2010 POP CULTURE ROUND TABLE

VZ Staffers Nicole and Amanda dish on the best (and worst) entertainment of the year.

By Venus Zine Staff
Published: November 2nd, 2010 | 12:00am

MUSIC ON TV
Nicole: When you think of music and television in 2010, the first show that will inevitably come to mind is Glee. Sure, singing teenagers were all the rage when the High School Musical kids reigned supreme, but Glee revived what would have otherwise been a dying genre. Each week viewers were treated to cheesy renditions of old (and new) classics. While this show dominated the whole "music as a form of storytelling" craze, Fox decided to bring some of its other popular shows into the mix, with Bones, Fringe, House, The Simpsons, and Family Guy all using a song or two to push their plots along. Did you get a chance to see any of these episodes?

Amanda: Musicals? Now you're heading into dangerous territory. Everybody knows how I feel about them: They make no sense. How often in your life do you ask someone a question, and in response they burst into song? And not just a song, but a flawlessly choreographed dance number with full gospel choir accompaniment, too. Of course, you probably never see dragons or mobsters or brooding-but-secretly-sensitive Victorian gentlemen in your daily life either, but those things are awesome. Awkward group dance numbers? Not so much.

That said, sometimes it’s good to mix things up. I’ll cop to enjoying the musical episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer back in the day. This year, I have to say Fringe’s effort, “Brown Betty,” was worth DVR-ing. The episode’s noir detective story-within-a-story gave us some really gorgeous retro styling, the song choices were eclectic and appealing (with picks ranging from A Chorus Line to Tears for Fears), and Lance Reddick sang! I know him as Lt. Cedric Daniels on The Wire, so I never thought I’d ever see such a serious actor sing. But he’s amazing! Maybe musicals are good for something.

OMFG

OMFG
Nicole: You don't even start to discuss the truly f'd up characters of 2010 without mentioning Tara Thornton. She shines on True Blood, with her penchant for attracting the worst things this world has to offer, while simultaneously blaming everyone else for her problems. She’s definitely earned the title of most f’d up character this year.

Chuck Bass from Gossip Girl may not have been as deliciously devious this season as he was when the show first came out in 2007, but he's still a top contender for most deranged. And Nancy Botwin on Weeds is another character who’s definitely seen more dastardly days, but given her child-raising skills and overall "sure, I know that's bad, but I'm going to do it anyway" attitude toward life, she's still solidly messed up.

Amanda: I agree. True Blood reinvented the shocking moment this third season. Every single episode ended with a blind-siding, heart-stopping, Tivo-rewinding flourish. It’s impossible to say which one is the most disturbing—between Bill and Lorena’s head-turning boudoir antics and Russell Edgington’s (neck) breaking news report, I’ll probably have nightmares for years.

Good call on Nancy Botwin, too! The current season of Weeds makes me long for the good old days when she was just a drug dealing sexaholic. Now she makes Dexter Morgan look like father of the year, and he’s a serial killer.

Speaking of serial killers, you know what doesn’t belong on this list? Saw VII 3D. I don’t know how this horror franchise went so wrong. Sure, the first movie was kind of a Seven rip off, but it had some potential: the pig head mask, the bone saw, the always sexy Cary Elwes. But it was all downhill after that, since the writers of the Saw films just aren’t that smart. They can’t put together believable puzzles, so they just slap cheap CG gore all over every frame and call it a night. Saw VII 3D is no exception. The franchise is getting so bad it makes It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown look like Rosemary’s Baby.

(B)romance

(B)ROMANCE
Nicole: Love, lust, and even like always look so much more glamorous onscreen then they do in real life. But there were a few couples that got it right. Their romances and bromances looked the way they do when you're actually in then, not when a group of writers pen every kiss and special moment. Take Troy Barnes and Abed Nadir from Community. Anyone who’s been in the presence of a real bromantic relationship knows that the bond two men form over their love for a common interest can be magical. And like Troy and Abed, Shawn Spencer and Burton “Gus” Guster of Psych also revel in private jokes, share a bounty of dorky moments, and have an overall ability to be annoyingly adorable to outsiders.

But while bromantic relations are nice, here are a few of my other favorite TV couples: Amber and Steve (Parenthood), Marc St. James and Amanda Tannen (RIP Ugly Betty), Penelope Jane "P.J." Franklin and Bobby Newman (RIP My Boys), and Artie Abrams and Tina Cohen-Chang (Glee).

Amanda: Ah the bromance, my favorite TV fad. So few things are as entertaining (both funny and touching) as the love between a man and another man. There were so many good bromances to choose from this year, but I can’t leave out Tracy Jordan and Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock! I just love how Kenneth’s sun rises and sets on his beloved Mr. Jordan, and Tracy thinks Ken’s OK, too. Watching Tracy try to cope without Kenneth when he took a page job at another network was tragic. Maybe their relationship isn’t perfect, but those two just can’t live without each other.

And for that old-fashioned, hetero-normative loving feeling, you really can’t beat vampire Jessica and Hoyt Fortenberry on True Blood. Even though they’re both 20-somethings, this couple had that real life awkward first-time sex scene pegged: the poorly calculated nose placement, the uncomfortable body positioning, and the shaky nerves. And the part where Jessica realizes she’ll literally be a virgin forever? Priceless!

Girls who kick ass

GIRLS WHO KICK ASS
Amanda: Girls definitely kicked a lot of ass this year. On TV and at the movies, women took care of business in the face of catty office politics, no-good relationships, and even zombies.

My favorite badass lady has got to be on Parks and Recreation. SNL alum Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope is a total fighter. She’s such a determined, take-no-prisoners kind of chick that her nothing job in a nowhere town doesn’t get her down—she takes her responsibilities as seriously as a heart attack. And I just love her unabashed (and unintentionally hilarious) feminist enthusiasm and impossibly high hopes. When I grow up, I want to be just like Leslie.

For literal butt-kicking, Emma Stone takes the prize this year. In Zombieland, Stone managed to beat major zombie ass while taking care of a little sister and getting Jesse Eisenberg to fall for her, all while looking grungy, post-punk fabulous.

But obviously no one kicked more ass this year than Betty White. She kicked butt on the big screen, the little screen, on live TV, and in Super Bowl commercials. White became an overnight sensation—again—at age 88. And she’s got a pinup calendar to prove it.

Nicole: Ah Betty White. Sure, pop culture was assaulted with Ms. White, almost to the point of annoyance, but despite the oversaturation (commercials, hosting SNL, and the arguably enjoyable Hot in Cleveland), she kicked the butt of any critics who assumed over-the-hill actresses have to be gone and forgotten.

I like Leslie Knope, too. She’s like Michael Scott, only smarter and kinder. Her ambition isn’t always appreciated by her staff, and her charm doesn’t always go over well with potential male suitors, but it doesn’t deter her from being consistently awesome.

Now if we’re speaking in terms of literal butt-kicking, Emma Stone is a strong contender, but I have to give my vote to Chloe Moretz as Kick Ass’ Hit Girl. This not-even-preteen vigilante pushed boundaries from all sides. Her language was rated a strong R (at times bordering on NC-17), she took immense pleasure in slaying foes twice her age and size, and most importantly she stole the show from the very wimpy Kick Ass himself.

Worst stuff on tv

WORST STUFF ON TV
Amanda: The worst stuff on TV, apart from cable news, of course, are reality television shows. Sure, there are some groundbreaking documentaries, and even some fun rock docs to be found, but for the most part, reality television is a schlock genre. And I can’t get enough.

By far my guiltiest pleasure is The Bad Girls Club. If you’re fortunate enough not to have seen it, some Oxygen producers hand-pick the most sociopathic, angry, narcissistic women in the country, ply them with tons of booze, and lock them up in a house for a few months. Naturally, outrageous shenanigans ensue. This season, Miami, included tons of stripping (by professionals and cast members), plenty of name calling, and one soy-sauce-and-bleach fight. Yes, these people threw soy sauce and bleach at each other.

I know most women aren’t as psychotic as the cast of The Bad Girls Club, and even the cast members are often just acting out for the cameras, but sometimes the show produces some really hilarious moments: After being hit with a gallon of beach during a fight with her housemates, Kristen grabbed a handful of her platinum-blonde down-to-there extensions and wailed, “You got bleach in my hair!” Like she doesn’t pay a stylist to do the same thing. It was priceless.

Nicole: I’ll admit, after season three of The Bad Girls Club I stopped watching. I didn’t find the show overly offensive, but with the host of other reality TV on my DVR, I lost interest in seeing variations of the same catfight over and over.

I can forgive The Bad Girls Club and most of VH1’s “Love” shows because they don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are. It’s the sneaky ones like The Marriage Ref and Tough Love that grate my nerves. They reel viewers in with the promise of providing sound and easily relatable advice, but what they really provide are b.s. opinions of so-called experts whose only credentials are their own lame experience. Just tell me you’re bringing couples on the show so celebrities can make jokes about their relationships (The Marriage Ref), or that some guy with mommy issues is going to wax poetic with his "tough love" to a group of easily rattled women with problems of their own. At least then it’d be honest!

Leaving the realm of reality TV, I found shows like Outsourced, Melrose Place, The Big C, and a slew of others I can't remember just plain bad. Not even awesomely bad or ironically bad, just, well, bad. These shows are wastes of space, and none of them are worthy of making the queue on my DVR. They all had potential, but lacked the writing or character depth to make me tune in past one episode. I will never understand how shows like this survived the five-episode mark, while Lone Star and My Generation didn’t even get three episodes’ time to boost ratings before they were canceled. A travesty indeed!

THE BOTTOM LINE
Even though there were some low points, overall this year we saw some epic releases in television (like Treme and Boardwalk Empire) and movies (Inception, The Social Network, and The Kids Are All Right).

Hopefully 2011 will be even better! We’re looking forward to Thor and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo on big screens, and the return of some of our favorite TV: Mad Men, True Blood, Parks and Recreation, the final season of Big Love, and so much more.

Nicole Nalls is Venus Zine's Social Media Manager. Amanda Hughes is Venus Zine's Create Editor and Online Fashion Editor.