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    Why Are People Obsessed With TV Finales ‘Sticking the Landing’?

    As “Curb Your Enthusiasm” gets ready to exit, it’s time to let go of the idea that a story’s ending determines its final score.Larry David is just fine with how “Seinfeld” ended. OK, I can’t read his mind — but “Larry David,” the version of himself he plays on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” is cool with that much-maligned finale. He insisted on it, vehemently, during a season of “Curb” that was almost entirely about a fictional do-over of the landmark sitcom he created with Jerry Seinfeld.“We didn’t screw up a finale!” he insisted. “That was a good finale!”The actual Larry David may be sanguine about repeating the experience of “Seinfeld.” The 12th and final season of “Curb” has even been steering toward a similar scenario, with TV Larry facing a trial, much as his earlier series ended.But the rest of the viewership is more likely to look at the final episode the way we have become conditioned to view a series finale: as a high-stakes, legacy-defining challenge. Will we laugh with it or at it? Will it cement the series’s place in history or tarnish it? Will it — say it with me now — stick the landing?Ugh. There are plenty of clichés in TV criticism, and I am not immune to using them. But “stick the landing” is one that awakens my cantankerous inner Larry David — not just because it is an overused phrase, but because of what it says about art and endings and what matters in both.The term, of course, comes from gymnastics, part of a creeping sportsification of pop-culture criticism that has also given us assorted TV power rankings and myriad March Madness-style brackets. (Didn’t arts nerds spend enough time getting stuffed into lockers by jocks without having to live inside their language, too?)Applied to TV, sticking the landing suggests that a finale is the equivalent of a vaulter’s dismount. The concentrated force of narrative momentum is channeled into a moment of impact, and the series either hits the mat firmly or shatters a leg. It’s the difference between the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.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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    Charity Lawson, a Former ‘Bachelorette’ Star, Attends NY Bridal Fashion Week

    Charity Lawson earned a reputation of being a sweetheart after starring in the 20th season of “The Bachelorette,” which ended in August with her engagement to Dotun Olubeko, an integrative medicine specialist.Ms. Lawson, 28, seemingly always has a smile on her face. She knows what she likes and she does not put up with drama, a trait that was witnessed first hand this week amid the chaos that was New York Bridal Fashion Week — a chaos that this season was exacerbated by heavy rain and wind.The three-day event, from April 2 to 4, was an opportunity for bridal designers to show their latest collections to journalists, buyers and, in Ms. Lawson’s case, a bride-to-be who is starting to look for dresses for her 2025 wedding.She hopes to have a dress chosen by July for the wedding she is planning in California next fall, which will be followed by a traditional Nigerian celebration in Lagos, Nigeria, to honor her fiancé’s heritage.Before becoming a “Bachelorette,” Ms. Lawson, 28, was a contestant on the 27th season of “The Bachelor,” which premiered in January 2023. Later that year, she appeared on season 32 of “Dancing With the Stars,” finishing in fourth place with her dance partner Artem Chigvintsev.“It’s a lot,” Ms. Lawson, a former children’s therapist, said about appearing in back-to-back-to-back reality television shows broadcast last year. “I came into all of this quickly. I didn’t envision myself even being engaged.”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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    How Zach Cherry, Actor From ‘Severance,’ Spends His Sundays

    Before he hits the stage for an improv show, Mr. Cherry cuddles with his rescue dog, Shrek, battles his wife in video games and heads to the movies.Zach Cherry warns that his Sundays are “pretty boring” — with the caveat that boring, for him, means a wild, 90-minute improv comedy extravaganza of nerdy jokes.“The most fun part is standing there while other people are performing and laughing really hard,” said Mr. Cherry, a 36-year-old actor and comedian who performs most Sunday nights in the fully improvised comedy show “Raaaatscraps” at Caveat on the Lower East Side. The show features a rotating cast of performers that also includes Jeff Hiller of the HBO comedy “Somebody Somewhere” and Connor Ratliff from “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”Mr. Cherry is best known for his role as the snarky overachiever Dylan in the dystopian Apple TV+ workplace thriller series “Severance.” On Thursday, Amazon Prime Video is set to release his latest project, “Fallout,” a postapocalyptic series based on the popular role-playing video game franchise. Mr. Cherry, a self-identified gamer, said he has played many of the nine games in the franchise.“But I often get kind of overwhelmed and don’t finish them because they’re so gigantic and there’s so much going on,” he said.Mr. Cherry, who was born in Trenton, N.J., lives in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn with his wife of almost two years, Anabella Cherry, 30, who teaches English as a second language at Hunter College, and their newly adopted 2-year-old rescue dog, Shrek.A SUMMONS FROM NARNIA I have the Bedtime function on my iPhone set to wake me up at 7 a.m., but almost every day I click “change for one day only” and move it later. I actually wake up around 9 a.m. I use the generic “Early Riser” tone — I’ve never changed it — which starts soft then gets gradually louder. It sounds like something you’d wake up to very gently in Narnia.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 the End, ‘The New Look’ Left Us Wanting More

    More Dior. More Chanel. More fashion!The last episode of “The New Look,” the Apple TV+ series about Christian Dior, Coco Chanel and the birth of post-World War II fashion, aired on April 4. A fictional take on the choices those designers had to make to survive, the show offered its own new look, not just at the origin story of a dress style, but at the actual characters behind the brands. Here, the Styles editor Stella Bugbee and the fashion critic Vanessa Friedman debate the possible repercussions for the two dominant red carpet names.Vanessa Friedman So my big question, after watching the whole series, is, Will this change how people think about Dior and Chanel? Those brands, after all, bear the names of their founders, and this show is the first time I expect most viewers will have been confronted with the idea of them as real individuals, with many — in the case of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, who is depicted as a Nazi collaborator, even if a somewhat unintentional one, very many — human frailties. What do you think?Stella Bugbee It has the potential to personalize these megabrands — for better or worse, since the show is riddled with factual inaccuracies. While pointing to Mademoiselle Chanel’s Nazi past, the show paints her choices as something almost verging on feminism. It’s a tidy bit of propaganda in a way. And as for Monsieur Dior, it takes pains to paint him as a success almost despite himself.But the best way it humanizes these characters is through the compelling performances of Ben Mendelsohn and Juliette Binoche. I was rooting for both of them. And I found that I wanted to know more about each brand, so that seems like a win.Ben Mendelsohn as Christian Dior and Maisie Williams as his sister, Catherine, who was in the French resistance during World War II. AppleTV+VF Dior comes off as the hero of the series, while Chanel is the villain, even if, as you say, she has a feminist bent, especially when she is confronting the Wertheimers, her backers, about getting a more even split of the proceeds. They ask her how she could use their Jewishness against them, and she asks them if they have ever considered what it is to be a single woman running her own business (a complicated equivalency).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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    “Curb Your Enthusiasm” Was Larry David’s Book of Manners

    Suppose you’re out at brunch and find yourself in a buffet line that a fellow diner does not appear to have noticed. He casually approaches with his plate and tries to serve himself. Do you A. join the hangry mob cursing him or B. rise to this man’s defense, because you can see that he’s holding a plate, which means he already waited in line and is now returning for another helping? If you’re Larry David, not only is the answer B. but the misunderstanding warrants, in your scratchy Brooklyn accent, a triumphant clarification: “That’s not how we do things here in America! We don’t wait for seconds! Never!”Listen to this article, read by Ron ButlerOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.Larry knows from buffet breaches. He once caught someone pulling what he termed a chat-’n’-cut, gaining proximity to food by talking to someone with a choicer position in line. He doesn’t like it but is impressed anyway. (“I respect your skills.”) Another time, when a restaurant employee accuses him of violating its buffet policy by sharing his plate with his manager and main man, Jeff, a lawyer magically appears to clarify for the employee that after a diner purchases a meal what he does with it is his business. Justice — and brunch — have been served.But now let’s suppose that you’re a serious, middle-aged woman named Marilyn, and you’ve decided to host dinner for your new beau’s closest friends, and the guests include this Larry David, whom you’ve already had to shoo from the arm of one of your comfy chairs. The group raises a glass and toasts your hospitality — well, everybody except you know who. Susie, who is married to Jeff and clearly finds Larry as much of an irritant as you’ve begun to, asks, “You can’t clink, Larry?” Why should he? “Because it’s a custom that people do, which is friendly and nice.” Larry takes a sip of water and asks the most peculiar question: “What is this, tap?” It is. His response? “Surprised you don’t have a filter.” Do you A. serve him your coldest glance and witheringly reply, “You have no filter,” or B. ask him to leave your home? If you’re Marilyn, you do both.Susie Essman, who has been the show’s true superego, and Larry David in Episode 5 of Season 12.Warner Brothers DiscoveryThese stories hail from “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which is scheduled to deliver its final episode on April 7, after 12 seasons and 24 years on HBO. In each incident, bald, bespectacled, wiry, wealthy Larry has stepped out of line, once physically, to defend or offend. I went back and watched the whole series and would like to report that television has never had anything like this show, nothing as uncouth and contradictory and unhinged and yet somehow under a tremendous amount of thematic control, nothing whose calamity doubles as a design for living. It presents the American id at war with its puritanical superego. Sometimes Larry is the one. Sometimes he’s the other. The best episodes dare him to inhabit the two at once, heretic and Talmudist.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

    Howard Atlee, Showman Who Promoted Dramas and Dogs, Dies at 97

    As a press agent, he had his first big hit with “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” In dog competitions, his first big hit was a dachshund named Virginia.Howard Atlee, an eclectic publicist who represented award-winning shows during a now bygone Broadway era and, as an avocation, also bred dachshunds that won best in show at dog competitions, died on March 15 in Silver Spring, Md. He was 97.His death, in a hospital, was announced by his friend and caretaker, Harpreet Singh.Transplanted from an Ohio city of 10,000, Mr. Atlee set his sights on Broadway after attending his first professionally staged production while serving in the Navy in Boston. After he was discharged, he was a theater major in college.As a publicist, he would help launch the career of the playwright Edward Albee by promoting his first full-length play, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” at the Billy Rose Theater in 1962. Some critics dismissed it as salacious, but Howard Taubman raved in The New York Times that it was written by “a born dramatist” and “marks a further gain for a young writer becoming a major figure of our stage.”Mr. Atlee also helped found the Negro Ensemble Company, which offered opportunities to fledgling Black actors and other theater professionals, including would-be publicists.In 1956, when he was 30 and working as a press agent for a summer theater in Camden, Maine, Mr. Atlee began what became more or less a behind-the-scenes gig, even for a press agent accustomed to operating backstage.“One day driving to the theater I saw a kennel,” he told The New York Times in 1970. “I stopped, and when I left I owned a smooth dachshund.”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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    With ‘Succession’ Complete, the Roys’ Next Takeover Is the Stage

    Audiences are flocking to shows with Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook and other alums of the acclaimed HBO series.There seems to be a secret ingredient to stage success this season: a stint on “Succession.”So many “Succession” alums are onstage in New York and London that the show’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, has been dashing from theater to theater, trying to catch the work of his colleagues. On a recent trip to New York, he saw four shows featuring “Succession” alums, including a revival of Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People,” one of the hottest tickets on Broadway thanks to its star performer, Jeremy Strong, and “The Effect,” an Off Broadway play written by Lucy Prebble, who is also among the producers and writers of “Succession.” In London, Armstrong saw “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” a critically-acclaimed, one-woman adaptation of the Oscar Wilde classic starring Sarah Snook, and is booked to see “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” starring Brian Cox.“We took a lot from New York theater,” Armstrong said, nodding to the many stage actors and playwrights who helped make “Succession” a success, “and I hope this season we are giving something back.”Arian Moayed, who played the investor Stewy Hosseini in “Succession” and starred in a Broadway revival of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” last year, theorized that the show had some theater-like attributes. “Part of what was cool about the show was that we shot it in a very one-act-y kind of way,” said Moayed. There are so many “Succession” alums onstage that one small downtown theater company in New York, Bedlam, advertised its current show, “The Assassination of Julius Caesar as told by William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw,” as “STARRING NO ONE FROM SUCCESSION.”Here is a look at where the Roys and their retainers are onstage now.Brian CoxBrian Cox as James Tyrone in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” left, and as the distant patriarch Logan Roy in “Succession.”From left: Johan Persson; Graeme Hunter/HBOIn “Succession,” Cox played Logan Roy, the merciless media mogul at the heart of the series. Cox, a veteran stage actor (his résumé includes five Broadway shows), is now starring in London’s West End in a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”Jeremy StrongJeremy Strong as Dr. Thomas Stockmann in “An Enemy of the People,” left, and as Logan’s ambitious, wounded son Kendall in the HBO series.From left: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times; HBO, via Associated PressWe 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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    Willy Wonka’s Unknown Lands a New Acting Gig in London

    The internet latched on to 16-year-old Felicia Dawkins’ performance as The Unknown at a shambolic Willy Wonka-inspired event. This weekend, she’s heading to a bigger and scarier stage in London.On one chilly evening in March, after the sun had set and when most school-aged children were begrudgingly starting their homework, Felicia Dawkins, 16, enthusiastically hopped on the phone from Scotland to share that her life had changed — for the better.She introduced herself with the kind of bubbly energy and giddiness that only a teenager can radiate. It is the same energy that drew millions of viewers to her TikTok account, where she unveiled herself as a key participant in a Willy Wonka-themed event that had gone so poorly that its memes briefly took over large portions of the internet and international news coverage went on for days.That event, in Glasgow in late February, failed to create the dazzling experience it promised. The fallout — in true internet fashion — was swift and brutal. Organizers quickly shut down the event and promised full refunds to disgruntled families.In the aftermath, the internet latched on to one of the event’s more inexplicable characters, known only as “The Unknown,” played by Felicia. Footage of her performance as an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls of the factory, which included emerging from behind a mirror to the cries of children, spread widely online, kicking off the teenager’s 15 minutes of fame.She’s capitalizing now, taking her scaring talents south for a guest appearance at the London Dungeon, a theatrical thrill attraction in the shadow of the city’s London Eye, this weekend. The company reached out to Felicia shortly after her viral moment to invite her to train with the performance team and appear in the attraction. “We could see she has a real passion and talent, for theater and interactions with guests,” Richard Quincey, the head of performance at London Dungeon and South Bank Attractions, said in a statement.Felicia’s mother, Janet Dawkins, said she had mixed emotions about the Wonka event failing so miserably, and so publicly. “Everything led to her getting all of this, all these opportunities,” Ms. Dawkins said. “So, I can’t really say that I’m mad about anything that went down, if I’m honest.”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