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RachelWatch Special Edition:The Year in Frivolity

Many, if not most, fans of The Rachel Maddow Show first become devoted to it for the earnest, geekball dedication to information depth and accuracy that Rachel and her staff all seem to share.

True to form, the show had many amazing, very serious moments this year. Rachel went to the Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq, chased down political candidates, gave a rousing Presidential speech, and used her formidable interview skills and incisive commentary to become the right wing’s scariest campfire story.

That said, it’s been a long, hard year, and I think we all deserve a dose of the other side of The Rachel Maddow Show‘s charm: Every now and then, they get a little goofy.

Please enjoy this biased and highly unscientific selection of some of the year’s best silliness. If you’d like a little more meat, I encourage you to check out the growing collection of #MaddowMoments on the always excellent MaddowBlog.

January began, as it should, with an eye toward the future. The future of television!

February, long unfairly stereotyped as a dreary month, turned out to hold untold highs and lows.

Rachel read a Seussian bedtime story to her viewers…

… And then ensured that no one in her audience would ever sleep again by running Senate candidate Carly Fiorina‘s infamous “demon sheep” ad. No, it’s not really as bad as you remembered. It’s much, much worse.

If you haven’t seen this, save yourself a computer screen and swallow that beverage before clicking.

And please remember: The TRMS folks are professionals. Messing around with demon sheep on your own can lead to horrific consequences.

Rachel also kicked off a year-long vagabond shoes theme by heading to New Orleans to take a look at the city’s (slow) recovery and help cheer the Saints toward a Super Bowl victory.

And then she left, secure and happy in the knowledge that all the city’s problems were behind it.

March, tired of the whole lion business, decided to go twelve times scarier and roar in like Liz Cheney. Rachel had the moxie to follow the conspiracy Ms. Cheney had sniffed out to its very roots — no matter how deep they might go.

In April, the members of the Supreme Court learned about pagers.

Yes, those things you stopped carrying in 1996.Yes, the actual United States Supreme Court. The one that will be deciding thorny issues on electronic surveillance, consumer tagging, Net neutrality, and stunning new ways to invade your privacy. Its members got a crash course on pagers this April.

Dear God, I wish this had been an April Fool’s prank. Fortunately, Rachel and Kent made it fun.

Despite the balmy breezes of Spring, (Pipe down, TRMS fans on the other side of the equator. I told you this would be a biased account.) May was the month when many on the far right woke up in a cold sweat and realized that this upstart teevee whippersnapper Maddow just might be in a position to make things difficult.

You can pinpoint the opening of their pores to Rachel’s interview with Rand Paul, and her unpunditlike refusal to stop asking a question until Paul had actually answered it.

You know it’s not going to be pretty when someone answers a direct yes or no question with “Well, the interesting thing is…”

Cold Fear of a Tenacious Interviewer, meet Rand Paul Flop Sweat.

… But perversely entertaining as that interview was, it had very little to do with our frivolity theme. That’s why we’re re-celebrating World Metrology Day.

Please note my generosity of spirit in posting this clip, as Dr. Maddow and I are still in a fight over her callous, uninformed, and entirely inaccurate remarks about the art of freehand pouring.

The fact that Dr. Maddow is entirely unaware of it does not change the fact that we are in a fight.

June helped drive home the importance of measuring and counting things accurately. Especially when you are checking those things as baggage.

And speaking of mysterious packages, the intrepid TRMS Players gave us a glimpse into the world of real-life spies. If you’ve ever chickened out of taking the SPECTRE entrance exam, take heart: Turns out espionage is way dumber than you thought it would be.

July is a month of heat, patriotism, and excitement! So why not learn to whip up a little something spicy in the kitchen of your mom?

 

Rachel left her own kitchen to travel to Afghanistan, but, ever the domestic type, she did pick up some lovely home furnishings.

(Personal to Richard Engel: I can’t help but notice that Rachel took a double sawbuck off you in that clip. I’ll send you $40 if you can get her to admit, on the air, that freehand pouring is an ancient, beautiful, and precise art, just like calculus or scrimshaw. It’s a win/win proposition. I’m just saying.)

The fact that Rachel had her very own gun rug didn’t mean that she forgot about her viewers. She returned in time to pass on a stern summer warning about cooling oneself with Socialist windows and roofing materials.

August was the month when Rachel finally answered the age-old question: How many bad-ass female bodyguards is enough when you’re surrounded by Italian models?

Obviously, that’s a minimum number of bad-ass female bodyguards, but still, it’s good to have a benchmark.

In September, Rachel eased us back into the school year with the official Tea Party coloring book.

Be sure to get your copy while supplies last. It’s a rare publication that can entertain, frighten, and bore your child to sleep all with a single page.

October is a month for thinking about what lies beneath surface appearances.

I’ll admit it: I had automatically written off Tank Jones because of his association with Levi Johnston. I was wrong. Incredibly wrong.

Not only did he gallantly pick up Rachel and friends at the airport, Tank seemed to be equal parts Alaskan insider knowledge and solid good sense. He is also the tallest thing I’ve ever called “adorable.” Go on and try to argue with that adjective. Just try.

After their travels, the good souls at The Rachel Maddow Show were too geeked for Election Night to go trick-or-treating (plus New York libruls just give out arugula and tofu), so they gave us a Halloween Night election special. The opening news rundown alone caused enough clamor on Twitter to wake the dead.

 

November saw most of us happily looking forward to sinking into a turkey coma, but Rachel was more interested in athleticism. Zenyatta wasn’t the first horse that Rachel has celebrated on the show, but I believe she’s the only one that Rachel would have joined for a true breakfast of champions.

In December, Rachel helped us update our naughty lists with a look at cheating in professional sports, and, in a satisfying full-year circle, showed off some bold new TRMS technology.

And then, like all good and industrious nerds, Rachel and staff finally got to play with their presents.

May your 2011 be happy, healthy, and full of frivolity. And maybe cool drones.

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