Joey’s Top Twenty TV Shows of 2024

I’m not gonna lie to you, this list is a ton of prep work. Listening to a bunch of albums is way easier than watching a bunch of TV shows (usually like 40-50 shows a year watched to completion). But how well do I actually do? Am I actually considering and giving you the best shows of the year?

I mean, I’m only one man, but I think I do well enough. Internet friend Mikey Tabletop has, for the past couple of years, done what Metacritic no longer does and aggregated just about every critic list of the best TV of the year, resulting in this spreadsheet. I managed to watch all of the top thirteen shows on it, and then 18 of the top 20 (I’m only missing Say Nothing, which would be my next watch if I had another week, and Slow Horses, which I would need to catch up on). My watching mostly consists of critical favorites, other various continuing series (I rarely drop a show, I don’t recommend this lifestyle), and then animation, which is often underheralded in features like these.

So this ends my features on the best of 2024. Stay tuned for a special bonus feature next Thursday, where I rank the 25 best songs of the decade so far.

20. Curb Your Enthusiasm
season 12
10 episodes (120 total plus 1 special)
stream: Max


Larry David (character) spends the entire final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm charged for the crime of giving water to a voter in line in Atlanta, Georgia. Larry’s accidental defiance of the draconian Georgia law makes him a national hero, but privately, Larry is still doing things like telling his gay lawyer that he and his husband have chosen the inferior surname for their newly adopted baby.

The season culminates in a courtroom scene where everyone that Larry has ever wronged testifies. Wait a minute.

While Curb Your Enthusiasm‘s twelfth season doesn’t quite have the juice of its peak years, it’s still absolutely got juice, and this is well-demonstrated in the finale. Larry (real person) has revisited Seinfeld on Curb before, and while this isn’t quite as transcendent, he manages to yet again reach across sitcom fictions to right his past wrongs.

19. Delicious in Dungeon
season 1
24 episodes
stream: Netflix

At first I was unmoved by Delicious in Dungeon‘s hook. Oh boy, a Dungeons & Dragons setting featuring fake cooking lessons about how to use monsters in your cuisine. How useful. But Delicious in Dungeon is more like a fictional nature program relayed to us through each episodic battle/puzzle the core party takes on and then also through, yes, the cooking program.

Especially with Studio Trigger going all in on the animation, it’s not hard to see why Delicious In Dungeon was maybe the most celebrated anime of the year. Though it can sometimes feel a little humdrum for a fantasy show, Delicious In Dungeon packs a punch when it counts, and eventually you already know so much about the titular dungeon’s wildlife that you’re invested even in the quieter moments.

18. Sound! Euphonium
season 3
13 episodes (39 total plus 2 films)
stream: Crunchyroll

What seems like a simple, cute show about high schoolers in their concert band club has always been more emotionally complex, making clear from the get-go that this is a series not about music and fun but about competition. It’s always been about making sure that a very large group of students has the same lofty goal for the organization, and all of the complicated group dynamics that emerge while holding that together.

This third and final season sees Kumiko and Reina take over the club in their senior year, and after the previous year’s failure, they (especially Reina) are dead set on winning the national competition. But discord ripples throughout the group as Kumiko faces stiff competition from transfer student and fellow euphonist Mayu.

This season takes the excellent first two seasons, in which Kumiko and Reina are first years, and flips it on its head: where Reina had been the young challenger to the club’s senior vanguard, Kumiko is now the challenged elder. Moreover, Kumiko is nagged all season about what she plans to do after high school. After an eight year wait for the next season, Sound! Euphonium finally ends its run beautifully.

17. Somebody Somewhere
season 3
7 episodes (21 total)
stream: Max


Somebody Somewhere concludes with its third season. What was once a story about Sam returning to her hometown of Manhattan, Kansas is now mostly about the ordinary moments in everyday life there.

There’s not a lot out there like Somebody Somewhere. Its gentle comedy and soft emotional punches really demand that you buy into these ordinary stories. This season, Sam finally thinks about getting romantically involved with a fellow Manhattan-ite. Joel adjusts to living with his new partner. Tricia keeps building her new business. Fred’s new wife is watching his health. These might sound like entries from your local paper’s society pages, but Somebody Somewhere treats them with respect, urgency, and perspective. It was a beautiful little show that will be missed.

16. House of the Dragon
season 2
8 episodes (18 total)
stream: Max


After a stop-and-start first season of context, the Dance of the Dragons begins in earnest. Game of Thrones has always done well with battles and war, but the all-encompassing horror of royal families warring with so many enormous, flying dragons gives House of the Dragon an unceasing sense of fear and paranoia that Game of Thrones simply didn’t trade in.

Which is not to say it’s outright better than Game of Thrones‘ heyday. But House of the Dragon is justifying itself despite not matching Thrones‘ intricate chessboard intrigue. House of the Dragon‘s success is in making its war maximally spectacular and the specter of its conflict even more dreadful than Thrones ever managed.

15. Dandadan
season 1
12 episodes
stream: Netflix

Okay, huge caveat here. Dandadan would actually be quite a bit higher on this list. But there are unwise scenes involving, uh, sexual danger in its premier and finale (both scenes in the Dandadan manga, of course), and they are just so wholly unnecessary to the proceedings. I just have to mention them in case someone bites on this recommendation and thinks I’m a freak! But Dandadan easily makes this list despite that because it is zany, adorable, and a visual feast.

Cool girl loner Momo Ayase (obsessed with spirits) and unpopular nerd Ken Takakura (obsessed with aliens) have an argument over which obsession is actually for real. Upon learning that both of them are, the two grow closer and closer as Ken’s testicles are stolen (yeah) and they keep falling into the same paranormal situations. Dandadan makes surprisingly great use of romantic tension, and otherwise it’s just a great (and unhinged) action show. Nothing out there is quite like Dandadan, and as long as you can look past its two bad moments, it will be rewarding, and I hear it continue its greatness in future seasons.

14. Oshi no Ko
season 2
13 episodes (24 total)
stream: HiDive

After its sprawling, unbelievable opener, Oshi no Ko‘s first season took on the Japanese entertainment industry, but it couldn’t settle down. So here, it’s welcome that Oshi no Ko‘s second season really feels like it coheres, spending the bulk of its time on a 2.5D stage play, and like in season one, it pulls back the curtain on the unintuitive collaborative process in the industry while also using the play itself – whose premier lasts three entire episodes – to dive directly into the heads of its characters. And after all this, Oshi no Ko throws us a bone by getting around to some of the questions that have laid dormant since that aforementioned series premier. It’s not quite as thrilling as the best moments of the first season, but in turn Oshi no Ko has become a more complete, more fully-realized proceeding.

13. Hacks
season 3
8 episodes (24 total)
stream: Max


Hacks – the story of a young comedy writer pushing legendary comedienne Deborah Vance out of the comfort zone of an eternal Las Vegas residency – has been great already, but its third season gets extra gas by really tearing into how Ava’s destructive relationship with Deborah is something she consistently chooses. Season two ended with the kind of parting shot that lets a series just end if it really has to, but Hacks uses its almost-reversion to its status quo to really observe why it keeps arriving back there. Hacks‘ greatest strength remains its performances. I’m sure if Satan wasn’t forcing The Bear into the comedy categories at every award ceremony it would still be cleaning up, and deservedly so.

12. Shōgun
season 1
10 episodes
stream: Hulu

It is impossible to ignore Shōgun‘s sheer execution. Its visual spectacle is well worthy of the Game of Thrones comparisons, and its performances – particularly Hiroyuki Sanada as Emperor-hopeful Toranaga and Anna Sawai as translator Toda Mariko – are probably just the year’s best. It is a constant wonder to watch, and while it can feel a little slow, Shōgun is more than sufficiently rewarding of your patience in the big moments.

A couple of red marks, though: The very ending lands pretty awkwardly, and new season orders means that Shōgun will move beyond its source material. Call me pessimistic, but I’m not envisioning a Leftovers-style success story for future seasons that set their own course. But hopefully I’m wrong.

11. Pachinko
season 2
8 episodes (16 total)
stream: Apple TV+

Pachinko, a twin-storyline series about A. a Korean family in Japan in 1989 and B. how the grandmother got through the twentieth century to then, continues apace, and this season focuses heavily on the past storyline, barreling towards the show’s great mystery: why do we never see Sunja’s eldest son Noa in the 1989 storyline?

Though there are fewer jaw-wide-open moments than in season one and the themes of Japanese subjugation of and discrimination against Koreans are relaxed for now, season two chugs dutifully along as perhaps the most casually excellent drama of the last few years. The 1989 story feels a tad neglected, likely so there’s enough left in season three to resolve things there, but the young Sunja story feels all the more rewarding with young Noa and Baek kicking around, first as they survive through the Second World War and then as they grow up during the Korean War.

Pachinko continues to quietly be one of the best shows on TV, but people continue to sleep on it because there’s no particularly hooky angle. It’s just really good stuff, is all.

10. English Teacher
season 1
8 episodes
stream: Hulu


English Teacher was the best sitcom of the year. You unfortunately should not watch it. Next!

9. Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
season 1
28 episodes (12 in 2024)
stream: Crunchyroll

I understand that this is sort of by nature for a show about the merciless passage of time, but outside of the main cast, the first cour of Frieren lacked many characters that felt like they’d matter going forward. The back half of Frieren‘s first season aggressively corrects this by hosting a mage exam (think the first arc of Hunter x Hunter) filled with many compelling faces they’d be stupid to not have pop up again. And while the new characters and the competitive context are all a blast, what really pops is Frieren‘s (and Frieren’s) unique relationship with magic. Already, Frieren has perhaps established itself as the most essential anime of the decade so far, and anyone with any tolerance for anime really needs to get on top of it.

8. Fantasmas
season 1
6 episodes
stream: Max


Julio Torres’ (kinda) sketch show Fantasmas wins this year’s The Curse Award for Strangest Vibe. In the upsettingly near future, Julio navigates a kafkaesque nightmare search for government documentation, and sketch-like sequences depict the peculiarities of this near future, from absurdities in technology, media, and communication to surrealist nonsense.

A young woman who plays a superhero at a theme park engages with a superfan who is not aware of non-superhero stories. Julio speaks with his annoying and extremely tiny social media consultant. A food delivery driver reveals he has a shocking past involving a major cultural moment. Julio sucks at jumping rope and makes a disturbing proposal to his jump rope class. A middle-aged man uses Grindr as “L👀KING 4 TWINKS 2 SUCK” to lure in potential victims for a photograph of his dead Pomeranian. And that’s all just one episode. Fantasmas is disorienting and hilarious, but most importantly it gives you the sensation that the dumb culture it depicts is basically already here.

7. Smiling Friends
season 2
8 episodes (17 episodes total)
stream: Max


Adult Swim’s new phenomenon has returned with an even stronger season. Smiling Friends has always specialized in the upsetting (from vaguely to very), so they dial in even more on that aspect: a scary man demands that Charlie make him smile, the disgusting Jimble requests the Smiling Friends’ help in reelecting him as the President of the United States to stave off a challenge from the ever-threatening Mr. Frog, and Pim and Mr. Boss travel to the stylistically-confounding Spamtopia, where you are not allowed to look its residents in the eye and everyone talks like they’re in the Clock Crew (if you understand that reference, congratulations). On top of that, nearly every episode uses some kind of mixed media on top of the traditionally-animated characters.

Smiling Friends‘ natural-feeling dialogue (think Home Movies) paired with its disarmingly insane events remains a winning formula, and its creators have a passion for animation that derives from their history on the Newgrounds-era internet. The only problem is that eight eleven-minute episodes is agonizingly few.

6. Arcane
season 2
9 episodes (18 total)
stream: Netflix

Look, yes, League of Legends-based Arcane is great. Its first season was great, and its conclusive second season was worth the three year wait. It’s an enormous achievement in animation, it’s a rare Western-produced animated drama that’s adult in tone, and it’s an emotional powerhouse of a show with strong themes and great characters.

But Arcane‘s second season can feel pretty bumpy! If its story about a well-off society trying to find safety by controlling the people of its poorer neighbor feels prescient, that aspect does fall a bit by the wayside compared to season one. If season one felt logical, season two feels challenging not just by feeling more abstract but by being significantly more complicated, losing some of the simplicity that made the themes in its first season pop so hard. Its insistence on maximal seriousness in all moments with zero levity can feel a little suffocating. I cannot understate this: Arcane has a stretch of four episodes where three 9/11’s happen. The show’s (great!) original soundtrack cannot stop over-describing exactly what is happening on the screen.

But all of those dings can be taken positively, too. There are few shows, let alone animated shows, whose ambitions are as high as Arcane‘s, and at a time where even a masterpiece like Scavengers Reign will get unceremoniously canceled, it’s so awesome to see a studio really financially invest in animation.

5. X-Men ’97
season 1
10 episodes
stream: Disney+

X-Men might just be the best superhero property, but its cultural life has predominantly resided in live action films for the past twenty-some years, with some very dodgy (or worse) movies marring the legacy of the great ones while said great ones are already complicated by director Bryan Singer, whose “sexual assault allegations” tab on his Wikipedia page runs pretty long. But outside of just the comics, the X-Men really belong in Saturday morning cartoons. I loved X-Men: Evolution as a kid.

But X-Men ’97 revives Evolution‘s more operatic, less complicated predecessor from 1992, and ’97 absolutely goes for it, in all directions. There are a couple of duds, sure. Jubilee and Sunspot get trapped in a video game. There’s a whole thing about a Jean Grey clone and which one is real and what that even means.

There are some that are completely off the wall. Storm loses her powers and is tormented by a demon. There’s a whole thing with aliens.

And then there is absolute fucking gold. Professor X leaves Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters to Magneto, who pleads his case in front of the United Nations. There’s the incredible episode on Genosha. Someone actually utters the words “Magneto was right.”

Even when it doesn’t completely work, it’s just a blast to see a show set off on crazy plotlines with seemingly no inhibitions. There will surely be more seasons, although showrunner Beau DeMayo was removed from the show due to allegations and evidence of sexual misconduct. Can someone normal make some great X-Men content for the screen, please?

4. Ripley
season 1
8 episodes
stream: Netflix


In 1960, New Yorker Tom Ripley is approached by one Herbert Greenleaf, who has mistaken him for a friend of his son, Dickey. Mr. Greenleaf offers to pay Ripley to travel to Italy to convince his slacker artist son to come home. Ripley accepts and travels to Italy, but Ripley is a conman and has other mysterious designs for Dickey. Dickey graciously accepts Ripley into his home, but Dickey’s girlfriend Marge senses there is something off about Dickey’s friend Tom.

The water slowly boils for two episodes until Ripley produces steam in its third episode and never stops whistling. Ripley navigates an impossible web of lies, traveling across Italy to keep everyone fooled. Ripley is extremely stressful and suspenseful for an unbearable proportion of its runtime.

It’s also shot incredibly well, with each black and white frame feeling as meticulously planned as Ripley’s next step. Andrew Scott also turns in one of the performances of the year as Tom Ripley, giving him an unnervingly pleasant radio voice. Ripley is an incredible ride, and though I haven’t read the books (or seen the film, for that matter), here’s hoping that they adapt the subsequent novels so we can get back on.

3. Interview With The Vampire
season 2
8 episodes (15 total)
stream: AMC+


Interview With The Vampire‘s first season was great, but though its second season does largely lose Sam Reid’s great performance as Lestat, the first season’s New Orleans setting began to feel cramped, and Eric Bogosian had too little to do as Daniel.

So it’s perfect that at the end of season one, Louis introduced Daniel to his (fellow vampire) lover Armand, and he just got to the part in the story where he and Claudia left for Europe. Interview deals with a larger cast this time around, and it’s refreshing to not be so bound to the Louis-Lestat-Claudia trifecta.

Interview‘s second season is just stuffed with payoffs. What happens to the Théâtre des Vampires? What really happened during Daniel’s first interview with Louis? What’s this Armand fellow’s deal? What becomes of Claudia?

Again, I can’t claim to have a strong picture of how strong an adaptation Interview is, but I’m aware that the explicit queerness, Louis and Claudia being black, and the titular interview being a follow-up are all inventions of this series. They continue to be incredibly strong elements of the show, and with this second season being so rich with resolutions to our lingering questions, few recent seasons have felt as rewarding as Interview‘s second.

2. Baby Reindeer
limited series
7 episodes
stream: Netflix


Baby Reindeer tells the real life story of how creator, director, writer, and lead actor Richard Gadd was stalked and harassed by a serial stalker (who had been to prison for it before) and how this tied into his history as a survivor of sexual assault. That’s a lot. Baby Reindeer is not usually quite as heavy as all that sounds, and indeed the intensity of “Donny” navigating the puzzle that is Martha can even occasionally feel a bit fun. But Baby Reindeer does always feel psychologically heavy, even when Donny is navigating his budding relationship with a trans woman or pursuing his dreams of being a prop comic.

Baby Reindeer is an arresting piece of television, and it’s made watchable by Josephine Bornebusch’s powerhouse turn as Martha. Martha is endlessly fascinating to watch, and Bornebusch somehow keeps her schtick fresh across these seven episodes.

It also just feels amazing that Gadd processed this personal story of his into a series like this. Baby Reindeer might feel overwhelmingly intense, but that feels slightly less so because the show itself is also a great act of courage.

1. Industry
season 3
8 episodes (24 total)
stream: Max


After one of its central characters leaves the British investment banking giant Pierpoint to end the second season, Industry has become less attached to its original central setting, and this has sparked a sense of freedom in the show. Industry‘s monumental third season is less interested in the nuts and bolts of investment banking than ever, instead taking the time to send the central characters through the wringer and stare into their souls. Rishi has loan sharks threatening to chop off his limbs. Harper fully embraces her ability to be a bad person. Eric makes his choice between loyalty to his company and loyalty to his friend. Yasmin ducks the press as her horrible father goes missing. Robert wakes up next to a dead woman. And this all centers around newcomer Kit Harrington’s role as manchild billionaire Henry Muck (hrm) and his company (a Pierpoint client) attempting to go public.

These character portraits can be so stunning and strangely captivating that The Sopranos is perhaps the only apt comparison. Rishi has the entirety of “White Mischief,” of course. Robert has an intense trip on ayahuasca in “Company Man.” We learn a distressing amount about Yasmin’s real feelings about her missing father in “Nikki Beach, or: So Many Ways To Lose.” Everyone shines in finale “Infinite Largesse,” but it’s never felt like we had a clearer picture of Eric than we do there.

And “Infinite Largesse” leaves us in a confusing place. If season two’s finale dared the show to leave the confines of Pierpoint, this finale dares even further. I almost assumed this was it for the show, but a fourth season is confirmed. I trust no show more to continue to venture into the unknown.

Honorable Mentions

Abbott Elementary, season 3 & 4
BLUE LOCK, season 2
Bob’s Burgers, seasons 14 & 15
Fallout, season 1
Heartstopper, season 3
Mr. & Mrs. Smith, season 1
My Adventures With Superman, season 2
Shrinking, season 2
Silo, season 2
The Apothecary Diaries, season 1
The Bear, season 3
The Diplomat, season 2
The Penguin, limited series
True Detective, season 4
What We Do In The Shadows, season 6

Joey’s Top Ten TV Episodes of 2024

I do four lists every year now: Songs, albums, TV shows…and then this one is the odd duck. You can certainly find lists of the best episodes, but those other units of entertainment produce orders of magnitude more. But the truth is, going back to an entire show is a lot! What if you want to revisit a show by throwing on that one dynamite episode, a self-contained bit of brilliance? Maybe you’re a freak, and you want to discard continuity and good form and just check out the best episode of a show without actually watching the episodes before it. Do people do that? Is that a thing? (I can only really recommend doing such a thing with #10 here.)

Well, I’ve got the list for you. These wouldn’t all be pleasurable rewatches that represent each show at their most quintessential, of course. A few of the highest rated episodes here are deliriously rich payoffs that do benefit greatly from the buildup. One or two is probably too emotionally intense to revisit. But to me, these were the best moments of TV in a pretty good year for it. In a year where Succession is gone and The Bear stumbled, we had to find those next classic holy-shit moments.

Tomorrow is the top twenty TV shows.

10. “Charlie, Pim, and Bill vs The Alien”
Smiling Friends
season 2, episode 6
stream: Max


Episodes six and seven of the incredible new season of Smiling Friends are a jump up on the insanity scale for the show, but while Spamtopia is probably my favorite thing from the whole season, I have to go with Charlie’s and Pim’s (and Bill’s) trip into outer space. The new setting provides an elevated horror for the show. They meet a couple of mixed media aliens (played by RedLetterMedia’s Mike Stoklasa and Rich Evans) who bully them into partying and then instruct them that they’ll push a button to blow up a populated planet, or else. When they finally arrive home, Smiling Friends hits us with an incredible twist. It’s the show’s most concerning and uncomfortable eleven minutes yet.

Also considered: “A Allan Adventure” (season 2, episode 3), “The Magical Red Jewel AKA Tyler Gets Fired” (season 2, episode 7)

9. “Red Dragon I”
Delicious in Dungeon
season 1, episode 11
stream: Netflix


You learn to appreciate the slow-roll, episodic nature of Delicious in Dungeon, learning about the flora and fauna of the titular dungeon via fictional cooking lessons. But our heroes really need to find their way back to the red dragon that swallowed their beloved mage Falin. And this is just an absolutely classic anime battle episode, with Studio Trigger balling out and spending the heck out of the animation budget. Delicious in Dungeon can feel a bit less like Dungeons & Dragons and more like a video game, as the objectives exist in the context of spaces that are very visually defined. And this is never better used than in the big boss battle, as a giant dragon chases the party through an abandoned underground city.

8. “Episode 4”
Baby Reindeer
episode 4
stream: Netflix


By its fourth episode, Richard Gadd’s autobiographical Baby Reindeer is already no stranger to depicting traumatizing events. Martha’s stalking of Donny had already gone to some pretty dark places, but something was plainly bubbling underneath the surface that made this saga all the harder for Donny.

Donny is asked why it took him so long to report Martha, and we’re whisked back to the horrible events of “Episode 4.” There’s no real way around it, “Episode 4” – which is about how Donny (a fictionalized version of Gadd, to whom these things really happened) is groomed and sexually assaulted – is a bad time, and a lot of people who aren’t already sitting out this series that unflinchingly stares into Gadd’s personal trauma might still want to skip it. But it’s a strong and valuable depiction of how these sorts of things can happen, and why people can seem unable to stop it.

Also considered: “Episode 6” (episode 6)

7. “The Red Dragon And The Gold”
House of the Dragon
season 2, episode 4
stream: Max


Game of Thrones sold itself really hard based on its CGI dragons, and people ate that shit up. But I was always pretty unimpressed. Dany’s dragons mostly just hung around occasionally breathing fire on individuals. If dragons ever actually fought each other, it was somehow never cool enough to enter the cultural memory. Well. House of the Dragon is making its bones on hot dragon-on-dragon action, and my mouth hung open for the full final fifteen minutes of “The Red Dragon And The Gold,” which makes clear just how devastating these creatures were to Targaryen-era Westeros. The immediate peril to not only the dragon-riding participants but every living thing on the ground even somewhat near the battle in the sky is so clear in a way that Game of Thrones could never make it, and “The Red Dragon And The Gold” shows that House of the Dragon is going to do some incredible things when it gets around to even crazier events in the source material.

6. “Remember It”
X-Men ’97
season 1, episode 5
stream: Disney Plus


It is simply hard to sell these episodes without just outright talking about the twist events that send them up this list, and it’s never harder than on “Remember It.” X-Men ’97 had already demonstrated that it was ready to take difficult subjects head-on in a way that its nineties predecessor probably wasn’t quite allowed, but when the X-Men travel to the mutant island nation of Genosha as it prepares to join the United Nations, X-Men ’97 goes in about as extreme a route as is possible. Great action sequences ensue, yeah, but the fact that a superhero show goes there and does so at all convincingly is extremely impressive. Here’s hoping that as long as we’re oversaturated with superhero properties, others can figure out how to build up that kind of storytelling credibility.

Also considered: “Mutant Liberation Begins” (season 1, episode 2)

5. “White Mischief”
Industry
season 3, episode 4
stream: Max


Coming unglued from a show that had just been about young talent at a major British investment bank, Industry‘s third season made the great choice to stare extremely deeply into its characters, and never was the choice more aggressive than it was on “White Mischief,” Uncut Gems but with Rishi. You see, Rishi is great at his job because he is addicted to risk, and it’s also why his life is coming completely undone. It’s really an odyssey. Rishi’s marriage is falling apart. Rishi is in deep shit with loan sharks. Rishi gambles, parties, gets the shit beaten out of him, and comes into work the next day without sleeping. Rishi pushes his role as a market maker to the absolute limit. This is all horrible, but also kind of delightful because we hadn’t gotten to glimpse Rishi outside of work basically at all, as he’s not quite a central character.

Like in Uncut Gems, there is a moment of sweet catharsis in “White Mischief.” But how does Uncut Gems end?

Also considered: “Nikki Beach, or: So Many Ways To Lose” (season 3, episode 6), “Infinite Largesse” (season 3, episode 8)

4. “To A Kinder World”
Dandadan
season 1, episode 7
stream: Netflix


“To A Kinder World” doesn’t do anything novel story-wise with its employment of the tragic-anime-backstory trope, but where it really shines is the execution. Firstly, animation studio Science Saru completely goes to town, not just with impressive and detailed animation, but creative art direction and bold visual decisions (although the brutal moment halfway in is a bit indulgently gruesome). But the real winning move is the score during the dialogue-free moments of the flashback, which adapts an incredibly sad chapter of manga and changes the mood just enough to keep that sadness but also inject it with a bit of awe that a show about aliens and spirits should always have. A ridiculously beautiful episode of television, impressively so considering that it begins with the characters recovering one of Ken Takakura’s missing testicles.

3. “III Sommerso”
Ripley
episode 3
stream: Netflix


Ripley starts a little slowly. Tom is clearly cooking up some kind of plan, but it’s unclear what it is or how quickly we’ll see any of it. Well, Tom pieces together that Dickey’s father and girlfriend have convinced him to (rightfully) doubt Tom. Tom’s plan arrives quickly from there, and he wrestles his situation so that he might have some control over it again. What ensues is a comprehensively berzerk sequence of events, so whiplash-inducing after a slow first couple of episodes. Ripley’s pursuit of whatever it is he wants does not get any easier from here, either.

Also considered: “V Lucio” (episode 5), “VIII Narcissus” (episode 8)

2. “And That’s The End Of It. There’s Nothing Else”
Interview With The Vampire
season 2, episode 8
stream: AMC+


The second season finale of Interview With The Vampire, which reaches the conclusion of the first novel in Anne Rice’s series, does begin with an action climax, true, but to my delight, that’s not really what things were building to. You see, Daniel has been listening to Louis’s story and smells bullshit. Louis squirms as Daniel asks him some clarifying questions, uncertain what he’s driving at.

All of the present day stuff in “And That’s The End Of It. There’s Nothing Else” is just so narratively satisfying. I’m totally new to the series, so I can’t comment on how it compares to the novels or the film (I’m aware of a few major differences), but I was blown away by how well this series paid off. This is also the episode where Eric Bogosian can really shine as Daniel, turning in an underrated performance in a series full of great ones. I would be satisfied if this adaptation was finished. But they’re not. There are twelve more books to adapt, after all.

Also considered: “I Could Not Prevent It” (season 2, episode 7)

1. “Green Queen”
The Curse
episode 10
stream: Showtime


I am begging you all to please watch The Curse.

The Curse was my #6 show of 2023, but its two final episodes came out in 2024, and they are both doozies. At the start of finale “Green Queen,” it’s months later, and Whitney and Asher are doing a press tour because Whitney’s Green Queen is finally on HGTV. Whitney is about to have Asher’s baby, and all is well.

The Curse has spent nine painful episodes establishing that Whitney is a hollow person desperate to be seen as good, and Asher is a loser hanger-on who, to put it politely, simply does not know how to behave. Their lives are wrapped in neverending contradiction. Whitney’s thing is building sustainable, energy-efficient homes, but she cannot square that this seemingly-good thing is not only unwanted by her community, but does active harm to it. Her ambition to turn her life into a TV show makes all this harder for her and Asher to plaster over.

So all isn’t really well, but they’ve both made it. The show and the baby are the things they’ve desperately wanted, and they are here.

But then.

“Green Queen” is one of the most memorable and astonishing payoffs in TV history, which feels ridiculous to say when almost no one I know has actually dutifully made their way through The Curse. But it’s just something you have to experience, and then it’s something you have to live with and wonder about, and then it will make you think about The Curse more.

Also considered: “Young Hearts” (episode 9)

Honorable Mentions

“A Breakup,” Mr. & Mrs. Smith, season 1 episode 8
“AGG,” Somebody Somewhere, season 3 episode 7
“Bulletproof,” Hacks, season 3 episode 9
“Cent’Anni,” The Penguin, episode 4
“Chapter Thirteen,” Pachinko, season 2 episode 5
“Crimson Sky,” Shōgun, season 1 episode 9
“Dog Christmas Day Afternoon,” Bob’s Burgers, season 15 episode 9
“Episode 1,” Uzumaki, episode 1
“Growth,” Oshi no Ko, season 2 episode 6
“Jinshi and Maomao,” The Apothecary Diaries, season 1 episode 24
“Journey,” Heartstopper, season 3 episode 4
“Last Attack,” BLUE LOCK, season 2 episode 14
“Looking4Twinks2S**k,” Fantasmas, episode 4
“Napkins,” The Bear, season 3 episode 6
“No Lessons Learned,” Curb Your Enthusiasm, season 12 episode 10
“Pretend Like It’s The First Time,” Arcane, season 2 episode 7
“The Height of Magic,” Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, season 1, episode 26
“The Last Soloist,” Sound! Euphonium, season 3 episode 12

Joey’s Top Ten Albums of 2024

Honestly, can’t complain about 2024’s music. In fact, at times I toyed with all of my top five albums below as being the #1 album of 2024. Every year as I’m crunching this feature together, I’m reminded that music is about as good as ever, there is just more of it, and thus we have fewer shared experiences that allow works to solidify into classics. Even with this year’s return of the monoculture, this remains pretty true. Only one album here (you know which one) is guaranteed a strong cultural memory in, say, twenty years. When I released those lists, I noted that consensus in the 2010s was partly stabilized by four auteuristic solo artists, with agreement on the indie canon growing looser and looser. It’ll be fascinating to check back decades from now and see what people are putting forward from the 2020s. The Pitchfork half-decade lists already don’t feel very certain.

Anyhow, this is it for the music of 2024. Come back next Thursday and Friday for features on the best TV episodes and TV shows of 2024. Two weeks from now, I’ll count down the 25 best songs of the half-decade so far.

By the way, I think the first Spotify playlist below is a pretty good time.

10. GNX
by Kendrick Lamar


As far as I can tell, the last rappers to wander through an album in awe of their own power and contemplating their place in history Ozymandias-style were Jay-Z and Kanye West. So the self-aggrandizing that runs through GNX is a little terrifying given that no one has really followed through after assuming that sort of greatness. But I’m not going to turn my nose at Kendrick’s version of the mission-accomplished The Black Album just because hyping yourself up like that is cringe or whatever. Only on “man at the garden” does that really threaten to subsume the project musically, because Kendrick has finally given us the album of bangers we’ve been waiting for. The production here is cleaner than he’s ever worked with, and while that obviously bolsters “Not Like Us” follow-ups “squabble up” and “tv off” along with ascendant R&B hit “luther,” it especially serves the “How Much A Dollar Cost”-esque swoop of “reincarnated,” where Kendrick channels John Lee Hooker and Billie Holiday before putting himself forward as the continuity of those artists.

More than him putting out bangers or thinking about his place in the rap pantheon, GNX is a pleasure because it’s the best rapper on the planet putting out work he’s really confident in, something we haven’t heard for the better part of a decade.

Listen: “tv off” (ft. Lefty Gunplay)

9. Tigers Blood
by Waxahatchee


It’s no surprise that on the other side of sobriety album Saint Cloud, Katie Crutchfield sounds totally unbothered. Her previous indie rock albums about corrosive substance abuse and explosive heartbreak? She’s not right back to it. Here she pulls off the complicated trick of making music about the uncomplicated. Even when she falls out with her friend, she’s simply “bored.” “My life’s been mapped out to a T, but I’m always a little lost,” she sings on standout “Lone Star Lake,” but she sounds fine with that. Maybe that little lostness provides enough turbulence at this stage of life. This is the final act of her good old days.

Crutchfield has now put out five (arguably six!) straight albums worthy of top ten lists. That might be the most impressive active streak in music. She is wildly dependable, and yet again her gift for melody cuts through everything, and she’s still putting out compelling music now that she’s left behind the friction.

Another great Waxahatchee album has come out. Set your watches.

Listen: “Evil Spawn”

8. Am I Okay?
by Megan Moroney


I loved last year’s debut Lucky, but I confess that I don’t mind that she’s too preoccupied to stick another “God Plays A Gibson” or similar on here. Despite the titular opener about how things might finally work out (they did not), Am I Okay? is stuffed with songs of dead love, be they straight up breakup songs, celebrations of newfound freedom, or even the one about the guy who can’t get a clue. The only successes herein are to be found in the failures. The best song here, “Noah,” is about an old flame she still thinks about, and while it doesn’t get her down, it’s still something she’s let pass her by.

Moroney does “Noah” in the style of classic Taylor Swift, she can invoke the wry humor of Kacey Musgraves at the drop of a hat, and she can lean into the more dramatic, traditional, or fiery – think Miranda Lambert or Ashley McBryde – when she really wants to. She’s not doing anything new or astounding here, but Moroney – on this list two years straight for two out of two albums – is making the very most of the basics.

Listen: “Miss Universe”

7. Manning Fireworks
by MJ Lenderman


“He’s just a jerk who flirts with the clergy nurse ’til it burns.” “Kahlua shooter/DUI scooter.” “I’ve got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome.”

The remarkable thing about MJ Lenderman’s writing, especially here on Manning Fireworks, is his bizarre way with words. Thumb through his Genius page and you’ll be struck by how brief he is on just about every song here, so it must take effort knocking things out of his head and onto the page in his particular, peculiar way. This gives these songs some of the power you might find in a very old blues standard. We know he probably has something in mind, but we’ll probably never find out quite what.

Manning Fireworks takes a step back from the fuzzy lo-fi sound of Boat Songs, and though there are a few rock-out moments, especially during solos, the album is quiet and even a little slower than you’d expect from the next move of indie’s emerging guitar god. You’ll still get a few moments of guitar heroics, but this is a very restrained album.

A current of sadness runs through Manning Fireworks: there’s the longing in “Wristwatch,” the chin-up pose of “She’s Leaving You,” and “You Don’t Know The Shape I’m In,” a great song that’s far more vulnerable than anything else here. It’s no secret that this is a breakup album, and though plenty of songs likely don’t touch on that, the cumulative effect is rather somber. But unlike a lot of breakup albums, he doesn’t really get into it, and the effect is that of a night out drinking with a sad friend where you learn a lot more about them and their sense of humor than you do about what actually went down. He will be better in the morning.

Listen: “Wristwatch”

6. hummingbird
by Carly Pearce


I was initially a little let down by the fact that, alas, this is not quite scorching divorce album 29: Unwritten In Stone, but what opened hummingbird up to me was that the arrangements make these song sound classic. My favorite is the fiddle on “heels over head” and “fault line,” and “truck on fire” recalls the old “Gunpowder & Lead” format. Pearce also sounds more comfortable varying her style on hummingbird than she did three years back.

It sounds like she’s still processing her divorce, though. Which is normal. This time, though, the sky isn’t falling. She’s processing his infidelity (and her capacity for arson). She’s getting over things and going out on the town. She’s forgetting who gave her all of these trust issues (this one’s my favorite). Nothing crazy is going on with hummingbird, just an artist who caught fire last time out turning into a more sustainable songwriting master. She’s got a great thing going.

Listen: “trust issues”

5. Utopia Now!
by Rosie Tucker


Rosie Tucker joins Emperor X as the only music artist that can really show how dumb the world is getting. “The lightbulb is updating!” is how the first song begins. That most basic of consumer electronics now needs your wi-fi password. But more than just the Hank-Hill-bwah inanity of that, Tucker continues that “light bulbs only die to maximize demand.” This is an obvious deficiency in our world, and absolutely no one has the power to stop it even when it’s pointed out. The demands of capital have imposed themselves, and that’s why we need to keep buying lightbulbs, it’s why your two-day-shipping comes with a bunch of single-use plastic that goes in the garbage immediately, and it’s why they want to build a sweatshop on the moon (“like none of these fuckers ever even heard of Gil Scott-Heron”).

Tucker takes these hyper-topical morsels about a dying society and world and ties them to other messages. “All My Exes Live In Vortexes” is about a failing relationship. “Lightbulb” is about their music career and their recent adventures in changing labels. “Gil Scott Albatross,” which opens so spitefully, turns into a declaration of love. “Paperclip Maximizer,” well, just read the press release. It continues like this. Songs also begin with stunning couplets like “The farther off the celestial body/The better glimpsed by the edge of the eye.”

Tucker dunks their face into the wretchedness and stupidity of 2024 and comes out of it hopeful and loving. Hopefully they still have that energy, I could use some proof that we’re capable of summoning it.

Listen: “Gil Scott Albatross”

4. Alligator Bites Never Heal
by Doechii


Since storming on the scene with “Yucky Blucky Fruitcake” – the best breakthrough rap single in a long time – four whole years back, Doechii has mostly fallen off my radar. So it was a great surprise when I turned on Alligator Bites Never Heal, her first ever release that tops twenty-five minutes, and found that it was the most compelling hip hop of the young decade. Hearing “DENIAL IS A RIVER” for the first time is a revelation, a bit of rap vaudeville worthy of Eminem. The scorcher “NISSAN ALTIMA” is a stunning display of rap dexterity that goes super hard. Right out of the gate she evokes Top Dawg labelmate Kendrick Lamar, with “STANKA POOH” ominously humming just like the first moments of “Sherane,” then referencing him more explicitly with her own “get Top on the phone!” on the stuttering, dizzying “BOOM BAP.” She sings her own (great) hook on “WAIT.” Honestly, the only thing that keeps this from being album of the year outright is that there’s definitely a dropoff after “NISSAN ALTIMA.” Makes sense considering she’s branded this a “mixtape.” We’ll see how she navigates the breakout mixtape to first studio album jump, it’s a tough one.

After a long period of hip hop fracturing, Doechii feels poised to be the next big thing, helping herself with a full court media press to close out the year. I haven’t heard anyone so ready to take over hip hop since, well…

Listen: “BOILED PEANUTS”

3. Short n’ Sweet
by Sabrina Carpenter


I figured Sabrina Carpenter was out of gas. After promoting “Feather” for the deluxe version of her very underrated emails i can’t send album, I thought “Espresso” was a one-off. When she announced Short n’ Sweet, I assumed the title was managing expectations.

Quickly, I discovered that the first ten songs of the new album are incredible. I still can’t find my way into the slower final tracks, but aside from the singles, she dips her toes into country on “Slim Pickins,” she picks up some K-pop zip for “Good Graces,” she goes full Rilo Kiley (!) for “Coincidence.” Every hook hits. She’s fucking hilarious, and pretty dirty: the big emotional climax is a song where she asks a guy to get her pregnant (“make me Juno,” yes, like the Diablo Cody film).

Most songs are about an idiot guy, probably mostly the same idiot guy, with the songs warning her man to not fuck this up likely being related to the songs about a guy who’s fucked it up. A few songs sound troubled, but more often she’s confident and cracking wise, almost above it. In “Slim Pickins” she admits she’s only really with him for lack of a better options. In “Taste,” she finds easy solace in what revenge against her rival she can find.

emails i can’t send was great, but that leap in confidence was all she needed. If this is how things are going forward, that’s crazy, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she joined fated rival Olivia Rodrigo as a likely suspect for this list going forward.

Listen: “Juno”

2. Brat
by Charli xcx


The difficult charge at this point in the list is explaining why Brat, and not any other Charli album to this point, became Charli’s critical and commercial step up. Was this really such an improvement?

Charli has been putting out great music for well over a decade now, but every album to this point has felt like a half-measure. Her best ’til now, 2017’s Pop 2, was her clearest aesthetic statement, an uncompromising piece of forward-thinking pop, and while she’s made two clear mainstream-move albums since then (Charli and Crash), her ultimate breakthrough has come in another moment when she has insisted on a fully realized vision.

BRAT turns itself into a meme before you even get the chance to. Obviously a perversion of “360” already ends the album, “bumping that” having already been refracted through an entire house of mirrors. There’s the iconic, ironic album art. There are a few dead-serious songs here, yeah, but there is a peculiar tone about the proceedings. In what tone of voice will your friends say that they’re so Julia, that they’re a 3-6-5 party girl, that it’s so obvious they’re your number one, fall in love again and again? Your mind expands, perceiving that anything could be brat. Lanky tennis rascal Daniil Medvedev, is he brat? The defining songs here disappear up their own ass, in the best sort of way.

This is how a Charli XCX album almost ruined what became an impossibly long summer.

God, I wish we had it back.

Listen: “365”

1. Bright Future
by Adrianne Lenker


It’s easy to see Big Thief as the last top tier indie band that’s still in its heyday. Their two great 2019 albums significantly rose their profile, and 2022’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You was not only their finest album, but the sort of album whose adventurousness in the studio raised their regard as a unit.

But Adrianne Lenker is prolific enough to give us solo offerings too, and unfortunately for that narrative, her album Bright Future is the best thing she’s ever been involved with. This is the fifth album on this list dominated by breakup songs (whoa, that’s a lot), and the uncomfortable intimacy of her solo process makes it impossible to run from how devastated her songwriting is here. Opener “Real House” plods along with the most minimal of instrumentation for six entire minutes, never varying its melody as it drifts through heartbreakingly vivid images of childhood. In one verse she interrupts to turn and face her mother, in the present, before returning to memories. By the end, she’s recalling key moments from her childhood about her mom. “I never saw you cry/Not until our dog died.” It’s not clear what Lenker wants to communicate to her mother. But the context alone is overwhelming.

The whole album is not as barren and startling as “Real House.” “Vampire Empire” has already gotten the full band treatment from Big Thief, but she re-releases it here as a more fun ditty. The fiddle on standout “Sadness As A Gift” is the most beautiful musical element of the entire year. Even the more minimal songs give you something. The piano on “Evol” is hypnotic and each guitar note of “Fool” hits like a drop of rain. “Ruined” hovers and shakes, not allowing us to leave the experience with much relief.

“I thought of this whole world ending/I thought of dying unprepared.” “Maybe the question was too much to ask.” She changes “time and attention” to “the eleventh dimension” for a final chorus. Her lyricism is simultaneously plain (“I never thought we’d go this long/Now I’m thirty-one and I don’t feel strong”) and metaphysical. This is the moment where if you asked me who the greatest songwriter working is, Adrianne Lenker is probably the first name that pops into my mind. It feels like she will really just keep doing this forever, too. She has no creative fire she needs to keep alight, this is just how she is. Her gifts for melody, arrangement, and lyrics are just too considerable, and her singing and playing being great on top of that feels unfair.

It’s strange to call it the best album of 2024. Lenker and Big Thief are entirely unaffected by trends and narratives, and this is Lenker’s most timeless work yet.

Listen: “Free Treasure”

The Next 15

11. Hurray For The Riff Raff: The Past Is Still Alive (Listen: “Hawkmoon”)
12. Magdalena Bay: Imaginal Disk (Listen: “Image”)
13. Beyoncé: COWBOY CARTER (Listen: “YA YA”)
14. This Is Lorelei: Box For Buddy, Box For Star (Listen: “Dancing In The Club”)
15. The Paranoid Style: The Interrogator (Listen: “Last Night In Chickentown”)
16. Pouty: Forgot About Me (Listen: “Salty”)
17. Gouge Away: Deep Sage (Listen: “Stuck In A Dream”)
18. Tucker Zimmerman: Dance of Love (Listen: “Burial At Sea”)
19. LL Cool J: THE FORCE (Listen: “Murdergram Deux” (ft. Eminem))
20. Maggie Rogers: Don’t Forget Me (Listen: “Sick Of Dreaming”)
21. Los Campesinos!: All Hell (Listen: “kms”)
22. Tyla: Tyla (Listen: “Truth Or Dare”)
23. Ekko Astral: pink balloons (Listen: “baethoven”)
24. Wishy: Triple Seven (Listen: “Triple Seven”)
25. Morgan Wade: Obsessed (Listen: “Total Control”)

Further Top 50

Allega Krieger: Art of the Unseen Infinity Machine (Listen: “Never Arriving”)
Billie Eilish: HIT ME HARD AND SOFT (Listen: “LUNCH”)
Carsie Blanton: After The Revolution (Listen: “After The Revolution”)
Charli xcx: Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat (Listen: “Talk talk” (ft. Troye Sivan))
English Teacher: This Could Be Texas (Listen: “Not Everybody Gets To Go To Space”)
FLO: Access All Areas (Listen: “Walk Like This”)
Fontaines D.C.: Romance (Listen: “Favourite”)
GloRilla: Ehhthang Ehhthang (Listen: “Yeah Glo!”)
GloRilla: GLORIOUS (Listen: “TGIF”)
Jlin: Akoma (Listen: “The Precision Of Infinity” (with Philip Glass))
Kim Deal: Nobody Loves You More (Listen: “Coast”)
Mannequin Pussy: I Got Heaven (Listen: “Loud Bark”)
Mdou Moctar: Funeral For Justice (Listen: “Funeral For Justice”)
Miranda Lambert: Postcards From Texas (Listen: “Dammit Randy”)
Mount Eerie: Night Palace (Listen: “I Saw Another Bird”)
Nilüfer Yanya: My Method Actor (Listen: “Like I Say (I runaway)”)
Pissed Jeans: Half Divorced (Listen: “Everywhere Is Bad”)
Sheer Mag: Playing Favorites (Listen: “Moonstruck”)
Tems: Born In The Wild (Listen: “Love Me JeJe”)
The Buoys: Lustre (Listen: “Ahead Of Myself”)
The Chisel: What A Fucking Nightmare (Listen: “Cry Your Eyes Out”)
Tierra Whack: WORLD WIDE WHACK (Listen: “CHANEL PIT”)
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross: Challengers (Original Score) (Listen: “Yeah x10”)
Tyler, The Creator: CHROMAKOPIA (Listen: “Balloon” (ft. Doechii)
Wussy: Cincinnati Ohio (Listen: “Inhaler”)

Honorable Mentions

Adrianne Lenker: i won’t let go of your hand (Purchase)
ALAN SPARHAWK: White Roses, My God (Listen: “Get Still”)
Allie X: Girl With No Face (Listen: “Weird World”)
Amyl and the Sniffers: Cartoon Darkness (Listen: “U Should Not Be Doing That”)
Brittany Howard: What Now (Listen: “Prove It To You”)
Burial: Dreamfear / Boy Sent From Above (Listen: “Dreamfear”)
Camera Obscura: Look To The East, Look To The West (Listen: “Big Love”)
Charly Bliss: Forever (Listen: “Waiting For You”)
Cheekface: It’s Sorted (Listen: “Popular 2”)
Christopher Owens: I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair (Listen: “I Think About Heaven”)
Clairo: Charm (Listen: “Juna”)
Drug Church: PRUDE (Listen: “Myopic”)
Father John Misty: Mahashmashana (Listen: “I Guess Time Just Makes Fools Of Us All”)
glass beach: plastic death (Listen: “rare animal”)
Greg Mendez: First Time / Alone (Listen: “Alone”)
Heems & Lapgan: LAFANDAR (Listen: “Sri Lanka” (ft. Your Old Droog))
Hinds: VIVA HINDS (Listen: “Boom Boom Back” (ft. Beck))
illuminati hotties: POWER (Listen: “Falling In Love With Somebody Better”)
Jack White: No Name (Listen: “Old Scratch Blues”)
Jamie xx: In Waves (Listen: “Baddy On The Floor” (ft. Honey Dijon))
Ka: The Thief Next To Jesus (Listen: “Bread Wine Body Blood”)
Kali Uchis: ORQUÍDEAS (Listen: “Igual Que Un Ángel” (with Peso Pluma))
Kelly Lee Owens: Dreamstate (Listen: “Love You Got”)
Kim Gordon: The Collective (Listen: “BYE BYE”)
Liquid Mike: Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot (Listen: “K2”)
Mk.gee: Two Stars & The Dream Police (Listen: “Are You Looking Up”)
Nourished By Time: Catching Chickens (Listen: “Hand On Me”)
Origami Angel: Feeling Not Found (Listen: “Dirty Mirror Selfie”)
Porridge Radio: Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me (Listen: “Sick Of The Blues”)
Porter Robinson: SMILE! 😀 (Listen: “Knock Yourself Out XD”)
Ruby Bell: Greatest Hits (Listen: “Internet bf”)
Shakira: Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (Listen: “(Entre Paréntesis)” (with Grupo Frontera))
Shellac: To All Trains (Listen: “I Don’t Fear Hell”)
Shygirl: Club Shy (Listen: “mr useless”)
Sleater-Kinney: Little Rope (Listen: “Say It Like You Mean It”)
Soccer Mommy: Evergreen (Listen: “Driver”)
SPRINTS: Letter To Self (Listen: “Heavy”)
The Cure: Songs of a Lost World (Listen: “Alone”)
The Hard Quartet: The Hard Quartet (Listen: “Rio’s Song”)
The Last Dinner Party: Prelude To Ecstasy (Listen: “Nothing Matters”)
The Smile: Cutouts (Listen: “Zero Sum”)
The Smile: Wall of Eyes (Listen: “Wall Of Eyes”)
Tinashe: Quantum Baby (Listen: “No Broke Boys”)
Tom Noble: House of Spirits (Listen: “Diamond Eyes” (ft. dreamcastmoe))
TORRES: What an enormous room (Listen: “Collect”)
Vampire Weekend: Only God Was Above Us (Listen: “Capricorn”)
Various Artists: I Saw The TV Glow (Original Soundtrack) (Listen: “Starburned And Unkissed”)
Vince Staples: Dark Times (Listen: “Shame On The Devil”)
X: Smoke & Fiction (Listen: “Big Black X”)
Zach Bryan: The Great American Bar Scene (Listen: “Pink Skies” (ft. Watchhouse))

And finally, as always, here are some playlists. The first includes one track from every album listed above. The second includes the top ten albums in their entirety.

Joey’s Top Ten Songs of 2024

Music became a warzone in 2024. Not one but two diss tracks hit #1 on the Hot 100 (Megan actually has the most scorching line between them: “These hoes don’t be mad at Megan/These hoes mad at Megan’s Law”). Chappell Roan’s demands for basic personal liberties traumatized droves of entitled fans. K-pop’s ascendant NewJeans ground to a halt to fight with management. Beyoncé’s country album is largely about her experience at the CMAs. Anna Wintour gutted Pitchfork, perhaps the preeminent driver of consensus in popular music today. Camila Cabello attempted a style shift so baffling and inept that I had to respect its power.

2024’s music will always be remembered by its big stories. Kendrick vs. Drake. Brat Summer. Sabrina Carpenter making the jump to superstardom. Chappell Roan rocketing impossibly fast to superstardom. Shaboozey taking over the Hot 100 and challenging the record held by “Old Town Road.” Monoculture has felt more alive this year than it has in a while, and it’s honestly felt kind of refreshing. In a year that otherwise made no sense, popular music finally stabilized for a second.

As always, I’ve prepared Spotify playlists at the bottom of this article. I’ve always felt that listening to the first one without shuffle is the best way to enjoy this feature. Thanks, folks. Tomorrow is the albums list.

10. “euphoria”
by Kendrick Lamar

Okay, first off, I don’t cosign all of this. Kendrick says some weird stuff here. I won’t take up your time picking them out, just preemptively noting that, yeah, I know this and that line don’t need to be there.

But despite all that, “euphoria” is just a blast, maybe the most fun diss track I’ve ever heard. A chill goes down my spine when, after Kendrick rejects that their beef is about pride, the church bell tolls as Kendrick hits “hater” in “now let me say I’m the biggest hater.” You wonder how Drake can keep up with Kendrick’s buttery flow on that “I hate when a rapper talk about guns” stanza. You hear “I like Drake with the melodies, I don’t like Drake when he act tough” and realize that might be the final word on his body of work.

Shit’s fucking funny, too. There’s the weird Joel Osteen/Haley Joel Osment mixup, there’s the music stopping before he goes “some shit just cringeworthy, it ain’t even gotta be deep I guess,” and there’s the Push-invoking nothing ’bout thaaaaat.

Not everything holds up under scrutiny, but “euphoria” is an absolute clinic, a dizzying demonstration of technical prowess over a fun Sounwave beat that earns its way into the Hall of Fame of hatred.

Don’t bring back Puff, though. Don’t do that!

9. “She’s Leaving You”
by MJ Lenderman

“We all got work to do.”

It’s hard to think of a more mature, productive takeaway from the end of a relationship (although my #13 song of the year certainly competes), but MJ Lenderman is doing his best to move on with grace. Is he deluding himself and holding back emotionally? On verse two, he tells himself that he’s not in Vegas to gamble only to rationalize himself into it. The rest of Manning Fireworks contains some of the devastation he doesn’t indulge in here, but here he’s matter-of-fact. It falls apart. It does get dark. We all got work to do. You can’t disagree.

And then there’s the haunting background vocal that’s all by itself at the end, provided by ex-girlfriend and still-bandmate Karly Hartzman. That vocal leaves the song in a very troubled place even while it manages to keep its head up.

8. “MILLION DOLLAR BABY”
by Tommy Richman

I’m sorry, who?

“MILLION DOLLAR BABY” is one of the most out-of-nowhere hits in a while, and it sounds like a slightly twisted and wrong version of today’s pop. It sounds like Tommy is singing this from underwater, yet it’s still loud enough to just about blow up your laptop speakers. Richman mumbles a whole bunch of nonsense in his falsetto. That’s “I ain’t ever rep a set, baby” at the start, and your ears don’t deceive you, he’s saying “don’t @ me.” Apparently this song was actually a rush-job, meaning that lightning really struck for Richman. His album followed this to absolutely zero fanfare, but that minimal, blown-out sound we get in “MILLION DOLLAR BABY” is both one of the most fun and most unique pop songs of the year, and though he hasn’t capitalized, maybe he’ll get another hit if he really wants it so badly.

7. “Espresso”
by Sabrina Carpenter

Some Sabrina Carpenter songs are melodically stronger (and resemble “Say So” a whole lot less), but “Espresso” is the one that just doesn’t let up. The backing track is too fun, the rap-style sex boasts go hard, and those backing vocals going “YES!” are just perfect.

And it’s just funny. “Mountain Dew it for ya” rhymes with “coffee, brewed it for ya.” “Switch it up like Nintendo” is the rare lyrical punchline about a contemporary gaming system. “My honeybee, come and get this pollen” still makes me blush.

Sabrina doesn’t seem all that interested in this guy, but she is having a great time with how thoroughly he’s hooked on her. “Espresso” isn’t really a song about sex, but the startling confidence and assuredness she finds therein.

6. “the girl, so confusing version with lorde”
by Charli xcx (ft. Lorde)

BRAT is a fantastic album, a deserving consensus album of 2024, but “the girl, so confusing version with lorde” (featuring Lorde) reveals one deficiency: Charli isn’t all that locked in lyrically. The first verse here, left intact from the album version, certainly gets the job done, but aside from “We talk about making music/But I don’t know if it’s honest” each line feels pretty functional.

Which is not really something you notice until Lorde shows up. Because ohhhhhhhhhh my god. The last time a feature verse blew me away more than this was Nicki’s spot on “Monster.”

It’s honestly a tough choice between this, “360,” and “Von dutch,” but there’s something so rare about the sound of two people working it out on the remix.

Take it away, Kyle.

@kyle_maclachlan

the girl, so confusing remix and it’s the same but i made a music video to it so it’s not

♬ original sound – Kyle MacLachlan

5. “Off With Her Tits”
by Allie X

“Off With Her Tits” is a lot of things at once. It’s overdramatic, it’s jokey, it’s a bop, it’s dead fucking serious. It’s a fun dancefloor jam that evokes The Knife, but it’s also a harrowing story that can be unpleasant to listen to and think about. “Off With Her Tits” sees comedy in these series of tragedies experienced by its gender dysphoric narrator, at least in a bang-your-head-against-the-table kind of way. Allie X makes sure to give this situation the proper weight, and makes sure to not present it as just another sad story.

4. “Angel Of My Dreams”
by JADE

After intro-ing with that big, bright chorus, “Angel Of My Dreams” quickly descends into Hell. Thirteen years after Little Mix was One-Directioned together on The X Factor, JADE feels cheated, and she expresses her feelings through a chaotic smorgasbord of pop elements. There’s the demonic, driving pulse and the contrasting versions of the chorus, the ones at the bookends hefty and brilliant, the ones between frantic and twisted. Pop songs abound about not getting everything you’re promised in the trade, but “Angel Of My Dreams” has a particularly sharp ire, as it seems specifically targeted. Can’t imagine a more satisfying resolution for Mixers everywhere.

Who needs Simon Le Cowell?

3. “Good Luck, Babe!”
by Chappell Roan

With a backing track sounding like it came out of Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” session, “Good Luck, Babe!” is the cherry on top of Chappell Roan’s ascent – the clear music story of 2024. And it isn’t characterized by a sort of magic the way “Pink Pony Club” is and it isn’t laced with pop crack the way “HOT TO GO!” is. It’s just her strongest piece of songwriting yet, bolstered by a skilled and restrained vocal. It’s perhaps the most horrifying sendoff to a failed love you might hear in a pop song (reminiscent of 2024’s cult hit I Saw The TV Glow): if you won’t get with me, what if you’re never yourself?

2. “All My Exes Live In Vortexes”
by Rosie Tucker

Did you know:

1. Amazon workers skip bathroom breaks and pee in bottles in order to keep their jobs?
2. Packaging is the world’s largest source of plastic waste, comprising about 40% of all plastic waste?
3. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a mass of plastic in the North Pacific Ocean around the size of Alaska, and apparently a Dutch nonprofit has plans to clean it up within ten years, pending financial support?
4. The plastic industry basically lied to everyone, and very little plastic ever gets recycled?
5. Even in the case of plastic that does get recycled, it degrades with every turnover?

But we’re all just middle-sized fish. So it’s not really on us.

Anyway. This song is about a failing relationship.

1. “Not Like Us”
by Kendrick Lamar

It was game two of the Western Conference Semifinals between the Denver Nuggets and our Minnesota Timberwolves, and Jaden McDaniels and Nickeil Alexander-Walker had just done this to Jamal Murray. I looked at my phone for probably the fiftieth time already that game, and oh god. Oh shit.

Now deep into their beef, Drake and Kendrick had just traded sprawling and nauseatingly messy tracks late the night prior within half an hour of each other. Kendrick planned things so he’d have the last word of the night, but here he was back for more. The single’s “cover” was presumably an image of Drake’s house, lovingly marked in the way a sex offender registry map might be. Yet another thing you react to by widening your eyes, shaking your head, and moving your head slightly back as if you were taking a small amount of psychic damage on Drake’s behalf. We were all getting fairly used to that ritual.

DJ Mustard had taken Monk Higgins’ cover of Ray Charles’ “I Believe To My Soul” and used two samples to fairly opposite ends. The “Not Like Us” intro and pre-chorus sounds like a party. Kendrick Lamar is here to declare and celebrate victory. We are all invited to the party. The sample that runs throughout, meanwhile, sounds evil, like the song that plays when the villain unleashes his henchmen. The gleeful hatred of “Not Like Us” is a feeling that doesn’t leave you.

And Kendrick, giving us his best Drakeo the Ruler flow, expands our minds regarding what we might find in a diss track. You can just flat out call the guy a pedophile. You can deliver a 5/10 joke so well that the entire country will learn it. And most unexpectedly of all, Kendrick could give a brief history lesson before dressing down The Drake Effect – a bump Drake can give to a smaller artist often thought of as an act of benevolence – as an act of colonization.

“Not Like Us” is the song of the year not just for its power, although there is certainly that. The last time Drake got destroyed in an exchange of diss tracks, he immediately shrugged it off and spent fourteen of the next seventeen weeks at the top of the Hot 100. This time, I hear an apologetic tone in people’s voice whenever anyone says a positive word about his music. Perhaps this will stop after Kendrick ceases his parade of reminders: a livestreamed concert film, a music video, a surprise album, a Super Bowl Halftime performance, a stadium tour…I could say a lot about all of this, but I’ll spare you.

But “Not Like Us” is the song of the year because it viscerally taps into feelings of revenge, power, and hate. And finding joy therein. It’s pretty disgusting, but for four and a half minutes, it’s a pretty great time.

Not about who the greatest, it’s always been about love and hate.

WOP WOP WOP WOP WOP

Maybe you hated Simon Cowell. Maybe you hated the CMAs. Maybe you hated sex pests, be they alleged or convicted. Honestly? It was fun. The year of hate really served us well.

Well, until it didn’t.

The Next 15

11. Doechii: “NISSAN ALTIMA”
12. Charli xcx: “Von dutch”
13. Adrianne Lenker: “Sadness As A Gift”
14. Doechii: “DENIAL IS A RIVER”
15. Future, Metro Boomin & Kendrick Lamar: “Like That”
16. Charli xcx: “360”
17. Megan Thee Stallion: “HISS”
18. Maggie Rogers: “Don’t Forget Me”
19. Waxahatchee (ft. MJ Lenderman): “Right Back To It”
20. Sabrina Carpenter: “Taste”
21. Magdalena Bay: “Death & Romance”
22. Shaboozey: “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”
23. Beyoncé & Shaboozey: “SWEET★HONEY★BUCKIIN'”
24. Tinashe: “Nasty”
25. Charly Bliss: “Back There Now”

Honorable Mentions

aespa: “Supernova”
Billie Eilish: “BIRDS OF A FEATHER”
Camila Cabello (ft. Playboi Carti): “I LUV IT”
Charli xcx: “Apple”
Charli xcx (ft. Billie Eilish): “Guess”
Charly Bliss: “Calling You Out”
Fontaines D.C.: “Starburster”
Los Campesinos!: “Holy Smoke (2005)”
Macklemore: “HIND’S HALL”
Megan Moroney: “Noah”
NewJeans: “How Sweet”
NLE Choppa: “SLUT ME OUT 2”
Porter Robinson: “Cheerleader”
The Lonely Island: “Sushi Glory Hole”
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross: “Challengers: Match Point”
Tyler, The Creator (ft. GloRilla, Sexxy Red & Lil Wayne): “Sticky”
Wishy: “Love On The Outside”

And as always, here are Spotify playlists to go with this feature, first of all the songs listed and then of just the top ten.

Joey’s Top Twenty TV Shows of 2023

It’s strange to think the best year for TV in a damn while could have been even better. The WGA and SAG/AFTRA strikes halted production for much of the year, but somehow we still had a completely unbelievable crop of shows.

In turn, I watched an ungodly amount of television in 2023, and I don’t feel all that silly about it! What I will say is that if I turn you onto something through this list, please tell me and let me know what you think. That’s a great reward to me for putting in as much time as I have.

This is it for the 2023 lists. I’ll see you all next year.

20. Silo
season 1
10 episodes
stream: Apple TV


In what sounds like it might almost be a parody of LOST-likes, 10,000 people live in a silo and no one really knows why. All institutional memory was wiped out over a century prior, and while it’s accepted that the silo protects the population from the deadly air of the outside world (after all, a common execution method is sending people outside with everyone watching), the veracity thereof has come into question. Each two years apart, IT worker Allison Becker (Rashida Jones), Sheriff Holston Becker (David Oyelowo), and engineer Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) try to solve the mysteries of the Silo, but its authorities are committed to putting an end to such questions. Silo doesn’t exactly break new ground, but its mysteries are engrossing and it steadily rewards your attention. I promise the season pays off.

19. Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake
season 1
10 episodes
stream: Max


It’s funny to see a show that got the ending so right the first time continue to tempt fate. When the Distant Lands series was announced, I bristled a little because I thought Adventure Time‘s finale, “Come Along With Me,” was pretty entirely perfect, and thought it would feel weird to spend more time with these characters after their arcs had been completed. But Adventure Time has navigated this problem well by making all of its epilogues so thoroughly cut off in time from the original series. The glory days are all long gone.

Twelve years after the events of the show proper, Simon Petrikov has accepted a life as a living science exhibit of humans from the distant past. He’s not exactly fulfilled by it, and spends his time trying to figure out a way to reunite with his lost-to-magic love Betty. Finn, now pushing thirty-years-old, recognizes that Simon needs an adventure, but Finn’s whole shtick seems too crazy now that he’s not a teenager.

Fionna and Cake, who have until this point just been fanfiction by the Ice King, become real due to some cosmic accident, and it’s their fresh eyes that end up taking Simon on the journey he needs. The multiverse media market is a little oversaturated at this point, but Adventure Time has often worked at a scale that deals with that sort of mess, and it makes the most of the detours it sends our new heroes on. The ending is a bit messy, but Simon in particular is given exactly the final note his character really needed.

18. Yellowjackets
season 2
9 episodes (19 total)
stream: Showtime


Yellowjackets‘ first season – about a high school soccer team lost in the Canadian wilderness and the survivors dealing with the fallout decades later – was positively thrilling, and I called it my second favorite show of 2021. Season two loses a bit of luster. The present day storyline feels a bit less rewarding this time around, and the whole deal feels a bit less exhilarating. But the nineties storyline really keeps it up, richly paying off two moments we knew would have to come.

17. Oshi no Ko
season 1
11 episodes
stream: HIDIVE

Oshi no Ko, based on a manga written by the author of the also-great Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, is about the main character trying to solve a mystery (the nature of which would be a spoiler to my #3 episode of 2023). However, the mystery progresses at a glacial pace in this first season, instead serving as an excuse to tour us through the nooks and crannies of the Japanese entertainment industry. An entire arc revolves around a not-well-received streaming-only romcom series. Another is about a dating show, although think one with far less structure than the ones we watch. We see the dark underbelly of social media’s relationship with microcelebrities. We…meet a muscular physical fitness YouTuber who conceals his identity with a very strange bird mask. Even when it seems like it’s meandering away from the promise of that unbelievable first episode, Oshi no Ko‘s energy and production make it demand your attention, and the promise of more is tantalizing.

16. BEEF
limited series
10 episodes
stream: Netflix


Sometimes people just hate each other. Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) and Amy Lau (Ali Wong) start out with a near-accident in a parking lot, and they immediately chase each other around town in their cars. Somehow, things escalate from there throughout the series. They’re both from separate worlds: Danny is a working class contractor who is struggling to keep his customers so he can move his parents there from South Korea, while Amy is already somewhat wealthy and looking to cash out of her business.

BEEF surprises you every time the conflict escalates to the next level, and it’s especially interesting the way Danny and Amy worm their way into the others’ life, whether it’s a strategic choice in their war or it’s a complete accident.

15. Vinland Saga
season 2
24 episodes (48 total)
stream: Netflix


Vinland Saga‘s first season was stupendous, and there have been few seasons of anime as good since. Season two mostly falters because its first half features a lot of tablesetting. Season one’s story of a young viking kidnapped into war and nursing a revenge fantasy has fallen entirely away (not to mention arguably its best character is gone), and after a large timeskip between seasons, we find Thorfinn as a slave. It takes much of the season for him to regain agency in the story, but fortunately King Canute, another highlight of the first season, plans an attack on the farm as a solution to his political problems. While this season is less flashy, it’s still a very serious meditation on season one’s kinetic mess, with a satisfying resolution to Thorfinn’s revenge arc.

14. How To With John Wilson
season 3
6 episodes (18 total)
stream: Max


How To With John Wilson ends its glorious run of three seasons (only eighteen episodes!) with its approach essentially unchanged. How To mostly features Wilson wandering around New York City and lucking into interviews that are either beautifully mundane, painfully awkward, or, everyone’s favorite, memorably odd.

Wilson takes us to a wireless-less town filled with electromagnetic hypersensitivity sufferers. He goes to a vacuum convention. He finds an organization obsessed with freezing themselves so that they might live forever. And the series ends with the most personal and intense anecdote anyone has ever given him. I do implore you to make your way through this show if you still haven’t. It really emphasizes that even the oddest folks are hauntingly ordinary.

13. Poker Face
season 1
10 episodes
stream: Peacock


Natasha Lyonne’s Charlie Cale doesn’t have any history as a mystery-solver. But she does have a history as a gambler, and it’s her power to flawlessly notice when someone is lying that gets the attention of the manager of the casino where she works. But when she solves the mystery of the murder of her friend and coworker, she makes too powerful an enemy and has to go on the lam.

So Cale travels across the country and keeps running into mysteries to unravel. That seems simple enough, but creator Rian Johnson gives Poker Face a strong sense of style, and each mystery Cale comes across is structurally distinct. Poker Face is one of the most charming shows of the year, and while it’s never really entirely stunning, it’s extremely reliable and likely will remain so when the next season rolls around.

12. Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
season 1
28 episodes (16 in 2023)
stream: Crunchyroll

Elven mage Frieren returns with her party from the land’s definitive adventure. Having defeated the demon king following a ten year journey, Frieren celebrates but then quickly wanders off and travels the land. When she returns sixty years later (not much time at all for an elf with a lifespan of thousands of years), she’s shocked to find her companion Himmel the hero (who she has always been fascinated by) has aged. The typically emotionless Frieren breaks down in tears when he dies soon after: “Why didn’t I try to get to know him better?” And while Frieren initially waved off implications that her journey with Himmel and company had a great effect on her by shrugging, “My adventure with you wasn’t even one one-hundredth of my life,” another previous party member later retorts, “It’s funny, isn’t it? That one one-hundredth changed you.”

Frieren is changed by these realizations and attempts to change her attitude towards time, life, and how she relates to others. She sets out on a new journey with a young human mage under her wing.

Frieren is a quiet show about learning to value the moment you’re in, but so far it’s luckily already treated us to a big climax. But more importantly, it shows us a changing land, beautifully showing Frieren‘s natural world and, given that nearly 80 in-universe years have already passed since the show’s start, how things change and how we process that.

11. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off
limited series
8 episodes
stream: Netflix

Given the cult film was written only halfway into its run, it’s fantastic to finally see the original Scott Pilgrim comic properly adapted to the screen, and by anime industry wonder studio Science Saru, no less. The animation of this show is off the charts wonderful.

The entire cast of the film returns for the English dub, and it’s consistently disarming how a stacked-at-the-time cast has gotten immeasurably more famous. Michael Cera is still the same Michael Cera, but Chris Evans, Brie Larson, Kieran Culkin, Anna Kendrick, and Aubrey Plaza are just a few names that have sprung much further into the public eye. So it’s great that everyone made time to revisit this 2010 moment. Further, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game composers Anamanaguchi take on the scoring duty, creating great original music alongside great licensed moments.

Just as an aside, this might have been a great opportunity to, I don’t know, disabuse certain fans of the comic and film of its regard for the main character and his love interest by instead sending Ramona through the tour of her own evil exes. After all, she might stand to grow more as a person by revisiting those people than Scott ever could, yeah?

But as it’s a direct adaptation of the comic, nothing of the sort happens. But still, you should go check. Just in case.

10. Reservation Dogs
season 3
10 episodes (28 total)
stream: Hulu


I’m a little alarmed that Reservation Dogs has been called off after three seasons, but its final season is a lovely sendoff to the most reliable show of the young decade.

Season two’s resolution to the Daniel story felt a bit final, but Reservation Dogs still has to deal with its central characters. Elora considers leaving again, but this time to college instead of California. Bear is finally sent on the journey his character needed. Willie Jack starts becoming an anchor in the community. Cheese, uh, doesn’t need glasses anymore.

Reservation Dogs still has plenty of good stuff saved for its final act. There’s a flashback episode, Bear’s run-in with Deer Lady brings an unexpected dive into the horrid legacy of Native American boarding schools, the gang initiates a heist, and finally Reservation Dogs throws a funeral for itself. Its offbeat sense of humor, its gentle but inspired departures from reality, and its unprecedented success as a show made for, by, and about Native people will all be sorely missed.

9. Barry
season 4
8 episodes (32 total)
stream: Max


Barry has somehow been one of the funniest shows on TV while taking a hard nosedive towards the sunken place. This has created an irresistible bit of tonal dissonance. Barry‘s fourth season is its strangest yet, with Sally processing the truth about Barry, Gene putting on a one man show about what he’s been through, and NoHo Hank going straight and building a sand empire. We have come a long way from the assassin who took an acting class.

The best part of the season, presumably necessary to execute the finale of a series like this, is its hard turn halfway through, further shaking its core characters up and filling the series with an unimaginable amount of dread. Barry eventually reaches the final outcome of its chaos, and while many of the facts of the finale have felt destined for a long time, ultimately the note it leaves on is about how these characters are remembered. To the very end, it’s tragic in a hilarious way.

8. The Last of Us
season 1
9 episodes
stream: Max


To be clear, it’s not exactly a shocker that this is one of the video game adaptations that has people saying that the practice is finally acceptable. The Last of Us (the game) was practically a movie anyway, so the adaptation is really a matter of not fucking it up. Sure enough, Chernobyl‘s Craig Mazin and original game co-director Neil Druckmann (very annoying man, by the way, I just had to say) don’t let us down, thanks in part to casting Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as Joel and Ellie. The two knock their performances completely out of the park in a way that should have won them awards were this a non-Succession year.

What keeps me from putting this higher is that you do get hip to the rhythm after a while. Too many episodes end in gut-punches that it somewhat dulls the finale. The finale also is easily the shortest episode, and I think it could have had more room to breathe.

Still, The Last of Us not only successfully brings video game adaptations into the realm of prestige drama, it does so in a way that will be very, very hard to beat (sorry, Fallout).

7. Heavenly Delusion
season 1
13 episodes
stream: Hulu

It’s hard not to see a bit of The Last of Us in Heavenly Delusion. Both adaptations came out this year. Both feature duos traversing a post-apocalyptic land, and in each instance the younger one has something that makes them special and important. And though hopelessness does rear its head time and again, unlike with The Last of Us, Heavenly Delusion has a bit more variety to the stories told at each locale Kiruko and Maru visit. In one, they stumble on a woman convinced that a monster is actually her son. In another, they happen upon a cult-like activist group seeking to end human experiments at the local makeshift hospital. They’re also attacked by a bear.

There’s also a lot more to it. The urban landscapes of Heavenly Delusion are still filled with people, the threats of the monsters not quite dominating every waking moment. Meanwhile, there’s an entirely separate storyline about a small academy of children, including one who looks exactly like Maru. It’s fascinating to watch the two stories slowly have more to do with each other, and the slow drip of information keeps things interesting.

Heavenly Delusion is just about the finest new anime in years, sporting an intriguing storyline, an engaging central dynamic, a pleasing style of animation, and a surprising number of novel gender explorations.

Just a note, there is an instance of sexual assault later on in season one. It’s no small thing, so just a heads up in case you require that information.

6. The Curse
limited series
10 episodes (8 in 2023)
stream: Showtime


Whitney (Emma Stone) and Asher (Nathan Fielder) are a couple making green-friendly homes in the small predominantly Mexican-American town of Española, New Mexico, and they set out with director Dougie (Benny Safdie) to create an HGTV show called Fliplanthropy. Whitney is obsessed with obscuring and undoing the gentrification her project creates for this small community, and Asher is basically her heartless henchman with an inadequacy complex, with Whitney slowly coming to resent Asher throughout the series. Whitney’s desires to be loved by all and her increasing desire to get this HGTV show on the air increasingly steer her moral compass towards chaos.

There is simply not a lot out there like The Curse. The editing and cinematography feel strikingly casual, the score by Oneohtrix Point Never makes it sound like Whitney and Asher are trapped inside of a dream, and Whitney and Asher’s penchant for behaving in just the wrong way will make your skin crawl. It’s also easily one of the funniest shows of the year. The Curse is well worth shelling out for Showtime, and in fact Benny Safdie tweeted out a code to get a free month trial. Use it by January 14 to watch The Curse, and maybe stick around to watch Yellowjackets. And hell, Twin Peaks: The Return while you’re at it.

5. The Other Two
season 3
10 episodes (30 total)
stream: Max

I’ve only gotten around to The Other Two as it reached its unfortunately justified end, but while this show was great the whole time – for my money, the funniest show since…30 Rock, maybe? – its third season is built from a certain mania that’s perhaps only possible from a show not long for this world. Cary’s method actor boyfriend keeps taking on roles that, in a new and unexpected way each time, entail not sleeping with him. Chase, fresh off turning eighteen, follows entertainment industry law and sports a “shitty little rat” look. Brooke leaves the entertainment industry and becomes literally invisible to her old colleagues. Brooke, in an episode titled “Brooke, and We Are Not Joking, Goes To Space,” goes to space.

As Cary’s career takes off, The Other Two leaves behind any semblance of realism, and the show goes down swinging. Don’t be too sad, the finale still works plenty.

4. Scavengers Reign
season 1
12 episodes
stream: Max


At this point it’s probably tedious to hear the visual influences, but here it is one last time: Scavengers Reign is the best looking show of the year thanks to its gorgeous, inventive environments with an easy-to-spot Moebius (think comics great Jean Giraud, not Green Hill Zone) influence. The wonder and variety of the flora and fauna, meanwhile, bring to mind Hayao Miyazaki (but with more of a wants-to-kill-you edge). There’s plenty more influence, but Scavengers Reign is much more than a demonstration of great taste.

An escaping crew is tossed across a seemingly livable moon, but as each team tries to make their way back to the wreckage of the mothership, natural horrors beyond comprehension throw our heroes into life and death duels that are not for the faint of heart. It frequently ventures into the creepy, disgusting, and just downright awful traits a mysterious animal might unfortunately have. Scavengers Reign also frequently plays with lack of dialogue or outright silence, further carving out a vibe entirely its own.

3. Pluto
limited series
8 episodes
stream: Netflix


In a future where robots are in the process of being assimilated into society (although no robot has yet to be perfectly human), someone has begun killing both the world’s most powerful robots and many humans leading in robotic thought. We follow Europol’s Detective Gesicht, himself a robot. But Gesicht has been having strange dreams that he has to grapple with while trying to save the world by stopping the mysterious killer.

In 2020, I watched Monster, the anime adaptation of Naoki Urasawa’s manga of the same name (you can also watch this on Netflix). I was shocked at Urasawa’s knack for writing a story, but even more importantly he was incredible at writing engaging dialogue – often just characters wondering or explaining what’s going on – that moves the ball forward.

Pluto, adapted from Urasawa’s manga of the same name (in turn based on Osamu Tezuka’s “The Greatest Robot on Earth” Astro Boy story), cranks that strength up even higher. There’s a bit of mystery to Monster, but it’s the whole ballgame in Pluto. And it’s rich with themes, leading to conversations about consciousness, robot rights, and the story’s stand-in for the Iraq War (Pluto began serialization in 2003).

2. Succession
season 4
10 episodes (39 total)
stream: Max


Somehow Succession has topped itself yet again. Perhaps this is because while earlier seasons were really just jostling for the kiss from daddy, this season has so many events approaching – Connor’s wedding, the presidential election, a major Church service, and finally the GoJo merger – that it’s so easy to appreciate the weight the palace intrigue actually has. The season has a bit of a weak opener – perhaps thanks to this season having rather different ideas for the Roys than “All The Bells Say” might have implied – but after that it is nine straight stunners.

Succession is also a contender for the most well-acted show. Ever. Period. Kieran Culkin and Sarah Snook are finally winning awards instead of just Jeremy Strong, and the entire supporting cast is dynamite.

Somehow, Succession has reached its peak for its grand finale. Thanks to that, it’s the best show of 2023.

Wait,

1. The Bear
season 2
10 episodes (18 total)
stream: Hulu


I thought well of The Bear‘s first season. In particular, I thought its final two episodes were incredibly strong, but I actually didn’t quite understand why so many had it as their show of the year.

The Bear‘s second season begins with the characters setting out to challenge the odds and make something of their own. They want to remake the The Original Beef of Chicagoland as The Bear, a high-end restaurant that can properly showcase the talents of Carmy Berzatto and Sydney Adamu. They barely have enough money, and they need to open unreasonably quickly. Marcus is sent to Copenhagen to study under a gifted pastry chef. Richie is sent to a fine-dining restaurant to learn how to host (and also how to stop being an asshole that ruins everything). Tina and Ebra even get to go to culinary school. Rather than keeping alive a dead man’s restaurant, we are watching our lead characters actually chase their dreams, and everyone else also gets to go on their little journeys of self-discovery. I was so much more invested this season, and, in turn, I was a whole lot more nervous. And season one is already famously nerve-wracking.

“Fishes” and “Forks” are already classic episodes of television, and “Honeydew” and the season finale are way up there, too. It’s purely academic whether The Bear or Succession was actually better this year. I think I’m a bit more wonderstruck by Succession, with the writing and acting being completely untouchable. But The Bear was what I found myself truly invested in because it just had that bit of magic this year. I will never forget the way I reacted to “Fishes” and “Forks,” or my stunned reaction after experiencing that season finale. The Bear had my heart, and I consider this the best season of television since at least Fleabag season two.

Honorable Mentions

Abbott Elementary, season 2
Blue Eye Samurai, season 1
BLUELOCK, season 1
Craig of the Creek, seasons 4 & 5
Dead Ringers, limited series
For All Mankind, season 4
Happy Valley, season 3
Heartstopper, season 2
Hilda, season 3
I’m A Virgo, limited series
Invincible, season 2
I Think You Should Leave, season 3
Mrs. Davis, limited series
Never Have I Ever, season 4
ONE PIECE (2023), season 1
Party Down, season 3
Somebody Somewhere, season 2
Telemarketers, limited series
Ten-Year-Old Tom, season 2
The Fall of the House of Usher, limited series
The Righteous Gemstones, season 3
Unicorn Warriors Eternal, season 1
What We Do In The Shadows, season 5