The 100 Best Moments in Culture in 2019, Pt. 4
An exhaustive ranking of everything good that has happened in film, TV, celebrity news, and memedom this yearThe 100 Best Moments in Culture in 2019, Pt. 4
An exhaustive ranking of everything good that has happened in film, TV, celebrity news, and memedom this year
Welcome to The Ringer’s 100 Best Moments in Culture in 2019 So Far, an exhaustive ranking of everything good that has happened this year in film, TV, celebrity news, and memedom. This is a list that seeks to capture the tiny moments that made a giant impact—the things from the first half of this year that brought us immense joy, that made us feel alive, and that will live on in our hearts and minds for years to come. Over the next week we’ll unveil our favorite moments, putting them in context, reminiscing on their importance, all while counting down to the best moment of the year. The first six months of 2019 have been a long, content-filled journey; now that we’re on the other side of it, it’s time to celebrate. (Click here to see Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.)
25. “I love you, alive girl.” (January 10)
24. “And you know that, Ken”: Ariana Grande’s stock continues to rise (February 8)
Rob Harvilla: Ariana Grande has an iconic high ponytail, a startling four-octave range, two no. 1 singles in the past three months, a genuinely distressing amount of public trauma and grief to process (publicly) for someone who is only 25, a convincing claim to being the biggest pop star in the world at exactly this moment, an active feud with the Grammys that only underscores her popularity, a raging cultural-appropriation controversy, a six-month-old and tremendously well-received album with a song called “Pete Davidson,” a brand-new album that is arguably better than that other album and is in part about getting over Pete Davidson, and a Japanese-language wrist tattoo that at press time still mistakenly reads “small charcoal grill, finger ♡.”
The commotion around her is getting louder, and messier, and faster as her music gets bigger, and often better. That is not a coincidence, and even if some balance eventually tips and it gets to be a real problem, it’s hardly a problem she invented. The boys, after all, do it all the time. [Originally published February 9]
23. The Metallica needle drop in Triple Frontier (March 6)
22. The Anjelica Huston interview—and subsequent beef with Jacki Weaver (May 3)
Lindsay Zoladz: 67-year-old Anjelica Huston gave an instantly legendary interview to Vulture in which she candidly discussed her filmmaker father, her ex Jack Nicholson, and the limited roles offered to older actors in Hollywood. Reflecting on why she’s been scarce on the big screen for the past decade or so, she said, “I’m looking for movies that impress me in some way, that aren’t apologetically humble or humiliating like, ‘Band of cheerleaders gets back together for one last hurrah,’ you know. An old-lady cheerleader movie. I don’t like that kind of thing. If I’m going to be an old lady—and I’m sort of touching old lady these days—at least I want to be a special old lady. I don’t want to be relegated to some has-been making a comeback.”
Incidentally, “band of cheerleaders gets back together for one last hurrah” was not a hypothetical plotline. It is the story of Poms, a real, feel-good comedy about a retirement-community cheer squad starring Diane Keaton and Jacki Weaver that opens this weekend, just in time for Mother’s Day. The day after Huston’s interview was published, Vanity Fair asked Weaver what she thought of Huston’s remarks. Although Weaver had several colorful retorts (my favorite being “Didn’t she grow up in a castle in Ireland?”), the one that got the most attention was the most direct: “Well, she can go fuck herself.” And so the unlikeliest celebrity feud of 2019 was born. [May 10]
21. Andy King does whatever it takes for Fyre Festival, instantly becomes a meme (January 18)
20. The Masked Singer’s reign of terror begins (January 2)
Miles Surrey: It’s not always easy to know what’s going to be a hit on TV. Even so, you’d have safety ticked off “masked celebrities hide under lurid costumes in a singing competition” as a surreal but forgettable slice of network programming. Instead, well, Fox’s The Masked Singer became the unlikely breakout hit to begin 2019—and the stuff of my unwavering night terrors.
Easily decipherable clues, an underwhelming judges panel headlined by an anti-vaxxer, and some awful performances from the likes of Terry Bradshaw did not dissuade audiences from gobbling up The Masked Singer. Who doesn’t love a good gimmick? Ultimately, in a sentence I never would have expected to type, T-Pain in a monster costume soundly defeated Gladys Knight (a bee) and Donny Osmond (a sparkly peacock) in the final round. And as T-Pain celebrates a genuinely well-deserved win, we as a society must prepare for a second season of The Masked Singer—and, if the stellar freshman ratings are any indication, many more in the years to follow. The night terrors will be back.
19. HBO’s Chernobyl (May 6)
18. Lupita Nyong’o’s faceoff with herself at the end of Us (March 22)
Megan Schuster: The violin-heavy score swells as Us reaches its climactic moment: Adelaide and Red, both played by the stunningly talented Lupita Nyong’o, square off in an abandoned subterranean shelter, battling for the right to exist in a plane defined by fresh air and free will, not tethers and raw rabbit meat. The bleak setting—a cavernous, poorly-lit hallway, the adjacent bunker-like classrooms and living quarters—and interspersed flashbacks of the two characters performing in ballet recitals when they were young are wonderful cinematic touches from director Jordan Peele, but the true star of this scene is Nyong’o.
Imagine not only having to act in a fight scene, but having to fight yourself. And then add on the fact that you have to portray a duality of emotions and intentions while doing so. And then consider that neither character is who the audience actually thinks she is, and you’re responsible for slyly conveying that. Us is truly a mindfuck of a movie, but the only reason we were so enthralled by the result is because of the convincing performance Nyong’o gives, throughout the film but especially in this last fight. As Red and Adelaide danced/cage-matched their way through the world of the Tethered, I couldn’t avert my eyes—not just so that I wouldn’t miss a pivotal blow, but so that I could see what Lupita would do next.
17. Arya and Gendry’s hookup in Game of Thrones—and Sophie Turner’s subsequent reaction to it (April 21)
Kate Knibbs: A girl has no V-card.
[April 22]
16. Horse fights, knife fights, Boban fights, dog-aided fights, Mark Dacascos fights: John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum hits theaters (May 17)
Andrew Gruttadaro: Keanu Reeves has, give or take, 20 lines of dialogue in John Wick 3? You can’t waste time talking when you’ve got to: break Boban Marjanovic’s neck with a book in the New York Public Library (and then replace the book ever so gently); have an elaborate knife fight in a Chinatown building that is for some reason SO FULL OF KNIVES; slap horses just so, so that they kick their hind legs into the heads of anonymous assassins; ride one of those horses across the Manhattan Bridge while killing more assassins on motorcycles; meet up with Halle Berry and her tactical dogs in Morocco, and then kill approximately 400 bad guys; return to New York City to have an ultimate showdown with the host of Iron Chef. God, John Wick 3 is so good.
15. The emergence of Megan Thee Stallion (May 17)
Lindsay Zoladz: From its blazing, take-no-prisoners opening track “Realer,” Fever leaves the ground scorched in its wake. Megan’s quick, barbed bars stab her haters before they even register that they’re bleeding: “Bitch keep talking that shit FROM YOUR HONDA,” she raps with enough venom to make an entire car company’s stock plummet. One of the record’s most playful moments, though, is the club-ready “Simon Says,” which features a cameo from Juicy J. (It’s also one of three songs he produced on Fever.) Breathlessly dextrous, Megan almost always raps like she’s got something to prove—and because she’s still working within the confines of a male-dominated industry, the unfortunate fact is that she usually does. [May 21]
14. Fleabag’s Hot Priest (May 17)
Alison Herman: Fleabag has walled herself off. What it takes to break her open is an act of blasphemy so extreme it qualifies as divine intervention: She falls in love with a priest. Specifically, The Priest, who—like Fleabag or [Olivia] Colman’s Godmother—is known only by his title, never his proper name. Such designations suggest an allegory, and Fleabag does deal in weighty, universal themes like sin, forgiveness, love, and God. Yet Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Andrew Scott share a volcanic chemistry that can only exist between two flesh-and-blood individuals. Their attraction is Fleabag’s sine qua non; for their unlikely romance to work, you need to believe Fleabag and the Priest have the kind of connection that would make them both question their most bedrock beliefs. His conflict is clear enough: “I can’t have sex with you because I’ll fall in love with you,” he says. “And if I fall in love with you, I won’t burst into flames, but my life will be fucked.” But so, in a way, is hers: “Don’t make me an optimist,” she half-jokes, half-warns. “You’ll ruin my life.” [May 20]
13. The chaotic, triumphant, star-filled end of Avengers: Endgame (April 26)
12. Bran the Brok—er, Bran the Meme Machine (April 14)
11. The hilarious madness of Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave (April 23)
Knibbs: Tim Robinson’s snappy, viscerally weird Netflix show is a perfect collection of sketches about how far people will go to avoid embarrassment, to win the approval of strangers, or to feel comfortable in their skin. By my estimation, it’s the funniest thing on television all year by a lead of about a million slices of toilet paper. I can’t imagine that it’s going to land for everyone; most of the sketches have one to a thousand poop or fart references, and nearly all of them can credibly be described as “breathtakingly stupid.” But I mean that as a compliment. Robinson, an SNL alum with sensibilities closer to Tim and Eric, has created something extremely rare: a sketch show that feels cohesive and completely unpredictable at the same time. Nearly every sketch centers on a social transgression, but they blow straight past cringe comedy into a trascendental, absurdly dumb galaxy, where the bones are their money.
10. Sally Rooney Fever (April 16)
Jane Hu: “Sally Rooney gets in your head,” goes the title of Lauren Collins’s New Yorker profile of the author. Reading Conversations With Friends, Meaghan O’Connell experienced what she describes as “the slow-burning dread of recognition.” Alexandra Schwartz’s review of the novel concludes that “Rooney’s natural power is as a psychological portraitist,” and especially her portrayal of “Frances’s defensive, deceived self-awareness, her painful errors in emotional judgment, feel so vividly truthful that the reader sympathetically braces for her comeuppance.” Citing Schwartz’s review, Ratajkowski’s recent Instagram stories provide further annotations on the power of these psychological portraits: “This part struck me as deeply relatable in the same way. I’m always trying to argue both sides within myself to a paralyzing extent.” In all these reflections, women readers are responding not to Frances’s likability and charisma, or even her typicality as a middle-class single white college-aged female. What makes Frances relatable is precisely how she constantly seems to exceed her categorical boundaries. She is both an ex-lesbian and current “other woman,” communist and conventional romance heroine, stubborn and sentimental. No wonder it took a novel-length work to figure it all out. [April 16]
9. Greta Lee steals Russian Doll with one line reading (February 1)
8. The terrifyingly dangerous child in Barry’s “ronny/lily” (April 28)
Alan Siegel: For Season 1, the creators of Barry considered a self-contained, real-time half hour about Barry botching a hit. “He’s on one side of the wall and the guy he’s trying to kill is on the other and they both have guns,” Berg said. “And they’re just sort of stuck there.” The show’s staff, however, never quite figured out where the episode would fit.
But this year, “ronny/lily” worked as a midseason surprise. “That was like the halftime show,” Berg said. Hader said that while watching the episode he and his editor, Jeff Buchanan, thought that it felt kind of like “Pine Barrens.” In the Sopranos classic, Christopher and Paulie spend the night in the snowy woods bickering after losing track of a seemingly indestructible Russian. Like him, Lily may be lost forever. Or maybe not. Feral mongooses do have excellent survival skills. [May 20]
7. Kacey Musgraves makes it known: “I didn’t say fuckin’ yee!” (April 13)
6. The Jordyn Woods episode of Jada Pinkett Smith’s “Red Table Talk” (March 1)
5. Operation Varsity Blues (March 12)
Claire McNear: My favorite part of the still-unfurling college admissions bribery caper—a.k.a. the Great Scantron Scammer Scandal, a.k.a. the 2019 Cheater Charade—is this: “Aw.”
According to a federal indictment, that is what the actress Felicity Huffman said upon learning that the man who was allegedly supposed to help boost her youngest daughter’s SAT score had just had a baby, and so needed some extra notice to prepare. Aw. A baby! How sweet! The bad news—for both Huffman and for the test taker/baby haver, who is now in (legal term incoming) A Lot Of Trouble—is that the person she allegedly discussed the scheme with happened to be a cooperating witness for the government, which, alas, does not seem to think that wealthy parents’ bribing their children’s way into elite colleges or high test scores is the stuff of pleasant chitchat.
[March 12]
4. Colton Underwood jumps the fence on The Bachelor (March 4)
3. Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga perform “Shallow” at the Oscars (February 24)
Michael Baumann: Four months later, now that we’ve had some time to breathe, the actual live Oscars rendition of “Shallow” seems a little underwhelming. Neither Lady Gaga nor Bradley Cooper truly accessed their singing voices from A Star Is Born, and outside the sweaty, emotionally maximalist context of the film, the whole performance lacked the no-holds-barred quality of, say, Gaga’s 2011 “You and I” duet with Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland.
Alternatively, this was the capstone performance by two people who were slightly mortified to be seen eyefucking each other, onscreen and off, for the previous six months, who dialed it back so people wouldn’t talk. Because at the time, within the context of A Star Is Born, the leadup to this award show performance was about Gaga and B-Coop’s knee-wobbling chemistry. Chemistry that good could be faked, I suppose, by two talented actors, but I’m pretty sure no actors have ever looked at each other the way those two did.
As someone who suffered from the much-derided epidemic of ASIB-related brainworms this past winter (that was possibly contained within this company’s walls), I will admit that the ongoing fascination with Gaga and B-Coop was weird and slightly voyeuristic, and perhaps even undignified. But also, what made A Star Is Born special was its ability to capture the unrepentant intensity of falling in love, and every frame-by-frame breakdown of the pair’s impromptu duet in Las Vegas, and every headline about both of them breaking off their previous relationships was on some level an extension of that captive emotional intensity.
So on the one hand, obsessing over this (very likely fictitious) love affair between two real people is a little like making one’s dolls kiss. But on the other hand, they are totally in love. I know it in my soul.
2. Keanu Reeves owns 2019 in every way
Miles Surrey: Even when he isn’t making great movies (shout-out 47 Ronin!) there’s an enduring appeal to watching Keanu Reeves do his thing. Whether it’s his choices on screen or the dank memes he inspires, Keanu has a unique authenticity. None other than The New Yorker suggested he’s so perfect that we might not deserve his presence, and scrolling through news feeds daily I’m inclined to agree!
Keanu always rules, but 2019 has been a Keanussaince because his status has been heightened by not just one great project, but several. In John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum, he goes from avenging dogs to fighting alongside them; in Ali Wong’s Netflix rom-com Always Be My Maybe, he plays himself as a superficial asshole who cries while eating venison; he voices a Canadian stuntman toy in Toy Story 4, making the small role bigger than it had any right to be; it was just recently revealed that he’s starring in [checks notes] a massive, open-world cyberpunk video game in 2020.
With more time in the spotlight, we’ve also been afforded more great moments offscreen: Keanu playing with puppies, Keanu uttering profound statements in late-night interviews, Keanu posing with the Toy Story toys, someone calling Keanu breathtaking (hard agree). Perhaps we, as a society, don’t deserve Keanu Reeves. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t savor every wholesome moment and execution by book of a Serbian basketball player.
1. Billy Ray Cyrus hops on Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” birthing the song of the year (April 5)
Lindsay Zoladz: Unto us a gift was born: An “Old Town Road” remix featuring the Achy Breaky One himself. Although we live in an increasingly surreal world—one in which, say, Aunt Becky from Full House might go to jail—this was the point at which the tale of “Old Town Road” had become absurd enough to draw the world’s undivided attention. The Texas Tech basketball team sang it while celebrating in their locker room last week; just a few days later it had reached whatever the level of ubiquity something reaches when Mark Ruffalo tweets about it. Suffice it to say there is a new sheriff in town, and his name is Lil Nas X.
Even stranger: The remix is somehow … good? Billy Ray Cyrus brings an admirable level of conviction to what some people might have dismissed as a novelty single. His soulfully croaked “yeeeaaaahhh” blows across the intro like a tumbleweed, and later in the song he drops heaters like “Baby’s got a habit, diamond rings and Fendi sports bras.” Hilariously, the powers that be at Billboard have now been backed into a corner from which they will have to declare a song that contains Cyrus crooning his achy-breaky heart out “not country.” But it doesn’t even matter anymore; Lil Nas X has won this showdown. [April 8]
