The Biggest Potential Let Downs of 2015

Like most of you fine people, I enter each new year with fresh eyes and a feeling of overwhelming optimism. When the clock strikes midnight and the confetti falls, we all get a chance to start with a clean slate and reboot our perspective in preparation for the next 365 days, which we all swear will be THE BEST YEAR EVER! But I'm also a grown-ass man, so I know that, while the year ahead will certainly contain some fantastic moments, it's also going to be littered with disappointments, frustrations and let downs, especially when it comes to pop culture. Every year we are led to believe that the upcoming crop of movies, TV shows, music, books, and games are going to be amazing. And every year 95 percent of those things fail to live up to the unrealistically high expectations we foolishly set for the stuff we love. With that in mind, here's a rundown of some of the things I'm most looking forward to in 2015, which means it's also a list of the things that will probably be the biggest let downs of the year: Movie: The Hateful Eight http://youtu.be/c7kM5XJKDcQ Look, we all know that the new Star Wars movie is going to be a disappointment because there is no way it can live up to the inevitable hype that will build and build and build between now and its official release. And I refuse to jinx the movie I'm most looking forward to in 2015 -- Mad Max: Fury Road -- because I want it to be awesome, damn it! So that leaves The Hateful Eight -- the new Western from Quentin Tarantino -- as the movie I'm most hopeful for that will probably leave me feeling like the kid who is eternally waiting for his businessman father to finally show up to watch him play basketball, even though his important suit-and-tie meetings always take priority. I may or may not have read the script to The Hateful Eight when it leaked last year, and it may or may not have been pretty awesome. Word is Tarantino rewrote much of it following the leak, but if the skeleton of the story remains in tact, this is going to be a violent, tense talk-and-shoot-athon that could be one of the coolest films of the year. Tarantino regulars Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Roth and Michael Madsen are in the mix, and Channing Tatum, Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern and Jennifer Jason Leigh round out the cast. Please be good, please be good, please be good...   TV: True Detective, Season 2 Oh man, it's going to hurt so bad when this sucks. I know that's a really bad attitude to have, but given how much I loved the first season of HBO's dark crime drama, there is simply no way the second season can be anywhere near as good. Unlike some fans of the show, I actually think the new cast is a home run. If you don't think Vince Vaughn can play it dark, go back and check out some of the films he starred in before he embraced his destiny as a comedic leading man. Films like Return to Paradise, The Cell, The Prime Gig, the Psycho remake, and -- my personal favorite -- Clay Pigeons, prove Vaughn is more than just a doughy chuckle-hound. Colin Farrell isn't always in great movies, but he's great in everything he's in. Rachel McAdams can deliver the goods, and even though I haven't been super impressed with Taylor Kitsch, he was good in Lone Survivor, so there's hope he'll be great in this. Regardless of the cast, it just seems impossible for the season two story to live up to the engrossing, confusing, and flat-out creepy tale spun in the show's first season. I can't wait to jump into the new season with clear eyes and a full heart (BOOM! NAILED IT!), but I can almost guarantee this show is going to leave me wishing I could just wipe my brain Men-in-Black-style and relive season one all over again.   TV: Broad City, Season 2 http://youtu.be/NhvBC-Ml01E (Warning: Language in the video above is NSFW. It's hilarious, but NSFW all the same.) If you haven't seen the first season of Broad City, you are seriously  missing out on the funniest show on TV. It was a huge favorite of several of us here on Funkhouser, and critics and comedy-nerds alike have crowned it one of the freshest, raunchiest and best comedies to come along in a long time. Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobsen star as two best buds navigating their 20s in New York in the most careless and hilarious ways possible, and the show is overflowing with outstanding supporting characters and guest stars, including comedian Hannibal Buress who plays Ilana's boyfriend, Lincoln. I was a fan of the web series upon which the show was based, but even that didn't prepare me for how awesome the show turned out when Amy Poehler helped develop it into a show for Comedy Central. Each episode was laugh-out-loud funny and the awkward situations in which the girls got tangled were a perfect blend of Seinfeld's "show about nothing" approach and early It's Always Sunny outrageousness. The show returns next week on January 14, and I'm literally giddy with excitement over its return. And that's why it's going to be such a punch in the nards if/when it hits a sophomore slump. Come on, dudes. I'm totally pulling for you.   Book: Silver Screen Fiend by Patton Oswalt Most people know who Patton Oswalt is, but finding out WHERE they know him from is always a hoot. Are you a fan of his stand-up comedy? Did you first see him on some crappy sitcom like The King of Queens or Two and a Half Men? Maybe you know him because he was the voice of Remy the rat in Pixar's Ratatouille? Perhaps you saw him on the big screen in Blade: Trinity, Big Fan, or Young Adult? Or maybe you're just a big fan of the current nerd-culture renaissance and heard him on a podcast or voice a character in a video game? Oswalt obviously is a man of many talents, and that's even before mentioning the fact that he's a New York Times bestselling author, having previously published a great book of essays called Zombie Spaceship Wasteland. Oswalt the writer is back this month with his latest book, Silver Screen Fiend, a memoir about his life in Los Angeles between 1995 and 1999 when he would watch movies at the New Beverly Cinema several nights a week, and how those movies shaped his development as a comic, actor, writer and human being. It sounds like the perfect read for someone like myself who keeps a meticulous list of all the movies I watch each year. But Oswalt has a love of "classic" movies that I don't share for the most part. I'm really excited to read Silver Screen Fiend, but I'm worried that Oswalt may spend too many pages singing the praises of old black and white movies, which would turn this into a giant snoozefest for me. Hopefully it's infused with his signature wit and irreverent style, because this is one of a very few books I'm actually looking forward to reading in 2015.   Music? HAHAHAHAHA, as if. I'm in my 30s, and if you're in your 30s, you know that the first thing to drop off your pop culture radar is popular music. That's not to say I don't listen to music. I do. I scroll through the new releases on iTunes every Tuesday and buy a couple songs or occasionally a full album. Or I'll hear a song in a movie or show or on a commercial and then go out and download it. But I'm not really "looking forward" to any new releases any more. I flipped through this slideshow of the 30 most anticipated albums of 2015 and I was all, "OK, sure." I'm sure I'll buy a track or two off the new albums from Kanye West and Drake. I have no doubt that I'll really like one of Adele's new songs. There's a decent chance I'll check out a song by Grimes or some other hipster dance-pop ingenue whose music I'm exposed to while I hate-watch Girls. But as far as an album I'm excited about in 2015? I don't know, is Ace of Base still around? If so, it's the next Ace of Base album. That's the one I'm most excited about.   Header image via thewashingtonfancy.com   @TheSEShepherd