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Another year has come and (almost) gone, and with it a pirate ship’s barrage of pop culture cannonballs, crashing into the hull of our consciousness and causing our poor, fragile brains to rapidly take on water. Like all noble seafarers, we didn’t ask for this fate. We do, however, accept it, because there is no other choice in this life but to sail the torrential waters of the zeitgeist. To love entertainment is to endure the bombs, while perennially seeking a new port to harbor in so we may restore the ramparts of our flop-addled vessels.
Alright, apologies for the pirate metaphor. Truth is: I know nothing about sailing. (Imagine that, a person whose job it is to sit in front of a keyboard, not knowing about boating; “Starboard” is what I call the Hollywood Walk of Fame.) I suppose I’m just parroting the language of One Piece, one 2023 show that remarkably was not a massive flop, even though most pre-release signs had pointed to it being terrible.
This year was a year of pop culture surprises just like that: television shows, movies, celebrity fodder, and meme moments that could have bombed gloriously, but rose to the occasion of public expectation to give us some sweet surprises. Big IP fare like Barbie and Wonka offered a surprising dose of irresistible charm. Those movies got audiences talking about how to bring new ideas to big-budget filmmaking—even if the latter is a bit more contested. (I, for one, was dazzled, despite my preexisting animosity for all things Willy Wonka.) And then there were shows like Squid Game: The Challenge, One Piece, The Curse, Swarm, and RHUGT: RHONY Legacy, ambitious programming that, by all standard metrics, should not work as well as they did.
Of course, not everything in 2023 pop culture was lucky enough to leave us stunned. Some—if not most—things left a sour taste in our mouths and a leaden lock on our hearts. The major studios’ responses to the SAG-AFRTA and WGA strikes were chilling displays of greed. The studios, in their mistreatment of workers, weren’t just naive or tone-deaf; they were cruel, discounting the hard work of hundreds of thousands of people.
Elsewhere, unimaginative films and TV shows landed on our laps like a stick of TNT with a lit fuse. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Ghosted, and Mafia Mamma sunk winkingly self-aware filmmaking to new lows, with the abominable Aquaman closing out a year of more superhero duds. But 2023 didn’t start off on solid footing either, with The Real Friends of WeHo kicking off the year in spectacularly shitty fashion with its milk-throated, thin-skinned influencers.
Regardless of the irritation that these colossal clunkers generate, they provide us with plenty of laughs to end the year with. Looking back, we can remember these failures fondly—well, as fondly as they can ever be remembered. Some of the things on this list even carry over from last year’s selection of flops. Imagine that, pop culture moments so misguided they got worse in the last 365 days? Now that’s what I call a blessing.
The Idol’s Breathtakingly Bad Erotica
I’ll be the first to admit it: I spent a good chunk of 2023 being dead wrong about The Idol. I was a naive Weeknd Warrior, a Sam Levinson apologist who foolishly thought that the schlockmaster’s latest creation could be the nasty piece of work it promised to be. The trailers for this show about a troubled pop star falling in love with a Machiavellian schemer had great promise, and the limited series’ first episode was one of the best of the year. (I’m willing to die on that hill!) But as the show went on, its promise dwindled and its plot nosedived. The Weeknd’s amateur acting abilities set the bar for entry-level industry players at a new low. Lily-Rose Depp’s weepy singer-turned-mastermind was impossible to buy despite the actress’ best efforts. The entire affair was a mess—and not even a hot one. I’ve seen nastier work on How to With John Wilson than I did in the chokehold of The Idol’s measly five episodes.
Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday 2 Rollout
Here’s a holdover from last year’s list, which featured Nicki Minaj’s “Super Freaky Girl” as one of the year’s worst assaults on the ear. While I’ll refrain from making too many comments about the album that “Super Freaky Girl” eventually became part of, Pink Friday 2 (Minaj has lost her touch and is flailing to catch up in a pack she once led—sorry, couldn’t help myself), the album’s troubled release is undeniable. Minaj initially announced Pink Friday 2 in June, saying that the record would drop on Oct. 20 of this year. Just three weeks later, Minaj revealed that the album had been delayed to Nov. 17.
As the weeks drew closer to the album’s purported release with no news, a second delay was announced, with the album now being scheduled to drop Dec. 8. Minaj did virtually no proper promotion leading up to the release beyond her emcee gig at this year’s VMAs, instead choosing to hibernate and perfect the album’s songs. (“Perfect” is doing a lot of lifting there.) And only a few days before the album was due to release, Minaj was polling her fans on X, trying to see if the Barbz might let her buy a little more time to push the album back another week.
Minaj let those same fans do most of their own promotion, creating AI-generated memes of a fictional, Barbie-pink metropolis they called Gag City. Minaj’s creative team ran with it, drawing up last-minute visuals to try to capitalize on the hype. It looked as though Minaj might have a win. That is, until album release day, when fans found out that Pink Friday 2—which has 22 songs on its standard streaming edition—was sent to retailers with only 10 songs included on its physical formats. It was a bleak ending to the drawn-out Pink Friday 2 saga, made worse by the uninspired, sample-heavy tracks that made it onto the release. A pitched-up “Heart of Glass” sample? Sounds more like a shart of gas.
The Dulcet Tones of Ariana DeBose’s BAFTAs Song
I just watched the clip of Ariana DeBose’s BAFTAs rap for the first time in 10 months and choked on my scalding hot coffee. It’s even funnier than I remember, and the hole in my esophagus is so worth it. It’s terrible, and it’s terrible from the jump. Who on Earth thought to construct a song like this, and then have DeBose perform it live, struggling to keep up with their rollercoaster of wordplay? “All the la-dies in the room, supporting and leading, all here I presume?” Like, what? And then when she starts listing the names, Christ! “HONGCHAU. DOLLY D! Kerry and Carey, with a C.” Let’s just sit with what we heard.
I would argue that, in the high-octane, nail-biting moments that follow, “AHN-GEH-LUH Bassett did the thing” got too much love. I think “Viola Davis, my woman king,” accompanied by the crowning gesture, really takes it there. Without that sentence, the Angela Bassett line couldn’t sing. But perhaps my favorite part is DeBose switching up Cate Blanchett’s name like a school teacher doing roll call. “Blanchett, Cate, you’re a genius.” You know what? She is, and so is this rap. And it’s also awful.
The First Official Photos from Wicked Causing Medically Unsafe Eye Strain
In April, the director of the highly anticipated film adaptation of Wicked, Jon M. Chu, posted the first official stills from the movie. Instead of production photos, they were more like an optometrist exam meets horror movie jumpscare. “You weren’t told the whole story,” Chu’s post read. Yeah, I should say so—we can’t see shit! Trying to make out what’s happening in these photos is an identical experience to watching Skinamarink. Thankfully, Ariana Grande is a genius and so wisely distracted people from laughing about how dark these photos are by allegedly boinking her costar.
George Santos Platformed (Again) by Ziwe
Let’s just call it like it is: George Santos is a monster. The former United States representative—who was just ousted from office for using campaign funds to pay for OnlyFans subscriptions, among a slew of other vile things—had his time in the sun and chose to squander it. So why are people still acting like he’s a delightful diva who’s done nothing wrong? Santos’ racism, support of anti-LGBTQ+ laws, and transphobia are well-documented (big of him to say “two genders” with a lisp). Despite all of this, Santos is being paid real money by the same American public he stole from to make silly videos on Cameo.
Earlier this month, comedian Ziwe—known for her ability to grill controversial figures and make them look more moronic using nothing but their own words—sat down with Santos to let him make his bed. Santos spent the interview stumbling over the history of his lies, backtracking on claims he’s made while laughing it up in the hot seat. Santos clearly believed Ziwe was his buddy. And though Ziwe’s intention was very clearly to let the public see Santos make an ass of himself once more, the interview only created more content for the social media meme machine to continue platforming Santos, when we should be looking to completely extricate him from public consciousness.
Yellowjackets Nearly Stings Itself to Death
When was the last time a series fell from grace so fast? By the end of its first season, audiences and critics alike were smitten with Yellowjackets, the Lord of the Flies-goes-supernatural drama. But what was once one of the most promising new shows on television concluded its second season with a nonsensical whimper. The first half of Yellowjackets Season 2 juggled its lack of vision well enough to seem like it might pull off a major narrative surprise. Perhaps the incoherent writing and bungled character arcs were all a misdirection.
Turns out, it was just bad television! By the end of Season 2, viewers realized that the series couldn’t circumnavigate its demise. Yellowjackets dragged itself to the finish line as bloodied and bruised as its stranded teenage cannibals, bringing out every last trick in the book to try to distract us along the way. There were weird bird costumes in fever dreams, a few ears to be nibbled on, and an infuriating season finale death that brought more plot holes than it did closure. Whether or not Yellowjackets can survive its upcoming third season will be a true test of wills, but I think I’d rather gnaw my own leg off than come back for more.
The Rebrand to End All Rebrands
Warner Bros. Discovery claimed that the transition from its HBO Max platform to the newly minted Max would be seamless. While that was true enough for the app on our televisions and phones, it was far more messy in the execution of… well, just about everything else. The platform’s new interface lumped directors and writers together, removing their individual titles and labeling them all as “creators.” To some, it might’ve seemed like a calculated move, given that the WGA had already been on strike for three weeks at the time.
Whether or not this was intentional on the part of higher-ups can’t be said, but social media outcry did prompt WBD to come out and apologize, vowing to change the interface back to how it previously credited its artists. It was a haphazard start to a buzzy-but-useless merger of HBO Max and the Discovery+ app, which only threatens to get worse should the rumors of a WBD merger with Paramount Global come to fruition. Please, God, let it end. I’m not paying $70 a month for Maxmounttime+.
Selena Gomez Is a Social Media Disaster
Selena Gomez has been notoriously horrible at social media for years. But 2023 brought the triple threat (actress-singer-shitty cookware influencer) to new online lows. Fans manifested a feud between Gomez and Hailey Bieber that stretched on for months, despite neither side speaking on it until users took things too far.
Then, in August, Gomez posted a promotional picture for Only Murders in the Building Season 3, violating the rules of the SAG-AFTRA strike. A couple of months later, Gomez was dragged again for her statement on the Israel-Gaza conflict, a response that prompted her to “take a break” from social media. When images later surfaced of Gomez canoodling with her new boyfriend, producer Benny Blanco, Gomez went on a response binge under several fans’ posts, repeatedly telling them how happy she was. Pretty girls, I beg of you: Stop defending your boyfriends’ neckbeards and just be happy with them. Gomez followed that up by once again confirming she has no intention of using her platform to comment on any world events going forward. Maybe she can use that spare time to get back into the studio and come up with something a little more lively than her insipid one-off release, “Single Soon.”
Jennifer Lopez Is Finally About to Be Her… Now
This remnant from last year’s list of flops has a long shelf life, one that will be extending well into 2024, if Jennifer Lopez and her team have anything to say about it. The singer’s ninth studio album, This Is Me… Now, was first teased in November 2022, with Lopez promising that the record—her first in almost a decade—would see the light of day in 2023. Most of this year came and went with no word from Lopez, causing yours truly to hunt down its whereabouts in a fervent investigation. A few days later, J.Lo gave the world a proper tease of what she had been working on.
To her credit, it seems like there were quite a few things to refine that kept her tied up in 2023. This Is Me… Now will be accompanied by a full-scale musical film (whose runtime has not yet been confirmed, but I am expecting it to surpass Killers of the Flower Moon, considering how long we’ve had to wait). The visual looks to be a soaring feat of artistry, a devotion to the cosmic pull of true love that has been guiding J.Lo’s work since her reunion with her now-husband Ben Affleck. It is, of course, 98 percent computer-generated. But hey, so was Wonka! As long as the J.Lo we get in the film is Jenny From the Knee Surgeon’s Office—with a set of reinforced titanium caps to keep those moves tight in front of the green screen—I don’t think anyone can complain.
The Toxic Gossip Train Has Derailed In Massive Wreckage on the Eastern Seaboard
Much as I did with Elliott’s guitar solo on Euphoria in the 2022 flops list, I will present a similar entry with a brief comment. YouTube star Colleen Ballinger’s (a.k.a. Miranda Sings) ukulele apology for her years of alleged misconduct toward fans is one of the sickest things I’ve ever seen. I genuinely did not think anything could get worse than a straight man picking up a guitar, but a YouTuber accused of wrongdoing grabbing her ukulele is so much more disgusting. If you’re accused of something terrible and your first inclination is to grab a musical instrument and turn the camera on, you need to smash all of your electronic devices with a hammer. It’s already too late.
The Kardashian Hate Train Has Also Derailed, Going Up In Flames in Glorious Surprise
I’d rarely say that the consumers of culture were the flops this year, but 2023 brought a wealth of surprises. This year was irrefutable proof of something I have long held to be true (and will refute the second they make me eat crow): The Kardashians are geniuses. Not, like, necessarily in the way that Albert Einstein or Beyoncé are geniuses, but they are brilliant when it comes to defying expectations.
2023 was a banner year for Kim Kardashian in particular, with her stellar turn as cutthroat PR agent Siobhan Corbyn on American Horror Story: Delicate. When Kim revealed that she’d joined the cast back in March, even I didn’t have much hope. But she pulled herself up, enrolled in a few acting classes in Century City, skimmed Angela’s Ashes to identify with her character’s Irish roots, and sold the damn thing. She was the best part of the entire show (well, the first half of the show—the latter half was delayed by the SAG-AFTRA strike).
Kim then confirmed her comedic prowess and earned her honorary degree from the Coleman Spilde Institute for Dramatic Dames in an ad for her SKIMS ultimate nipple bra, a galaxy-brained video that poked fun at everyone who still thinks she’s nothing but a big-boobed bimbo. Not only was it funny, but the ad’s style was also referential, and its entire construction was gleefully irreverent; it seems Kim has finally found her niche.
But I’d be remiss if I didn’t end this list with my favorite Kardashian moment of the entire year: Khloé talking about her deathly fear of whales on The Kardashians. Even on a luxury vacation, Khloé was paralyzed with fear, staring miles out into the ocean and waiting for her stomach to drop at the sight of her least-favorite mammal that isn’t Tristan Thompson.
An orchestral score hilariously accompanied the entire sequence, while Kim egged her on like any good sister would. I’ll never forget the sight of Khloé with binoculars to her face, trying to make sense of the presence of whales in the ocean. “What are they doing, mating? That’s sick.” I just know Khloé is perturbed by the ocean being 63-percent whale cum. She’s convinced me. You know what, Khloé? It is sick. Thank you for saying what no one else was brave enough to admit.
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