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    Where Does ‘Unicorn: Warriors Eternal’ Rank in the Tartakovsky Canon?

    The Adult Swim series, from the acclaimed animator Genndy Tartakovsky, wraps up its first season this week. Our critic breaks down his other shows.On Friday, “Unicorn: Warriors Eternal,” the latest series from the famed animator Genndy Tartakovsky, will wrap up its first season on Adult Swim. Decades in the making, this show about a group of immortal fighters was a passion project for Tartakovsky, who is best known for award-winning series like “Primal” and “Samurai Jack.” While “Unicorn,” which is streaming on the Adult Swim website and on Max, has many of the animator’s signatures, it does not always deliver to the standard of some of his earlier series.What does “Unicorn” do well and less well? And what should you watch next if the series served as your introduction to Tartakovsky? I have broken down the good, the bad and the middling of his oeuvre — specifically TV series that he created and had the most creative control over (so no “Powerpuff Girls” or “Hotel Transylvania”) — and how “Unicorn” fits in with the rest.‘Dexter’s Laboratory’ (1996-2003)“Dexter’s Laboratory” is about a boy genius and his inventions.Hanna-Barbera/Cartoon NetworkA zany and fast-paced series about a boy genius named Dexter and his inventions, which are often destroyed by his ballet-dancing older sister, Dee Dee, “Dexter’s Laboratory” is one of the original series that defined Cartoon Network in the 1990s. Though it lacks the loftier intentions of “Samurai Jack,” “Primal” and, now, “Unicorn,” it delivers in fun, original narratives and stellar sound design.The show premiered as part of Cartoon Network’s animated anthology series “What a Cartoon!” in 1995 with a few short pilots. It graduated to a full series the following year, with a variety of short segments in each episode, including fun superhero parodies like “Dial M for Monkey” and “Justice Friends,” featuring goofs on Captain America, Thor and the Hulk.The series’s main appeal, however, is its fantastical plot twists and developments within the span of stories that are just a few minutes long. “Dexter’s Laboratory” has a total of four seasons but Tartakovsky left after the second, and the series lost much of its comedic charms. Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.‘Samurai Jack’ (2001-04, 2017)The animation in “Samurai Jack” features sharp silhouettes and bold colors.Adult SwimAn impressive marriage of classic kung fu movie conventions and futuristic sci-fi dystopia, “Samurai Jack” is not just an example of Tartakovsky’s animation at its best, but a masterful work in its own right. As in “Dexter Laboratory,” the animation in “Samurai Jack” is full of sharp, geometric silhouettes and bold colors. But “Jack,” like “Unicorn,” uses a wider swath of artistic reference points, including paintings of the Edo and Meiji eras and Impressionist-style watercolor paintings.“Unicorn” comes the closest of Tartakovsky’s series to matching the stunning imagination behind the worlds and characters in “Samurai Jack,” which incorporates lengthy, intricately directed action sequences, split screens, modular frames and various aspect ratios. The sound design is so tactile that you can practically feel each stab, crunch or slice.Through Jack’s classic hero’s journey, his noble questing and his encounters with new places and people who need his help, the series gives its story an epic scope. However, that narrative, with its repetitive “Kung Fu” western formula, can start to feel dull after a few episodes, but the revamped final season in 2017 was an improvement.Though the story doesn’t always take off, “Samurai Jack” follows a fascinating line of questioning about what it means to control a historical narrative and how fascism is born and perpetuated through physical and mental slavery and oppression. Plus, it had an awesome theme song. Stream it on Max.‘Star Wars: Clone Wars’ (2003-05)“Star Wars: Clone Wars” includes well-known characters like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker while pushing the story in new directions.LucasfilmSeparate from the C.G.I. show “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” from 2008, this series explored the years between “Star Wars” films — specifically “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith” — long before Disney+ arrived with its ever-expanding cache of spinoffs. But the show succeeds where so many of the franchise’s extensions fail by including enough familiar characters to satisfy fans while pushing the story into invigorating new directions.In terms of the action sequences, “Clone Wars” and “Samurai Jack” are both first-rate, but the former’s combination of light-saber fighting and Jedi parkour, gymnastics and force-pushes makes for a more dynamic watch.Tartakovsky proves to be the perfect match for George Lucas, who is notorious for writing dialogue as stiff as the hinges of an unoiled C-3PO. Tartakovsky’s minimalist approach to dialogue allows the visuals and unfolding action to speak for themselves; the additions he does make, like fresh exchanges between Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi and the introduction of a new sith-in-training named Asajj Ventress, further illuminate the workings of the “Star Wars” universe. Stream it on Disney+.‘Sym-Bionic Titan’ (2010-11)“Sym-Bionic Titan” has the clean lines and balanced palettes of Tartakovsky’s other work but it lacks charm overall.Cartoon NetworkIn this throwback to ’80s and ’90s fantasy mecha (read: giant robot) shows, a princess, a moody warrior sent to protect her and a robot escape a war on their home planet to settle on Earth as normal human high schoolers. But when their enemies pursue them to Earth, the three discover that they can “Voltron” themselves together into a giant robot fighter via a psychic link, à la “Neon Genesis Evangelion.”This show somehow manages to be too much and not enough: too much camp without the bite, too much earnest replication of the flashy ’80s and ’90s animation style, too mecha and yet too little humor, too little grounding, too little nuance. The humor is D.O.A., the jokes and cookie-cutter dramatic scenarios (fish out of water, a wacky intrusive neighbor) are set up neatly but executed without finesse or charm.The backdrops still have the clean, simple lines and balanced palettes of Tartakovsky’s other work. But they get quickly swallowed by the unctuous gleam and artificial gloss of the central action sequences and by character art that feels dated and muddled, a mix between decades old anime and saturated graphic novels of the previous 10-15 years.“Sym-Bionic Titan” stands out as one of the more loquacious series in Tartakovsky’s career. It shares this quality with “Dexter’s Laboratory,” but “Sym-Bionic Titan” is more awkward and cringe-worthy. Rent it on iTunes.‘Primal’ (2019-present)“Primal,” about a primitive man and his dinosaur, is violent but artful.Adult SwimAt a glance, you might expect “Primal” to be defined by viciousness and machismo — “Metalocalypse” but with dinosaurs. The series, about a primitive man and a dinosaur traveling together, bonded by grief, is violent and masculine. But it is never gratuitous, even when a dying woolly mammoth’s eye looks out pleadingly before being blinded by a sharp stone.That wounded eye says it all. The show, which was renewed for a third season earlier this month, is grounded in a brutal, unflinching philosophy of empathy and survival, exploring how empathy can be both a necessity and hindrance in a fight for survival.From its visual artistry to its unblinking, unsentimental depiction of connection and loss to its well-placed moments of levity, “Primal” feels like a natural evolution for Tartakovsky’s style and writing following “Samurai Jack.” The animator has tended toward spare dialogue, but “Primal” is practically nonverbal. The result is a captivating series that pulls you in to its world and doesn’t let go. Stream it on Max.‘Unicorn: Warriors Eternal’ (2023)“Unicorn: Warriors Eternal” is about magical immortals who are repeatedly reborn as ordinary people.Adult SwimTartakovsky started this series about 20 years ago, around the time he concluded work on “Samurai Jack” and “Clone Wars.” But “Unicorn,” which has been popular but has not yet been renewed for another season, has neither the sophistication of the former nor the fine-tuned action of the latter.The warriors of the title are magical immortals who are repeatedly reborn as different, seemingly ordinary individuals in order to fight an ancient evil — a robot named Copernicus locates each reborn warrior and awakens their dormant powers. “Unicorn” centers on the journey of Emma, who is struggling to adapt to her recently activated warrior alter ego, Melinda, a sorceress with devastating destructive power. She’s joined by Edred, a Legolas-type elven swordsman who was Melinda’s lover in a previous life, and Seng, a floating bald kid who recalls Avatar Aang, drifting in and out of the astral plane.Tartakovsky drew from Hayao Miyazaki (“Howl’s Moving Castle,” “Castle in the Sky”) for the wonderfully fantastical 19th-century steampunk setting — Copernicus’s speechless reactions, spare but full of meaning, are classic Tartakovsky. But the rest of the storytelling is more traditional, and it is flattened by a humdrum plot and a poorly written female protagonist.Tartakovsky’s projects tend to be predominantly male, so perhaps it is unsurprising that Emma/Melinda is saddled with a pat dilemma meant to give her character emotional complexity. She’s caught between a meek, accommodating persona and that of a powerful entity, a well-worn trope from animated series, especially anime. (See “Yu-Gi-Oh!” and “Jujutsu Kaisen,” among others.) It doesn’t help that her identity crisis is conflated with a romantic crisis, as lovers from the two halves of her life vie for her affection.Ultimately “Unicorn” builds worlds and mythologies but not the urgent stakes or interesting characters to drive them. For all of the magic in the series, it is missing the magic of Tartakovsky at his best. Stream it on AdultSwim.com and Max. More

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    ‘Just for Us’ Review: A Jew and 16 ‘Nerf Nazis’ Meet Cute

    Is it a stand-up act or a morality play? Either way, Alex Edelman’s look at race, religion and the limits of empathy is at home on Broadway.It may be too much to ask a human hummingbird like Alex Edelman to try to stick to the subject. In “Just for Us,” his three-jokes-per-minute one-man show, he zooms from punchline to punchline almost as fast as he caroms around the stage of the Hudson Theater. (At 34, he’s part of what he calls the overmedicated ADHD generation.) If you haven’t read about his act coming to Broadway, you might assume from his introduction — in which he describes his usual style as “benign silliness” and says this “isn’t Ibsen” — that you are in for a cheerful evening of laughs.And even though he’s telling a story about white supremacy, you are.That’s the glory and also the slight hitch of “Just for Us,” which opened on Monday after runs in London, Edinburgh, Washington and Off Broadway. No, it’s not Ibsen, a dramatist rarely noted for zingy one-liners. But it’s not silliness either. Despite its rabbi-on-Ritalin aesthetic, and its desperation to be liked at all costs, the show is so thoughtful and high-minded it comes with a mission statement. Edelman wants to open a conversation about the place of Jews on the “spectrum of whiteness,” he recently told my colleague Jason Zinoman, “without having a conversation about victimhood.”He’s well placed to draw the distinction. Growing up a “proudly and emphatically” Orthodox Jew in “this really racist part of Boston called Boston,” he clocked the wariness between races but also within them. And though he admits to experiencing “quite a bit of white privilege,” he was so alienated from mainstream culture that he didn’t know what Christmas was until his mother observed it one year when a gentile friend was in mourning.Oy, the tsouris it caused at his yeshiva!Hilarious as the ensuing story is, you have the feeling that “Just for Us” might have been little more than a millennial update on Jackie Mason-style Jewish humor were it not for that millennial accelerant, social media. “An avalanche of antisemitism” on Twitter, in response to some comments he’d posted, supercharged Edelman’s thinking about identity-based hatred and led him, one evening in 2017, to infiltrate a white supremacist get-together in Queens.“A Jew walks into a bar,” the joke might start, though it wasn’t a bar, as Edelman had expected, but a private apartment. There he took a chair among 16 strangers with predictably pan-bigoted opinions. By marrying Prince Harry, Meghan Markle would be “degrading” one of Europe’s oldest families. Diversity initiatives constitute “a plan to slowly genocide white people.” Jews, the root of the weed of that genocide, “are sneaky and everywhere.”The comedian is making his Broadway debut with “Just for Us.” The set at the Hudson Theater, by David Korins, consists of little more than a miniature proscenium to rescale expectations, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat we rarely feel the horror or even the unpleasantness of Edelman’s encounter is partly deliberate; he portions his spinach with plenty of candied yams. Defanging the “sneaky and everywhere” comment, he admits that he was in no position, sitting there incognito, to disprove the point. Then he wheels sharply into a seemingly unrelated 10-minute story about vaccine denialists. Likewise, the racist disparagement of Meghan Markle is immediately interrupted by a bit about Harry snorting cocaine through a rolled-up “picture of his grandmother.”The indirection is not purposeless; Edelman is building the service roads to his main argument. But that argument surfaces far less than the jokes do, taking up only about 35 minutes of the 85-minute show — a proportion that betrays its origins in stand-up. The set, by David Korins, betrays those origins too, consisting of little more than a miniature proscenium to rescale expectations and a black stool straight from your local Komedy Korner.The real giveaway, though, is the compulsive ingratiation. Though it produces much laughter, including too many giggles from the comic himself, the doggy overeagerness could stand to be toned down, and probably would have been if Edelman’s longtime director, Adam Brace, had been able to complete his work on the production. (He died in March, at 43, after a stroke.) Alex Timbers, credited as the creative consultant, helped guide the show to Broadway, handsomely.And yet, the ingratiation, however distracting, is also strategic. The show wouldn’t work without its contrast between storytelling and joke plugging. By going “dumb and small” about such a serious subject — Edelman describes the arrangement of chairs at the meeting as an “antisemicircle” — he lays the groundwork for a denouement in which he turns the critique on himself as he turns to the bigger issues at hand.For as he promised, “Just for Us” is not about Jewish victimhood, or anyone’s victimhood, except perhaps that of the aggrieved supremacists, who are too puny and whiny to constitute a real threat. He calls them Nerf Nazis. Nor is “Just for Us” (which is how the supremacists ultimately describe their territory) really about the spectrum of whiteness. What’s at stake instead is the idea of empathy, a central value in Edelman’s vision of Judaism. How far does it extend? Is it unconditional? Do even the hateful deserve it? And, especially relevant to Edelman in this case: Is it vitiated by bad motives?Because, check it out, there’s a cute woman at the meeting who seems to be into him. Could he be the guy who “fixes” her? Who fixes the whole group? They too have been ingratiated: “I came as an observer,” he says. “I might leave as, like, the youth outreach officer.”This is moral vanity, Edelman admits: a professional charmer’s eagerness to flatter other people’s self-regard as a way of buttressing his own. That’s what makes “Just for Us” more than a Catskills club act washed ashore on Broadway like Mason’s. For all the dumb jokes (but yes, I laughed at every one) it winds up as a critique of both dumbness and jokes.If that’s a highly indirect route to insight, it’s a highly effective one too, taking us through the process by which a Jew, or anyone, may learn once again that the cost of being liked at all costs is too high.Just for UsThrough Aug. 19 at the Hudson Theater, Manhattan; justforusshow.com. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. More

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    Brooklyn Academy of Music Lays Off 13 Percent of Its Staff

    The organization, which made Brooklyn a destination for pathbreaking performances, is reducing programming next season as it seeks to rebound from the pandemic.The Brooklyn Academy of Music, one of the most important cultural organizations in New York, has laid off 13 percent of its staff members and reduced its programming as it seeks to plug a “sizable structural deficit” during a challenging time for the arts, officials confirmed on Monday.BAM moved last week to eliminate 26 positions, according to a letter sent to staff members by the organization’s president, Gina Duncan.In the letter, which was reviewed by The New York Times, Ms. Duncan said that the changes were necessary in part to help BAM to “weather the downturn in charitable giving for the arts, and address an outdated business model that heavily relies on a shrinking donor base.” She said that the organization faced a “sizable structural deficit” each year.“This is us putting on our oxygen mask so that we can continue to fulfill our promise to be a home for adventurous artists, audiences, and ideas,” she wrote in the email.Ms. Duncan noted that the academy had already pared down its Next Wave Festival scheduled for this fall and added that programming for next season as a whole would be reduced. (The festival, often a highlight of the city’s cultural year, will feature seven programs this year, down from 13 last year.)“These difficult decisions were made after a rigorous organizational review process,” Ms. Duncan wrote in the memo.“We cannot spend our way out of a deficit, and we cannot present programming beyond what we can afford,” she added.The year before the pandemic, in April 2019, BAM obtained a $2.8 million loan from Bank of America, according to its financial papers. The papers said that the balance, more than $2.4 million, would come due next June.Megan Grann, a union representative of Local 2110, which represents technical, office and professional workers, said that 17 of the people who lost jobs had been in the union. She said that at least three had been offered “possible new positions” within the arts institution.“We are really just not happy with this development, to say the least,” she said. “Our primary goal right now is to try to mitigate the damage as much as possible.”The layoffs come as BAM, which began presenting work in 1861, finds itself having to navigate the post-pandemic challenges that many arts organizations around the country are facing. Earlier this month the Center Theater Group, a flagship of the Los Angeles theater world, laid off 10 percent of its work force and halted productions at one of its three stages, the Mark Taper Forum.But BAM is facing those difficulties while also experiencing significant leadership turnover after many years of relative stability.David Binder, the institution’s artistic director, is expected to step down next month after roughly four years at the helm. His two predecessors, Joseph V. Melillo and Harvey Lichtenstein, each spent more than three decades at the institution.On the executive side, Ms. Duncan took over as president in 2022, after the departure of Katy Clark, who held the job for five years (and was permitted to keep an apartment that BAM helped her purchase). Clark had succeeded Karen Brooks Hopkins, who spent 36 years at the institution, including 16 as president.Nora Ann Wallace took over as chair of BAM’s board in 2020, after the death of its previous board chair, Adam Max.Like other arts organizations, BAM has also had to contend with headwinds generated by the pandemic, which shuttered live performance for months. While many organizations survived the shutdown with the help of federal aid, once they reopened many found that it had become more difficult to attract audiences and donors alike.When Mr. Binder announced this year that he was leaving, the institution had 222 full-time staff positions, down from 256 before the pandemic. Most recently, the number of such positions had dwindled to around 200, and the latest round of cuts are expected to move the number below that threshold. More

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    ‘The Idol’ Season 1, Episode 4 Recap: Just a Jealous Guy

    Destiny goes undercover as tensions rise at Jocelyn’s mansion. Tedros’s hair evolves from rattail to ponytail.Season 1, Episode 4: ‘Stars Belong to the World’On the track that plays over opening and closing of this week’s episode of “The Idol,” the Weeknd sings: “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry that I made you cry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m just a jealous guy.” It’s the classic text of an abuser now made to sound pretty in Abel Tesfaye’s sensitive warble.The Weeknd music that scores scenes has been a confusing element of the series. Is this just the star and co-creator putting more of his stamp on the show? Or is he actually in character? This song, at least, sounds to be coming less from the Weeknd and more from Tedros. That is, if you listen to the lyrics. (I’m not sure if Tedros can sing.)In the fourth — and apparently penultimate — episode of this season, we finally get some details on Tedros Tedros’s past. His real name, it turns out, is Mauricio Costello Jackson. In 2012 he was arrested and accused of kidnapping his ex-girlfriend, holding her hostage for three days and beating her. During his trial more accusations arose.He told a version of this story to Jocelyn, apparently, that turned him into a victim of a “crazy ex-girlfriend.” Jocelyn blithely explains to her manager Destiny that he was acting in self-defense when he hit her, and that the other girls that emerged with charges that he was their pimp were just musical artists he was working with trying to extort him for money.It seems unbelievable, frankly, that anyone could believe that story, but in the context of “The Idol,” everyone is somehow seduced by Tedros, no matter how suspicious they are of him or how violently he acts toward them. This is the most baffling aspect of the series. In an interview with GQ, Tesfaye explained that Tedros is a “douchebag,” a fact that is painfully obvious to any viewer. And yet this “douchebag” is apparently so alluring that he can assault people in plain view while everyone just shrugs and chalks it up to his unorthodox methods. The only character who is seemingly immune to all of this is Jocelyn’s best friend and assistant, Leia, the lone voice of reason who ends up getting blasted with a water gun full of tequila.Take Jocelyn’s manager Destiny, for instance. After digging up the facts of Tedros’s life — and suggesting that he might need to be literally assassinated — she decides to go on an undercover mission at the compound to gather information. At first, she reports back to her partner Chaim that there is “weird, scary” stuff going on after she watches Tedros blindfold and get Jocelyn off in front of a room full of people in order to re-record her vocals as she builds to a climax. But eventually, even Destiny is at least a little impressed. After about a week there, she is telling Chaim about the talented people that Tedros has assembled and saying, “Tedros is Tedros.” In her assessment, he is making hits with Jocelyn, and even though his methods are brutal, ‌‌the hits are worth preserving. She still wants to handle the situation, but for now she’s letting it play out.That’s nothing, however, compared to how Xander turns around over the course of this hour. In one of the more messily constructed plot threads, Tedros listens to Xander sing in the shower and then pops up like a poltergeist. What begins as an interrogation as to why Xander no longer sings professionally eventually turns into a torture session in which Jocelyn participates almost gleefully.The contours of Jocelyn and Xander’s relationship are muddy. They were both child performers. Xander lived with Jocelyn and her mom and stood by while the abuse took place, but also Jocelyn’s mom outed Xander and possibly made him sign a contract saying that he wouldn’t sing anymore. Clearly there is resentment that might be worth exploring if this were a more nuanced show, but the situation ends with Xander tied up and relentlessly shocked by a collar around his neck.Despite all of that, by the end of the episode he appears to be doing Tedros’s bidding, orchestrating a situation to humiliate Jocelyn’s superhero actor ex-boyfriend, Rob (Karl Glusman), whom she invited over for sex in an act of revenge.Yes, Jocelyn at least starts to stand up for herself just a little bit when she learns that Dyanne, who has now been offered the chance to record “World Class Sinner” as a debut single, brought her to Tedros’s club on Tedros’s bidding. Rob is genuinely concerned for her when he arrives. She has just gone public about the abuse her mother inflicted upon her, recording a teary iPhone video for social media. But she doesn’t want to talk about that with Rob. She just wants to seduce him in a play to make Tedros jealous. Cue: an extremely explicit sex scene.As Rob is leaving, Xander and a bikini-clad woman accost him. The woman poses seductively as Xander snaps photos in what is likely some sort of blackmail attempt.With only one episode remaining, it feels as if “The Idol” is both running out of steam — how many times can we watch Tedros blindfold Jocelyn? — and has too many threads left dangling. Most crucially: I still don’t feel I understand Jocelyn or why she is so drawn to Tedros beyond the thin explanation of her history of being abused. And as for Tedros, by this point I’m not sure why we’ve spent so much time watching a man who is a one-note abuser himself.I expect that Jocelyn will reclaim some of her power and there will be some moment of comeuppance for Tedros. Will it answer any of my questions or be at all satisfying? That remains to be seen.Liner notesI still think “World Class Sinner” is a better song than any of the tracks Jocelyn is making with Tedros.Yes, Mike Dean is a real record producer. No, I do not know whether that is his giant bong, but it is a very large bong.Is Tedros really that connected that he would know Dean? Or is that just another messy blurring of the lines between the Weeknd and his character?Suzanna Son, so great in Sean Baker’s “Red Rocket,” is also a standout here. I genuinely enjoyed her scene opposite Da’Vine Joy Randolph and her crocodile song.I will admit, the shot of Tedros watching Xander in the shower was a pretty good jump scare.I was wondering when the noted pop star Troye Sivan (as Xander) was going to sing.Five episodes does feel awfully short for as hyped an HBO project as this is. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Bachelorette’ and ‘Casa Susanna’

    The 20th season of the reality dating show premieres on ABC, and PBS presents a documentary about a safe home for trans women in the ‘50s and ’60s.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, June 26 — July 2. Details and times are subject to change.MondayKevin Jonas, left, and his youngest brother, Frankie Jonas, in “Claim to Fame.”John Fleenor/ABCCLAIM TO FAME 8 p.m. on ABC. A new group of 12 A-list celebrity relatives will live together and compete in a series of challenges while trying to conceal their identities in the second season of this game show from the executive producer of “Love Is Blind.” Hosted by the singer Kevin Jonas and his youngest brother, Frankie, these lesser-known relatives must guess whom their fellow housemates are related to before they themselves are found out and eliminated. The last person standing will win $100,000.THE BACHELORETTE 9 p.m. on ABC. Charity Lawson, a child and family therapist from Georgia, will be “The Bachelorette” in the 20th season of this reality dating show. Last year, Lawson was a contestant on the 27th season of “The Bachelor,” becoming a fan favorite before she was eliminated in Week 8. Hosted by Jesse Palmer (a former football player and Season 5’s “Bachelor”), the show will follow Lawson on her search for lasting love as she is courted by 25 men in dates across the globe.POV: AFTER SHERMAN 10 p.m. on PBS. The 36th season of this documentary series follows the New York-based filmmaker Jon-Sesrie Goff as he explores his Gullah Geechee heritage by returning to the South Carolina Lowcountry, where his family purchased land after emancipation. Through interviews with his family and locals and a mix of animation and home movies, Goff explores themes of Black inheritance, trauma and survival. “The film is expressionistic but never at a cost to its subjects and archival material,” wrote Lisa Kennedy in her review for The New York Times, adding that the documentary is an “investigative and intimate work of belonging.”TuesdaySusanna “Tito” Valenti in “Casa Susanna.”Collection of Cindy ShermanCASA SUSANNA 9 p.m. on PBS. As a part of its Pride Month programming, PBS presents a documentary about Casa Susanna, a home in New York’s Catskills region where transgender women and cross-dressing men found refuge during the 1950s and ’60s. Through a collection of photos, archival footage and interviews, the film explores the cultural significance of the house and dives deep into the lives of the transgender woman Susanna Valenti and her wife, who owned it.WednesdayMarcus ScribnerMike Taing/FreeformGROWN-ISH 10 p.m. on FREEFORM. The sixth and final season of this “Black-ish” spinoff follows Andre Johnson Jr. (Marcus Scribner) as he navigates college. The first episode of the new season begins the summer before Andre’s sophomore year, which finds him stressing over choosing a major, his relationship with his girlfriend and what the new school year might have in store for him. The season will also feature his older sister, Zoey (Yara Shahidi), as she attempts to revive her company, in addition to a number of guest stars including Kelly Rowland, Lil Yachty and Anderson .Paak.ThursdayREVEALED 10 p.m. on HGTV. This home renovation show blends design with culture as the interior designer Veronica Valencia Hughes remodels homes into modern spaces that reflect her clients’ family histories and life stories.FridayMichel Serrault, left, and Ugo Tognazzi in “La Cage aux Folles.”United ArtistsLA CAGE AUX FOLLES (1978) 10:30 p.m. on TCM. Based on the 1973 play of the same name by Jean Poiret, this French-language farce tells the story of a middle-aged gay couple — Renato Baldi (Ugo Tognazzi) and Albin “Zaza” Mougeotte (Michel Serrault) — who operate a drag nightclub in a French resort town. Comedy ensues when Renato’s son brings his fiancée and her conservative parents home to meet them. Despite its multiple Academy Award nominations and two sequels, the movie failed to impress The Times movie critic Vincent Canby, who wrote that the performances were “energetic, broad, much too knowing and superficial.”SaturdayTrevante Rhodes, left, and André Holland in “Moonlight.”David Bornfriend/A24MOONLIGHT (2016) 5:05 p.m. on HBO2e. This coming-of-age drama begins in a Miami housing project and follows the young Black protagonist, Chiron, through childhood, adolescence and early adulthood as he grapples with his sexuality and masculinity. In his review for The Times, A.O. Scott said it is “both a disarmingly, at times almost unbearably personal film and an urgent social document, a hard look at American reality and a poem written in light, music and vivid human faces.” Directed by Barry Jenkins, who received an Oscar nomination for best director and won the award for best adapted screenplay with Tarell Alvin McCraney, “‘Moonlight’ is about as beautiful a movie as you are ever likely to see,” Scott concluded.SundayTOUGH AS NAILS 8 p.m. on CBS. From the Emmy Award-winning producer Phil Keoghan (“The Amazing Race”), this competition show takes place, for the first time, in Ontario, with 12 American and Canadian contestants vying for $200,000 and a pickup truck. The premiere of the fifth season challenges them to see who can cut, grind and torch 500 pounds of scrap metal the fastest. More

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    in Theater

    ‘Invisible’ Review: Brown and British

    As part of the Brits Off Broadway festival at 59E59 Theaters, Nikhil Parmar’s solo play is a drama-tinged satire that morphs into a grisly revenge parable.In the world of Nikhil Parmar’s funny, fantastical solo play “Invisible,” the mind-set of Britain has undergone a significant shift. One of the West’s favorite boogeymen — the Islamic fundamentalist — has vanished from the public imagination. Chinese terrorists are the designated bad guys now.For brown British actors like Zayan Prakash (Parmar), that is both good news and bad. On the one hand, strangers no longer look at him and assume that he’s a threat. On the other, that means the Muslim terrorist roles that were once so prolific have disappeared. So what’s left for him to play? Just “doctors, cabdrivers and corner shop owners.” He’s lucky if those characters get names.“Invisible,” at 59E59 Theaters as part of the Brits Off Broadway festival, is a drama-tinged satire that morphs into a grisly revenge parable, before shape-shifting into something close to reality. But first this play, directed by Georgia Green for London’s Bush Theater, is a sharp and lively comedy in which the charismatic Zayan recalls answering his door to find his ex-girlfriend, Ella, the mother of his toddler daughter, standing there.“Hello. Why do you look weird?” Ella asks, and Zayan — who’s looking weird because he’s just heard on the news about the demise of “brown terrorism” — pivots to the audience with a cliché-killing aside that won my heart: “I was going to do her bit in a really high-pitched voice but, (a), it sounded pretty offensive and, (b), she actually has a properly deep voice, so.”Ella has come to tell Zayan that she has a live-in boyfriend, Terrence, an old classmate of theirs from drama school whose career is flourishing; he’s Korean and playing a terrorist in a prestige drama, now that “East Asian fundamentalism” is supposedly a menace. Zayan can’t stand Terrence, but their ensuing rivalry makes for laughs, even as it drives home a point about jostling for position inside a white-supremacist system.The magnetic Parmar slips in and out of Zayan and the crowd of characters around him, each distinct. Though the play’s narrative becomes somewhat tangled and unruly, there is method in its muchness.What torments Zayan is a creeping sense of his own invisibility: Now that he isn’t perceived as a terrorist, he fails to register at all. Yet over the show’s 60-minute running time, we see Zayan for the multitude that he is: underemployed actor, reluctant cater waiter, incompetent weed dealer, doting father, inattentive son. He is also a grieving brother haunted by the ghost of his dead little sister, the person who looked at him and saw someone central to her story.It is disorienting, and infuriating, to be hampered by a culture’s — and an industry’s — blinkered perception of what a whole group of people is capable of. “Invisible” is a thoughtfully provocative, witheringly knowing response to that noxiousness.InvisibleThrough July 2 at 59E59 Theaters, Manhattan; 59e59.org. Running time: 1 hour. More

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    in Theater

    Philip Schuyler Is Knocked Off His Pedestal in Albany

    A statue of the Revolutionary War general, newly prominent thanks to the musical “Hamilton,” has been removed from its place outside Albany City Hall because he enslaved people.There was a time when one probably had to be a committed Revolutionary War buff or an aficionado of early Albany aristocracy to know the name Philip J. Schuyler.But that was before “Hamilton.”Indeed, as any devotee of the blockbuster musical can tell you, the Schuylers were Colonial-era movers and shakers, and the central figures in the show’s fraught love triangle between Hamilton and two of the Schuyler sisters.And while Philip Schuyler never speaks during the show, he is a presence even before he becomes Hamilton’s father-in-law: “Take Philip Schuyler, the man is loaded,” Aaron Burr intones, and Schuyler is mentioned frequently by his daughters, Angelica, Eliza and Peggy.In reality, Schuyler was much more prominent than a bit part: the patriarch of a wealthy Albany family — a patroon, as Dutch-era landowners were known — he served as a New York lawmaker, a United States senator, and a major general in the war with the British, and was a close friend of George Washington.Those accomplishments had resulted in a seven-foot-tall statue of Schuyler being placed, nearly a century ago, on a pedestal in front of Albany’s grandly Romanesque City Hall, just across from the State Capitol. In recent years it sometimes drew “Hamilton” fans to snap selfies.The Schuyler statue — in bronze, by J. Massey Rhind, a Scottish-born sculptor — had stood outside City Hall since 1925. iStock/Getty ImagesBut Schuyler also enslaved people, by some accounts among the most in the Albany area at the time. That fact has led to a reconsideration of his legacy, and ultimately to his statue’s removal — a slow-motion retreat on a flatbed trailer — after years of delays and amid a backlash by some who argue that such actions do little to remedy past sins and may even miss an opportunity for education.The removal is part of a wider reckoning with the racist actions of historical figures, a movement that gained steam during the Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, who died after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by a white police officer in Minneapolis. That re-evaluation has included the removal or dismantling of scores of monuments devoted to Confederate figures, and has even touched on Hamilton himself, who some scholars say is likely to have enslaved people despite his reputation as an abolitionist.In Schuyler’s case, the statue’s detachment — from a pedestal hiding a 1920s time capsule, complete with a letter from a Schuyler descendant — was authorized by Albany’s mayor, Kathy Sheehan, via executive order in June 2020.In an interview, Ms. Sheehan said that her decision had come, in part, after concerns were raised by Black members of her staff. “You couldn’t get into City Hall without walking past the statue,” said Sheehan, a Democrat, who said budget problems and the pandemic had stymied earlier efforts to move the statue.Mayor Kathy Sheehan of Albany held a news conference after a time capsule was discovered in the base of the statue.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesMs. Sheehan noted that Schuyler’s slaveholding was well-known. Nearly two decades ago, the remains of enslaved people were discovered buried on property once owned by the Schuyler family.Alice Green, the executive director of the Center for Law and Justice, a civil rights organization in Albany, said that the statue’s removal was “a relief.”“It didn’t seem right that we should have a statue on public property, glorifying and paying tribute to someone who had done what he did to African American people,” said Dr. Green, adding that her group had worked for years to have Schuyler sent packing, and that the publicity around “Hamilton” may have given the effort momentum.“Some people, I think, became more angry after learning more about who Schuyler was,” Dr. Green said. “And they only were able to do that because people started talking about Schuyler as a result of ‘Hamilton.’”The removal was met with opposition from some prominent local lawmakers: Representative Elise Stefanik, the third-highest ranking Republican in the House majority, who represents a district in Northern New York, accused Ms. Sheehan of trying to “erase history” with the statue’s removal.Jeff Perlee, a Republican member of the Albany County Legislature, echoed that.“I just think it reflects poorly on Albany, and its awareness of its own history,” said Mr. Perlee, adding that — unlike Confederate figures — Schuyler was “someone who sacrificed everything he had to create this country.”“Can you imagine Boston turning its back on Sam Adams or Virginia denying Thomas Jefferson?” Mr. Perlee continued. “The leaders in those places, I think, are sophisticated enough to understand the historical context and the whole measure of attributes and negative features of historical figures. And unfortunately, the leaders in Albany don’t.”Workers with the time capsule, and its contents, found in the base of the statue.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesThere is no question that Schuyler — and Hamilton — had a major presence in Albany. Hamilton, who famously died in a duel with Burr, his political rival, in 1804, was married to Eliza Schuyler at the family’s mansion on Albany’s south side in 1780, where Hamilton also worked on the U.S. Constitution, according to “Oh Albany!,” a history of the city by William Kennedy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Both Hamilton and Burr also had law practices in the capital, not far from City Hall.The Schuyler Mansion, overlooking the Hudson River, was a seat of power in old Albany, an impressive estate with formal gardens and a working farm manned by dozens of enslaved people and other servants, according to the state’s parks department. Mr. Kennedy said that Schuyler — who married Catherine Van Rensselaer, from another prominent Dutch family — was host to some of America’s most famous figures at its most formative moments.“He was constantly talking with people like Benjamin Franklin when they were planning the Declaration of Independence,” said Kennedy, who is 95 and the éminence grise of Albany’s literary scene. “And his house was a place of common traffic with the leadership of this nation.”The Schuyler statue — in bronze, by J. Massey Rhind, a Scottish-born sculptor — was a gift of George C. Hawley, a local beer baron, and treated as front-page news in the Knickerbocker Press, which recounted a parade and thousands of onlookers at its unveiling, including military units and Boy Scouts, in June 1925.“The attention of millions of persons from all parts of the world will be arrested by General Schuyler’s figure, eloquent reminder of duties of manhood and obligations of citizenship,” the Press quoted Charles H. Johnson, the keynote speaker, as saying.Mr. Johnson’s prediction may have been hyperbolic, but the smash success of “Hamilton” — which opened at the Public Theater in 2015 and transferred to Broadway — has had a spillover effect to related Albany attractions. Attendance at the Schuyler mansion — now a state historic site — doubled between 2015 to 2019, as officials there and others began offering special Alexander Hamilton tours at the mansion and around Albany.The Schuyler sisters have also had their close-up, with specialized tours at the mansion, and a 2019 exhibition at the Albany Institute of History and Art.The Schuyler sisters: Phillipa Soo as Eliza, Renee Elise Goldsberry as Angelica and Jasmine Cephas Jones as Peggy in “Hamilton” on Broadway in 2015.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAt the same time, however, historians here do not try to whitewash Schuyler’s personal connection with slaveholding, including at the mansion, said Heidi L. Hill, the site’s manager. The mansion’s exhibits highlight the stories of an enslaved butler and valet of Philip Schuyler, as well the story of an enslaved woman who fled the mansion. The mansion also was the publisher of a 2020 paper linking Hamilton to slavery.Schuyler died in 1804, just months after Hamilton was killed in the duel. Schuyler’s fame ebbed, but his name has continued to be affixed to villages, schools and bakeries around the Albany area (though some of those have also decided to change their names).“He’s one of those figures that’s like hugely significant in his own lifetime, but he doesn’t have quite as prominent a role post-Revolution,” said Maeve Kane, an associate professor of history at the University at Albany. “So he has this role during the Revolution and then he kind of fades away.”Dr. Kane added that while the musical hadn’t necessarily changed the perception of Philip Schuyler, it had “acted as a catalyst for these broader conversations about early America.”“And as a historian, I think that’s valuable,” Dr. Kane said.As for the sculpture itself, the bronze was taken to an undisclosed location as the city considers where it put it; a 2022 study, “What to Do With Phil?,” authored by a local youth group — the Young Abolitionist Leadership Institute — considered several options, including moving the statue to a location near the Capitol.In the meantime, Mayor Sheehan says that she hopes that a new city commission — likely to be approved by Albany’s Common Council this summer — will find a good spot where the fullness of Schuyler’s life can be told, saying the removal is “not about scrubbing” the past.“It’s not about cancel culture and not about canceling him, but about moving him to a place where the entire story is contextualized,” she said, adding, “You cannot contextualize the history of anyone on a traffic circle.” More

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    in Television

    ‘The Bear’ Season 2 Puts a Little Optimism on the Menu

    With a gentler tone and reverence for hospitality, the Hulu show reaches beyond the chef to give other workers the spotlight.This article contains spoilers for the Hulu series “The Bear.”Even before the bump in Italian beef sandwich sales last year, you could sense an immediate, almost feverish enthusiasm for “The Bear.” You could measure it, not in actual views (Hulu doesn’t release streaming data), but in thirsty memes of Carmen (Carmy) Berzatto, the broken chef with a wavy jumble of unwashed hair and a startled, pink face that always seemed recently slapped.Carmy, played by Jeremy Allen White, is the tortured chef at the center of “The Bear,” determined to, though not always capable of, doing things differently.Chuck Hodes/FXCarmy, played by Jeremy Allen White, became the patron saint of obsessive chefs, their personal lives obliterated by a dedication to restaurant work. After his brother’s death, Carmy was determined to get his family’s ancient, grimy, lawless sandwich shop into shape while also, somehow, being a good guy — a dilemma he tackled between exploding toilets, fights, Al-Anon meetings and panic attacks.“I’m fine, really,” Carmy told his sister over the phone, “I just have trouble breathing sometimes and wake up screaming.”The breakout show’s portrayal of the anxiety and tension that rule restaurant kitchens was darkly realistic. And while the second season, which premiered Thursday on Hulu, doesn’t completely leave those pressures behind, it conveys an unexpected optimism about the restaurant industry and the people who make it run.The new season of “The Bear” follows its workers on their various adventures as the restaurant closes for renovations.Chuck Hodes/FXSeason 2 of “The Bear” swivels attention away from the chef and his trauma to spend time with other characters and, in the process, does something that TV and movies about restaurants hardly ever do: It subverts the power structure of the brigade system and invites more workers into the center of the story, where they belong.Though it never feels instructive or moralizing, there’s a sense of hopefulness as “The Bear” wrestles with larger themes of hospitality. Each member of the kitchen crew finds moments of joy and deep meaning in their work, whether they’re drawn to it by devotion or dysfunction (or a broken emulsion of both).In its second season, “The Bear” sends two of its characters on transformational internships, or stages, at other restaurants. Lionel Boyce, left, is Marcus, a pastry chef who finds inspiration on a gentle internship in Copenhagen.Chuck Hodes/FXOne episode focuses on Marcus, the young pastry cook who’s a sponge for new techniques and ingredients, played by Lionel Boyce. In Copenhagen, he interns with a brilliant pastry chef played by Will Poulter.It doesn’t matter that recent reporting on the stage economy of Copenhagen, one of the world’s fine-dining capitals, has revealed a pattern of abuse and dangerous working conditions for unpaid interns. In “The Bear,” the stage is a dream: Marcus’s tasks are simply to learn from a skilled but kind and patient mentor, to get out and about and feel inspired, and to come up with some new dishes of his own.A stage at a fine-dining restaurant transforms Richie, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach.Chuck Hodes/FXNo one was more suspicious of the fussy quirks of fine-dining kitchens than Richie, the fragile chaos machine played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach. But after a stage of his own in a Chicago fine-dining restaurant, Richie is completely transformed. He cares about organizing pens and polishing silverware. He wears suits now.In an arc that made me weep, Richie learns that he has the aptitude and composure for expediting, for being in the eye of the storm, for channeling all of his pettiness and intensity into fixing problems and making diners happy.There were flashbacks, in the first season of “The Bear,” of a toxic chef who trashed cooks on the line, telling them they’d be better off dead. But here the show seems keen to remind us that fine dining can work differently, and that wonderful people are still scattered throughout it.“The Bear” always blurred the lines between family and workplace in ways that felt both tender and menacing, and the most nightmarish kitchen scene takes place not in a professional kitchen, but at a Berzatto family Christmas at home a few years back, when Carmy’s brother Michael was still alive.Jamie Lee Curtis is devastating as their alcoholic mother who can’t get through cooking and serving a beautiful holiday dinner — an elaborate Feast of the Seven Fishes — without wringing guilt and shame from her children. Her inability to host offers a glimpse at what shaped the siblings and warped their relationships to cooking, but it’s also a razor-edged contrast to the cooks’ growing sense of hospitality as instinctual and deeply fulfilling.Sydney, played by Ayo Edebiri, is the enterprising stagiaire who quickly turned her internship into a serious job.Chuck Hodes/FXSydney (Ayo Edebiri) is crushed by her anxiety about the restaurant opening and herself as a leader. She worries about failure, but also about not having a financial stake in the business.Despite all of that, she’s delighted and re-energized after making a simple omelet for Carmy’s woozy, hungry sister, Natalie (Abby Elliott). She tops it with chives and crushed potato chips, plating it beautifully on a tray, as if she were carrying it to her own mother on a holiday morning. As she stands behind Natalie, watching her eat, Sydney looks happier than she’s been in ages.It’s a beautiful and agonizing scene that compounds the hospitality industry’s complications, and the ways a calling to it can both hurt and heal. Sure, Sydney deserves more than the pleasure of watching someone fill with happiness when they eat her food. But also, that pleasure is real and, sometimes, there isn’t anything else.Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More