[Best of 2017] Highlights
- Matt Bickerton, Joshua Covell, Chris Harrison
- Dec 22, 2017
- 8 min read
Narrativity contributors Matt Bickerton, Joshua Covell, Chris Harrison, David Rogers, and Andrew Ryan share the entertainment, experiences, and cultural events that stood out the most for them this year.
Matt Bickerton: Breath of the Wild and My Reinvigorated Love for Nintendo
To say that Nintendo is coming off a rough couple of years is a bit of an understatement. While the 3DS has chugged along at a relatively steady pace, it's no secret that the Wii U struggled to gain a foothold, resulting in something of a creative and commercial nadir for Nintendo. Sure, I bought one, but that purchase was largely predicated on the promise of a future Zelda game to come (as it is with most of my Nintendo purchases). Nintendo eventually got around to releasing a new Zelda game for the console, but unfortunately, like Twilight Princess before it, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild ended up as a flagship title for Nintendo's wonderful new console, the Switch. This was all the excuse I needed to pony up and pre-order a Switch at launch, and after spending a few hours downloading Breath of the Wild (damn Best Buy let me down!), I've never looked back.
The Switch's genius lies in its simplicity: as a fusion of both home console and portable system, it blends the best (and sometimes the worst, I guess) of both styles of play. Like, if I'm halfway through a dungeon in Zelda, and I have to leave the house, the game comes with me, no muss, no fuss. If I want to watch an episode of Star Trek on Netflix, but I really need to harvest my crops in Stardew Valley, bam, the Switch lets me do that. The Switch is all about having options, and for the first time in a looooong time, I've found myself checking if a game I want to play is going to get a Nintendo release before I decide to buy it.
I've been a Nintendo fan pretty much since my dad unwrapped a Super NES on Christmas morning in 1995, but it's been harder and harder over the years to celebrate or defend their decisions. The Wii was an interesting console, and a huge financial success, but the motion controls never really solidified into what was pitched. I'll go to my grave defending Skyward Sword, but even I'd be hard pressed to argue it didn't feel like Nintendo had lost the plot somewhat. The Wii U was honestly a mess of a system, confusingly marketed, with a gimmick that, while interesting at first glance, never really panned out. Add to that the absolute dearth of third party support for their home consoles, and it was becoming really hard to justify the purchase of a Nintendo console just for the exclusives, especially when Zelda, the one Nintendo franchise I really care about, only sees a mainline release once every five years or so (if we're lucky). With the Switch, I finally feel confident in buying a Nintendo system without referring to it self-consciously as my "$400 Zelda machine." As we're starting to see more third party support in both the indie and AAA spheres (DOOM! On Nintendo!!), I feel confident I'll be playing games on the Switch for years to come.
Joshua Covell: The Women’s March(es)
For me and many others, 2017 was the year when political awareness turned into political action. I participated in my first demonstration this year—Chicago’s Women’s March on January 20th, the day after President Trump’s inauguration. If you went to that march, or any of the dozens of other marches around the world on that day, you know how peaceful, supportive, family-friendly, and optimistic the vibe was. We weren’t just there to protest against a president and administration that promoted (and continues to promote) hate and discrimination, but we were also there in support of women everywhere, and to a larger extent anyone who was being targeted, including people of color and refugees.
A quarter of a million people showed up at the march in Chicago; organizers had only anticipated 60,000. Women, men, and children flooded downtown streets, holding signs, singing and chanting, speaking through bullhorns, and taking pictures to document what would be the largest protest the city had ever held.
It was a singular moment in history that marked the beginning of a global political movement of resistance. And it was borne entirely out of love and motivated by a fundamental respect for others. To say it was inspiring would be to greatly undersell the power and gravity of the event.
It seemed like every day since has been another attack to defend against, another bully to stand up to, another right to protect. And although we have suffered some great and devastating losses this year, the marches that took place in January sent a message to all of us to never stop fighting.
Chris Harrison: 28-3
As a lifelong New England Patriots fan, I’ve been pretty spoiled. I’m not old enough to remember anything before Robert Kraft bought the team and changed the franchise’s fortunes. Really, the roughest season I’ve had to endure was the 2000-2001 season, when the Pats posted a 5-11 record in the first year of the Bill Belichick era.
The other pro teams I follow in American sports (Knicks! Blue Jays!) have typically fallen somewhere between utterly embarrassing and totally forgettable, so I’ve taken Patriots’ losses in stride and appreciated their wins for what they are. Except when they lose in the Super Bowl.
The Pats have lost three Super Bowls in my lifetime, with two of them coming during the Brady/Belichick reign. And they’ve been as heartbreaking as can be. Both Super Bowl losses to the Giants featured a miracle catch for New York (David Tyree and Mario Manningham) and an embarrassing and uncharacteristic drop by a Patriot (Asante Samuel and Wes Welker).
Watching the Atlanta Falcons absolutely pasting the Pats sent me flying through a series of emotions. The rage quickly subsided and gave way to acceptance. “At least we can say we were comprehensively beaten this time. No flukes here,” I thought. Still, I kept watching. I mean, they’re the Falcons. They could always do some Falcon shit.
And, oh boy did they do some Falcon shit. The Pats’ comeback quickly transitioned from “it’s technically possible if this, this, and this happen” to feeling borderline inevitable. Even a miraculous Julio Jones catch couldn’t net them a scoring opportunity, thanks to some bizarre play calling and a steadfast refusal to run the ball. And this time, we got a miracle catch of our own. At the end of that game, all I could really do was sit there in disbelief (and be really thankful we didn’t play the damned Giants).
David Rogers: Baby Driver
It’s funny that Josh disliked Baby Driver so much since seeing it was actually one of my favorite pop culture moments of this year. I didn’t have the same problems with the lead he experienced. Elgort isn’t incredibly charismatic, but I never really felt like the movie suffered for it. And the rest of the movie more than makes up for that nitpick.
Baby Driver’s characters are unique, the dialogue is witty, and Edgar Wright’s signature quick editing style is in full effect. I’ve always wanted a movie that synced a soundtrack to events happening on the screen, making car doors or gunshots part of the score, and Baby Driver does it better than I could ever have imagined. The end result is a movie that elevates what should be a standard gangster story to something far more interesting and exciting.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie with so much swagger that seemed to pull it off so effortlessly. The viewer needs to buy into it from the get-go or else it may not work for them, but it had me hooked from the very beginning. Seeing it in the theater with a group of friends, reacting to the twists and jokes, was easily the most fun I’ve had at the movies this year.
Andrew Ryan: Twin Peaks
The original run of the influential, revolutionary, and highly quotable Twin Peaks debuted in 1990, finished its second season in 1991 and left us with a one-off prequel movie in 1992. In the final episode of the show, wrapping up the narrative journey that Mark Frost and David Lynch had taken us on, the murdered Laura Palmer says to Agent Dale Cooper: “I’ll see you again in 25 years. Meanwhile…” before letting out a blood curdling scream. It’s absolutely amazing that Lynch, Frost, and a huge portion of the original ensemble of both cast and crew reunited to deliver on Laura’s promise and bring us 18 new episodes of Twin Peaks, 25 years later. It was already an incredible feat that this TV season, called “a limited event series,” happened at all, and it’s even more astounding that what we got was so damn good.
I’d say it exceeded expectations, but expectations are a funny thing with David Lynch. He’s not exactly known for giving audiences what they want in any sort of predictable or traditional way. It’d be more accurate to say this set of Twin Peaks episodes played with expectations, toying with the audience and building an elaborate puzzle, deconstructing the original series and using its DNA to bring about something entirely new. And not just new for Twin Peaks, something new for television, art, and pop culture as a whole. This was unlike anything else that’s ever aired on our TV screens, and it’s the reason why Twin Peaks was my defining pop culture experience of 2017.
It wasn’t just the new season that captivated me this year, either; it was re-watching the old ones, reading the two new books, following podcasts, reviews, and discussions taking place across the internet. Twin Peaks captivated me in 2017, and it was so much fun to think about. In an age where we can forget a show faster than it took for us to binge watch it, Twin Peaks had me thinking differently about the world than I did before watching the show. It left a mark that’s not going away as we transition into the next year.
One of the ongoing themes of Twin Peaks has been how the large is contained within the small, and vice versa. As agent Tamara Preston put it in Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier: “It was all there, in that one town. All of life, cradle to grave, every shade and color of the spectrum, like a fractal itself made up of infinite parts; the ocean in a drop of water.” Put another way, all the components of the universe, the tug of war between good and evil that plays out across the worlds, across time, inside small towns, and within each of us, are present within Twin Peaks. And with that idea, Frost and Lynch fit a whole helluva lot inside those 18 episodes.
This show was about nostalgia itself, remakes, and what it means to revisit places we’ve been before. It was about the perpetual dance of light and dark, the cycles of good and evil manifesting themselves in both predictable and unpredictable ways. It was about America, particularly small town America, and the ways these communities have changed and decayed over the past several decades at the hands of corporate profiteers. It was about violence against women in a world controlled by men with a full spectrum of intentions, and how sex itself can be a medium for everything wonderful and terrible in this world. It was about what human beings do to each other, in ways that are both beautiful and harrowing. And it was about survival, a roadmap for how to endure, keep going, and thrive amidst everything that makes life seem hopeless. This show sure came to us in a fitting year. Twenty five years later and right on time.
Of course, that’s what I got out of it, and a small slice of it at that. If you watched those 18 hours of television you may have had an entirely different experience and walked away from the conclusion with completely separate takeaways. That’s how Twin Peaks is designed, and any fan of the show has learned that every question answered by Lynch and Frost is replaced with an entirely new set of mysteries and secrets for the audience to unravel on their own. That’s why season one, season two, and season three all ended on cliffhangers. It’s a cycle, a loop that we’re all in, for better or worse. We’re not getting resolution in the Twin Peaks universe (or multiple universes for that matter) but we can still grapple with everything it offers. If Showtime convinces Lynch and Frost to do another season, I’m there. If not, I’m weirdly satisfied with how it concluded: another agonizing scream from Laura Palmer, and so much material for the audience to deconstruct, analyze, discuss, and debate to keep Twin Peaks alive far into the future (or is it past…?)
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