Nine Things That I Am Delighted Came Back in the 2010s

Back in the late 2000s when I was doing this blog, I would occasionally pepper my videogame blog articles with other entries related to geeky things that I also enjoyed. Continuing that, here are nine things that amazingly returned in the 2010s and my thoughts on them.

Midnight Oil

My favorite band  in the world broke up in 2002 after a decades-long career, and only reformed a few times after that to do special gigs here and there. Peter Garrett, the lead singer, went on the serve in the Australian government, and the other members kept busy with other projects. There was, for a very long time, no talk nor hope of a reunion, much less a reunion tour.

Cut to early 2016 when Peter Garrett cranked out a solo album, his time in the government done and seemingly really enthusiastic to get back into music.

Fans who hoped that this was a precursor to an Oils reunion were ecstatic the following year when not just a reunion was announced, but a massive worldwide tour, to my amazement. The first dates announced, however, put the nearest show to me as either Toronto or Chicago, so I was resigned to not getting to see them due to the sheer distance needed to travel. Late in the tour, however, new dates were added that included The House of Blues up in Cleveland, and thanks to my generous significant other, we got tickets to see the Oils in a small venue. Many of their shows on the Great Circle Tour were in large venues, but this club was smaller and we had great balcony seats with this view:

The nightmarish insanity of the times we live in were not passed by the band, calling out the corruption of the then current administration and Trump in particular. Peter Garrett also told the audience that they had stopped to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame where they found their band mentioned on a tiny plaque in one display. Not bitterness about their lack of recognition, but rather a shining light on the relevance of inclusion in the Hall, I think.

Of course the next hope was a new LP of new material from the band, but that did not come until late 2020 and in the form of a shorter album with multiple collaborations with other artists called The Makarrata Project":

Sadly, shortly after the album's release, bassist Bones Hillman passed away. Before his tragic passing, he apparently told the band to replace him and that the show must go on, because the cause is too important. Tour dates for a hopefully post-COVID 2021 in Australia were announced later.

Mystery Science Theater 3000

Rifftrax continues to carry the torch from the 2000s, moving past synched-up mp3s playing alongside your DVD to multiple releases of fully riffed movies. We caught a few of these in the 2010s that were done in a live theater somewhere and simulcast to theaters all over the country. They did Manos again, and a Kickstarter to do Starship Troopers! It was a reminder of seeing the premiere of Mystery Science Theater: The Movie live in a theater full of Misties back in the 1990s.

But a huge flood of Netflix cash swept through the vast backlog of properties left untouched by other studios, and MST3K was continued for its 11th and 12th seasons with a new cast of humans, but the same bots. The formula held and the cast was great, even bringing back some level of invention exchange.

While fickle-ass Netflix gave up after two seasons, the show will go on. Best of all, there are free (but not commercial free) channels on Pluto TV that run reruns of classic MST3K and Rifftrax episodes all day long. How cool is that? The audience for all of this is big enough to ensure lots of riffs for the foreseeable future.

The Tick

Third time's a charm? After a classic 1990s cartoon, a "Seinfeld with Superheroes" short live-action in the 2000s, the great streaming wave of cash swept through Amazon Prime in the late 2010s. With it, a contest was created for viewers to select their favorite pilot from d a bunch of entries. The winner was a pilot for a new live-action Tick series, made with modern special effects and for modern viewing sensibilities.

What I mean by that is that this is a much darker version of the Tick, still hilariously funny at times, but with characters rooted in some deep psychological shit. The reward for winning the pilot contest was a full season order, and they delivered, creating a fantastic story arc, lots of great secondary characters, and one of the best super-villains to hit any screen, the Terror played by Jackie Earl Haley.

A second season expanded on the various side characters and developed more lore of their crazy version of a world with superheroes. Amazon, having taken fickle lessons from Netflix, axed the show after that. It's too bad, too, as it was really one of the best superhero shows ever made for television, with a ton of potential had it been allowed to continue.

Maybe they will try again in a decade.

Hassle Castle

For much of my childhood, I dreamed of being a cartoonist, and had been drawing my own comics on a regular basis since I could remember. No shame in saying that they were not that great, because I was a kid just doing it for fun. Copiers and personal computers with printers were not that prevalent a thing in the late 1970s, and although my dad was a press room foreman at a real print shop, there was no technical way to make and sell multiple copies of my comics anyway.

One day in 1977 in the next town over, my parents and I stopped in a newsstand and I saw an actual self-published black and white comic book among all the regular national comic books and magazines:

I did say it was a black-and-white comic, but I colored in some of the cover with marker in my youthful lack of concern for future appreciation. The author was, as I suspected, a local adult person with not just the creative genius to come up with this horror-pun-minute classic, but with the means to publish and sell it. I picked up 3 more issues in 1978 but never followed up on it until decades later, with a Google search for the author.

It turns out David Lady went on to distinguish himself as a world famous sci-fi/horror movie mask collector and expert and maintains a Facebook group for fans of his work. He did not abandon Hassle Castle, though, and published 2 large volumes in the 2010s. One was available from a personal website which I think he took down in favor of his Facebook group, and another is still for sale on eBay.

I cannot recommend them enough. Great characters, silly stories, subtle commentary, and the best horror puns I've ever read.

Zima

Nostalgia washes through modern culture so prevalently now, but it's a double edged sword. I sometimes fear a future where everything is nostalgia reboots and remakes and nothing original blows us away. The 1990s are at their peak of nostalgia as the children and teens of that time have taken their place as adults with spending cash.

Zima, the refreshing malt beverage that swept through 1990s culture starting in 1994, was retired in the early 2000s. The brand was owned by Coors, however, who revived it for the summers of 2017 and 2018, seeking to cash in on sweet nostalgia taste. 

My own nostalgia comes from drinking Zima at the finest restaurant I ever worked at, with the coolest crew. We kicked ass as a top-10 fine dining restaurant during that time, and Zima was our colorless, odorless drink of choice during those long days. It drank easy and quick, went down smooth, and looked like 7Up if you poured it into the Styrofoam cup that sat on your station while you slaved on the grill all day. I was (and remain) not a great drinker, so Zima was safe for that working buzz/keep your shit together ratio required by the job.

During those two aforementioned modern summers, I drank Zima again, and was openly mocked by friends and family for it. A few we shared it with enjoyed it, and some recommended dropping Jolly Rancher candy in the bottle. In reality, I did not miss Zima when it was gone again (and I keep a 6-pack stashed in the garage). There was a weird aftertaste to this modern Zima which is not present in my preferred replacement, Smirnoff Ice Triple Black.

Arrested Development

This 2000s comedy classic returned with a new season on Netflix which was good, but confusing at first because of a warped chronology within the episodes of the season. Noting that awkwardness, the new season was reworked to be more chronologically straightforward. I have seen that season but not the other new season they added, but have come to realize that Arrested Development is a tough show to drop in and drop out of.

Not that it's a soap opera level of continuity to follow, it just flows better in a consistent binge-watching schedule rather than an episode here and and episode there. Nonetheless, the show and cast were still outrageously funny and the pace of the show whiplash-fast. I'm glad we got to see more of the Bluths and their wacky world.

TV Star Trek

Movie Star Trek in the 2010s consisted of Kelvin-timeline cast adventures that were mostly satisfying. Late in the decade, Star Trek was back where it really belongs, on television. The big media conglomerate that owns it is CBS Viacom, and when they wanted to start up their own subscription-based streaming service, they smartly tapped into the Star Trek well and got a bunch of Trekkers to subscribe to it for just one show.

Star Trek Discovery takes place on a ship from just a few years before The Original Series. This ship is a science vessel containing a very experimental new type of engine that immediately makes no sense seeing as it would change everything in some of the previous Star Trek shows where no such engine is ever talked about or known to exist. it would have really helped out the USS Voyager, for example.

Luckily, this discrepancy is fully explained by the end of the second season. While the show started out in a weird direction with weird Klingons, the characters and situations have really gelled, and some familiar faces from The Original Series have shown up to help set up their own spinoff. In fact, Discovery was joined by Picard in 2020, a series centered around an elderly old friend whose name is in the title. That show, too , became really enjoyable, and helps justify the CBS All Access subscription a lot more.

Beavis and Butt-Head

In 2011 Beavis and Butt-head returned to MTV for a season. While more of these two was welcome, it did not last long and Mike Judge moved on to other projects. Their 1990s antics translated well to the 2010s, and they even riffed on modern videos and reality shows as well in the new season.

Rumor is that in 2020, he is looking to bring back the duo for another season, possibly on Comedy Central. 

Jay and Silent Bob

Kevin Smith's View Askew connected movie universe ended with Clerks 2, sadly, but understandable as the director moved on to other projects. After a near-death heart attack and subsequent recovery, he went to the well one more time to make Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, where the characters rehash their trip to Hollywood from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back to stop a reboot of the movie they tried to stop before.

As with Clerks 2, though, this was not simply a rehash of old jokes and characters; no, this one had a lot to say about fatherhood, maturity, and of course Hollywood rebooting everything. Smith weaves all of that so well, even with the smallest moments featuring old characters whose own journeys brought them back to the world of Jay and Silent Bob. It was a heartwarming celebration of the silly joys of playing in that world and recognizing together that we've all gotten old, but that's ok.