Now that the votes have been sorted and we’ve handed out our laurels for the year, it’s time for something a little more personal. We’re bringing back an A.V. Club tradition, one of foisting something that particularly resonated with us this year—could be a song, a single moment, or a whole season of TV—on the rest of humanity. For our final AVQ&A of 2025, we asked the staff: What’s your pop culture gift to the world?
As always, we invite you to contribute your own responses in the comments. And if you have a pop culture question you’d like us and fellow readers to answer in 2026, please email it to [email protected]. Happy holidays!
The Rehearsal, “Pilot’s Code”
While I can’t force everyone to watch all of The Rehearsal‘s incredible second season, I would insist that they experience Nathan Fielder’s transformation into pilot Sully Sullenberger for a single spectacular episode. As a comedy experiment, Fielder’s quest to replicate, rehearse, and perfect real-life moments—spending whatever money he can con from HBO—has been a brilliant, detailed oddity. The second season features Nazi-fied Paramount offices, confrontations with congressmen, and a fake singing competition. But the surreal social scientist reaches cruising altitude in “Pilot’s Code,” which sees him grotesquely reenact moments from Sully’s life and use details from his memoir to posit history’s funniest theory about what really happened during the Miracle On The Hudson. I only included the season’s trailer here because any clip from the episode robs you of the full experience. The needledrops are perfect, the production design is the best of the year, the ambition is overwhelming. If you only watch one episode of TV this year, you won’t find one with a better setup and payoff than those Fielder creates with a fake cockpit and a real iPod. [Jacob Oller]
The unhinged sweetness of Haha, You Clowns
There are plenty of ways to sell Joe Cappa’s animated series, Haha, You Clowns: It’s “Dudes rock” the TV show; it fits seamlessly into Adult Swim’s lineage of bizarre late-night cartoons; its 10th episode is a spiritual successor to BoJack Horseman‘s “Yes And.” You could use any one of these as an on-ramp to the show’s offbeat humor, but for me, its appeal is even more straightforward: It’s one of the sweetest shows to feature a bacteria-ridden hot tub and use a shootout as a button you’ll ever see. The strong family bond between widowed weatherman Tom Campbell and his large adult sons Preston, Tristan, and Duncan is at the core of the show, with the boys’ Kramer-like enthusiasm providing the tension and resolution for each new setup. It’s because they care so damn much that they’ll spike their dad’s ice cream with supplements, invite a pill-popping stranger over for dinner, and venture down the “Yes and” rabbit hole when one of them gets a little too into improv. Rarely has bighearted comedy been this sharp and warped. [Danette Chavez]
A reminder that all you need is two chords from Semi Trucks
Georgia Overdrive (PPM)
It was actually a pretty great music year for me. I was lucky enough to play bass on my very talented friend’s song in Chicago, get my mind blown seeing Spiritualized for the first time in 17 years, nab a Japanese pressing of an Ike & Tina classic and Billy Childish demos during the same record-store visit, and, yes, discover a bit of exciting new music too. About the latter: Now, I know basically nothing about Los Angeles band Semi Trucks or have much insight to bring to their LP Georgia Overdrive, which dropped in April on Post Present Medium, a label run by No Age’s Dean Allen Spunt. But I do know a killer opening track when I hear one—or like to think I do—and am a total sucker for songs that only need two chords to intoxicate me. “Flower,” by leader Brendan Sepe and co., is very much one of those songs, with sloppy guitars, feedback, coolly deadpanned vocals, and a locked-in sound. Play this one loud. [Tim Lowery]
Not having the first episode of Pluribus spoiled
When you’re as embedded in the cultural discourse as the readers and writers of The A.V. Club are, it’s hard to approach anything fresh. We’re inundated with trailers, plot summaries, casting announcements, and theories, while also generating some of our own. But I managed to miss all that before Pluribus premiered. In fact, I kept my feet out of the lava for weeks into its run, catching up with it around the time episode three premiered. I’m so grateful. The mystery of what Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seehorn’s latest collaboration drove the advertising for the show, and it paid off in an opening episode that grabbed me by the shoulders and knocked my stupid glasses off my stupid face. Gilligan does what he does best, building a tricky premise out of a house of cards and running up and down the flimsy house, adding support beams while constantly teasing that it might all fall apart. It’s so hard to see something fresh right now, and it’s even harder to do so after the episode airs. As my pop-culture gift to you, the reader who has yet to dive into Pluribus, watch that first episode and be amazed. [Matt Schimkowitz]
The Egg game wants to cook you, sunny side up
The freeware platformer Egg begins with a question for the philosophers (probably the Greek ones): what if you were an egg? Awakening from your foam plastic sarcophagus, you guide a chicken egg through pitfalls and traps, the crisp greens of its polygonal graphics calling to mind mascot platformers of yesteryear like Super Mario 64 and Spyro The Dragon. Matching its simple art style, the challenges begin straightforward enough. Use the space bar to jump and the WASD keys to move as you guide the egg through pleasant locales, leaping onto stationary platforms until you eventually find it a new “nest.” Mission accomplished, right? But as the camera cuts back to the egg carton, you now control another little guy from this six-pack. Here, the truth begins to reveal itself like a mask slipping off. Wait, this game is evil! Escalating events take you through a literal hell as you try to guide all six eggs through deviously hidden destinations guarded by even more devious platforming challenges that will crack your patience. The slow-burning realization that there’s more to Egg than it initially appears made this free-to-play browser game (from well-known designer Terry Cavanagh) one of the most memorable gaming experiences of the year. [Elijah Gonzalez]
Hallow Road
Hallow Road (Universal Pictures)
Matthew Rhys is one of my favorite actors, but I’m not being biased when I say Hallow Roadrules. The film, which premiered at SXSW this year, flew under the radar because of its limited-time Halloween release in the U.S. I don’t want to spoil anything about Babak Anvari’s psychological thriller (I’d recommend avoiding the trailer, too, if you can) because it’s best consumed by going in blind. What I will say is this: Rhys and Rosamund Pike play a married couple on the way to pick up their daughter from a crisis in the middle of the night. The entire movie pretty much takes place in real-time and in the claustrophobic space of their car. Anvari never lets the tension drop, and the masterful work from both leads helps us immerse into their worlds—even if the film never actually shows us anything beyond that damn car. The open-to-interpretation ending might annoy some, but I found it to be oddly profound. [Saloni Gajjar]
Swan Boy
Swan Boy (Brandon Reese)
Branson Reese has been writing and drawing his webcomic Swan Boy for long enough that its profane blend of hyper-specific references and gloriously absurd flights of fancy has already managed to infiltrate TV, having appeared as part of FX’s animated anthology series Cake back in 2021. But 2025 was the year Swan Boy not only got its hooks in my brain, but the year I decided to then mass-produce said hooks, and then ship them out to you. Is it Reese’s gift for bizarre dialogue, which makes his comic the only one I’ve read in years that matches the unnaturally natural cadences of Achewood in its prime? Is it the way he manages to keep his bizarre, asshole characters strangely grounded and likable, despite the fact that they act like nu-metal-obsessed Looney Tunes characters half the time? Was it the extended riff on Italian giallo movies that ended up turning into a One Piece battle between two men written with the thickest Italian accents imaginable? Yes. It was that last one. Go read Swan Boy. [William Hughes]
Monsters Unchained: The Frankenstein Experiment at Epic Universe
Monsters Unchained: The Frankenstein Experiment (Epic Universe)
In the late ’90s there was an amazing pinball machine called Monster Bash, where you had to activate the classic Universal monsters one-by-one by bashing stuff with a pinball, so that they could make it to their big gig, because somehow they’re a rock band now. It is, perhaps, the greatest pinball game of all time. Frank, Drac, and the gang got back together again this year, and although rocking wasn’t on the to-do list, they weren’t taking it easy; in 2025 they had nothing less than perfecting the theme park dark ride in their sights. Monsters Unchained: The Frankenstein Experiment at Epic Universe is an overwhelming multimedia extravaganza that zips you through Dr. Frankenstein’s castle as all your favorite monsters try to escape, using animatronics, screens, and an unpredictably flexible vehicle to create a thrilling, immersive experience that still tells a coherent story. Your seat glides through the sprawling monster brawl, zooming by giant robots of dusty old miscreants like the Mummy and the Phantom of the Opera as they reach out at you, lurching and tilting and at some points going fully horizontal as constant chaos churns around you. It’s not quite a thrill ride, and absolutely not a roller coaster, but you might want to pop a Dramamine or two a half-hour before getting in line if you have motion sickness issues. Like Monster Bash, it’s an inspired mash-up of these classic characters that are so vital to pop culture history, and a testament to the unique power of a theme park ride. [Garrett Martin]
