The year we hit peak nostalgia
These 10 homages and revivals took audiences back, even if they were sometimes pretty terrible
Our culture has been obsessed with nostalgia for a while now, but it may have hit its peak in 2016, with a slew of remakes, reboots, revivals, sequels and homages. Which ones were the best? But a few of us at the Washington Post ranked 10 nostalgia projects that really struck a chord with us this year.
1. Stranger Things
The lauded Netflix sci-fi thriller about a missing child in a small town paid tribute to a ton of movies from the 1970s and ‘80s, and became a phenomenon. I could barely tear myself away from the eight-episode series, but homages to “E.T.” and “Stand By Me” didn’t resonate with me so much as the feeling of what it was like to be a kid before the days of cellphones and the Internet.
2. La La Land
Musicals aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but for those of us willing to believe in a surreal world where singing and dancing are the only logical ways to express one’s emotions, the effects are dazzling. We don’t get many movie musicals these days, so each one feels like a throwback to another era. “La La Land” conjures up “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Swing Time.” And yet, the likely Oscar contender feels utterly contemporary despite its use of artifacts from different eras, including a shot of the observatory from “Rebel Without a Cause” and songs from the 1980s.
3. The X-Files
The original X-Files spoke to me then for the same reason the Internet speaks to me now: the show was a weekly exploration of the strangest rabbit holes that humans could think up. It certainly helped that one of the main characters was a good-looking weirdo and that the other was Scully. Another true thing about The X-Files is that the show was not very good for much of its later seasons. So when The XFiles TV revival was announced, I expressed my feelings in the following headline: “The X-Files revival has a chance of being horrible, but I don’t care.” After watching the actual six-episode return earlier this year, I stand by that observation.
4. Dixie Chicks
I started listening to the Dixie Chicks in 2003, just around the time they were essentially shunned from country music after Natalie Maines’ controversial comments about George W. Bush, so I never got to see them live. This year, when the Dixie Chicks announced they were going on tour for the first time in a decade, my friends and I snapped up tickets. I wondered if I would still feel the same connection. Then, upon hearing the opening song, “Taking the Long Way,” the inspirational tune about the road less travelled, I burst into tears and clearly had my answer.
5. Disney Channel original movies marathon
When Disney Channel announced that, in anticipation of its 100th original made-for-TV movie, it would be airing a marathon of the first 99, it was a nostalgia blitz. No winking references or obligatory cameos here: just Shia LaBeouf and Zac Efron acting their pubescent butts off and enough sap to fill a maple tree.
6. Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life
I had a lot of anxiety before I pressed “play” for the first time on Netflix’s revival of Gilmore Girls, my all-time favourite show: Would it be terrible? Would the fast-paced dialogue that initially charmed me now seem grating? Would the magic of the original series hold up? The answer to all those questions turned out to be ... “kind of.” The revival had many flaws, but it was still exciting to see the characters back onscreen together again.
7. Degrassi
As a teenager, I devoured every episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation. I continued to watch the show into my late 20s. By then, the actor who played the show’s cute basketball player Jimmy had become a full-blown superstar. Drake got a cheeky shoutout at the beginning of the franchise’s latest iteration, “Degrassi: Next Class,” which premièred in January on Netflix. I checked out the first few episodes to confirm that, yes, Degrassi still goes there.
8. My 2K Tour
I thought I knew exactly what I was getting into with the “My 2K Tour:” a night of ‘90s and early 2000s pop, starring 98 Degrees, OTown, Ryan Cabrera and Dream. Upon arrival, however, I found the whole thing unsettling, especially when O-Town started to play; it felt too surreal to see middle school dance music live in 2016. By the time 98 Degrees arrived onstage, I calmed down and was able to enjoy the throwback tunes of Nick Lachey and the gang.
9. Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters rolled into theatres with enough baggage to fill the Ecto-1. It was clear from all the enraged comments on the YouTube trailer that a certain segment of the population wouldn’t be satisfied no matter what. But for the rest of us, would the all-female version of Ghostbusters strike a balance between covering new ground and paying homage to the past? The answer was: Not exactly. The first Ghostbusters blended brilliantly delivered quips, action and horror. But that formula isn’t nearly as fresh anymore.
10. Fuller House
Listen, we all know Full House was terrible. It was shmaltzy, overly simplistic and poorly acted. But sometimes, that’s just what you’re in the mood to watch. But the shortcomings we tolerated in “Full House” are more annoying when used the exact same way 20-plus years later. And while the first season of “Fuller House” had enough throwbacks to childhood to make it a guilty pleasure, the second season proved that there can be too much of a bad thing.