Best movie:
I’m not a Christopher Nolan junkie, nor a spy thriller fan, so it’s quite a surprise that I loved Tenet as much as I did. I think I understand 95% of it now, and I’ve only watched it three times, so that’s not bad. Seriously, I think John David Washington is great, as was the whole cast. One normal and one inverted thumb up for a movie I file in my science fiction collection. Great stuff.
Best shows:
5. Jeopardy! – final season with Alex
4. Star Trek: Picard – Season 1
3. American Dad! – Season 17
2. Star Trek: Discovery – Season 3
1. Star Wars: The Mandalorian – Season 2
Jeopardy’s never made my lists here before but watching Alex Trebek keep on going and going only weeks before his death is awe-inspiring.
American Dad had a better than average season this year. Some of the episodes this year will go down as the series’ best: “Brave N00B World“, “300“, and “First, Do No Farm”. The latter features a new Weird Al Yankovic called “Rabbitage” based on — you guessed it — “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys. The season also featured pop star The Weeknd in an episode called “A Starboy is Born”.
I’m jumping the gun a little bit on Discovery as the season hasn’t ended yet. However, setting the season over 900 past the days of Kirk and Spock has opened the show up to new possibilities and…discoveries. It has been a great season with some standout episodes that felt more like The Next Generation than anything since. Contemplative episodes with minimal (sometimes zero) violence. Trek is back, and Discovery is currently the superior show, even over Picard, which was pretty good itself.
And finally we have Mandalorian, which despite an unimpressive initial teaser trailer went on to be the show we always hoped it could be. And it was Bill fucking Burr’s Mayfeld that really pushed it late in the season, adding some much needed character development. All this made it so much more delicious when Giancarlo Esposito’s Moff Gideon did all the moustache-twirling villain stuff at the end. Then we get Boba, more vicious and primal, and the stoic but intense Jedi. Bonus points for doing what Qui-Gon Jinn failed to do in Episode I: just crush the fucking droid with the Force already! Thanks, Luke.
2020 was the Year Without a Marvel. Boo.
Well, I didn’t write the song, and this makes ZERO sense out of context, but yeah, that was me screeching out a Beastie Boys parody last night on @AmericanDadTBS pic.twitter.com/duEI6hgH1t
— Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) July 28, 2020
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