My 2022 Favorites by Month

Something I’m simultaneously proud and ashamed of is the amount of media I consume. I thought I might as well put this cute little list together and share some of the things I spent my time watching and listening to this year, seeing as it ate up so much of my time. This list isn’t limited to projects that came out in the year 2022, just any piece of media that had any impact on me during the year, good, bad, and everything in between. Enjoy browsing through my thoughts and feelings, and cheers to more movies, TV, and music in 2023!

January - Succession Season 1, HBO

Sometimes I do this fun little thing, where I binge-watch an entire television series in 48 hours and it stresses me out so bad that it gives me nightmares. This happened to me with the first season of Succession. 

I get a sort of secondhand anxiety when watching television shows that is very real and very tangible to me. When I watched Succession I felt like I was in the room during each board meeting, each awkward Shiv and Tom argument, and that scene when the siblings are fighting in the kitchen and Kendall bangs on the window shouting “FAMILY THERAPY”; I was there. It was real to me. I didn’t sleep properly for a week after I finished just the first season. It’s an incredible show and I would give anything to be normal so I could watch it without having a panic attack, but I fear there is nothing more terrifying to me than the one percent.

February - Scandal, Season 4 episodes 10-13 (Rewatch), ABC

This is an oddly specific selection of media, but please just hear me out. Scandal is one of the best network television shows ever created. Shonda Rhimes ensures that there is not one dull moment, every time you finish an episode you feel like you’ve run a marathon. In one scene the president is on his hands and knees begging for Olivia Pope to love him in the oval office (mind you his wife is listening through the door) and in the next, he’s committing war crimes in a third-world country while verbally abusing his chief of staff. Instead of trying to explain to you where my love of Scandal lies, I’m just going to explain what happens in the aforementioned episodes.

Oliva Pope is randomly kidnapped from her home and held hostage in what appears to be a war-torn country. Over the course of the four episodes, she attempts to escape and in her failure, she learns that she is not your average everyday prisoner of war. Instead, she’s being as political ransom over the president’s head to force him to go into a war he disagrees with. But who would know enough about Olivia and the President’s relationship to take advantage of it for political gain? The Vice President of course. Eventually, Olivia Pope works her magic and convinces the captors to auction her off on the black market instead of killing her (because that sounds more attractive, Olivia) She’s a hot item on the black market, and multiple countries including the U.S. fight over who gets her. In the end, she’s bought by an old friend of hers who delivers her back to Washington in one piece. But before she can make it back home, the president is so desperate to get his precious Olivia back that he goes to war with a third-world country, dropping multiple drone strikes and killing a plethora of civilians. When Olivia arrives back at the White House, she curses the president out and calls him dumb for going to war over her, he responds by calling Olvia ungrateful and rude. Then they have sex. Is that not the most insane thing you’ve ever read? They aired that on national television in a prime time slot.

Something about these four episodes is gold to me. There will never be television as good as Shonda Rhimes running a muck at ABC studios in the 2010s. The drama, the absolutely implausible plot lines, and Kerry Washington giving a performance of a lifetime creates a feeling of euphoria I can’t experience with any other show. If you’ve never seen Scandal I beg you to drop everything and start it now, you won’t regret it. Rewatching these few episodes along with the rest of the season gave me the joy I needed to make it through the month of February.

(By the way, Olivia ends up murdering the vice president in cold blood the next season. Like this shit is not a joke.)

March - Everything Everywhere All at Once, Dir. The Daniels

This is a safe space for immigrant daughters who felt personally victimized by EEAAO. I would love to sit here and write a beautiful analysis of the film and what it means to me, but I have to put myself first.

April - Solar Power, Lorde

Live footage from Radio City!

This is also a safe space for Solar Power enjoyers! Something that I noticed during the rollout of this album is that a lot of people genuinely do not care about the artists they listen to. How can you listen to this album, hear Lorde healing, growing, and thriving, and call it “mid.”Her growth and newfound excitement for life exuded off the record, and you can hear it in each note she sings. Each song feels like an anecdote, a story, or a feeling that accompanies this new chapter of her life; Instead of entering this new era with fear or sadness like Pure Heroine and Melodrama, she’s entering with light and hope for the future. It’s a beautiful thing to hear your favorite artists grow and gain confidence in themselves with age. That means more to me than the production of a sonically perfect album. Solar Power is perfect to me because it sounds authentic and full of love, I can’t ask for anything else from the music I listen to. This album dominated my listening hours in April because 1. It was my birthday month and it made me feel grown up, and 2. I was preparing to see her perform it live in concert. It really is an album fit for a transitional era, not necessarily growing up but evolving. Secrets from a Girl Who Seen It All made me think of 11-year-old Sidnie listening to Royals and turning it up each time it came on the radio, and 15-year-old Sidnie listening to Melodrama and pretending she relates to it. It’s an album that I know will grow with me, and have new meanings each time I press play. It’s perfect.

May - Dr. Stranger In the Multiverse of Madness, Dir. Sam Raimi

Now, this might seem out of place because I’m not really a super huge marvel fan, but during quarantine, I randomly developed a very mild and normal obsession with the show Wandavison. I thought it was creative and fun, and I loved Elizabeth Olsen’s performance. My one gripe with the show was the ending; it was boring as hell. It wrapped everything up in a perfect little bow in order to set up for the next movie or show, and while I understand that Marvel’s whole thing is that it’s connected and each show is connected to a movie, it limited the creativity of the show so much. All this to say, a Multiverse of madness falls victim to this same issue. Making creative movies and shows within a cookie-cutter franchise is basically impossible. I much rather the movies stick to the usual script so I know what to expect than try to be out of the box just to flop in the end. There’s nothing I hate more than wasted potential, and MoM had so much potential that was squandered by its being with a big franchise. I hope I never have my creative endeavors stifled by a huge corporation like Disney. It sucks any and all life out of productions that have so much creative potential. In the end, capitalism always ends up being the villain.

June - Nothing

I was too busy graduating and getting my money up to consume media.

July - Marcel The Shell with Shoes On, Dir. Dean Fisher Camp

When I first saw the trailer for this movie I teared up in the theater, and then felt ridiculous crying over a stop-motion shell with shoes. I almost didn’t go see it because I was afraid of what it would do to me emotionally, but I’m so glad I did anyway. It somehow managed to be heart-wrenching and heart-warming in the span of 90 minutes. I never thought I could feel so much empathy for a piece of plastic. I think of that line where he says “I enjoy the sound of myself connected to everything” every single day.

August - Renaissance, Beyonce

I literally don’t know what to say other than that lady put crack in that album. It was my top album of the year, and I listened to it so many times Beyonce was my top artist. It is just too good, from start to finish. When I’m sad I listen to renaissance, when I’m happy I listen to renaissance, I listen to renaissance like I get paid to do it. I have no big complicated spiel about Beyonce’s excellence because we all already know. Beyonce if you’re reading this (she’s not) I love you, and I love this album a little bit too much. 

September - Negro Swan, Blood Orange

Blood Orange makes me feel seen. When I listen to him I feel like a young adult in the most literal sense of the word. I am young, yet I am so old. Usually, when I’m looking for nostalgia and achy sadness I turn to “Pure Heroine” or “19” but as I get older these albums stay the same. I evolve and grow into a “young adult” in a new city, but Pure Heroine is still the same album from the same time. As I grow up into my “big girl music” Blood Orange is an artist that will grow with me. The way he articulates his sadness, grief, and joy makes so much sense to me. When I first heard “Negro Swan” in 2018 it didn’t really click, but now with every listen it grows on me like hand-me-down clothes. With every listen I hear a lyric I didn’t hear before that I resonate with. Each stroll through the city listening to Blood Orange makes me feel younger and wiser.

October - Die Lit, Playboi Carti

I’ve decided in 2023 I’m no longer going to feel shame about my love of Playboi Carti. Die Lit was my third most streamed album of the year, and it probably will be again next year. A problem I have when I’m listening to music is I feel like I can only listen to certain songs for certain occasions and reasons. I can only listen to Lorde on the bus, Sade while I’m getting ready for the day, and Blood Orange while I walk to class. I don’t feel this way at all with Playboi Carti, I listen to Carti in the shower, on the bus, while I’m falling asleep, anytime. It’s the only music I can listen to while I’m doing schoolwork. Die Lit is such a versatile album, there’s really something for everyone on there, if you’re a bad bitch listen to Poke it Out, if you like R&B listen to Fell in Luv, and if you like music that feels like putting batteries in your back just press play from track one.

November - Tar, Dir. Todd Feilds

I went into this movie thinking it was going to follow the “Obsessed Artist” trope based solely on the trailers but about 45 minutes in I realized I was very wrong. Tar handled abuse by people in high places in such an interesting way, you are immersed in the twisted mind of the composer right from the beginning. Every odd question or glance of the eye she makes is a decision you immediately understand. The limitations of Lydia’s world only extend so far as she allows them, throughout the film I kept going back to that quote in the trailer, “Time is the essential piece of interpretation, you cannot start without me. I start the clock.” Lydia’s narcissism has grown so great that she truly believes she controls reality, if she simply does not believe it is not real, then that is so. Throughout the entirety of the movie, all the way through the very end this truth is held up by her delusion. The audience is fully indoctrinated in her false reality, yet we don’t feel pity or empathy for her. You’re only shocked each time she continues to act within the limitations of her mind.

Not to sound like every film critic ever, but Cate Blanchett is such a powerhouse and her performance really elevates the experience. But I can’t say she “carried the film on her back” either, you can tell it’s such a collaborative effort which is refreshing to see after so many movies recently being carried by the lead ensemble. And the score! Don’t even get me started on the score! I thought about Tar for days after I watched it, I talked about it to everyone who would listen and spent hours reading and watching interviews about the process of making it. I was so in awe of how each detail of the film added to the experience, not one thing went untouched. It was incredible, and definitely one of my top films of the year.

December - Fleabag (Rewatch), Amazon Prime

Every time I rewatch Fleabag, it temporarily ruins my life. It’s the only television show I consider “perfect”, every single aspect has a purpose and a place. I started it again after recommending it to my roommate countless times, and once she finally started watching it I was jealous that she got to watch it for the first time and I couldn’t. In order to replicate the first-watch experience once more I expelled all prior knowledge I had of the show in my mind and watched it with fresh eyes once again. Yielding no surprise, it was even more devastating than the last time.

I think when a very specific demographic of women watches fleabag they put too much energy into her relationship with the priest and the iconic “It’ll pass” scene in the series finale. It makes me wonder if they even watched season one, and everything leading up to her relationship with the priest, and if they ever considered why he said those specific words to her. Personally, I think her relationship with her sister and by extension, her mother and Boo are so much more devastating. When I watch the flashback scene of her at her mother’s funeral crying, and she tells Boo she doesn’t know what to do with all the love she has for her and Boo says “Give it to me,” It floors me every time. Fleabag is full of so much love, that she has nowhere to place, all she wants is to be loved and love someone else in return, but every time she loves someone they die or they abandon her. At the top of season two, she says to the viewers “This is a love story.” I like to think that she’s not talking about her relationship with the priest at all, but her relationship with her sister, her father, and herself. Throughout season two she relearns to love, instead of fueling it into fruitless romances, she gives it to those around her. She encourages her sister to go to Switzerland, she walks her father down the aisle, and in the end, when the priest walks away she’s finally able to direct some of that love toward herself. The point of this is to say that the show is so much more than her love and sex life, and I wish a lot of the conversation around the show surrounded less of her romantic life and more about her as an individual.

Honorable Mentions - Bop or Flop

  • Bop - Bodies Bodies Bodies, Dir. Halina Reijn

  • Flop - Don’t Worry Darling, Dir. Olivia Wilde

  • Bop - Yellowjackets, Showtime

  • Flop - And Just Like That (Sex in the City reboot), HBO

  • Bop - Caprisongs, FKA Twigs

  • Flop - Her Loss, Drake & 21 Savage

Closing Thoughts

Happy New Year! Thank you for taking the time to read my funny little list. I’m excited to share so much more here in the next year and I hope you’re excited to read and watch me grow. Creating an outlet for me to be creative was something important to me in 2022, and although it took almost the whole year, I did it. In 2023 I’m hoping to do so much more, and reach so many more people. I’m glad you’re along for the ride :)

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