Eliana Willis

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    in Television

    ‘The Bear’ Is Back. Here’s What You Need to Know

    The kitchen dramedy returns Wednesday, a year after its divisive third season ended on a cliffhanger. Here’s what to remember for the new episodes.The FX dramedy “The Bear” arrived on Hulu in the summer of 2022, and unlike a lot of award-winning TV, this series has stuck to a yearly release schedule, always arriving in late June. So get ready to start hearing “Yes, chef!” during everyday interactions.Season 4 debuts in full on Wednesday, returning viewers to the eclectic, vibrant Chicago food scene and the struggling restaurant at the heart of the story, the Bear. At the end of last season, Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), the Bear’s chef and co-owner, had just received a review in The Chicago Tribune that might determine whether or not his place stays open. But viewers still don’t know what it says.They almost certainly will find out in the new episodes, though Christopher Storer, the creator of “The Bear,” likes to keep the show unpredictable. Here are some things to keep in mind going into the new season.Chaos on the menuA quick reminder of how we got here: Carmy, suffering from self-doubt and burnout from his time working at high-end restaurants, returned to run the Original Beef of Chicagoland a few months after the suicide of his brother, Mikey (Jon Bernthal), who had inherited the restaurant from their volatile father. The first season ended with Carmy discovering Mikey had hidden thousands of dollars in tomato cans — enough to settle much of the restaurants’ debts, potentially.Instead, in Season 2, Carmy went deeper into debt with the family’s longtime backer, Jimmy Kalinowski (Oliver Platt), known variously as “Cicero” or “Unc,” to expand the restaurant into a new establishment called the Bear, serving sandwiches for lunch and a Michelin-level menu at night. The soft opening went well, despite a meltdown in the kitchen and a Carmy tantrum inside a walk-in refrigerator.Last season, the Bear built some buzz but still suffered from internal dysfunction, much of it because of Carmy’s persistent, restless reinvention of the menu. It all led up to the make-or-break review, which, based on Carmy’s reaction when he read it, does not seem to be the rave he and his team badly need.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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    in Theater

    The Curious Proposal to Fund New Hampshire’s Arts Council With $1

    New Hampshire residents pushed back, but lawmakers still plan to decimate the group, which gives grants to theaters and museums.The notice that landed in the inbox of Elliott Cunningham, the managing director of New Hampshire’s oldest playhouse, provided little explanation. But it made clear that the federal grant it had been awarded for a traveling production about a 12-year-old boy exploring backyard trails was no longer available.He expects a similar message from state funding sources to come next.Support for New Hampshire’s arts council is at risk as legislators finalize a two-year state budget this week. After one lawmaker suggested eliminating the organization, another countered with a proposal that the council should instead receive $1.The proposed cuts looked similar to President Trump’s move to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. In her inaugural address in January, Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, announced the formation of the Commission on Government Efficiency, a state version of the Department of Government Efficiency.The message has been clear: Reduce the size of government and trim budgets.To many state legislators, shrinking revenue means tough decisions. To arts administrators, the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts is essential to sustaining the theaters, museums and festivals that help give the “Live free or die” state its character.Last fiscal year the arts council gave the New London Barn Playhouse, where Mr. Cunningham works, a $21,250 grant to upgrade its sound system. The council also helped pay for a wheelchair-accessible lift backstage at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, for broadband upgrades at the New England Ski Museum in Franconia and for new floors at a dance studio in Lebanon.“There are a million places in this country that have a million strip malls that all look exactly the same,” said Sal Prizio, the executive director of the Capitol Center for the Arts, which is blocks away from the State House. “You’re killing the things that make New Hampshire, New Hampshire.”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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    On Broadway, A.I. and High-Tech Storytelling Is Having a Moment

    Sarah Snook screen-sharing selfies from a face-filtering phone app. Nicole Scherzinger getting her close-up via movie cameras. George Clooney making onstage television. Robert Downey Jr. superseded by a digital puppet.High-tech storytelling is surging on Broadway. Over the last year, stages have been brimming with large-scale and high-resolution videos, deployed not simply for scenery but also as an integrated narrative tool. It is all made possible by the growing availability, affordability and stability of the cameras, computers, projectors and surfaces that are utilized as part of today’s stage sets.The phenomenon, which is presumably here to stay, also reflects the ubiquity of digital devices in contemporary life. In an era when we are rarely separated from our smartphones or smartwatches, and video greets us in our cars and supermarkets, the latest technology is transforming stagecraft and storytelling.Robert Downey Jr. in “McNeal.”“The majority of Americans’ waking, conscious moments are looking at screens,” said the designer Jake Barton, who last fall worked on “McNeal,” a play that starred Downey as a novelist whose entanglement with generative artificial intelligence is woven into the scenic design. “On one level,” Barton said, “this is just theater naturally evolving.”Just two weeks ago, the Tony Awards gave the coveted best musical prize to “Maybe Happy Ending,” in which actors playing robots share a stage at times with massive videos depicting their digital memories. The best musical revival Tony went to “Sunset Boulevard,” where performers holding camera rigs film part of the action for transmission to a giant screen that swivels into the audience’s view. And the best play revival honor went to “Eureka Day,” which featured a reliably gut-busting scene in which chat comments posted during a school board meeting were projected above the cast.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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    Jimmy Fallon Wonders What Trump Will Launch Next

    The “Tonight Show” host said it was crazy that the president had “launched an attack on Iran, his own parade and a cellphone in the same week.”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.Hard LaunchPresident Trump authorized military strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend.“Remember when we were scared he was going to invade Canada?” Jimmy Fallon said on Monday. “I miss that.”“Yep, the strike came as a total surprise. Apparently, Trump had all the planes fly out of the abandoned Newark airport.” — JIMMY FALLON“The U.S. on Saturday launched strikes against three Iranian nuclear sites in a surprise attack. Well, ‘surprise’ to everyone who’s not on Pete Hegseth’s text chain.” — SETH MEYERS“It’s crazy to me that the president launched an attack on Iran, his own parade and a cellphone in the same week.” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump claimed Iran’s nuclear program was totally obliterated. As evidence, he held up a satellite photo showing Iran’s nuclear facility is now a Spirit Halloween.” — JIMMY FALLON“Now, were we facing an imminent threat? I don’t know. On one hand, Iran’s slogan isn’t ‘Life to America,’ but it’s hard to trust Donald Trump to be the one making these kinds of decisions. It kind of feels like we’re all in the back seat while the Uber driver goes on a road rage.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Fainting Elmo Edition)“New York governor Kathy Hochul yesterday declared a state of emergency amid a heat wave that’s expected to break 125-year-old records. Which means it’s time for my favorite hobby, going down to Times Square to watch the Elmos faint.” — SETH MEYERS“This weekend was the official start of summer, as my audience knows all too well. Thank you, thank you, you brave souls, for waiting outside in the humidity that the Weather Channel has described as ‘the devil’s trouser chili.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It’s not wearing a suit that makes me feel sticky. It’s the two layers of Spanx underneath it.” — JIMMY FALLON“Seriously, it is brutal out there. You know it’s bad when the heat map looks like Elmo’s colonoscopy.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThe Mexican actor and director Diego Luna spoke out on behalf of immigrants during his first night as guest host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe pop music prodigy Lorde will promote her new album, “Virgin,” on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutMore than 500 influential directors, actors and other notable names in Hollywood and around the world voted on the best movies of the 21st century so far. More

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    The Real Winner of ‘Squid Game’ Is Hwang Dong-hyuk

    “Squid Game,” the candy-colored South Korean series about a deadly competition, premiered on Netflix in 2021 and almost immediately became an international sensation. Hwang Dong-hyuk, who wrote and directed the series, could hardly believe it.“Literally, I pinched myself,” he said, gripping the skin of his cheek. “It was very surreal to me.”Hwang was speaking — sometimes in English, sometimes through an interpreter — earlier this month in the breakfast room of a luxury hotel in midtown Manhattan. The series was conceived in far shabbier locations.In 2009, having earned a master’s in film at the University of Southern California, he found himself back in South Korea, broke and demoralized. Spending his days huddled in cafes, reading grisly comic books and sliding deeper into debt, he began to dream up a story about a competition, based on popular children’s games, in which players would either solve all their money woes or die. No one would finance that nascent feature until nearly a decade later, when Netflix came calling.In its first season, “Squid Game” became the streamer’s most popular series ever, spawning think pieces, spinoffs, memes, bobblehead dolls. You could buy a “Squid Game” tracksuit, emblazoned with 456, the player number of the show’s protagonist, Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae). You could participate in less lethal recreations of the games, with on-site snack bars and a gift shop. A capitalist satire had become a capitalist triumph.Lee Jung-jae as Gi-hun in the final season. “The sense of crisis that weighs heavily on people’s daily lives, it allows anyone to easily relate to Gi-hun,” Hwang said.No Ju-han/NetflixWe 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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    in Theater

    Democrats to Protest Trump’s Takeover of Kennedy Center With Pride Event

    “This is our way of reoccupying the Kennedy Center,” said Jeffrey Seller of “Hamilton,” who was asked to stage the invite-only concert hosted by five senators.Five Democratic senators have rented a small theater at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and invited the producer of “Hamilton” to stage a gay pride concert there as a form of symbolic protest against President Trump’s takeover of the institution.The event, scheduled to take place on Monday night before an invited audience, will feature Broadway artists performing songs and readings. The concert, hosted by Senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado, is being called “Love Is Love,” a slogan used by the gay rights movement and quoted by the “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda when his show won at the Tony Awards in 2016.“What’s happening in the world is deeply concerning, but even in our darkest hours, we must continue to seek out the light,” Mr. Hickenlooper said in a statement. “The L.G.B.T.Q. community has long embodied this resilience, maintaining joy and creativity in the face of adversity.”Mr. Trump took over the Kennedy Center in February after purging its previously bipartisan board of Democratic appointees and replacing them with his allies. He denounced its programming as too “wokey” and promised to usher in a “Golden Age in Arts and Culture.”The senators, who exercised a prerogative extended to members of Congress to rent space in the center, chose this week for the event because June has long been when supporters of the gay community have celebrated Pride Month.Mr. Trump, in a departure from previous presidents, has not acknowledged Pride Month, and some of his actions in recent months have prompted concern in the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Since his takeover of the center, several groups have canceled events there, saying they no longer feel welcome.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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    ‘The Bear,’ Plus 3 Things to Watch on TV This Week

    The Hulu original series returns for its fourth season, and a new crime drama from Dennis Lehane airs.Between streaming and cable, there is a seemingly endless variety of things to watch. Here is a selection of TV shows and specials that are airing or streaming this week, June 23-29. Details and times are subject to change.If you can’t take the heat …“The Bear” — FX’s hotly anticipated kitchen drama — airs its fourth season this week. The first season, which aired in 2022, had a familiar premise of the prodigal son returning home: Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), who was climbing the culinary career ladder, goes back to Chicago to take over the family’s sandwich shop after a sudden tragedy. Much of the drama takes place in the kitchen, where Carmy, like Hamlet in a pair of Birkenstock Tokios, navigates his grief while managing competing pressures. In subsequent seasons, “The Bear” has included cameos by such real-life Michelin-starred chefs as René Redzepi and Thomas Keller.“The Bear” is about the pursuit of greatness, however fleeting, but it doesn’t play into the myth of the individual genius either. Much of the show’s success is owed to the fleshed-out portraits of an ensemble of characters — Liza Colón-Zayas and Ayo Edebiri have both picked up Emmys for their roles — whose abilities and dreams are as real as those of the show’s tortured frontman. Season three ended with a cliffhanger involving a consequential review for Carmy’s new fine-dining restaurant. Tune in for more of the show’s choreographed mania. Streaming Wednesday on Hulu.A point of originIn fire forensics, the “point of origin” is the term for where things ignited. For the Apple TV+ original series “Smoke,” that was the podcast, “Firebug,” about a real-life arsonist who tried to use his crimes as fodder for a novel, and then got caught. “Smoke” will run for nine episodes and center on the fraught partnership between an arson investigator (Taron Egerton) and a detective (Jurnee Smollett) as they try to catch two serial arsonists on the loose. A game of cat and mouse ensues, set to the melancholic crooning of Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, who wrote the series’s theme song, “Dialing In.” “Smoke” was created by the novelist cum TV writer Dennis Lehane, who is also an executive producer. Fans of Lehane’s books “Mystic River” and “Shutter Island” may appreciate the show’s slow-burning drama (forgive the pun). Streaming Friday on Apple TV+.Redemption arcsWe 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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    What Does Shane Gillis Want (to Get Away With)?

    How do you profit from a sudden windfall of attention?That’s what’s confronting the man-children of “Tires,” the Netflix sitcom from the comedian Shane Gillis, at the beginning of its recently released second season. The question digs at them both onscreen and behind the cameras.The show’s first season, which aired last year, felt like a tentative demo — a lo-fi experiment in bawdy, blue-collar yuksmanship. Season 2 is crisper and slicker. The clothes fit better. The lighting is sharper. And the auto repair shop at the show’s center is thriving, or something like it. The spoils of success are trickling in.Gillis, a frisky bear of a man who deftly tangles with the absurdities of contemporary culture and politics, is one of the standout comedic talents of the past few years. His humor is playful and plugged in, and delivered approachably. But he has at times deployed offense, or the appearance of it, in ways that have rendered him still something of an outsider from the mainstream, despite his huge popularity.“Tires,” an episodic sitcom on a major streaming platform, is first and foremost an opportunity to bridge that divide. Can the edgelord comedy that’s defined the nü-bro movement of the past few years come out and play?That remains to be seen. “Tires” is too inert to be offensive — curiously (purposely?) stakesless and edgeless for one of the few performers capable of making comedic hay of the current paroxysms around ideological purity (on all sides). Itchier provocations can be found in one Michael Scott monologue on a random episode of “The Office,” or truer right-leaning red meat on any of Tim Allen’s sitcoms.Gillis, left, stars in “Tires” as a mechanic at a Pennsylvania car repair garage.NetflixWe 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