The phenomenal hook of Stephen King’s 2018 novel The Outsider is that it presents a case that is, in a very literal sense, impossible. In small-town USA, an 11-year-old boy is found brutally raped and murdered. All evidence—eyewitnesses, security camera footage, fingerprints, DNA—indisputably points to one man. Except, however, that there’s also incontrovertible proof that this individual was elsewhere, and thus couldn’t have done the deed.

It seems like the perfect setup for a joke: Harvey Weinstein, the monstrous movie mogul accused of sexually assaulting over 80 women, tottering into court with a metal walker—balanced on tennis balls, no less—in a cheap ploy for sympathy (your move, Cosby cane). But Kelly Bachman isn’t taking the bait. “I don’t want to give him any more of my…energy,” she says, looking down. “He doesn’t deserve it.

There’s a question asked out of cynicism when TV shows are rebooted, revived, reimagined, and however else one could describe the dozens of old series and intellectual properties that each year are brought back from the dead: What’s the point? With Freeform’s new Party of Five, there’s a crucial one.

After wishing his viewers a Happy New Year and telling them how happy he was to be back on the air after a two-week holiday break, Stephen Colbert got right to the “momentous, world-shaking events” that “everybody’s talking about.

The last time Ricky Gervais hosted the Golden Globe Awards four years ago, he hugged it out with Mel Gibson and made some jokes about Caitlyn Jenner that have haunted him ever since. So how did he top himself when he returned to host for the fifth (and supposedly final) time Sunday night? Well, he began, beer in hand, by promising that this would be his last time hosting. “So I don’t care anymore,” he said. “I’m joking, I never did.

Twenty-six years ago, R. Kelly married his protégée, Aaliyah. He was 27, and she was just 15. Eighteen years ago, a video was widely circulated allegedly of the R&B superstar raping and peeing on an underage girl. Despite the vast evidence, which included decades of additional allegations of grooming and sexual abuse against Kelly exposed by journalist Jim DeRogatis, it wasn’t until the release of last year’s dream hampton docuseries Surviving R.

In Damascus, an ISIL siege is stymied by a 43-day sandstorm of biblical proportions that was foreseen by a single man. For accurately predicting—and preaching throughout—the cataclysm, this figure comes to be known and revered as al-Masih (Mehdi Dehbi), aka “The Messiah.

There were good things that happened in 2019. Really. I mean, a lot of horrible, disturbing, apocalyptic, humanity-in-crisis, extremely bad things happened, too. But there was a lot to celebrate, laugh at, laugh with, escape to, delight over, indulge in, cry (happy tears) about, and dance to. Things that made us feel something. Something good. At the end of the year for the last two years, we’ve called out on social media to Daily Beast readers and staffers.

When the American Music Awards crowned Taylor Swift the Artist of the Decade last month, it seemed obvious and promotional: Swift had a new album out and was in the headlines again, fighting to own her music catalogue. But in reality, the award may have been de facto: In a decade defined by pop divas, she was the only one who made it all the way through.

As the queen peered into the camera lens for her 2019 Christmas Day message, uttering the time-honored mixture of platitudes and gentle allusions to earth-shattering events, there was a striking sense that this was the end of an era.