"Succession creator Jesse Armstrong introduces a tech mogul by showing him riding in his fancy SUV with his sycophants, observing that he accidentally spelled the f-word with two u's when announcing a new product. He thinks this is hilarious, and the sycophants assure him that it is. This early moment, in which we learn both that this man is a giant boob and that no one around him does anything but drown him in affirmation, is very simple but very, very funny."
"I would be hard-pressed to choose a single moment from The Pitt, HBO Max's brilliant series about a Pittsburgh emergency department. But if I absolutely had to, and if I went on delight alone, I would choose charge nurse Dana, played by the Emmy-winning Katherine LaNasa, breaking up a fight in the waiting area and then telling the combatants with disgust, "Where do people you think you are? This ain't Philly!" (The great thing is that both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia find this flattering.)"
A fifteenth-anniversary collection of fifty pop-culture items from 2025 includes television, films, games, books, and other discoveries. The selections are explicitly personal rather than objective rankings, and many notable works remain unseen by the compiler. The HBO film Mountainhead introduces a tech mogul through a humiliating SUV moment where a misprinted expletive exposes sycophantic affirmation and the mogul's foolishness. HBO Max's The Pitt features charge nurse Dana breaking up a waiting-room fight and delivering a memorable line contrasting Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Apple TV's Pluribus depicts a global hive mind explaining itself via a soap-opera television face.
Read at www.npr.org
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