Underrated Moments From Our Favorite Movies And TV Shows In 2022
Vote up the TV moments of 2022 you couldn't stop thinking about.
So much film and TV content is released year after year that sometimes small, individual moments - in movies and shows both good and bad - get lost in the mix of broader talks about what the overall best stories were that graced our screens. We're here to remind you of some of our favorite scenes and moments this year.
- 1
Interrogation Scenes That Defied Assumptions - 'The Batman'
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To its credit, Matt Reeves’s The Batman - the third restart of the franchise this century - is not trying to reinvent the comic-book wheel. It does put the iconic character into a specific context - the neo-noir detective thriller, and, more specifically, the serial-killer procedural, one that proudly wears its Se7en inspiration on its gritty PG-13 sleeves.
But as straightforward as it is as a thriller and Gotham City movie - a rotting urban nightmare besieged by a calculating new villain who does more to threaten the corrupt sociopolitical establishment than does the vigilante ostensibly self-created to do so - two scenes in particular stand out to me as examples of the shrewd way Reeves plays with the built-in codes and assumptions of these genres. The way clues and connections make particular conclusions seem not only easy but glaringly obvious, only for those conclusions to evaporate once they’re put to the test.
Everything revolves around two archetypal figures - not within DC’s iconography, but within that of the crime thriller. There is the savant-like master detective, and there is the nigh-omniscient master criminal. Batman and Riddler, in this case. The first scene is when Batman and James Gordon capture Oswald Cobblepot and subject him to an unofficial interrogation on the outskirts of town. They attempt to strong-arm Penguin by insisting they know he’s the rat in crime boss Carmine Falcone’s operation. They know this - which is to say, they believe they know this - because of the mountain of details and clues they’ve meticulously pieced together - a puzzle they’ve meticulously solved. Except… Cobblepot is not the rat. And he’s not the rat because the master detective put together those pieces incorrectly - a fact Cobblepot memorably points out by making fun of Batman’s poor grasp on the Spanish language. Oops.
The second scene is an interrogation of a different (though still off-the-books) sort, late in the film when Riddler has been captured and Batman pays him a visit. For much of the film, we have assumed - and more important, Batman has assumed, based on a more-than-reasonable interpretation of the letters, clues, and apparent taunts that have been left for him at each crime scene - that Riddler knows who he is. Knows that Batman is, in fact, Bruce Wayne. So it comes as something of a shock - again, to us and to Batman - when it turns out Riddler knows no such thing. His interest in Batman and his interest in Bruce Wayne are entirely separate. His incarcerated “Bruuuuuce Waaaaaayne!” moan upon Batman’s arrival to his cell is not, as we first assume, a mask-off moment between the two; rather, it's an angry lament that Bruce Wayne is the one target that got away. Batman’s confusion and budding realization that his nemesis does not, in fact, know his identity is borderline comical. The joke is on Riddler, the genius master criminal; he just doesn’t know it.
To take it a step further, far from Batman being his primary target, Riddler believes he and the Caped Crusader have been working in concert (if unofficially) all along. It’s a twist on the common “hero and villain are two sides of the same coin” idea, filtered through the prism of Riddler’s psyche, and his perverted sense of justice. That unholy (and dually misunderstood) alliance also flips a switch in Batman - who's still, after all, new at this whole vigilante gig. It’s the key to him realizing his heroic impulses must be put to use actively helping the innocent rather than just inflicting fear and punishment on the bad guys. A serial killer expressing admiration and kinship with you tends to make you rethink your life choices.
-Chris Bellamy
Great moment? - 2
Soldier Boy Tells Off Homelander - 'The Boys'
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It's tough to overstate how memorable Jensen Ackles's performance as Soldier Boy was in the third season of The Boys. Lifelong Supernatural fans (like me) were waiting with bated breath to see him take on his first role since the long-running series ended, and Ackles did not disappoint. In just one season, Soldier Boy delivered so many unforgettable lines and managed to also be a comedic relief while portraying one of the most complicated characters the series has ever introduced - Homelander's biological father.
Antony Starr's Homelander is otherworldly. He is devastatingly human in a suped-up body, devoid of even conditional love and in constant search of it. We've watched Homelander shamelessly nurse from Madelyn Stillwell à la Lysa Arryn Game of Thrones-style (yet somehow even more disturbing). He genuinely cares and wants to nurture his biological son, Ryan. When Homelander meets his father, Soldier Boy, a man he didn't think existed, the stars aligned in his eyes. The narcissist he is, he can't possibly comprehend what happens next, which is when Soldier Boy labels him "a disappointment."
As it turns out, generational trauma is a real thing. Soldier Boy was nothing but a disappointment to his own father. He never got the love he deserved, either. "We're not alone anymore," Homelander says with tears in his big, blue puppy eyes. He holds Ryan's hand, physically trying to bring the three of them together. It was satisfying to hear someone tell Homelander the truth to his face. "Maybe if I’d raised you, I could’ve made you better. And not some weak, sniveling p***y, starved for attention."
-Raelyn Giansanti
Great moment? - 3
Viserys Brings His Family Together... For A Moment - 'House of the Dragon'
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Episode 8 was House of the Dragon at its very best in its debut season, and it was all held down by Paddy Considine's Emmy-worthy performance. King Viserys's humbling yet powerful walk to the Iron Throne halfway through the episode stole the episode (with good reason) as the failing king proves to himself, his family, and his subjects that he has just enough strength to rule one more day. But it was a much subtler moment later in the episode that cemented the episode as the season's best for me.
After giving a final rousing speech to his grown extended family about joining together rather than tearing each other down, Viserys collapses into his seat and watches as his family seems to start healing and accepting each other before his eyes. Kids are pairing off and dancing; parents and friends are smiling and joking. Paired together with Ramin Djawadi's always-stellar score, we watch Viserys take it in with a look of contentment on a face that's known nothing but pain for years.
Viserys got a lot of flack during Season 1 for being fairly-to-extremely incompetent and taking one L after another - and he's about to take his biggest one when he confuses Alicent for Rhaenyra on his deathbed. But in this moment he gets everything he wants. His family is united, strong, and most of all, happy. King Viserys I dies thinking he's achieved his greatest victory as his last. It's all the sadder knowing that win doesn't even last the night.
-Jacob Bryant
Great moment? - 4
The 'Peacemaker' Opening Credits - 'Peacemaker'
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James Gunn has a knack for introducing a younger generation to music they might never have given a chance otherwise, and he had probably his biggest success doing so at the beginning of 2022 with the Peacemaker opening credits. All the main characters performing a heavily choreographed dance number to the Wig Wams' “Do Ya Wanna Taste It” took the internet by storm week after week. The whole package served as the perfect oddball opening to an equally weird (and surprisingly good) series to follow.
A few opening intros in 2022 were deemed unskipabble by me (House of the Dragon, White Lotus), but I actively looked forward to Peacemaker's silly dance number week after week. I'm not ashamed to admit this opening had such a hold on me that “Do Ya Wanna Taste It” actually ended up at the top of my 2022 Spotify Wrapped. Now that's the power of a good opening.
-Jacob Bryant
Great moment? - 5
She-Hulk And Daredevil Get Together - 'She-Hulk: Attorney at Law'
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The MCU gets many things right. Romance is not one of those things. Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff's situationship was dry and dusty. Their "flirting" was forced and unnatural. Incredibly, Steve Rogers and Sharon Carter were worse. Their scenes together were so awkward, specifically their now-infamous car garage kissing scene, that it's now become a meme. It wasn't until the introduction of Wanda and Vision in Avengers: Infinity War when things started looking up for a chance of tangible romance, but those hopes came and went in under two hours. Vision was dead and Wanda was left broken. WandaVision was heartbreaking; true romance was sparse.
She-Hulk was a breath of fresh air. Unlike its predecessors, this installment of Phase 4 didn't take itself too seriously. Fans got to see the playful side of the MCU, one that isn't filled with world-ending stakes, but low-level superheroes looking to score some fame and fortune. Jen Walters (Tatiana Maslany), charming lawyer-turned Hulk, navigates a new job while defending herself from the inevitable enemies that being a Hulk brings. There's one problem - Jen is a normal girl! She doesn't want to fight crime; she wants to fall in love. Grappling with her new identity, she finds herself on dates with superhero fetishists and entitled fanboys in a montage that's almost too accurate to watch without a scowl. These men want to date She-Hulk; they don't want to date Jen.
Enter Matt Murdock. Eliciting a reaction from fans on par to his cameo in No Way Home, he shows up in She-Hulk and beats Jen in court. There are no hard feelings, however, which is made clear at the bar where they start to shamelessly flirt. The wheels start turning in Jen's head even before they take on some enemies together, beating the cojones out of an army of henchmen. Filled with adrenaline and even more witty back-and-forth, the smash cut to a fiery makeout in Jen's apartment was really the only logical conclusion to this team-up. Watching Daredevil do the walk of shame in costume was just icing on the cake. I'm sure Tatiana Maslany could feign chemistry with a cup of orange juice, but watching her and Cox come together felt like the ultimate treat.
-Raelyn Giansanti
Great moment? - 6
Cad Bane Faces Off With Cobb Vanth - 'The Book of Boba Fett'
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Let's just get this out of the way at the top: The Book of Boba Fett wasn't very good. The first four episodes of the series were a bleary and plodding affair that split runtimes between Boba trying to shore up support as the new gang leader of Tattooine and bacta tank flashbacks to what happened to the bounty hunter after his near-death experience at the end of Return of the Jedi. The show's saving grace was when the last three episodes sneakily became The Mandalorian Season 2.5.
That sneaky flip in the final episodes gave us lots of great moments in a rough show that could go on this list: Mando and Grogu reunited, Ahsoka and Luke sharing the screen together for the first time, etc. But for fans of the larger Star Wars universe and canon (the Filoniverse?), few things are better than seeing a beloved animated character get the live-action treatment, and Cad Bane's entrance didn't disappoint.
Seeing the legendary bounty hunter swagger into town and up to Cobb Vanth, give the man some pre-shootout warnings, then quickly take down him and his deputy, were the things dreams are made of. Bringing in Corey Burton to voice Bane during his episodes was an added great touch. The Book of Boba Fett may be entirely forgettable, but at least we'll always have live-action Cad Bane participating in a classic Western shootout.
-Jacob Bryant
Great moment? - 7
OJ Makes The Run - 'Nope'
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I'm a sucker for when a Frankencrew group of regular people band together to face off against some extraordinary foe, and that's exactly what I got throughout the entirety of Jordan Peele's third film Nope. That vibe culminated in OJ's run with his horse Lucky through his family's property so a film director and a Geek Squad-equivalent employee can help him and his sister get footage of what they think is a UFO. In a film that was pegged more toward horror, this scene plays more like an action Western as OJ races down the lane lined with stolen wacky flailing arm tube men and an alien hot on his heels.
The scene is also definitely lifted by Michael Abels's score, which adds a bit of that classic Western tinge to the moment. It has given me chills every time I've watched and helped elevate a movie I knew I'd like into a movie I loved more than almost everything else in 2022. Nope has a lot going for it, but it never hurts for one of the big action set pieces to blow you out of the water.
-Jacob Bryant
Great moment? - 8
Gritty Visits Abbott Elementary - 'Abbott Elementary'
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After its critically acclaimed and award-winning first season, Abbott Elementary pulled a classic (hat) trick out of the sitcom playbook to open Season 2 - bring in a celebrity cameo. Set in Philadelphia, Abbott has no shortage of local celebrities it could have reached out to. Will Smith, perhaps? No, not famous enough. The ghost of Benjamin Franklin? Unfortunately, too dead. Instead, the show drafted its most honorable local native - Gritty, the Philadelphia Flyers mascot.
For those unaware, Gritty is the faux-Muppet, actual-fever dream mascot for Philadelphia’s NHL hockey team. The creature’s gyrating midsection and googly eyes have enamored Flyers fans and those beyond since 2018. Gritty is as enigmatic as they are personable, making them the perfect ringer to take Abbott Elementary’s opening puck drop. In the episode (no spoilers, just a little context), Gritty is scheduled to make an appearance at the school, but the plans go awry, forcing Quinta Brunson’s Janine Teagues to run an audible (or whatever you call such a switcheroo in hockey). As silly and joyous as the episode is, the mere presence of Gritty makes it an instant classic. You can’t help but feel the childlike glee bursting from Abbot’s cast, who, like us, live in the real world amongst the wild-eyed mascot. In moments it feels like they’re hardly able to stay in character as they interact with the scene-stealing Gritty (who can’t speak, by the way, but communicates flawlessly in gestures).
Beyond the episode itself, Gritty’s cameo also led to delightful behind-the-scenes publicity, including a short feature in Variety, which somehow managed to land a brief one-on-one interview with the guest star. When asked about how people outside of Philadelphia may not understand his importance, Gritty offered an absolute slapshot of a response:
I’m not in the business of explaining myself or my actions. You either get me or you’re wrong.
-T.J. Peters
Great moment? - 9
AJ Measures Some Square-Footage - 'Barbarian'
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Much has been said about how the introduction of Justin Long’s soon-to-be-disgraced TV star AJ Gilbride, nearly halfway through the movie, abruptly and radically shifts the tone of Barbarian. But writer-director Zach Cregger isn’t satisfied merely to give us a sacrificial dirtbag; instead, he leverages AJ’s oblivious moral corruption and entitlement against his already-established horror scenario.
The film’s best - and, not coincidentally, funniest - sequence begins with AJ, having discovered a secret tunnel and dungeon-like space underneath his rental property, going online to find out if he can add that underground space to his square footage to bump up the price. And he takes “usually doesn’t count” - Long’s emphasis on “usually” is one of the line readings of the year - as permission to do exactly that.
The comic masterstroke is AJ eagerly going underground and manually tape-measuring the square footage. Does he notice the creepy bedroom with the camcorder and the bloody handprint on the wall? No, he does not. Deeper and deeper he goes into that tunnel, where any reasonable human - and, more to the point, any other character in any other horror movie ever made - would be increasingly spooked and horrified by the tunnel’s very existence, and every red flag (or blood smear) along the way, AJ is cheerfully oblivious to his ominous surroundings. Cregger gives his heel the slow-burn comeuppance he deserves by turning the “creepy underground tunnel” cliche into a glorious extended sight gag.
-Chris Bellamy
Great moment? - 10
The Rita Wilson Scene - Kimi
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You know what's always fun? When an established actor with a whole screen persona shows up for a single scene and, for that scene, completely changes the temperature of a movie. Not talking cameos here, but single-scene performances that put a movie into a headlock, but in a good way.
Kimi, the underseen thriller from thankfully un-retired moviemaker Steven Soderbergh, has just a scene, and weaponizes everything people love about Rita Wilson. A go-to “best friend” type in romantic comedies and the like for decades, Wilson has an innate warmth, charm, and cleverness as a performer. She's also married to Tom Hanks in real life, and even if you don't consciously know that, it's rattling around in your head somewhere. When she shows up in a movie, the natural response is delight. When she shows up in Kimi, the only response is creeping horror.
See, Zoe Kravtiz plays Angela, a prickly loner who thinks she accidentally overheard a murder recorded on the Alexa-like device made by her employer, a vague tech company. Angela, trying to do the right thing as a person and an employee, finally ends up in office of Natalie Chowdhury, an HR-ish executive. As Chowdhury, Wilson is all fake sincerity and evasion. All the warmth, charm, and cleverness we associate with Wilson is used against us as it becomes clearer and clearer that this person is not on our hero's side at all. Wilson projects genuine menace. After just a couple minutes, you're basically shouting for Angela to get the hell out of there.
It's not a particularly flashy scene, and it's smack dab in the middle of a straight-to-streaming movie very few people watched, but this stretch of Kimi is incredibly smart filmmaking that makes a slick glass office feel like a claustrophobic nightmare. It's driven by Wilson, who makes every insincere gesture feel hollow and threatening. By the time she delivers her last line and walks out of the movie, it's chilling, and gets at the quiet sense of dread that Kimi so expertly builds.
-Tucker DeSaulnier
Great moment?
