Being a pop culture obsessive goes hand-in-hand with a compulsive, enthusiastic fascination—one could say, —with award shows. (We’d venture that we’re not alone in having encyclopedic knowledge of Oscar winners for Best Supporting Actress before we could name all the state capitals.) So last year, to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the launch of The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, we debuted our own version of awards, , that reflected the site’s take on TV, movies, celebrities, and all the mayhem that whirls about in between.
Believe it or not, a whole year, a lot of entertainment news, and about 47 new versions of albums have passed: It’s time for our second annual Obsessies. Below, you’ll find an incredibly silly and equally fun list of categories and winners reflecting back on the things from this last year that excited us the most and made us the most passionate. It runs the gamut from serious to ridiculous.
We’re as proud to acknowledge the creative brilliance of shows like and as we are to pay tribute to Manny Jacinto’s arms and Julianne Moore’s grave concern about having enough hot dogs. We had a blast putting this together, and thank you to all the Obsessed staff and contributors who locked arms in ridiculousness in order for this to happen. Welcome to The Obsessies! Josh Hartnett’s cameo as the new husband in No one’s happier about the than everyone here at Obsessed.
From his standout turn in to nailing the lead role in the zeitgeist-seizing , we’re fully on board for the Josh Hartnett era. Case in point: his brief role in , playing Cousin’s ex-wife’s new man, who is so just plain nice that it’s impossible to hate him—no matter how much we want to. — Heather Gay, Lisa Barlow, Angie Katsanevas in The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
Heather Gay on It was the year solidified itself as a top-tier reality show, and the year that Heather Gay proved she’s a star. Orchestrating the masterful exposé of Monica Garcia at a Bermuda triangle-themed dinner, Gay delivered a legendary monologue. “I have your perfect formula: Receipts! Proof! Timelines! Screenshots! Fucking everything to prove that you are a fucking bully and a fucking troll.
” Some people live in ignorance, having never watched an episode of the Real Housewives franchise (“Real? I don’t think so!” they utter in disdain), a modern Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Too bad for them. — Manny Jacinto in From the first movie in 1977 to the many recent TV spinoffs, is not short on attractive actors playing its heroes and villains.
And yet, no one, nope, not even Han Solo or Kylo Ren, has elicited the same jaw-dropping reaction as the reveal that Manny Jacinto’s Qimir in is the mysterious masked figure known as “The Stranger.” It isn’t the removal of his face covering so much as the surprise bulging biceps beneath those robes that cause the gasps across the universe. For a franchise that tends to lean chaste, this display of physicality, whether during impressive balletic fight choreo or taking a well-earned dip, is nothing short of breathtaking.
— at the Eras Tour Seeing Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Andrew Scott shaking it off at the Eras Tour warmed my cold dead broken heart. It’ll never pass! It was especially cute when they heard “Style” and ran back so they wouldn’t miss it. — Jacob Anderson as Louis De Point Du Lac and Eric Bogosian as Daniel Molloy in Interview with the Vampire.
Eric Bogosian as Daniel Molloy in Eric Bogosian plays ’s lone mortal Daniel Molloy with a charisma and wit so potent it’s impossible to take your eyes off of him whenever he’s on screen. At 71 years old, the playwright-actor-author is delivering the best performance of his career, and finally making journalism look sexy again as he does it. — Jodie Comer stars as Kathy in Jeff Nichols' The Bikeriders.
Jodie Comer in As the most prominent female voice among a gang of macho motorcyclists in this summer’s , the Tony and Emmy winner delivers a dialect bigger than her bump-it in her hair. Is it good? Is it bad? The power of Comer’s “oh gorsh!” mid-century Midwestern dialect jetrockets past mere notions of quality and lands gloriously somewhere between caricature and authenticity–much like the leather-clad greasers she’s surrounded by, the voice is equally a put-on the real deal. It’s neither good, nor bad–it’s perfect.
— Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer in While eventually devolved into a , its first few episodes had some delectable sex scenes. Give Jonathan Bailey all the awards—an Emmy, a Peabody, a Nobel Peace Prize—for just what he did with Matt Bomer's feet. After endless discourse about Gen Z sexual devolution, somehow struck big with its dom/sub action and bondage.
Hell, is even selling a “drink your milk” t-shirt. — The J.Lo concert I bought tickets to that was supposed to be last weekend.
It’s been a rough few months for Jennifer Lopez, and it’s been a rough few months to be a fan. Especially one—and perhaps the only one—who bought a ticket for her tour that was canceled amid low sales, a flop new album, and rumors of a split from Ben Affleck. — “I don’t think we have enough hot dogs.
” The piano echoes. The camera zooms. Julianne Moore stares vacantly into her fridge.
And then, the zinger: “ ” As Gracie in Todd Haynes' , Moore loads the lisp on thick, giving line reads for the century. It’s a flicker of comedy in an unexpectedly dark movie, a combo that only Haynes and Moore together could pull off. — Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley in Ripley.
Anthony Minghella’s 1999 remains a great thriller, so there was little reason to believe that another version of Patricia Highsmith’s best-seller was needed. Oscar-winning writer/director , however, knew better, as his proved the best thing to hit the small-screen this year. Energized by Andrew Scott’s cunningly placid and creepy tour-de-force, stellar supporting turns from Dakota Fanning and Johnny Flynn, and sumptuous black-and-white imagery courtesy of Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Elswit ( ), the eight-part Netflix miniseries was an artistic triumph in every regard, remaining faithful to its source material even as it added new (literal and figurative) angles.
With additional Ripley novels primed for adaptation, one can only hope there’s more to come. — Phish at the Sphere Even the haters, and yes, that’s most to the world, have to accept that Phish’s four-night run at the Sphere in Las Vegas this April looked cool. Sure, sure, joke that their music is for Boomers too stoned not to realize they aren’t watching the Grateful Dead, but the fact remains that they played 68 different improv-heavy tunes with no repeats, and a special visual creation was timed to accompany each jam.
Surely you have a cousin or friend from college that sent you , right? In the proper frame of mind, admit it, it would’ve been fun. — Beyoncé It’s dangerous for me to begin to monologue about what an absolute achievement is—especially when paired with —because I simply never stop monologuing about what an absolute achievement..
.you get it. To have given us that this year, plus the world’s most random (but very cutely acted!) cell phone commercial? We don’t deserve .
— Kaitlin Olson in In the year 2024, it’s hard to imagine catchphrase comedy taking off. There’s something a little outdated and cheesy about this tried and tested method. But when DJ Vance (Kaitlin Olson) grabs the mic at her mother Deborah’s comedy roast in ,it is a reminder of why this form of repetition works.
“What a c—-!” is a loaded sentiment, but it hits all the right notes in this setting and with this much history. And I’ve not stopped saying it since. — Chappell Roan performs on Day 3 of Outside Lands Festival 2024 at Golden Gate Park on August 11, 2024 in San Francisco, California.
Chappell Roan and Tim Walz The American world is hard-pressed to consider the cultural relevance of any non-coastal influences. Here we are, though, in the throes of a Midwest renaissance, as Chappell Roan stages a coup on the music industry with a reminder that pop music can be longer than three minutes and still go viral on TikTok—all while sporting a bombastic, in-your-face persona. And just when we thought the Midwest had hit its quota for the year, Kamala Harris chose as her VP , who’s such a lovably Midwestern dad that the nation (well, select parts of it) has taken a collective sigh of relief and said, “We needed this.
” — Elmo Twas late January, before we learned how to hope again, when Elmo if we were doing okay and we said NOPE. — Magneto in The age difference between Magneto and Rogue as they pursue their doomed romance in remains skeevy as hell. But, I have to say: girl, I get it.
Dude may be over 60, but he is still rocking it (even if he is a cartoon). — Roxxxy Andrews Did any drag queen have a more iconic year than Roxxxy Andrews? The first queen on to ever do a wig reveal, Roxxxy continued her unprecedented lip sync dominance on All Stars 9 taking her incredible win streak to 9 straight lip sync wins. We stan.
— Andrew Scott in I’m not a “watch a movie multiple times” kind of person, unless that film title starts with “ ” and ends with “ .” Yet this past year, I’ve revisited more times than I can count, haunted and deeply moved by its depiction of a gay man’s loneliness, complicated relationship to love, and awareness of how fleeting everything from happiness to passion can be. Andrew Scott is brilliant in this, just as he was this year in .
Each time I watch, I uncover new layers in his performance to marvel over...
and cry about. — Cynthia Erivo's final “AlfieeeeEEEEEE” at the Kennedy Center Honors Dripping in blue, Cynthia Erivo takes the Kennedy Center stage to sing to the herself, Dionne Warwick. With a string orchestra behind her, Erivo .
Still, it’s that final “AlfieeeeeEEEEEE” that guarantees Erivo her spot as one of our best vocalists. It’s a mesmerizing performance, one that will be hard to top in the upcoming movies. — The cast of Jonathan Groff just gets really wet when he.
..what?! From that still makes me cry with laughter to Jonathan officiating Lindsay Medez’s wedding (Daniel Radcliffe was the ringbearer), these are the best old friends ever.
— Taylor Swift’s 100 variants of the same album It was once taboo to so desperately game the system for commercial success. Those days are long over now that , our biggest pop star, has decided to inundate the world with four new versions of every business week. We can’t let the music industry get even more cynical and annoying, squeezing every last drop out of albums to break records that no longer even make sense in the streaming era.
Get a grip and sell one, , versions of your album. Anything more is just plain classless. — Delivering absurdist gags at a pace that would make Bugs and Daffy proud, is a live-action/animated black-and-white cartoon that’s imaginative to the point of exhaustion.
Director Mike Cheslik and star Ryland Brickson Cole Tews’ indie comedy concerns a woodlands distillery owner who, following calamity, winds up in a war against the rural region’s beavers and bunnies, all of whom are played by adults in furry costumes. Slapsticky bits indebted to Tex Avery and Chuck Jones, video games, Benny Hill, and many more are served up with formally audacious, consistently amusing enthusiasm, such that the sheer creativity on display proves borderline overwhelming—and is certainly more abundant than in five likeminded studio offerings. - Nick Schager Eight episode seasons If Season 2 of House of the Dragon is anything to go by, 8 episode seasons of television need to be reserved for limited series’.
Please, for the love of all that is holy, allow your seasons of television more room to unfold, lest they become proof that we are in the darkest times of television production. — The cat Cats and their owners have become a huge talking point this summer, from controversial statements to controversial essays. Before the conversation took this turn, TV ensured that it wasn't just dogs like Messi getting all the glory.
No one is doing it quite like Lucio (played by King) in Netflix’s because this majestic-looking feline watches Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott) awkwardly disposing of a body and barely bats an eyelid (or whisker). Leaving bloody kitty prints as a clue is not exactly keeping quiet, but Lucio will never tell. A dog might be a man's best friend, but in this case, a cat is a solid accomplice.
— Luke Newton and Nicola Coughlan. ’s Polin Colin and Penelope (Luke Newton and Nicola Coughlan) went around the world, holding hands the whole time. Netflix PR people went haywire, and the Colin Fingerington’s technique.
— The, um, rimming train in is known for its gusto in portraying raunchiness when it comes to sex and violence. Still, not even a series that has shown us a tiny man exploding inside of a penis and a superhero sex orgy could prepare for us the “ ” from the past season, in which a supe capable of cloning himself had his copies get naked with each other and, well, I think you get it..
. — Cole Escola’s Oh Mary! on Broadway has become the theatrical event of the past several years for a reason, making good on the promise of non-stop laughs in the name of revisionist history nonsense. However, the pure genius of the play is how its madcap (and Escola’s one-in-a-lifetime stupid-smart performance as Mary Todd Lincoln) builds into a fevered finale that’s too divine to ruin for you.
But rest assured it takes the play’s hard hitting laughs into I-didn’t-know-they-could-do-that rule-shattering territory that sends audiences out on a giddy high that’s helped cement ’s reputation. — Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga in Shogun. Hiroyuki Sanada in Hiroyuki Sanada hardly has something to prove after a 50+ year acting career.
Yet, having moved to Hollywood in 2005, it’s hard to pin down a role for him that could be said to be at the top of the call sheet—despite ample evidence of his skills in projects like , , and . We’ve had to wait until 2024, but finally, both as producer and lead, Sanada was allowed to anchor with his usual dedication and a long-desired authenticity to prove it’s been a mistake to not give Sanada more lead roles. — At the end of 2023, bastion of impartial journalism, , reported that 2024’s hot new men’s trend will be big butts.
Great news for folks like me and apparently Netflix, which seemed aware we were yearning for ample rumps as dropped on the streamer soon after. It’s a beautiful, slow-burn romance set in the world of and fading coastal towns, but if you like big butts and find it hard to be dishonest about that, you can’t do much better than Jang Dong-yoon and his wrestling pals donning the tightest of tight shorts for 16+ hours. It’s almost too much butt! — on Netflix is, joke-for-joke, the funniest laugh-out-loud comedy you can stream right now.
Season 3 moved from Peacock to Netflix, which thrilled with me the prospect that it would get the hallowed “Netflix boost” and turn into the phenomenon it always deserved to be. Yet you still didn’t watch. To which I ask: Do you not enjoy fun? — Lady Raven from Move over, “Espresso,” Lady Raven’s “Save Me” is the song of the summer! One part thriller, one part concert film, M.
Night Shyamalan’s launches his daughter Saleka’s music career, and in turn gives us the strongest contender for a fictional musical act that needs to go on a real world tour. — I am devastated and pissed off that I don’t . This gem of a show was a love letter to musicals while being funny and original.
BRING HIM HOME! — It’s easy for media to get lost in the deluge of streaming releases, and you’d be forgiven, what with Netflix’s track record, for thinking is another dud in the streamer’s catalog of licensed “content” (ick). Though it boasts a far from pithy title, is a beautiful, tragic look at first loves and rediscovering yourself in your thirties that carries the same vibes as and . Which is why it’s so bizarre that Netflix did NOTHING with it! — Ilona Maher There were many amazing stories from the Paris 2024 Olympics, but nobody captured the hearts of the world quite like Ilona Maher.
The bronze-medal-winning member of the Rugby Sevens team has with her power, humor, and infinite charm. — The final scene in A master class in action, writing, creating tension, subverting audience expectations, and serving a fierce bob haircut: The pas de deux between Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder was thrilling. They both better get Emmys, or we ride at dawn.
— Julianne Moore as Gracie Atherton-Yoo and Natalie Portman as Elizabeth Berry in May December. No one has done more for hot dog sales in the last year than Gracie (Julianne Moore) in . Sure, we don't have the stats to back this up, and Oscar Meyer might have a word or two to say about this.
However, no one has made me want to rush out to the grocery store more than when director Todd Haynes cuts from Gracie's fretting (“I don’t think we have enough hot dogs”) to the of wieners on the grill. When it comes to barbecue season, it is better to have too much than not enough. — Kidnapped Marco Bellocchio’s spectacular is a gorgeously shot period piece about a young Jewish boy taken from his family and forced into the Catholic church.
It’s a sweeping melodrama that tackles the power of communities working together for justice and how faith can shape your worldview. It’s a truly special movie that’s every bit as enriching for the religious faithful and nonbelievers. —.
