What We Wasted Our Year On

What We Wasted Our Year On was a unique, innovative, and exciting piece of programming commissioned by the famed, terrestrially circulated NBC network back in 2013. The show represented a synthesis of the zeitgeist capturing the most absurd, outrageous and hilarious occurrences both in pop culture and the wider social narrative.

This hour-long special was guided by the keen insights and incisive wit of Willie Geist, a seasoned news commentator known for his groundbreaking work on NBC's Morning Joe and the Today Show. Falling into the genre of news comedy, the show adopted a format that rhythmically oscillated between being a talk show, a news commentary program, and an almost reminiscent look at the year that was - a retrospective of the hilarious, absurd, and sometimes downright ridiculous events, personalities, and cultural phenomena that caught the public eye during the year it was produced.

What We Wasted Our Year On presented its audience with a comedic twist on the traditional year-in-review rundown. Rather than recapping serious news events or noteworthy milestones, the program placed its focus firmly on those captivating oddities and mesmerizing anomalies that make the news cycle so endlessly fascinating to many.

The show centered on highlighting myriad nonsensical happenings that had transfixed the nation throughout the year. From pop-culture fads and celebrity antics to viral memes, daring fashion statements, and peculiar forays into the weird and wacky, What We Wasted Our Year On parsed through a year of American life, drawing out the laugh-inducing, frequently ludicrous threads that bind the national conversation.

Complementing Willie Geist's acerbic anchoring, What We Wasted Our Year On assembled a panel of NBC News personalities to hash out the selected events in each episode. Through stimulating dialogue and domesticated debates, the panelists discussed and dissected each topic, offering light-hearted commentary and candid assessments inspired by their respective viewpoints and experiences in the news world.

The creators of What We Wasted Our Year On sought to transform the retrospections of their audience through vibrant discussions that ran the gamut from the mildly amusing to the outlandish. The program teetered on the fine line between satire and reality, injecting biting humor into its news-based dissections while consistently maintaining a tone of good-natured joviality.

In doing so, the show challenged its viewers to question the ways in which they consumed and interpreted the vast amounts of information they were bombarded with daily, all the while giving them permission - and indeed, encouraging them - to find humor and levity amidst it all.

The aim of What We Wasted Our Year On was not to compel its audience to disregard the happenings it spotlighted but rather to emphasize the unpredictable hilarity inherent in everyday life, even in an era saturated with seemingly never-ending streams of substance-laden news. This was achieved through impactful storytelling, eloquent conversational exchanges, the knowledgeable input of the assembled panelists, and, of course, Willie Geist's tongue-in-cheek commentaries.

Despite maintaining a casual, light-hearted atmosphere, at its core, the show glancingly nudged its audience toward a reflection on the nature of contemporary information consumption – encouraging a critical analysis of the stories that dominate our collective consciousness and the somewhat frivolous incidents that often captivate the public's attention.

In essence, What We Wasted Our Year On was not just a tv show but a pop-cultural mirror held up to society; a reflection on the melodrama, the silly and the awfully funny - all the things that we allow ourselves to be consumed by throughout the course of a single year.