50 wonderful things from 2021: The performances, moments, and laughs we'll remember
I've been making 50 Wonderful Things lists since 2010. These are lists of big and small things, important and fleeting things, things that stuck with me and things I almost forgot until I looked back on the year. Both last year and this year, it has been challenging to put together a list like this, because the world in general and the art world in particular still struggle with the effects of the pandemic and all manner of resulting, cascading challenges.
But it seemed more important than ever to remind myself that however I felt in 2021, other people's creativity — whether profound or profoundly silly — kept me company, lifted me up, taught and changed me. So here are 50 Wonderful Things (and, as always, these are pop-culture things only) from 2021.
1. Troy Kotsur's performance as the father in the charming film festival favorite CODA is a funny, warm, fresh presentation of a loving parent who is flawed, devoted and mischievous. And, not for nothing, it presents him as still having a great sex life with his wife, played by the also wonderful Marlee Matlin.
2. The purely calming pleasures of the PBS update of All Creatures Great And Small were a moment of deep exhalation at a time in January when everything was cold and isolated and I was hanging on by a thread.
3. Very few people got to see the pilot of a series called These Days, in which William Jackson Harper and Marianne Rendón played a pandemic pair flirting over Zoom. But I saw it at Sundance, and I am here to tell you that while it seems not to have gone anywhere, before Harper was blowing minds with his performance as a sexy romantic comedy lead in Love Life on HBO Max, he was just divine in this little experimental project that I didn't forget all year.
4. is easy to love and admire just for its richness as a historical document and for the opportunity to watch so many brilliant performers work. But something about its particular mix of performers across generations and genres made it even more than that — it's a piece about the nature of art and
