Well, folks, enough looking ahead. It's time to look back. It's time for the first annual Michael and Us Academy Awards.

It's a wonderful night for Oster. Oscar, Oster will win. You didn't think I wasn't going to do this, did you?

That's right. For the rest of the episode, we will be looking back not only at the year, but also at some of the

greatest hits of the podcast, the movies that moved us, the moments that changed us.

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

Next up, we had, what build itself is the first film of the COVID era, which was coastal elites,

which was, I guess, the first movie made over Zoom, which, I mean, uniquely unpleasant to watch.

I mean, one of our awards is going to be worst movie of the podcast.

I think we can safely scratch that off the list unless you disagree because this was clearly

this one. Why limit it to the podcast? Worst movie I've ever seen possibly. I don't think I've ever had a

worst time watching a movie. Well, we move on to a movie that I actually think was maybe my favorite

episode of the year, not just in how it came out, but also in the recording of it, which is the

Monsieur Verdeu episode.

It's a movie that I hold very dear.

And it's a movie that to me, and I don't necessarily want to regurgitate everything I said on that episode, but a movie who's kind of cold, ugly beauty best represented how I and

perhaps also you were feeling in the wake of the Biden victory.

Yeah, actually, I'm glad you bring this up because it's actually something else I want to say.

I want to sort of make a more abstract point about this whole exercise we've been doing,

sort of remembering, you know, thinking back through the year.

You know, we've talked a lot about the movies, and we haven't talked as much about the context in which they were rooted. And I think

the reason for that is that the year really only has two phases, right? There's the COVID phase and

there's the non-COVID phase. And those two phases also happen to match on to what was happening

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