Is it just us, or have the past few weeks of network television renewals, cancellations, and new series pickups been particularly dramatic? More than any other previous year, the anticipation and anxiety surrounding upfronts has been at fever pitch, with fans of imperiled cult favorites glued to their Twitter feeds for news and a slew of new shows that already have critics and readers talking. The onslaught of announcements has been so intense that even those of us who follow pop culture for a living have had trouble keeping up — so, for the sake of our sanity and yours, we’ve dug through the reports to compile a list of the biggest and most interesting news about the 2012-13 TV season, including trailers for some of the most talked about new series.
The montage that closed last night’s three-part Community season finale, which basically showed the newly christened Greendale Seven becoming better people for having known each other, elicited an audible “awwww” from all assembled in this writer’s living room. But I still wasn’t prepared for the moment when everything faded to white and “#sixseasonsandamovie” appeared on the screen, which I’ll confessed choked me up for a second.
A simple call out on the part of creator Dan Harmon and the team behind Community to its small but obsessive legion of fans, who have adopted the phrase as a rallying cry against its cancellation, this end title card clarified for me why I love this show so much. Although, on the surface, it’s a pop culture-obsessed sitcom with an unprecedentedly wacky and experimental style, it’s also more than that. Along with the strong and sensitive development of Abed’s character that we’ve seen throughout the last several episodes, this season’s finale — which Harmon clearly feared might be the series finale — reaffirmed that Community is first and foremost about the power of friendship to bring people with hugely different backgrounds, interests, and worldviews together, even if some of them are unrepentant assholes. (And if Chevy Chase can’t understand that, he probably should leave the show.)
But now that I’ve got that mushy stuff out of the way, let’s talk about the funniest cultural references on all thee of last night’s episodes. Our top 10 are after the jump.
In typical NME fashion, the magazine has caught on to ’90s nostalgia a few years after the rest of the music media and released its list of the top 100 songs of the decade. Aside from a few unmistakably British flourishes (Pulp’s “Common People” edging Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” out of the #1 spot, McAlmont & Butler’s “Yes” in the top 10), there are few surprises. No one can deny the excellence of Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” or Daft Punk’s “Da Funk,” but we’re getting sick of seeing the same songs honored over and over when there are so many other equally great tracks to celebrate. We’ve done just that below, rounding up a handful of criminally underrated ’90s songs that you may have forgotten over the years. Since there are literally thousands of tracks that also deserve a place on this list, we hope you’ll add your suggestions in the comments.
When you think of miniatures, perhaps images of old ladies meticulously constructing dollhouses and shut-ins building ships in bottles come to mind. But, whether they’re commercial ventures or individuals’ all-consuming projects, there are quite a few miniatures out there that could actually be described as awesome. A scale model of New York City that reproduces every single building from Staten Island to the Bronx? Amazing. A Mayan temple made out of nine tons of chocolate? Incredible (not to mention delicious). A teeny tour of old Hong Kong? Fascinating. We’ve collected some of the coolest — and one of the most depressing — miniature models of cities and landmarks from around the world. Take a guided tour after the jump.
New Yorkers don’t hear much news about progress on the MTA’s Second Avenue Subway (SAS), which has only been in the works for 75 years and was most recently resumed in 2007 — although we hear it’s no fun living east of Third Ave. on the Upper East Side these days. But there have been a few updates trickling out about the art we’ll eventually see in the stations. In last week’s New Yorkerprofile of Sarah Sze, Andrea K. Scott described the artist’s contribution to the line’s 96th Street station as “blueprint-like compositions — in a palette of violet, light blue, and dark blue — [that] depicted a floating world of hundreds of objects, from ladders and potted plants to office chairs.” Now, we’ve learned that Chuck Close has also been commissioned to create work for the SAS; the MTA’s Art for Transits program will pay him $1 million to make 12 pieces for the 86th Street station. According to the local news site DNAinfo, a total of $5 million has been allocated to adorning the new line’s first few stations. Artist Jean Shin — who might be best known for this awesome wave sculpture made of vinyl records — is also onboard, with plans for a site-specific piece at 63rd Street. The first phase of SAS construction is slated for completion in December 2016, so we won’t get too excited about Sze, Close, and Shin’s public art, because we’ll have to wait at least four and a half years to see it.
It is so difficult to ignore Chris Brown, who everyone besides teenage girls and other pop artists seems to be completely disgusted with, when folks like Nicki Minaj keep insisting on collaborating with him. So we kind of expected to see Brown taking up space in her video for “Right by My Side,” although we couldn’t predict that he and Nas — who doesn’t appear on the track — would be dividing Minaj’s affections in it. She makes the right choice in the end, and the scenes between her and Nas are just as sweet as the syrupy song requires. The only problem is that their romance has to share the stage with Brown’s overtures to Minaj — which has us thinking that we’d like to see a fan edit of “Right by My Side” that cuts him out and replaces him with pictures of cats, stills from Kitty Pryde’s “Okay Cupid” video, or even just TV’s classic color-bar test pattern. Seriously, if there is a reader out there ambitious enough to do this, we would be thrilled to post your video.
Devastating news: TMZ is reporting that Donna Summer died of cancer this morning at her Florida home. She was 63 years old. Born LaDonna Adrian Gaines and known as the Queen of Disco, Summer was a five-time Grammy winner whose hit songs — including “Love to Love You Baby,” “Last Dance,” “MacArthur Park,” “Hot Stuff,” and “She Works Hard for the Money” — defined a genre and dominated the charts in the ’70s and ’80s. The singer’s battle with cancer was not widely reported, apparently because she was attempting to keep it a secret.
We’ve seen far too many music icons pass away before their time in the past few months, so here’s hoping this is the last untimely death we’ll have to report for a while. Meanwhile, we’re going to take a moment to watch her excellent 1979 performance of “Bad Girls” and scatter some sequins in her honor. Join us after the jump, and leave your memories of Summer in the comments.
There is a special kind of pop-cultural delight in seeing two celebrities we love together. We felt that thrill several times over last night, when The Rachel Maddow Show returned from a commercial break and we found none other than Jane Lynch sitting in Maddow’s chair. Lynch led the show’s entire “Best New Thing in the World,” about increasing Republican support for same-sex marriage, in which she both pulled off an effective MSNBC anchor impression and recalled an alternate-universe episode of Sue’s Corner. But the greatest part of Lynch’s appearance happened after the camera pulled back and Maddow was still there, and the women finished out the show discussing Barack Obama’s support of gay marriage and how the political struggle for LGBT rights has affected their lives as lesbians. Watch the 10-minute clip after the jump.
Did you know that Huey Lewis and the News were a punk band? Well, according to the ad below for a ’90s compilation called Punk, those clean-cut fellows who wrote “Hip to Be Square” were basically the Sex Pistols. Other “punk” bands on the CD include Crowded House, The Knack, Toni Basil, A Flock of Seagulls, and Culture Club. But it isn’t just the tracklist that elevates this commercial to potential camp classic status — it’s the pair of hosts in Party City wigs, one of which appears to have been plucked from a Slash costume, addressing the kids at home in a slacker sub-dialect of Valspeak. Among other things, we can be thankful to this commercial for revealing what punks are truly angry about: “wasting money on CDs with only one or two good songs.” Mystery solved!
Some of the world’s most wonderfully strange works of art aren’t hanging on gallery walls — they’re stuck to the refrigerators of proud parents. Artist Dave DeVries knew this when he launched The Monster Engine, in which he creates realistic paintings based on children’s drawings. But actual kids will probably be more excited about Sunny Little Studio, a company run by a pair of friends that transforms their sketches into plush toys and pillows, which we discovered via Doodlers Anonymous. Their 3D reinterpretations of everything from penguins to smiling hot dogs capture the messy exuberance of the source material, resulting in toys that are charmingly childlike. See a selection of Sunny Little Studio’s creations after the jump, then visit their website to learn more about the company — or, you know, order us one of those purple robots.
