousness of the season at hand, the two most luminous such moments belonged to 1) the game everyone was most excited about before anyone even knew what covid was and 2) a game scheduled two days before it happened.  The Irish-Tigers battle was everything you want out of a blockbuster battle - pointsy, dramatic, and self-evidently making the case for a rematch later in the season (and maybe another rematch in January?).  

But BYU-Coastal was something different - dare I say it was the precise sort of thing that makes college football "special."  Two wildly divergent programs dropping everything to play each other on a moment's notice and managing to play not just any old game but a surprisingly heated classic.  It had everything: Mainstream attention (Gameday was there), hipster attention, two fun-ass offenses, the teal field, a nickname that was instantly accepted universally (Mormons vs. Mullets!), some good ole fighting, and a last-second finish.  Athletic endeavors in 2020 often felt like a hollow luxury at best, but for at least a couple of nights, our dumbest sport managed to deliver something worth remembering.

Best TV Shows

Hey it's the thing I normally opine on.  Like I began doing last year, I now limit my countdown to bangers only.  There's plenty of perfectly good semi-autobiographical shows (Ramy, I May Destroy You), miniseries that should have been movies (Devs, We Are Who We Are), peculiar biographies of John Brown (The Good Lord Bird), goofy comedies (What We Do in the Shadows), and German period pieces (all of them), but I'm not going to spend time remarking on all that.  Here's the best of the best: 

#8 - The Plot Against America (HBO)

Like with Chernobyl last year, it would be easy enough to dismiss David Simon's alternate history of America in the 1940s as a heavy-handed liberal metaphor for the Trump era (there were plenty of times where I considered it).  Add in that Simon, the man whose magnum opus (The Wire) is basically a treatise on the problems with policing, is kind of a tool, and it's even easier to paint the miniseries as an ineffectual treatise against creeping fascism.  Luckily the six-part miniseries was plenty effective in its own right.  The acting performances (especially Zoe Kazan) and the typically deft storytelling laid the groundwork, and the attention paid to the growing hysteria throughout supplied a sense of pending doom.  But what really made it all hum were the little moments:  Cops standing by as right-wingers assault a political rally; the nonchalance of a klansman loitering outside of a burning building; and the discarding of votes in the election that spans the final moments.  All of this points to an understanding about the subject matter at hand that's anything but naïve.

#7 - Pen15 (Hulu)

This show shouldn't work.  The nineties nostalgia, the unabashed earnestness, and the cringe-inducing nature of teenage life has no business becoming anything other than unwatchable pablum.  But Pen15 always manages to subvert all of that through a fundamental dedication to flipping the script.  A goofy storyline morphs into something sublime.  An awkward moment turns genuine and tender.  And moments of sadness and despair often become uproariously funny.  It's an impossible balancing act that shouldn't work but somehow does...it's almost like being a teenager all over again.

#6 - Normal People (Hulu)

Another show that shouldn't work but does, Normal People is effectively the slightly more serious cousin to Pen15.  Just swap out the best friend duo for a pair of star-crossed lovers.  What makes this one work despite the similar long odds is a combination of its deft storytelling across time and its fundamental care for its two main characters.  Marianne and Connell's relationship ebbs and flows constantly and the series ends (appropriately) on an uncertain note, but the neat trick is that at that point it doesn't even matter.  Neither the characters nor the audience have any remaining reason to doubt Marianne and Connell's commitment to each other, so much so that it's easy to imagine the story continuing for years along the same trajectory.  It's this combination of confidence in itself and contentment with the story as it is that makes Normal People worth the investment.

#5 - Mrs. America (FX on Hulu, which is a thing I guess)

There's really only two ways to make something good about a subject as all-encompassing as the battle for women's liberation in the 1970s.  One way is to hitch your narrative wagon to one character and tell the story through that lens.  But given that the story of Mrs. America necessarily involves a decidedly unsympathetic character like Phyllis Schlafly, I don't see how you could strike the right balance in either direction.  So it's to the show's credit that it takes the second route - telling a big messy ensemble story.  This route might sacrifice a little bit of subtlety as there's a lot to cram in, but the holistic view we get is worth it.

Another pleasant side effect of eschewing subtlety is that it gives extra power to the remaining subtext.  The silences in between the spectacle become even more important.  This is most obvious in the moments where we pull back from the main story to understand what drives individual characters (ie. Gloria's abortion, Phyllis' law school ambitions).  But this tendency is most effective when it's tasked with answering the question of just what went wrong for the women's liberation moment.  There's all the smoke-filled rooms Phyllis inhabits full of rich Republican boosters that suggest a deck stacked against the other side.  There's the sly contrast between Phyllis' successful alliance building and the internecine struggles and occasional myopia in the liberation movement.  And the most perfect moment is saved for the end, when Phyllis' underling Alice leaves the cause for (gasp) a job.  On the surface, it's played as a triumphant moment for Alice - She's free from her oppressor!  She is liberated!  But when you consider that what little freedom her low-level job grants her will be slowly stripped away by the success of the political project that Phyllis represents, it becomes a moment of introspection.  What does it really mean to be liberated?  Does anyone on this show have a clue?  Do any of us?  That the show leaves you wrestling with these questions is a testament to its greatness.

#4 - How To with John Wilson (HBO)

The spiritual sequel to Nathan For You that we never knew we actually wanted but who's kidding of course we did.  When describing why this oddball documentary is great, most will talk about this show's profundity regarding the human condition and how it's the only thing that really "gets" the lockdown and they're all right of course but I'm not going to go that direction here.  Rather I will simply posit that no other show has ever produced a constant stream of small, satisfying laughs quite like this one.  Every musing, every observation, every shot of these six short episodes is a gift, even the ones with the dude trying to stretch out what's left of his foreskin.

#3 - ZeroZeroZero (Amazon)

When I write these little capsules, I often focus on the thematic content of the show.  I do this because it's the easiest aspect of a show to describe succinctly and it's usually the most obvious and compelling distinction between shows.  ZeroZeroZero doesn't really break new thematic ground here (the drug trade consumes the life and lives of those in and around it...we get it), so how did it earn its place on this list?  Because as I've written before, story is king for me.  And boy did ZeroZeroZero tell a story.  The way the three interlocking storylines (the suppliers in Monterrey, the buyers in Calabria, and the middlemen in New Orleans) dance around each other and then intersect in sudden, violent fashion somehow makes a tired trope feel fresh and new.  This works because the show abandons conventional format (think The Leftovers) and eschews entire storylines from episodes when they're not needed.  And while the characters serve the story, the story returns the favor as it manages to reveal everything we need to know about their inner workings within the construct of the main plot.  But the absolute strength of the show is the way it uses scenery and composition to not just set the mood but inhabit it.  This all comes home in the finale where every single segment has an iconic conclusion that I won't soon forget (look at those gifs!).  Just an absolute treat.

#2 - Better Call Saul (AMC)

Pretty much every highly lauded drama series of the past decade (this one included) has ended with a final two-season order.  This often leads to a noticeable drag in these penultimate seasons, which become mere setup for the final run rather than the great season of television we might hope for.  Better Call Saul most decidedly did not suffer from this problem.  It helped that the titular character came into being in the final moments of the previous season, which meant this season provided the thrill of seeing a fully-deployed Saul Goodman once again.  It also helped that the story with Gus, Mike, and Nacho shook off the dust and began to accelerate towards its logical conclusion.  But make no mistake, the star of this season was Kim Wexler.  As probably the last character who will "break bad" in the ABQ universe, her story is a fitting capstone.  Much like I've previously written about this show and its predecessor, Kim's story is not simply presented as a matter of moral fortitude but rather a tale of human necessity.  We've seen Kim strive to get ahead for five seasons and all it's gotten her is the privilege of kicking a guy out of his house and kissing the ass of an increasingly frustrating bank president.  Given all this, the only logical decision is for her to burn it all down.  I can't wait to see her finish the job next season (whenever that is).

#1 - My Brilliant Friend: The Story of a New Name (HBO)

In its second season, the adaption of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels remains every bit as precise, vibrant, and (as I'm told by my wife) faithful to the source material.  But there's something even grander in this installment that ensconces the series in the pantheon of all-time great television.  To understand why, start with what I wrote this previously in my 2018 list:

"What sets My Brilliant Friend apart from the pack is its depiction of the unique friendship of Lenu and Lila.  Both girls use their superior intellect to belittle, push, and support each other, but what ultimately keeps them together through the years is how their special bond means that each of them is the only one that truly understands the other."

The whole shape of that first season led to the same conclusion I described earlier for Normal People.  Despite a path that was rarely straightforward, the finale (which gives the series its name) made the special and lasting nature of Lila and Lenu's bond clear.  Which makes this subsequent season's methodical depiction of the slow dissipation of their friendship all the more striking.  It shows this divergence in many obvious ways - Lila's rant that barely hides her resentment at Lenu's superior fortune, a shared desire for the same man, and literal physical distance coming between them.  But it also takes great care to show the more subtle and meaningful reasons for the fissure.  Moments where helpful words were swallowed, small personality changes borne out of unspeakable trauma, and in the season's closing moments, a small gesture indicating a fundamentally disparate understanding of what their friendship was.  Nothing was more affecting and gripping on TV in 2020.