In football, schematic innovation tends to trickle up. All of the new-age concepts you’ve seen infiltrate the NFL over the past few years were developed by coaches in high school and college. So, the premise of this list is a bit flawed.
The NFL has always been on a bit of an island. While lower-level coaches have never been afraid to experiment with new strategies, the pro coaches have been reluctant to adopt some of the things their peers are doing on Fridays and Saturdays.
It only takes one, though.
If one NFL coach has success with a certain concept, it’s not long before the entire league gets on board. Those guys may not have invented the strategy but they do deserve credit for bringing it to the NFL. All great coaches are receptive to new ideas.
Thanks to a handful of innovative coaches, the NFL game has changed dramatically over the past decade. Which coaches are most repsonsibile for those changes? Let’s figure that out…
1. Bill Belichick
Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
This seems like an obvious answer but I don’t know how many football fans truly appreciate the influence a young Belichick had on modern defense. While in Cleveland, he and his defensive coordinator — some dude named Nick Saban — first developed the idea of pattern matching coverage. Everyone knows what man and zone coverage is, but Belichick and Saban created a hybrid of the two.
You’re probably wondering what a concept developed in the 1990s has to do with this decade. Well, Saban brought those coverages to the college level, and a few national championships later, almost every college defense in the country was playing some form of pattern match coverage. This was like 15 years ago. But that wasn’t really the case in the pros. Of course, there were teams that started utilizing those coverages at the turn of the century, but, even when Belichick was building his dynasty in New England, traditional, spot-dropping zone coverages were still the top option for most defensive coordinators.
That has started to change over the last decade, though. As passing games have grown more varied and complex, defensive coaches have had to adjust in order to keep up. Thanks to Belichick (and Saban), they have options outside of zone or man coverage.
(Obviously, Belichick’s influence extends beyond this one concept. I could have gone in a bunch of different directions with this one.)
2. Pete Carroll
Steven Bisig-USA TODAY Sports
Single-high coverages were popular well before Pete Carroll got to Seattle, but there’s no denying that the success he found with the Legion of Boom transformed the defensive landscape of the NFL for nearly the entire decade.
In retrospect, Carroll’s influence may not have been a good one for the rest of the league. Teams tried to replicate his Cover-3 and Cover-1 heavy scheme and didn’t have nearly as much success, which I wrote about my in my offseason series on the evolution of NFL defense. It turns out that running that scheme doesn’t work as well without Earl Thomas patrolling the deep middle, Richard Sherman eliminating one side of the field and Bobby Wagner, K.J. Wright and Kam Chancellor lurking underneath. Personnel matters!
Even still, Carroll laid the blueprint for how defense would be played in a post-Tampa 2 world. The NFL remains a single-high coverage league.
3. Chip Kelly
Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
Stop laughing.
Are you done?
OK, I get that Kelly was ultimately a failure as an NFL coach, but there’s no denying that he greatly impacted the league in the short time he was a part of it. I think his schematic influence is a bit overstated, but some of the concepts he popularized during his time in Philadelphia have become NFL staples.
Kelly’s use of tempo has probably had the most profound impact on NFL strategy during the last decade. And that goes back to his time at Oregon when Belichick was picking his brain and had the Patriots running a no-huddle attack before the rest of the league caught onto the value of going fast.
Kelly’s biggest impact may have come off the field. His use of sports science was seen as revolutionary at the turn of the decade. Now it’s commonplace. And his streamlined approach to practice gave teams a model to copy after the 2011 CBA cut down on practice time, something NFL coaches are constantly complaining about.
Reid has been a brilliant offensive coach for a long time, but I don’t know if he would have made this list if I wrote it a few seasons ago. In the past few years, though, Reid has evolved what was once a classic West Coast offense into something new.
He’s made the long-time NFL staple his own by blending it with concepts we were used to seeing on Saturdays but had never been the foundation for a consistently successful pro offense. Along with college staples like option run plays and RPO’s, Reid borrowed Air Raid passing concepts to help make Patrick Mahomes’ transition to the NFL easier.
Having a quarterback like Mahomes obviously makes schematic innovation easier, but Reid was having no problem getting top production out of Alex Smith using similar concepts. And as coaches from Reid’s tree have moved on to head coaching gigs of their own, his influence has only grown. It won’t be long before most NFL offenses resemble the scheme he’s crafted in Kansas City.
5. Kyle Shanahan
Stan Szeto-USA TODAY Sports
I suppose the elder Shanahan also deserves a ton of credit for influencing the league, but Kyle has taken the concepts popularized by his old man and dressed them up with mind-boggling pre-snap motions that leave defenses dazed and confused.
Shanahan has a distinct offensive philosophy — outside zone running plays meshed perfectly with a deadly play-action pass game — but he’s done a masterful job of adapting it based on his personnel. The best example being the 2012 season when he remade his offense to suit Robert Griffin III;s strength, and, in doing so, established the zone read as a concept that could work in the pros.
In his presser today, Kyle Shanahan was asked if he felt defenses had figured out the zone read. His answer was fantastic pic.twitter.com/dSa9FfGGHn
In Atlanta, he turned Matt Ryan into an MVP with an offense built around two versatile running backs and Julio Jones. Now, in San Francisco, he has the 49ers offense humming with a tight end (George Kittle) and an H-back (Kyle Jusychyck) as the focal points. Shanahan always gets the best out of his personnel.
Last year, Sean McVay was being hailed as the NFL’s newest genius, but his style was birthed by Shanahan. And Shanahan has been doing this offensive genius thing for a while now.
I can’t decide if Simone Biles’ historic triple twisting-double somersault is more incredible in slow-motion or real-time. While slow-motion highlights the details of the move she performed during her floor routine on her way to a sixth U.S. national championship in August, the real-time video illustrates just how much she jam-packs into one powerful pass.
It doesn’t really matter, though, because I’ll watch any and all versions of Biles’ high-flying triple-double — or three twists plus two flips — a skill so challenging she was the first woman to do it. That move is just one of the countless examples of her greatness and only one footnote in her decade of dominance.
No athlete in the entire world has dominated his or her respective sport in the 2010s like Biles has in gymnastics. No athlete has redefined dominance or impacted the way others approach competition like she has, and no athlete has the hardware to prove it all like she does.
It’s not even close.
Everyone remembers her utter excellence at the 2016 Rio Olympics when four of her five medals were gold, including her victory in the all-around by an astronomically large margin of more than two points over American teammate Aly Raisman. She led the “Final Five” to team gold, while also finishing at the top of the podium on vault and floor exercise with her lone bronze medal coming on the balance beam.
That summer, Biles became a household name, but she was ruling the gymnastics world years before that.
Since 2013, she’s won 25 world championship medals to become the most decorated male or female gymnast in history at worlds, most recently taking home five golds in Germany in October to raise her career gold medal total at the event to 19. And, looking ahead, it’s possible she could win five more gold medals at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
In every world championship Biles entered this decade, she won gold in the all-around and floor exercise (2013, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019). In fact, she’s won every all-around competition in which she competed since 2013. (She cleaned up at the Olympics in 2016 and took a break from gymnastics in 2017.)
She was on top of the world for six years this decade, and that is — in the truest sense of the word — unbelievable.
She won her sixth all-around national title in August, but her overall win actually took a backseat to two jaw-dropping moments from the competition. One was, of course, the triple-double, during which she got so much air that she could have cleared an SUV, as USA TODAY Sports’ Nancy Armour observed.
You already know we had to get the slo-mo for y'all…
“I can’t describe what it feels like because we’re in total control of our bodies,” Biles told For The Win about the skill not long after nationals. “So it doesn’t feel like we’re way up there and gravity’s trying to pull us back down. In a way, if feels like we’re flying, but it’s very controlled.”
And with her dismount on the balance beam, she became the first gymnast to land a double-twisting double somersault. The move is so exceptional that at world championships a couple months later, the International Gymnastics Federation actually punished her for having the audacity to perform something only she is capable of in a misguided attempt to deter others from attempting it.
With these two moves, she now has four skills named after her, which happens when a gymnast is the first to successfully perform something new.
So obviously the GOAT in gymnastics, Biles also deserves to be included in debates about the greatest athletes of all time because of her sustained success. She’s so far ahead of her competition that sometimes she can make a mistake and still comfortably win.
Her name deserves to be listed alongside all-time greats like Michael Phelps, Serena Williams, Michael Jordan and Tom Brady, and she continues throwing one impressive accolade after the other on her resume. But as far as total domination of the 2010s goes, Biles stands alone above her peers, above her fellow GOATs and above the laws of physics.
Ranking the 10 best songs of the decade, from Lana Del Rey to Beyonce to Kendrick Lamar.
The decade is over, and in the spirit of pointless lists to pass some time, I’ve ranked what I feel are the ten best songs of the decade.
Seeing that I didn’t hear a lot of the music that was released this decade, and my taste is what it is, this is (of course) a completely subjective and imperfect list. That being said: I did try to put my personal biases aside. If it were really up to me, this would be ten weird punk songs that six of my friends and I know about. (That being said, everyone go listen to the band Pile. They’re good. I didn’t rank them, but you should all listen to Pile.)
Anyway. I tried to factor in cultural impact, popularity, and other stuff into the rankings. Some are more important than good. Others are just plain perfect songs.
Let’s get to the list.
Fair warning: A lot of these songs have explicit language.
10. Lil Nas X — “Old Town Road”
Is this song country? Is it rap? Is it even a real song? Is it a meme? I still have no idea, and I suppose that’s the point. “Old Town Road” wasn’t so much a catchy song (though man, it was catchy), it was a statement about gatekeeping, and labels, and “authenticity,” and everything we’ve ever thought about music. There’s no set path anymore. There are no dues to be paid, for better or worse. You just create. And if people like it, you make a video with Billy Ray Cyrus.
9. Robyn — “Dancing On My Own”
Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own” isn’t just a perfect pop song (which it is) but it’s also a reclaiming of a personal narrative. Robyn burst onto the scene as part of the aughts pop movement, all boy bands and girl groups, then came back with … this. Digital, flawless, the song is one of independence and power.
8. Lana Del Rey — “Video Games”
LDR released a lot of great music this decade, but “Video Games” is still haunting me all these years later, a flawless piece of hopeless pop that summarizes just about every bad relationship any of us have ever been in.
With her sultry croon, LDR channels pop songs of the past to pay homage to her man, but does so with clear eyes: She knows he’s terrible, but she just can’t help herself.
7. Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars — “Uptown Funk”
Listen, say what you will about this song. It’s unoriginal, certainly, sugary to the point that it will give you a toothache. But here’s the thing: We will be listening to it at weddings until we croak. This is an all-timer pop song, whether any of us like it or not.
6. Beyonce — “All Night”
It’s unfair to limit Beyonce’s contribution to this list to just one song, but the song I will take with me from this decade is “All Night.” The penultimate song on Lemonade, an album about Bey reckoning with her husband’s infidelity, “All Night” shows the singer finding strength through forgiveness.
She knows what he’s done. She’s gone through the stages of grief, and anger, and has finally hit acceptance. She forgives him, not because she’s weak, but because she has made a choice, one out of strength. The video overlays videos of New Orleans finding a way to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina, a metaphor perhaps a bit too on the nose, but we’ll forgive it. Then the “Spottieottiedopaliscious” horns hit, and I’m a wreck.
5. Kanye West — “Runaway”
The plinking piano. That video, the stark images of the ballerinas with Kanye West and the ghostly voice of Pusha T. “Runaway” is the best track on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye’s true masterpiece, his high point before everything went sideways. It feels nostalgic to listen to it now, but man, it’s still thrilling. One man still completely trusting his ear, and his vision. “Runaway” is a man captured at the absolute peak of his powers.
4. Titus Andronicus — “A More Perfect Union”
The Monitor, Titus Andronicus’ 2010 masterpiece, is a punk rock opus run through the lens of Springsteen. This song, to me, didn’t so much channel Springsteen as completely unmake his world, and capture our world in the process.
Springsteen felt sadness and desolation in his songs, so he hit the open road. In “A More Perfect Union,” Titus Andronicus frontman Patrick Stickles feels that same sadness and desolation, so he hits the open road … and then realizes “Oh wait … what have I done?”
The song has an intro written by Abraham Lincoln (seriously), a shoutout to the Fung Wah Bus, and multiple anthemic singalongs. It’s lasting worth, however, is the capturing of that fear. For a generation that was told by our parents: “Go and have your moments of rebellion, it’ll all work out,” only to find out it wouldn’t all work out, this spoke to us. Released at the height of the recession, Stickles belted out lyrics which captured our horror and our fear. “Tramps like us,” he sings, “baby we were born to die.”
3. Frank Ocean — “Bad Religion”
“Bad Religion” is the song where we got to meet Frank Ocean, got to know and understand him, and at the time, it felt like something big. It felt like something important.
The song’s plot is one any Ocean fan knows well: A man gets in a car and tries to escape his problems. But what makes this song so powerful is how it blends the tiny (a conversation with a cab driver) and the large (religion, sexuality, the pain of unrequited love) in a way that feels natural and earned.
As for how it applies to the 2010s: In the song, a man pours his heart out to a cab driver, revealing more to a stranger than he will to the people closest to him. What is the internet, if not for that?
2. Migos feat. Lil Uzi Vert — “Bad and Boujee”
“Bad and Boujee,” to me, is the song that took all the best moments of rap in the past decade and boiled them all down to their essence. It’s tossing out the cake mix and jamming your hand into the jar of frosting. This is Migos asking: “What if we made the whole plane out of the black box?”
The triplets that Pusha T and others had peppered occasionally into their songs for years? Migos said eff it: We’ll just make the whole song those. Ad libs and call backs? Yep. They’re all in there too. Stuff ’em in. Forget waiting around for those cool moments that make your hair stand on end — the whole song will be goosebump-inducing.
Migos had been playing with these ideas for years, but on “Bad and Boujee” they perfected them. It’s their masterpiece. Toss in a perfect meme edit with Sid the Science Kid, and you’ve got everything you want in a song.
1. Kendrick Lamar — “Alright”
The best song of the 2010s is also the most important song of the 2010s, a song that captured the terror of being alive this decade, but packaged it with an audacious sentiment: We’re gonna be alright.
Did Lamar actually believe those words? Unclear. The song is so interesting because, while there’s hope, he’s almost convincing himself of it in real time. “Do you hear me? Do you feel me?” he asks, as if to himself.
Lamar knows it’s necessary, to convince himself that they will, in fact, be alright. He knows it’s the only way to live. “I can see the evil,” he raps. He’s awake, not dreaming, and understands what’s going on around him. Yet, still, he chooses hope. What other choice does he have?
What a decade it’s been for KD on Twitter and Instagram.
The 2010s, for better or for worse, became the decade social media went completely mainstream.
For sports fans, that meant so much more access to the athletes they love, which again, was for better or for worse.
There were gleeful trolls like Joel Embiid. There was LeBron James, king of the subtweet and Taco Tuesdays, who knew the power of social media to both deliver messages and delight the masses. We delighted when athletes did trending challenges like the rest of us and were in awe when they used their clout to raise money for causes and stood up for social justice.
But not many of them are Kevin Durant. And KD deserves our Best of the Decade hardware.
Let’s start with the fact that we’ve written about the Brooklyn Nets’ star’s Twitter and Instagram exploits countless times, and I think it’s because he acts like any other person does on the social media platform. He’s more than happy to log in late at night and respond to trolls, haters, television talking heads and die-hard fans. No egg avatar is too small, no blue check mark is too big to cast aside with a brutal response or the perfect comeback. Some critics might wonder why he wastes his time, but I think he gets a kick out of it. And he should!
It doesn’t make him petty. It makes him human.
Oh that’s just Joey crack trying to sell that album, go cop that family ties on December 6
“I wasn’t used to that amount of attention, you know, from playing basketball. I wanted a place where I can talk to my friends without anybody just butting in my conversations or mixing my words or taking everything out of context because I enjoyed that place.
“… I had an Instagram account that I just use for my friends and family. Like, it’s a cool place for me just to be me instead of worrying about Bleacher Report or Barstool mixing up anything I want to say.”
At the time, he called himself “a total (expletive) idiot” and was so mad at himself for going too deep with his use of burners to pose as someone else that he lost sleep over it. Again: doesn’t that seem human to you, especially for a person so famous who longed to be normal for a few hours on social media? Here, he owned the mistake and moved on. You have to respect that.
So as we enter 2020, remember: troll or insult him and other athletes at your own peril. They’re watching, just like you are.
Looking back at the most memorable episodes from the best TV shows this decade.
The 2010s gave viewers some fantastic television and iconic characters, as the way we consume it rapidly changed with streaming sites practically taking over the world. TV in the last decade has been intense with anti-heroes practically being a given, hilarious thanks to scripted sitcoms that are a little rough around the edges and, most importantly, particularly memorable.
So while it’s one thing to remember the greatest shows of the last 10 years — and there were a lot — For The Win wanted to take it a step further. Instead of listing or ranking what we TV experts think were the top series, we wrote about the specific decade-defining episodes as a way to celebrate the best shows out there.
Warning: There is some NSFW language in some episode clips.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Chardee MacDennis: The Game of Games, Season 7, Episode 7, October 27, 2011
On a particularly boring day at Paddy’s Pub, the gang decides to play an old drinking game they devised years ago, “Chardee MacDennis.” The brilliance of the episode is that it takes place entirely inside a single room and features only the five main characters, but manages to be one of the wildest, off-the-wall episodes in the series, with plenty of classic, quotable moments. Shut up, dog! – Nick Schwartz
Breaking Bad: Ozymandias, Season 5, Episode 14, September 15, 2013
You could pick most episodes of Breaking Bad — yes, even Fly — to fit this list. But most BB fans would say this was the show at its most devastating, the series at its most unforgiving. One character — and I’m going to avoid names in case you haven’t watched the series, although if you haven’t already, please do so NOW — dies while another learns a fact from Walter that was previously unknown. Then, there’s a shocking family confrontation and an ending you probably didn’t see coming. You’re so emotionally invested in the characters by now that having the rug pulled out from under you like this will leave you stunned. This is arguably the best episode of any show of the decade. – Charles Curtis
Atlanta: Streets on Lock, Season 1, Episode 2, September 6, 2016
Atlanta has never been a show that stuck to the conventions of a traditional TV show, often going at its own pace and dealing deftly with complicated issues like race, masculinity and black identity. Streets on Lock picks up right after the pilot episode, and focuses on Earn as he waits to get bailed out of county lock up after his proximity to a shooting. It’s a tense, quiet episode that focuses on not just the prison system, but homophobia, mental health and transphobia, with humor and insight. I held my breath through much of Streets acutely aware that Earn’s fate rested entirely the hands of an unjust and exploitative system.
Honorable mention: B.A.N., Season 1, Episode 7, October 11, 2016
B.A.N. doesn’t totally work as a 30-minute episode, but it’s sketch on “trans-racial” identity which focuses on a black teenager who believes he’s a 35-year-old white man, is transcendent. – Hemal Jhaveri
Veep, Election Night, Season 4, Episode 10, June 14, 2015
It was impossibly hard to pick the best episode from this series, led by the ever brilliant Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Nearly every episode is sharply written with a balance of laugh-out-loud and cringe-worthy dialogue with a wonderfully heinous group of characters who flutter about while JLD reminds everyone she drops the best f-bomb in Hollywood.
But the election night episode is something special because, as she’s trying to avoid getting rejected by the American electorate for not the first time, nor the last, her incompetent staff is left frantically Googling what happens if there’s a tie in the Electoral College. Everyone’s reaction to the potential tie is quintessential digital age, and the possibility of her losing the election ultimately to her running mate is supremely Veep. And the fact that “Continuity with Change” — almost as bad as “Some New Beginnings” — is plastered on the stage of their election rally just before the tie is announced is just *chef’s kiss*. – Michelle Martinelli
BoJack Horseman: Stupid Piece of Sh*t, Season 4, Episode 6, September 8, 2017
Fish Out of Water, in which BoJack visits an underwater city and is unable to speak and yet the episode unfurls without dialogue, and Free Churro, an episode entirely built on his bitter eulogizing of the mother who caused him so much angst, are rightfully lauded for both format and content. But there wasn’t a better or more impactful episode than Stupid Piece of Sh*t.
The gimmick here is that we’re tuned in to BoJack’s inner monologue, riven as it is by depression, anxiety and alcoholism as he goes through a bender of booze and doubt brought on by the nearness of the family he has yearned to be close to. And it feels in many ways like the show has been winding here all along. The entire premise is absurd — a humanoid horse who was once a famous actor — and by this time you’ve already watched three whole seasons and five episodes of another, so you’ve settled in to this world when you’re confronted by an unsparing look at all the ways the brain folds in on itself. In a decade where we finally started talking more about mental illness. I’m not sure there’s a better example out there to help people understand and feel its effects. – Chris Korman
Game of Thrones: The Winds of Winter, Season 6, Episode 10, June 26, 2016
HBO via AP
Yeah, yeah, the Red Wedding (The Rains of Castamere is the episode name) is probably neck and neck here. But let’s see: Cersei blew up a building (!!) filled with her enemies, Jon Snow is declared King in the North, Daenerys and her dragons are FINALLY on their way to Westeros and Bran finds out key information through time travel: Jon Snow is actually a Targaryen, which has HUGE implications in who belongs on the Iron Throne. What a season finale. – Charles Curtis
True Detective: Who Goes There, Season 1, Episode 4, February 9, 2014
The first three episodes of True Detective were good, don’t get me wrong. But the show didn’t really pick up steam until this episode. This was arguably the best of the entire series and gave us one of the best action sequences of the decade — in film or television. I’m talking, of course, about the six-minute tracking shot during a botched drug raid. Words cannot do the scene justice, and I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but after watching that scene, you may need a few minutes to regroup and get your heart rate down. The first season of True Detective will ultimately be remembered for Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson’s acting and dialogue, but, in this episode, director Carey Fukunaga and cinematographer Adam Arkapaw steal the show. – Steven Ruiz
Atlanta: Alligator Man, Season 2, Episode 1, March 1, 2018
This was the episode where, for me at least, Atlanta went from being something I could appreciate to something that blew my mind. Season 1 of Atlanta was smart, and measured, and moody, and had moments of great beauty. Alligator Man, the first episode of Season 2 (AKA Robbin’ Season) was when Donald Glover and Hiro Murai decided they didn’t care about rules, or form, or really anything anymore. Stunning set pieces, a meme reference to “Florida Man,” Katt Williams as the titular Alligator Man… the episode showed that Atlanta was no longer going to be contained by something as simple as “reality” when it came to finding truth with its storytelling. – Nate Scott
30 Rock: When It Rains, It Pours, Season 5, Episode 2, September 30, 2010
(NBC Photo: Nicole Rivelli )
I used to think the first half of 30 Rock was significantly better than the second half, but after trying to pick out the best episode from the brilliantly written show that aired in the first few years of this decade, I realized that might not be true. I spent entirely way too much time on this and just couldn’t pick one. It’s impossible. The genius of 30 Rock largely revolves around its layers and unbelievable frequency of jokes. It seems like there’s a joke in every other line, and you have to devote your undivided attention to have a chance at catching every one.
So instead of a best episode, here is my favorite joke from the whole show, which happens to be from an episode that aired this decade. Dot Com is explaining to Liz that he and Grizz are guarding Tracy — he’s werewolfing himself — to ensure he doesn’t miss the birth of his third child:
Dot Com: Also, we took Tracy’s cell phone, his wallet…
Tracy: …And my mood ring! And I don’t know how I feel about that.
– Michelle Martinelli
Walking Dead: No Sanctuary, Season 5 Episode 1, October 12, 2014
Tense, gory and emotional, No Sanctuary is The Walking Dead at its absolute best. Rick and the gang are captured by the crazy cannibals of Terminus and must fight their way out. Rick, Glen and Daryl remain bound and gagged over a trough, just milliseconds away from death until Carol (bad-ass MF-ing CAROL) saves the day with a massive explosion. Satisfying emotional resolutions are a rarity on Walking Dead, but this episode has one of the best of all. This tear-jerking embrace between Daryl and Carol. – Hemal Jhaveri
I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson: Has This Ever Happened to You? Episode 1, Season 1, April 23, 2019
Thankfully, I saw someone tweet about this sketch show last summer and decided to give it a shot. I then watched all six episodes (which are all like 20 minutes long) in one sitting and proceeded to text everyone I know, telling them they have to watch this show. I was that annoying friend, but the ones who did watch it agreed with me: It’s phenomenal.
It all starts with the first sketch in the first episode in which a pleasant job interview in a coffee shop comes to a hilariously awkward end that will immediately hook you to this show. The “Baby of the Year” sketch might be one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen (one particular line about baby Harley Jarvis almost made me fall off my couch). And the gift receipt sketch at the end is so bizarrely funny that you’ll immediately press play on Episode 2. Seriously, if you haven’t watched this show do so immediately. Don’t make me text you about it. – Andy Nesbitt
Snowfall: Other Lives, Season 3, Episode 10, September 11, 2019
This episode was just a stroke of brilliance all around. It takes the entire series so far, all 30 episodes, and brings them full circle.
In the midst of a near-death experience after being shot, the episode begins in an alternate universe where Franklin Saint — our protagonist (?) — has made the choice to go off to college instead of staying home in Los Angeles and becoming the city’s biggest drug kingpin. He’s eventually kicked out of school after being treated unfairly by a racist dean and is sent back home. He comes home where, eventually, he’s recruited by a CIA agent.
Essentially, this vision Franklin is having of an alternate universe is a nightmare that shows him what life could’ve been. But it essentially leads him to the same place.
Once he wakes up, he has a revelation. He decides not to run from Los Angeles. Instead, he decides to fight for his people — but in such a twisted way. He realizes that the system he lives in, his community is built in, is one that is built to keep them down. And the only way he sees to fight it is by taking his drug game to another level despite all the carnage it’s led to and will lead to in the future. It’s sad, but it’s also a reality that’s all too common for some. This episode, and season, captured that perfectly. – Mike D. Sykes, II
Bob’s Burgers: Work Hard or Die Trying, Girl, Season 5, Episode 1, October 5, 2014
(FOX)
It’s a musical about Die Hard! And Working Girl! Combined! There’s not a more perfect half hour of television than Bob’s Burgers, and this is one their absolute best episodes ever. Gene decides to stage an underground, one-man Die Hard musical on the same night as the school’s officially sanctioned production of Working Girl. Not only are the musical numbers here phenomenal, but the attention to detail is everything. Gene’s Hans Gruber hair! Tina’s shoulder pads! Louise’s wig! Because this show always believes in the fundamental goodness of people, the kids combine to perform a new musical that combines the two movies, called Work Hard or Die Trying, Girl, which is as much musical as it is a cultural commentary on late capitalism. – Hemal Jhaveri
Mr. Robot: 407 Proxy Authentication Required, Season 4, Episode 7, November 17, 2019
In an effort to provide a spoiler-free summary for one of the finest hours of television I’ve seen, I won’t say what happened in the episode. But rather I’ll give credit to Sam Esmail — who formatted this episode as a commercial-free, five-act play — and the acting masterclass by Rami Malek, Elliot Villar, Christian Slater and Gloria Reuben. The episode was almost entirely dialogue, but it was delivered and produced in a manner that had viewers at the edge of their seats as the episode progressed towards the inevitable and heartbreaking reveal. – Andrew Joseph
The Good Place: Janet(s), Season 3, Episode 9, December 6, 2018
The Season 1 finale is an easy choice here, but I’m going with Chapter 36, arguably the most head-trippy episode in a series full of mind-twistiness. This time the humans are all placed in Janet’s void after they’re taken off Earth again. We get to see the super talented D’Arcy Carden proceed to play multiple characters (right down to their tics and line reads) and a dramatic climax as her void nearly destabilizes. If you’re reading this and are completely confused… well, now you’re going to have to sit down and stream the series to find out how special this episode is. – Charles Curtis
Parks and Recreation: The Fight, Season 3, Episode 13, May 12, 2011
Is the The Fight a perfect sitcom episode? It might be. This Season 3 episode, which was written by Amy Poehler, comes at the height of the show’s creative peak, and focuses mainly on the friendship between Ann (Rashida Jones) and Leslie (Amy Poehler) and all its crazy dynamics. I’ve watch The Fight more times than I can remember, not just because it’s hilarious from start to finish, but because it’s a loving but unsentimental portrayal of female friendship in all its complexity. Leslie pushes Ann too hard, Ann and Leslie both submerge their annoyance at each other until it all spills over in a messy, drunken fight at the Snakehole Lounge.
Every beat of this episode is perfect, including all the subplots! We’ve got Chris Traeger (Rob Lowe) being peak Chris Traeger, an appearance from Burt Macklin, plus a very sweet moment between Ron and Tom (Aziz Ansari) bonding over the limitations of government. Among my favorite moments are the last series of quick cuts, showing everyone totally wasted, plus the final shot of Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt) puking and running at the same time. – Hemal Jhaveri
Fleabag: Episode 5, Season 2, Episode 5, May 2019
The Season 2 opener of Fleabag is the one seemingly everyone wanted to talk about this year. It was great and perhaps best captures all that the show was. But the penultimate — in Fleabag’s voice, Penultimate? — deserves some attention as well for how exquisitely it pulls each character’s arc to a peak.
Fleabag’s ill-advised, mid-confession makeout with the Priest leads to him lying about why he can’t officiate her father’s wedding, and, as she struggles to come to terms with the consequences of her actions with a heavy hangover, the main character is summed up in one simple yet hysterical image with the perfect soundtrack. Here sits Fleabag, on a bus bench, bent over at the waist, face in her hands and contemplating the disastrous ripple effect of her uninhibited life decisions. Later, Claire has a spectacular meltdown over the exact, beyond bold haircut she asked for and is ultimately comforted by Klare, the kind of partner she deserves. The madness also gives us the best short monologue of the whole series, when Fleabag and Claire indignantly confront hairdresser Anthony.
And all this leads us to the moment where the Priest is trying to explain his complicated feelings while the Hot Misogynist — “He’s a feminist.” “I have a sister.” — vigorously yells at her front door. The tense final scene between Fleabag and the Priest elicits a full range of emotions and is largely what makes this episode an absolute masterpiece, bringing the season to its climax. – Michelle Martinelli
Nathan For You: Finding Frances, Episode 7, Season 4, November 9, 2017
Nathan For You is undoubtedly one of the most underrated shows of the decade. It’s a hard show to sell without video clips but I’ll try my best: The show stars Canadian comedian Nathan Fielder and real-life business owners looking for advice on how to improve their operations. Fielder comes up with wild ideas — like starting a band featuring the “jazz smoke detector” in order to allow a shipping company to reduce tariff costs on smoke detectors by marketing them as musical instruments — that he somehow gets these people to go along with.
Now, the Finding Frances episode is totally different from the others and almost plays out like a movie. Fielder helps an old man named Bill, who was used as a Bill Gates impersonator in past episodes, track down a long-lost love. I don’t want to oversell it, but this might be the greatest love story of all time. The 120-minutes episode (the other episodes are a half-hour) is full of laughs but there are some emotional scenes thrown in there as well. The best part about Finding Frances? You don’t have to watch any of the past episodes in the series to appreciate it. – Steven Ruiz
Downton Abbey: A Journey to the Highlands, Season 3 Christmas Special, December 25, 2012
(Giles Keyte/Carnival Film & Television Limited 2012 for MASTERPIECE)
Our son refused to sleep unless he was held, so I found myself, in mid-2013, binging Downton Abbey with my wife while I cradled the most precious person I’d ever encountered. And it was a pleasant diversion. The sweeping music. The luxurious sets. The order of it all. (Though, honestly, revisiting this show now made me realize how not-charming the aristocracy is as we appear to lurch toward a new form of feudalism.) What I liked most about the show was the main romantic plot, which involved the snooty Lady Mary falling for Matthew, who was vaguely distantly related to her and, gasp, a lawyer (the rest of her suitors appeared to be dudes who just bounced from castle to castle, cavorting.)
The context here is important. The Crowley family has already lost one member this season, when Sybil, the youngest daughter, died after childbirth. Mary and Matthew, meanwhile, have had trouble conceiving but are set to finally have a baby in this, the last episode. They do, and it’s astoundingly beautiful: Matthew arrives late, after traveling, and hoists his son for the first time and says, “Hello my dearest little chap.” Then pauses for a beat before asking, “I wonder if he has any idea how much joy he brings with him?” And I am just weeping at this point, tears streaming down onto my own baby. Then Matthew goes for a drive, the exultant kind we’ve all had where we think a movie camera should be following us and an orchestra playing in the background as we contemplate how much life has suddenly changed and how lucky we are.
And then he crashes and DIES, and we see his dead eyes looking up at the sky and the camera goes back to Mary holding the baby and why — why, why, why — would anyone do this to us? I still haven’t gotten over it and never will. Because the answer is that the actor playing Matthew just didn’t want to be on the show anymore, so the rest of had to endure that ending to what was marketed as the season’s “Christmas special.” Thanks, Britain. – Chris Korman
Sherlock: The Great Game, Season 1, Episode 3, August 8, 2010 (UK), November 7, 2010 (U.S.)
What a cliffhanger of a finale. This tight hour long episode gives us some fun John and Sherlock domestic fighting, a cute Ms. Hudson moment, plus a bit of Mycroft and LeStrade. Written by Mark Gatiss, Sherlock has to solve three seemingly unrelated cases all while the clock ticks as innocent people’s lives hang in the balance. The tension and pacing of this episode is almost smothering, and just when we think things are going to be alright, out steps Andrew Scott as Moriarity. You may know him as the Hot Priest, but he was our Hot Villain well before being cast in Fleabag. Benedict Cumberbatch is fantastic as the idiosyncratic detective, playing all of his quirks and antisocial behaviors with just the right edge of sympathy. It’s a surprisingly emotional and gripping episode and representative of the show at its absolute best. – Hemal Jhaveri
Mad Men: Person to Person, Season 7, Episode 14, May 17, 2015
(Michael Yarish/AMC)
“The finale of Mad Men was suburb, absolutely superb.” – Michelle’s mom
If there’s one aspect of sports that decidedly changed this past decade, it has to be how fans consumed, followed and reacted to sports. This was the first full decade with sports intersecting with mainstream social-media use, and with that, seemingly every major sports moment produced a fresh batch of memes and jokes, adding an extra level of entertainment for us to enjoy.
While a decade is an eternity in internet years, a handful of memes have managed to persevere beyond the in-the-moment joke on Twitter, Instagram and other platforms.
These are the 10 memes we’ll remember from the past decade.
The Curry 2 Low “Chef”
Under Armour has long struggled to produce a commercially successful sneaker for Steph Curry, but the 2016 release of the Curry 2 Low sneaker served as a low point for the brand’s basketball operations. There was no coming back from these memes.
Nick Young has spent much of his career as the league’s most confident middle-of-the-rotation player. And honestly, his NBA career will probably be remembered for the memes. All of them.
The Astros have been entangled in a cheating scandal this offseason after former Houston pitcher Mike Fiers blew the whistle on a sign-stealing operation. Those cheating tactics included someone banging on a trashcan to relay an off-speed pitch to the hitter. Well, MLB Twitter turned that entire story into an exceptional meme.
Michael Phelps was getting his game face on ahead of his 200 meter butterfly semifinals at the 2016 Olympics. His game face, though, just happened to be terrifying.
Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast McKayla Maroney made the signature expression after earning a silver medal in the 2012 vault final. You know a meme is epic when this happens …
Back when the Golden State Warriors were good, the Cleveland Cavaliers had a shot at stealing Game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals on the road. George Hill missed a chance at the go-ahead free throw, and when J.R. Smith grabbed the rebound, he dribbled the ball to the perimeter rather than attempt a put-back layup. Smith forgot the score, and LeBron’s look of disbelief became a meme.
— Geoff Magliocchetti (@GeoffMags5490) June 1, 2018
Kevin Durant: My Next Chapter
When Kevin Durant made his league-changing announcement that he was signing with the Golden State Warriors in 2016, he did so with an essay in The Players’ Tribune. That essay included a featured image of Durant wearing a plane white shirt. It was basically asking to become a meme, and it did! The meme followed Durant for his entire run with Golden State and almost certainly had something to do with his painfully boring Nets announcement this past offseason.
It wasn’t the funniest meme, but the Crying Jordan was undeniably the most prevalent sports meme of the decade. Though the photo was taken from Jordan’s Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2009, the meme started becoming a thing on the internet around 2014.
This might turn out to be a list that will make you sad at all the money you had an opportunity to win in the last decade.
But think of it differently: this is a list of miraculous things we saw happen in sports over the last 10 years. And who doesn’t love a longshot, even if you’re not betting on it?
Of course, some of these were actually events people bet on happening, so you also need to take a second and bow down at their sports gambling prowess.
So here are some of the best bets of the last 10 years, which — in hindsight — might have won you so much money.
1. The Cardinals were 999-to-1 longshots in the middle of September and went on to win the World Series
Deadspin had the story of someone who took those looooong odds with the Cards five games back of the Wild Card with 15 games left in the season.
2. Harry Wilson’s grandfather bet on him playing for Whales someday
This is a wild story: Wilson’s grandfather threw down £50 when Harry was around three years old that he’d play for Whales. He had 2,500-to-1 odds and was paid out in 2013 when Wilson played.
3. Leicester City were the ultimate underdogs
Unbelievably, Leicester City won the Premier League in 2016, and a fan bet $28 on 5,000-to-1 odds, although he cashed out at $41,000 so he didn’t have to stress out over winning or not.
4. The Warriors blew a 3-1 lead to the Cavaliers
And the Cavs odds to come back in the 2016 NBA Finals from that deficit were +1100.
