Brett White’s Top 10 of Everything 2018

Netflix’s Stay Here checks off a lot of my boxes. Half-hour show? Stunning home transformations? A British guy in chunky glasses? My longtime fave Trading Spaces queen Genevieve Gorder?! But one short-term rental property on this show stood out from all the rest: the Palm Springs Time Machine.

I’ve seen a lot of home reno shows, from the TLC glory days of While You Were Out and Town Haul to HGTV’s current reign with Property Brothers and Love It or List It. Believe me when I say that this episode was a rollercoaster! I was gagged when I saw the lovingly recreated groovy interiors and aghast at the thought of Genevieve changing a single thing. I may have screamed at the TV, “Leave the time machine alone!”

But trust in Genevieve, because she saw the potential in this throwback palace and decided to double-down on the borderline egregious level of kitsch. The home came alive through that transformation, becoming even more of the retro hangout of my dreams.

Yes, I have looked into renting it.

Stream Stay Here "Palm Springs Time Machine" on Netflix

I’ve been a fan of The Cool Kids since the instant it was announced. Golden Girls meets It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia starring four legit TV legends? Glad I never have Friday night plans, because I now get to hang out with my favorite feisty elders every week! This show has only gotten better, especially after an October episode involving catfishing and stabbing a fake cop with a real knife kicked the show up a notch. It’s an old school setup (consider this entry on my list a nod to the return of the multi-cam sitcom, which I am here for) with a new school attitude, which allows pros like Martin Mull, Vicki Lawrence, Leslie Jordan, and David Alan Grier to do the kind of off-the-wall comedy that’s usually reserved for performers a third of their age. I love this show exactly as much as I thought I would.

Stream The Cool Kids on Hulu

Anthropologists take note, for I believe I am the lone gay that watches award show red carpets and movie premieres exclusively for the men’s fashion. And being this lonely subclass of gay, Martin Freeman is year after year the man to watch! Just look at the looks from his Black Panther premiere tour. That green Mark Powell suit he wore back in January still turns me green with envy.

We! Don’t! Celebrate! Men! Who! Care! About! Clothes! Enough! Even when Freeman goes totes caszh, he doesn’t pull some lazy jorts and tee nonsense. That’s when he busts out the ascot. As a fan of a good daywear ascot, a sentence I know has never been written on Decider before, I admire this with every fiber of my cable-knit sweater. And a little later this year, Freeman’s Mark Powell plaid jacket sent me on a mission to get more patterns into my life. It also made visiting the Mark Powell shop a must when I visited London for the first time this year.

Let’s get to the heart of the matter, since this is quite possibly the only chance I will get to write about this for work: I, too, am a 5’6″ prematurely gray-haired guy of completely average build. My hair color and my height are the two things I have long been uncomfortable with. Martin Freeman, being a fellow short and gray, gives me confidence–and looks hot while doing it.

Superstore is a criminally under-celebrated jewel of a show. It’s a show that is still getting funnier every single season, too, and that’s partly because of these two recurring scene-stealers. Kelly Schumann’s Justine is a scene-stealer in the truest sense of the word. She’s almost never the focus of any plot, instead relegated to tags and asides that add another laugh into an already packed scene. But those asides! The thirsty-for-attention Justine consistently interjects with saucy one-liners, her eyes darting around for any kind of approval.

Justine’s a scene-stealer and Kaliko Kauahi’s Sandra is a fully-formed tragic character. In a just world, Kauahi would have been nominated for–no, won–an Emmy for her darkly comic monologue from Season 2’s “Ladies’ Lunch.” Sandra delivers a totally improvised monologue about her intense–and totally imaginary!–love affair with Jeff.

There are plenty of reasons to watch Superstore. These are my two.

Stream Superstore on Hulu

I love Drag Race. The show unquestionably made me a better gay man. But there’s one episode every season that fills me with extreme love and extreme alienation: “Snatch Game.” Don’t get me wrong! I love “Snatch Game” dearly and it’s the challenge I look forward to the most. The mixed emotions come from my deep, deep love of the original Match Game and the campy game show queens of the 1970s (Charles Nelson Reilly is my author page GIF for a reason!). But I always feel alienated because being thoroughly unfamiliar (and casually uninterested) in the world of Bravo, I’m totally at sea with at minimum 60% of the celebs the queens pick to play.

That’s why when BenDeLaCreme chose to play Hollywood Squares sass master Paul Lynde during the All Stars 3 “Snatch Game,” I felt seen. I felt seen by this show, by a drag queen, by a fellow 30-something gay man in a way that I rarely feel while watching this show (don’t even get me started on Lucian Piane’s complete misunderstanding of everything about the B-52’s in Season 8!). I love DeLa, I love the way she caught every Paul Lynde sneer and chuckle, and this performance was hands-down my favorite drag moment of 2018.

Where to watch RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars

What more can I say about Gritty that hasn’t already been said by my co-worker and fellow Gritty Slack enthusiast Meghan O’Keefe in her list? Gritty was a relatively late addition to our world, but he feels like he’s always been a part of it. He came right when I, when we all, needed him most, filling the vile wasteland that is Twitter with video of him playing in the snow or threats against mascots.

I don’t care about hockey. I generally have no interest in sports outside women’s gymnastics and men’s water polo (and even then I can take or leave the actual polo part of that one). But Gritty transcends his duties as a sports mascot. In a realm filled with recognizable animals dressed in sports equipment, Gritty is an orange outlier, a googly-eyed monstrosity that definitely doesn’t belong on the ice–and that’s why I love him! He shouldn’t exist, but he does, and he’s filled with so much wonder (and a bit of mischief). I love Gritty, and he’s clearly doing his job well because I want to go to a hockey game now.

Gone too soon! I gotta tell ya, this was a slog of a year for Netflix’s Marvel shows, and the year sure didn’t have a happy ending. After powering through lackluster seasons of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage and one surprisingly watchable season of Iron Fist, I actually did not know what to expect from Daredevil. The season delivered. It delivered in a way very few Netflix seasons, and I’m not just talking about the Marvel ones, does. It built tension perfectly and put this absolute dynamite ensemble to work in riveting new ways. Matt’s self-loathing, Karen’s righteous anger, Foggy’s suits–I truly loved every punch, every twist, every omelette, and every deadly piece of office equipment. It’s kinda devastating that this show is over, not because viewers lost interest but because Netflix and Disney are in a fight. But what a way to go out! Daredevil is dead. Long live Daredevil.

Stream Daredevil Season 3 on Netflix

To think, I didn’t even know what a French tuck was when 2018 started. My oh my, how things have changed! Peer behind the curtain for a sec: screeners are a perk and a curse of this gig. You get to watch so many shows early, but you also have to watch so many shows early. It’s true that I wanted to cover Queer Eye, but I was also deeply skeptical; those screeners felt more like a curse, an invitation into what could have very well been a Twitter flame war if the show was cringey.

That didn’t happen. Those screeners, which I got the month before Queer Eye dropped, were more than a perk. They were a gift. I watched Queer Eye at work, holding back a torrent of tears because no one around you has seen the show (and also crying at work, not a good lewk). I sped through both seasons of the show this year, all 16 episodes giving me what honestly felt like oxygen even as the show took my breath away. I love the new Fab Five and I love the way they’ve become a positive part of our culture, one of the only positive parts at that. I cannot wait to get those Season 3 screeners, honey–and I won’t be watching those at work.

Stream Queer Eye on Netflix

Can we JUST? 2018 had no shortage of superhero moments, and plenty of them came from the super-sized epic Avengers: Infinity War. I loved Shuri in Black Panther (“What are thooose?!”) and I wrote, I dunno, a thousand words about the importance of Steve Rogers introducing himself to Groot. But the moment that wins the Nearly Gave Me A Panic Attack award of 2018 goes to “She’s not alone.”

Proxima Midnight, Thanos lackey in dire need of an eyebrow threading, looms over Scarlet Witch, telling her that she will die alone. And that’s where Black Widow comes in: “She’s not alone.” Pan over, and there’s Okoye, general of the Dora Milaje.

So yeah, can we JUST?! This moment means everything. It’s female empowerment and collaboration (through ass-kicking). Remember that earlier in the movie, Natasha was down on Wanda for running off with Vision and going radio silent? And remember how in Civil War when Natasha had a super tense staredown with a member of the Dora Milaje? This team-up builds on all of that and shows that women, all of humanity, we are stronger together. This is what goes through my mind when I watch these movies. And it’s another victory lap moment for humans, as the powerless Black Widow and Okoye throw the F down against this alien marauder. It’s so brief, a memorable battlefield moment in an third act stuffed with them, but it’s the one that squeezed my heart and pulled it right up into my throat.

Where to stream Avengers: Infinity War

This show, a long-running reality sensation in Japan and a relatively recent addition to Netflix’s increasing lineup of international content, was not even on my radar last year. Now it’s my most-anticipated watch every single time a new batch of episodes is imported to the States. It’s one of the most engrossing and painfully real depictions of human interaction that I’ve ever seen on TV, especially reality TV. No one on the show is there to cause drama or become a superstar (although almost all of them are some kind of model, so… ). They’re all good people that are literally there to make friends, so when you watch people fall in love or get on each others’ nerves, it feels so much more intimate and intricate than what we’re used to seeing on TV.

This approach also turns little things like someone admitting they like someone else into these gargantuan moments; that’s why model Shion and hockey player Tsubasa’s love story is the best one on Netflix. On the flip side, that intimate storytelling style is also what made the climax of Shohei and Seina’s story so deeply, deeply uncomfortable. Terrace House is the best reality show on TV and it’s also the realest reality show on TV–and I couldn’t get enough of it this year.

Stream Terrace House: Opening New Doors on Netflix