As January approaches we’re all asking ourselves, “Where did the year go?”
In 2013, you can blame everything from Miley Cyrus’ twerking and Grumpy Cat to Paula Deen’s racism scandal and Anthony Weiner’s “Carlos Danger” — all covered in the NBC News comedy special “What We Wasted Our Year On,” airing Friday at 9 p.m. (Ch. 4).
Hosted by “Today” and “Morning Joe” co-host Willie Geist, the one-hour special will count down the pop culture phenoms that consumed our collective consciousness in 2013 — including selfies, the Kardashians, the Harlem Shake — with a panel of four comedians.
“We say guilty pleasures — things you’re not ashamed of wasting your time on this year,” says Geist, who covered many topics as news stories on “Today.” “It’s a little tongue-in-cheek. There are things like the Royal Baby, Paula Deen, ‘Duck Dynasty’ — things that were cultural stories that we covered more seriously, but when you sit down with a bunch of comedians they shred through it together.”
Once producer Peacock Productions recruited Geist and hired a writer’s room, it wasn’t hard to come up with 10 themed segments of viral obsessions and “name-that-quote” games.
“There’s no mystery topic. These are all very familiar things that we talked about this year,” Geist tells The Post. “It’s really a question of just culling them down — you forget in 12 months how much wild stuff happened. A year gives you a wealth of material so when you sit in a roomful of comedians, it’s pretty easy to get a lot out of that.”
While Geist won’t reveal his No. 1 pick, he does say the pop culture story he enjoyed the most this year was the saga of Toronto mayor Rob Ford.
“It has that great mix. The other people you kind of expect it from — Miley Cyrus is an entertainer,” he says. “This guy is the mayor of a really big, important, international city. And he’s talking about smoking crack in a drunken stupor and he’s kind of proud of it in a weird way and he’s talking about his romantic life with his wife in very creepy ways. It’s kind of like [Rod] Blago[jevich] a couple of years ago but to the next level.”
“Wasted” is the first comedy special for Geist. Primarily a news anchor, he has also authored two satirical books and is known to work his sense of humor into segments for his day job.
“It’s such a different muscle to flex and you kind of let it rip a little bit,” he says. “I’m lucky being on ‘Morning Joe’ and our hour of the ‘Today’ show, it’s all very loose and you can pepper jokes in, so it’s not a complete 180 for me.
“I’m just a fan of comedy and a fan of culture and of crazy things that are happening in our culture, which is always. It felt very natural sitting in the chair.”
Though Geist doesn’t expect to make the comedy specials a regular gig, he would love to be counting down the ridiculous moments of 2014 a year from now.
“It’s a fun way to remember the frivolous part of the year,” he says. “Hopefully it does well and we can make it an annual tradition.”