Behind The Scenes - Frank's 2024 Year End Review

This time last year, even though everything was feeling warm and cheery for the first time in a few years, with travel restrictions and anxieties eased to nearly pre-2020 levels, and many spending money again on Christmas gifts and parties, there was still something dangling over our heads that was hard to completely ignore...2024. I was taking calls and collecting emails all December long leading up to New Year’s Eve, archiving predictions for what this now nearly-finished year was going to bring us.  

It did not disappoint from a personal and a planetary level. No, 2024 lived up to its billing.

I feel like every New Year actually begins with the Super Bowl. For me, it’s a time to get friends and family together, buy some boxes at the local deli, and order some food that will make J Gulinello call in the National Guard. Aside from that, the game usually provides Quite Frankly with opportunities to de-occult the half-time ritual, and poke fun at the worsening quality of the commercials—which used to be one of the biggest reasons to watch.

From there on, there wasn’t a dull moment that I can think of. There was the Solar Eclipse that passed through most of New York just days after Easter, and my birthday. I’ll always remember standing in the driveway with Lauren, Aurora, my mother, and my brother, watching the sun turn crescent with our Star Trek glasses on. Let us never forget the debates about whether or not the glasses were necessary at all, or whether the NASA rocket experiments on the day of the eclipse was actually a recreation of an ancient Egyptian ritual.

Lauren and I were already deep into preparation for our May 21 wedding, a renewal of our vows from 2017, only this time in the Catholic Church; and boy did the day arrive quickly, with our gorgeous little flower girl, Aurora, leading the way down the aisle for a small group of family gathering on a warm, sunny Tuesday. Two days later, we would take a short family honeymoon to Bar Harbor, Maine, and the reflections of that beautiful weekend became the opening essay in the inaugural edition of The Quite Frankly Bulletin–another small dream realized.

From there we were hightailing it through the spring and into summer, and we were determined to get sun everyday no matter if it was via landscaping, rebuilding trellises, beach days with Aurora, or getting the shit kicked out of me in workouts with Rob at the park. Paired with all of the nutritional tips I have been learning from our wellness talks on the show, this was a banner year for health in the Frankly household—especially for Lauren, whose work with J Gulinello can most definitely be described as life-altering, if not life-saving...but that is a story for another time.

Book club, now in its second full year, was better than ever. We covered the gamut from comet-impacts and triumphs of faith, to coming-of-age summertime nostalgia, and self-confronting quests into imagined worlds. In October, we incorporated short stories into the mix for the first time, and it added a whole new aspect to the book club sessions that I am sure will continue to expand down the road.

To tell the story of 2024 with any real depth would be to commit to an anthology of articles, focusing on slivers, until eventually, the fuller picture began to form. Because behind the personal adventures of writing and producing the nightly show every day, looming over the shoulder of every trip we took, whether it be Bar Harbor, Martha’s Vineyard, or our autumnal retreat into the Adirondacks, or peering at us through the clouds as we made plans to launch a newsletter, upgrade the studio, and book guests, was the main event that was The Election.

We brought with us into this new year all of the disastrous memories of 2020, a year in which our nation was slowly hoodwinked, gaslit into giving up whatever was left of election integrity, from Election Night being turned into weeks, to being able to vote through the JCPenney Christmas catalog...many of us wondered what good could possibly come from 2024?

Then came 2024.

Donald Trump surging once again as conditions across the country degrade and all the opposition and its media could think to do was insult those who were hurting. We saw Joe Biden dash his own election hopes by having a “stroke” during a debate in June; then we saw President Trump nearly killed (for real) under conditions that will defy logic for as long as we maintain the right to discuss it. A week after that, Joe Biden is ripped away from his own campaign by force of his own party, and then Americans were once again required to go through IQ/Compliance-testing based on whether they accepted Kamala Harris as their new prom queen. Three months of Project Hoe-Beam, with the media and most pollsters lying about her popularity, her intelligence, and her mandate to lead. 

We knew it wasn’t real. I certainly knew it wasn’t real, even before Madison Square Garden, as Trump packed the arena with many thousands still outside (myself included). No matter what we know is or isn’t real, what do we have to go by until we break through the smokescreen?  

We broke through in a big way on November 5, as we witnessed the lie that was Kamala Harris be beaten handily in both the Electoral College and by millions in the national popular vote, confirming that we are in fact a formidable, truly diverse majority, and that we were right to suspect enormous levels of foul play in 2020. But there is one other thing that this colossal victory has granted so many of us: a mandate to take a satiating breath for the first time since 2019 and enjoy the holidays the best we can before we reignite the engines for 2025.

Surely, we are not out of the proverbial woods, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that even thermonuclear war is not off the table when it comes to resisting any sort of change which upsets the Deep State apple cart; but all you and I could have ever done along the way is pray, vote, improve ourselves, and get a little sun.

For me, the next 4-6 weeks are going to be a real blast, reading through our 2024 predictions, casting the net for 2025 prophecies, enjoying our more well-established end-of-year traditions, tripling down on our commitment to family, and culture, and the art form that is talk radio.

Postscript: 

I would just like to thank everyone reading this for the time you have spent with me over the course of 2024. For everything I do in front of the camera, there is an unquantifiable level of work that is happening off-screen, and I’d be lost if not for the help, advice, and support I receive from both the audience and my small production crew—especially Krista Roman, John Carroll, and my Lauren, who each made this newsletter a dazzling reality. If not for all of you I would probably be in the same mental health clinic as Rob Reiner. I look forward to seeing what 2025 has in store for Quite Frankly and our nation; let’s make America great again!