The Good List: 30 Things Worth Loving

Years-in-Review can be a real drag (and overdue since today is January 2). Rankings that you disagree with. Recaps of stories you wish never happened. Billionaire purchases of major digital media outlets that we could have all lived without (not to get too specific).

But I don't wish to drag you down an ounce further. Straying briefly from the topic of marketing and leadership and such, here are 30 good things I loved in the last 12 months. (Watchful eyes will notice the straying is not that far-reaching because... the world's best leaders are learning... everywhere.) Here are things I loved from this year, and none of them from the "50 things to do before you're 50 to motivate yourself and extract money from others that you haven't earned" shelf at Barnes and Noble.

(Inside voice - Ok, Nick, let's manage the sarcasm. We promised minimal dragging-downy-ness.)

1. Station Eleven (HBO) - Who could have imagined that the most inspiring piece of creativity I saw this year took place in a post-pandemic apocalypse. This miniseries strays far from the book (another wonderful thing) but in such a ways to become its own work of art. Himesh Patel as Jeevan Chaudhary is luminous. And Mackenzie Davis hasn't been this good since Halt and Catch Fire. A revelation.
2. Angela Bassett in Wakanda Forever (Marvel | Disney) - While the second Black Panther buckled a little under the weight of the essential grief for Chadwick Boseman and the multiverse building that Marvel requires now of its tentpoles, Ms. Bassett devours every scene as the mourning queen who has lost it all and yet still can outwit the United Nations. The only Marvel performance ever truly worthy of an Oscar nomination.
3. Trust by Hernan Diaz - I only read a handful of 2022's newest books this year favoring older titles, but among the best is Trust. With a narrative structure like I've never read before, Diaz lays out the question of perspective and worthiness. How we aspire value and who we aspire it to. And how that impacts the truth (or lack thereof) of the stories we tell.
4. Midjourney - Many will had have poo-poo-ed the impact of AI on design. Reasonably so, in unskilled hands it is as uninspiring as a Canva template and in some cases it borders on creative theft. And yet, when used deftly and contextually, the AI design generator Midjourney created some beautiful things this year, bringing the potential for custom visuals back into the conversation for marketing and advertising at smaller and mid-sized firms. A much-needed innovation.
5. Carrie Coon in The Gilded Age (HBO) - Much of what I read this year played on money and power disparities. None did with more camp than The Gilded Age--the latest from Julian Fellowes creator of Downton Abbey. Fellowes hand is more recognizable here and the storytelling is less skilled. But Carrie Coon as the New Money matriarch tearing through Manhattan had me smitten in every scene. Between this and Yellowstone, the return of the Soap Opera as genre had a very good year.
6. Loot (Apple TV+) - I would watch Maya Rudolph mow the lawn. Let's begin there. Here she plays the more dim-witted version of Melinda Gates or MacKenzie Scott, left with half a fortune and not sure what to do with herself. She realizes along the way that her philanthropy often has more to do with her dealt-with loss and damaged self-concept. Along the way, hijinks--as they are wont to do--ensue.
7. The Overstuffed Mediocrity of Marvel (Disney) - We spent a lot of energy this year trying to convince ourselves that Marvel's latest fare was good. Moon Knight? Unique! Egyptian gods! Ms. Marvel... not white! She-Hulk... Remember Ally McBeal? Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Mediocrity? Look at them doing horror! How droll. In the end, none of it was particularly memorable (a problem because we're going to have to recall every single plot point to know what the hell is going on from now on). Why then on the list of Wonderful Things? Because for all the good Marvel has brought to us: Black Panther, America's ass, "I love you, 3000," The Paul Rudd-aissance... it has oversaturated us with its overpriced, digitally rendered repetition. It's averageness this year gave our brains a break to think about other things...
8. ...like Abbott Elementary (ABC) - If nothing else good happened in pop culture this year besides Abbott Elementary, this would have been enough. Funny, effervescent, and so deeply of this moment it does what great sitcoms have done for decades: tell stories that make us think by making us laugh. Quinta Brunson for President.
9. Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe - Radden Keefe, most known for his New Yorker in-depth reporting, brings us a true Rogues gallery of people from El Chapo to Mark Burnett. Without attempting a grand theory of villainy, the book shows with clear-eyed and meticulously researched storytelling where the shared threads of roguishness truly get the best and the worst of us entangled.
10. The World Cup Final between France and Argentina - While we all bemoaned (some of us performatively - you know who you are) the injustices deeply tied to the Qatar hosted World Cup, our eyes shifted from their tiny screens to watch what has been argued to be the greatest World Cup Final ever. I'm a late entry into the soccer-iverse drawn in by my middle son's obsession. While I was working on World Cup day, the play-by-play updates from the next room were a joy like few I experienced in 2022.
11. Episodes 5 & 6 of Season 3 of Mythic Quest (Apple TV+) - MQ is one of my very favorite escapisms. It's at its very best when Ian (Rob McElhanney) and Poppy (Charlotte Nicdao) have to balance their narcissism and and love for each other. The pinnacle of this (so far) was in these mid-season episodes of Season 3. Not to be missed.
12. The cast album of the 2022 Revival of Into the Woods - I'm a theater geek through and through. With the passing of Stephen Sondheim, his shows have found new audiences, including me returning to a few favorites. The revival of Into the Woods with a cast that any show would die for was incredible and the cast recording (a rare gift from a revival) provided a worthy soundtrack to many long days.
13. Addiction in The Flight Attendant (Apple TV+) - Not being a big Kaley Cuoco fan, I was surprisingly sucked in by the Fight Attendant, one of many great shows being produced by Apple right now. Season 1 was a fun little romp, but Season 2 was a breathtaking, intense, and at appropriate times comical look at addiction. Dealing way above its weight class in pathos, FA is a worthy layover from one great Apple show to another--pun intended.
14. The Bear (FX/Hulu) - Proving that this list is in no particular order, the M#F*ing Bear. God I loved nothing more (maybe my wife and kids) than this show this year. For many its been reduced to the "Yes, Chef" meme, a travesty of immense proportion. It is deep, funny, brilliantly acted (particularly the interplay between Ayo Edebiri and Jeremy Allen White) and could, in my view, sweep the comedy categories at the Emmys next fall.
15. My 14YO son's obsession with Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount) - I was "meh" about TG:M, it felt like a slightly better replay of the one from my youth, which I was never a big fan of. This one is buoyed by Miles Teller's vulnerable strength... a category we could see more of from leading men. But the real treat was how my teenage son decided to make Maverick his whole personality this year: aviator sunglasses, new usernames on all his games, and hairstyle to match.
16. Andor (Disney+) - I could write a whole essay on how Andor is the best that Star Wars has ever produced, requiring no Star Wars back knowledge while still being the logical conclusion of 40 years of mythology. This deft, smart, complex, diverse, and boldly acted drama really doesn't belong in a galaxy far, far away. It felt immediate and personal and timely in a way that only brilliantly done genre-work can.
17. The Middle-Age Snake Draft from The Popcast Podcast (Wondery) - You may not be familiar with The Podcast (a moral failure I won't hold you accountable to) but you should be. Highly ranked in viewership on Wondery (available everywhere) and in the Top 25 communities on Patreon - these guys know how to build a following. (Marketers, please advise.) In Episode 485, co-host Knox McKoy turns 40 and invites other host Jamie Golden and two of their team to do a snake draft of "middle-aged" sign posts. I almost laughed myself off the road. Glorious.
18. Maryanne Oketch wins?Survivor 42 (CBS) - I'm very on the fence about the new Survivor format post Season 40. It's too Jeff Probst forward for me and I'm not a JP fan. But if you needed unapologetic joy in your life this last year (or next, streaming on Paramount+) then watching the goofy, awkward, yet stealthily-skilled Maryanne take the crown on Season 42 is worth every moment. Knowing she wins doesn't spoil it. It just makes those first 10 episodes all the more incredible to watch.
19. Wordle (and the NYTimes Purchase) - I'm an unapologetic Wordler. I play in near every day. It is the perfectly scaled word game (although I am now the age where I do the NYT crossword, so I'm up for all things). Many people feigned shock and dismay when Wordle was bought by the New York Times. For me, I relished in the slight changes that it brought (though the editors still let some trash words through the cracks) and the buffed-up backend where my NYT subscription gets me all kinds of analytics like the fact that my 2nd word on October 11 gave me a 97% chance of winning in three.
20. James Gunn fuels the haters - The storied Warner Bros. lot has been producing a trash heap of burning trashy trash over the last 3-5 years, trying to stuff most of it under the "HBO Max" banner hoping the prestige of the first three letters would make people think trash isn't trash. Among this dumpster fire (yes I'm continuing this metaphor) has been the handling of the DC Comics universe. Snyder fans can grab their smelling salts all they want, it was mismanaged IP from the jump. Only Wonder Woman was any good and the sequel burned my eyes out with stupidity. (Kristin Wiig I will never forgive, you broke my heart.) So when James Gunn was hired after a lackluster production of Suicide Squad, the DC "purists" went into shock. I'm not convinced Gunn can reboot the unbootable (Superman is a man out of time) but I'm excited to see him try.
21. Severance (Apple TV+) - Nothing captured the Zeitgeist this year like Severance. While everyone was talking about WFA and Quiet Quitting, Adam Scott was portraying a story depth and aching desperation. Forcing us to examine how we think about work and its ability to balance, destroy, or subsume what we call a life. The most creative thing on TV this year.
22. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin - Not artsy enough to win book of the year, but it should. It's common to Shakespearean themes into modern settings, but dropped one into a gaming company strung between two lifelong frienemies... unimaginably perfect. The title's allusion to Act 5 of Macbeth gives us a clear view where the book is headed, and yet every page is a revelation of its own. As my friend, Stephanie said, "I'm sad that I never get to read it for the first time again."
23. Running Up the Hill and the secondary cast of Stranger Things (Netflix) Season 4 - Stranger Things can be very hit (Season 1) and miss (the entire Russia sequence of Season 4), In part driven by the fact that the starring cast is very inconsistent in both their acting and my interest in their storylines. This year it was Joseph Quinn's Eddie Munson and Sadie Sink's Max Mayfield that carried the shows greatest moments. Millennials resurrecting Running Up that Hill by Kate Bush was an unexpected gift. Arguably the best needle drop (and seasonal theme song) in recent memory.
24. The James Burrows episode of Smartless (Wondery) - One last Podcast moment I loved: Smartless with Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and Sean Hayes was all the rage this year. The Smartless boys fire on all cylinders when someone they know well is in the guest seat (less so when they have to actually... you know... interview). For those of us in Gen X, James Burrows' sitcoms (Cheers, Friends, Will & Grace, etc.) were the staples of our viewing lives. Famously kind, Burrows glows with magnanimity has he retells stories of the glory days of the Multicam sitcom (a genre he practically invented) and that glorious staple we used to call Network TV.
25. The comeuppance of crypto - In 1999, may thought the false ballyhoo of the WWW was getting its just desserts. Turns out, like all bubbles, a lot of money had gone running toward a very limited set of good ideas. When the dust settled, those good ideas set the stage for the next 20 years of innovation. I suspect we are in a similar cycle for Web 3 and crypto. The early adopters were regularly smug and unreflective of the technologies limitations... buoyed by their wallets. This years correction in both value and exposures of fraud, will reset the playing field so the real value can start to emerge.
26. Season 3 of Derry Girls (Netflix) - I love a sitcom that sticks the landing. Derry Girls was beginning-to-end perfect, but its final season showed that UK show-runners are the true stars because they know how to tell a story that comes to a satisfying (and uproariously funny) conclusion. Using the trivialities of 90s teenagers at a Catholic prep school to highlight the backdrop of the Troubles in Northern Ireland was deft, never preachy, and incredibly satisfying.
27. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel - SJM is the author of the book behind #1: Station Eleven. In Sea of Tranquility she returns to the dystopian pandemic space for which she is known. The intertwining of tales again reminds us of how close we are in our tragedies. As a bonus, rarely has a story dealt with time travel in such a non-annoying show-not-tell way. Masterful.
28. (Most of) Everything, Everywhere All at Once (A24) - Speaking showing and not telling, nothing did MORE showing without telling than EEAAO. It was THE movie of the first quarter of this year and is still holding its prestige into awards season... a difficult feat for any film. I'm in the "didn't love the hot dog fingers" camp of EEAAO fans. The storytelling is truly unique and the acting by an Asian American whos-who is a reminder to write more stories for these truly gifted creators.
29. Ryan Reynolds rules the Zeitgeist - It's joyous to have a year where the people we remember were kind, fun, self-effacing and sometimes heroic. Ryan Reynolds is (currently) the best of the Hollywood hunks, and his foray into everything from advertising (resurrecting Mr. Big in 48 hours for Peloton was legendary) to wireless phones to Christmas song and dance (Spirited on Netflix WAS in fact the best new holiday film this year)... RR filled-in his free time learning soccer in a year where Americans in droves realized how great soccer is. (Thanks WC and Ted Lasso).
30. Glass Onion (Netflix) - I had to finish my Good List with something that made me so happy I almost broke my face. Knives Out has become one of my go-to films on repeat so when Netflix bought the sequels, I began to shudder with anxiety. Netflix is generally anti-quality and so tends to ruin good things. But in Rian Johnson we trust. Glass Onion in the theater was my best 2 hours in a recliner of the entire year, and it's not even close. Janelle Monae was the Mona Lisa, capturing your attention with her silent gaze in every scene she was in. Give her all the trophies.

Welcome to 2023 friends. May it find you thinking, laughing, wondering, and walking among many good things.