What do we want from the TV small town?
On Letterkenny, Schitt's Creek, and the ways we romanticize rural lives
Emily St. James
Emily St. James is a writer and critic whose work has appeared in Vox, The A.V. Club, and the New York Times. She is the co-creator of the podcast Arden and a writer on the TV series Yellowjackets.
Life jacket
Or: I watched the Mr. Robot finale and had an existential crisis
From the cutting room floor...
A cut excerpt from my recent end-of-the-2010s culture piece
What's your favorite pop culture New Year's Eve/Day?
New Year’s strikes me as a potentially great holiday to build into pop culture — but it’s very rarely present in even TV series (which usually opt for Christmas episodes). There are a few “drunken New Year’s Eve” tales, but the spiritual and symbolic significance of one year
My 11 favorite things I wrote in 2019
(Not including all of the things I wrote in 2019 that you won't see until 2020 at the earliest)
Let's make tiny New Year's resolutions together
A few years ago, I made the New Year’s resolution to learn how to use chopsticks — and I succeeded at this incredibly minor task. The year after that, I set a resolution to learn how to shuffle cards, and… I haven’t quite mastered that, but I’m much
Give us your pop culture prediction for the 2020s
What do you think will happen to pop culture in the 2020s? You can take this question as seriously or lightheartedly as you like, but let’s presume that pop culture will continue to exist in the 2020s. Which is to say — “Climate change will become a central concern of
What was your favorite pop culture moment of the 2010s?
This should not be more than just a few split seconds — no more than a minute or two — of a larger work. Whether it’s Furiosa wailing and kneeling in the sand in Mad Max: Fury Road or the way Elizabeth Jennings gasps when she realizes something big in The
letterdrop
What was the best TV show of 2019?
We’ve already discussed the best TV show of the 2010s, so let’s turn our focus to just the last 365-ish days. I’ve published my list of the best shows of 2019. What’s your pick?
3 Ghosts, 1 Corpse
The Christmas Conundrum by Emily Dickens
What was the best TV show of the decade?
I just published my list of the decade’s defining shows, so now I want to know what your favorite show of the decade was. You can name anything that aired in the 2010s — but only the episodes that actually aired in the 2010s are eligible.
The first time I screwed up
That time I tried to win a journalism award and instead wrote something hollow