A 2024 Screen Time Report
Part 2: The New! Don't let your phone bully you into thinking less screen time is better!
Against every other publication in the world, I don’t think we shouldn’t be able to fully make our best-ofs until the year is actually over. You never know which mediocre movie you’ll unexpectedly resonate with when you’re stuck streaming on airport wifi!
“I use my notes app the same way everybody does, by keeping a detailed list of everything I watch each year to allow for easier reflection at this time.” - Ryan Harer, 2023
Wow what an inspiring quote. Anyway same as this time last year, I want to highlight a few TV shows and movies that may not get the recognition they deserve (like, obviously Dune: Part Two is great but it will get plenty of artsy awards over the coming months). Let’s get to it.
Television1
John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in LA (Netflix)
How do you make sure a talk show doesn’t lose steam and fade out? Only commit to six episodes! This John Mulaney-fronted limited talk series tackled a very Los Angeles-specific topic each night, talking to both celebrity guests and experts on the subject, in an evergreen way that could be watched whenever— unless between my time writing this and you reading it, “The Big One” has happened and the city is under rubble. Don’t google it. Mulaney meanders and segues in ways that don’t annoy, keeps up the recurring bits, and figures out the live talk format just enough to not overstay the welcome in the one week it aired.
I became so obsessed with the aesthetic of the show that I started taking screenshots of the title cards with no purpose in mind but now I just have a folder of those on my computer, and it was highlighted on my post from this fall about intros that I wouldn’t skip.
In my (current) time working at Netflix, I often check the company store for swag, to no avail. Since this aired in May 2024, Netflix announced Mulaney will host a Live Variety/Talk series in 2025, with no further details available. I’ll be sat (at least for the first week).
Hacks (Max)
Remember like 30 seconds ago when I said I wouldn’t highlight shows that have already been so highly recommended and awarded? In the words of pop starlet Olivia Rodrigo, “fuck it, it’s fine.”
I don’t think I’ve been as delightfully surprised at an awards show in recent memory as I was when Hacks won the Emmy for Comedy Series— the gasp I goosped! And deserved, as Hacks is the best comedy on TV right now. A show that gets better every season had so many strong moments this season that left me wondering if our two main characters would end each half-hour as friends or enemies, not to mention giving more screen time and stories to its funniest side characters. And that final scene WOOF!
There’s a current trend in television (or, a marketing angle to appeal to more demographics), of pairing an old star with a younger voice. We see it on Shrinking with Harrison Ford/Jason Segel and Only Murders in the Building with Steve Martin and Martin Short/Selena Gomez, for example. The dynamic between Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder is so sharp I just need Einbinder to get her Emmy any day now.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Prime Video)
There is a scene in the pilot episode of this show that got me on board: At the end of their first mission John and Jane Smith deliver a seemingly innocuous cake to a nice house for a party, and as they walk away down a suburban street, the house just blows up. John and Jane start at a walking pace and then slowly gain speed, until they are sprinting away to safety. Telegraphing their skill level or lack thereof, this is a show about these spies becoming spies, while also, maybe, becoming important to each other? It’s giving romance!
I love the movie star aspect of the 2005 Mr. & Mrs. Smith but I can understand if the only thing you remember about it is that it was the dawn of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie starting their journey as a Hollywood couple. Donald Glover and Maya Erskine, already TV comedy icons, infuse this action/drama with their own comedic sensibilities because every wild shootout, undercover interrogation, criminal disarming needs a little farce!
Movies
Gosh darn what a surprise this was. I get that June Squibb is a treasure and she’s been working forever but it wasn’t until 2013’s Nebraska that she popped off for a modern audience playing Grandma in all movies in perpetuity.
Thelma is based on a true and personal story for the writer/director, as we follow his adventurous grandmother seeking revenge from a telephone scammer. It tackles lots of senior-citizen-low-hanging-fruit jokes in a fresh way and Squibb delivers every line with such earnestness that we are invested enough to be on the edge of our seats as our titular hero tries to navigate a modern computer, her biggest challenge yet. Reader, the final scene had me nearly in tears, then the credits showed clips of the real life inspiration and it was all over. If this gets any screenplay nomination, it would be heavily deserved.
(on Hulu)
It’s still TBD how this will fare with awards nominations but what a TREAT this was. Blending so many genres in a way that, while it is a “movie about tennis”, it’s a METAPHOR Y’ALL. So much volleying and competition and training and Zendaya’s sunglasses and a bone-breaking moment that had the theater cringing.
Really big shout out to the visual effects because if your only understanding of VFX is space and explosions and big action spectacle, then you don’t know the entire art medium was invented to watch a tennis ball camera POV zoom back and forth on a rural New York tennis court.
(on Prime Video)
I did not have a more fun experience at a movie theater this year than watching The Substance. The phrase that gets thrown around a lot is “body horror” but girlies let’s get specific because it’s not as much about the blood as it is the pus, the vague beige/green stuff that builds in an infected wound. We’ve all been there after picking that big zit!
Wait, I’m just remembering a scene where it is very much about the blood. And also eating: if watching people (Dennis Quaid) eat doesn’t make you feel great, move along.
Aside from the gory makeup and visual effects of it all, The Substance is a great and simple fable of the stress and high cost of trying to maintain your beauty or live up to unreasonable standards just to be seen, to feel like you’re worthy of that date you’ve been asked out on, etc. And it👏🏻is👏🏻not👏🏻subtle👏🏻. If you have a hard time finding the meaning behind some media, this will make it simple for you. I too would strive to look like Margaret Qualley if the option was presented to me, but instead I have to go to the dermatologist every 6 months to check if my skin is out to kill me or not.
(on MUBI, lol find someone in middle America who knows that word)
I am a child so it wouldn’t be right to not call out anything animation (not a genre but a medium!!!) on this list— yes Inside Out 2 was great but anything that made one billion dollars does not need my extra endorsement. Ultraman: Rising takes a decades-old Japanese franchise and refreshes it for a modern audience, with themes of fatherhood (lol what superhero movie doesn’t!) and having great power and great responsibility or something. The animation in this is sublime and it’s one of those streaming movies I wish I could have seen on a big screen.
And like the Inside Out franchise, if more people had the chance to see this in theaters, we’d be having that conversation again about hot animated characters.
(on Netflix)
I saw more movies in 2024 than ever before, and this possibly came at the expense of television, one of my other true loves, but it just gives us goals for 2025. GROWTH!!
A 2024 Screen Time Report
I don’t subscribe to New Year’s Resolutions because no you’re absolutely not going to start changing everything about yourself to look like Glen Powell or Sydney Sweeney as soon as January 1st hits. BUT sometimes I make goals and they work out, like the time I chose to fill in some pop culture blindspots by watching at least one “old” movie each month.
Small footnote: I was prepping to recommend one more comedy on this list but after rumors and rumblings became a verified story, let’s skip that endorsement.