The Pop Culture Junkie podcast is re-running a special series of episodes looking back at the past decade, chronicling the highs and lows, at least from a pop culture standpoint. Each episode deals with two years, so we had to leave some stuff out. A year is a long time! So as a companion piece, here is a more in-depth look at each year in pop culture.

2019 HAD US ASKING…

• Really…does anything really spark joy? 
• Can you use ‘Midsommar’ as a verb? 
• Which blue CGI nightmare was worse: toothy Sonic the Hedgehog or Will Smith as Genie in Aladdin? 
• Are you still glad you named your kid “Khaleesi”?

THE FILMS

Seven of the top eight movies from 2019 were produced by Disney. So let’s be honest: when we look at the most popular films of 2019 (or any year) we are enjoying the same stories over and over again. But whether this is necessarily a bad thing is up to you to decide. Anyway, Marvel was represented by three hits: Avengers Endgame, Captain Marvel and (Sony’s) Spider-Man: Far From Home, and the fanboys definitely loved two of those movies. Disney animation gave us a reboot of The Lion King with Donald Glover, Beyoncé and James Earl Jones returning as Mufasa, a sequel to Frozen with basically the same cast, and a live-action Aladdin with Will Smith replacing the late Robin Williams as Genie, though that wasn’t what made people cringe. The Disney effects team rendered Smith as a half-naked, blue nightmare figure, and the internet wasn’t having it, with one Twitter wag quipping, “The Will Smith genie makes me feel the same way I feel when a celebrity dies: Nauseous, sad, and like I can’t wait to tell everybody about it.” The House of Mouse also gave us a live-action Dumbo and a sequel to Maleficient, but those didn’t do as well as the Pixar offering Toy Story 4. And finally, Disney’s Star Wars franchise also got on the board with The Rise of Skywalker. DC brought us Joaquin Phoenix in the out-of-canon Joker movie and the in-universe first Shazam! film, and there were sequels to family-friendly outings How to Train Your Dragon and The Secret Life of Pets, as well as a live-action Pokémon movie, Detective Pikachu. Not for kids: the clowntastic It: Chapter Two, stylish killfest John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, and the Fast and Furious-adjacent Hobbs and Shaw.

There were some popular original concepts in 2019, though: Jordan Peele’s followup to Get Out, the creepy-af Us, Rian Johnson’s Daniel Craig showcase, the ensemble mystery Knives Out, and Quentin Tarantino’s ode to moviemaking (and alternate history), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Broadway musical Cats horrified us, with CGI versions of Dame Judi Dench, Taylor Swift and Idris Elba that was called “bizarre and inexplicably horny.” And that was the non-butthole cut of the film. Another denizen of the Uncanny Valley, Sonic the Hedgehog, made us go ew (and caused the movie to get completely retooled.) And finally, we couldn’t stop talking about the last shot of May Queen Florence Pugh in Midsommar, part of the “good for her” cinematic universe.

THE TUNES

In 2019, we were introduced to the delightful iconoclast Lil Nas X, who brought us something new but also very familiar when his song “Old Town Road” blew up the charts. The song, part country, part rap (or was it country trap?), featured Billy Ray Cyrus and was based on an instrumental from another artist that Nas bought for $30. The song made history when it charted on the Country and R&B/Hip-hop charts simultaneously, but it was later removed from the country charts by Billboard for not having “enough elements of country music” – a decision that to many was entirely racist. In other artist debuts, Billie Eilish came from out of nowhere to take the pop charts by storm in 2019. Her biggest hit was “bad guy,” which she wrote with her brother/writing partner Finneas O’Connell and which won Record and Song of the Year at the Grammys. Billie was only 17 at the time, the youngest person since Lorde to hit number one, and the first born in the 2000s. Also 2019: Post Malone charted with “Sunflower” from the Into the Spider-Verse soundtrack and also had a hit with “Wow,” Halsey scored with “Without Me,” Marshmello and Bastille were “Happier” in 2019, Ariana Grande had “7 Rings,” Khalid was all “Talk,” Travis Scott got in “Sicko Mode,” and the Jonas Bros. were back with “Sucker.” Further down the charts, Panic! at the Disco had “High Hopes,” Lizzo had the “Juice” and told us the “Truth Hurts,” Sam Smith and Normani went “Dancing with a Stranger,” Luke Combs confessed that “Beer Never Broke My Heart” and Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber declared “I Don’t Care.” But we cared. We really, really did.

THE TELEVISION

The Mandalorian, or more accurately, the true star of the show (Baby Yoda) – took the world by storm in 2019. Created by Jon Favreau, and is the first live-action series in the Star Wars franchise. Yes, we know now his name is Grogu, but back then, we had nothing else to call the little guy in all those memes your aunts (who never even saw a frame of Star Wars) were posting. Pedro Pascal rounded out the cast as the title character (aka Din Djarin), a bounty hunter who decided to protect his adorable charge rather than turning him in for profit. Elsewhere, Amazon Prime spoofed superhero worship culture in Eric Kripke’s The Boys, a bloody, sweary, irreverent black action-comedy. More boutique cable/streaming shows from 2019 include Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini in Dead to Me, Zendaya in Euphoria, Gillian Anderson in Sex Education and the stellar trio of Jennifer Aniston, Steve Carrell and Reese Witherspoon in The Morning Show. Top genre shows debuting this year: Henry Cavill and his magnificent hairdo in The Witcher, Lin-Manuel Miranda in HBO’s adaptation of His Dark Materials, the streaming adaptation of the vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows, Pennyworth, the origin story of Batman’s butler Alfred, Elliot Page in The Umbrella Academy, and another dark superhero action-comedy, Doom Patrol with Brendon Fraser and Michael Sheen and David Tennant in Good Omens. And then there was The Masked Singer: part game show, part performance comptetion show, and all weird, the show hid minor celebrities (some not known for singing) in oddball costumes and made judges Ken Jeong, Jenny McCarthy, Nicole Scherzinger, and Robin Thicke try to guess who they were.

THE TRENDS, TOYS AND TECH

This year, Full House star Lori Loughlin and Desperate Housewives’ Felicity Huffman were busted in a sting conducted by the Justice Department, and arrested on charges of using cash bribes to get their kids in college. Lori served two months in prison and her husband Massimo Giannulli five months, while Huffman copped a plea for obtaining fraudulent SAT scores, apologized and served less than two weeks in the clink. Speaking of moms, both mom jeans and ripped jeans were trendy in 2019, because moms are known for loving it when you wear ripped jeans. Brands on Twitter abandoned corporate-speak and started tweeting like the rest of us: talking smack at each other (looking at you, @Wendys), getting flirty, cracking wise, and expressing other real human emotions. When @SunnyDelight tweeted “I can’t do this anymore” during the 2019 Superbowl, brand Twitter responded: Pop Tarts sent hugs, Pornhub offered a tissue, and Little Debbie gave tips to address clinical depression. (In reality, it probably just a tweet about how boring the game was.) As for the rest of us, we wondered if the contents of our closets and junk drawers “spark joy” by following the wisdom of Marie Kondo and her guide The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up which became a bestseller and a Netflix series. It caused a lot of people to dejunk their homes, although the same effect could be achieved by watching Hoarders.

In technology, 3D printing became available in our homes, where with the right equipment you could print anything from art to a gun you could smuggle through airport security. Cool. When 4G proved to not be enough Gs, our cell phone signals got an upgrade. 5G was introduced, supposedly offering greater bandwidth and faster downloads. We needed that not just for our phones and computers, but for all the smart devices in our homes, known as the internet of things. While it caused certain people to fear that it causes brain cancer, infertility, etc., so far those concerns haven’t manifested…that we know of. Be careful out there, people. And finally, AI has been with us for years, but in 2019, it took a leap forward as social robots infiltrated businessees and even our homes, using artificial intelligence to determine how to best serve us in a more lifelike way. Bots were now recognizing voices, faces and emotions, interpreting speech and gestures, responding appropriately to complex verbal and nonverbal cues, making eye contact and conversing, and adapting to our needs by learning from feedback, rewards and criticisms. Robots filled so many new roles in our society that there was no way to be sure you were dealing with a real person online. This article you’re reading right now, for example, was entirely written by a bot. Enjoy!

THE MEMES AND CATCHPHRASES

THE meme of 2019 came from an old episode of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and a white cat. The side-by-side presentation seems to show the woman – Taylor Armstrong – yelling at the cat, who takes offense at her outburst. The RHoBH photo comes from a 2011 episode of Real Housewives, where Taylor was arguing with Camille Grammar and being restrained by Kyle Richards, and the rest came from Tumblr and was just a picture of a cat named Smudge with the caption ‘he no like vegetals’. Intrepid Twitter user (@missingegirl) put the photos side by side in a tweet, and then the internet did its magic, and now it’s used for any two entities who cannot find accord. Video of a buoyant, exuberant and seriously hot Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC for short) dancing on a rooftop long before she was elected to Congress surfaced this year, and though conservatives who shared it tried to make it seem like a bad thing, we knew they were just jelly. 2019 was the year we declared our undying love for Keanu Reeves, who (we hope) will never disappoint us with some deep dark secret and fall victim to “cancel culture,” aka “calling out assholes.” And although we all RSVPed that we would show up to storm Area 51 this year and get the truth our government had buried there for the last 50+ years, apparently we were all really busy that weekend.

The war between the generations heated up in 2019, as the phrase “Ok, Boomer” became widespread in 2019 after it was used as a reaction to some old dude’s TikTok rant about “infantile generations hobbled by social media and participation trophies” that basically dissing millennials and Gen Z. Well, you raised them, gramps. Of course, now it’s used to disagree with anyone even slightly older, so watch out, anyone born before 2010. The other catchphrases falling out of our mouths this year were “you hate to see it,” “yeet” as a verb, “stan” as a verb, and “vibe check,” which could be a noun or a verb. Lastly, those of us who were bikini ready (and some who weren’t) by the end of spring were preparing for an epic “hot girl summer,” even if just that meant drinking a can of White Claw at the pool in your apartment complex.

SAYING GOODBYE

2019 was the year Plantation weddings finally, FINALLY went out of fashion. Don’t rest in peace. Beloved misanthrope Grumpy Cat, aka Tardar Sauce, appeared in her last meme, and both The Big Bang Theory and Game of Thrones ended, putting long-time viewers out of their misery, maybe. We also lost Broad City, the CW’s female-led iZombie, Jane the Virgin and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the American Sherlock drama Elementary, Carson Daly’s late late night talk show, Fleabag, Gotham, and the Kevin Spacey-less House of Cards, all the Marvel shows, like Cloak and Dagger, The Punisher, Daredevil and Jessica Jones, years before the characters would be repurposed for Disney, The OA, and the short-lived Murphy Brown reboot. The cons in Orange is the New Black were released, and the political career of Veep ended on HBO.

Shockingly, Luke Perry, who played a teen in Beverly Hills 90210 and a dad in Riverdale died far too young, and the portrayers of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch (Carroll Spinney) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) departed this year. We also said goodbye to shock jock Don Imus, Chelsea Lately sidekick Chuy Bravo, actor Danny Aiello, Roxette frontwoman Marie Fredriksson, Star Trek: TNG star Rene Auberjonois, rappers Nipsey Hussle and Juice Wrld, Will & Grace‘s Shelley Morrison, campy comedian Rip Taylor and actor Rip Torn, Cream drummer Ginger Baker, actor Diahann Carroll, and opera star Jessye Norman. We also lost House of 1000 Corpses actor Sid Haig, journalist Cokie Roberts, Singers Eddie Money and Ric Ocasek, sitcom legend Valerie Harper, the original Easy Rider, Peter Fonda, Nobel Prize-winning auther Toni Morrison, voice actor Russi Taylor, Blade Runner Rutger Hauer, former presidential candidate Ross Perot, auto exec/commercial star Lee Iacocca, fashion designers Gloria Vanderbilt and Karl Lagerfeld, musicians Leon Redbone and Dr. John, actors Tim Conway, Doris Day, Jan-Michael Vincent, Carol Channing, Robert Forster, Albert Finney and Peggy Lipton, Monkee Peter Tork, Boyz n the Hood director John Singleton, actor John Witherspoon, and football legend Bart Starr.

And that’s a bigger, better look at the year in pop culture, circa 2019. See you in ten years (if Earth is still a viable planet) for the best of the 2020s!