Radar looks back at the season's biggest disappointments

Labor Day is more than a last chance to down burgers and suds before autumn sets in. It's also a time to reflect on the past three months and all they gave us: Not just warm weather and beach getaways, but also a fresh crop of mindless Top 40 anthems, blockbuster superhero movies, and addictive MTV reality shows.

However, in looking back on this summer's contribution to our cultural oeuvre, we can't help but feel that it was all rather ... meh. Sure, records were broken, the presidential race got off to a preternaturally early start, and a few celebrities had colossal breakdowns. But somehow, nothing quite satisfied. Summer of 2007, we're not angry with you. We're merely disappointed. Below, 10 ways you really let us down:

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10. SICKO
It was a season of cinematic letdowns (witness Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and Spider-Man 3), but no film let us down more than Sicko. Remember when you first heard that Michael Moore, fresh off Fahrenheit 9/11's success, was taking on the American healthcare industry? Finally, someone was going to nail those fucks! And not just someone—the guy who made Kmart stop selling ammunition, and who helped set the table for the Republicans' drubbing in the 2006 election. In the HMOs, Moore had a viler villain than Darth Vader and Karl Rove combined. But a film that could have been thrilling and controversial turned out to be restrained and uncharacteristically toothless—which may be why it never became the lighting rod for national debate it should have. Hands were wrung; none were slapped. "He's raised a warning flag that shouldn't be ignored," gushed Salon. But a little over two months later, no one's talking about Sicko except us. This summer, Moore was less.

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9. "UMBRELLA"
It's not that we don't like Rihanna's hit single. There's something strangely satisfying and hypnotic about the chorus—we imagine that, at some point in July, at least 50 percent of the country had the mantra "ella ella" reverberating in their ears. Yet we can't help but think it falls short compared to the truly epic summer anthems of yore. "Hot in Herre," "Crazy in Love," that Abercrombie and Fitch song about Chinese food of dubious quality—these are songs that really told a story. Great summer songs stay with us, forever tied to specific memories of wanton dance parties, public intoxication, and sexual humiliation. Yet as we look back, we can't recall a specific instance where Rihanna really rocked our world. "Umbrella," we like you. A lot, even. But we fear you will ultimately be forgotten, resigned to top billing on Now That's What I Call Music: Volume 49 along with Gretchen Wilson's "Redneck Woman," Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girl," and J. Lo's "If You Had My Love."

8. BARRY BONDS' HOME RUN RECORD
In an August 7 home game against the Washington Nationals, San Francisco Giants left-fielder Barry Bonds used a 34-inch, 31.6-ounce piece of Canadian maple wood to propel a stitched leather ball 435 feet up and over a fence. It was the 756th time the seven-time MVP had done so in his 21-year career—once more than Hank Aaron, 42 times more than Babe Ruth, and 96 times more than his godfather, Willie Mays. But you wouldn't know that someone had just broken one of the most sacred records in sports based on fan response. A sellout crowd in Anaheim booed when a video replay was shown. Same in Arizona. And in Colorado. It seems it doesn't actually matter that Bonds has never failed a steroid test. To bar patrons and stadium-goers alike, his once normal-size head has now literally (and metaphorically) swollen to the size of a bowling ball, and that's proof positive of foul play. At least one person is happy about the sordid mess: Queens native Matt Murphy, who nabbed the famous ball and emerged victorious from the scrum over Bonds' asterisk; he's auctioning it off, and expects to take home up to $500,000.

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7. CELEBRITY JAIL SENTENCES
Time in prison used to be a demoralizing, life-altering career wrecker. That was then. Leave it to Paris, Nicole, and Lindsay, who have already debased so many aspects of our culture, to lay waste to jail time. As the girls of summer have done for plastic surgery, promiscuity, wanton drug use, and consumerism, they've gone and proved that time in the clink is really no big deal. You can get sent there for more than three weeks after driving with a suspended license, à la Paris; or a day, like Lindsay Lohan after being busted with coke; or 82 minutes like Nicole Richie, who drove the wrong way on a highway on-ramp after indulging in some marijuana and Vicodin. You don't need a bleeding heart to see that the system's not only broken, it has been co-opted into the latest must-have life experience. Go to jail, try to think, lose your tan. Get out of jail, pose for cameras, party on. It's what Paris does.

6. HILLARY CLINTON'S CLEAVAGE
On July 18, Hillary Rodham Clinton strode up to a podium on the Senate floor. It was a day like any other, yet Clinton, dressed in a peach blazer and V-neck top, did something unprecedented. She offered America a glimpse into heretofore uncharted territory—her cleavage. And how the ink was spilled. "It was startling to see that small acknowledgment of sexuality and femininity peeking out of the conservative—aesthetically speaking—environment of Congress," wrote Robin Givhan of the Washington Post, who devoted 746 words to the topic. "Clinton hot and bothered over cleavage report," declared the New York Daily News. Katie Couric, always at the forefront of feminism, scolded her colleagues, saying, "By focusing on this display of décolletage, it seems we've plunged to a new low." Frankly, we didn't see what the fuss was about. Hillary's foray into showing her womanly bits, which could have been a ballsy breakout (bust out?) moment, seemed incidental, uninspired, and, as far as political skin goes, far less titillating than Barack Obama's bare-chested romp on the beach earlier this year.

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5. FACEBOOK APPLICATIONS
When Mark Zuckerburg, the nebbish founder of facebook.com, ushered in the Applications platform in May, it had Silicon Valley atwitter. The social networking site was finally poised to take on cooler bigger brother MySpace. Not quite. While a handful of the apps, like Top Friends, have become immensely popular, the overwhelming majority have proven to be bug-plagued widgets with little functionality and even less relevance. According to a recent estimate, more than 65 million applications had been added to Facebook profiles—2.5 for every bored college kid out there. But as one user notes of apps like Pirates vs. Ninjas: "I ignore the vast majority of them, as do a good number of my friends; some are just noisy and don't serve much purpose."

4. THE iPHONE
It's hard to recall any tech product breeding more anticipation than the iPhone. In fact, 100 hours before its release, some (evidently unemployed) gadgetphiles were already lined up outside the Apple stores in Manhattan. Once the hype died down, however, a cruel reality set in: At the end of the day, the damn thing is still a phone. You talk to your aunt on it. You rarely text your friends anything more complicated than "where r u?" Performing these mundane tasks on a nearly $600 device simply doesn't elevate cell phone use to the mind-altering cross-platform interactive experience Apple ads would have you believe. Cingular's plodding EDGE network, spotty reception, and enormous (as in multipage, multipound) bills don't help. The greatest disappointment, though, is left for those diehards who became the voluntary homeless and lined up for days to buy the thing, only to watch their well-rested friends stroll in and pick one up the next day.

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3. POLITICAL RESIGNATIONS
First it was Rummy, then Rove, and now Gonzales. When Chief of Staff Josh Bolton requested that those unwilling to stay the course until the bitter end announce their intention to leave before Labor Day, more than 15 senior aides took the plunge. Given the shoddy record of the current Republican administration—from W's low poll numbers to the GOP's loss of Congress to the United States' disappointments in Iraq—news that a bunch of Bushies wanted to jump ship just wasn't a surprise. Likewise, the resignation announcements of Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales, two of the most polarizing men in the Bush Administration, felt like a case of too little too late. At the end, neither the West Wing Svengali nor the forgetful attorney general took responsibility for the decisions (ahem, mistakes) they made during their service, closing their last days in office with neither a bang nor a whimper.

2. THE TWO COREYS
So much wasted potential. This statement was (generously) applied to Corey Haim and Corey Feldman by many entertainment journalists in the mid-90s. For whatever reason, nostalgia for Corey Squared films like Lost Boys and ... well, just Lost Boys, made us sympathize with this pair of Hollywood brats, even though their cultural relevance outgrew them faster than Corey Feldman outgrew his Michael Jackson obsession. That's why there was something particularly sweet about seeing these Hollywood brats get another shot, reunited on A&E's The Two Coreys. Unfortunately, the show was a cable-ready version of You, Me & Dupree, with Haim cast as the difficult house guest in a series of "reality"-based scenarios even more awkwardly conceived than the Feldman-Haim-Eggert threeway in Blown Away.

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1. THE SURGE
When President Bush proposed his troop surge earlier this year, the topic sparked an international debate. But this summer brought only more confusion, and more contradictory reports. On August 30, General David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, told an Australian newspaper, "We've achieved progress, and we are obviously going to do everything we can to build on that progress, and we believe Al Qaeda is off balance at the very least." Yet other sources report disappointing progress: more murders in Baghdad this July than in March, April, or June, and the death toll from sectarian attacks nationwide was double what it was a year ago. Insurgent attacks in and around Baghdad are off peak levels, but outside Baghdad they're more frequent than ever. More than seven months into the surge, Bush's decision to deploy extra troops seems to have only one certain repercussion: It's never been easier to join the army.

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