Rob's Ramblings: The Best of 2024
Better late than never, right?
2024 was a weird year. I shifted over to Substack, and as is pretty common for my projects my grand ambitions kind of dwindled as things went on and I did not become a huge Substack star out of the gate. Personally, I tried a few new things but my life stayed pretty much the same. Politically, well, best not to talk about it. The entertainment industry was also seriously disrupted this year in the aftermath of both COVID and the writers and actors’ strikes. But we also had some weird art, some stuff that I truly loved, and that’s worth recognizing.
Best new/ongoing TV: What We Do in the Shadows
Despite finding the original film forgettable, I’ve loved the TV version of the vampire mockumentary, and it went out on a high note this year. The end of the show seemingly revitalized the creative team, with a lot of really fun ideas like Laszlo building a Frankenstein-like monster or Guillermo working for finance bro Tim Heidecker. I also loved the meta-fictional finale, which seemed to cement the show’s thesis that immortality would just lead to endless repetition and stupidity.
Honourable mentions: Shogun, The Curse
Best old TV I watched: Deadwood
I finished up my rewatch of Deadwood this year, and was reminded of all the ways in which it’s a total miracle of a series. Timothy Olyphant and Ian McShane were the breakouts of the cast, in that they’ve been asked to pretty much do the same thing ever since, but just about everyone gives a stellar performance, from Brad Dourif’s gruff but loving doctor to Gerald McRaney’s villainous but non inhuman rendition of George Hearst. Rewatching the show also made me value the reunion movie a lot more, providing a less downbeat ending and a final grace note for so many characters. Let him wait, indeed.
Honourable mentions: Seinfeld, Lost
Best Individual Episode: Interview with the Vampire – “Don’t Be Afraid, Just Start the Tapes”
In what was a pretty thin year for ongoing dramas, Interview with the Vampire’s second season stood out as one that was captivating week-to-week, expanding the first season’s world and deepening the characters in ways that great second seasons are supposed to do. Nowhere was this more apparent than “Don’t Be Afraid, Just Start the Tapes”, a break in the main flashback narrative that totally reframes some of the series’ core relationships. Jacob Anderson and Eric Bogosian both give fantastic, raw performances that deserved more awards recognition.
Honourable Mentions: Enlightened – “Consider Helen”, Jeopardy Masters 5/10, Deadwood – “The Catbird Seat”
Best Anime: Dan Da Dan
I’ve written about how I didn’t click with some of the year’s biggest anime hits, but one that absolutely worked for me is Dan Da Dan, a Shonen Jump adaptation about two teenagers who get mixed up with the world of ghosts, demons and aliens. Science SARU has been my favourite animation studio since pretty much their founding, and their fluid style perfectly suits both the action and humour of the series. In a lot of ways it feels like Dan Da Dan is bringing back a lot of the tropes and will-they-or-won’t-they romance that were standard in 90s anime, but adding an extra level of psychological realism that makes you feel like it’s real people navigating these challenges.
Honourable Mentions: Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, Look Back
Best New Movie: I Saw the TV Glow
I’ve already written about why this movie cut me so deeply, so I’ll just focus on the execution here. I Saw the TV Glow does a great job conjuring the kind of evocative low-budget genre show that was so common in the 90s, and the set design strikes the perfect balance between realism and a waking nightmare. Justice Smith and Bridget Lundy-Paine are both great, and we even get a musical break. I’ve seen this listed as one of the best horror movies of the year, but that doesn’t really seem like the best genre. It’s a dread movie, an ennui movie, a dysphoria movie, and there’s nothing else quite like it.
Honourable Mentions: The Beast, The Substance, Society of the Snow
Best Old Movie: Witness
The era where you could make a mid-budget thriller with one proven movie star and a moderately high concept is sadly gone, and Witness is among the best of the genre. The Amish community is depicted without either judgement or idealizing, while Harrison Ford is at his absolute best as a man out of place and almost out of time. And any movie that gets Sam Cook stuck in my head has to be good.
Best New Book: The Wren, The Wren – Anne Enright
This may be a lazy comparison for an Irish novel, but Enright’s use of prose styles to depict three generations of Irish history is genuinely Joycean. The mother and daughter that make up the core of the narrative are such well-drawn characters, both sympathetic and frustrating at the same time. It was a thin year of reading for me, but I’m glad I got around to this one.
Best Ongoing Comic: 3rd Voice – Evan Dahm
I’ve been following Evan Dahm’s otherworldly webcomics for a long time – Rice Boy is still my avatar in a number of websites – and he’s still in fine form with his latest, a slowly unspooling story of two wanderers in a world gripped by obscure social divisions. The use of a webtoons-style vertical scroll adds an interesting element to Dahm’s usual gradual worldbuilding, and he manages to conjure a lot of emotion over creatures that are both physically and mentally alien.
Best Sporting Event: Women’s NCAA Basketball Tournament
This was the year of Caitlin Clark’s emergence as a true superstar, first in the college game and then with an almost-seamless transition to the WNBA. But there were so many other stories and personalities in this year’s women’s tournament, packed with close games and highlights. The fact that more people were watching than ever, and that most of the big names made it deep in the tournament, just added to the sense of every game being epic and can’t-miss.
Honorable Mentions: UFC 300, T20 Cricket World Cup, Summer Olympics
Best Wrestling Promotion: Deadlock Pro Wrestling
Independent wrestling has become something of a lost art, with most promotions content to rely on comedy and one-off matches. Deadlock Pro, growing out of a podcast I don’t listen to, has become the exception, with great production, hard-hitting action, and just enough ongoing stories to give everything spice. With most of the big promotions inconsistent this year, DPW has become the best pound-for-pound wrestling on the planet.
Honourable Mentions: Sendai Girls, Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling
Wrestling Match: Bryan Danielson vs. Will Ospreay (AEW Dynasty)
The biggest story in wrestling, however, was Bryan Danielson’s march towards the end of his career as a full-time wrestler, which saw him wrestle a bevy of dream opponents (and Jack Perry) across three promotions, in the perhaps best form of his illustrious career. No one was dreamier, however, than Will Ospreay, arguably the heir to Bryan’s throne as the best in-ring wrestler working today. The match lived up to the billing, with Bryan managing to ground Will’s adrenaline-fueled style until the younger man resorted to an act of desperation to beat him. It was a match that felt historic when it happened, and has only grown more so since.
Honourable Mentions: Bryan vs. Sabre (NJPW New Beginning), Bryan vs. Swerve (AEW All In)
Best New Game: Metaphor: ReFantazio
Every Persona game has been an evolution and strengthening of the game that came before it, and director Katsura Hashino’s team carried that spirit forward into their newest project, Metaphor: ReFantazio. The daily-agenda mode of Persona translates surprisingly well to a heroic fantasy setting, with beautiful art design, Giger-esque bosses, likeable characters, and a combat system that gives you more to think about than the typical element-matching. I’m only about 10-20 hours into this, but I can tell I’ll be playing it to the end.
Honourable Mention: UFO 50
Best Old Game: Hades
When this swept various Game of the Year honours in 2020, I was a little unsure why. On a stream, the game’s action looks overly busy, and the modernized Greek gods storyline a little too English-class-assignment. When I finally got around to it, however, these reservations were overwhelmed by just how fun the game was to play. There’s so much variation in each run, in terms of power-ups, enemies, and even dialogue, that it never becomes a grind or repetitive. So yeah, it turns out, Hades? Pretty good.
Best New Album: Los Campesions – All Hell
This feels like the album that Los Camps have been building to for their whole run, full of melancholy sounds and lyrics that are smart without being overly clever. I’m bad at writing about music, but just know that this album activated the dormant Millennial part of my brain that wants to post song lyrics on social media, and it takes a rare record to do that these days.
Honourable Mention: Vince Staples – Dark Times, Laura Marling – Patterns in Repeat
Live Experience: Solar Eclipse
I didn’t get out to many live events this year, but there was one live event which came to me, and that was the April solar eclipse which passed directly over my corner of Southern Ontario. There was a thin layer of cloud cover, but that only enhanced the beauty of that silver ring. (And okay, I looked directly at it a little bit, but I couldn’t see shit through those glasses.) Stores shut down and people gathered on the street to take in the beauty of nature. It’s a nice reminder that the world is still capable of stopping and surprising us.
I’ve cut some categories from last year, mainly because I didn’t have good winners. This is also notably a best-of-2024 list being released in March but hey, if it’s good enough for the Oscars, it’s good enough for the Eternal Couch Potato. 2025 is not looking any better than 2024 as far as the state of my personal life and the world, but I’m sure there will be a lot of art and experiences to talk about this time next year.