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    Did ‘The Bear’ Bounce Back? Sort of, Chef

    After a divisive previous season, the fine-dining dramedy regained some momentum. But other aspects of Season 4 might leave fans cold. Here, we recap it all.This recap includes spoilers for all of Season 4 of “The Bear.”Season 3 of the FX/Hulu series “The Bear” was generally well-received by critics and it will probably pick up plenty of Emmy nominations when they are announced next month. But there was a fair amount of fan grumbling when the season debuted last summer.The most common complaints were that the season felt unsatisfying and incomplete, with too much left unresolved, and that it heaped too much misery on the characters. There were fewer of the triumphant moments that made the first two seasons so beloved.It would be a stretch to call Season 4 a comeback because “The Bear” never stopped being top-shelf television — and because the ending of the new season might provoke more howls of frustration. For the most part though, these 10 episodes should give most fans what they want, as our heroes finally start notching some wins again, and, for once, they actually open up to each other.When Season 3 ended, the Chicago fine-dining restaurant the Bear was in big trouble, thanks largely to its co-founder and head chef, Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), whose emotional unavailability and fussy pursuit of perfection resulted in consistent kitchen chaos.The Season 4 premiere, “Groundhogs,” is named for the movie “Groundhog Day,” in which a self-centered man repeats the same mistakes until he learns how to be a better person. The episode begins with what ends up being a turning point for Carmy: a mixed-to-negative Chicago Tribune review of the Bear, praising some of its dishes (including the Italian beef sandwiches served at its lunch window) but blasting the overall “culinary dissonance.”As the season starts, everyone at the Bear is about as low as they can be. To make matters worse, the restaurant’s chief financial backer, “Uncle” Cicero (Oliver Platt) — and his number-cruncher, “the Computer” (Brian Koppelman) — present the kitchen with a large countdown timer. They say the business has enough capital to keep losing money for another two months, but when the clock hits 0:00, if the Bear is not making enough profit to cover costs, it closes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Matthew Goode’s Surprising and Subversive ‘Dept. Q’ Performance

    The British actor is the engine that drives the popular new Netflix series.Anyone can be charming. But not everyone can wield and subvert their charms with the same savvy as the British actor Matthew Goode. He’s done it to great effect in movies and series like “Match Point,” “Downton Abbey,” “The Crown,” and now the Netflix show “Dept. Q.”In the first season of the Scotland-based series, Goode plays Carl Morck, a brilliant but abrasive detective whose career has been derailed by an attack where he was injured, his colleague died and his partner was paralyzed. When Carl returns to work bearing two healed bullet wounds and guilt underneath his prickly exterior, he leads the reopening of a cold case about the yearslong disappearance of a notorious court prosecutor. “Dept. Q” is a well-crafted detective show with a compelling cast of characters portrayed by an equally strong cast of actors. But what really anchors the show, and has helped it become a breakout hit for Netflix, is the charismatic performance of its lead.Goode has taken on roles that exploit his appearance as the strait-laced guy, the polished gentleman who represents a man of good breeding, education and success. His boyish looks and upright posturing can easily set him in the category of nonthreatening romantic interest. More often than not, though, Goode portrays a variation on the type, tamping down the charm or perverting it so that even a rote role is instilled with new dimension.For all of Carl Morck’s vulgar language and boorish attitudes toward those around him, the character is still a very obvious — and beloved — trope. Grizzled, rule-bending cops are their own subgenre of entertainment, as is the misanthropist genius — detective, doctor or otherwise — who excels at his job and yet struggles to engage in a civil conversation. So Carl is performatively sardonic and curmudgeonly, but Goode allows the audience to see how desperately this detective is clinging to his churlish persona as a life raft after his traumatic incident.Carl’s dialogue is snappy and curt, punctuated with firm, perfectly enunciated expletives. Because of his character’s insomnia, Goode’s bearing and mannerisms are languid, his eyes glazed and half-lidded. It gives Carl an extra air of impatience, even boredom.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Squid Game’ Season 3 Review: Game Over

    It’s time for Netflix’s global phenomenon to give up its final answers, if there are any.Contains spoilers for Season 2 of “Squid Game.”“Squid Game” is back for what is said to be its final round, with a six-episode third season on Netflix. If only all beneficiaries of free-floating, pandemic-boosted nihilism would fade away as quickly.The South Korean drama’s creator, writer and director, Hwang Dong-hyuk, had a couple of very profitable insights: that what was missing from “Survivor”-style competition shows was machine guns; and that greatly increasing the pool of contestants — the show’s dour hero, Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), is No. 456 — would increase the amount of blood that could be shed while simultaneously giving most of the deaths an anesthetizing, video-game irrelevance.He then gave his package an Instagram-friendly visual wrapping of bright colors, gargantuan toylike structures and massed minimalist costumes, and replaced plot with a series of elaborate variations on children’s games. No candy was ever designed and marketed with greater effectiveness.But the series wasn’t strictly a consumer product, and it wasn’t a reality show. As a work of fiction, it needed to do something to surprise us to merit a second or third season (they are really 2A and 2B). Most television shows may be formulaic to one degree or another, but it is harder not to notice when the formulas you are repeating are ones that you just created.The last batch of episodes picks up halfway through a set of the games in which debt-ridden proletarians are killed, or kill one another, as they compete for an ever-increasing pot of cash, all for the entertainment of anonymous, hyper-rich spectators. The previous winner Gi-hun, whose attempts to halt the spectacle and unmask its ringleader have failed miserably, is battered but alive. Sixty players remain for the final three games.The proximity to a resolution of Gi-hun’s fate gives this season a tension (artificial as it may be) that the show’s second installment, released in December, lacked. Otherwise, it is “Squid Game” business as usual.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Squid Game’ Review: Game Over

    It’s time for Netflix’s global phenomenon to give up its final answers, if there are any.Contains spoilers for Season 2 of “Squid Game.”“Squid Game” is back for what is said to be its final round, with a six-episode third season on Netflix. If only all beneficiaries of free-floating, pandemic-boosted nihilism would fade away as quickly.The South Korean drama’s creator, writer and director, Hwang Dong-hyuk, had a couple of very profitable insights: that what was missing from “Survivor”-style competition shows was machine guns; and that greatly increasing the pool of contestants — the show’s dour hero, Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), is No. 456 — would increase the amount of blood that could be shed while simultaneously giving most of the deaths an anesthetizing, video-game irrelevance.He then gave his package an Instagram-friendly visual wrapping of bright colors, gargantuan toylike structures and massed minimalist costumes, and replaced plot with a series of elaborate variations on children’s games. No candy was ever designed and marketed with greater effectiveness.But the series wasn’t strictly a consumer product, and it wasn’t a reality show. As a work of fiction, it needed to do something to surprise us to merit a second or third season (they are really 2A and 2B). Most television shows may be formulaic to one degree or another, but it is harder not to notice when the formulas you are repeating are ones that you just created.The last batch of episodes picks up halfway through a set of the games in which debt-ridden proletarians are killed, or kill one another, as they compete for an ever-increasing pot of cash, all for the entertainment of anonymous, hyper-rich spectators. The previous winner Gi-hun, whose attempts to halt the spectacle and unmask its ringleader have failed miserably, is battered but alive. Sixty players remain for the final three games.The proximity to a resolution of Gi-hun’s fate gives this season a tension (artificial as it may be) that the show’s second installment, released in December, lacked. Otherwise, it is “Squid Game” business as usual.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Barbara Walters Film ‘Tell Me Everything’ Sticks to Highlights

    “Tell Me Everything” is more of a puff piece than its subject might have liked, but the film is at its best examining TV journalism’s evolution.Given the subtitle — and, to be honest, the subject — of Jackie Jesko’s documentary “Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything” (streaming on Hulu), I expected a bit more soul-baring. That’s what Walters, the pioneering journalist who dominated the TV interview for decades, was known for. As Oprah Winfrey notes in the film, Walters’s specialty was getting subjects from Fidel Castro and Anwar Sadat to Monica Lewinsky and Winfrey herself to say something they’d never said to anyone.There’s nothing that really qualifies as a bombshell or revelation in this film, though. Like most documentaries about celebrities these days — and Walters, who died in 2022, was undoubtedly a celebrity — it features some frank comments from various interviewees, but carefully positions Walters in her best light: not a flawless woman, but one whose foibles don’t detract from her overall legacy.That means the film comments upon but doesn’t dwell on some of Walters’s more controversial moments: grilling women like Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga on their romantic lives, or cozying up to men like the notorious Roy Cohn. The lives of women in the spotlight are often scrutinized far more intently than those of their male colleagues, but here it’s not without reason: journalists who aspire to do their work in a fair, independent way have to accept that close personal relationships with subjects are off-limits in their private lives, and some questions probably cross ethical lines. But the film tries to frame most of these moments as responses to her upbringing, without spending much time on how they play into a broader American attitude of mistrust toward journalists.By those standards, “Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything” is disappointing, and more of a puff piece than I suspect Walters herself would have wanted. Yet seen through a different lens, it’s also fascinating — a rather thrilling history of television journalism, as seen through Walters’s life.That’s because she was absolutely a trailblazer for women in news, subjecting herself to plenty of ridicule as she took on one barrier after another: co-hosting a morning show, then anchoring evening news, landing consequential interviews, breaking ground with newsmagazines and innovative talk formats like “20/20” and “The View,” and ultimately creating a brand out of herself that signaled something to the public. There was a time when “the Barbara Walters interview” with a celebrity was an Event, something to stay up late and watch.Throughout the film, a host of voices — including Walters’s own, via archival interviews — tell this story. Winfrey and the seasoned news anchor Katie Couric, in particular, are valuable in filling in the historical background, showing how television journalism progressed from an era in which “hard news” was the realm of serious men in suits, all the way to the years when Walters sat around on a couch with her fellow hosts on “The View,” mixing news and interviews with live-wire conversations. Alongside Walters, they tell the tale of a shift in the shape of TV news. A medium built for entertainment has slowly changed how journalism is delivered and what you expect, and you can see it happening right before your eyes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Diego Luna Gives Jimmy Kimmel the Gift of Fox News Coverage

    While filling in for Kimmel this week, the actor-director got the attention of Laura Ingraham, who said she’d never seen the show before.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Reaching New ViewersDiego Luna delivered his final monologue as the first Mexican guest host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Thursday. The actor-director thanked audience members for their support, saying he “didn’t do this for the recognition, or the money, because there’s nothing.”“But there has been such an outpouring of support over the past few days, and last night — last night, I got the highest honor a late-night host can receive.” — DIEGO LUNALuna rolled clips of Fox News reacting to his guest-hosting stint, including Laura Ingraham, who said she was unfamiliar with his work and had never before watched “a ‘Jimmy Kimmel.’”“Thank you. By the way, Jimmy, that’s my gift to you. Yeah, whatever name this woman has, I got her to finally watch your show.” — DIEGO LUNAIn another parting gift, Luna promoted Kimmel’s sidekick, Guillermo, to executive producer, with help from Charlize Theron.The Bits Worth WatchingJimmy Fallon got stuck in the freezer with Jeremy Allen White, star of “The Bear,” on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutWet Leg onstage at the Reading music festival in England in 2023. Scott Garfitt/Invision, via Associated PressThe British band Wet Leg is enjoying indie rock stardom ahead of the release of its second album, “Moisturizer,” on July 11. More

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    ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 3, Episode 5 Recap: Heels

    The Goldenblatts and the Wexleys go glamping on Governors Island, but all is not well. Carrie meets her moody new neighbor.Season 3, Episode 5: ‘Under the Table’I’m sorry, there’s a crappy apartment below Carrie’s lavish Gramercy Park palace? With a tenant — her tenant — she has never met or heard of? This is an unexpected (and, like many things on this show) somewhat unbelievable twist.Sure, garden apartments are common, but Carrie is a rich person who bought this house from another rich person. Would either owner really leave the bottom floor in such shambles? Maybe so if it doesn’t bother the sexy biographer Duncan Reeves (Jonathan Cake) who lives there only six months of the year solely to write — and smoke a pipe, apparently, which is a detail that took the brooding London author thing a step too far.The only thing that does bother Duncan is the clickity clack of little Carrie heels, which keeps him up all day long as he is trying to sleep. (Brooding London authors can write only at night, see.)It’s this complaint that kicks Carrie into her petty era.Duncan requests that Carrie please remove her shoes when she is home, which offends her to her core. He even gifts her a pair of slippers, which she impolitely declines. “It’s New York. There’s noise,” she tells him, and continues to click-clack away, albeit with a bit more tiptoe.From there, Carrie’s pettiness only grows. When Miranda’s Airbnb neighbor comes at her half-naked with a meat cleaver, Carrie insists that her friend come stay in the safe harbor that is Gramercy. Miranda obliges, and then Carrie immediately begins to pick at her for consuming the last yogurt, the last banana and the last Mexican Coke. Again, Carrie is a rich person. And they are best friends. Why is Carrie acting as if Miranda should put down a credit card for incidentals?However, Miranda is rich, too, and she has been divorced from Steve for what, three years now? (Season 1 was a long time ago!) Why she still hasn’t found a permanent place to live is perplexing to say the least. Remember the first time Miranda left Steve in the first “Sex and the City” movie? All she had to do was walk through a gentrifying neighborhood and say the incredibly regrettable line “White guy with a baby. Wherever he’s going, that’s where we need to be, and boom, she had a new apartment. (Where was Woke Charlotte when we needed her?)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Art Detectives’ Is Good Nerdy Fun

    Murder? Of course. But this British series also gets excited about things like Viking gold, Chinese artifacts and Dutch master paintings.“Art Detectives,” on Acorn TV, is another strong cozy-nerdy procedural, this time oriented around murders connected to arts and culture. Stephen Moyer stars as Detective Inspector Mick Palmer, the sole member of the Heritage Crime Unit and a knowledgeable, passionate, observant dork. In the pilot, he recruits a devoted underling, Detective Constable Shazia Malik (Nina Singh), a young cop whose potential he spots and whose shabby boss he abhors.Each episode opens with a jazzy little murder vignette, and then Palmer and Malik show up to educate us all about Viking gold or Chinese artifacts. Given that Palmer is an art cop, perhaps it is no surprise that his dad (Larry Lamb) is an art criminal — a forger in particular, and also a real absentee dirtbag. Their relationship and Palmer’s grief and abandonment issues form the serial story line of the show.But the fun here is in the episodic aspects, and “Art Detectives” has a good time in the worlds of, for example, wine fraud and Titanic collectibles. Most of the mysteries here include one more minor twist at the end, an additional motive for the murder that the detectives misunderstood or a connection between the suspects that they missed. This helps the show feel more special than just another chug-along “Murder, She Wrote” descendant, a little richer, a little more adorned. The show is conscious of its own predictability, so it makes the most of its surprises.Many detective shows center on an investigator who is so dang quirky that his or her quirk is the defining feature of the show. But “Art Detectives” is a little brighter and realer than that. Palmer is not some alienated, frigid genius, nor is Malik his trusty people-whisperer. Palmer is an occasionally awkward smart guy who loves art and history. He flirts with his curator romantic interest (Sarah Alexander) over 1,000-year-old Viking skeletons and impresses collectors with his knowledge of rare books. For a while there, a lot of cop shows were horny for murder; “Art Detectives” prefers culture. Ooo, talk Dutch masters to me.Four of the season’s six episodes are available now, with new installments arriving on Mondays. More