Recalibrating My Hype Meter

Marketing media has always been all about building movies and television shows into events, but I've reached the age where I'm anticipating fewer and fewer titles than I used to.  I'll happily watch whatever everyone else is talking about, but there are very few projects anymore that I'll track obsessively months and years in advance the way that I did in the past.  2025, like 2019, saw the releases of several long-awaited pieces of media that I'd been looking forward to for a while, like the last season of "Stranger Things," and I'm realizing that there's not much left in 2026 and beyond that I'm really anticipating.

Sure, I'm curious about "Project Hail Mary" and "Dune: Part 3," and even the new "Mandalorian" and "Avengers" films, but the excitement that I always associated with being a film fan has largely ebbed.  I recently sat down and wrote up a list of everything coming up that I was actively looking forward to, and it was barely a dozen titles.  I know a lot of this is due to me being in my forties and no longer in the audience that the majority of media is aimed at - especially in the case of genre media.  However, there are a couple of contributing factors and specific nuances that I want to take some time to talk about.  I've written similar posts a few times before, but this time I want to get a little more analytical.  

A big issue is the nostalgia wave moving on to Millennial and early Gen Z properties.  I count myself as a late GenXer, and all those remakes and legasequels of 80s and 90s media are becoming scarce.  "Spaceballs" is probably the last big one on the horizon, which does sound like a lot of fun.  Most of the targets for cultural strip mining are now 2000s media like "Freaky Friday," "The Devil Wears Prada," and our recent billion dollar hit, "Lilo & Stitch."  The new "X-men" movies should be right on time.  I have fond memories of a lot of these, but not the kind of emotional connection I have with the big hits of my childhood.  There are a few new attempts being mounted to reboot older kids' properties like "Masters of the Universe" and "The Chronicles of Narnia," but in most cases I've already seen multiple versions come and go, so it doesn't feel like anything special.

I used to have a significant list of projects stuck in development hell that I was waiting for - "Ender's Game," "The Sandman," and "Watchmen" among them.  I think watching a lot of these Holy Grail projects actually get made, and dealing with the inevitable tempering of expectations, influenced me to stop pinning my hopes on them prematurely.  Would I love to see a new version of "The Last Unicorn" or big budget adaptations of "Akira" or "Evangelion" finally hit the big screen?  Sure.  However, I no longer automatically assume that any of these would be an improvement on the media that already exist for these titles.  The big exception, of course, is "The Dark Tower," because there's no way that any new adaptation of that one wouldn't be an improvement on the terrible 2017 film.      

My tastes and attentions have gradually shifted away from IPs and genres and towards specific actors and directors.  I know, for instance, that I will generally enjoy a Christopher Nolan or Greta Gerwig film, but this is not a certainty.  After "Doctor Strange" I've become much more wary of films that look great on paper.  I have never seen a project waste such a fantastic cast on such underwhelming material.  There have also been far too many director and actor passion projects that have turned out badly.  It's honestly a nice surprise when a "Sinners" or a "Life of Chuck" turns out well.  Or even an "Alien: Romulus."    

This doesn't mean that I'm no longer looking forward to new media, or that I'm not going to write up my yearly lists of anticipated films and series.  However, it's an unavoidable fact that many projects fail to meet expectations, and in the case of the ones from development hell there's often a reason why it took so long for something to reach our screens.  I'm going to miss the fun of the hype, but I guess I've been around the block enough times that this aspect of my fandom experience is probably over for good.  The movies aren't any better or worse in the end, though, and this way I avoid a lot of disappointment.    

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New Seasons of Old Cartoons

2025 saw the return of "King of the Hill" on Hulu, and "South Park" taking off the gloves and making headlines.  We also got a pretty decent new season of "Futurama" that seems to have totally flown under the radar.  I thought I'd take a post to talk about all three.

"King of the Hill" returns after a sixteen year break, and there have been some major changes.  The characters have all aged in real time, so Hank (Mike Judge) and Peggy (Kathy Najimy) are now retirees and Bobby (Pamela Adlon) is twenty-one and running a Japanese-German fusion restaurant.  On top of that, the Hills have been living in Saudi Arabia for over a decade for Hank's work, and are just now returning to a vastly changed Arlen, Texas.  This means that the dynamics of the show have changed, with the generational divide now as prominent as the cultural one.  And yes, the cultural divide is still in play.  There's a whole episode where Hank has an existential crisis over the fact that he enjoys soccer.      

The show doesn't look quite the same - the switch to digital has taken some of the hand-drawn imperfections out of the animation, similar to "The Simpsons."  It also doesn't sound quite the same, with several recasts and some of the actors having noticeably aged.   Johnny Hardwick passed away after voicing Dale for some of the episodes, so Toby Huss fills in for the rest.  However, the important parts are still there.  World-weary Hank has to deal with plenty of new aggravations about modern life while adjusting to retirement.  Peggy continues to mangle foreign languages and struggles with keeping her inner busybody in check.  Bobby is doing great, but still has to deal with his childhood bully and is still nursing a crush on Connie (Lauren Tom), who is now a university student.  

"South Park" has been going strong for over twenty years now, despite taking a few years off here and there.  Not much has changed since the late 2000s, when I was last regularly watching, as far as I can tell.  However, after a 2024 that only offered the "End of Obesity" special, we got a full season in 2025, and Trey Parker and Matt Stone are not pulling their punches.  After years of only indirect criticisms and fairly mild lampooning of Donald Trump, the season premiere came out swinging.  There was no mistaking that MAGA and the Trump administration were the primary targets, with Trump himself in a relationship with Satan, and JD Vance rejiggered into Tattoo from "Fantasy Island."  There is also gratuitous nudity, deepfaking, and a talking penis.  Subsequent episodes tackle ICE, Charlie Kirk, Labubus, Brendan Carr, Peter Thiel, and Benjamin Netanyahu.

I appreciate that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are fighting the good fight while much of the news media feels like it's in retreat, but aside from the shock value I didn't get much out of these episodes.  "South Park" and its edgelord tactics were never really to my tastes, and I was only ever a regular viewer for a few seasons when I was pretty much watching Comedy Central 24/7.  I watched this newest batch of episodes to keep up with the discourse, and "South Park" is pretty much the same as it always was, just with updated targets.  The method of mockery hasn't changed, and the characters haven't evolved at all.  The episodes with Satan in a relationship with Trump recycle some of the same jokes from the episodes with Satan and Saddam Hussein.  And I get that that's the point, but it still feels old hat.   

Finally, I think it's worth noting that "Futurama" just wrapped up its second season on Hulu, and proved that it's still the nerdiest cartoon currently running.  Sure, "Rick and Morty" may have taken the animated science-fiction sitcom to new and disturbing places, but "Futurama" devoted an entire episode, "The Numberland Gap," to incredibly geeky math jokes.  It even brought Georg Cantor along for the ride.  There have been a few minor developments in the "Futurama" status quo - Amy (Lauren Tom) and Kif (Maurice LaMarche) are now raising three kids, and Fry (Billy West) and Leela (Katey Sagal)  are in a long term relationship, but otherwise the Planet Express gang seems to be doing well.  There were some very mediocre seasons over the years, since "Futurama" has been bouncing between platforms and revived multiple times, but this year was one of the good ones.  

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And Now, "The Naked Gun"

My relationship with the original Abrams/Zucker Brothers "Naked Gun" movies has never been great.  I saw bits and pieces of them many times over the years, but mostly at an age where I didn't get most of the jokes.  I always thought of them as very raunchy movies for adults, probably because they were the only comedies I saw broadcast on television that got away with a certain level of sexual innuendo.  What I found more interesting was that these movies, along with the Mel Brooks comedies and other parody films, all took place in this absurd cartoon universe where the rules of reality didn't apply.  You could have wild, elaborate sight gags where luggage came alive, a squad car could drive through anything, and you combed the desert with literal combs.  

This kind of humor has fallen out of favor as the parody film has lost popularity.  I think the "Austin Powers" movies were the last to really do this joke-a-minute, off the wall style well.  So it was a nice surprise to see so many of the old gags and goofs and cartoon props used extensively in the new "The Naked Gun," where Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr., the son of Leslie Nielsen's character from the original films.  A giant claw machine claw is used to pluck a crashed car out of a river.  There's a running gag where officers in the police station keep being handed larger and larger cups of coffee.  Drebin makes his first appearance in disguise as a pint-sized schoolgirl, and then proceeds to foil a bank robbery by beating up all the criminals while wearing the schoolgirl outfit.  All the humor is extremely silly, with a lot of puns, a lot of ridiculous sight gags, and a lot of Liam Neeson keeping a stony expression while doing wacky things.

I went back and watched a few of the other Abrams/Zucker Brothers films, including the original "The Naked Gun," and was pleasantly surprised to find that they were all like that.  Some of the jokes have aged badly, but on the whole these older parody films are much more lighthearted and cartoonish than I remember.  The humor is all very juvenile, "MAD Magazine" level naughtiness, but very earnestly so.  The reboot manages to capture and update that sensibility just about right.  You've got the return of the "this looks like people having sex, but it's something totally innocent" sequence.  You've got the extremely stupid acronyms.  Weird Al and Priscilla Presley have cameos.  There's an extended bit with a demonically possessed snowman.  At the same time, you can tell this is the work of Akiva Schaffer and the Lonely Island comedy group, with Drebin occasionally finding a moment to rant about Tivo settings and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."      

However, I think what really makes it all work is the cast.  I wasn't initially onboard with Liam Neeson as the new Frank Drebin, even after his work in "The Lego Movie."  The role was too incongruous with my image of Neeson as a serious actor who made a lot of brainless action movies.  However, it turns out his comic timing is great, he's willing to go to embarrassing lengths for a laugh, and his serious actor persona is part of the joke.    After all, Leslie Nielsen was a serious actor too, before "Airplane!"  Even better than Neeson is the participation of Pamela Anderson, who finds exactly the right tone and commits beautifully to the comedic madness.  She and Neeson make a very cute couple.  The supporting cast is also filled with stalwart performers who can keep a straight face - Paul Walter Hauser, Danny Houston, and CCH Pounder.   

Finally, is the movie funny?  Well, that's a difficult question for a reviewer with a notoriously terrible sense of humor.  I didn't laugh much at the new "Naked Gun," but I found it extremely entertaining and I left my screening in a good mood.  I don't think this kind of movie will ever be for me, but I like it better than the manchild antics of the Frat Pack, or the tiresome tedium of most romantic comedy/action/spy/whatever movies that I'm supposed to be the target audience for.  I don't know that I need a sequel, but maybe they could spin off the demonically possessed snowman?  

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My 2025 Youtube Playlist

I apparently skipped doing this feature in 2024, which means you're getting a bumper crop this time.

My yearly Youtube playlist is mostly made up of media ephemera that's difficult to categorize, and the only thing they really have in common is a strong musical element.  Still, I think they're worth taking a look at and writing about.  This batch contains some real obscurities, including music videos, promotional material, song numbers, and even a fanedit.  Here we go

The Disney Sunday Night Movie - "The Disney Sunday Night Movie" was an anthology series that ran on ABC from 1986 to 1988, featuring a mix of made for television movies, Disney classics, and occasional promos for other Disney projects.  This is where some real Disney obscurities like "Fuzzbucket," "Fluppy Dogs," and "Splash, Too" originally aired.  I've included the version of the opening sequence that I remember from 1986, which remains prepended to my VHS recording of "Robin Hood" in perpetuity.  

#1 Spice - So, Zohran Mamdani had a rap career in the 2010s as Young Cardamom.  No, I'm not making this up.  Here he is with Hussein Abdul Bar (HAB) on a track featured in the Disney film, "Queen of Katwe," which happened to be directed by Mamdani's mother, the great Mira Nair.  Mamdani also produced and curated the soundtrack for the film.

Handlebars - This has a good claim to being one of the most influential fanedits (fanvids? fanworks?) ever made, when you're talking about Western fandoms anyway.  Created by Flummery (Margie and Seah), "Handlebars" is a profile of the Tenth Doctor from "Doctor Who," set to "Handlebars" by Flobots.  The escalation is fantastic, and as many people have pointed out, this video was made before the Time Lord Victorious stuff happened, making it very prescient.  The video premiered at Vividcon in 2008.  

Ask DNA - Here's the opening sequence of "Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' On Heaven's Door," featuring jawdropping animation by BONES co-founder Toshihiro Kawamoto.  Kawamoto was the character designer and animation director for both the series and the movie, and is one of the key creatives responsible for the way "Cowboy Bebop" looks.  "Ask DNA" was composed by Yoko Kanno and is performed by the Seatbelts, featuring Raj Ramayya's vocals. 

Across the Universe - The Fiona Apple cover of the Beatles track was released as part of the "Pleasantville" soundtrack in 1998.  The accompanying music video was directed by Apple's then-boyfriend Paul Thomas Anderson and features an extended version of the scene from the movie where the local townsfolk destroy the local diner.  And Anderson ensures that it looks gorgeous.

Dr. Demento's 20th Anniversary - In 1994, Comedy Central aired the full Dr. Demento 20th Anniversary Show, featuring all our favorite novelty songs being performed by people who I'm delighted to discover are real human beings.  There's Tiny Tim, Benny Bell, and "Weird Al" Yankovic of course.  But did you ever think you'd see a live performance of "Monster Mash" with Bobby Boris Picket or "The Purple People Eater" with Sheb Wooley?  As a Demento admirer, finding this was like unearthing buried treasure.

I'm Just Ken - This song remains one of the greatest things to have come out of the "Barbie" movie.  Here's the Christmas version with Ryan Gosling and Mark Ronson.  And here's the GWAR cover.  

Real Cats Drink Milk and Block City - Here are two of Al Jarnow's many, many animated shorts that he made for "Sesame Street" over four decades.  These two in particular are stop motion pieces from the early 1980s that are among the earliest pieces of media I ever remember seeing.  The music is by Jonathan Larson, and according to Jarnow's notes from  his website, the cat featured in "Real Cats Drink Milk" is named Banana. 

The Annotated Colbert Finale - Thank goodness for Slate for still having a copy of the closing sing-along of the final episode of "The Colbert Report" from 2014 still hanging around on their channel.  And it provides such helpful annotations too.  Yes, that's Henry Kissinger, George Lucas, and Cookie Monster among the notable celebrities who agreed to participate in one of the most bizarre sendoffs any fake late night pundit has ever received.  Whatever Colbert is cooking up for this final episode of "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert," he has a lot to live up to.

And finally here's They Might Be Giants, appearing on the Tonight Show With Johnny Carson in 1990 to play us out with Birdhouse in Your Soul.

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My Favorite John Carpenter Film

Some films take a while to find their audiences, and some directors aren't appreciated until they've essentially retired.  So it is with the 1982 version of "The Thing" and its director, John Carpenter.   Audiences at the time were looking for optimism and affirmation, and were not in the mood for a bleak, paranoid horror thriller set in Antarctica.  However, in the years since, "The Thing" has gone from box office bomb to cult favorite to one of the undisputed horror classics.

I want to talk about the special effects up front.  Rob Bottin put himself in the hospital for exhaustion due to his extraordinary efforts to bring the creatures of "The Thing" to life.  Though initially criticized as too gruesome, his work set the bar for prosthetics and practical effects for the next decade.  It's hard to describe film without just eventually reciting a litany of violent horrors, each building upon the last.  There's the head that removes itself from a corpse, grows spider leads and runs away.  There's the torso that suddenly grows teeth and bites a guy's arms off.  Then you've got the blood testing and the dogs and the flamethrower scenes, all of them horrifically spectacular thanks to Bottin and his team.  The impact of the monster effects has lessened over time, but the amount of work and effort that went into them is still visible in every bloody frame.  One of the many poor decisions that doomed the 2011 remake/prequel of "The Thing" was using CGI effects instead of practical ones.  

Much of what makes "The Thing" so effective is its simplicity.  You have twelve men in an isolated research outpost who are attacked and killed one by one by an alien being.  You barely know anything about them except their last names and occupations, and the monster could be impersonating any of them.  Aside from Kurt Russell as the lead, the cast is made up of career character actors, including Keith David, Wilford Brimly, and Charles Hallahan.  It's easy to forget they're actors as the bodies pile up and we realize that nobody is safe.  John Carpenter was wary of stepping on the toes of the Howard Hawks adaptation of the same material, "The Thing From Another World," so the story was stripped down to the basics, with a focus on the bare mechanics of survival and the paranoia of dealing with the doppelgangers.  We are shown where the alien came from, but nearly everything else about it is a mystery.  The climate is inhospitable and the monster is clever.  The action and suspense are pushed to the forefront, and a happy ending is not in the cards.

Long before I saw "The Thing" I saw its influence on other media.  So many movies and shows about doppelgangers, isolated standoffs, implacable contagions, and creepy crawlies have been trying to capture that same sense of dread and disaster.  The echoes of "The Thing" are everywhere, from other horror movies like Daniel Espinosa's "Life," to Quentin Tarantino's snowbound western, "The Hateful Eight" - which also borrowed the Ennio Morricone score for "The Thing" for good measure.  The gory excess of the alien transformations broke some boundaries, but what really lingered in the cultural consciousness was the nihilism of facing a monster that could only be defeated through the cold obliteration of every living thing we see in the movie.  John Carpenter would return to Lovecraftian cosmic horror several times over the course of his career, but never with as much impact.  

Carpenter is often described as a genre filmmaker, which is fair, as he gave us classics in several different ones - action-comedy, horror, satire, and science-fiction.  If I hadn't written about "The Thing," my next choice would have been "Starman," another film about an alien on Earth that is a complete tonal 180 from "The Thing."  Most of his films were dismissed as B-movies and schlock upon initial release, but are well loved decades on.  And Carpenter did have his share of hits, helping to ensure that he had a long and fascinating career that included tiny indie projects and major studio films.  "The Thing" was one of the studio films, which gave him the resources to create a nightmare vision of grotesquery on a scale that had never been seen before.  And frankly, nobody has really matched it since.

What I've Seen - John Carpenter

Dark Star (1974)

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

Halloween (1978)

The Fog (1980)

Escape from New York (1981)

The Thing (1982)

Christine (1983)

Starman (1984)

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

Prince of Darkness (1987)

They Live (1988)

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

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The Nostalgia Documentaries

I've noticed that several of the prominent documentaries I've watched over the last few months fall into a specific category, and seem to be targeting the same audience.  These are documentaries that spotlight performers and entertainers who became prominent in the 1970s and 1980s, with narratives that largely serve as retrospectives of their careers.  This includes "Pee-Wee as Himself," "Cheech & Chong's Last Movie," and "Devo."  Though biographical documentaries have always been common, lately it feels like everyone from that era is getting one.  Over the past few years we've had documentaries about Val Kilmer, Anthony Bourdain, Sly Stone, Christopher Reeves, Steve Martin, Albert Brooks, Jim Henson, John Candy and multiple Beatles tributes.  Plenty more are on their way soon.

Now, some of these documentaries are very good.  "Pee-Wee as Himself" stands out as one of the best, not only because it reveals Paul Reubens' private life and struggles as a persecuted gay man in the 1980s, but also because of the adversarial relationship that Reubens had with the documentarian Matt Wolf, which is on display in their interviews.  However, most of the others follow a similar pattern of either having the documentary subject reminisce about their life and career, hopefully offering an entertaining personal account of what it was like to live through their successes and failures, or if they're deceased, piecing together this information through interviews with their friends and family.  There are a few that fall into the category of exposes or tell-alls, like the Martha Stewart and Bill Cosby documentaries, but these are fairly rare.  

Instead, most of the nostalgia-centered docs are all about evoking good feelings and providing an excuse to traipse down memory lane.  I've been fascinated with some of these, because these celebrities come from an era where I was aware enough to understand who they were, but often too young to really grasp the historical context in which they existed.  "Cheech & Chong's Last Movie," for instance, did an excellent job of not just getting across who Cheech and Chong were in their heyday, but the counterculture of the '70s that they were a part of.  I also like the framing device of the two old stoners going on one last imaginary road trip together, occasionally picking up other interviewees as their passengers.   Alternately, I have a much harder time with music documentaries like "Becoming Led Zeppelin" and "Pavements" because music culture remains ever elusive for me.  I think you have to be an existing fan to really appreciate what they're doing. 

Fundamentally, there's nothing wrong with spending a few hours listening to Steve Martin or Lionel Richie tell stories about the good old days, but I do feel that some of these biographical documentaries get awfully indulgent, to the point where some of them are pretty obviously just vanity projects.  The more ambitious, hard-hitting historical documentaries are much more rigorous about their research, and often much more critical of their subjects.  I prefer the documentaries where the subject is deceased, because the filmmakers are often willing to paint a less flattering portrait, with more shadings and more nuances.  One of my favorite documentaries remains "Mr Best Fiend," Werner Herzog's wonderfully candid look at his tumultuous friendship with the Austrian actor and madman, Klaus Kinski.  

I love seeing extraordinary individuals getting the spotlight, and learning more about what was really going on behind the scenes for certain moments in pop culture, but I find myself raising my eyebrows more often lately when I learn who the subject of a new documentary is.  I'm not going to name specific names, but it often feels like if one documentary about a particular performer is successful, everyone in their cohort is suddenly next in line.  Frankly, not everyone needs a documentary, though in the vlogging age I suppose there's the material for anyone to make their own.

It's going to get very interesting in a few decades when we're all old enough to be nostalgic for any years where social media was active.  I guess I should just enjoy this era of nostalgia docs while it lasts.  

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My Top Ten Episodes of 2011-2012

Below, find my top ten episodes for the 2011-2012 television season below, in no particular order.  And a few spoilers ahead, including that one episode of "Breaking Bad." 

Game of Thrones, "Blackwater" - The first real "Game of Thrones" battle episode feels positively small scale now, especially considering the way it was contrived to skip most of the expensive battle scenes because we stuck to Tyrion's limited POV.  But still, what an event!  Cersei gets to be maternal, Tyrion gets to be inspirational, and at this point getting so many disparate characters in kinda close proximity to each other was something to cheer about. 

Parks and Rec, "The Comeback Kid" - It's the one with the ice rink.  Leslie launches a comeback push for her city council campaign while Ben takes up claymation and Andy and April adopt a dog.  And all of this culminates in a trip across a slippery frozen arena, set to Gloria Estefan's "Get on Your Feet," that is one of the most hysterical things that "Parks and Rec" ever came up with.  By this point in the show's run, the laughs could come from anywhere.  And they did.

Breaking Bad, "Crawl Space" - The emotional lowpoint of the fourth season, where Walt gradually comes to learn how badly things are going with both his allies and his enemies.  The tension ratchets up as the danger grows and Walt's options shrink, until there seems to be only one way out.  The final shot where the axe drops is one of the best of the entire series run, capturing a chilling moment where Walter White seems to have gone over the edge at last.  

Community, "Remedial Chaos Theory" - Witness the birth of the darkest timeline.  This is truly an episode for the nerds who are willing to patiently sit through the first few cycles of the story, which are fairly similar to each other, in order to reach the chaotic joys of one-armed Jeff and evil Abed.  Stuffed with meme-worthy lines, references, and in-jokes, the episode breaks all the rules and is one of the best examples of the experimental side of "Community." 

Mad Men, "Commissions and Fees" - Jared Harris's performance as Lane Pryce was one of my favorite parts of "Mad Men."  This episode is his swan song, a bleak, wintry farewell that has some truly heartbreaking scenes and existentially unnerving imagery.  This is also very much a Don episode, where we watch him take care of business with the understanding that a few wrong moves will put him in the same boat as Lane.  And the Jaguar shade is legendary.  

Girls, "Pilot" - I didn't like "Girls" much from what little I saw of it, but I always appreciated the pilot episode, where we're introduced to the exasperating Hannah Horvath, who has a very long way to go on her path to maturity.  From the very beginning, her awfulness and her privilege are clear, but I was also struck by the candidness of how she's portrayed.  I was also relieved that the production values were better than Lena Dunham's feature, "Tiny Furniture."  

Sherlock, "A Scandal in Belgravia" - This episode set off a storm in the fandom about the sexuality of the characters and the show's treatment of the female characters.  This version of Irene Adler is incredibly sexual, self-contradictory, and ultimately a fantasy ideal of a love interest for Sherlock Holmes.  And there's nothing wrong with that in this context.  I still count this as one of the best episodes of the show - juvenile sure, but awfully entertaining.    

Louie, "New Jersey"/"Airport" - What I loved about "Louie" was Louis C.K.'s ability to capture very specific moods and tones.  In this case, a misadventure strands him far from home, forcing him to call up a friend for a ride in the middle of the night.  And this leads to one of the best things I've ever seen special guest star Chris Rock do, acting as the disappointed, responsible adult who lectures Louie all the way home on how he's too old to be acting this stupid.   

Doctor Who, "The Girl Who Waited" - The quality of "Doctor Who" was hit-or-miss in every era, but I stuck around for the occasional episodes like this, the ones that told time travel stories that really took advantage of the show's fantastic concepts and characters.  Here we meet an embittered version of Amy Pond who was forced to wait too long for her rescue - creating a moral dilemma for the Doctor and Rory as they try to find a way to resolve the situation.  

Black Mirror, "15 Million Merits" - Finally, the episode that began my obsession with "Black Mirror," back when it was a Channel Four production.  I accidentally stumbled across a pirated version on Youtube, and thought it was a web series.  I didn't know who Daniel Kaluuya was, or Jessica Brown-Findlay, and I'd never heard of Charlie Brooker.  I just knew that the episode was one of the most effective pieces of science-fiction I'd seen in ages, and I wanted more.  

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