The 10 Best TV Needle Drops of 2024

12/24/2024 12:00 PM

We're as happy to argue for hours about the merits of oft-maligned Christmas songs as the next group of highly opinionated culture writers; I personally will think very hard about engaging in fisticuffs to defend the honor of Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime." However, as we stare down whatever 2025 is going to be, it's time to set aside our pettiest differences to participate in one of the best traditions December has to offer: celebrating TV's best needle drops of 2024. Need a righteously intense anthem? Motörhead and Rage Against the Machine are ready to go! Want to sob your eyes out? Bronski Beat and Kris Kristofferson have you covered. And if laughter's on your list of the best things in life, go straight to No. 1.

Shrinking 

"Letting Go," Angie McMahon

Appears in: Episode 203, "Psychological Something-ism"

Angie McMahon's imperfection-celebrating anthem soundtracks several plot threads in the last minutes of "Psychological Something-ism," suiting each one equally well. Jimmy's client Grace, who like McMahon's narrator feels like she's been lying on her living room floor for the last six months, finally lets go of the Los Angeles chapter of her life and heads back to Vancouver. Likewise, Jimmy lets go of trying to be right, instead walking gratefully into the (mostly) warm welcome Brian and Charlie offer him following a huge, not-quite-air-clearing argument. Alice, though, is putting herself through bad judgment-laden trials by fire, layering rage on top of regret on top of grief. As in the song, Alice can see "From miles away that I would detonate / I tried some magic tricks to skip my fate." Her inevitable depletion of impulse control culminates in berating the drunk driver who killed her mother, then trying to self-soothe by sleeping with Connor. Not your best friend's boyfriend, who is also your next-door neighbor who used to have a crush on you! McMahon's Florence Welch-indebted voice meets a boygenius-y melody to yield a perfect moment of scream-singing "It's okay, it's okay, make mistakes, make mistakes."

Say Nothing

"Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)," Kris Kristofferson

Appears in: Episode 103, "I'll Be Seeing You"

Sometimes a song hits the moment we hear it, and sometimes it's a long, long fuse. Playing over the opening scene of Say Nothing's third episode, Kris Kristofferson's rueful ballad is very much the latter. The vivacious Provisional IRA volunteers Dolours and Marian Price are learning how to be cool under pressure while crossing the border in a car full of explosives, while also lovingly ridiculing their more experienced friend and bomb-transport tutor Joe Lynskey over his inability to distinguish Kristofferson from, say, Gordon Lightfoot. The song's spare, vivid lyrics of a lost love, paired with Kristofferson's straightforward, confiding baritone, combine to foreshadow the reckless love that will spell Joe's doom by the end of the episode: In the fever dream of falling in love with Rachel, the wife of another PIRA volunteer, Joe seems to have believed that since "She's opened every door in my mind," it would follow that "Dreaming is as easy / As believing that it's never gonna end."

My Lady Jane

"Wet Dream," Wet Leg

Appears in: Episode 105, "I'm Gonna Change The World"

"What if … I didn't want a divorce?" That's a rather oblique preamble to consummating one's marriage, but after five full episodes of Lady Jane Grey (by now, Queen Jane) and her shape-shifting husband Lord Guildford Dudley (secretly a horse during daylight hours) flirting and bickering and sword-fighting and irritating each other into making out, the only wonder is that it took so long for these two crazy kids to get down to business. The classic trope of a forced marriage, a gleefully anachronistic timeline, and the fantasy element of the persecuted shape-shifting Ethians standing in for the great schism of the Protestant Reformation all merge in a funny and sweetly hot first time in Guildford's love nest in the stables. Yes, it's a literal roll in the hay, scored to a call-and-response enticement to the lovers: "Let's begin".

The Bear

"Laid," James

Appears in: Episode 310, "Forever"

Only The Bear could suggest that a joyful mid-'90s song about a fun nightmare of a relationship, one that races on jangly guitars to a chorus that's nothing but a single, soaring syllable of "Eeeeeeeeeeeeee," can trigger a panic attack. After the final service concludes at Chef Terry's restaurant, everyone but Carmy parties at Sydney's new place, hurling themselves around the empty living room and devouring improvised waffle pizzas. That "Eeeeeeee," so ecstatic for everyone else, is a proxy in Syd's mind for all of the reasons she's been avoiding the one choice she must make: fish (sign the agreement to co-own the Bear with Carmy) or cut bait (go work with Chef Adam at his new place). There are no words for those feelings, just "Eeeeeeeeee" and sobbing gasps for breath alone in the stairwell.

We Are Lady Parts

"The Reason," Hoobastank

Appears in: Episode 201, "Villain Era" and Episode 206, "Glass Ceiling Feeling"

Amina getting squarely friend-zoned by her crush Ahsan in We Are Lady Parts's first season couldn't be the end of their story. Sure enough, their mutual affections eventually get synced up in season two, thanks in part to Hoobastank's immortal power ballad. By the time her all-female Muslim punk band returns from an exhilarating, if unprofitable, summer tour for which Ahsan worked as a roadie, the pendulum has swung and now Ahsan is the one pining and badly warbling "The Reason" as he breaks down their stage setup. Amina finds it endearing but is riding too high on a wave of professional and personal confidence to think much of it. It's a classic arc: He gets jealous of her affinity for basic white folk-music fanboys, she accuses him of being a basic bitch, and slowly, song by song and one cheesy radio DJ-style commentary at a time, his perfect-for-Amina mixtape wins her over. What song does she pick for her grand gesture of an apology concert in the season finale? Well, he is her reason for changing (just a bit!) who she used to be.

Senna

"Ace of Spades," Motörhead

Appears in: Episode 103, "Ambition" 

Prior to his death at 34, in a crash seen worldwide from the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994, legendary Brazilian Formula One driver Ayrton Senna won three world championships, becoming an international sex symbol along the way. By the midway point of Netflix's eponymous limited series Senna, he has successfully raced his way to driving for McLaren, where his teammate and chief rival is four-time world champion Alain Prost. To win races, and eventually capture his first championship, he must pour all of his confidence, determination, and preternatural mechanical awareness into each drive. "Ace of Spades" comes roaring in just when Senna needs it the most, starting at a heart-pounding 140 bpm and never letting up as a montage of races unfold before us. The monster riff, driving drum, and Lemmy Kilmister's insistent, whining growl deliver spookily prescient lyrics: "Gambling's for fools / But that's the way I like it, baby / I don't want to live forever." If a song were an F1 race, it'd be "Ace of Spades."

Only Murders in the Building

"Scenes From an Italian Restaurant," Billy Joel

Appears in: Episode 407, "Valley Of The Dolls" 

The doorbell chime at the Long Island home of Charles-Haden Savage's sister Doreen is the opening piano trill to Billy Joel's "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant," four notes that conjure a person and her world. When we hear it, moments after Charles, Oliver, and Mabel arrive at what they hope will be a safe house, it's a punch line before we even hear the setup. These two seconds — go ahead, try not to sing "bottle of white" immediately — are a marvel of expository efficiency, preparing us for the scale and intensity of Doreen's personality (loud, helmet-haired, sometimes drunk at breakfast) and preoccupations (creepy dolls standing in for her five grown daughters, her rift with Charles, and whether or not she can get in Oliver's pants).

Industry

"Bombtrack," Rage Against the Machine

Appears in: Episode 307, "Useful Idiot"

After a season of nerve-rackingly high highs and low lows, the shit is well and truly hitting the fan, and in classic Industry fashion, it's all happening against the backdrop of a lavish party celebrating (well, memorializing) Pierpoint & Co.'s 150th anniversary. Lumi's catastrophic IPO and everything after; Harper launching Leviathan Alpha with Petra; Rishi's dangerous game of chicken with the currency markets; Yasmin and Harper navigating the fallout from her father's death — all of it pales in comparison to a full episode of Eric and Bill racing to keep the firm afloat, and at the end of it all, Eric has insider-traded Bill right out of a job. As the group of prospective buyers from Saudi Arabia file into the room to complete the introduction Eric has brokered, and Zack De La Rocha sing-screams "I warm my hands upon the flames of the flag / To recall the downfall and the businesses that burnt us all", the mood among the other executive committee members shifts from "Phew, we did it!" to "Oh, no, what have we done?" Fist-pumping, head-banging Schadenfreude, baby! There's nothing like it.

Somebody Somewhere

"Smalltown Boy," Bronski Beat

Appears in:Episode 301, "Margarinis"

Another classic needledrop approach, flawlessly executed: the same song, deployed twice to bookend an episode, giving the audience two ways to feel about it. And feel we do! In Somebody Somewhere's final season premiere, Sam starts out roughly where she's been, having rebuilt a life for herself in her hometown of Manhattan, Kansas. In the car heading to brunch, she sings along jauntily to Bronski Beat's slice of mid-'80s synthpop and its trancelike chorus of "Run away turn away run away turn away," but we know something's missing. Later, after seeing how much fulfillment Iceland, the gentle giant renting her parents' house, gets out of his relationship with his dog, Sam decides to pour all of her longing for connection into adopting Pepper, an adorable Pomeranian at the local shelter, but someone else gets there first. She deletes her selfie with Pepper, a tidy, devastating erasure of the notion that a future with that dog was ever a possibility, and drives home alone.

This time, "Smalltown Boy" is still bouncy and fun, but we can hear past its exuberant tempo and Jimmy Somerville's heavenly falsetto to the grief and rage behind it all. Sam's not so much singing along with an anthem of her youth as being shown a mirror of her own, seemingly stagnant existence. The gay protagonist of "Smalltown Boy" flees his hometown to find the love that isn't waiting there for him, but that's not really an option for Sam now. She's not a young person about to spread her wings; she's middle-aged and feels hopelessly earth-bound.

Rivals

"Addicted to Love," Robert Palmer

Appears in: Episode 101, "Episode One"

Hit "play" on the first episode of Rivals and you are immediately treated to a sustained close-up of Rupert Campbell-Black's naked buttocks as he thrusts away to the increasingly delighted moans of his partner-for-the-moment in the bathroom of the Concorde as it approaches the sound barrier sometime in 1985. By soundtracking this moment to Robert Palmer's peak '80s MTV staple "Addicted to Love," Rivals lays down one hell of a marker: This show is going to be horny, campy fun and is going to spend approximately the GDP of Liechtenstein on music clearances alone. Who knows what will happen next, but it hardly matters, because as the song and scene continue, it's clear that Rupert's assignation has been very precisely choreographed to match the beat and lyrics, literalizing its sonic crescendo as a physical one. Rivals's soapy tale of the professional, sexual, and even occasionally romantic rivalries among the newly and generationally wealthy in England's bucolic Cotswolds region begins as it means to go on with a bang and full of '80s signifiers. Tweeds! Black pantyhose with bright-red pumps! Shoulder pads! Exuberant, en plein air sex! Only the briefest mention of HIV/AIDS! There's no better way to announce it: This show is so horny that it's horny for its own horniness.