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The Happiest Surprises of the ’00s

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Yesterday we offered our choices for the biggest disappointments of the ’00s — all the promising things that just didn’t pan out. Today, we’re in a more positive mindset, so here are ten ugly ducklings that turned out to be swans. Expect the worst, and you may be pleasantly surprised.

neil_patrick_harris1. NEIL PATRICK HARRIS: When Doogie Howser somehow morphed into Dr. Mengele at the end of Starship Troopers, we chuckled at the subversive genius of director Paul Verhoeven. But Verhoeven hasn’t done much worth mentioning since, while Harris has turned out to be Mr. Entertainment. Every Monday night he’s got his sleeves rolled up, manually stimulating How I Met Your Mother‘s heart. They should have invented a nationally televised awards show for Best Performance in a Web Series just so that his work as Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible could be properly honored. And he himself should be required to host every awards show that doesn’t have Hugh Jackman or Steve Martin nailed down.

anvil-the-story-of-anvil2. ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL: In our snarky age, it’s hard to know which is more inspiring: that a couple of guys love making their critically and commercially ignored music so much that they’ve kept fighting to make it even as they push on towards the far side of middle age; or that a successful guy, Sacha Gervasi, was so loyal to the impact they had on him as a kid that he made this tribute to them with the money he got for writing a Spielberg movie, The Terminal. Personal to Sarah Palin: if you’re still confused about who’s not a quitter and a loser, see this and with any luck all will become clearer.

the-shield3. THE SERIES FINALE OF THE SHIELD: Great TV series are a lot more common than great TV series finales. Even if you were amazed as the creators of The Shield tore up the idea that fraternal loyalty in any way redeemed their bad cops, you might’ve doubted that they’d give their central figure the fate he had coming to him. (What fate could be bad enough?) While people will continue to argue about whether or not Tony Soprano is dead, we at least have the comfort of knowing that Vic Mackey’s in Hell, every weekday from nine to five, with half an hour for lunch.

gretchen-mol4. GRETCHEN MOL: In 1997, a premature Vanity Fair cover story on the then-unknown Mol made her a laughingstock and the poster child for unearned celebrity. Mol is hardly a household name today, but she’s recovered from her first unhappy brush with fame through hard and honest work, most notably on the big screen as Bettie Page and on the American version of the TV series Life on Mars. More people will eventually catch up with these than watched them at the time, but DVDs last longer than Vanity Fair covers anyway.

al-franken5. AL FRANKEN: The junior Senator from Minnesota’s first public statement about politics was a sketch written for Saturday Night Live in which a White House portrait of Abraham Lincoln called Richard Nixon “such a dip.” Even the people who never thought it was strange that the star of Bedtime for Bonzo was running for president may have to tip their hats.

chinese-laundry6. CHINESE DEMOCRACY: No, it’s not the greatest album ever made. It’s probably not even one of the hundred best albums of the decade. Maybe not one of the top five hundred. But it exists, and it has interesting and listenable qualities. Seriously, who saw that coming?


christopher-lee7. CHRISTOPHER LEE: A decade ago, the venerable horror star was someone whose cameo in Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow inspired whisperings of “Hey, he’s still alive!” Since then, his roles in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the rebooted Star Wars series reignited his stardom among fantasy geeks, and the Wachowskis are probably still kicking themselves for not having fit him into the Matrix sequels. (It could have only helped.) Earlier this year he was knighted by the Queen, who probably wondered herself what had taken her so damn long.

homecoming8. HOMECOMING: Joe Dante’s hour-long film, made for Showtime’s Masters of Horrors series, about deceased war veterans trying to vote against the idiot scumbags whose pointless war got them killed in the first place, was, for most of the decade, the sole evidence that you could make a good movie about the Iraq War. This year, Kathryn Bigelow released The Hurt Locker, which is in most ways even better, but which suffers from a disappointing lack of zombies.

magpublicspace9. n +1, A PUBLIC SPACE, STOP SMILING: …and a number of other smallish print magazines that, jumping up throughout the decade to fill the gap in good writing and fresh and meaningful cultural coverage, gave the lie to the idea that we’ve seen the last of the hard-copy world. Of course, most of them have their own nifty websites, which in turn help to fill the gap left by the demise of such valuable online “magazines” as Feed and Suck.

lady-gaga10. LADY GAGA: We like her, she’s screwy.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Jackie Earle Haley, Naomi Watts, the 52 comics series, Ben Affleck’s directorial debut Gone Baby Gone, Achewood, No More Heroes, David Tennant, Tony Jaa, Robert Downey Jr. getting his shit together, Battlestar Galactica, All Star Superman, Nurse Jackie, Eagles of Death Metal, The Complete Peanuts, Casino Royale, Craig Ferguson, Ian McShane, the U.S. The Office, Q-Tip’s The Renaissance, Katamari Damacy, “Lazy Sunday”, the New York Dolls reunion, Al Gore’s Nobel Prize, Chappelle’s Show, AMC’s original dramatic series, SCTV on DVD, Portishead’s Third., and Human Giant.

Click here for the biggest disappointments of the ’00s.

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