The Cringey List for 2023
Four different highly successful series that aren't bad, but aren't excellent either...here's my explanation as to why these shows made the Cringey List, not The Bingey List, for 2023
When I began to lay out the framework that became the Bingey List for 2023 (which went on December 11), a wise friend suggested that I make a rubric to define what went into my decisions.
Informally, I had been doing this already in AirTable, where I vigorously categorize these different shows and track them under a growing list of tags.
But her query was a bit more detailed. Could I actually defend my rating, based on specific criteria? What were the precise differences between, say a 6-star and an 8-star rating? If something got a 3-star rating, was it for more reasons other than “didn’t speak to me,” which could equally mean “caught me on the wrong day.”
The rubric system was familiar to me from teaching at the university level. Course assignments are evaluated based on a specific set of criteria which are broadly defined. As you grade assignments, which in my case was a bunch of short podcasts, I would quickly need to check boxes and then assign a number to them. Did they meet, exceed or fail at these specific criteria?
So I cracked opened a fresh GoogleSheet and got down to work. As I ventured further into this exercise, I learned that criteria needed to be very specific. Vague motherhood statements like “strong narrator” were not clear enough—you need a an adjective to give that noun some grounding in a particular (“insightful,” or “connecting,” are a good start).
Without these adjectives, there were clusters of ratings around the same number. This led me to realize that multiple criteria were required for each -star rating to avoid the problem of the nouveau public school tie (Everyone’s a Winner!)
But what I observed next was what threw me.
There were a small list of shows that puzzled me because they had both very high and very low scores.
These shows were both amazing on one level, and infuriating on another.
Was I indecisive, or too inclusive? I couldn’t decide, but concluded that these split scores were trying to tell me something.
What was this visceral Jekyll and Hyde reaction about? And then to my problem: How do you rate a series that does very well on one level, and then really misses the mark on another level?
While these series all started out good, they went past that, then began to overachieve, and at some point, they took a turn towards…not good. But also not patently bad—it was that fuzzy middle ground that’s hard to explain. Add to this, these series are all topping the charts. They are extremely popular, by one measure or another. So clearly, my opinions are not shared by everyone.
And that’s where I landed on the term for them: Cringey, which is a potpourri of scents and smells, sizes and shapes, colours and textures that land them in a strange place. It’s also personal: what cringes one person out is not universal. It’s a taste thing.
Here’s exactly why I have identified these four different series for the Cringey List of 2023.
1 - The Outlaw Ocean
I can honestly say that I hadn’t been this excited about a new show in a while
I stumbled a reference to The Outlaw Ocean in
and I immediately clicked the link to listen.The trailer is riveting. The production values are next level. The host, Ian Urbina, is an investigative reporter who has travelled the world on ocean trawlers for his reporting, which is so bad-ass that I can’t even fully express it. I once spent a month on a ship; I know they are a crazy way of life.
I dove in and devoured the first episode, The Murder Video. I assumed that the whole series would be about what this video was—a slow and defined walk through the video crime, and then a paced discovery of how a murderer on the high seas was brought to justice.
This episode was some of the best audio I’ve ever heard. The careful way he reported what it was like to be sent a murder video by a source, the Interpol-level of investigation to first verify it and then set out to figure out where it came from, and finally who committed this truly senseless crime.
The story brought me into a world I’ve never been to before and it pulled back some fascinating layers of how a journalistic investigation is conducted this level, with this much at stake. For many years Urbina was an investigative reporter with the NYTimes. He has won a Pulitzer Prize, an Emmy nomination and a George Polk Award for his work.
But by the end of the first episode, the crime had been solved. In the second episode, we went on a global chase to take down an illegal fishing vessel (all the way to Antarctica). In the third episode we were off the Horn of Africa taking a hard look at slavery at sea, and in another, we were on a ship that performs abortions in international waters. Each episode was deeply detailed, fascinating details, but thoroughly unconnected. Although it was released as a series, it was a series of chapters.
That’s about when I lost patience. Because as much as I was enjoying the series, it was now under my skin. A quick Google search told me that there was a book with the identical title, and a similar chapter layout.
This was up-cycled audio material.
To be clear, it was up-cycled very well. And unlike other up-cycled material I’ve come across, it had loads and loads of actual source tape that was recorded over many years. It wasn’t just Urbina opining on his past work; it was produced with some incredible journalism chops and recast it into a compelling narrative.
On one level, the series had too much depth, and on another, there was no through line to keep listeners engaged. The result felt uneven; and I felt it missed the boat on a singular series about a fascinating journalistic quest, ie, the murder video, which could have sustained an entire series all on its own.
2 - Dear Alana,
From the get-go, this was not the series that I expected
It is full of plot-twits, surprises and reveals that were carefully paced for multiple build-tension-resolve moments. It has also been topping the charts since it was released last summer.
The Tenderfoot.tv / iHeart series Dear Alana is a split-level biography of two strangers who have a lot in common: Simon Kent Fung, and Alana Faith Chen. The story ultimately chronicles their very different outcomes as devout teenagers who sought out early forms of conversion therapy.
As a storytelling style, a dual-biography was completely novel for me, and I thought it was an interesting idea that was well executed. The way Simon told the Alana’s story, including his approach to her mother and other family members felt transparent, honest and engaging.
The choice of Tenderfoot as the publisher was also intriguing; they are much better known for their true crime offerings, rather than one that digs down into a subject that has its own controversies built in: conversion therapy and the Catholic Church.
has done some great reporting on this, along with a sit-down with Simon Kent Fung about the making of this series.I arrived at this series with my own assumptions
I anticipated this would be a story about an extreme religious community, or how a family pushed conversion therapy on their teen to “fix” her. But this was not the case. And in some ways, this is what makes this series so compelling. Just when you think you might have the series pegged, it does something different.
Both Simon and Alana came from reasonably mainstream families who might even have been regarded as “not particularly religious.” These teens found devout religion on their own; it was their version of teenage rebellion. Instead of underage drinking and teenage sex, they were going to Confession six times a week, meeting with daily prayer groups and volunteering for various outreach communities, all at the peril of their high school grades.
But in many ways, their choices had some of the same hallmarks of teenagers who secretly participate in dangerous or self-harming activities.
Both Simon and Alana realized they were gay as teens, and in some way wanted to be gay, but neither managed to figure out how to be gay (while also remaining extremely pious and building a life towards life committed to Catholicism as a Priest and a Nun, respectively). It’s important to say that based on how the story was reported, neither family would have shunned their children had they known they were gay; the issue, in both cases, was the Church. In the case of Alana, it seems they would have actually welcomed the news of their daughter or sister being gay.
Instead, it was their strong affinity for the church and a strict Catholic doctrine, combined with their ambition to commit to the church for life, which concerned the parent. Neither teen felt comfortable being gay within the boundaries of their chosen religion…and as a result, both struggled with depression and suicidal ideation.
Simon explains the religious beliefs that Alana followed with great detail. He used her own words (by way of an actor) to read from her diary and text messages, which Alana’s mother provided him access with.
I was drawn into the voice of Alana’s words, but I kept thinking to myself how odd it must have been for Simon to tell the life story of a woman he never met, but had an unusual amount in common with. It was a captivating conundrum to be drawn into.
His choices of text, the actual voice reading and the way the mother was featured in the story to make it clear that he did this with her blessing, were spot on. Fung managed to walk the tightrope of telling someone else’s story without it sounding like a priest awkwardly giving a eulogy for a person he did not know.
The narrative tone of Simon Kent Fung himself, as he described his own life and his connection to religion and piousness, is where this series fell apart for me
First there was his tone. The actual tenor that he delivered his story, which I feel like it maybe tried to steer away from the “sermon-tone,” but either he gave up, or it’s just too deeply ingrained in him that he couldn’t avoid it. Perhaps I’m allergic to this from my own childhood, but I found it hard to avoid the image of him standing on the pulpit, frocked in liturgical vestments, raising his arms straight up towards the heavens as he spoke.
And then there was the pacing, and the reveals. As I said earlier, every part of this series was a surprise—which is part of what makes this a great series. But as the series went on, I felt like he used these mysteries—primarily where/if he landed on the queer spectrum, and then if/when he had changed his views about being both gay and Catholic—to hold the audience hostage for the full eight episodes.
In a way, it worked. It created suspense and it kept me listening to the series. I was genuinely relieved when he finally told us about his own ‘come to Jesus moment,’ also pleased that his reveal didn’t also evoke a Don’t Say Gay tone….because up until then, it wasn’t completely clear which way this was going to fall. He worked hard to not make that explicit. But I have some issues with using this as the bait to keep a listener engaged.
Then there were the twists. The first being that these teens were radicalized by the most unsuspecting forces—upstanding nuns and hipster priests—into believing that they were wrong to love the way their brains and bodies wanted them to. And that through therapy, excessive prayer and changes in their lifestyles, they could stamp out their gay.
Hard to say exactly when, but this theme started to grate on me. I felt that it unnecessarily played up the tension around the subtext question: is he gay-or-not?
I spent a while reflecting on why this bothered me, and I’ve landed on this conclusion: it’s a tension that’s very much alive in America. To use it as a plot point to leverage audience from one episode to the next felt a bit reckless to me. I wondered if it could fall into the wrong hands, or be misinterpreted if the listener doesn’t make it all the way to the conclusion.
When Simon’s stance, on being both gay and religious, wasn’t explicitly stated, up front and early, it allowed an audience to go along for the ride. He leaned into his own beliefs, and those of Alana’s, in a way that was honest; but it began to feel slightly emotionally manipulative to me.
By the end, it felt a bit like a derivative of conversion therapy for me as a listener. Simon Kent Fung really wanted me to understand why he had sought out a therapist to “fix” him. As he told his story, he slowly revealed that his mind had changed. But he did this so slowly that it made me wonder what his aim was with it: to linger longer in this world where therapy can and should “fix” people’s sexual orientation so that others would understand this equally to him?
But what if some listeners use this first piece of his story to rationalization for their own beliefs? He never really comes down hard on the question: Is conversion therapy ok…maybe in some circumstances? Maybe for just some people, like him, but not everyone?
For a series that takes on such a serious issue, he doesn’t come out with a very firm response.
Was it that his reporting so balanced that it took almost eight full episodes to fall down in any one specific court? Yes, in a way. But by that point, I started to loose faith in his faith.
My deeper concern is that this irresponsibly plays into the delicate balance between the Left and the Right, religious and non-religious, ultra observant and the merely observant religious communities in the US, and beyond. These are all the same communities that are deeply divided over the idea that being queer and/or homosexual is “allowed.” Drawing out his struggle for so long, without putting caveats, or saying things like “later on, you’ll see that I changed my mind about this…” concluded for me that he didn’t actually have a strong stance on this very challenging question.
If a that audience commits to 7+ hours of the story, we do learn the current belief structure of Fung. But fall short of the 3-5 hour mark (which is a lot of listening, I might add), and what you get instead is a sympathetic story about the tragic death of a young woman, told by a man who didn’t know her, but sort of felt the same way too, except that he’s still here to tell his story.
Dear Alana, tells an important story. And I hope that it serves as a wake up call to the Catholic Church about the actual practices, from this decade, which are harming a reasonable portion of their community. But I worry that that’s not the case…and that the real audience for this series is the vast pool of religious-minded folks who, like Fung, sorta feel the same way…but they aren’t quite sure what to do about those thoughts.
3 - McCartney: A Life in Lyrics
This is the subject of a previous post, so I won’t rehash it all here for you here.
First to say, if you’re a die-hard Beatles fan who can’t get enough of everything Beatles, you should rush out and get going on this series. In no way does this disappoint.
McCartney: A Life in Lyrics is impeccably produced. It’s one of the rare cases where you actually get to listen to the actual popular music being discussed (which must have been a monster to pay and clear). The Beatles music, and then a range of other incredible pieces of reference music, are used in the most profound way.
The basis of the series is that Irish poet Paul Muldoon sits down with McCartney to dig down and find new nerdy layers of backstory, original inspo, funny little details, and whimsical stories about the genesis of a raft of the biggest hits of Rock n’ Roll history: Let it Be, Penny Lane, Back in the USSR…the list is plentiful. Even Beatles scholars can find new treasures in here.
Muldoon is very upfront about the fact that these recordings were originally done as part of the research for his book The Lyrics, which is an open-faced autobiography, “written” by Paul McCartney, and “edited” by Paul Muldoon. So yes, it is also up-cycled material here. But my issue is that it really didn’t have to be this.
What bothered me about this series was two things:
The sessions that were recorded with Muldoon and McCartney were not properly recorded. Why? And then, How? Could? This? Have? Happened!? Two undeniable lyrical geniuses sit down to talk, ‘about a dozen times between 2015 and 2020,’ and a decent microphone couldn’t be rummaged up betwixt the two of them?
Well, here’s the answer: This was never meant to be an audio project. It was for a book project. The audio bit came later…which was clearly a good idea…but why didn’t anyone foresee this audio project?The whole celebrity-ness of this series is just a bit over-the-top…and that having an audio series for some very senior members of the creative community (ie Paul Muldoon) is just another feather-in-the-cap for him. And I’m not sure what it does for the ongoing legacy and building of this industry, and those who work hard to make their art with shrinking budgets, shelf-space and attention.
This all has me wondering a bit if we, the narrative audio industry, are shooting ourselves in the foot each time with welcome a giga-celebrity into the audio world.
Do these projects create a ShopVac Effect to the budgets and resources of the production houses and producers? Can the math actually ever work out in the end, even to cost-recover, given how expensive it is to work with this level of celebrity?
And if that math is not tenable, does it possibly drain the time, money and resources from one of the many production houses who take these projects on as their Moon Shot at giant profits, are then just diminished? I would be happy to have some follow up conversations with those who know more and feel strongly about this, as I do.
4 - Scamanda
This series was a huge hit, but it rose to popularity based on some of the worst traits of our society
The feminist in me wanted to scream every time I heard a new layer of this story….which I should say was many layers, because I was thoroughly sucked into it.
Not because I didn’t believe it; the worst part was, I did believe it. I did believe that Amanda faked cancer, and then faked a whole range of other things in order to take money from sympathetic church communities to support her lifestyle.
But each time I listened, I came away feeling a bit dirty.
The series is hosted by Charlie Webster, with the secondary host also being a journalist named Nancy Moscatiello, who was personally sued by Amanda as a result of her reporting on this story.
Moscatiello has skin in this game, and that comes through clearly in the series. As the bonus episodes started to roll out, which now were talkies between the two hosts, not highly-produced episodes, I started to feel like they were dragging this one out a bit long. Had it turned the corner from journalism towards salacious gossip?
Why do we love to jump down on women when they cheat, lie and scam? In the end, federal authorities were able to identify 349 people who had given Amanda Riley money—a total of about $105,000 over the seven-year period. This was a crime, quite certainly—she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years. Upon release she will need to pay back the more than $100,000 she stole from various people.
But in the spectrum of scammers, this amount is actual peanuts. Bernie Madoff ruined lives and took entire life savings away from people—$20 billion in cash losses and upwards of $60 billion in paper losses. Rudy Giuliani was just fined $148m for two election workers whose lives where ‘turned upside down’ through his claims of election fraud.
My feeling about this series is that the attention this story got outsized the crime. It is shocking and sickening to imagine someone faking cancer…and perhaps that’s the kicker of this story. But the deep dives into all the folds and layers of this story, finding ex-friends who were willing to come and share their story, started to feel icky to me.
Taken a few giant steps back, the truth is, the story of The Scammer archetype is immensely popular. In a recent memorable episode on Critics At Large, the team dissect the downfall of George Santos; the multi-faceted scammer who has gone from Congress to Cameo in a few short months. “The Scammer,” they remind us, is part of our cultural lexicon.
Scamanda is here to prove the point: the scammer story is totally a subplot of our current reality. Audiences love to be pulled into the plot because it makes them feel morally superior.
We listen, rapt, to discover if she will get caught, and then wait to hear what the punishment might be for all of her small-scale frauds. I would say that these crimes feel much bigger when you look at them up close and pull each of them apart.
Ultimately, all scammer stories are about desperate people doing desperate things. These stories unfold as we listen captivated to see if, when and how they will get their comeuppance. For some reason, watching the downfall of another is entertaining and engaging. Sometimes the bigger the fall, or the more egregious the crime, the better (faking cancer clearly falls into this category).
Sure, we can go on to listen and support the stories of scammers. It is our cultural imperative. But as I continue to listen to these stories, let’s also going to work hard to keep in check our my morals in check, and not add to the depravity of someone else’s suffering.
And for me, to watch this show climb the charts, on the back of a sad and sorry petty crime, feels a bit wrong to me.
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