Every time I sit down to write a 2021 year-end letter to my family, friends, frenemies and Loopers, I always start off writing about things that happened to me and end up with sentences like, “So, the question we all have to ask is, ‘Is Taylor’s scarf still at Maggie Gyllenhaal’s house or has it moved to a second location?’ ”Things happened in my own life this year — some good, some bad, some Facts-of-Life style — but when I think about what preoccupied me the most, what sparked ongoing, insatiable curiosity, I keep coming back to the year in pop culture — the good, the bad, the schadenfreude, the Squid-adjacent. 

This was a banner year for being absolutely obsessed with the little people who live on our screens. From Lil Nas X pole-dancing circles around his haters, to Regina King inventing wearing a hat in The Harder They Fall, to Brad on Sex/Life, uh, letting his flag fly on the third episode of the series (specifically the 19th minute and the 50th second), everywhere you looked there was something to ponder, to harangue your friends about, to rewind so many times that the scrub bar on your computer was like, “Babe, take a break.” What was behind the obsession? We did more than just binge pop culture this year; we let it become so much a part of our lives that it stayed with us even after the credits had rolled or the playlist had stopped. 

It wasn’t just new entries into the pop culture canon, either. Raise your hand if you’re one of the millions of people who made 17-year-old Grey’s Anatomy one of the top shows on Netflix this year. No judgment coming from me. No matter how many times I rewatch the show, I’m still agog when McDreamy’s wife shows up at the end of the first season. 

In a year where actual reality was a mixed bag, to say the least, it was a relief to have fictional stories (and whatever space reality TV occupies in the true/totally fake spectrum) to beguile us, entertain us and make us curious. For instance, though the rumors that I am Lady Whistledown are just spurious gossip, I did spend countless hours trying to square the logistics of the staircase scene on Bridgerton. You know the one I mean. And many an hour was spent trying to figure out how to send the Duke more comprehensive contraception, because the pull-out method is very sus. And, cumulatively, I spent, like, a solid week just Googling “Picture of Regé-Jean Page, shirt optional!” (The exclamation point lets Google know it can go buckwild.)

While the Regency drama answered many of the questions I had about who was going to end up with who and who was a Ye Olde Gossip Lady, it was the ponderables, the opinions and Image Search results that kept me coming back.

Similarly, I spent so much time thinking about Squid Game this year that I feel like I could apply for a master’s degree in “Red Light, Green Light.”(and also dystopian economics). How did a premise so bleak, and yet so perilously close to being possible, capture so many imaginations? My theory is that Squid Game has what I like to call Olympic Relatability. It’s that thing where you watch Olympic athletes, humans in peak physical condition, performing at a niche set of movements and skills better than anyone else in the world, and you, sitting at home on your sectional, think, “Yeah, if I really applied myself, I could do that.” I do this every two years. Summer, winter, doesn’t matter. If there were a Spring Olympics, I’d be up there talking about how I’m going to be the top tip-toer through the tulips. If there were a Christian Girl Autumn Olympics, I’d be sitting at Starbucks, PSL in hand, tweeting about how I’d crush it at the scarf-wrapping event. So, of course, I decided that I could totally win Squid Game or at least make it far enough that others would feel bad about betraying me.

The Pop Culture Questions We Asked in 2021

I have to say, however, I may talk a good (squid) game, but when it comes down to it, I know I wouldn’t have lasted a millisecond. That fierce robot would have been like, “It’s curtains, Babe!” (That wasn’t its catchphrase, but what if it was?!) I think, for me at least, one of the most appealing parts of Squid Game was the paradox of knowing that the game is set up to make losers of us all but holding on to the belief deep down that maybe we’d surprise everyone (ourselves included) and pull it off. 

Another game I’m certain I’m no good at and yet also certain I have a hidden skill for is chess. I used to play that chess video game on Microsoft Windows back in the olden horse-and-buggy times, and I distinctly recall the desktop computer wiping the floor with me, even on Easy Mode. But the minute I saw Beth Harmon pop a downer, go into her mind palace, and start rearranging the giant chess pieces on the ceiling like she was the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, I immediately Googled “Is chess my calling?” 

I suppose what The Queen’s Gambit and Squid Game have in common, besides fierce wardrobe choices born out of necessity and then out of pique, are that they’re sports stories at their hearts. This year we loved a sports story: Ted Lasso’s second season and the very meme-able The Last Dance made things personal, while Squid and Queen’s found big stakes in unlikely places. We tuned in to root-root-root for the home team, and when that home team had a compelling, deeply human backstory, it made the rooting so much stronger. 

Thank goodness for sportsballs of various forms, because when it came to the game of romantic musical chairs on Sex Education, I honestly didn’t know who to root for. I got so stressed about all the making up and breaking up and switcheroo-ing partners on the third season of the show that I reconstructed that weird graffiti bathroom so that I could get advice from Otis. Should Jean stick it out with Jakob? I don’t know! Are Eric and Adam just incompatible? The answer is unclear! Is Maeve better suited with her neighbor Isaac? Much to consider!

And most importantly, how dare Jemima Kirke be so good at being so evil! Honestly, Moordale Secondary School is the most stressful educational institution I’ve ever been to (and I graduated from Seattle Grace Medical College).

Speaking of academics, here’s a thing that I definitely needed the Spark Notes for and don’t have any shame about admitting to you, my esteemed colleagues at the United Nations. I unabashedly Googled “Does David Duchovny have a degree from Princeton, and did he write a bunch of books, and if so, how did I not know about this?” And the answer, according to Spark Notes is: “Yes and YES, and I don’t know, bro. Don’t you subscribe to David Duchovny Monthly?” One of the delights of The Chair, the sharp Sandra Oh vehicle that skewered college-administration politics, was also one of its most darkly comedic aspects: Nothing that happens in the show is that far from reality. And in the case of The X-Files actor, it's pretty close to reality.

Sure, Duchovny didn’t actually take a position at a flailing liberal arts college, but his novels are real, as is his history of scholarship. I love when celebs play themselves. (Well, technically, I love when celebs portray themselves. I hate when celebs play themselves. Looking at you, Sharon Osbourne!) The concept of celebrity is so outlandish already that it all but demands actors give us a wink to let us know they’re in on the joke. Sometimes that comes out in personality-filled late-night appearances; other times it’s in cameos that take the piss out of the boldfaced name. Or, in the case of this year’s most intriguing boldfaced names, sometimes it’s in re-creating an iconic image, just for funsies. 

Yes, the time has come to address Bennifer 2.0. Or, as I like to refer to them, Jeffleck. It’s less catchy, but I think J.Lo has earned top billing by now, don’t you? It’s possible that the thing we as a culture were most curious about this year was the same question we’ve been pondering since Lovesick first came out: Should we all, like, call our exes? I gotta get Otis and Maeve on the case. Of course, not every High Fidelity situation turns out as well as J.Lo and Ben’s. If I’m understanding The Crown correctly, the entire fate of the British monarchy hinges on the fact that Prince Charles called his ex in the ’80s, and we’ve been hearing about it for the last 40 years. So... you know, plan accordingly. 

There was no new season of The Crown in 2021, as we waited for the title of People’s Princess to be passed from Emma Corrin to Elizabeth Debicki. (I wonder if the delay is because of supply chain issues?) But that didn’t stop the industry from producing multiple screen versions of Princess Diana and hundreds more opinions about her. The fact that Lady Di remains so prominent in pop culture decades after her untimely death is a testament to how extraordinary she was in life. But the sheer volume of Diana depictions in this and recent years also acts as a kind of curiosity ouroboros — the more answers we get, the more questions we have: Did she really roller-skate down the halls of Buckingham Palace like Emma did in The Crown? Did she flee across a field like Kristen Stewart in the much-memed clip from Spencer? Did she really box with Camilla like the lyric from Diana, The Musical suggests? (Okay, I know that didn’t happen. I think.)

For better or worse, that’s the same effect that all the obsessions we had this year had, from the sudden entrance of Dr. Addison Montgomery-Shepherd (can you believe it?), to the sudden disappearance of the titular cash in Money Heist (can you believe that?!), to the sudden exit of Jen Shah from the ski trip as the FBI was en route to arrest her (can you... actually, yes, we can believe this). 

There’s a way of understanding pop culture that suggests we look to on-screen stories like these as a way of getting answers to unanswerable questions about ourselves. We are all Beth Harmon, although the only Bishop most of us know is the guy from Midnight Mass. (He was a priest, actually, but given all he put us through, his title is the least important aspect.) Entertainment is a mirror and stories are empathy engines. But I think another equally important aspect of cultural curiosity is that it acts as a kind of pause button. Jumping on Google to get answers about a show or movie we just saw, having group text conversations about minute plot points, pestering one’s partner about what they’d do in various fictional dystopian games — they’re all ways of lingering in a narrative long after the credits have rolled. Pop culture can be a kind of buddy who’s always there, has no problem telling the same story over and over again and will gently ask you, “Are you still watching?” if it thinks you’ve gone to sleep. Here’s to a great year of obsessions and hopefully another one spent Googling, gabbing and gasping. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my full-time job and review all the pages of the Regé-Jean Page Image Search results. It’s a tough gig, but I’ll do it. For the culture.