Let’s talk about the best sitcom of this decade that you probably haven’t heard of.

Back in 2012, Google spent $100 million to fund the “YouTube Original Channel Initiative.” Almost a full year before Netflix got into the production game with House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black, Google spent more money than any of us will ever see to try to make YouTube the king of the yet-to-exist streaming wars. 

Google’s attempts to legitimize YouTube as a production platform mostly failed. The Original Channel Initiative was shelved by the end of 2013. By 2015, YouTube Red (now YouTube Premium) proved to be more logical for YouTube. The subscription model favored by ad-based sites like Spotify and Pandora made more sense for YouTube anyway. 

Unfortunately, one of the casualties of this logic was MyMusic. A surreal and bizarre fever dream of a sitcom created by YouTube’s own Fine Bros, MyMusic should’ve been the future of television. And I don’t say that hyperbolically. MyMusic took futurist risks that, if presented in the correct forum, could’ve revolutionized the way we consume and interact with media in the rapidly-revolutionizing future present. 

But that didn’t happen. The show only lasted two seasons before it got the axe, and it’s unlikely to ever return in the full form it existed in from 2012-14. 

So what made MyMusic so different from everything else? Allow me to stop preambling and start advocating for a piece of comedy that was every bit as good as its paradigm-shifting delivery format.

It Begins Again

MyMusic was the most immersive show of the decade. The best term to describe the show is “transmedia,” meaning it was entertainment presented across multiple platforms. There was a way to passively watch the show through its primary format, but there was also a way to actively consume the show through its full scope.

Let’s start with the primary format. On Sunday nights, MyMusic released new episodes of its main show on its YouTube channel. Episodes, which were filmed and scripted in mockumentary format as The Office, Parks and Recreation or Modern Family but set at a music news blog, usually ranged between seven and 12 minutes in length. Every six episodes or so, a series of plots and subplots would resolve themselves and be packaged into “sitcom episodes,” usually running for 30-35 minutes.

The first season lasted 34 episodes with six sitcom episodes. The second season was 24 episodes long with six sitcom episodes. If you’d like to binge the show the way you’d binge a Netflix or Hulu original, you can knock out the 12 sitcom episodes in one rainy afternoon. 

But MyMusic was much deeper than just its narrative. In addition to the main show, which was filmed months in advance, obviously, MyMusic also consisted of a laundry listed of sub-series within the universe of the show. There was The Mosh, a weekly Q&A show with the characters of the show, who would answer questions about the preceding week’s episode and respond to fan mail in character. There was MyMusic News, a weekly news show where characters from the show would analyze and react to the hottest music trends of the week. There was a live variety show, hosted in character by the actors for about an hour every week. There were interviews with musicians. There were full-length podcasts performed and improvised in character. There was a gaming show and a Tumblr reactions show.

And that’s only scratching the surface of how this show existed outside of itself. There was a real MyMusic blog with updates about what was happening in the world of music written in the voices of the characters who would’ve written them. Each character had a Twitter account that was updated frequently in the characters’ voices and would interact with viewers during episodes and during the week between episodes. The characters also had Facebook pages and presences on Tumblr and I’m pretty sure they did Yelp reviews at one point.

If you so chose, you could suspend reality and believe these characters were really people. Sure, you were watching them in a scripted series on Sunday nights. But Monday-Saturday, you could ask them about the scripted series. And in shows like The Mosh and MyMusic News, you could see them react in real-time to the feedback and questions from the fans about the main show. Because in their reality, the show wasn’t pretaped. Everything was live. Even the scripted stuff.

The comparison I always used during my obsession with MyMusic (which came a little after the show had already ended, unfortunately) was that watching MyMusic was like what it would be like if you had a question to ask Sheldon Cooper after an episode of The Big Bang Theory. In the world of MyMusic, not only would you be able to ask Sheldon that question, but he’d be able to respond to you in character and, in doing so, continue the emotional narrative of the show you’re watching. It was like a virtual reality experience in a sense, in that once you’d immersed yourself in the world of MyMusic, you never had to actually leave. You could continue interacting with the show for days and days between episodes and, in effect, become a character in the world you’re watching.

Finally Reunited

Of course, none of this would’ve mattered if MyMusic was boring. But that’s the one word I wouldn’t use to describe the show. Despite its massive overexposure in the form of inundating and invading every sphere of social media imaginable, MyMusic had a sense of humor all its own and used it to create a surrealistic fantasyland. 

Here’s the general premise of the show: MyMusic is a music news blog and production company owned by Indie. Indie has a rule that every employee at the company be identified by the genre of music they identify with. So Indie was Indie. The head of social media was Idol, who adored all things popular and mainstream. Metal ran production. Hip Hop ran marketing. The team of Techno and Dubstep (the latter of whom only spoke in wub-wub noises) handled booking. And the interns are the pop-punk obsessed Scene and the kinda-likes-everything Jim Halpert clone of the series, unaffectionately named Intern 2.

If the show had a theme, it was that “everyone is a poser sometimes.” Characters grew by proving they were more than their one-note characterizations. Indie softened his iconoclastic ways. Idol proved to be witty and savvy and more than her vapid persona. Metal was a family man with a domestic wife and a bratty teenage daughter. And Hip Hop outed himself as a huge nerd who loved cosplay. Nobody is defined by their taste, no matter how easy it is to define someone that way.

Of course, this show thrived by stereotyping its minor characters into the one-note roles it thematically crusaded against. Included in the best minor characters were: News Newsman (a news anchor), Relay Runner (a relay runner), Satan (the devil himself), Scarfman (a pile of scarves), the Rat Protector (a protector of rats), Viking (a viking), Shaman (a shaman who married Viking), The Guess Guy (a guy who always tell people to guess what he’s thinking), Bigfoot (a literal bigfoot who roamed the office), Vampire Temp (a vampire who temped at MyMusic), Murray Spub (a guy who is not a bar) and The Guy Who Pulls Intern 2’s Chair (he’s the guy who pulls Intern 2’s chair). 

The jokes in this show were almost too specific to be understood without a deep understanding of every genre of popular music and culture. The show was just as comfortable referencing Thom Yorke’s spastic dance moves as it was mocking Garth Brooks’ Chris Gaines phase. It was a show just as likely to have characters pray to a pre-fame Avicii as it was to have a character model her office after the 1988 TV special Totally Minnie. It had entire story arcs built around The Patty Duke Show and My Name Is Earl and named characters after members of the band Coal Chamber.

It also involved inexplicable inside jokes. Like a character who is sexually attracted to flow charts having a best friend who is a squirrel. Or how every character in the show had an absurdly-specific superpower they could only use once every 10 years. Or, well, a season-long series of potshots at Chris Daughtry comparing his music to auditory torture. 

Stylistically, the show bore resemblance to its brethren in the mockumentary format like The Office and Parks and Rec. But sense of humor wise, MyMusic was more similar to shows like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt or Happy Endings in its joke delivery speed. And it also had remnants of cartoons like The Simpsons and Family Guy in it in the way it relied on one-note side characters and cutaway gags to make the universe feel more lived-in and real.

Saying Goodbye

I think the main reason MyMusic speaks to me so much is how it served as an introduction to so much I love in this world. Many of the actors on the show were YouTube creators or actors who I’d never seen before, and MyMusic exposed me to their creative outputs. Because of MyMusic, I know creators like Jack Douglass and Grace Helbig and Lee Newton and Jarrett Sleeper and so many more creators who dropped in for a cameo or two. 

The show also introduced me to the music of Driftless Pony Club, which I love, and to that band’s lead singer Craig Benzine, who later became my favorite creator on YouTube. And it reintroduced me to the likes of Adam Busch, who I loved on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and Felicia Day, who starred in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, my favorite piece of media ever made. As well as, you know, keying me in to how The Fine Bros were more than just the REACT kings of YouTube. They were brilliantly clever and absurdist filmmakers willing to push envelopes and take risks with content.

More than that, I think MyMusic can teach you how to create. Anyone can come up with an idea that fits an existing format. But Benny and Rafi Fine synthesized a lot of preexisting formats into a new format entirely. And I believe that had this show been produced on a cable network or a streaming service or on YouTube circa 2017 instead of YouTube circa 2012, it would’ve had the potential to launch a horde of copycats and lookalikes taking advantage of the seductive brilliance of the transmedia format.

It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that I come up with a new idea for a sitcom at least once a month. Sometimes I write them down. Sometimes I flesh out full scripts. Other times, I’ll map out a massive transmedia experience that could exist within a similar framework to MyMusic. Because it really is a great idea if you think about it: If your show never stops creating content, it’s never really off the air. Even while you’re editing and writing new episodes, your characters continue to exist. The less downtime you give your fans, the less likely they are to forget about you and the more likely they are to build bonds with your characters.

Selling someone on MyMusic isn’t just selling someone on a show. It’s selling someone on a concept, and selling someone on the evolving concept of fandom. 

Hopefully I’ve sold you.

The two defining episodes of FX’s romantic comedy series You’re The Worst are mirrors of one another.

First, in Season 2, there’s LCD Soundsystem, a heart-rending portrait of fighting a losing battle against depression. Then there’s season five’s Zero Eggplants, a topsy-turvy romp about inclusion, forgiveness and the inherent selfishness built into chasing happiness. 

At the center of both episodes, there’s a couple we’ve never met before. In LCD Soundsystem, it’s a pair of hip, young parents named Lexi and Rob. On the surface, they appear to be an idealized version of what our protagonists, Gretchen and Jimmy, could be at their best. They’re still fiercely independent. They haven’t succumbed to the life of the “sweater people.” But they also have responsibilities. They have a dog. They have a child. They have jobs they don’t seem to hate. They’re still artsy and adventurous. But they’re grown-ups. Gretchen yearns for their guidance.

In Zero Eggplants, we meet Rachel and Quinn. At this point, Jimmy and Gretchen are engaged. Rachel and Quinn serve the role of “couple friends” that Gretchen is so eager to fill. Like Lexi and Rob before them, Rachel and Quinn are cool in all the ways Jimmy and Gretchen are afraid they aren’t. They like to scam wedding vendors for free swag. Rachel is confident and accepting. Quinn is a sardonic realist. Gretchen yearns for their approval.

In both episodes, Gretchen’s preconceived notions about the couple she’s putting on a pedestal (or, in LCD Soundsystem, stalking) prove to be facades. Rob is bored and unfulfilled by his domestic life. He misses his party days and wants to get a divorce. Rob’s sadness validates Gretchen’s depression and the episode ends on an excruciatingly beautiful shot of Gretchen’s breakdown as directed by series creator Stephen Falk.

Three years later, plenty has changed. Gretchen and Jimmy have won the acceptance of Rachel and Quinn, seemingly breaking the cycle. But now Gretchen fears that very acceptance and sabotages the friendship. (The way she does it involves gaslighting Quinn into believing Jimmy may have raped him. It’s one of the hardest sitcom moments I’ve ever forced myself to endure multiple times.) Then we get a final shot of Gretchen raiding roommate and friend Edgar’s medicine cabinet to steal his prescribed PTSD medication.

Where in LCD Soundsystem, Gretchen was triggered into tears by her depression, in Zero Eggplants she fought to mask it by any and all means necessary.

Constant Horror and Bone-Deep Dissatisfaction

You’re The Worst isn’t just my favorite sitcom of the decade. It’s my favorite television show ever made. Falk’s masterful web of a series seamlessly blended dark humor, high drama, relationship subversions, absurdist diversions and heaping loads of nihilism to create what’s often mislabeled as the quintessential “un-romantic comedy.”

The truth is this show is incredibly romantic. Assuming you’re using the word romantic to mean idyllic. Because at the center of this show, there are two true questions: Do broken people deserve love? And can broken people overcome their flaws to find that love?

If those are the two main questions at the center of the show, the two answers come in thesis statements spoken by our protagonists. The first comes from Gretchen in my favorite episode of the show, the Season 3 premiere episode Try Real Hard. Near the end of the episode, Gretchen synopsizes the show’s purpose in two sentences.

“If ‘I love you’ is like a promise,” Gretchen says to Jimmy in the episode’s climactic scene, “it’s just a promise to try real hard. It doesn’t mean you can’t fail.” 

The other thesis statement comes from Jimmy in the series finale, Pancakes. Sitting at a diner dressed in the vestigial reminder of the wedding they’ve abandoned, Jimmy outlines his future with Gretchen. It’s as gentle and sweet as it is discomforting and challenging. 

“Every day, we choose,” Jimmy says. “I don’t want to be with you because I made a promise to be with you. I want to be with you because I want to be with you. So every day we wake up, we look at each other and say ‘Today, again, I choose you. Until maybe one day we don’t.”

There, in two quotes, is the distillation of why I think You’re The Worst is the perfect sitcom for this era. The 2010s were rife with shows about relationships that probably shouldn’t work. In an era where the romantic comedy movie industry bottomed out, TV romantic comedies peaked with shows like Love, Catastrophe, Casual, New Girl and, to a weird extent, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. 

But none of those shows captured the messiness of relationships quite like You’re The Worst did. Gretchen and Jimmy’s love story is one of the messiest ever filmed. Their love story is one that resulted in multiple fires, a stolen cat, a best-selling novel, a cliff-top abandonment, multiple affairs and enough jealous rage to make Ross Geller look like an enlightened Buddhist monk. Calling You’re The Worst realistic seems like a stretch. It’s also a show that paints Ben Folds to be an alcoholic menace to society and Paul F. Thompkins as an emotionally abusive boss who seeks gratification by forcing his proteges to over-gorge themselves on office snacks.

At its core, though, You’re The Worst is a show that idealizes and advocates for a different type of commitment. People like Gretchen and Jimmy aren’t built to conform to modern standards of love and romance. But they still deserve love. In each other, they’ve found it. Messiness and all.

Fix me, dummy

I have a functioning theory that the five seasons of You’re The Worst can be viewed through the prism of the five stages of grief. That’s not to say the show is about grief. If anything, the show is about a depressive and a narcissist trying to find common ground in each other. But each season of the show mirrors one of the proverbial five stages in theme.

Season 1 functions as a clinic in denial. The whole first season consists of people telling Jimmy and Gretchen that they’re wrong for each other while Jimmy and Gretchen ignore them. In fact, Jimmy and Gretchen’s first date is to a restaurant called “Insouciance,” which is a fancy word for unconcerned indifference. The second Gretchen thinks Jimmy is looking for a commitment, she bails. The season can only end when Jimmy and Gretchen stop denying their magnetism and move in together. 

Season 2 transitions into anger. Given the season’s very explicitly written depression arc, it feels like this stage should be sadness. But we’ll get there. Because I think there’s an underlying anger to the second season. One of the first trigger’s for Gretchen’s depressive episode comes in Born Dead when she lashes out at her old posse for leaving the party life behind. But the main manifestation of anger is Jimmy, who spends the back half of the season festering in a pool of frustration over not being able to “fix” Gretchen. The two can’t move onto the next stage of their relationship until Jimmy abandons his anger and simply acts altruistically, inadvertently “fixing” Gretchen. For the time being.

Season 3 leads to bargaining. In addition to being my favorite season of the series, this one is also the most experimental and layered. The season begins with Gretchen’s negotiation in Try Real Hard and progresses through every main and secondary character making sacrifices for their own happiness. Edgar gives up his medication to be with Dorothy. Lindsay cuckholds Paul for the sake of their marriage. Vernon tries to convince Paul to run away from their families to avoid obligation. And Jimmy and Gretchen? They make every excuse possible to justify their relationship and nearly break up because of it, but the season ends with a proposal. Well, not ends. Unfortunately, there’s another two minutes of the season that ends with Jimmy abandoning Gretchen with no warning or explanation.

Season 4. Now we’re at depression. This season is just downright sad. Jimmy is broken and defeated by the realization that he’s not as elite as he thought he was. Gretchen’s depression becomes an escapist nightmare in the episode Not A Great Bet, where she overdoses on manic enthusiasm, nearly commits statutory rape and sulks away from her hometown without meeting her brother’s child. And the relationships keep taking hits. In Worldstar!, Jimmy and Gretchen both want to reconcile but the episode ends with Jimmy having sex with another woman while Gretchen watches and self-pleasures. One episode later, Gretchen has sex with her boyfriend’s ex-wife. It’s only when Jimmy finally fights for Gretchen instead of letting circumstances dictate their sadness that their relationship is rekindled.

Season 5, finally, is about acceptance. Not accepting grief, mind you. Accepting yourself and accepting those around you. Gretchen has a great monologue in the penultimate episode We Were Having Such A Nice Day where she confirms this theory, telling Jimmy unconditional acceptance is all she ever wanted. But it’s more than that. The season is about Edgar accepting himself and finally gaining Jimmy’s respect. It’s about Lindsay and Paul growing separately until they reach a point where they can accept their love for one another. It’s about Becca accepting her love for Vernon and her need to be maternal. And most importantly, it’s about Jimmy and Gretchen accepting that they’ll never have a normal relationship. Their relationship only reaches the point it’s supposed to when they finally accept that they can’t conform to the normal constraints society expects.

On Intransigence

The first episode of Season 5 is titled “The Intransigence of Love.” Like standout one-off episodes Twenty-Two, The Seventh Layer and the aforementioned Not A Great Bet before it, The Intransigence of Love is a character episode that contributes virtually nothing to the plot of the show. It’s a spoof of 90s rom-coms that centers on Jimmy and Gretchen telling elaborate lies about their love story to avoid confronting the true messiness of their relationship.

But there’s also something uniquely satisfying about beginning the final season with an episode that describes love as intransigent. Intransigence means inflexible, uncompromising, disagreeable. And so too is Jimmy and Gretchen’s love story for most of the series. The two keep running into walls because their love was intransigent. 

Where the show ends, that intransigence becomes an asset. Jimmy is incapable of change, a fact Gretchen calls him out for in Bachelor/Bachelorette Party Sunday Funday. Gretchen is famously resistant to love and support, a fact her mother calls her out on in We Were Having Such A Nice Day. Jimmy’s rigidity and Gretchen’s fear mix into a cocktail for a hopeless relationship.

That’s not what happens though. They answer the central question of the show by continuing to choose one another. In our glimpse into their future, we see this doesn’t go perfectly. Gretchen still continues to cry uncontrollably in bed even when she and Jimmy’s child is crying right next to her. And in her final moments of the series, Gretchen lets Jimmy know she’ll always be a risk to walk in front of a moving train without warning.

Jimmy says he’ll move on quick.

I didn’t. I don’t think I’ll ever move on from this show. It’s whip-smart and devastatingly modern and just so darn funny. If loving this show is like a promise, it’s just a promise to try real hard. It doesn’t mean I can’t miss it forever.

Nothing makes me laugh more than a silly song. The relationship between comedy and music has always been my favorite one, and the one that has defined my life more than any other.

My favorite piece of media ever filmed is Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, the 2008 musical superhero mini-movie written and directed by Joss Whedon. I rewatch it at least three times a year.

My favorite movie ever is John Carney’s 2016 masterpiece Sing Street. It’s a comedy about a kid in Ireland in the 1980s who starts a band. I listen to the soundtrack all the time and rewatch the movie once or twice a year.

If someone asked me what the greatest song ever written was, I’d probably tell them it’s “Issues (Think About It)” by Flight of the Conchords. If someone asked me who my childhood heroes were, I’d tell them Andy, Jorma and Akiva from The Lonely Island. The comedy special I think about more than any other is Bo Burnham’s Make Happy, a melancholy blend of comedy, performance art, therapy and music. 

In the 2010s, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend earwormed its way into my soul. 

This decade was full of sitcoms that changed my perception of the world. But I don’t think there was another show that challenged my belief system and understanding of humanity like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend did. Not just in the way that it made me more compassionate and understanding, but also in the way that it taught me truths about myself that I didn’t yet know.

But enough about the sappy stuff. Let’s talk about songs.

Ranking all the 130 or so songs in the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend catalogue would take too long. (And I’m pretty sure Vulture already did it.) So I’ve decided to pick 20 CXG songs and make my version of a greatest hits record.

Keep in mind, these aren’t necessarily my 20 favorite songs. And they’re definitely not 20 songs that tell the story of the show. I’ve just picked 20 songs (five from each season) that I think do a good job of showcasing the talents and strengths of this wonderful, wonderful show. 

Some of them are heartfelt. Some of them are plot-heavy. Some of them are parodies. But they all work. And all of them have incredible laugh-out-loud moments that still make me giggle after dozens of listens. 

So here it is. A Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Greatest Hits Album, listed chronologically based on when they aired:

Track 1: Feeling Kinda Naughty (Season 1, Episode 2)

Whenever I try to explain the sense of humor of this show to anyone, this is where I start. Parodying I Kissed A Girl in 2015 should’ve already been well-tried territory. But Rachel Bloom pulls it off with deeply disturbing lyrics that all my poor friends recoil at when I play this for them because they never see it coming.

Locking a girl in your basement. Stealing her baby teeth. Taking measurements of her body so a surgeon can transform you into her clone. All in the name of “feeling kinda naughty.” If the two songs in the pilot (West Covina and The Sexy Getting Ready Song) were a thesis statement about the topics and themes the show would attack, Feeling Kinda Naughty is the proof that comedy wouldn’t get in the way of those themes. They can coexist. And they did.

Track 2: Settle For Me (Season 1, Episode 4)

Settle For Me is a difficult song to write about for me. I’m attracted to this one for the jokes. And with lines like “If he’s your broken condom, I’m Plan B,” Settle For Me might contain the best wordplay of any song in the show.

But I also think of this song as one of the most manipulative in the show. I’m not #TeamGreg (more on why later), so when I hear him singing about how Rebecca should lower her expectations to settle for him, I feel genuine frustration. First off, don’t tell her what to do. Second off, don’t expect everyone else to conform to your expectations.

I think I feel so much frustration with this song because some of my least proud moments have come when I thought like Greg. I can relate to his character for all the wrong reasons.

That shame is another reason why I get so much pleasure out of this song, though. Settle For Me packs itself with jokes, but also with a deeper twinge of awareness of the selfishness that comes with trying to make someone fall in love with you.

Track 3: What’ll It Be (Season 1, Episode 6)

After three paragraphs of ritualistically shaming Greg, now I’m back on his side. Because What’ll It Be — Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s pitch perfect parody of Piano Man — is a remarkable achievement. 

At its core, Piano Man is a song about arrogance. The whole ‘Man, what are you doing here?’ vibe of the song reeks of ego. And Greg’s ego takes centerstage in this one. But this time, we sympathize with Greg’s ego. He feels trapped. He wants to leave but he can’t. He’s unhappy and he feels like there’s no way out of it. 

Santino Fontana’s performance is magnificent. He’s smug. He’s smarmy. He’s all sorts of arrogant. But he’s also pitiable and soft and you can’t help but yearn along with him. This song rules.

Track 4: You Stupid Bitch (Season 1, Episode 11)

You Stupid Bitch is probably the most painful song in the series. Rebecca’s self-indulgent self-loathing marks the turning point in the series (along with “The Villain In My Own Story,” which comes four episodes later). This song is when it becomes evident that Rebecca’s actions will have repercussions, and that Rebecca’s move to West Covina wasn’t as whimsical as it might’ve first appeared to be.  

It still pains me so much to hear Rebecca smile through the line “Yeah, you guys know this one” at the top of the song. She’s singing about shaming herself into a spiral of self defeat. She’s singing about the weight of her actions feeling like being crushed by a boulder. She calls herself a bitch and a slut and horrible and stupid and dumb and ugly and fat and simple. And the worst part is when she says she deserves all of it.

It’s a song about self-hate, a feeling I think we’re all ashamed to say we can relate to. But Crazy Ex-Girlfriend made such an artful and compelling ode to this feeling. And it’s the song that turned this show for me from something I mindlessly enjoyed into something I was deeply invested in.

Track 5: Oh My God I Think I Like You (Season 1, Episode 17)

It’s nearly impossible for me to choose just one song from this episode. I Gave You A UTI might be the pound-for-pound most joyful song in the show. But ultimately, I’m gonna pick Oh My God I Think I Like You. And not just because it reeks of influence from my girl Carly Rae Jepsen. Also because this song reeks of the tone Rachel Bloom thrived on before Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was ever a thing.

The sweet, bubblegum vibe of the song juxtaposed against the raunchy, oversexualized lyrics are funny. But Crazy Ex-Girlfriend already traversed that territory with the aforementioned Feeling Kinda Naughty. What this song adds is heart. It’s both sweet and tragic when you hear a lyric like “But as my body’s getting ruined, like, really trashed, I only wanna look in your eyes.” 

Then there’s the bridge. “Are there condoms that can prevent these feelings? Is there spermicidal lubricant that can kill the fluttering in my heart? Is there an IDU that can stop the image of you and me getting married on a hillside surrounded by ducks and then we get into the rowboat… Oh My God I Think I Like You.”

I don’t talk much (or enough) about acting or direction. I mostly focus on the songs and lyrics. But Rachel’s performance on that last line as she’s having her head pushed down the front of a fridge but conveys all that meaning in her eyes? Man, that’s just great. Great for comedy and great for, to quote this song, the feels.

Track 6: The Math of Love Triangles (Season 2, Episode 3)

This song says nothing about the show and it doesn’t need to. The Math of Love Triangles is a spot-on parody of Marilyn Monroe with the most surprising and genuinely impressive vocal performance Rachel Bloom pulls off in the show. 

It’s three minutes of sex jokes and triangle puns. There’s not much else I can add. It’s a masterpiece of songwriting and set designing and choreography and testing the limits of my memory of my 10th grade trigonometry lessons. This song was as funny on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend as it would’ve been on SNL or as a Robin Sparkles bit in How I Met Your Mother. It’s just a straight-up funny song. No need to overthink it.

Track 7: We Tapped That Ass (Season 2, Episode 4)

When it comes to songs that bang, the first half of Season 2 feels like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s peak. This most evident in the first 20 minutes of Season 2, Episode 4 when we get Greg’s heart-wrenching goodbye song “It Was a Shit Show,” followed closely by Josh and Greg going all dream-ghost-adjacent with We Tapped That Ass.

It’s pretty clear at this point that my musical theater knowledge isn’t all that extensive. Nor is my knowledge of classic musical cinema. But even I got this reference. And I laughed my way through it. It’s crass. Sometimes the humor borders on immature. But it also radiates joy in a way only a song performed by Santino Fontana and Vinny Rodriguez could. 

The wordplay is fresh. The dancing is mesmerizing. And there’s an underlying hint of self-loathing reminiscent of You Stupid Bitch layered throughout the song since Rebecca is the one imagining this whole thing. It’s a phenomenal song, and a fitting farewell for Greg. For now.

Track 8: You Go First (Season 2, Episode 7)

If I’m ranking my personal favorite songs in the series, this is probably in second place. You Go First is an obvious parody of 80s female power ballads by acts like Heart and Bonnie Tyler. And it just works so, so well. 

You Go First might be the most passive aggressive song ever written. Performing an entire song about wanting to reconcile with your friend, but only after she reconciles with you is a masterstroke of making fun of how dumb the human condition really is. The whole bit about rehearsing an “Oh, no no no, please” response to an apology feels way too real. 

Then there are the billowing curtains. The ever-growing mullets. The acrobatic dancer straight out of an Olivia Newton-John video. Paula’s dope-ass leg kick. This is the most aesthetically hilarious song in the series, and it’s a song that I think might read as funny to people who haven’t even seen the show. It just works. 

Track 9: Santa Ana Winds (Season 2, Episode 11)

It’s hard to call this one song. Santa Ana Winds is a running gag throughout an entire episode that you can composite into one song. And if you do, you get one of the best bits in the whole show. 

A Jersey Boys spoof about a natural phenomenon native to the west coast is too specific of a joke. It shouldn’t work. But it does. It works really, really well. Pair in some science jargon reminiscent of the math puns in Triangles and a harrowing throwback to You Stupid Bitch and you get yourself an earwormy pop song that also reveals so much about Rebecca and the self-defeat that she’s layering on top of her self-hatred. 

Track 10: Let’s Have Intercourse (Season 2, Episode 11)

Two songs from the same episode? That must be a darn good episode. (It is.) 

Let’s Have Intercourse has ruined Ed Sheeran for me. Not just Thinking Out Loud. But all of Ed Sheeran’s work. This song is such an eviscerating takedown of Sheeran’s vibe that I can’t listen to his music anymore. (Fine, Castle On The Hill is ok.)

Every joke in this song lands. From the bit about Nathaniel acknowledging Rebecca’s intellect and demeaning her appearance in the same sentence to “you could use the exercise” to rhyming unfortunate with “contortion it” to wondering about nipples. All the jokes land. What an introduction for Scott Michael Foster as the best comedic force in the show’s later seasons.

Track 11: Let’s Generalize About Men (Season 3, Episode 1)

I don’t like using terms as prosaic and oversimplified as “best” or “favorite.” (Says the guy who devoted six months of his life to ranking the 50 best sitcom episodes of the 2010s.) But yeah. Let’s Generalize About Men. It’s the best. It’s my favorite. No questions.

It’s bright. It’s colorful. It’s dripping with hairspray and irony. In the live concert retrospective for the series, Rachel Bloom described this song as simultaneously feminist and anti-feminist. It reminds me a lot of TGS Hates Women, the episode of 30 Rock where Cristin Milioti guest stars as an over-sexualized Barbie doll of a woman who Liz tries to change, but unwittingly reveals her disguise and exposes her to a stalker. It’s well meaning in all the wrong ways

Let’s Generalize About Men also has some of my favorite vocal performances in the series. Especially Vella Lovell. She just feels like she belongs in a Pointer Sisters or Weather Girls song. Not to mention Gabrielle Ruiz’s growly growl. It’s just so damn perfect.

Track 12: I Go To The Zoo (Season 3, Episode 3)

Confession time: I’m #TeamNathaniel. Reformed frat bro with a conscience is such a phenomenally specific and poignant trope to lean on, and the show did it so well. Especially in Season 4. But you can see the seeds of it in Season 3, especially with this song where he drops the hardened facade and sings about his love for fishies and cheetahs and kangaroos and monkeys whose eyes look like his.

Based on the colors and beat, this song is probably a spoof of Hotline Bling. But it always felt to me like a takeoff on musicians like Jason Derulo and Flo Rida, guys who constantly brag about the money and women and parties they’re around. It comments on the emptiness of the over-commercialized pop and hip hop industries much in the same way that Lorde’s Royals did a few years before. With a few built in jokes about bottle-feeding panda cubs.

Track 13: A Diagnosis (Season 3, Episode 6)

In a lot of ways, I think Season 3, Episode 6 is a second pilot for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Two episodes before, with “Josh’s Ex-Girlfriend Is Crazy,” the arc of the first two seasons ended. The following episode, “I Never Want To See Josh Again,” functions as an interlude as the characters cope with denial. Then the show reboots itself with “Josh Is Irrelevant.”

If we’re assuming Josh Is Irrelevant is a second pilot, then A Diagnosis serves the function that West Covina did in the original pilot. Rebecca’s got a new plan for how to feel better, a new lavish musical theater number to explain it and a new iconic dress to mark her mood. (Is it a coincidence that the dress in West Covina is blue, the color of depression, and the dress in A Diagnosis is yellow, the color of the sun? Probably not.) The only difference? West Covina was about finding validation in others. A Diagnosis marks the beginning of Rebecca’s difficult and complicated journey to self-discovery.

Sure, this song has jokes. The bit about hearing voices makes me chuckle, and the jab at naturopathic medicine is funny. But this song is more than jokes. It’s a fresh start. It’s a new lease on a show that got incredibly dark so that the sun could rise again. It’s such an important song for the series, and it’s one that gives me hope.

Track 14: Without Love, You Can Save The World (Season 3, Episode 9)

Full disclosure: Without Love, You Can Save The World came out a whopping three days after the beginning of a hard breakup that took me about two months to get over. So I leaned on this song pretty hard when it first dropped, and I’ll always have some sentimental connection to it because of that.

But also, this song is just really clever. “Forget who you did, think about what you can do” is such an awesome thesis statement. The entire cast rocks it in this song. And I still have major beef with the Spotify version of this song not including the best line: It’s an asexual utopia! 

Honestly, I love a good full-cast song. I think this is the first one I’ve included so far. But as the show neared its end, it added in a few great full-cast ditties. Can’t wait to talk about all those.

Track 15: Nothing Is Ever Anyone’s Fault (Season 3, Episode 13)

Picking a fifth song from Season 3 was probably the hardest choice for this list. I probably should’ve gone with The End of the Movie from Josh’s Ex-Girlfriend Is Crazy. But in my last album binge before I started writing this, I rediscovered this gem from the Season 3 finale.

Nothing Is Ever Anyone’s Fault is one of the simpler, more straightforward songs in the series. It’s about denial. Rebecca and Nathaniel are denying culpability for any of the bad things they’ve ever done because they have traumatic backstories. In five words: Psychology is a great excuse. 

Is the Hitler bit a little overused? Maybe. But calling the big bang the ultimate bad father and blaming it for the entirety of human suffering is a darn-near perfect way to lampoon delusion. There were funnier songs in Season 3 I could’ve picked (The Moment Is Me, Buttload of Cats, etc.). And there were more ambitious and catchy songs (First Penis I Saw, This Session Is Gonna Be Different, etc.). But this song is a perfect ending to the complicated and powerful third season of this complicated and powerful show.

Track 16: No One Else Is Singing My Song (Season 4, Episode 1)

Another personal connection: This episode and song debuted on a day where I moved to a new city where I didn’t know anyone. For the second time in four months. I was stressed. I was scared. I was lonely. This song almost made it better.

There’s a website called The Dictionary Of Obscure Sorrows that aims to make new words and definitions for feelings that we all have but don’t have words for. (I learned about it through a YouTube review of an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Yay, television!) One of those words is “sonder,” which the DOOS defines as “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” 

This song, bitingly sarcastic as it may be, led to me accepting the truth of sonder. If you ever feel alone, scared, beaten or tired, it’s easy to sing this tune. It often feels like we’re the only people going through our sorrows. But we obviously aren’t. Everyone is experiencing something.

That’s the beauty of this song. “Maybe while I’m singing my song, someone else is singing along.” That’s it. That’s the whole value of this song. It makes me feel all the right emotions.

Track 17: Don’t Be A Lawyer (Season 4, Episode 3)

Now for something completely different.

Heading into Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s fourth season, I was afraid the show had ran out of genres to parody. Then I heard Don’t Be A Lawyer and realized I was so, so wrong. This pastiche of every new jack swing cliche is one of the better genre parodies the show ever did. And unlike songs like Settle For Me or You Go First, Don’t Be A Lawyer comes from a genre that isn’t often parodied. So all the vocal and choreographic cliches being pointed out seemed like original jokes rather than retreads.

The bow on the whole song is the great line where Jim sings “there are so many other professions that won’t turn you into Jeff Sessions.” This show rarely went topical or political, but when it did the jokes landed hard. Even if that line won’t age super well, in 2018 it was perfect.

Track 18: Trapped In A Car With Someone You Don’t Want To Be Trapped In A Car With (Season 4, Episode 6)

By sheer coincidence, I think I’ve picked almost all of the songs with the longest titles in the show. Weird.

Anyway. Of course I’m going to pick the never-ending song that manages to parody three different phases of the Beach Boys’ career in one ever-shifting song. They nail the Fun, Fun Fun era. They nail the Pet Sounds era. And they absolutely slay the Kokomo era. 

The lighting, sets, dancing, vocal harmonies and barking-dog sound effects were all on point. And using the Beach Boys as the backdrop for a road trip song is just meta in all the right ways. The first (indescribable) instant I heard this song, I knew I’d love it. And I was right.

Track 19: I Hate Everything But You (Season 4, Episode 12)

I’ll be brief with this explanation. Skylar Astin rocks doing a Bruce Springsteen impression. Instead of explaining why this song is good, here’s just a list of all the words in the song that make me laugh when they’re growled in a Bruce voice:

Hour, bling, everything, shampoo, “the wave,” Caddyshack, true, done.

Track 20: Love’s Not A Game (Season 4, Episode 16)

The last completely original song in the series is also the best ensemble number in the show. Everyone gets a moment, from Mrs. Hernandez to Sunil to Jim and Tim and George and our beloved Father Brah. And every joke works. 

It’s a little weird to me that most of the jokes come at the expense of Josh, positive ones and negative ones. But that’s a small gripe for a song that otherwise rules. The colors alone are enough to entrap you like a siren’s call. But then you look closer and see the inside jokes scribbled on the betting boards. And you notice the irony of WhiJo leading the callback to Group Mind. 

I like Eleven O’Clock. It was a fitting and proper send off for a show I obviously love. But this was the real goodbye song for me. It’s fun. It’s vibrant. It’s funny. It’s biting. And it sums up just about everything I love about musical comedy. Like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend as a whole, I guess.

“I don’t spend a lot of time thinking ‘What if?’ I guess that’s happiness.”

That’s a line that didn’t make it into Last Forever Part 2, the final episode of How I Met Your Mother. There’s a deleted scene that takes place about six or seven years in the future. Ted and Robin are having lunch. They’re reconnecting after a few years of not seeing each other. Robin brings up the old pact they made, that if neither of them is married by the time they’re 40 they’ll marry each other. But Ted isn’t interested. He’s in love. 

I’ve got a theory as to why this scene didn’t make it into the final cut of the finale. For one, it’s a little too on-the-nose. But beyond that, I think including this scene would’ve deprived Ted of the opportunity to end the series with a moment befitting his most defining character trait.

Great characters, no matter what genre of fiction they come from, make choices. Oftentimes when you’re bored watching a work of fiction, it’s because things are happening to characters. The exhilaration we feel from a great moment almost always comes when a character makes a choice. Memorable moments aren’t telegraphed. Memorable moments aren’t accidents. They happen when characters we love make tough decisions.

There’s a lot I can say about Ted Mosby the character. A lot of which negative. A lot of that because I think he and I are dangerously similar. But one thing no one can say about Ted Mosby is that he’s afraid to take risks. When Ted Mosby makes a choice, he goes to every possible extreme to make that choice. He doesn’t just choose; he plunges.

Which is one reason why I don’t think this scene works. If Robin was the one who opened the door, that would’ve robbed Ted of his stupid, giant, romantic gesture. He needed to come to the realization on his own. He needed to initiate the reunion. He needed to be 100 percent sure that he made the choice to follow his instincts and do what he thought was right.

In the version of Last Forever Part 2 that aired, Ted made that choice.

He made the right choice.

Defending a TV Episode Everyone Hates

In this long, glorious decade of sitcoms, I don’t think there’s been any single episode that has drawn more criticism than Last Forever Part 2. On IMDB, How I Met Your Mother’s finale has a rating of 5.6 out of 10. That’s the lowest rated episode of the show. Lower even than the disastrous misstep that is Bedtime Stories. To put that in perspective, 5.6 is also the rating of the episode of Two And A Half Men that replaces Charlie Sheen with Ashton Kutcher. That’s the company Last Forever Part 2 is in.

And here’s the thing: I understand why all these years later people are still frustrated with the way HIMYM ended. The finale feels both abrupt and drawn out. After a season that spend upwards of 20 episodes fixating on one weekend, we get one hour to explain about 11 years. We get one sentence of dialogue explaining Tracy’s death, but we get a full season of back-and-forth between Ted and some random lady on a bus bench. The entire episode is fixated with “not missing the big moments,” but all we ever see is characters we love sitting around and talking about big moments. We never actually see the big moments, save for a brief glimpse at Ted and Tracy’s wedding that’s drowned out by voiceover.

Most importantly, there’s Ted’s choice. I understand why a fan might be frustrated by the series ending with Ted going after Robin one more time. We spent nine years listening to the most dramatic, romantic and convoluted love story ever told, only to have the show end with a relationship we had spent nine years being told could never happen.

As I said, I understand if you think this way. But I don’t. I think Last Forever Part 2 is more than just an ending to a series I loved. I think it was the right ending. I think any other ending would’ve felt cheap. It would’ve felt fake. Because at the end of the day, How I Met Your Mother was never a show about being happy. It was a show about chasing happiness. It’s only right for a show all about the pursuit ending with one more quest.

Like it or not, How I Met Your Mother was a messy show. There’s a significant quality dip after Season 5. If I’m being honest, three of the five best episodes of How I Met Your Mother that aired this decade came in January of 2010. Girls vs. Suits, Jenkins and The Perfect Week aired back-to-back-to-back as the first three episodes of the decade. The only episodes after those that remotely live up to that standard of quality are The Final Page and How Your Mother Met Me. 

But I don’t call How I Met Your Mother messy as a commentary on its quality. I think the show was messy more in the way that none of its characters were ever perfect. For a show that has often been accused of being a Friends ripoff, I think one major distinction (salute: major distinction) between the two shows is the characters on How I Met Your Mother lack a lot of the polish that the characters on Friends had. Ross and Rachel and Joey’s flaws were played for laughs. Ted and Robin and Barney’s flaws were played for character development.

The characters on Friends aged. The characters on How I Met Your Mother grew up. And I think that’s the main reason a lot of fans hated the finale of How I Met Your Mother. Most great network TV shows don’t ask their characters to grow or change. Chandler was always a smart-aleck. Joey was always horny. Monica was always Type A. Phoebe was always flighty. Ross was always the hopeless romantic. And while Rachel changed a lot on the surface, she was always the one who made rash decisions, whether she was running away from her wedding or getting off a plane to abandon her new career on a new continent.

On HIMYM, the characters grew. That’s what made the finale so hard to watch. We were watching messy people grow out of their early 30s and into true adulthood. It might’ve been rushed, but we got to see Barney graduate from lothario to father. It might’ve been rushed, but we got to see Robin live out her dreams and realize her dreams didn’t make her as happy as she’d hoped. And, most importantly, we got to see Ted in his element, finally being the loving husband and loving father he always wanted to be. 

If the characters in the finale didn’t feel like the characters we’d spent nine years watching, it’s because they weren’t. They grew up. They became actualized versions of themselves. 

Season 9 of How I Met Your Mother is bad. Real bad. It’s the Be Here Now of sitcom seasons. All the hype in the world couldn’t prevent it from being a bloated mess so far up its own butt that it forgot to prioritize substance over style. But all that said, it ends on the right note.

In the moment, I struggled to find the good in the finale. I remember watching the episode as it aired and I couldn’t speak or move or do anything but blink for about five minutes after the show ended. I was shocked. I’d spent a year watching Robin and Barney’s wedding, and they got divorced 30 minutes in. I’d spent nearly a decade rooting for Ted’s happiness, and it lasts about 45 minutes before the woman of his dreams dies.

None of this seemed fair. This wasn’t the happy ending we wanted.

But the point of How I Met Your Mother was never to be happy. To go back to Ted’s quote from that deleted scene, showing Ted when he’s in the throes of happiness isn’t compelling. It might be satisfying in the moment, but it isn’t memorable. And more than that, it isn’t real. 

Real life is messy. Real life takes twists and turns we don’t expect. Most people don’t get their happy ending. And if they do, they only get it for a few fleeting moments. Happiness is elusive. 

But great characters — and by extension, great people — never give up on their quest to be happy. Ted Mosby is the ultimate symbol of that. He’s a hopeless romantic who is never shaken from his belief that true happiness is always one grand gesture away. 

That’s where the show had to end. Not on Ted finding happiness. But on him looking for it. 

Chapter 1

I have a complicated relationship with The Office.

I started watching The Office back in 2008. The show was in the middle of its fifth season on NBC. Around that time, the show started airing in syndication on TBS. For the life of me, I’ll never be able to forget the lame commercials of Office cast members guessing what TBS stands for. (Does it stand for tablespoon? Wouldn’t know. ‘Nard dog doesn’t cook.) I also had a couple friends who were fans of the show who lent me the first two seasons on DVD so I could catch up.

Soon after, watching The Office started factoring into my weekly schedule. Not just Thursdays on NBC. But Tuesdays on TBS, so I could catch up as efficiently as possible. The show had a system of joke delivery unlike anything else I’d discovered up to that point. It was faster than The Big Bang Theory or How I Met Your Mother. But it wasn’t as dense as Arrested Development or Scrubs. It was paced like real life. It felt grounded. It felt comfortable.

The only problem? Right around when I started watching The Office was right around when The Office stopped being worth watching. I know there are staunch defenders of Seasons 6 and 7 of The Office, but the show really took a dip after Season 5. And it took a much more precipitous dip at the start of Season 8. 

Still, without fail, I watched every Thursday night. I never missed an episode. Even when I was in college and could’ve been spending time with friends or making memories, I’d cuddle up on my futon to see what diminishing returns I could get from a show that obviously wasn’t what it used to be. 

When the show ended, my high school friends and I had a watch party. We laughed. We tried to pretend we weren’t crying. We raved about how good the ending was. It was perfect.

And then I stopped watching the show. Never really felt it necessary to do a rewatch. 

And now, six-and-a-half years later, with enough distance from the show to only remember feeling and tone, I kind of resent the show I used to love. 

Chapter 2

I have a complicated relationship with Parks and Recreation too.

I remember watching the first season of the show as it aired. Amy Poehler was the first cast member from my generation of SNL to leave, and I was happy to follow her to primetime. But there was one hitch: The show kinda sucked.

It was too much like The Office. Leslie Knope was a little too similar to Michael Scott. The characters weren’t all that interesting. The narrative didn’t grab me. The jokes felt a little done. By the middle of the second season, I gave up on watching the show. It wasn’t for me.

Then, of course, a funny thing happened: The show got good. And it wasn’t until three or four years later when I admitted I had to catch up. Injecting Adam Scott and Rob Lowe into the show gave it a pick-me-up. Adjusting Leslie Knope’s character from a Michael Scott clone to a caring, selfless, competent, sometimes-stubborn and — most of all — likable character grounded the show into something even more relatable than The Office was. And it didn’t hurt that Aziz Ansari’s stand-up career took off, attracting me back to the show as well.

I started watching the show again with a little more regularity. I never regretted when I did. But I’ve also never brought myself to watch the show in order. I’ll watch reruns when they’re on. But there’s no part of me that wants to revisit those stale, lame first two seasons that I hated while they were on.

With most shows, you’re probably better off if you don’t watch the last couple seasons. Parks and Rec is the opposite. It’s a show I’ll always recommend people to watch, provided they skip to the last few episodes of Season 2 and treat Chris and Ben’s introduction as a pilot. Anything before that? I have no interest in. None at all.

Chapter 3

I have a, you guessed it, complicated relationship with Brooklyn Nine-Nine as well.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s pilot premiered on my 19th birthday. I’ll never forget it because I was sexiled. My roommate and his girlfriend were up in my room canoodling. They’d arbitrarily decided to celebrate their one-year anniversary on my birthday. So I was locked out of my room, left to watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine in our common area with two other dudes we lived with who had no interest in staying quiet while I tried to watch my stories.

Growing up, I idolized Andy Samberg. I would memorize every weekend’s SNL Digital Short, song or otherwise, by Monday morning so I could recite the jokes to my friends before school. My sister and I would watch and rewatch his SNL sketches over and over again on Sundays to a point that our parents probably thought we both had a crush on him. 

I liked the pilot of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I liked most of the first season, actually. But the show never felt like it was mine. I still watch it. I still like it. A lot. It’s one of the funnier sitcoms still airing on network, and the chemistry of the cast has only grown with time.

But whereas The Last Man On Earth, another show starring one of my former SNL heroes, always felt like a show aimed at me, Brooklyn Nine-Nine never did. At first, that was because it was a little too similar to Parks and Recreation, just as Parks and Rec took cues from The Office at first. But then, it was because B99 started to be about so much more.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine isn’t for me and that’s a good thing. I still get a lot of laughs out of the situation comedy aspect of it. And Samberg’s performance is still one of my favorites. But with episodes like Moo Moo, Game Night and He Said, She Said, the show made a statement that it’s more than a situation comedy with a charismatic lead.

I’m extremely happy and proud that a show like Brooklyn Nine-Nine can mean so much to so many people. Every year, I watch the Comic Con panel for B99 and marvel at just how many different kinds of people have been touched by this show being willing to take stands and comment on injustice or taking pride in who you are.

There’s no “but” coming. I truly take joy in getting to experience a show that isn’t necessarily for me. Or, at the very least, isn’t 100 percent for me like so, so many shows were before it. And are after it.

Still, I see myself gravitating toward the episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine that have no gravitas. I like the silly. I like the inane. I like the one-liners and the innuendo. And because of that, I’ll always feel like I’m enjoying the show wrong. Or, if not wrong, at least outside the full ability to appreciate it.

Chapter 4

I have a very straightforward relationship with The Good Place: It wrecks me.

I can track the trajectory of my post-graduate life using nothing but panic attacks I had because of The Good Place. No, seriously.

Like The Office, Parks and Rec and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, I wasn’t a huge fan of The Good Place’s first season. I took a break midway through Season 1 and came back to the show about six months later. That’s when I learned that the back half of The Good Place’s first season was a non-stop anxiety ride.

Culminating, of course, in the full-on panic attack that is Michael’s Gambit. The gap between Season 1 and Season 2 was unbearable for me, even if it was only a few weeks for me because of my break.

Season 2 was one of the best seasons of TV I’d ever watched. I had my first (minor) panic attack during Dance Dance Resolution, realizing that no timeline was ever safe in this show. I had another during Leap of Faith when it seemed like Michael was selling out the Soul Squad. I had my biggest one at the end of Rhonda, Diana, Jake and trent when Michael claimed to have solved the trolley problem. And I had a pretty large one at the end of Somewhere Else not knowing what would happen next.

(Full disclosure: I still cry thinking about Somewhere Else. Like, sometimes I’ll be driving and just think about the scene with Michael behind the bar and I’ll start tearing up. It’s a perfect scene. And it was also the closest I ever got to watching an episode of Cheers live and I’ll never be able to articulate why that means so much to me. Anyway…)

Season 3 traded panic for truth. The existential dread disappeared (with the exception of the time Chidi ate peep chili) and it was replaced with hard facts about existence. If Season 1 was about revelations and secrets and Season 2 was about panic and growth, Season 3 was about the battle between accepting reality and fighting for a better reality. By the end of the season, I found myself too invested in the soul squad’s wellbeing to even acknowledge what I was watching was fictional. 

And now we’re in the middle of Season 4. I’ve yelled at the TV. I’ve cried a lot. I’ve screamed “JANET DO SOMETHING” and then watched as Janet did something. I’ve been suspicious of and panicked about every reality the show has presented. And I’ve sobbed just thinking about Chidi’s note.

The Good Place ruined suspension of disbelief for me. It’s too good and too real. 

Chapter 5

There’s an obvious reason why I’m lumping all these shows together. Michael Schur wrote or co-wrote 10 episodes of The Office before creating or co-creating Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Good Place. His writing defined a generation of network comedy with sharp wit, quick jokes, subtle satire and a staggering, surprising amount of heart.

There’s another reason why I lump these shows together, though. In a way, the thesis statements of these shows serve as tidy metaphors for ways people view humanity. And I think those metaphors articulate why I relate to some of these shows better than others.

Let’s all throw on our Chidi caps and start talking about moral philosophy, shall we?

I view The Office as a pessimistic show. Like Ricky Gervais’ The Office U.K. before it, the American adaptation of The Office tends to take the worldview that life is bleak. In particular, it takes the worldview that working in a passionless job leads to a passionless life. 

I think the best way to describe the ethos of The Office is actually with a quote from Malcolm In The Middle’s Season 2 episode Hal Quits:

• Francis: “I’m working for a moron.”
• Lois: “Of course you are, honey. Your boss is an idiot, your co-workers are incompetent and you’re underappreciated. Welcome to the working world.”

If you distill Francis’ frustration and Lois’ resignation into one character, you’d likely get someone resembling Jim Halpert.

We as viewers see The Office through Jim’s eyes. That’s why he spends so much time looking into the camera. He’s our window into their world, the character acknowledging what we’re all thinking. And because Jim usually looks at us when something dumb or frustrating happens, we start to view Jim’s world through a prism colored with stupidity and frustration.

In many ways, I think of Jim as the living embodiment of pessimism. He makes choices, so I don’t want to call him a nihilist. And he doesn’t derive meaning from triviality, so I don’t want to label him an absurdist either. Just a run-of-the-mill pessimist. Guarded. Negative. Resigned to the idea that the world is what it is and no matter of effort on his part will change that.

I don’t want to make rash generational generalizations, but this is why I’m so surprised my generation has embraced The Office so much. The show’s pessimistic attitude toward life seems to run in direct contrast to the prevailing notion that younger millennials are the most optimistic sub-generation in American history. 

According to Nielsen data, viewers streamed more than 52 million minutes of The Office in 2018. That beat the second-most streamed show by almost 40 percent. And it just confuses me why so many people, young people especially, continually flock to a show that takes such a regressive stance about happiness.

Most people my age aren’t Jim Halpert. Most people in their 20s aren’t resigned to work a dead-end job they don’t like because it’s the best they can do. These people, demographically speaking, are more likely to fight and claw and push to make change happen, even if it takes a ton of work.

I guess what I’m saying is, people my age should probably see themselves more in Leslie Knope.

Chapter 6

If I see The Office as a show about pessimism, I see Parks and Recreation as a show about optimism. Whereas The Office seems to believe that people are inherently flawed, Parks and Rec seems to posit that people are inherently good.

Parks and Rec is a show about characters who believe that any action, no matter how small, can make a difference. These characters are ambitious. They’re altruistic. They care about one another. And they have vision. Even Ron Swanson, a paragon of regressive political thought, is a die-hard believer in self-reliance and the ability of people to self-regulate. It’s hard to be a Libertarian if you don’t believe that people are inherently good enough to rule themselves.

There’s a philosophy called optimalism that theorizes the universe exists because existing is better than the alternative. To completely oversimplify a theory I’m not going to pretend I’m an expert on, optimalists believe that failure is something to be accepted because it’s a stepping stone to success. 

We see Leslie try and fail as a councilwoman to get her agenda passed. We see Tom’s businesses and get-rich-quick schemes flounder. We know about the Ice Clown losing his town crown because of Ice Town. But we see these characters continue to fight. Because they believe they can make the world better.

Isn’t that beautiful?

And also isn’t it a little too idyllic for a real-life person to buy into? 

Don’t get me wrong: I’d be stoked to believe in humanity as much as Leslie Knope does. But I don’t think any real person is capable of believing in humanity the way that Leslie Knope does. It’s almost too sweet, too perfect. 

What if there were a way to reconcile optimism and pessimism and meet in the middle? Let’s try Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

Chapter 7

Let’s talk Hobbes.

Unfortunately, I don’t mean Calvin and Hobbes. Though I do have a Calvin and Hobbes compilation book on my bookshelf that I’ll probably read after I get done typing this.

I mean Thomas Hobbes and his theory of the social contract. Effectively, the idea of the social contract is the theory that free individuals have agreed to create institutions to govern human rights for the sake of preserving human rights. This means the establishment of laws, governments, courts and, for the sake of our argument here, police.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine at its heart is a show about people who think the world can be fixed. There are bad people out there, and thanks to the intervention of select good people, bad people can be brought to justice. Characters like Peralta, Santiago and Holt then are people who have bought into Hobbes’ social contract. They believe it is the duty of these man-made institutions to protect and preserve natural law, and they trust that these man-made institutions will do their job.

It’s comforting to believe this. And if you’re someone who works for the government or the military or the police force, you’ve definitely bought into this.

But as a lay person, it’s not really as comforting to ponder the social contract as it is if you’re participating in it. In a way, the preservation of a social contract is the preservation of a protection state. There’s very little self reliance involved in trusting that institutions will take care of you.

Philosophically, B99 often counters the bad with the good. In Moo Moo, when Terry is confronted with profiling, he counters it by doing his job well and trying to defeat prejudice from the inside. In He Said, She Said when Santiago is confronted with sexism and questions of assault and harassment, she and Diaz do what they think is right, even if the effects don’t seem so in the moment.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine deeply believes in the ability of our man-made institutions to regulate us. Which is comforting. It’s nice. It’s optimistic, but it’s also an acknowledgement that there are bad people and that those bad people need to be dealt with.

And then there’s The Good Place. 

Chapter 8

If you want a breakdown of the moral philosophy of The Good Place, I suggest you watch The Good Place. It’s a show about it’s own philosophy. There’s nothing I can say here that the show hasn’t said better.

But the one way I’ll try to condense the message of the show is this: The Office says people are flawed. Parks and Rec says people are good. Brooklyn Nine-Nine says people are flawed, but institutions can protect people from themselves.

The Good Place says people can change.

I don’t know if I’d describe myself as an absurdist, but I definitely relate to absurdism. An absurdist believes that life is inherently devoid of meaning. But he or she also believes it’s human nature to search for meaning in life. Equipped with that knowledge, an absurdist then believes it is up to the individual to define, apply and create meaning in his or her own life. 

Choices, then, are what create meaning in an absurdist worldview. If you aren’t making choices, you’re letting the randomness of the universe dictate your life. But if you are making choices, even if the choices are bad or wrong or hard, you’re creating meaning.

I often think about The Good Place through this lens. In so many ways, it’s a show about choosing to be better, about choosing to grow. The central question of the series becomes: Are people capable of becoming better than who they currently are? 

If we use Eleanor Shellstrop as our guide, I think the answer is yes. When given the chance to get better, she does. As we see toward the end of the second season, she has grown enough internally that she could’ve qualified to enter The Good Place. She chooses against it out of solidarity with her friends, doubly proving her growth in selflessness. 

That said, I think the eternal demon Michael is a better example of human nature than any of the humans are. Eleanor’s growth is the central narrative of the show. But Michael might be the series’ protagonist. I mean, he probably isn’t. But there’s an argument for it. 

No one grows throughout the show quite like Michael. When confronted with a millennium worth of mistakes, Michael resorts to doing the one thing he’d never done before: changing. He first makes a selfish deal with the humans to preserve his own life. Then he grows into being a caring person. He falters and oscillates between his demonity and his humanity across different phases of character. But he eventually becomes human, in a way. In feeling, in emotion. In the ability to care and be selfless and be altruistic. He becomes that by which he’s always been fascinated: man.

Through that lens, The Good Place seems to define our humanity not by who we are, but by what we do and how we perceive ourselves and those around us. And centrally, the good people in The Good Place are those who believe humans are not inherently good or inherently evil. We’re inherently capable of growth.

It’s up to us to seek out that growth. People aren’t born good, but they can be. People aren’t born evil, but they can be. 

Tabula rasa. Blank slate. People are born with the choice to become whatever they want to be, and humanity is capable of reflecting any choice. 

No one is beyond rehabilitation. But that person needs to accept rehabilitation in order to achieve it. 

That’s the philosophy I’m most comfortable believing in. And I think it’s why The Good Place resonated with me so much more than its contemporaries in The Schurniverse. 

I want to get better. I think we all want to get better. And I believe we can.

Everything is fine.

The funny thing about dividing cultural touchstones into 10-year groups is that sometimes culture doesn’t divide neatly.

Take music, for example. Let It Be and Bridge Over Troubled Water are quintessentially 1960s-sounding albums that were both released in 1970. The 70s were the decade of groovy disco and funk, but Funkytown by Lipps Inc., didn’t top the charts until 1980. Few songs reek of 80s hair metal like Cherry Pie by Warrant, but that song wasn’t released until 1990. 

You get my point. Eras don’t die just because the calendar switches to a new decade. And, just as importantly, eras don’t start at the turn of a decade either. Just think about the decade of television we just had.

At the end of the 2009-10 TV season, the highest rated shows on television included American Idol, Lost, House, Two And A Half Men and Desperate Housewives. The most nominated show at the Emmys that year was Glee. Bret Michaels outlasted Holly Robinson Peete to win The Celebrity Apprentice. Whatever you’ve come to define as TV in the 2010s, it sure as hell hadn’t quite started by 2010.

So what do we define as the major tenets of television in the 2010s? The emergence of streaming platforms as viable alternatives to network or cable is probably the biggest one. But there’s also the migration of high-profile movie actors, writers and directors to television. There’s the reboot fever on network that revived everything from Charlie’s Angels and Hawaii Five-O to The Odd Couple and One Day At a Time. And broadly, there’s the move from conventional and procedural TV storytelling to higher concept and deeply serialized stories. 

Let’s take a look at when the shows that define this era began. The Walking Dead premiered in late 2010. Game of Thrones premiered in early 2011. Homeland premiered a few months after Thrones. American Horror Story started doing whatever the heck it does in 2011 as well. House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black didn’t kick off the streaming revolution until 2013. And it wasn’t until 2015 when both Breaking Bad and Mad Men were off the air, taking half the decade for the most powerful vestiges of the previous era to run their courses.

But of course, I don’t write about high drama. I write about sitcoms. So when did the 2010s begin in the sitcom world? The earliest answer could be in summer 2010 when Louie premiered, debuting the auteur-era of sitcoms that would later be copied, replicated or improved on with the likes of Master of None, Atlanta and Fleabag, among others. A safer answer might be 2012, especially at HBO where Veep and Girls premiered within SEVEN DAYS of one another in April of that year. 

Still, the sitcoms that I think will end up culturally defining the 2010s really started turning up around 2014. Everything from Transparent and You’re the Worst to Broad City and black-ish premiered that year. Netflix’s comedy boom came right after that, with Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Master of None debuting in 2015 and Love coming shortly after in 2016. 

Since I refuse to count Orange Is The New Black as a comedy (because it’s not one), it’s possible to say that the decade that’ll be defined as the binge-watching age didn’t have its first true binge-watch comedies until 2014 and 2015. 

That’s an awfully late start for a decade that is absolutely loaded with memorable sitcom episodes and moments. Sure, plenty of those were holdover moments and episodes from the aughts era of Peak TV. But for the most part, a staggering percentage of the decade’s best moments, seasons, episodes and series are densely packed into the back half of the era.

Another major tenet of the television evolution in the 2010s was a willingness on the parts of networks and creators to end series early. With binge-watching up and attention spans thirstier than ever for compelling storytelling, shows are tighter and shorter than they’ve ever been. Which is why for as late as this era of sitcoms seemed to start, I think it also ended already.

The spring of 2019 was an absolute graveyard for the best sitcoms of the decade. On Jan. 25, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’s final season was released. Crashing (U.S.) came to an end on March 10. Catastrophe’s fourth and final season dropped on Amazon on March 15. Broad City ended on March 28. You’re the Worst ended on April 3. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend ended two flipping days later on April 5. Speechless faced its inevitable cancellation head on with a would-be finale on April 12. Veep kept the ball rolling by ending one month later on May 12. A few days after that on May 16, The Big Bang Theory aired its finale. One day later, the second and final season of Fleabag dropped in the U.S. on May 17. 

That’s 10 shows that I love, all ending within four months of one another. And in almost every case, I knew the end was coming. Especially with You’re the Worst, Broady City and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, every week was a panic-attack-inducing cry fest as I had to devote three nights a week to shows making highly publicized endings. Heck, the promotions for both Broad City and You’re The Worst centered around hammering the phrase “final season” into commercials as frequently as possible. 

I wasn’t old enough to appreciate the last time something like this happened in May 2004, when Friends and Frasier both said goodbye within one week of one another. Anyone who knows me knows I was an obsessive Friends fan in high school and college, and still count it as one of my favorite shows to this day. And Frasier is my favorite show to watch random episodes of before bed. They’re two of the best four-cam sitcoms ever made, and I probably didn’t even need to qualify that with four-cam. They’re just great shows.

But I think the stretch we had in the spring of 2019, especially the eight-day span that included the endings of You’re the Worst, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Broad City, hit harder than even Friends and Frasier’s finales would’ve. Because television is so much more serialized now. And as painful as it still is to see Rachel get on the plane or to see Frasier, uh, get on the plane (never realized that before), neither of those finales ever led to me sitting in the dark for 10 minutes sobbing uncontrollably while listening to The Mountain Goats. 

I don’t want to sound overdramatic, but it honestly felt like I lost a part of myself losing that much great television in the span of weeks. Most of the shows ended happily. But saying goodbye to Rebecca Bunch and Abbi and Ilana and Selina Meyer and Kimmy and Tituss and especially Jimmy and Gretchen felt like the last party I had with my high school friends before we left for college. And even if I had long ago given up on The Big Bang Theory, saying goodbye to Sheldon and Leonard and Penny and the gang kind of felt that way too. 

It’s the feeling where you’ve built up a support system of people you want in your life, and then suddenly all of them are gone and all you’re left with is the lessons you learned along the way. I often say that a sitcom becomes great not when it’s at its funniest, but when the characters on the show become people you want to welcome into your home every week. Streaming complicates that relationship, of course. But I think that still holds, even with shows we only binge once a year. 

The beauty of television is that you give yourself years, sometimes a decade, to get to know a character’s life story. Unfortunately for me, dozens of those life stories ended in a short span earlier this year. In my book, that’s the end of an era. But that might be a little single-minded. Shows like The Good Place, Barry, GLOW and The Marvelous Ms. Maisel will surely carry this decade into the next one.

Still, it’s hard not to appreciate the finality of a decade actually ended in its own decade. Even if it meant a couple months of internal torment.