Vox - The best of 2014: movies, TV, music, and bookshttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2015-01-05T10:30:02-05:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/105545592015-01-05T10:30:02-05:002015-01-05T10:30:02-05:00Still need binge-watching recommendations? Here are 30 more great 2014 shows.
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<img alt="Game of Thrones might have been a little scattered in season four, but it was still entertaining TV. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/77z9MZooFcrmHLMz_W7_yU61y74=/73x0:1844x1328/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/45151356/tyrion.0.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Game of Thrones might have been a little scattered in season four, but it was still entertaining TV. | HBO</figcaption>
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<p>I mentioned in my post on <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/12/23/7440019/best-tv-shows-2014">the 30 best TV shows of 2014</a> that I had culled that list down from an even larger list. It was an insanely great year for TV, to the degree that when I made this supplementary list of another 30 shows I liked and would have been proud to slot into that list somewhere, I <em>still</em> had to cut 20-some shows from the list.</p>
<p>So if you don't see a show you love here, assume I either forgot about it, just cut it, or haven't seen it.</p>
<p>Here are 30 sentences on the 30 runners-up to the best TV shows of 2014, listed alphabetically. On to 2015!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2661044/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>The 100</strong></em></a><em><strong> </strong></em><strong>(The CW): </strong>This dystopian sci-fi show is one of TV's hidden treats, a deeply compelling story about the sacrifices that must be made when the world winds to a close.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2699110/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>The Affair</strong></em></a><em><strong> </strong></em><strong>(Showtime): </strong>Though it never lived up to the promise of its pilot, this series about an extramarital affair turned out to be one of TV's best considerations of class and privilege.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2193021/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Arrow</strong></em></a><strong> (The CW): </strong>The start of season three this fall has been a glorious mess — and kept this from the top 30 — but spring's late season two episodes were TV comic book action at is finest.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2188671/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Bates Motel</strong></em></a><strong> (A&E):</strong> This <em>Psycho</em> prequel turned up the dial on disturbed psychological drama in its second season, and the finale was one of the best episodes of the year.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0979432/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Boardwalk Empire</strong></em></a><strong> (HBO): </strong>It was easy to be skeptical that the mob drama would wrap up all of its stories in a final season of just eight episodes, but the show managed the feat surprisingly well.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2406376/?ref_=nv_sr_2"><em><strong>The Bridge</strong></em></a><strong> (FX):</strong> The wild, twisting crime saga set on the US/Mexico border became more baroque and compelling in its second season — and was canceled for its troubles.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2467372/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Brooklyn Nine-Nine</strong></em></a><strong> (Fox):</strong> Yeah, a wacky comedy about police officers suffers a bit from the unfortunate timing of cracking jokes when police brutality is a very real question in the world at large, but <em>Brooklyn Nine-Nine</em> rises above that with ace jokes and great characters.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3569344/?ref_=nv_sr_2"><em><strong>The Chair</strong></em></a><strong> (Starz): </strong>The year's best new reality show took a look at what happens when two directors make a film from the same script with fascinating results.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1439629/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Community</strong></em></a><strong> (NBC): </strong>It's weird to think of this quirky sitcom as an old warhorse, but that's what it was in a creatively revivified fifth season.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3729144/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Cristela</strong></em></a><strong> (ABC): </strong>If there's any justice in the world, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/11/26/7285247/cristela-alonzo-interview">Cristela Alonzo</a> will become the new Roseanne and her show the new <em>Roseanne</em>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2741950/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Enlisted</strong></em></a><strong> (Fox):</strong> This military-set sitcom was another bold, funny show that was canceled by its network because no one could quite figure out what to do with it.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3107288/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>The Flash</strong></em></a><strong> (The CW):</strong> This super-fun superhero show <em>just</em> missed my top 30, and it's some of the most enthralling TV out there right now in its depiction of the sheer joy of super-speed.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Game of Thrones</strong></em></a><strong> (HBO):</strong> The fourth season of the fantasy drama was more scattered than the previous three but still deeply entertaining stuff.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1981558/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Key and Peele</strong></em></a><strong> (Comedy Central):</strong> TV's best sketch series isn't perhaps as consistent as it once was, but still provides some top-notch laughs every week.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2937900/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>The Knick</strong></em></a><strong> (Cinemax): </strong>Despite storytelling you could see coming from a mile away, director Steven Soderbergh's arrival on TV with this period piece medical series was a cinematic delight.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1442464/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>The Middle</strong></em></a><strong> (ABC):</strong> Though a bit long in the tooth — as any sitcom in its sixth season would be — <em>The Middle</em> remains TV's funniest take on families struggling to live without enough cash.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3877200/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>The Missing</strong></em></a><strong> (Starz):</strong> A miniseries about two parents haunted by the disappearance of their son in different ways, this was stark television that somehow never quite gave in to despair.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2319283/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Moone Boy</strong></em></a><strong> (Hulu):</strong> This Irish/British import about a young boy and his imaginary friend (played by the irrepressible Chris O'Dowd) makes for a perfect, easy afternoon binge.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3502172/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Mozart in the Jungle</strong></em></a><strong> (Amazon):</strong> Though it took a bit to get going, Amazon's comedy about musicians in a modern orchestra hit some perfect, fizzy notes as it wound to a close.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2297757/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Nathan For You</strong></em></a><strong> (Comedy Central):</strong> This elaborate prank show — in which a comedian "helps" struggling businesses turn it all around — would belong here if only for the "Dumb Starbucks" episode.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1826940/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>New Girl</strong></em></a><em><strong> </strong></em><strong>(Fox):</strong> Yes, this has lost its step a bit from its brilliant season two highs, but the Zooey Deschanel vehicle is still capable of stunningly funny episodes more often than not.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3006802/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Outlander</strong></em></a><strong> (Starz):</strong> Adapting Diana Gabaldon's best-selling books about a woman who travels through time and falls in love could have been a disaster, but in the hands of showrunner Ron Moore, it made for sexy, thoughtful TV.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2442560/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Peaky Blinders</strong></em></a><strong> (Netflix):</strong> A dreamy, moody mob thriller, <em>Peaky Blinders</em> hails from the United Kingdom and is one of the best series in terms of stunning visuals out there right now.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2628232/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Penny Dreadful</strong></em></a><strong> (Showtime):</strong> Over-the-top gothic camp usually isn't my bag, but <em>Penny Dreadful</em> makes it work by treating the emotions of its monstrous (as in, literal monsters) characters seriously.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2155025/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Please Like Me</strong></em></a><strong> (Pivot):</strong> The second season of this comedy about a young gay man coming out sometimes bit off more than it could chew, but by the end of its run, it was hitting moments of emotional truth most shows can only dream of.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3400010/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>The Roosevelts</strong></em></a><strong> (PBS):</strong> Ken Burns's look at Teddy, Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt worked so wonderfully because it presented them both as important figures in history and as intimately realized human beings, with deep wells of feeling.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2575988/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Silicon Valley</strong></em></a><strong> (HBO):</strong> This was not the most sophisticated comedy out there, but boy was the tech world send-up one of the funniest, a necessary corrective to all those swooning profiles of the business titans of our age.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2356777/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>True Detective</strong></em></a><strong> (HBO):</strong> The last couple of episodes of <i>True Detective</i> let me down, but around the middle of the show's season, I was as into this as anything else out there, which has to count for something.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1759761/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Veep</strong></em></a><strong> (HBO):</strong> I've always been cooler on this Washington-set farce than a lot of people, but even I could admit the third season was a hilariously great piece of TV comedy.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2306299/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em><strong>Vikings</strong></em></a><strong> (History):</strong> Treating the world of the Vikings as a strange, almost alien landscape has paid off nicely for this series, which remains one of TV's least likely successes.</p>
https://www.vox.com/2015/1/5/7492367/2014-best-tvEmily St. James2014-12-31T14:00:02-05:002014-12-31T14:00:02-05:00The 10 best movies of 2014
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<img alt="Gone Girl was one of the 10 best movies of 2014." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-aenE06Nco_Xvosn9EUH5ifxXFo=/0x0:2925x2194/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/45130664/gone-girl-DF-01826cc_rgb.0.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Gone Girl was one of the 10 best movies of 2014. | 20th Century Fox</figcaption>
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<p>Let's start with a simple fact. I haven't seen nearly everything released in 2014. The New York Times' Manohla Dargis counts the number of films that received at least a cursory release in the US this year at <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/movies/manohla-dargiss-best-movies-of-2014-beyond-the-lights-and-more.html?_r=0"><em>nearly 1,000</em></a>, a number that not even the most dedicated of film critics could hope to attain.</p>
<p>But scratch seeing <em>everything</em>. I haven't even seen most <em>interesting</em> things. There are films from some of my favorite directors, like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2473794/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Mike Leigh's <em>Mr. Turner</em></a><em>, </em>that I haven't caught up with, as well as gigantic entertainments I just haven't fit into my schedule, like <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/12/4/7332611/big-hero-6"><em>Big Hero 6</em></a>. What I'm saying is take all of this with a grain of salt. It will almost certainly look very different a year from now. Or even a week from now.</p>
<p>What these are, then, are 10 films I would unreservedly recommend from the year 2014. It wasn't as good of a year as 2013 or 2012, but I still found myself with around 30 movies jostling for a position here. And that's not bad at all.</p>
<p>Here are 10 of the best films I saw in 2014, presented alphabetically.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2321549/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><strong><em>The Babadook</em></strong></a><strong> </strong>(dir. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0448768/?ref_=tt_ov_dr">Jennifer Kent</a>): Many of the best horror films work because the terrors of the film are somehow even worse if the supernatural <em>isn't</em> involved. There are few better examples of that than <em>The Babadook</em>, an Australian ghost story that doubles as a haunting tale of mental illness. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0204583/?ref_=tt_cl_t1">Essie Davis</a> plays a single mother, struggling to hold on to what little of her sanity she has left amid a long series of sleepless nights and days plagued by her terror of a son. And that's all <em>before</em> the bogeyman of the title starts knocking around. Some have ripped this film for not being "scary" enough, but the big jolts aren't the point. This is a movie about the creeping sense that you, yourself, are the worst monster of all.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1065073/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><strong><em>Boyhood</em></strong></a><strong> </strong>(dir. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000500/?ref_=tt_ov_dr">Richard Linklater</a>): This lovely little coming-of-age tale might have become the victim of overhype. When it was simply an underdog indie movie with a great gimmick at its center, it was irresistible. Now that it's become an awards winning juggernaut, there's some understandable fatigue around it. But the best way to approach the film is as if you know nothing about it. Yes, it was filmed over 12 years, as the two children at its center grew up. And yes, every one of those 12 years is on screen. But to watch this movie progress is still a magic trick if you can find a way to enter it as purely as possible. There's never been anything like it, and it's the sort of thing only a great movie can pull off. (Read my review <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/7/10/5886011/boyhood-filmed-with-the-same-actors-over-12-years-is-a-slow-motion">here</a> and five things the film gets right about Texas <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/8/27/6075215/5-things-boyhood-got-right-about-growing-up-in-texas">here</a>.)</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0831387/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><strong><em>Godzilla</em></strong></a><strong> </strong>(dir. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2284484/?ref_=tt_ov_dr">Gareth Edwards</a>): Wait. Please stop laughing. I mean this sincerely. Yes, the human characters are underdeveloped. But that's also sort of the point. Gareth Edwards's spin on <em>Godzilla</em> emphasizes just how powerless human beings ultimately are in the face of nature, and it slowly cedes all control of its narrative over to the big guy in the title, battling against giant spider creatures for supremacy over San Francisco. This was a summer of <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/8/27/6075205/blockbuster-direction-guardians-of-the-galaxy-godzilla-apes">beautifully directed blockbusters</a>, but none were so beautiful as this one, filled with evocative images that suggested perfectly what it would be like to be in a major city in the midst of a giant monster attack.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2267998/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><strong><em>Gone Girl</em></strong></a> (dir. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000399/?ref_=nv_sr_1">David Fincher</a>): I've written more about this than any other film released in 2014, and with good reason. This was <em>the</em> movie to discuss and argue about and pillory and defend this fall. Whether you loved or hated its whacked out, gonzo excesses, you had to sort of admire how it could get just about everybody who saw it to take an extremist position on either side of those debates. Above all, though, this film succeeded because it only seemed to be a tale about a woman whose husband may or may not have killed her. From that pulpy beginning, the movie became a treatise on modern marriage and an ultra-bizarre feminist manifesto. It was a delight. (Read my review <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/10/1/6880349/gone-girl-review-marriage">here</a> and a later, spoiler-filled piece on the film's feminism <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/10/6/6905475/gone-girl-feminist-movie-david-fincher">here</a>.)</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2278388/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><strong><em>The Grand Budapest Hotel</em></strong></a><strong> </strong>(dir. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0027572/?ref_=tt_ov_dr">Wes Anderson</a>): Wes Anderson, whose intricate contraptions of films hide bittersweet centers, created perhaps his most intricate contraption yet in this spring release that went on to be his most successful film at the box office. At times, the film's central setting (a lovely European hotel between the World Wars) seems a wind-up toy, which Anderson can unfold to reveal all manner of tiny dolls moving through its confines. But in the film's final passages, it reveals itself to be something much sadder, much more monumental. It's a story about the fundamental inability of anything to last forever. And, yes, we all know that's true, but Anderson seems to feel it more acutely than most and translates that to the audience.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2872718/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><strong><em>Nightcrawler</em></strong></a><em> </em>(dir. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0319659/?ref_=tt_ov_dr">Dan Gilroy</a>): A gloriously nasty bit of business, <em>Nightcrawler</em> is a dark satire of the journalism business that feels like it crawled out of the primordial ooze of 1992 and deposited itself in our modern movie theaters. Starring <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0350453/?ref_=tt_ov_st">Jake Gyllenhaal</a> in the <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/12/5/7340681/nightcrawler-jake-gyllenhaal">performance of the year (literally)</a>, the story follows a young opportunist who finds himself chasing footage of crimes, crashes, and disasters, the better to sell to local news stations. After all, "if it bleeds, it leads." But <em>Nightcrawler</em> is about so much more than that. It's about how amorality can sometimes be a boon if you're willing to follow it into the dark. It's about twisted romance. And it's about Los Angeles as a glittering jewel of destruction, waiting to corrupt souls.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3263996/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><strong><em>The Overnighters</em></strong></a><strong> </strong>(dir. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0608999/?ref_=tt_ov_dr">Jesse Moss</a>): A documentary packed as full of twists as any narrative feature, <em>The Overnighters</em> is a searing, moving portrayal of the limits of kindness and charity. North Dakota Lutheran pastor Jay Reinke opens his church to the many men drawn to his state by the oil boom who are <em>unable</em> to find work and just need somewhere to sleep. This simple action ends up reverberating throughout his community, as more and more people take issue with the kinds of people Reinke is extending his charity toward. Should there be limits to this kind of Christian compassion, particularly when it's put to the test in the real world? <em>The Overnighters</em> is both brilliant storytelling and brilliant journalism, but it's also a kind of modern moral fable that just happens to be real. (Read my review <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/10/10/6954911/whiplash-review-overnighters-review-boxtrolls">here</a>.)</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020072/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><strong><em>Selma</em></strong></a><strong> </strong>(dir. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1148550/?ref_=tt_ov_dr">Ava DuVernay</a>): This is not typically the sort of movie I enjoy. Big historical docudramas that attempt to capture important moments in time too often fall flat under the weight of their own hubris. Not so with <em>Selma, </em>making it seem all the more miraculous that this is the first major motion picture about Martin Luther King, Jr., to be made at this scale. Yet Ava DuVernay's deeply moving film takes King out of the history books and resurrects him for an era when the intolerance he battled against seems to have revealed newer, nastier faces. The conclusion of <em>Selma</em> is as cathartic as anything you'll see in a movie theater this year, but it doesn't suggest, for one second, that the work King began is over. (Read my review <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/12/24/7443697/selma-movie-review">here</a> and interviews with DuVernay and the film's star David Oyelowo <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/12/24/7436393/selma-movie-ava-duvernay">here</a>.)</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1441395/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1"><strong><em>Under the Skin</em></strong></a><strong> </strong>(dir. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0322242/?ref_=tt_ov_dr">Jonathan Glazer</a>): A spectacularly weird and even alienating film, <em>Under the Skin</em> forces the contemplation of what it means to be human by making its protagonist someone who is decidedly ... not. As The Woman (the only name she is given), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0424060/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="new">Scarlett Johansson</a> is riveting, portraying some sort of alien interloper on the planet Earth who seduces men, takes them back to her place, then consumes them in a manner utterly unlike any you've ever seen in a movie. (To say more would be to spoil it.) This is not a film for everybody. There's no conventional plot to speak of, and the ending is hard to take for how rapidly it tries to shift audience's allegiances. But this is a movie that's all about the experience and the visuals and the weird, eerie ride. And on those levels, it over-delivers.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2364975/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><strong><em>We Are the Best!</em></strong></a><strong> </strong>(dir. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0600546/?ref_=tt_ov_dr">Lukas Moodysson</a>): A blast of joyous, punk rock anarchy, this Swedish film is one of the best crowd-pleasers of the year, following three young girls who start a punk band in '80s Stockholm. It goes about as well as you'd expect, but the fun of this movie is in following the characters as they discover just how wonderful it feels to express themselves. There aren't a lot of examples of pure, unfettered joy on this list, but there's lots of it in <em>We Are the Best!</em>, and even if it's at the end by the accident of alphabetization, it feels like it's the perfect capper to a year that could be a little dour.</p>
<p><strong>13 more: </strong><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2359024/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em>Blue Ruin</em></a><em>; </em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2866360/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em>Coherence</em></a><em>; </em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2103281/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em>Dawn of the Planet of the Apes</em></a><em>; </em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1631867/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em>Edge of Tomorrow</em></a><em>; </em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1816518/?ref_=nv_sr_3"><em>Ernest and Celestine</em></a><em> </em>(technically a 2013 release, but essentially no one saw it then);<em> </em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1100089/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em>Foxcatcher</em></a><em>; </em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1951181/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em>The Immigrant</em></a><em>; </em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1490017/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em>The LEGO Movie</em></a><em>; </em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2910274/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em>Obvious Child</em></a><em>; </em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706620/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em>Snowpiercer</em></a><em>; </em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2737050/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em>Two Days, One Night</em></a><em>; </em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2582802/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em>Whiplash</em></a><em>; </em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2758880/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em>Winter Sleep</em></a></p>
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https://www.vox.com/2014/12/31/7474935/best-movies-2014Emily St. James2014-12-30T08:30:02-05:002014-12-30T08:30:02-05:00The best books we read in 2014
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<p class="s-ecnt-intro">Here, Vox writers, editors, and designers share the best books they read in 2014. Some of these titles were published decades ago, others just earlier this year. They all have one thing in common: in a year with countless articles, news stories, TV shows, podcasts, and other books vying for our attention, these books captured our minds and our imaginations.</p>
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<h2>The Sixth Extinction</h2>
<h4>Elizabeth Kolbert</h4>
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<p>We're in the midst of the sixth great extinction of life in Earth's 4.5 billion-year history. By the end of the century, 20 to 50 percent of all living species might be extinct. And unlike the five previous extinctions, this one can be pinned entirely on one species: us.</p>
<p>If this kind of book appeals to you, you're probably already familiar with these facts. But Elizabeth Kolbert's mix of detailed reporting, historical research, and insightful exposition will make you reconsider your relationship with the natural world on a fundamental level.</p>
<p>It's not just that we're killing other species through well-known modern environmental catastrophes like climate change (though we are), but that we've been wiping out other species for at least 50,000 years or so, ever since we learned to hunt cooperatively and take down big game. It's not just obvious problems like pollution and habitat destruction that are causing extinctions (though they are), but also our newfound ability to travel from continent to continent within hours, unwittingly carrying invasive microbes and infectious diseases.</p>
<p>All this leads the reader to one inescapable conclusion: human society is incompatible with a healthy, diverse ecosystem of other species.</p>
<p>Yes, this is depressing. But the book's exploration of our planet's billion-year history will leave you with another realization that's strangely reassuring, if nihilistic too. Our species' existence is just a blip compared to the scale of Earth's geologic history, and soon enough, we'll probably go extinct too. Wait just a few million years after that, and biodiversity will once again flourish.</p>
<h4>— Joseph Stromberg, writer</h4>
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<h2>The Big Fat Surprise</h2>
<h4>Nina Teicholz</h4>
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<p>What if many of the assumptions you make about eating are wrong? In this tour de force of reporting, investigative journalist Nina Teicholz demonstrates how much of the science behind the low-fat and even Mediterranean diet crazes is weak, flawed, or cherry picked. The popularity of these nutrition fads, she contends, was driven more by the personalities of star researchers and exotic, food-filled conferences subsidized by Big Olive Oil than actual compelling scientific evidence. She also shows how researchers who had contradictory findings (i.e. that a diet high in saturated fat could be healthy) were systematically stifled and ignored at the height of the low-fat fad. All this amounted, she argues, to a vast, uncontrolled science experiment on the whole population, which boosted the consumption of added sugars and drove obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. By the end, in a Michael Pollan-esque flourish, she sums up her diet corrective this way: "Eat butter; drink milk whole, and feed it to the whole family." But the book is about a lot more than how we should eat: it’s a case study in how science — especially nutrition science, with Big Food behind it and so much money at stake — can be made and unmade by very human actors, shaped by their conflicts and passions with disastrous consequences for our health.</p>
<h4>— Julia Belluz, writer</h4>
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<h2>On Writing</h2>
<h4>Stephen King</h4>
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<p>John Updike famously praised Nabokov for writing prose "the only way it should be written: ecstatically." In "On Writing," Stephen King humbly sets himself (as a "popular novelist") in a class apart from literary giants, but he also both embodies and lets us in on that unique ecstasy of crafting a great story. This book is a mix of memoir and loving ode to the art that has made him an international superstar.</p>
<p>The tales of childhood shenanigans are amusing enough, but more important are the tales of King's early unsuccessful writing attempts. Perhaps the most indelible image is of a teenage King hanging his early rejection letters on a nail, which he eventually replaced with a spike when the letters became too numerous. It's true that writers talking about writing can be insufferable, something King acknowledges — in the foreword, he writes,"I didn't want to write a book...that would leave me feeling like either a literary gasbag or a transcendental asshole." On this count, he succeeds — his unpretentious love of writing is infectious.</p>
<h4>— Danielle Kurtzleben, writer</h4>
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<h2>Fun Home</h2>
<h4>Alison Bechdel</h4>
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<p>Earlier this year, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/9/17/6332045/alison-bechdel-genius-grant-macarthur-fellow">Alison Bechdel</a> was awarded a <a href="http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/9/3/6098755/macarthur-geniuses-map-fellows">MacArthur "genius grant"</a> for redefining the way stories are told.</p>
<p>"Fun Home," published in 2006, is a graphic memoir about Bechdel's painful relationship with her closeted father — a funeral home director — and a somber, composed reflection on her own sexuality. Her father's secrets take a toll on the family, hollowing his wife into a shell of herself and muddling Bechdel's idea of identity and womanhood. It's also an exploration of grief and the guilty lack of it.</p>
<p>The book's comic-book style allows Bechdel to display her cutting humor and lends round, full-bodied life to her sharp prose. The panels fiddle with the way we've traditionally read memoirs, sometimes forcing the reader to slow down in the parts that Bechdel doesn't want us to miss and other times revving up the pace to highlight Bechdel's pointed wit.</p>
<p>"Fun Home" is a consuming experience that elevates the graphic novel and comic genre. It's also one of the bravest books I've ever read.</p>
<h4>— Alex Abad-Santos, writer</h4>
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<h2>Political Order and Political Decay</h2>
<h4>Francis Fukuyama</h4>
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<p>Here's a book that takes on the really big question about politics: why are some societies governed well and others governed poorly? It does not, unfortunately, offer a particularly simple or concise answer to that question. But that's why you should read the book!</p>
<p>Once you wrestle with this question it's impossible to take the tired American debate about "big government" versus "small government" all that seriously. States that manage to be governed well (say, Denmark) are able to construct vast social welfare states without imperiling liberty or prosperity. States whose public officials treat their office as an opportunity for personal or familiar enrichment (say, Mexico) scarcely manage the basic law-and-order functions of libertarian paradise. Fukuyama offers history on a grand scale, but also zeros in on the dilemmas of the present day — the United States has historically been a leader in good government, but in recent years our institutions appear to be in a state of decay.</p>
<h4>— Matthew Yglesias, executive editor</h4>
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<h2>The Magicians trilogy</h2>
<h4>Lev Grossman</h4>
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<p>My favorite single book I read this year was Emily St. John Mandel's "Station Eleven," which I wrote about a little <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/12/8/7355189/best-books-2014">here</a>. But 2014 was also the year Lev Grossman concluded his <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/8/3/5960277/magicians-land-review-lev-grossman-interview">Magicians trilogy</a>, which I think is one of the signature literary achievements of the last few years.</p>
<p>These books are thrilling page-turners, but they're also thoughtful coming-of-age novels that double as a sneaky story of a privileged dude slowly realizing just how much his privilege blinds him to the pain others feel. It's amazing how well Grossman captures the process of maturation, the way that we come to realize that other people's lives matter just as much as our own. The first book is almost claustrophobic, told from a single, limited point of view. The second lets in one other voice. And then the third explodes, as nearly everybody gets a chance to tell their story. It's a tricky, savvy feat of storytelling, and it underscores how well these books work both as great yarns and as beautiful character studies. And did I mention they take place in a world full of wizards? Because that's pretty cool too.</p>
<h4>— Todd VanDerWerff, culture editor</h4>
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<h2>Tenth of December</h2>
<h4>George Saunders</h4>
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<p>In a widely read commencement speech last year, American author George Saunders urged the class of 2013 to "err in the direction of kindness."</p>
<p>"What I regret most in my life," he said, are "those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly."</p>
<p>It's not easy, as Saunders admits, to keep ourselves wide open as a rule. But an easy place to start is reading "Tenth of December," a collection of short stories Saunders wrote over the past 20 years. You're going to want this one on your shelf, as an easy-access antidote for bouts of contempt and indifference. The stories combine sharp, imaginative satire with deep compassion for the sore spots in all of us.</p>
<h4>— Joss Fong, video producer</h4>
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<h4>Peter David</h4>
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<p>I was a comics geek as a kid, but "X-Factor" is one of those properties I never paid much attention to. I only had so much allowance, and I wasn’t going to spend it on a knock-off team with cut-rate characters. But then I downloaded Marvel Unlimited on my iPad, which gives you, for $70, full access to pretty much every comic the company published until six months ago (side note: living in the future is the jam). And I know now what I didn’t know as a kid. The good stuff is in the knock-off teams with the cut-rate characters. Those are the properties where Marvel let its writers and artists play. And so I started digging into the crates, and eventually came across Peter David’s "X-Factor." And I loved it.</p>
<p>"X-Factor" is the type of comic you want to give to people who don’t understand why anyone likes comics — if, for no other reason than if they don’t like "X-Factor," then they’re really not going to like any other comics. The series is built around a team of mutant investigators, because of course it is. But at its heart, it's a love story — actually, a couple of love stories — that somehow balances some of the darkest elements of noir, fantasy and science-fiction. It builds one of the most indelible characters I’ve found in a comic book: Layla Miller, the girl who "knows stuff," and, well, the thing I want to say about her would be a spoiler, so I won’t say it. Knowing too much is, as Miller shows, a terrible curse.</p>
<p>The problem with most comic runs is they never finish. Captain America has to keep Captaining America until the heat death of the universe. But David’s "X-Factor" run isn’t like that. It begins and, unusually for comics, it ends. Some of the characters, at the run’s close, are taken off the board. And that means, between the first issue and the last, they can have a real story. Terrible things can happen to them that, unlike in most comics, never get fixed. Loved ones can die, and dreams can shatter, and the triumphs, when they come, can mean something. Because the story has a beginning and an end, it can have stakes, and it can all lead to something. And in this case, unlike in most comics, it really does lead to something, and the something it leads to is worth it. At least it was for me.</p>
<h4>— Ezra Klein, editor-in-chief</h4>
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<h2>Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail</h2>
<h4>Cheryl Strayed</h4>
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<p>Growing up, you believe you're invincible. You climb trees, fly off swing sets, jump headfirst down a slide and it doesn't matter how much parents and teachers moan "you're going to get hurt."</p>
<p>Invincibility must be tested.</p>
<p>Then one day you break. Maybe a dish or a bone, or maybe even your own heart.</p>
<p>In Cheryl Strayed's autobiographical journey "Wild," we learn the day she breaks was the day her mother died. Her marriage soon ended and she hopscotched around trying to dull the pain until she finds a book about the Pacific Crest Trail. It's her way out. A cast for her heart. Unprepared, out of shape, with comically too much baggage, the author sets off to hike the more than one thousand-mile trail from the Mojave Desert to Washington State. She has a guide book and a will of heart.</p>
<p>There's little forgiveness for error in the wild. You're up against an unknown, a step on ground that gives, or a turn in a canyon so large the weather changes. You're also fighting yourself.</p>
<p>This book is as much about breaking as it is about the adventure of never staying broken. Each step is one less step forward and one more step behind. She pushes on as you turn the pages.</p>
<p>While our hearts are not invincible, they are resilient. And with will, we often find our way.</p>
<h4>— Yuri Victor, senior UX designer</h4>
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<h2>The Son Also Rises</h2>
<h4>Greg Clark</h4>
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<p>One of the few things that just about everyone in American politics believes is that there should be high upward mobility — it should be possible to end life in a higher socioeconomic station in society than you began it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Greg Clark's argument is that this entire idea is a giant sham. Social mobility, he claims, is very low. It's low everywhere, and there's very little governments can do to change that. The Communist takeover of China in 1949 didn't increase social mobility. Universal public education in Sweden didn't either. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/29/everyone-likes-the-idea-of-equal-opportunity-this-economist-thinks-its-a-fantasy/">Quotas for people in lower castes</a> in Bengal, India seem to have made some difference but that's about it.</p>
<p>This claim — that people's positions in society are mostly set at birth and social policy can't do much to change them — is usually used to <a href="http://reason.com/archives/1995/03/01/cracked-bell">argue against the welfare state</a>, but Clark comes to exactly the opposite conclusion. If his argument is right, then nobody deserves their place in society, and it's only fair to redistribute lots from the lucky few who wound up on top due to little effort of their own.</p>
<p>I'm not sure I entirely believe Clark's data, and I'm certainly skeptical of a number of his interpretations of it. But it's one of those rare, invigorating arguments which, if correct, totally upends your understanding of the way the world works. Right or wrong, I've thought about it more than anything else I read in 2014.</p>
<h4>— Dylan Matthews, special projects editor</h4>
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<h2>The Love of a Good Woman</h2>
<h4>Alice Munro</h4>
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<p>When Alice Munro <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2013/munro-facts.html">won the Nobel Prize</a> in Literature last year, my eye slunk straight to my crowded bookcase. There, "The Love of a Good Woman" sat, unread and unopen, its straight spine staring out at me. Munro is an author other writers love to recommend. They speak of her work only in the most reverential tones. For over four decades, Munro has written one collection of short stories after another, each one greeted with critical praise. And her reputation weighed that book down on my shelf.</p>
<p>Why couldn't I read her? Munro's output is intimidating to approach. Where do you start? How do you begin? What book out of the many? What story out of the many? I bought "The Love of a Good Woman" figuring I should start somewhere, anywhere, and the prize pushed me to open the book up one rainy day.</p>
<p>What I found was the opposite of intimidating. I slipped easily into the rivers of Munro’s character’s lives. Start on any story, and Munro peels back a curtain for you to peer through; she lets you watch the sadness and the secrets and the stories of lives unfold. This is not a book to read in a fury, racing through the pages, but one to pick up over the months on quiet evenings. I could skip from a Canadian beach party to a war widow’s womb to the basement bedroom of newlyweds, each story a universe to enter for a few hours, and to leave with a tinge of regret. I recently bought my second collection of Munro. Which one? It doesn’t matter. My hunch is they’re all just as delicious.</p>
<h4>— Melissa Bell, executive editor</h4>
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<h2>Bad Feminist</h2>
<h4>Roxane Gay</h4>
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<p>Feminist as a word took center stage in 2014 — literally, in the form of <a href="http://digg.com/video/beyonce-vma-performance-yaaaaaaas">Beyoncé at the VMAs</a> and <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/9/23/6832243/the-sexual-threats-against-emma-watson-are-an-attack-on-women">Emma Watson's speech</a> about women's rights. But feminism as a concept is a messy belief system imbued with stigma, anger, and misunderstanding. Feminism, culture tells us, is something a woman can do right or wrong — another aspect of a woman's life for which she will be judged.</p>
<p>This tension is central to Roxane Gay's excellent book of essays about being a woman, a writer, and a bad feminist. We already knew that Gay is a fabulous writer: her novels are perfectly structured and carry so much heart that they are sometimes difficult to read. In "Bad Feminist," she applies that narrative skill to essays — each about a moment in popular culture, the news, or her own life.</p>
<p>"Bad Feminist" is a book that makes feminism approachable, realistic, and most importantly, difficult. Gay doesn't make feminism into a happy female commune of love and perfection because life isn't any of those things. "Bad Feminist" was the book I needed this year because it's honest about our culture, where equality sometimes seems unattainable.</p>
<h4>— Kelsey McKinney, writing fellow</h4>
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<h2>Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China</h2>
<h4>Evan Osnos</h4>
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<p>"Age of Ambition" is a fascinating exploration of today's China from Evan Osnos, a journalist who spent eight years covering the country for the Chicago Tribune and the New Yorker. Osnos writes that the country's present state reminds him of the the US Gilded Age, another major time of transformation and new possibility. He focuses the crux of his narrative on the "strivers" looking to achieve or be a part of something interesting and different. He interviews CEOs, reporters, dissidents, and regular people, combining thorough reporting, sharp observation, and a keen literary sense.</p>
<p>The book's first section focuses on the country's economic transformation — both the new opportunities and improved quality of life available to many, and the difficulties of turning dreams into reality. Second, he explores censorship and politics, with a focus on the internet and the omnipresence of government corruption. His final section, on "Faith," focuses on people engaging with larger ideas or traditions in a search for meaning — whether it's religion, ethics, or nationalism. The book is informative, enjoyable, and moving throughout, and richly deserved its recent <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/9/23/6832243/the-sexual-threats-against-emma-watson-are-an-attack-on-women">National Book Award for nonfiction</a>.</p>
<h4>— Andrew Prokop, writing fellow</h4>
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<h2>The Power Broker</h2>
<h4>Robert Caro</h4>
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<p>This is a biography of Robert Moses, the bureaucrat whose road, bridge, park, and tunnel projects transformed New York City in the mid-20th century. It's worth reading even if you have no interest in New York City or infrastructure. This book will help you understand one of life's great mysteries: how do people become powerful?</p>
<p>Moses was never elected mayor or governor (his 1934 run for governor was a complete disaster), yet for three decades he had more power over New York's manmade geography than the men who held those titles. Drawing on seven years of research, Caro tells a gripping story of how Moses gained, kept, and finally lost power. It tells about his intense loyalty to Governor (and failed presidential candidate) Al Smith, who aided his rise to power in the 1920s. It describes his bitter feud with Governor, and then President, Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s. It describes his long reign as the undisputed master of New York infrastructure projects in the 1940s and 1950s. And it describes his downfall at the hands of Governor Nelson Rockefeller in the 1960s.</p>
<p>Most of the specific disputes Caro chronicles have long been forgotten. But the book's broader lessons about ambition, greed, and loyalty are timeless.</p>
<h4>— Timothy B. Lee, senior editor</h4>
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<h2>Unbroken</h2>
<h4>Laura Hillenbrand</h4>
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<p>This was one of the most powerful books I have ever read. A true story of determination and perseverance, it gripped me till the very end. I would have probably read the story just to learn about Louis Zamperini's life as a track star before going to fight in World War II (he was on pace to potentially break the four-minute mile). I'm very excited to see the movie, which came out this month, too!</p>
<h4>— Kyle Keller, analytics editor</h4>
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<h2>If on a Winter's Night a Traveler</h2>
<h4>Italo Calvino</h4>
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<p>"If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler" is deeply, wonderfully tricky. The first chapter begins with a description of "You" — much of the novel is written in second person — beginning to read "Italo Calvino’s new novel," a book called "If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler." And it only gets trickier from there.</p>
<p>What you think is the novel’s opening story is interrupted after the second chapter, when "You," the reader, realizes that you’ve been given an incomplete book containing only its beginning. The third chapter is about "your" quest to find the rest of the novel you were reading, but what you discover is a completely different novel — whose first chapter makes up the actual book’s fourth. The rest of the novel alternates, by and large, between opening chapters from widly different novels and "your" quest to figure out why books keep turning up in fragmented form.</p>
<p>Is this structure complicated, maybe even convoluted? Certainly. But Calvino is talented enough to make it work, and quite beautifully at that. The "novel within a novel" chapters vary wonderfully, seamlessly into a dizzying array of styles and tones. The overarching story — which evolves into both an odd love story and a conspiracy tale about literary fabulism assaulting the nature of truth itself — is a thought-provoking meditation on the acts of reading and writing. "If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler" is not an easy book, but it’s the richest and most unforgettable novel I’ve read this year.</p>
<h4>— Zack Beauchamp, writer</h4>
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<h2>The Drug Wars in America, 1940-1973</h2>
<h4>Kathleen Frydl</h4>
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<p>Most discussions about the origins of the US war on drugs focus on former President Richard Nixon’s declaration and Congress’s approval of the Controlled Substances Act in the 1970s. Kathleen Frydl’s "The Drug Wars in America, 1940-1973" instead centers on the lead-up to Nixon’s drug war and the policies that followed.</p>
<p>Frydl reveals that Washington, DC, was the testing ground for many of the drug policies that would eventually become law nationwide: mandatory minimum sentences, no-knock raids, and asset seizures, to name a few. Racist legislators characterized majority-black DC as a lawless haven of violence — even when the nation’s capital had historically low crime rates. Despite the protests of DC locals, Congress was able to go on with its interventions in local policy due to DC’s status as a federal jurisdiction.</p>
<p>The book provides important historical context for drug policies that remain to this day. Nearly seven in 10 DC voters <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/10/20/6953771/weed-legalization-alaska-florida-oregon-washington-dc-vote#DC">voted to legalize marijuana</a> in November, but Congress <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/12/9/7360463/weed-legalization-washington-dc">attempted to block</a> the initiative in a spending deal in December. Frydl shows the outrageous act of congressional intervention has decades of precedent — for better or worse.</p>
<h4>— German Lopez, writing fellow</h4>
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<h2>Truth and Beauty: A Friendship</h2>
<h4>Ann Patchett</h4>
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<p>This book popped up in my Amazon recommendations because intense nosiness about other people’s lives — the more unusual, the better — means I adore a good memoir. I couldn’t put it down. It’s Patchett’s story of her heartbreaking, 20-year friendship with <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/21/arts/lucy-grealy-39-who-wrote-a-memoir-on-her-disfigurement.html">Lucy Grealy</a>, who famously chronicled her own story of losing most of her jaw to a disfiguring childhood cancer and undergoing endless reconstructive surgeries, in "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Face-Lucy-Grealy/dp/B004HB1DCC">Autobiography of a Face</a>." I’m going to cheat and recommend both books, which offer starkly different perspectives on Grealy and the way she managed her struggles (warning: they’ll make you question whether anyone sees you the way you see yourself). Read together, the pair of offer a beautifully written story of loyalty, relationships, and the complicated emotional lives of two very different, but extremely talented writers.</p>
<h4>— Jenée Desmond-Harris, writer</h4>
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<h2>The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.</h2>
<h4>Adelle Waldman</h4>
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<p>My favorite authors — Jane Austen, William Faulkner, Edith Wharton — are masters of describing small worlds. Their books rest on the belief that individual lives matter: that it's worth devoting an entire book to watching two sisters decide whom to marry, or chronicling a family's attempt to bury one of its own, or exploring if a man will leave his wife. Of course, these books aren't <em>just</em> about the personal lives of their characters: these lives are canvases on which to address class, race, gender dynamics, and a whole host of other social issues.</p>
<p>"The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P." follows this tradition. It's a 300-page book that focuses on whether a self-absorbed 30-something man living in Brooklyn will ever commit to his girlfriend. Like its predecessors, though, the novel is about much more than one man's romantic entanglements. It's about class, art, elitism — and whether or not we're raising a generation of people to look for love in all the wrong ways.</p>
<h4>— Eleanor Barkhorn, features editor</h4>
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<h2>Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Death, Life, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity</h2>
<h4>Katherine Boo</h4>
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<p>The best book I read in 2014 was Katherine Boo’s "Behind the Beautiful Forevers." I’m hardly the first person to come to that conclusion — it won the <a href="http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2012_nf_boo.html#.VJmidcABo">National Book Award in 2012</a>, along with a string of other prizes — but I when traveled to India for work this year, it was the book I kept returning to over and over again.</p>
<p>The book follows the lives of the residents of Annawadi, a slum nestled behind the Mumbai airport, only a few hundred meters from five-star luxury hotels. When the story opens, several families have identified paths that they hope will lead them to middle-class stability. But then tragedy strikes, and the book shifts to follow one family’s desperate attempts to avoid being imprisoned for a terrible crime they did not commit.</p>
<p>It’s a fascinating story, but also an extraordinary work of journalism. Boo spent three years in Annawadi following the lives of the people who became characters in her book, and it shows. The people in her book seem like real people, not stock characters or what she has called "<a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/02/15/how_to_write_about_poor_people/">the representative poor person</a>." Every time I re-read it, I feel lucky to reap the benefits of her efforts.</p>
<h4>— Amanda Taub, writer</h4>
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<h2>And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic</h2>
<h4>Randy Shilts</h4>
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<p>Yes, I recommended this book for our other feature, "<a href="http://www.vox.com/a/books-to-read-to-understand-the-world">Books to Read to Understand the World</a>." But yes, I'm recommending it a second time here, because Randy Shilts' 1987 telling of the early AIDS epidemic is hands-down the best book I read in 2014. This book was so compelling that, after getting the print edition, I bought the audiobook too so I could keep listening when I was walking.</p>
<p>Shilts masterfully tells the story of how the United States moved much too slowly to respond to the AIDS epidemic, allowing the disease to spread rapidly across the country. His narrative moves from the scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta trying to figure out what the disease is, to legislators in Washington battling over funding to the gay communities of San Francisco and New York ravaged by the new, mysterious plague. I've never read a book that so skillfully weaves together narrative upon narrative, that all add up to a larger, layered story.</p>
<p>Shilts' story helped me understand how disease outbreaks get bad — a perspective that helped me cover this year's <a target="new" href="http://www.vox.com/cards/ebola-outbreak-2014/why-is-ebola-in-the-news">Ebola crisis</a>, and understand public health threats in a completely new way.</p>
<h4>— Sarah Kliff, senior editor</h4>
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<h2>Full Fathom Five</h2>
<h4>Max Gladstone</h4>
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<p>I don't read fantasy, as a rule. I barely even read fiction anymore. But I'm a sucker for the Craft Sequence novels of Max Gladstone — which basically ask the question, "What if the 21st-century global economy ran on magic, and what if capitalism really were a religion?" "Full Fathom Five" is the third book in the sequence, and if you want to start from the beginning I won't stop you, but the novel stands on its own. It takes a hard look at the criminal justice system's promise to rehabilitate prisoners, and at what happens to a community that loses its main industry and tries to make money from tourism instead.</p>
<p>As a journalist, I enjoy reading Gladstone's books to piece together how systems work in his world. As someone who follows the news, I get a kick out of the references to our own world Gladstone slips in. When I caught a brief parody of The Economist in Full Fathom Five, I laughed so hard I accidentally closed my Kindle app. If that appeals to you, seriously, don't get caught up on the genre thing.</p>
<h4>—Dara Lind, writer</h4>
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<h2>Men We Reaped: A Memoir</h2>
<h4>Jesmyn Ward</h4>
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<p>This book, a beautifully composed, melancholy ode to five young men in Jesmyn Ward’s life who died too soon, seems as much a tool to help her grapple with their senseless deaths as it is a venue to share her Mississippi family’s story with the world.</p>
<p>And it’s quite a story. The hopelessness is woven through the tales of her dead friends and relatives, all young black men, like a brightly colored thread against a dull background. In writing about her life and her loved ones, she’s telling a story about poverty and prospects and pain that is felt in poor black communities across the country — far outside the confines of her hometown in the rural South. I read this in February, months before the <a target="new" href="http://www.vox.com/cards/mike-brown-protests-ferguson-missouri/mike-brown-shooting-facts-details">death of Michael Brown</a> put a spotlight on the subject of young black men and their place in this country. For so many people, people like Ward’s loved ones, these questions are a matter of life and death — not a news story.</p>
<h4>— Lauren Williams, managing editor</h4>
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<h2>I Was Told There’d Be Cake: Essays</h2>
<h4>Sloane Crosley</h4>
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<p>On moving day, Sloane Crosley locks herself out of both her old and new apartments. As a young, single woman living in New York City, she endures a horrible first job, suffers through bridesmaid chaos, and tries to decipher who left a turd on her bathroom floor — all chronicled in this excellent book of essays.</p>
<p>Each essay reads as if your best friend is sitting right next to you recounting her day. It’s true that one could have much worse problems than Crosley’s, but there’s a certain comfort in the fact that bizarre and awkward situations happen to everyone.</p>
<h4>— Lauren Katz, social media manager</h4>
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<h2>Kinky</h2>
<h4>Denise Duhamel</h4>
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<p>This is a volume of poetry for anyone who has ever loved, hated, or seen a Barbie. That means everyone. These poems are as exceptionally accessible as they are carefully crafted, imagining Barbie experiencing the full breadth of American life, much of which would never meet with Mattel’s approval. It’s our culture, satirized through Barbie’s unblinking eyes.</p>
<p>There’s Apocalyptic Barbie, Beatnik Barbie, Antichrist Barbie, Barbie’s molester, Barbie in therapy (several times), and — in the poem that’s the title of the book — Barbie and Ken switching heads for kicks and wishing that they had genitalia.</p>
<p>The Barbies of Duhamel’s poems are sentient, but usually trapped in their stiff plastic bodies with frozen smiles, the realness of their inner lives contrasting with the aching limitations of their physical existence. They make for poems both funny and haunting. Here’s one of Duhamel’s shorter ones:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>CODEPENDENT RELATIONSHIP</p>
<p>"Barbie says to Ken:</p>
<p>You know what chlorine does to my hair.</p>
<p>But if you insist we go swimming</p>
<p>at least have the courtesy</p>
<p>to help me take my head off first."</p>
<h4>— Susannah Locke, writer</h4>
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<h2>To Show and to Tell</h2>
<h4>Phillip Lopate</h4>
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<p>Phillip Lopate's "To Show and To Tell" is the best book on writing I read this year. The title of this essay collection comes from an old writing rule: "Show, don’t tell," writing teachers lecture their students, warning them against over-writing. Why tell your readers that a character is sad if you can show them that she’s sad? Lopate doesn’t refute this idea, but he does challenge it, reminding his readers that good essayists actually do both — show and tell.</p>
<p>"To Show" reads like a classroom lecture, which makes sense because Lopate has been a college professor for decades. His collection is full of anecdotes recalling some of the more memorable teachable moments he’s shared with students over the years. Each anecdote, like Lopate’s writing in general, is characterized by charity and compassion for his subject, which, at the end of the day, is the essay form that he so loves.</p>
<p>Lopate cautions against certain essayists that don’t turn against themselves, against their presuppositions. He’s obviously talking about first-person writers, but I think the caution applies to all who write. And think. In an age when thoughts have to be condensed to an authoritative 140 characters, lest they risk not being seriously considered, Lopate’s point — that writing is best when it’s undertaken in humility — is an important one.</p>
<h4>— Brandon Ambrosino, writing fellow</h4>
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https://www.vox.com/2014/12/30/7460515/best-books-2014Vox Staff2014-12-29T12:00:02-05:002014-12-29T12:00:02-05:00Why the Bone Clocks was one of 2014’s cleverest new novels
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<p>All but the most arrogant among us understand that our lives are shaped by forces far outside of our control: your government, the global economy, socio-economic hierarchies, wars, technology, evolution, and the broader panoply of Things That Matter But No One Is In Charge Of.</p>
<p>David Mitchell's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Bone-Clocks-A-Novel/dp/1400065674" target="_blank"><i>The Bone Clocks</i></a> is a novel about those things. But it doesn't feel like one. Told from the perspective of five different people over the course of about 60 years, the novel is intensely personal. Mitchell ties them together by way of a time-spanning magical war — which is, by my lights, the novel's cleverest thematic and literary asset.</p>
<p>But if that's not your bag, there's still plenty in <i>The Bone Clocks</i> for you. The prose is masterful; the characters are heart-wrenching; the self-aware sense of humor is laugh-out-loud funny. And it has a point to make.</p>
<h3>Meet Holly Sykes</h3>
<p><i>The Bone Clocks</i> is made up of six different stories. The first and last are told from the point of view of Holly Sykes, an English woman with an unhealthy relationship with what she calls "the weird shit" — the supernatural. The middle four stories are told from the points of view of, respectively, a conniving British student, a war correspondent, a grumpy novelist, and a doctor.</p>
<p>Most of these stories are about the real fabric of their lives. Hugo Lamb, the student, is a quietly monstrous sociopath. His story is about the damage he inflicts on the lives of everyone he meets. The journalist, Ed Brubeck, tenuously balances reporting on the collapsing American occupation of Iraq with his obligations to his family.</p>
<p><q class="right" aria-hidden="true">At their best, Mitchell's stories are wonderfully empathetic tales about identity crises</q></p>
<p>But Holly lurks at the corner of all of these stories and eventually comes to the fore of them. Hugo falls in love with Holly, provoking a surprisingly compelling crisis of conscience over his sociopathy. Ed marries Holly. The novelist, Crispin Hershey, becomes Holly's closest adult friend. And the doctor, Marinus, well ... Marinus is the key to the book's more fantastical story.</p>
<p>Marinus is an immortal, and a member of a group called the Horologists. The Horologists have been at war with the Anchorites, another — very different — magical sect. In the first chapter, Holly is drawn into their war. As, eventually, are those closest to her.</p>
<p>That's absolutely everything I can tell you without revealing some of the novel's many surprises, the pursuit of which proves one of the novel's chief, but also most frustrating, pleasures. But the book's <i>greatest</i> pleasure is the way the magical plot interweaves, almost seamlessly, with the stories of individual people's lives.</p>
<h3>Magical realism</h3>
<p>At first blush, it seems hard to see how what essentially two books — a collection of time-spanning short stories and a fantasy yarn about a magical war — fit together in one coherent whole. Some reviewers, as in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/books/review/the-bone-clocks-by-david-mitchell.html?_r=0" target="_blank">The New York Times</a> and <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/08/soul-cycle" target="_blank">The New Yorker</a>, felt that the pulpiness of the fantasy element degraded the "seriousness" of the rest of the novel.</p>
<p>This reaction is utterly predictable, so much so that Mitchell actually wrote it into the novel. "The fantasy subplot clashes so violently with the book's State of the World pretensions, I cannot bear to look," a fictional reviewer writes of the fictional novelist's newest book.</p>
<p>But the clash between the Horologists and Anchorites actually serves to strengthen the novel's more traditional literary elements. At their best, Mitchell's stories are wonderfully empathetic tales about identity crises. How does teenage Holly's life change after her first love cheats in the worst way imaginable? Several years later, does Hugo embrace his Nietzschean disdain for the rest of humanity, or explore his growing connection with Holly?</p>
<p><q class="right" aria-hidden="true">the magical plot also builds on Mitchell's more political ambitions</q></p>
<p>The fantasy plot amplifies these emotional stakes. A crisis of identity, after all, is not just a crisis about ourselves. We cannot think about who we are without questioning our place in the world. So the characters' decisions about who they are, and what they want out of life, end up being connected — in ways both obvious and subtle — to an epic magical war. It's a way of literally depicting the phenomenology of an existential crisis.</p>
<p>And interestingly, the magic here is somewhat subdued. For all of the zip-bam-boom of the (deeply enjoyable) combat scenes, the magic only ends up affecting a handful of characters. As compared to, say, the environmental catastrophe in the book's final chapter, the impact on the world is relatively minor. The stakes are epic, but not world-shattering.</p>
<p>That said, the magical plot also builds on Mitchell's more political ambitions. His handling of big problems, like the Iraq War and climate change, is often crude. But he's quite good at showing how these enormous forces buffet individual people, small and weak as we are. Throughout <i>The Bone Clocks</i>, events beyond the control of individual characters put them in terrible situations. They're then forced to deal with them as best they can.</p>
<p>The magical war, initially, seems similar. Holly is drawn into a war for reasons she barely understands, for reasons she can't control. But the model here is just a touch more hopeful. Holly writes a bestselling-novel based on her magical experiences; ultimately, she plays an important role in the magical war's resolution. Humans are not helpless: while the world may be controlled by forces bigger than ourselves, it's still possible, Mitchell suggests, to seize a modicum of control.</p>
<h3><span>The David Mitchell multiverse</span></h3>
<p>Mitchell's prose is, as ever, sterling. He's a novelist with an extraordinary talent for mimicry, for writing in dozens of impossibly different voices and making them all sing. That occasionally fails him — for example, the American soldiers in Ed's story are cartoonishly callous. (It didn't help that I had finished Phil Klay's <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/11/19/7246149/national-book-award-nominee-reviews" target="_blank"><i>Redeployment</i></a>, a book that handled the Iraq War in immensely superior fashion, right before reading this.)</p>
<p><q class="right" aria-hidden="true">this exercise in unification has a distinctly comic book feel</q></p>
<p><i>The Bone Clocks</i>, however, has grander ambitions: it wants to unify Mitchell's disparate voices into one story. The novel is stuffed with characters (some major, some minor) from Mitchell's other novels.</p>
<p>These stories were occasionally peppered with mystical overtones: think the hint of reincarnation in <i>Cloud Atlas</i> or the mysterious Abbot Enomoto in <i>The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet</i>. The magical plot in <i>The Bone Clocks</i> explains much of that, firmly establishing that all of the novels take place in one universe (which Mitchell calls an "<a href="http://www.vulture.com/2014/08/david-mitchell-interview-bone-clocks-cloud-atlas.html" target="_blank"><i style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.65;">Über</i>-book</a><span>").</span></p>
<p>For devoted Mitchell fans, this exercise in unification has a distinctly comic book feel. I'm thinking here of mega-events like DC's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_on_Infinite_Earths" target="_blank">Crisis on Infinite Earths</a>, which attempted to reconcile the long and contradictory series of stories about Batman, Superman, and the like.</p>
<p>And that's awesome! Watching characters move around a massive shared universe is one of comics' great joys. Seeing a similar thing performed in novels, by one of the best prose stylists of our time — well, that's a project I'm on board for.</p>
<p><i>Come back every day of December for </i><a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/best-of-2014" sl-processed="1">Vox's picks</a><i> of some of our favorite pop culture of 2014.</i></p>
https://www.vox.com/2014/12/29/7447695/bone-clocks-david-mitchellZack Beauchamp2014-12-23T14:00:02-05:002014-12-23T14:00:02-05:00The 30 best TV shows of 2014
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<p class="feature-photos-intro">It was another astoundingly good year for television. When I sat down to make my annual list of shows, I had so many potential options that I could have easily done a top 100 list and filled it with shows I mostly liked. It can be easy to forget that there's so much good TV, because there's so much trash out there, too. But the explosion of outlets offering programming has meant that many of them are cranking out incredible shows, sometimes by accident. (Indeed, this top 30 represents 16 separate networks or streaming services.) Consider this a list of shows worth catching up over your holiday break. And come back next week for even more shows that didn't fit on this list.</p>
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<h3>The Top 30 TV Shows of 2014</h3>
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<a href="CBS" target="_black"><img class="lazy zoom" data-src="https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2873326/mom.0.jpg"></a> <a href="CBS" target="_blank" class="icon-link-ext-alt"></a>
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<h4>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2660806/?ref_=nv_sr_4"><i>Mom</i></a> (CBS)</h4>
<p>The latest sitcom from longtime comedy titan Chuck Lorre (he of <i>Two and a Half Men</i> and <i>Big Bang Theory</i>) might be <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/11/6/7170297/mom-cbs-good-review">the best thing he's ever put his name on</a>: a wrenching exploration of never having enough cash and struggling with addiction that boasts two of TV's best performances from Allison Janney and Anna Faris. The show's second season is turning into a quiet knockout.</p>
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<a href="Showtime" target="_black"><img class="lazy zoom" data-src="https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2873312/shameless.0.jpg"></a> <a href="Showtime" target="_blank" class="icon-link-ext-alt"></a>
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<h4>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1586680/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Shameless</i></a> (Showtime)</h4>
<p>This is apparently the "dealing with poverty" section of the list, because Showtime's story of the family Gallagher — Chicagoans always dancing just ahead of utter desolation — reached perhaps its most desperate, darkest moments in season four. Emmy Rossum has always been a treasure as eldest daughter Fiona, but even William H. Macy, long forced to play the show's weakest link in patriarch Frank, got some terrific material to play this year.</p>
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<a href="HBO" target="_black"><img class="lazy zoom" data-src="https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2873354/girls.0.jpg"></a> <a href="HBO" target="_blank" class="icon-link-ext-alt"></a>
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<h4>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1723816/?ref_=nv_sr_3"><i>Girls</i></a> (HBO)</h4>
<p>Paradoxically, the "better" <i>Girls</i> gets, the more it slips down my list. The first season was slapdash and a little messy, while the second season was all over the place. But both performed much better with me than this third season, which had a quiet consistency and competence that was easy to appreciate but hard to get too excited about. Still, two episodes — isolated getaway "Beach House" and hospital visit "Flo" — stacked up nicely against anything else TV offered this year.</p>
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<h4>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3530232/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Last Week Tonight with John Oliver</i></a> (HBO)</h4>
<p>I am allergic to placing late-night talk shows on my list, alongside all of my precious scripted dramas and comedies. But John Oliver's new show was such a groundbreaking inversion of what we expect from the form — featuring long, thoughtfully <i>reported</i> pieces that were still gutbustingly funny — that it was hard for me not to include it. I can't wait to see what Oliver and company accomplish in season two, now that the kinks are worked out.</p>
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<a href="The%20CW" target="_black"><img class="lazy zoom" data-src="https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2873340/janethevirgin.0.JPG"></a> <a href="The%20CW" target="_blank" class="icon-link-ext-alt"></a>
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<h4>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3566726/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Jane the Virgin</i></a> (The CW)</h4>
<p>This show should not work. It should be a trashy, over-the-top, soapy mess. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/10/14/6973331/jane-the-virgin-pro-life-premiere-recap">Its premise</a> involves a virgin who's accidentally artificially inseminated, then decides to keep the baby. Many of its motivations beggar belief. But the show revels in just how preposterous it is by underlining its wacky plot at every turn, then daring us to get invested, because the characters and their world are so richly drawn. No new TV series had a bigger heart than this one, and that has served it well.</p>
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3231564/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2"><i>Manhattan</i></a> (WGN America)</h4>
<p>Though it got off to a slow start, this fictionalized account of the Manhattan Project built to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/10/19/6994619/manhattan-review-season-one-wgn">an impressive head of steam</a> by the end of its first season. Cool and collected, the series examined the process of chain reactions, not just in the world of nuclear physics, but in the way that people forced to live in close proximity to each other have a tendency to, well, explode. I'm positively ravenous for whatever season two might bring.</p>
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3487356/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Black-ish</i></a> (ABC)</h4>
<p>So much of the media attention paid to this show has been about its diversity, about the fact that it's the first major network sitcom in ages to focus on a black family. But just as much should be paid to the uniquely hilarious comic worldview of creator Kenya Barris, who rarely settles for the obvious joke and has sharp, piercing insight into the ways parents and children relate to each other, and all of the ways that men both embrace and chafe against an outwardly comfortable existence.</p>
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2342652/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Getting On</i></a> (HBO)</h4>
<p>There are few grimmer series than <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/12/14/7391239/getting-on-review-hbo/">this HBO comedy</a> — set in an elder-care ward — but there are also few more rewarding ones. Television isn't terribly good at looking directly at death, but the genius of <i>Getting On</i> is how it understands that to have to do so every day, without flinching, would eventually make you just have to search for any way out, even if it involved petty schemes and manipulations of office politics, as the show's characters indulge in.</p>
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1796960/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Homeland</i></a> (Showtime)</h4>
<p>Yeah, the season finale was a major letdown. But the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7274411/homeland-season-4/">11 episodes leading up to it</a> had so much good stuff in them that I worry I'm underrating this one a little bit. <i>Homeland</i> used to be a weird, psychological thriller, and it's traded that in to primarily be an action-driven spy story. But it's <i>really good</i> at being an action-driven spy story, and it buries surprisingly acute critiques of American foreign policy in the middle of that storytelling. Season four was a definite rebound for a show that needed one.</p>
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1305826/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Adventure Time</i></a> (Cartoon Network)</h4>
<p>Truth be told, I'm finding the show's increasing sprawl in its latest episodes a bit of a mess. But the back half of its fifth season — which concluded last spring — might have been the best stretch of episodes the series ever came up with, as protagonist Finn crossed definitively from childhood to adolescence, with all the attendant growing pains. With every new season, every new episode, <i>Adventure Time</i>'s choice to tell this coming-of-age story metaphorically, rather than directly, seems more and more a stroke of genius.</p>
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<h4>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1442462/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>The Good Wife</i></a> (CBS)</h4>
<p>The show squandered a bit of its momentum in the second half of its fifth season — I am someone who thought the aftermath of the season's big death was a huge mixed bag — but this is still <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/9/21/6673677/good-wife-season-6-premiere">one of TV's most thoughtful, complex series</a>, offering up a panoply of fantastic characters and a willingness to experiment with storytelling that even much more consistent series could do well to learn from. And the start of the sixth season heralds a year that may be the show's most ambitious yet.</p>
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2861424/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Rick and Morty</i></a> (Adult Swim)</h4>
<p>Wildly ingenious and funny, this Adult Swim riff on <i>Back to the Future</i> (with better misanthropy) was the series <i>Community</i> creator Dan Harmon turned to in the year he was kicked off that show. (He co-created this one with Justin Roiland.) And in so many ways, <i>Rick and Morty</i> feels like that earlier series unfiltered, the ideas of its creators spewing all over the place in glorious, animated wonder and in stories that are rarely predictable and always hilarious. What other TV show would feature a TV set that periodically lets you in on what's happening in alternate universes, entirely via those other universes' television programming? There isn't one, just this slice of madness.</p>
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<h4>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1492966/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Louie</i></a> (FX)</h4>
<p>The fourth season of this show was by far its most epic. At one point, creator, writer, director, and star Louis C.K. gave over several weeks to the story of his character romancing an Eastern European woman, a distinct break from the series' previous standalone nature. That resulted in the occasional sense that C.K. had bitten off more than he could chew, and was raising topics (like, say, violence against women) just to raise them, rather than to really discuss them. But it also resulted in some of the show's best, most brilliant episodes, like hour-long flashback "In the Woods" or ingenious slice of privileged life "Model."</p>
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<h4>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2581458/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Looking</i></a> (HBO)</h4>
<p>The rise of the art sitcom — loosely plotted half-hours that don't particularly care if they make you heartily laugh — reached a new apex in this chronicle of three gay men's lives in San Francisco. This is a show filled with great characters and bold storytelling that thinks nothing of tossing all of that aside for an episode that just portrays one long, eventuful day in the lives of two of them. It's a very small show with the experimental soul of a much larger one, and it will be fascinating to see what the series can do with more episodes to utilize in its second season.</p>
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<h4>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2802850/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Fargo</i></a> (FX)</h4>
<p>Here's another show that <i>shouldn't have worked</i>. Updating the Coen brothers' classic film seems an act of madness, destined for failure. But instead, series writer Noah Hawley dug in and found elements of the film that he could bring to what amounted to a miniseries remix of several of the directors' greatest films. And in so doing, he found a way to portray nothing less than the battle between good and evil in the middle of the frozen Minnesota wilds. This series was as thrillingly, heartstoppingly visual — all those empty snowscapes! — as anything in the history of television, and it backed it all up with vital characters, played by great actors.</p>
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<h4>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3012698/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Olive Kitteridge</i></a> (HBO)</h4>
<p>Miniseries are another TV oddity I have trouble stacking up against traditional TV, but I had to make room for this Lisa Cholodenko-helmed series, which was <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/11/2/7140469/olive-kitteridge-review-hbo-frances-mcdormand-bill-murray">one of the quietest treats of the year</a>. The series has as rich a sense of place — a small town in Maine — as any TV project you're likely to think of, and in Frances McDormand's work as the title character, TV might have found its performance of the year. Olive Kitteridge is not an easy woman to like, but McDormand all but forces you to recognize what's human in her. That's no easy feat, but both McDormand and Cholodenko made it seem easy.</p>
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<h4>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1520211/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>The Walking Dead</i></a> (AMC)</h4>
<p>I'm <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/12/1/7314439/walking-dead-finale">as surprised as anyone</a> to realize how much I'm digging this show this year. Yeah, it still has trouble telling stories larger than an episode or two, but those episodes are often brutal and brilliant, digging deep into what it would be to live amid the zombie apocalypse. The show has doubled down on its characters, something that wouldn't have worked even a year ago, and that gamble has more than paid off, as the ensemble is now filled with figures who are far more than fodder for the series' omnipresent "walkers." If this was where the show could go in 2014, maybe 2015 will bring even better things.</p>
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<h4>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804503/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Mad Men</i></a> (AMC)</h4>
<p>AMC made a huge mistake in cutting the final season of Matthew Weiner's magnum opus about 1960s America in two. All <i>Mad Men</i> seasons take their time to set their beautifully designed and costumed dominoes in a row, before Weiner gleefully starts knocking them over, and this season was no exception. But then, right as the story was getting going, with two of the best episodes the series had ever managed, it stopped, going away for a year. That bodes well for the spring's final set of seven episodes, but it still made for a weird half-season of TV.</p>
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1561755/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Bob's Burgers</i></a> (Fox)</h4>
<p>Fox has finally realized the buried treasure it's always had in this show, placing it after <i>Family Guy</i>, where it's done much better in the ratings. Those who are just getting caught up with the beauties of the family Belcher will have much joyfulness in store, even when only 2014 episodes are considered. This is frequently TV's most delightful show, creating a world filled with hilarious characters at every level. It's also the only series on TV that would dare stage a full musical version of <i>Working Girl</i> mashed up with a full musical version of <i>Die Hard</i>. So you have that to look forward to.</p>
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<h4>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2141913/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Review with Forrest MacNeil</i></a> (Comedy Central)</h4>
<p>Andrew Daly's remake of an Australian series sat on a shelf for a year before Comedy Central put it on the air. All that viewers were missing was one of TV's best shows. No big deal. The show's central conceit — a man reviews the tiny things that make up life itself on some sort of public access TV show — is so weird that it seems as if this will be a kind of ersatz sketch comedy with a single central figure. But as the season goes on, it becomes all the more apparent that Daly and company intend to take this idea deadly seriously. In so doing, they turn the show into one of TV's funniest comedies — and most moving tragedies. Sometimes in the same scene.</p>
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<h4>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1839578/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Person of Interest</i></a> (CBS)</h4>
<p>No crime procedural should be this smart. No science-fiction show should provide such enjoyable detective stories. And no action series should feature characters with this much depth. <i>Person of Interest</i> feels like <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/9/24/6839009/how-person-of-interest-became-the-x-files-revival-you-didnt-know-you">the best show on TV literally nobody knows about</a> — even though it's frequently one of TV's best-rated shows. The full scope of the series' ambition became apparent in 2014, when it pulled back the curtain and revealed that it wasn't just about the all-seeing eye of the surveillance state but also what it means that we're giving over more and more of our lives to machines. This is a CBS crime show your parents probably watch that's about rogue artificial intelligences using humans as proxies in a terrifying war. How cool is that?</p>
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3228420/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>You're the Worst</i></a> (FX)</h4>
<p>There are so many ways to read <i>You're the Worst</i>, a romantic comedy about awful people who can't help falling in love with each other. You can read it sincerely, seeing the journey of Jimmy and Gretchen toward couplehood as something ultimately good for both of them. Or you can see it through much more cynical eyes, finding the two so awful that you're happy to see them essentially quarantined away from the human race. The greatness of the series lives in that tension, in the fact that you can legitimately want these two to end up together, while still finding them a little bit hard to take. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/9/18/6357147/youre-the-worst-fx-stephen-falk">Creator Stephen Falk</a> walked that line nimbly in the first season, even if nobody was watching.</p>
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2699128/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>The Leftovers</i></a> (HBO)</h4>
<p>The very definition of "not for everybody," <i>The Leftovers</i> was, nonetheless, my favorite show in all of television some weeks, particularly when it drilled down and focused on only one of its characters. This adaptation of Tom Perrotta's novel about a Rapture-like event that causes 2 percent of the world's population to simply disappear boasted an impressive commitment to its dark, occasionally nihilistic tone. But look underneath the surface, and there was a rich series here about learning to live with loss, tragedy, and, yes, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/9/7/6116687/leftovers-depression-hbo">depression</a>. Co-creator <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/a/lost-damon-lindelof-interviews">Damon Lindelof</a> has always been great at translating mental illness into the stuff of real drama, and he was at the peak of his powers here.</p>
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<h4>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2372162/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Orange Is the New Black</i></a> (Netflix)</h4>
<p>Let's be honest: this series is going to completely fall apart someday soon. There were already signs of this in a generally terrific second season that, nonetheless, stretched itself so thin that it occasionally seemed to be trying to tell the story of every single person who'd ever been even tangentially connected to Litchfield Prison. But there's also something so admirable about that. The show's empathy stretches to each and every person within its frame, even if those of us at home might not extend our own sympathies so far. The show probably needs to contract a little bit for its long-term health, but it's still not hard to be blown away by its sheer reach and ambition.</p>
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<h4>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1588221/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1"><i>Rev.</i></a> (Hulu)</h4>
<p>Here's the exact opposite of "too big," with Hulu's masterful British import, a series that keeps such an intimate focus that it can occasionally seem claustrophobic. That was never more apparent than in the show's third season, which followed its central character — the minister Adam Smallbone (Tom Hollander) — through a series of unfortunate events that seemed likely to lead to his defrocking. Too many stories about Christians fail to wrestle with the real, intractable problems of the faith, but <i>Rev.</i> revels in them. The third season concludes with three episodes of raw, real power that center on the difficulty — and necessity — of forgiveness.</p>
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<h4>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2578560/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Broad City</i></a> (Comedy Central)</h4>
<p>It was a great year for new comedies, particularly on cable and streaming sites. But of all of these series, perhaps none was funnier than Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobsen's <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/10/15/6968931/broad-city-watch-it">tribute to young women</a>, without any particular direction or plans, in a big city. It's not hard to compare the series to <i>Girls</i> — the two series' premises are so similar — but <i>Broad City</i>'s lens is much more forthrightly comedic than the earlier HBO show. The series also grew out of a webseries of the same name, which means that the humor here often makes it seem as if the internet itself has risen up and created a TV show. The biggest surprise wasn't that a webseries could translate so perfectly to TV. It was that Glazer and Jacobsen had such total command of their vision in their first season.</p>
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<a href="Sundance" target="_black"><img class="lazy zoom" data-src="https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2873322/rectify.0.jpg"></a> <a href="Sundance" target="_blank" class="icon-link-ext-alt"></a>
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2183404/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Rectify</i></a> (Sundance)</h4>
<p>Empathy in all directions, part two. The first season of this series focused relentlessly on central character Daniel Holden, a man who, at 18, was sent to death row for raping and murdering his girlfriend, only to later have his sentence commuted when DNA evidence called into question his involvement in the crime. In those first six episodes, the show dug deep into what it would be like to re-enter society after almost 20 years away. But in <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053383/rectify-is-the-best-show-youre-not-watching-here-are-5-reasons-why">this year's second season</a>, with 10 episodes to play with, creator Ray McKinnon and his staff instead spread their focus in all directions, shoring up characters who had seemed like Southern stereotypes in season one and embracing weird, artsy storytelling that seemed to take place in a kind of half-remembered dream. It was at once more cohesive and less coherent, a combination that proved devastatingly perfect</p>
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3502262/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1"><i>Transparent</i></a> (Amazon)</h4>
<p>It's tempting to say that Maura (Jeffrey Tambor) has been living a lie her whole life when <i>Transparent</i> begins. After all, she's gathered the three children she fathered to tell them that she's begun a gender transition. But the genius of <i>Transparent</i> is in how it embraces the fact that nothing in life is truly a lie if it ultimately leads to you becoming the person you always were. There's so much richness and beauty in <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/10/16/6977705/transparent-interview-jill-soloway">creator Jill Soloway's</a> vision of the universe, in the ways that Maura and her children hurt and wound each other but always return to the family home, to the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/10/5/6895869/transparent-full-season-review">connection</a> that has always existed and must always exist between them. This is a supremely hopeful series, the perfect antidote to a medium that sometimes seems to overdose on gloom.</p>
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2243973/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>Hannibal</i></a> (NBC)</h4>
<p>After the first season of Bryan Fuller's stunning reimagining of the Hannibal Lecter novels, it seemed as if the sky was the limit for telling new stories about the character. But even the greatest of believers in the show's future couldn't have imagined how sinuously, sensuously involving the show's second season would be. After sending criminal profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) to prison for crimes committed by his friend and mentor Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen), Fuller and his writers began untangling the bond between the two men, then knotting it up ever more fiercely all over again. By the season's triumphant conclusion, blood had been spilled, relationships had been shattered, and the TV year's harshest breakup came between two men who were never romantically involved. This is a dark, baroque vision of the evils people can do to each other — and the love that can lurk right alongside that darkness.</p>
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2149175/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>The Americans</i></a> (FX)</h4>
<p>What does it mean to be a spouse? What does it mean to be a parent? What does it mean to pledge allegiance to a country? The first season of this FX spy drama was solid stuff, but it was, in no way, a preparation for how fantastic season two was. This year, <i>The Americans</i> took its central characters — two KGB agents living in the Washington, D.C., suburbs of 1982 in a marriage of convenience that becomes surprisingly real — to a place few other shows would think to go. With their marriage safely solidified and finally "real," the two found they were suddenly much worse at their jobs. With something to lose in the field, they finally had weak spots that could be exploited. And that's not even mentioning how much the two worried about their children, who were increasingly enamored of the fruits of American capitalism. Showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields have crafted a series about both the wonders and the costs of loyalty, and in a year for great TV, that consistency of vision pushed the show to the very top.</p>
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<h3>Learn more</h3>
<ul class="feature-photos-related-list">
<li class="feature-photos-related-list-item"> <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/12/18/7408709/best-cartoons-simpsons">
<div class="feature-photos-related-image" style="background-image: url( 'https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2646676/simp_NoDisgraceLikeHome_330F_hires2_hires2.0.jpg' );"></div>
<div class="feature-photos-related-highlight"></div>
<div class="feature-photos-related-headline">The 25 best animated series since the debut of The Simpsons</div>
</a> </li>
<li class="feature-photos-related-list-item"> <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/12/12/7377541/maps-that-never-happened">
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<div class="feature-photos-related-headline">20 maps that never happened</div>
</a> </li>
<li class="feature-photos-related-list-item"> <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/7/6/5874267/seinfeld-anniversary-article">
<div class="feature-photos-related-image" style="background-image: url( 'https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/assets/4714742/seinfeldcast.jpg' );"></div>
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<div class="feature-photos-related-headline">5 ways Seinfeld changed television</div>
</a> </li>
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<h3>Credits</h3>
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<li class="feature-photos-credits-list-item"> <span>Editor</span> <a href="http://twitter.com/laurenwilliams">Lauren Williams</a> </li>
<li class="feature-photos-credits-list-item"> <span>Copy Editor</span> <a href="http://twitter.com/mckinneykelsey">Kelsey McKinney</a> </li>
<li class="feature-photos-credits-list-item"> <span>Developer</span> <a href="http://twitter.com/yurivictor">Yuri Victor</a> </li>
<li class="feature-photos-credits-list-item"> <span>Image courtesy of</span> <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com">Shutterstock</a> </li>
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https://www.vox.com/2014/12/23/7440019/best-tv-shows-2014Emily St. James2014-12-23T13:04:00-05:002014-12-23T13:04:00-05:00My favorite 2014 music video: hundreds of women with umbrellas filmed from a drone
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<img alt="A shot from the video shows hundreds of people holding up colored umbrellas." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tjSHHRILTbdrnFXX6orxXqpGVJQ=/127x0:1419x969/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/42839736/okgo_heart.0.0.png" />
<figcaption>A shot from the video shows hundreds of people holding up colored umbrellas. | OK Go</figcaption>
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<p>One of the most ambitious videos of 2014 was this one, released in October to promote the group's <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/10/15/6981695/ok-gos-amazingly-nerdy-music-videos-ranked">new album</a><span>:</span></p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/u1ZB_rGFyeU" height="315" width="560"></iframe></p>
<p>The video, which is filmed as a single long take, starts out with the band in a warehouse dancing around on what look like electric unicycles. Then they scoot outside, and the drone-mounted camera zooms upwards. The viewer is treated to increasingly spectacular choreography involving dozens, then hundreds of women with colorful umbrellas.</p>
<p>One interesting thing about the video: it was filmed in Japan. That might be because drone laws here in the United States are a <a target="new" href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-06/drone-pilot-s-fine-dropped-by-judge-finding-against-faa.html">mess</a>. While hobbyist drone use is allowed, commercial use (which the Federal Aviation Administration defines in a broad way that would likely include this video) requires a permit, and those aren't easy to get. The agency is supposed to draft new, more permissive regulations by next year, but it's <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/07/01/faa-will-miss-2015-drone-deadline-audit-warns/">behind schedule.</a></p>
<p>The video is a reminder that drone regulations aren't just an economic issue, but a potential free-speech issue as well. In the coming years, people will increasingly want to experiment with using drones to make art. They'll also be used for weightier purposes, like monitoring police conduct during protests. It's important that the law not give the government too much say over how they're used.</p>
https://www.vox.com/2014/10/27/7079153/the-latest-ok-go-video-is-amazing-would-it-have-been-legal-in-theTimothy B. Lee2014-12-23T11:30:02-05:002014-12-23T11:30:02-05:00The Flash was the best superhero show of 2014
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<figcaption>The Flash | The CW</figcaption>
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<p><span>2014 has been a great year for television. </span><a style="font-size: 1.15em; line-height: 1.65; background-color: #ffffff;" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/9/21/6673677/good-wife-season-6-premiere" target="_blank"><i>The Good Wife</i></a><span> continues to hit its groove. </span><a style="font-size: 1.15em; line-height: 1.65; background-color: #ffffff;" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/9/17/6230921/new-fall-tv-shows-2014-good" target="_blank"><i>The Affair</i></a><span> burst onto the scene and twisted the way we watch television. </span><a style="font-size: 1.15em; line-height: 1.65; background-color: #ffffff;" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/9/25/6845055/transparent-review-amazon-binge" target="_blank"><i>Transparent</i></a><span> is powerful. And there were some gothic little surprises like </span><i style="font-size: 1.15em; line-height: 1.65;">Penny Dreadful </i><span>and </span><a style="font-size: 1.15em; line-height: 1.65; background-color: #ffffff;" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/12/6/7343559/black-mirror-netflix" target="_blank"><i>Black Mirror</i></a><span>.</span></p>
<p>Then there is <i>The Flash</i>, the CW's <i>Arrow</i> followup into the world of DC Comics. It doesn't come with the clout, buzz, or edge that these other shows have. And, because of its nature, it's probably never going be mentioned in the same breath as those other works.</p>
<p>That's a shame. Because there isn't a more enjoyable show on TV right now. Writers Greg Berlanti, Geoff Johns, and Andrew Kreisberg's major theme might be simple — anyone can change the world — but the show delivers it with a joyfulness and lightness that elevates and makes that message something you can believe in.</p>
<p><i>The Flash</i> isn't necessarily the best show of 2014, but it might be the one you like the most.</p>
<h3>
<i>The Flash</i> knows how to have fun <br>
</h3>
<p>The most important aspect that makes <i>The Flash</i> stand out is its spirit and how different that feeling is from the myriad of superhero tales out there.</p>
<p>Since the dawn of the first X-Men film and through Christopher Nolan's run on his <i>Dark Knight</i> trilogy, there's been an unspoken rule that superheroes have to be dark and serious. This leads to pained antiheroes, hefty stories with big stakes, and a lack of shiny happy people.</p>
<p>That's not happening on <i>The Flash</i>.</p>
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<p>Whether it's too silly by half Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes) and very serious Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker) bickering about metas (the show's nickname for superhumans), Barry Allen's (Grant Gustin) goofy heroism, or the honey-glazed unrequited love between Barry and Iris (Candice Patten), there's so much playfulness happening in <i>The Flash</i>. The show creators, the cast, and the crew are more concerned with having fun than they are concerned with being great.</p>
<h3>Grant Gustin is a perfect fit <br>
</h3>
<p>So many superheroes are defined by tragic pasts. Batman is continually haunted by his parents. Wolverine can't shake the experimentation that happened to him. The Avengers all have skeletons in their closets, Black Widow especially. Even Superman got some grit to him in <i>Man of Steel</i>. Good, for many of these these heroes, is a penance for their past.</p>
<p>Barry Allen is cut from a different pattern. He's a superhero who is happy, and joyful. He's someone who is organically good, even with his own tragic back-story (involving the death of his mother and his father's imprisonment for the crime). As Barry, Grant Gustin gives those qualities a full-bodied life.</p>
<p>Gustin is charming, dorky, and perhaps too handsome to be a believable forensic scientist, but it all works because he leans into the goofy physical comedy of his character. He's saving the world awkwardly and joyfully, and he brings a vitality and a humanity to Allen that no hero can match.</p>
<h3><span>The Flash also knows how to be imaginative</span></h3>
<p>On so many superhero shows, the villains become redundant. A whole season of super-speed saving the world would get old quickly if there weren't different ways to imagine how that might happen. In other words, you can only save a man from a speeding bullet so many times without it getting boring.</p>
<p>Thankfully, <i>The Flash</i> has found ways around that.</p>
<p>In the first episode The Flash takes on the Weather Wizard by creating a cyclone. A few episodes later, he dodges clones. Later, he has to run faster than poison gas. And one of the best scenes of the season happens when he faces off against Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller). Cold derails a train, which crumples in slow motion. And then, in a sequence with superb visual imagination, the Flash weaves in and out of the crushed train, freighting victims out of the wreck:</p>
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<p class="caption">(The CW)</p>
<p>Are these effects comparable to something you might see on <i>Game of Thrones</i> or in the movies? Of course not. But this sequence is imaginative and exciting. It exhibits the type of thinking that keeps this series fresh, leaving you enthralled by the prospect of what this weirdly perfect little show might do next.</p>
<p><i>Come back every day of December for </i><a href="http://www.vox.com/best-of-2014" target="_blank">Vox's picks</a><i> of some of our favorite pop culture of 2014.</i></p>
https://www.vox.com/2014/12/23/7431249/flash-cw-grant-gustinAlex Abad-Santos2014-12-18T10:00:02-05:002014-12-18T10:00:02-05:00The Simpsons turns 25 this week. Here are the 25 best cartoons it inspired
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<p class="feature-photos-intro">The first time <a target="_blank" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096697/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1"><i>The Simpsons</i></a> ever aired on American television as its own show was 25 years ago Wednesday. That episode — <a target="_blank" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348034/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">"Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire"</a> — was technically a "Christmas special," and the series would begin regularly airing the next month. But it legitimately changed television and became a touchstone for a whole generation of writers and animators. So we wondered — what have been the 25 best animated series since <i>The Simpsons</i> debuted? And after a lot of wrangling (and leaving a lot of series we loved off the list), this is what we came up with. Please note: This list solely focuses on North American animation, which is most likely to have been influenced by <i>The Simpsons</i>. It's not that we don't like Japanese or European animation.</p>
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<h3>The Countdown</h3>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">Adult Swim</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0476922/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Moral Orel</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by: </b>Dino Stamatopoulos<br> <b>Aired on: </b>Adult Swim<br> <b>Ran: </b>2005-2008, 2012<br> Dino Stamatopoulos's riff on the old Christian cartoon series <i>Davey & Goliath</i> seemed, in its first season, like it was going to be a weak-sauce parody of something that didn't particularly need further parodying. But in its second and third seasons, the show deepened and grew into something lovely, stark, and heartbreaking. Particularly in season three, the show became about the journey from a life of faith to a life of disbelief, while trying to remain a good person on either end, and in the young boy of the title, the series found the perfect religious seeker for the post-ironic age. The show returned for one special in 2012, but its true high point was its final two seasons.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>The program is notoriously difficult to find. At present, a handful of episodes are available on DVD and for digital download.</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2861424/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Rick and Morty</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by:</b> Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon<br> <b>Airs on:</b> Adult Swim<br> <b>Ran:</b> 2013-present<br> On paper, <i>Rick and Morty</i> sounds like a good idea for a comedy sketch and a disastrous concept for a whole show: a parody of <i>Back to the Future</i> only with a sociopathic Doc and a more bumbling, idiotic Marty, and with space travel in addition to time travel. It shouldn't work, but Roiland (who voices both Doc-analogue Rick and Marty-analogue Morty) and Harmon have sustained it for 11 glorious episodes so far, without diminishing returns. It shares the love of pop culture pastiche of Harmon's other show, <i>Community</i>, and refuses to take the easy way out of humanizing Rick by painting him as grumpy-but-ultimately-good. He's just a bad person, and the show's much funnier for it. Take the time where he orders Morty to shoot at a race of insect people, assuring him that "it's okay to shoot them, they're robots." Morty shoots, the insect person he hits cries out in agony, and Rick clarifies that the robot thing was "a figure of speech. They're bureaucrats, I don't respect them." The whole show's like that: Rick deceiving Morty into helping him do unconscionable things and waving off his objections. It's wonderful.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>It's available on DVD and for digital download.</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1865718/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Gravity Falls</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by: </b>Alex Hirsch<br> <b>Airs on: </b>Disney Channel/Disney XD<br> <b>Ran: </b>2012-present<br> Alex Hirsch's lunatic attempt to mash up the long summers of his youth with a whole fleet of weird and paranormal phenomena came out of nowhere to become one of the best series the Disney Channel had aired in years. What set this series apart was its dedication to telling sweet, whimsical character stories amid the chaos, with twin brother and sister duo Dipper and Mabel Pines making for two of the best characters in the recent animation sphere. The show could be wild and funny, yes, but it could also be surprisingly poignant and moving, and its finest episodes, like "The Time Traveler's Pig," are as much about the relationships between the characters as any sci-fi devices.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>The show is available on a handful of DVDs and for digital download.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">Adult Swim</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0297494/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Aqua Teen Hunger Force</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by: </b>Matt Maiellardo and Dave Willis <br> <b>Airs on:</b> Adult Swim<br> <b>Ran:</b> 2001-present<br> Just try explaining <i>Aqua Teen Hunger Force</i> to someone who has never seen it. There's this box of fries named Frylock who lives with an immature, troublemaking milkshake and a slow-witted wad of meat (aptly named Meatwad). Their next-door neighbor is the fat, slovenly, often-perverted Carl. Plus, the show's evolved so much over its run that it's only barely about any of the above anymore. Because creators Matt Maiellardo and Dave Willis have created a universe in which anything can and does happen, ATHF gives them a seemingly limitless canvas for their likewise apparently limitless capacity for weirdness. <br> <b>Watch it: </b>Much of the run is on DVD and digital download. The first two seasons are on Netflix.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">FX</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1486217/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Archer</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by:</b> Adam Reed<br> <b>Airs on:</b> FX<br> <b>Ran:</b> 2010-present<br> The basic idea behind <i>Archer</i> — an office comedy, only at an office full of secret agents — is hardly original. But the execution is stellar. A lot of elements are borrowed from Reed's previous Adult Swim shows <i>Frisky Dingo</i> and <i>Sealab 2021</i> (both contenders for this list), but channeled into a more traditional format, where the singularly bizarre characters and joke-heavy dialogue can shine. Sterling Archer is a mash-up of like 15 different stock characters: the debonair Bond-esque spy, the hyper-allusive smart aleck ("who am I, Karl Landsteiner?" he replies when asked for his blood type), the caddish lothario, the mama's boy with abandonment issues, and so on. Even more impressive is Pam Poovey, a character who genuinely could not exist on any other show. Only on <i>Archer</i> could the office HR director be a coke-loving, sexually aggressive underground fighter who has the entire third stanza of Byron's "The Destruction of Sennacherib" tattooed on her back, just below a running tally of the men she's killed. <br> <b>Watch it: </b>The series is available for digital download, and it's on Amazon Prime streaming.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">The WB</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0197148/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Mission Hill</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by:</b> Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein<b><i><br> </i>Aired on:</b> The WB, Adult Swim<b><i><br> </i>Ran:</b> 1999-2000; 2002<b><i><br> </i></b>Oakley and Weinstein served as co-showrunners for <i>The Simpsons</i> in seasons seven and eight, when the show took a turn toward more realistic, emotionally grounded storylines, ones which served Lisa particularly well (see "Lisa the Iconoclast," or "Summer of 4'2""). So it's perhaps not surprising that its next series featured another precocious, misunderstand protagonist: 17-year-old Kevin French, who is forced to move in with his older brother Andy when his parents move to Wyoming. Kevin is more insecure and socially inept than Lisa ever was, which makes the amount of empathy Oakley and Weinstein depict him with all the more affecting. The show still feels strikingly current. Andy's apartment is in the titular neighborhood of Mission Hill, a blend of every neighborhood that would become a haven of hip twentysomething culture in the ‘00s. Andy's an underemployed recent college grad who dreams of becoming a cartoonist, which is practically a cliché after the financial crisis but feels startlingly prescient here.<br> <b>Watch it:</b> The complete run is collected on DVD.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">MTV</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118298/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Daria</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by:</b> Glenn Eichler, Susie Lewis Lynn, Mike Judge <br> <b>Aired on:</b> MTV<br> <b>Ran:</b> 1997-2002<br> Daria Morgendorffer first appeared as the aloof, sharp-witted, recurring foil to teenage dumbasses Beavis and Butt-head. But the show's spinoff status was always obscured. Its first episode aired nine months after the original run of its parent show and contained very little reference to it.<i> </i>Daria and best friend Jane spend their time contemplating the absurdity of life while mocking suburban teenagehood. The show runs on the basic underlying premise that life simply isn't fair and no one can find true happiness, particularly in high school. The series is relentlessly uncompromising and is thrillingly free of the typical melodrama and sentimentality associated with fictional depictions of female adolescence. <br> <b>Watch it: </b>The entire series is available on DVD and Amazon Prime.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">Fox</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0397306/?ref_=nv_sr_1">American Dad!</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by: </b>Seth MacFarlane, Mike Barker, Matt Weitzman<br> <b>Airs on: </b>Fox, TBS<br> <b>Ran: </b>2005-present<br> A famous gag in <i>The Simpsons</i> involves Homer coming upon a picture of <i>Family Guy</i>'s Peter Griffin, labeled "plagiarismo," only to turn the page and find a picture of <i>American Dad</i> patriarch Stan Smith, labeled "plagiarismo di plagiarismo." And that's the reputation this show has had for far too long, living in the shadow of all of the other shows that more or less look like it. But this is actually the best thing co-creator Seth MacFarlane has ever put his name on, a skewed look at suburban life that abandons anything like <i>Family Guy</i>-style pop culture cutaway gags in favor of the grandly, outlandishly surreal. Start watching from about season three on. You might be surprised how sharp, funny, and dark this show can be.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>New episodes air on TBS, while the show itself is available on DVD, for digital download, and on Netflix and Hulu Plus.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">Nickelodeon</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417299/?ref_=nv_sr_3">Avatar: The Last Airbender</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by: </b>Michael Dante Di Martino, Bryan Konietzko<br> <b>Aired on: </b>Nickelodeon<br> <b>Ran: </b>2005-2008<br> Ostensibly a children's series, it was no surprise when the rich, involving <i>Avatar: The Last Airbender</i> started wrapping in those kids' parents - and then people who didn't even have children at all. The show's mythology was so beautifully thought out and its story so arresting and perfect that it couldn't help but draw in viewers, always pushing forward to the next big confrontation or story point. The show takes place in a world of "benders," who can each manipulate one of the four classical elements, and at its center is the idea of someone who might be able to manipulate all four in one person. The action sequences are terrific, but the show is also worth watching for its visuals, which are influenced by cultures from all over the world. A loose spinoff, <i>The Legend of Korra</i>, set in the same world, is almost as good.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>The show is on DVD. It can also be purchased for digital download and streamed on Amazon Prime.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">Nickelodeon</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101178/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Ren & Stimpy Show</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by: </b>John Kricfalusi<br> <b>Aired on: </b>Nickelodeon<br> <b>Ran: </b>1991-1995<br> The most critically acclaimed and influential of Nickelodeon's original trio of "Nicktoons" (joined by <i>Rugrats</i> and <i>Doug</i>), <i>Ren & Stimpy</i> is also a tale of war between network and creator, as Nickelodeon wasn't entirely aware of what it was going to get when it commissioned the series from animator Kricfalusi. What he turned in was wild, weird, and wonderful, far beyond anything anyone could have imagined. It garnered a cult following and surprisingly robust ratings. But his work was also more than the ostensible children's network was prepared to handle. He was dismissed after the second season, and the show became a shadow of itself. Still, we'll always have the first two seasons of a cat and dog behaving very badly.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>The series is available on DVD, with a few episodes streaming on Amazon Prime.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">MTV</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0305011/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Clone High</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by:</b> Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Bill Lawrence<br> <b>Aired on:</b> MTV<br> <b>Ran:</b> 2002-2003<br> From one point of view, <i>Clone High</i> is yet another story of a cluster of hormone-riddled teens attending high school. What makes the show interesting, however, is that these teens are clones of important historical figures who are attending a high school secretly being run as an elaborate military experiment. (You know. That premise you've seen a million times before.) A moody Abraham Lincoln pines over the promiscuous Cleopatra, while Joan of Arc longs after Lincoln. Meanwhile, a womanizing John F. Kennedy also chases after Cleopatra, supported by his best bro, Gandhi. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, but <i>Clone High</i> manages to find the funny and the bittersweet in the midst of all that weirdness.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>The complete series is on DVD.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">Cartoon Network</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0275137/?ref_=nv_sr_2">Justice League/Justice League Unlimited</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by: </b>Bruce Timm, Paul Dini<br> <b>Aired on: </b>Cartoon Network<br> <b>Ran: </b>2001-2006<br> The DC Animated Universe remains one of the best dramatic interpretations of superheroes ever placed on any size screen. In <i>Justice League</i> and its continuation series <i>Justice League Unlimited</i>, Bruce Timm and Paul Dini were free to use just about any character they wanted in pursuit of telling the best superhero stories possible. By digging into the DC vaults, beyond just Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, they were able to tell sprawling, enthralling tales that could be over in half an episode or could stretch out for weeks at a time. Western animation still isn't often sure what to make of serialized storytelling, but <i>Justice League</i> made it look surprisingly easy.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>The series is on DVD.</p>
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<a target="_black" href="https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2629494/venture.0.jpg"><img data-src="https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2629494/venture.0.jpg" class="lazy zoom"></a> <a class="icon-link-ext-alt" target="_blank" href="https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2629494/venture.0.jpg"></a>
<p class="feature-photos-caption">Adult Swim</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417373/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Venture Bros.</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by: </b>Jackson Publick, Doc Hammer<br> <b>Airs on: </b>Adult Swim<br> <b>Ran: </b>2003-present<br> Production of this series has been so spaced out that every new season — sometimes arriving after hiatuses that last years — is greeted as an event. And the show has also gotten steadily more popular in that time, as more and more viewers embrace the series' elaborate deconstruction of roughly a half-century of American pulp storytelling. Two brothers, the sons of a brilliant scientist, travel the world on missions of derring-do, along with their bodyguard, Brock, a mountain of a man who's ready for combat in almost every instance. But what makes the show are the moments <i>between</i> missions, when the longing for a faded, glorious past becomes so palpable it seems to emanate from the screen. This is, in some ways, a show about how America sees itself, versus how it actually is, and it's brilliant for it.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>The series is available on DVD and for digital download.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">Adult Swim</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108937/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Space Ghost Coast to Coast</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by: </b>Mike Lazzo, Alex Toth<br> <b>Aired on: </b>Adult Swim<br> <b>Ran: </b>1994-2008<br> One of the most deceptively influential series of the past several decades, <i>Space Ghost</i> took the characters from a junky old Hanna-Barbera series and inserted them into the middle of a talk-show setting, where they could have the most possibility for utter strangeness. Celebrities dropped by to be interviewed, while the rest of the show's backstage shenanigans played out with an utterly straight face, even though one of the major characters was an evil praying mantis named Zorak. Was it terribly sophisticated? No. But it invented a whole new programming bloc — Adult Swim — and proved surrealism could sell in late-night TV.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>Some of the series is available on DVD.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">Cartoon Network</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175058/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Powerpuff Girls</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by: </b>Craig McCracken<br> <b>Aired on: </b>Cartoon Network<br> <b>Ran: </b>1998-2005<br> One of the things that has made Western TV animation so exciting in the post-<i>Simpsons</i> era is the brace of visual stylization. TV can't exactly have the production schedule of an animated film, so, instead, it has embraced wild, outside the box artistic styles, to its benefit. Take, for instance, the Day-Glo pastel world of <i>The Powerpuff Girls</i>, three little girls created in a scientific experiment and gifted with superpowers. The show borrows freely from a wide variety of pulp sources, but what's most remarkable about it is the way that it seems like a little kid's strangest doodles come to life. It's also notable for being the rare animated series of its time to boast girls as the central characters.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>The complete series is on DVD and available for digital download.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">Cartoon Network</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278238/?ref_=nv_sr_2">Samurai Jack</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by: </b>Genndy Tartakovsky<br> <b>Aired on: </b>Cartoon Network<br> <b>Ran: </b>2001-2004<br> Genndy Tartakovsky was responsible for so much great TV animation in the ‘90s and 2000s, but this artful, gorgeous series is his crown jewel. The series' plot follows a samurai warrior who's been tossed into the wrong time and longs to get back to his own era, but that's just an excuse to show off some of the best animation to ever appear on television, to say nothing of the show's sparse dialogue, which allows even more time to appreciate the lush visuals. Animation is too often viewed in the US as a joke-delivery mechanism or a way to keep the kids occupied. <i>Samurai Jack</i> could be both of those, but at its core, it was a deeply beautiful series, set in an unusual world.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>It can be found on DVD and for digital download.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">Nickelodeon</p>
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<div class="feature-photos-story feature-photos-column">
<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206512/?ref_=nv_sr_2">SpongeBob SquarePants</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by: </b>Stephen Hillenburg<br> <b>Airs on: </b>Nickelodeon<br> <b>Ran: </b>1999-present<br> If <i>The Simpsons</i> spearheaded the idea that a single animated could contain both jokes about art history, and completely absurdist humor about donuts, <i>SpongeBob SquarePants</i> proved both kinds of humor could work in a children's show that starred a sponge who lived in a pineapple under the sea and worked at a hamburger joint called the Krusty Krab. Like <i>The Simpsons</i>, <i>SpongeBob SquarePants</i> made jokes that could only work in animation, like SpongeBob's friend Sandy, a squirrel who wears an astronaut suit to live underwater, but it also made smart points about the meaning of community. Both shows return to the same locations over and over again, imbuing them with meaning, making these series as much about the places they are set in as character or plot. Plus, <i>SpongeBob</i> proved hugely popular, becoming the longest-running animated series Nickelodeon had ever shown. <br> <b>Watch it: </b>Many episodes are available on Amazon Prime.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">MTV</p>
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<div class="feature-photos-story feature-photos-column">
<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105950/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Beavis and Butt-head</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by: </b>Mike Judge<br> <b>Aired on: </b>MTV<br> <b>Ran: </b>1993-1997, 2011<br> <i>The Simpsons </i>was the original "who will think of the children?!" series in terms of inspiring weird cultural panics about kids inappropriately idolizing animated characters. But after it became a bit more of a cultural institution, the mantle was taken up by this hugely entertaining series of shorts about two incredibly idiotic teenagers who waste their days away in the middle of nowhere, watching MTV and getting into stupid adventures. Watching <i>Beavis and Butt-head</i> now is to be slightly amused that anybody ever found it so scandalous, but maybe that's just because we all live in the world it created, one sort of vacuous and pointless and filled with ephemera.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>Due to the music video segments used, it is impossible to find the original versions of these shows. However, several episodes are collected on DVD.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">Warner Bros.</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105941/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Animaniacs</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by: </b>Tom Ruegger<br> <b>Aired on: </b>Fox/The WB<br> <b>Ran: </b>1993-1998<br> It's easy to point to <i>The Simpsons</i> as a watershed moment in TV animation, because, well, it was. But Warner Brothers' contributions to that growth have largely been forgotten, because the studio mostly gave up on its television animation division. (Disney was also doing impressive work, though none of its shows from the era made this list.) Foremost among the studio's output for kids was this series, which started at manic and just kept getting more and more frantic with every episode. It was nothing but a joke-delivery system, but, man, those jokes were hilarious.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>The series is on DVD and streaming on Amazon Prime.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">Fox</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1561755/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Bob's Burgers</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by:</b> Loren Bouchard<br> <b>Airs on</b>: Fox<br> <b>Ran:</b> 2011-present<br> <i>Bob's Burgers</i> should be boring. Its premise is straight out of the Fox animation playbook: a middle-class family with a slightly bumbling father, responsible mom, and 2.5 kids gets itself into hilarious situations. However, creator Loren Bouchard makes these recognizable characters all the funnier by giving the show a twist of absurdity — for starters, teenage Tina is voiced to wonderfully awkward effect by a deep-voiced Dan Mintz, a choice that reveals its perfection almost immediately. But what makes <i>Bob's Burgers </i>work is that it's not afraid to make these characters likable, even when they're deeply strange. This is a show that's willing to go a few steps wackier (and dirtier) than <i>The Simpsons,</i> without venturing into the chilly, just-testing-your-good-taste-limits zone of <i>Family Guy</i>. And that turns out to be the sweet spot.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>The first three seasons are on DVD and Netflix. The current, fifth season is on Hulu.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">Fox</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0149460/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Futurama</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by:</b> Matt Groening<br> <b>Aired on:</b> Fox, Comedy Central<br> <b>Ran:</b> 1999-2003; 2008-2013<br> <i>Futurama</i> premiered with a very clear organizing premise: what if the distant future is just like today, only more future-y? "Traditionally, you have either the overly optimistic world's fair/chamber of commerce/<i>The Jetsons</i> point of view or you have dark, drippy, cyberpunk, creepy future á la <i>Blade Runner</i> or <i>Brazil </i>or <i>The Fifth Element</i>," Groening said in a <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/media/1999/03/matt-groening">Mother Jones interview</a> at the time. "I'm trying to offer an alternative that's more like the way things are right now, which is a mix of the wonderful and horrible." The show evolved considerably over its seven seasons (four for Fox, three after being revived by Comedy Central), but that central idea remained intact. Philip Fry, the protagonist, was a delivery boy when he was a cryogenically frozen in 1999, and he's still a delivery boy when he wakes up again in 3000. There are still terrible soap operas. Richard Nixon's still president. The result plays with more or less the same dynamics as normal sitcom but with a whole sci-fi world to boot. <br> <b>Watch it: </b>The complete series is available on DVD and Netflix streaming.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">Fox</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103359/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Batman: The Animated Series</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by: </b>Jean McCurdy, Tom Ruegger<br> <b>Aired on: </b>Fox<br> <b>Ran: </b>1992-1995<br> Moody, stylish, and packed full of adult appeal, <i>Batman: The Animated Series</i> felt like a nod toward what a Batman project <i>could</i> be in an era when director Tim Burton would leave the film franchise behind in favor of (shudder) Joel Schumacher. The series' aim was simple: tell good stories about Batman. It didn't always succeed at that, but even in the episodes that didn't work, it was relentlessly focused on pushing the boundaries of what people expected TV animation to do. It launched the DC Animated Universe, and it proved that lots of people would tune in for animation that was more than jokes aimed at kids.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>The series is on DVD and streaming on Amazon Prime.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">Cartoon Network</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1305826/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Adventure Time</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by: </b>Pendleton Ward<br> <b>Airs on: </b>Cartoon Network<br> <b>Ran: </b>2010-present<br> It's easy to miss how epic <i>Adventure Time</i>'s achievement is, because the show is told in discrete 11-minute chunks. But the story of a boy named Finn and his dog named Jake takes viewers around every corner of the cheerful, post-apocalyptic land of Ooo, gradually revealing that it has more on its mind than whimsy. (That said, its whimsy game is airtight.) What's amazing is how even now, six seasons in, the show continues to surprise and impress with its wicked sense of humor and the depth of its raw emotions. This is a show that attempts to depict the hard truths of growing up symbolically and metaphorically, rather than directly. That it succeeds as often as it does makes it one of the best shows on TV right now.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>Several seasons are on DVD. The first two are streaming on Netflix.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">Comedy Central</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121955/?ref_=nv_sr_1">South Park</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by: </b>Trey Parker and Matt Stone<br> <b>Airs on: </b>Comedy Central<br> <b>Ran: </b>1997-present<br> <i>South Park</i> has run into the same thing <i>The Simpsons</i> has. It's been on the air so damn long that it's basically run out of stories to tell and is now riffing on its own history. (<i>The Simpsons</i> has proved more successful at this because it's more willing to go in for sentimentality.) But that's no matter. For roughly 10 years, <i>South Park</i> was one of the most thrillingly funny, inventive series on the air, a show that was willing to go for broke for any gag, be it a gross-out or political one. The show's politics occasionally seemed all over the place (mostly boiling down to "just leave us alone!"), but the fact that it even dared to go <i>in</i> for politics — in a show ostensibly about some kids in a small town in Colorado — made it all the more fascinating. It's a time capsule of the time in which it was made, but a great one.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>Every episode is available at the <i><a href="http://www.southparkstudios.com">South Park website</a></i> and on Hulu.</p>
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<p class="feature-photos-caption">Fox</p>
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<h4><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121955/?ref_=nv_sr_1">King of the Hill</a></i></h4>
<p><b>Created by: </b>Mike Judge and Greg Daniels<br> <b>Aired on: </b>Fox<br> <b>Ran: </b>1997-2010<br> It might seem a little weird to top a list of best cartoons with a series that could have so easily been live-action, but that's one of the chief appeals of <i>King of the Hill</i>. The series, about a family and group of friends living in a small Texas town, gains so much from creators Mike Judge and Greg Daniels's dual senses of both place and character. The people of this world are so finely drawn they could only exist here, yet they're also so universally recognizable that you probably know a version of each and every one of them in your own life. That's an incredibly difficult balance to manage, but <i>King of the Hill</i> managed it for the bulk of its long, long run. Even more impressive was how willing the show was to be <i>still</i>, to let its jokes come from silence, or even from going terrifyingly dark. Between <i>The Simpsons</i> and <i>King of the Hill</i>, broadcast networks tried and failed with many primetime animated shows. But after <i>King of the Hill</i>, the genre was here to stay. As well it should have been.<br> <b>Watch it: </b>The show is, thankfully, being rediscovered, as its entire run gradually makes its way onto DVD and digital download.</p>
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<hr>
<h3>Learn more</h3>
<ul class="feature-photos-related-list">
<li class="feature-photos-related-list-item"> <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/8/20/6049013/the-simpsons-marathon-one-hour-per-season">
<div style="background-image: url( 'https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/664432/simp_SimpsonsRoastingOnAnOpenFire_7G08F_hires2_hires2.0.jpg' );" class="feature-photos-related-image"></div>
<div class="feature-photos-related-highlight"></div>
<div class="feature-photos-related-headline">16 can't miss Simpsons episodes</div>
</a> </li>
<li class="feature-photos-related-list-item"> <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/12/7/7349069/best-comedies-2014">
<div style="background-image: url( 'https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/675908/Review-with-Forrest-MacNeil---ep104_0965.0.jpg' );" class="feature-photos-related-image"></div>
<div class="feature-photos-related-highlight"></div>
<div class="feature-photos-related-headline">Watch these 10 shows and feel good about the future of cable comedy</div>
</a> </li>
<li class="feature-photos-related-list-item"> <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/8/29/6083143/shows-to-binge-watch-2014">
<div style="background-image: url( 'https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/676026/shutterstock_132384326.0.jpg' );" class="feature-photos-related-image"></div>
<div class="feature-photos-related-highlight"></div>
<div class="feature-photos-related-headline">Binge-watch some of 2014's best TV</div>
</a> </li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="feature-photos-credits">
<h3>Credits</h3>
<ul class="feature-photos-credits-list">
<li class="feature-photos-credits-list-item"> <span>Editor</span> <a href="http://twitter.com/binarybits">Timothy Lee</a> </li>
<li class="feature-photos-credits-list-item"> <span>Copy Editor</span> <a href="http://twitter.com/mckinneykelsey">Kelsey McKinney</a> </li>
<li class="feature-photos-credits-list-item"> <span>Developer</span> <a href="http://twitter.com/yurivictor">Yuri Victor</a> </li>
<li class="feature-photos-credits-list-item"> <span>Image Credit</span> Fox</li>
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https://www.vox.com/2014/12/18/7408709/best-cartoons-simpsonsEmily St. JamesEden RohatenskyKelsey McKinneyDylan MatthewsDanielle Kurtzleben