rachel’s wrap up 2021

it’s always “vulture top tv shows of 2021” this, “rolling stone top albums of 2021” that, but never “rachel’s wrap up” anything.

makes you think.

and thus, herein lies my list of things that got me through the not-as-bad-as-2020-(dec. 18 update: i spoke too soon)-but-still-pretty-darn-tootin-bad-dumpster-fire that was 2021. please note these didn’t necessarily come out in 2021. i just watched them in 2021.

this list is unranked, uncategorized, and is pretty much a brain dump of things that came to mind that i enjoyed. i also probably forgot a lot of things. alright now that the feminine urge to qualify what i’m about to say is out of the way, let us begin.

Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry

okay this was way better than it should’ve been and came to me during the phase of 2021 where all my attention span could handle was documentaries about pop stars because i could not retain any more plot than that. i wasn’t even a huge billie fan before this. i enjoyed the hits as much as the next bad guy (ba dum sh. *ducks* okay that thrown tomato was deserved.) but this was just so fun and refreshing and reminded us that pop stars are people too!! they have feelings and hopes and dreams and idols! the scene where she meets justin bieber made me cry! and especially for those who blow up as teens, it reminds us that they are literally SO YOUNG. other docs such as gaga’s five foot two, while great, ultimately just illustrate the complete opposite in that stars are in fact not like us, whatwith her makeup artist literally doing her makeup while she’s at the doctor’s office. anyway. i literally loved this and came out of it a full on stan. what can i say, melancholy dreampop really does it for this main character. i also literally got apple tv+ for this and then forgot to cancel my subscription after the trial was over which is really neither here nor there just a fun piece of trivia.

Ashlyn

in the year of the great break-up albums i think this was maybe the best??? between the olivia and the adele and the red (taylor’s version) of it all i think ashe got a little left behind. at 28 she is refreshingly grown-up amidst her indie pop peers, also singing of divorce and mistakes that were memories made and i don’t know what i’m saying because i don’t know a thing about music other than what i like and i liked this a lot. it came out around the same time as SOUR and i had the two in near-constant rotation this summer. till forever falls apart ft. finneas is an underrated bop. she shoulda been nominated for best new artist. that’s my grammy snub.

Felicity

after consulting with my every-tv-show-i’ve-ever-watched spreadsheet (listen we’ve all had a lot of time on our hands and this was my king lear. or folklore. pick your poison.) it turns out i started watching this on dec 31, 2020 but completed it jan 9 so i consider it fair game for this list. and it is my list so i make the rules. anyway. i am famously a sucker for coming-of-age stories, namely the particular brand of late 90s-early 00s grainy nostalgia porn and though i love a good high school melodrama, college was a way more seminal time for me personally and usually when high school shows go to college it’s in the fourth season and the writers don’t know what to do with the new dynamic and it’s sort of a stretch that all our main characters end up at the same university but on the flip side how do you maintain storylines and plot development when they all part ways. but enough about glee. felicity is literally like every girl’s fantasy about their unrealistic high school crush working out. and keri russell? a treat. scott speedman? a heartthrob. they don’t make ’em like this anymore. also there was this one episode late season three about how college is fake and just when you’ve found your place and your people it ends that hit waaaaaay too hard. anyway. if you like dawson’s creek/one tree hill/gilmore girls this shit absolutely slaps.

superstore

okay hot take but in the NBC-workplace-sitcom-universe (i do love a contrived overly-hyphenated term don’t i?) i say this takes the cake for me above the office/30 rock/parks and rec trifecta. the office is good and 30 rock is…i never finished it…but parks and rec — despite my friends’ insistence that i am leslie knope, which like, sure but whatever — never did it for me. superstore is the last bastion of great network sitcoms. underrated as hell and laugh out loud funny AND a perfect will-they-won’t-they (those hyphens are earned and i stand by that) pairing to carry us through? what more could we ask for. also tackles actual issues of our time like immigration and unions and capitalism head on without being a psa? it’s a new top-tier show for me, joining the exclusive company of gilmore girls, the oc, friday night lights, and new girl. the highest praise i could give.

andrew garfield just as a person

i was briefly employed in the latter half of 2021 as a security guard and as ill-advised as that may have been, my job mostly consisted of me sitting in a little pseudo-cubicle checking student IDs on weekends which meant my job actually mostly consisted of me watching actor interviews on youtube. while some oozed self-importance and hollywood artifice, some stood out as having actually insights about life and art and the mirage of it all and andrew garfield was the shining star of the latter category. this was made even more true during tick tick…BOOM press when he did a particularly impactful interview on colbert where he discussed the recent death of his mother which such beauty and grace and eloquence and humanity and just…watch it. he too, is the best of us.

tick tick…BOOM is also good but does not earn an official item on this list.

hot ones

another “this is all my attention span can handle”-era watch mid-year but…dude. this has got to be one of the most genius webseries of the social media era. the sheer insanity of the scoville levels brings even the most famous celebrities down to earth as their mouths burn and they are asked equally insanely researched questions by host sean evans. for those unfamiliar this is the source of the paul rudd “look at us. who woulda thought? not me.” meme. as overused as this term is, hot ones truly deserves the moniker of iconic.

come from away on apple tv

i will die on the hill that this deserved the best musical tony over dear evan hansen. and when this and the dear evan hansen movie came out within days of each other, i was proven right. that’s all i’ll say. subscribe to apple tv just for this. and also the billie documentary. and also ted lasso. and also for the comedy of errors that is the morning show. a lot of things actually.

maid

as someone who lives their life on twitter i feel like i never saw much discourse on this upon its october release but it remains a stand out for me. first of all the tiny child they had playing maddy is more of a pro than most grown adult actors. i bet she never asked to be tear gassed. also nick robinson, noted cutie who also famously lived in the same dorm as me freshman year at nyu (before he dropped out because he is, you know, nick robinson) played such a convincing villain. a damning portrayal of how fucked up late capitalism and how themeagre american social net is. margaret qualley is a star. victoria, bc is also star. also can i just say thank god for when shows in the streaming era have more than eight episodes. ten feels like the new 22. i mean that as a compliment. remember when the oc season one had twenty-seven episodes? those were the days.

The Sex Lives of College Girls

off the bat, let me just say regretfully the character with whom i most identify is the german RA named frude who, when the titular girls begin discussing fake IDs during a floor meeting, panics and leaves the room, a reality i have lived. never forget RAchel (2017–2019). again, college shows are my sweet spot and this is so fucking good and funny and sweet and sad and well-cast which is an underappreciated skill. (compared to gossip girl 2.0 where some of the casting choices…well.) cast good actors who are unknown! it’s okay! it’s a mindy kaling show it will be okay i promise!! if one of those unknown actors happens to be me? all the better! also the core four have chemistry, which i feel a lot of shows these days are missing both when it comes to both romantic pairings and friendship dynamics. i need to believe the people you are telling me are friends actually are. this for me hearkens back to the nostalgic shows i loved growing up but is perfectly transposed to 2021. a new favourite. and the 2–3 episode at a time release model is a great choice i do believe. enough to micro-binge but still keep viewers coming back for more for a few weeks, at least. and keeps it in the zeitgeist on twitter for more than a day. mindy knows how to make tv.

Kodachrome

once again way better than it needed to be but something about jason sudeikis is so goddamn charismatic. same for elizabeth olsen. a tried and true plot about estranged child/parent who have to go on a road trip because the parent is dying blah blah blah but listen. cliches are cliches because they’re true. or something. listen just put jason sudeikis on my screen and i’ll be happy, okay? when is ted lasso season three coming out? are rebecca and ted ever going to get together? sorry, moving on.

“is there something in the movies” — samia

this song narrowly missed out on my spotify wrapped top 5 but dude, it’s so good. it’s one of those songs that you’re instantly like oh this will play during the scene where i look out the bus window as i leave my small town behind for my big city dreams. i cry every time.

emma chamberlain

call me basic i don’t care. one of the only good influencers. her videos feel like sitting at a trendy cafe on your laptop reading vulture articles about the ~industry~ while listening to rex orange county which i have to believe she would consider a supreme compliment.

good trouble

okay this is actually the last great network show. this feels like the spiritual successor to kids who grew up watching the oc. the main contention is a unlikely group of millennial/gen z-ers living in a communal space all trying to make it in LA in their respective fields (activism, law, tech, comedy, to name a few) and also they are horny and hot so chaos ensues. because why else would we watch? it’s stylized in such a way that you’ll either love or hate but if you love it you’ll really love it. sorta like those this is us-esque misdirects where it shows a flashforward at the top of the episode you interpret one way but by the end of the episode it’s revealed to mean something different. it’s slick and sexy and airs once a week as maybe all TV should. oh also it’s a spinoff of the fosters if you liked that. i liked that just fine but honestly love this. as is evident by my gushing.

the maggots or magic episode of las culturistas

okay this isn’t really a specific to 2021 thing but it is my favourite episode of my favourite podcast which is just the ultimate escapist but intellectual and interesting and entertaining thing out there. i’m a big podcast girl especially in the year of our lord 2021 when the casual walk enjoyed a massive resurgence and i couldn’t be left with my own thoughts because they would immediately hyperfixate on the impending climate disaster so instead every wednesday i would listen to two ACTUAL modern-day philosophers discuss the weighty debates of our time such as what makes a star vs. an actress? matt and bowen literally deserve a nobel peace prize for getting us through these ‘trying times.’

the all too well short film

sorry not sorry dylan o’brien could run me over and i would thank him! and that’s just the way it is!

the weekly release model

my dear friend tim and i frequently engage in discourse about the ways in which the TV landscape has changed in our lifetimes and not to be all “back in my day” BUT i really do think the binge model has made us worse at watching tv. i’m all for the accessibility and wider-audience streaming affords, don’t get me wrong, but outer banks? a fever dream. never have i ever? i already forgot. the office? i could not tell you a single plot other than jim and pam. what can i say, i’m a romantic. the point is i literally remember where i was when nick and jess first kissed on new girl because the weekly release model made TV appointment viewing. gossip girl mondays. new girl tuesdays. the vampire diaries thursdays. those are the treasured memories of my childhood. i would watch and rewatch next week’s promo to see what i could glean. i would read tv fanatic reviews and spoilers and fan theories and there was a culture to watching TV that has changed in the last ~five years. it’s what made mare of easttown so exciting this year, the weekly sunday community. the articles speculating the likelihood that each character was the killer. the shock when it wasn’t guy pearce. weekly TV drops create phenomenons. binge-watching makes you forget plot points so entirely i am literally going to have to rewatch ozark before season 4 comes out. also like, hello survivor wednesdays?

olympic track and field

listen i know the olympics are bad and patriotism is bad but the olympics gave me something to live for this summer and damian warner is the actual GOAT so fuck tom brady. also the use of all the 2020 marketing was never not hilarious.

inside

okay i held off on watching this for a long time because it got so overhyped and i was like eh is it really gonna be that good? and not to be a hater but i’m not the biggest fan of musical comedy as it is. bo’s past stuff was good not great for me. love the guy, don’t get me wrong. heartbreaking in promising young woman. a well-spoken guy. one of the good ones (fingers crossed), etc. ultimately inside was as good if not better than people said and should have gotten the emmy over hamilton. maybe pandemic art can be good sometimes.

cannolis

a good cannoli can make you forget about the ills of the world, even for just a moment.

places having kettles

i am a big tea person in part because coffee makes me feel absolutely crazy and honestly that’s mostly the reason BUT an added bonus is that if the place you’re going has a kettle which they often do if you ask and you bring a to-go mug of sorts (i have a yeti and listen they are expensive but they are honestly unreal #notspons) and a teabag with you you have a FREE HOT BEVERAGE anywhere you go. that yeti will pay for itself in no time. if you really wanna go turbo mode you can leave some milk in the fridge if there’s a communal work fridge. unless you’re into green tea as i am. i was in a play this fall (working actor flex) and the rehearsal studio had a kettle and i would just bring my little yeti and my little tea bag and keep refilling it with hot water and honestly just the ritual of having a warm drink was so nice and probably good for my little vocal chords because i had to do a southern accent which did my fragile little voice no favours. #castme

articles about succession

the show is great don’t get me wrong but it’s worth watching just to be part of the discourse. yes that was a painfully online sentence of me leave me alone but that new yorker profile of jeremy strong was unreal. and then the thinkpieces ABOUT the profile? this is what i live for.

tomato basil soup

it came in mid-fall. a family friend made tomato basil soup from scratch for lunch one day and i wasn’t about to turn up my nose at homemade soup. mind you, i’ve never been much of a tomato soup gal, largely because it unfairly reminded me of ketchup, a condiment i despise. but this soup? life changing. i would go on to order it at a number of restaurants by year’s end. my mom made a homemade pot of her own upon learning of my newfound soup of choice. it really is true what they say, gorgeous gorgeous girls really do love soup.

a really good pickle

i’m not just talking your grocery store vlasic dill, i’m talking a prestige deli-grade kosher dill. this year through an unfortunate series of events involving my cat getting put down, my mom and i drove past this bagel place that caught my eye one day while driving to the vet and in our feline mourning state, we wandered in for bagels. i got a delightful little veggie sandwich on an everything bagel that happened to be served with kettle chips and a dill sliver on the side (sally albright would be proud.) this pickle was what i had long been seeking. less garlicky, more salty. the perfect prestige pickle. in a sea of tired network procedurals, this was mare of easttown. and to my great delight, they sold these pickles by the jar. i will never buy any other pickle again. let this be a life lesson, ladies. never settle for less than what you deserve. the pickle you seek is out there, waiting for you.

also i guess i should officially recommend the bagel place which is solly’s bagelry for those in the vancouver-area. they have three locations.

also selling sunset. i am currently processing the chrishell-jason break up. no further questions at this time.