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    Review: ‘White Girl in Danger’ Flips the Script on Soap Operas

    Michael R. Jackson’s wild new musical satire is packed with a thesis’ worth of insight about fate and representation.What comes to mind when you think of soap operas? Amnesia, murders, cliffhangers, catfights?Think bigger.Even judged by the standards of “All My Children” and “Dynasty,” Michael R. Jackson’s satirical soap musical “White Girl in Danger,” which opened on Monday at the Tony Kiser Theater, is a wild, raunchy, overstuffed tale.Sure, it features amnesia and the rest, and mile-a-minute jokes, but the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “A Strange Loop” has also packed the nearly three hours of “White Girl” — way too long — with a thesis’ worth of insight and argument. By the time you get to the dildo slapping and the “Hairspray” parody, followed by the anguished yet hopeful finale, you no longer know what hilarious, despairing, muddle of a planet you’re on.Surely that was the plan. “White Girl in Danger,” directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, is simultaneously set in a fictional soap opera world called Allwhite and a metaphorical one inhabited by ideas. Allwhite is dominated, of course, by its white characters: the high-school mean girls Meagan, Maegan and Megan (abused, bulimic, druggy), their mothers (smothering, manipulative, viperish) and their boyfriends (psychotic, supportive, dissolute). Among the girls especially, privilege is assumed; it allows them to “choose their own adventures.”Their priorities are a little off, though. The most pressing issue they face as the insanely catchy title song kick-starts the action is not so much the discovery, every few minutes, of another white schoolmate’s body in the Allwhite woods. It’s the way the deaths threaten their hopes of winning an upcoming battle of the bands. Who will be left to play autoharp?The Black inhabitants of Allwhite have different problems. The Allwhite Writer (represented at first by thunderbolts and a voice-over) has consigned them to the “Blackground,” there to serve as friends, helpers and (in inexplicable historical flashbacks) enslaved people picking cotton. Mostly they are resigned to their fate; it may not be very fulfilling but, except for “Police Violence Story Time,” it’s relatively safe.Latoya Edwards, center, as Keesha Gibbs, a soap opera “Blackground” player who wants a bigger role.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat’s not good enough for Keesha Erica Kane Gibbs (Latoya Edwards). Her ambition is to transcend the Blackground and get an Allwhite story of her own, even if it means becoming a victim or a villain: “whichever one works.”This puts Keesha in conflict with the other Black characters, especially her mother, Nell Carter Gibbs (Tarra Conner Jones), who takes a more conservative approach as she rises from cafeteria lady to nurse and beyond. Also disapproving is Keesha’s D’Angelo-like ex-boyfriend, Tarik Blackwell (Vincent Jamal Hooper), who says she’s “hooked on that assimilation crack.” More fatefully, her schemes set her on a collision course with the Allwhite Writer himself.In Jackson’s complex and cross-linked encyclopedia of ideas, Nell and Keesha stand for a multitude of distorted representations of Black women in white culture, soap operatic or otherwise. He loves those representations but also loathes them, usually in the same breath; the ambivalence is the motor of the show’s satire, which scathes and kisses.Nell is the more familiar case: She’s the “Mammy” figure from “Gone With the Wind” and the title character from “Caroline, or Change,” even though they are nothing alike. The 11 o’clock number Jackson gives her, a ringer for “I Know Where I’ve Been” from “Hairspray,” provides the same full-throated thrill (in Jones’s titanic performance) as Motormouth Maybelle’s did in the earlier show, even as Jackson punctures its uplift by recasting it as “That’s Why I Kill.”And in Keesha’s quest for “an interblacktional bleminist movement that will liberate all Blackgrounds,” Jackson needles the jargon of trauma and revolution — and the bourgeois appropriation of victimhood he suggests it represents. Yet Keesha, as portrayed by the tireless Edwards, is also the eternal spirit of Black advancement spurred by bright young women from Beneatha Younger onward. It is not, we soon learn, just the Allwhite Writer who can’t make up his mind.If that leaves the characters confusing and hard to follow, well, they can join the club. Everything about “White Girl in Danger” is confusing and hard to follow. In the manner of soap operas, but with an absurdly fast twitch rate, personalities and plots get rewritten without notice. There’s very little for the actors to act except the twitch itself, which quickly grows tiresome through no fault of their own. Since most of them play three or more roles — Liz Lark Brown as all the white mothers, Eric William Morris as all the white boyfriends — they tend to blur into archetypes when they don’t whirl into inconsequence.Yet somehow the show remains compelling. Not because of the staging, which flags and — other than Montana Levi Blanco’s parade of laugh-out-loud costumes — is visually underpowered. (Even the constantly slamming doors wobble.) From Blain-Cruz and her set designer, Adam Rigg, who in last season’s “The Skin of Our Teeth” delivered many astonishments for the eyes, that comes as a surprise. Perhaps “White Girl,” despite being a coproduction of the Vineyard and Second Stage theaters, could not, on an Off Broadway budget, afford all its ambitions.In Jackson’s complex and cross-linked encyclopedia of ideas, Nell and Keesha stand for a multitude of distorted representations of Black women.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhat keeps your attention most of the time as you watch, and certainly when thinking about it later, is the bounty and electricity of Jackson’s ideas, which derive as much from his long history as a soap opera lover as from his complex approach to the underlying conflicts of race and gender.Those conflicts, expressed in “A Strange Loop” through the voice and thoughts of just one character, are distributed more broadly in “White Girl,” a typical sophomore play problem (it’s chaotic and exhausting) but also an opportunity. Whether the opportunity can be exploited without exacerbating the problem, we must leave for future productions to discover. Stay tuned!It was in any case an opportunity worth taking. A glance at some of the “special thanks” in small type in the program gives you a sense of the fascinating breadth of Jackson’s high-low influences: Jackie Collins, Black musicals, “Fine-Ass Oiled Up Mens,” Soap Opera Digest, “PC/un-PC/woke/anti-woke” story lines, cultural neoliberalism and childhood loneliness.You can pretty much feel them all in “White Girl,” especially when a figure whose identity I won’t spoil (but is played beautifully by James Jackson Jr., one of the “thoughts” in “A Strange Loop”) arrives near the end as a kind of deus ex mess to untangle the show’s themes. Though that proves impossible, his attempt reminds us that ambivalence of all kinds, about people and love and stories and theater, is not a failure no matter what world you live in. Nor is it a success. It’s a start.White Girl in DangerAt the Tony Kiser Theater, Manhattan; 2st.com. Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes. More

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    ‘Perry Mason’ Season 2, Episode 6 Recap: The Smoking Gun

    Della shreds a witness in court. The prosecution shreds Perry’s credibility.Season 2, Episode 6: ‘Chapter Fourteen’I can’t remember the last time I shouted at the screen as much as I did during this episode of “Perry Mason.” I’m not kidding: I was hooting and hollering for what seemed like half the duration of this week’s installment. It didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped in the end, of course. But in the meantime? What a rush!The rush came primarily from the episode’s centerpiece scene, in which Della Street takes over the cross-examination of a prosecution witness from Perry midstream. The witness in question is Councilman Taylor, the brother of the murder victim Brooks McCutcheon’s incapacitated mistress Noreen. Della knows where Perry’s line of questioning is headed: directly to the fact that Brooks enjoyed strangling his lovers with his monogrammed belt.Della presents her proposed takeover as a way to better handle the “sensitive nature” of the subject matter. But by the end of her questioning, by which time she has wrapped the belt around her own neck in full view of the jurors, it is apparent her real motives were much less high-minded. She didn’t just want to explain to the jury that Brooks got off on choking beautiful women — she wanted to show them what a beautiful woman being strangled looks like. The resulting display is a slam dunk for the defense.And it all stems from another surprising step into the spotlight. Rather than continue to battle against Perry and his team, our crooked old friend Detective Holcomb decides to volunteer for that team instead. (To be fair, it’s either that or be forced to testify about his role in Brooks’s shady dealings and lose his job and pension.)Holcomb, as we’ve seen, can’t figure out how Brooks’s grift operated, so he turns to Perry, whose deductive mind he recognizes as superior to his own, for help. In return, he hands over Noreen’s medical file from the San Haven rest home and brings Perry to a dumping ground on the shore where McCutcheon produce can be found discarded and soaked with oil. The import of the latter is still unclear, but the info contained in the former very nearly wins Perry the case.But only very nearly. Perry isn’t the only person involved in the case with investigative aces up his sleeve. Mason may have Della and Paul and even Holcomb in his corner at this point, but the prosecutor Tommy Milligan has Perry’s old buddy Pete Strickland. In a development that literally had me booing and hissing (what can I say? I’m a vocal TV watcher), someone, almost certainly Pete, breaks into Perry’s office and discovers the murder weapon hidden in his safe. Later in court, Milligan smugly reveals the news about the gun to the judge, who orders the whole gang over to Perry’s office to witness the retrieval of the weapon firsthand. Shea Whigham’s mustachioed dissolution as Pete really shines through in these scenes; you can certainly believe this is a guy who would turn on his oldest friend if the price were right.Pete and Perry’s relationship at this point can be held up in contrast to that of Paul and his brother-in-law Mo. Paul hires Mo to help him stake out a street corner where a rich junkie implicated in the case is known to score heroin. But Mo is no experienced P.I., so his notes leave something to be desired. Paul, who ought to know better than to hold a rank amateur to his own exacting standards, goes ballistic, causing a family rift.It’s not really Mo’s lack of prowess as a private dick that’s bothering Paul. He is haunted by his role in the beating and, presumably, death of the young, small-time gangster Ozzie Jackson, whom he was forced to rough up. Indeed, Ozzie’s blood-soaked Converse All-Stars are found dangling from a telephone wire by a local kid, who in the opening scene retrieves and wears them in the dead man’s stead, causing Paul to pretty much lose his mind the instant he lays eyes on them.And if anything is going to sink this case, it’s the Mason team’s personal demons. Paul has his guilt over the Ozzie Jackson affair. Della has her budding relationship with the screenwriter Anita St. Pierre, for whom she leaves her previous girlfriend; and don’t forget that a mysterious stranger is aware of her clandestine love life.Della also has a very thinly veiled job offer from the gazillionaire Camilla Nygaard to consider. Camilla invites her over for drinks and “marihuana” and implies heavily that she is considering ditching her existing counsel for Della. Given the choice between a gifted but unpredictable sad sack like Perry and a rich and vivacious piano-virtuoso stoner like Camilla … well, it’s not going to be an easy decision, is it?Finally, Perry himself turns on his schoolteacher girlfriend, Ginny Aimes, on a dime when the gun is brought to light, assuming she is the person who ratted him out. Finally, Ginny is getting a taste of the mercurial side of Perry that isn’t quite as alluring as the Perry who slugged some jerk in the schoolyard.From start to finish, this episode is twisty, sexy, sordid fun, featuring richly realized acting from a double-digit number of lead and supporting players. This may be anecdata, I realize, but I’ve seen more and more people saying what a pleasure it is to watch this show every week. Consider me another voice in favor.From the case files:In the annals of “terrific throwaway shots from ‘Perry Mason,’” the vertiginous angle with which Perry’s fire-escape exit from his compromised apartment, broken into by parties unknown the previous week, takes the cake.I also loved how the “Perry Mason” logo appears just as the kid who retrieves Ozzie’s bloody Converses looks up at the now-empty telephone wire, wondering just what the hell happened to the shoes’ previous owner.Detective Holcomb is one of television’s finest dirtbags at the moment. I’m so happy for the actor Eric Lange, whose work I’ve been enjoying since I watched him play an eccentric drama teacher on Nickelodeon’s “Victorious” with my kids while they were growing up; more recently, he was delightfully sleazy as a Hollywood movie producer in Netflix’s gruesome horror satire “Brand New Cherry Flavor.” He’s perfect in this part, and I admit a part of me hopes that he and Perry reach some kind of permanent rapprochement and work together in the future now that Strick is out of the picture.“Paul. Paul. Put it away.” Clara’s words of wisdom to her transparently distraught husband ring out loud and clear thanks to Diarra Kilpatrick’s restrained but forceful performance. I remain hopeful that she’ll eventually be given more to do than react to the men of the house.Let’s note here that Rafael Gallardo is handling incarceration much worse than his older brother, Mateo, to the point of needlessly picking fights with guards and getting hauled off to the hole. What’s going on there, I wonder?The awkward elevator ride in which the prosecution, the defense and the judge all travel up to Perry’s office is straight out of “Mad Men.”“I just want to know if you’re all right,” Della says to District Attorney Hamilton Burger regarding his unexpected, and frankly unjustifiable, offer of a plea deal to the Gallardos. Is someone squeezing him, perhaps because of his sexuality? And is this the fate that awaits Della, given the shadowy figure who trailed her to the lesbian nightclub last week?Della on Ginny, to Perry: “Nice work. She’s tasty!” Perry to Della: “Oh my God.” Even in the 1930s, it’s awkward to hear your friends tell you how hot your girlfriend is. More

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    Unpacking the Roy Family in That Pivotal ‘Succession’ Episode

    The Roy family has never felt more human than it has in this season’s third episode — or more alien.In her 1969 book “On Death and Dying,” the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described the five emotional stages of people at the end of life: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Kübler-Ross’s model has since been popularly applied to the grief process. The implication is that all of us who live, love and die are in this way the same.“Succession” appears to have done its psych homework. In the tour-de-force episode “Connor’s Wedding” — spoilers begin here — the Roy siblings learn by phone of their father Logan’s fatal collapse, while he is on a jet crossing the Atlantic, and begin racing through Kübler-Ross’s stages.One part of the show’s genius has always been its portrayal of the superwealthy Roys as both deeply human and alien. As it is in life, so it is in death. The Roys’ reactions are, broadly, familiar to anyone who’s ever gotten similar news. It’s in the particulars that this family is very different.Let’s start with denial. In one sense, Logan’s death may be the least surprising big surprise in HBO drama history. His health has always been shaky, and the show’s very title asks what or who will come after him. But when the inevitable suddenly happens, instinct still kicks in: This can’t be real.“Real,” as any viewer of “Succession” knows, is a key word for the Roy family. It’s a measure of worth, separating people who are “real” — important, worthy of concern — from those who are merely numbers on a ledger.It’s also a fraught term for characters who grew up in a, shall we say, low-trust environment. “Is this real?” Shiv (Sarah Snook) asks, with good reason, when Logan (Brian Cox) offers in Season 2 to let her take over his media empire. It’s the series’s refrain: This deal, this promise, this expression of love — can I take it to the bank?So when Roman (Kieran Culkin) manically refuses to accept the news — “What if it’s a big [expletive] test?” — yes, he is being irrational. But he is also operating by the logic of the only reality he has ever known. What isn’t a test with Logan? His last words to Roman were to order him to fire his lieutenant Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron), with whom Roman had a bond (and occasional rounds of masochistic sex chat). When Roman hesitates, Logan asks, “You are with me?”About Logan’s death, Roman keeps repeating, “We don’t know.” And the episode, written by the creator, Jesse Armstrong, and directed by Mark Mylod, cleverly puts the viewers in his position. We can see inside the plane, but we can’t see much of Logan, only the crew performing compressions on a body. Only when Shiv spills her frenzied last words into his cold ear do we finally see his face. I will admit to having wondered if Roman was right. Yes, it would be insane for Logan to fake his death. But a side effect of growing up Roy is learning to read your most intimate family moments as potential plot twists and fake-outs.Anger and bargaining, in Roy World, tend to operate as a team. There’s anger at Logan, of course. Each Roy child sputters a word salad of love and hurt and fury into the phone. But anger is also a reaction to helplessness. Kendall (Jeremy Strong) demands to have “the best airplane medicine expert in the world” brought onto the call, growing frustrated and incensed, as if he could cheat Death by demanding to speak to its manager.From the beginning of the phone call to when we cut to the corporate-response discussion aboard the plane is less than 20 minutes, and Armstrong packs a lifetime into it.Every line, every image, speaks to the moment and to decades of family trauma and relationships: Roman’s forcing himself to say that Logan was a good dad, then handing off the phone like it’s radioactive; Shiv’s becoming at once a terrified girl and a furious grown daughter; Kendall and Shiv’s holding hands as they go to break the news to their half brother, Connor (Alan Ruck), on his wedding day. (Ruck has done spectacular emotional work with comparatively little screen time, and he does it again here: “He never even liked me.”)By the time we return from the plane to the wedding yacht in New York, depression is creeping in. And acceptance — well, that too has a different meaning in this family.Logan (Brian Cox, left) as seen with Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) moments before Logan’s plane ride flies him into the Great Beyond.David Russell/HBOThe Roys live in an environment where everything is personal and nothing is entirely private. Your family is your family, but it’s also a business. Your father’s death is your father’s death — bound up with a lifetime of resentment and thwarted love — but it is also a “material event” that requires disclosure. (“Succession” is known for its clever, filthy dialogue, but it also has an ear for the bland brutality of business-speak.) Your emotions may be complicated and genuine, but their expression is inevitably tactical. As Kendall says, “What we do today will always be what we did the day our father died.”Your father is the man who loved you or hit you or molded you or disappointed you, but he is also an expensive corporate asset, an asset that has now failed. And its failure must be announced and adjusted to, even as you adjust to the fundamental reordering of the universe.The dialogue shifts seamlessly from shock to grieving to maneuvering. The firmament has shattered. God — or the devil, or both — is dead. That vacuum must be filled, and the deluge prepared for, whether you are family, staff or, like Shiv’s estranged husband, Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), an unhappy bit of both. “I have lost my protector,” he says, like a “Game of Thrones” bannerman realizing that his head may soon part company with his neck.It’s a bold and potent move for Armstrong, who has one of TV’s greatest actors in Cox, to give us none of this from Logan’s point of view. We don’t know what he was thinking at the end. We, like his children, don’t know what he felt or if he heard their last words. There is no closure, no satisfaction. He will forever be a question mark at the center of the universe.Instead, a scene from the season’s first episode amounts to his last testament. Restless and unsettled at a birthday celebration that Kendall, Roman and Shiv have chosen not to attend, Logan ends up at a diner with his body man, Colin (Scott Nicholson), whom — is it possible to pity Logan Roy? — he calls his “best pal.”To his wary companion, Logan launches into what now sounds like a deathbed monologue. “What are people?” he asks Colin, and then answers his own question: “What is a person? It has values and aims, but it operates in a market. Marriage market, job market, money market, market for ideas, et cetera.” And while he is a winner in the judgment of the market — “a hundred feet tall” where most people are “pygmies” — he doesn’t seem to feel like one.At last, he asks Colin whether he believes in the afterlife, and again, Logan supplies his own answer. “We don’t know,” he says. “We can’t know. But I’ve got my suspicions.”Those suspicions were confirmed or denied on an airplane floor thousands of feet above the Atlantic Ocean, a most appropriate choice for “Succession.” The series is about people untethered to place, who move from vehicle to vehicle, from one antiseptic luxury space to another.So this is a most fitting end for Logan Roy — to die in no country, in the expensive no-space of a corporate jet, his last moments relayed to a yacht docked off the financial district, where the market will weigh and digest his death as it does all human effort and sorrow. As Roman says, a plunging chart line on his phone indicating Waystar Royco’s share price: “There he is. That is Dad.”There is one vehicular transfer left for Logan Roy. We end the episode at Teterboro Airport, where his shrouded body is deplaned and loaded into an ambulance. Kendall looks on, taking a private, pensive moment before what comes next: The period when his father’s passing becomes a news event, and most likely, a contest.Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance belong to us all. But for a Roy, there is a sixth stage of grief: ambition. More

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    Sherri Shepherd Skates Through Life

    The talk-show host gives shout-outs to her favorite comfort food in Harlem, New York’s tough comedy crowds and the actor she believes “got greater later.”Sherri Shepherd has a knack for making her dreams come true.The one about being a stand-up comic? Check. (Her “Two Funny Mamas” tour with Kym Whitley kicks off in May.) An actor? Check. (Remember the “Queen of Jordan” episodes on “30 Rock”?)How about her fantasy, starting when she was a kid interviewing her teddy bears, to be a talk-show host? That’s a big check with “Sherri,” her syndicated daytime hit. It premiered in September and by January had been renewed for two more seasons.“I love coming out, sitting in that chair, because I got to do it when I was on ‘The View,’” said Shepherd, 55, who co-hosted that long-running talk show from 2007 to 2014. “And I love my family on ‘The View,’ but you have to share audio space with four other women at the table. So this one I get to come out and be as silly as I want to.”In a video interview from Harlem, where she lives with her teenage son Jeffrey, Shepherd chatted about a few other things that excite her, like a loud game of spades, Sylvester Stallone in “Tulsa King” and roller-skating wherever she can. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1Katz’s DelicatessenIt’s unorganized chaos, but everything gets done. They have the best pastrami sandwiches. The sucker is about 10 feet tall so you get your money’s worth because it’s $200, practically. You will walk in and there is a crowd of people and if you’ve never been to Katz’s Deli, you’re freaking out, going, “Where am I supposed to stand?” But once they see you’re lost and have no clue about life, somebody from Staten Island will go, “What are you doing? Come on over here.”2Melba’s RestaurantMelba’s is the go-to place for comfort food — like a warm, fuzzy blanket. Ninety-nine percent of the time Melba’s there, and she’s got these big chocolate eyes and she hugs you and she comes to your table. During the summertime, you sit outside and eat, and inside you’ll have a really great R&B or jazz band. So I don’t even leave Harlem when people come to New York. I go, “Meet me uptown.”3‘Tulsa King’It is the perfect role for Sylvester Stallone. He plays this old Mafioso who’s done 25 years in prison and he gets out and the world has completely changed on him. And instead of getting this really great position because he didn’t snitch on any of the family, they send him to Tulsa, Okla. He just plays it so beautifully. I feel like it got greater later for Sly.4SpadesEven if you don’t know how to play the game, you’ve got to talk like you know. You have to be loud. You have to slap cards on the table. And you have to be a real sore loser. It’s all about betting how many wins you will get. If you don’t get close to those wins, you’ve got to literally go off on your partner. At the end of the day, you’re all friends. While you’re playing? Mmm-mmm.5New York Comedy ClubsAt Gotham’s or the Cellar, it’s people who want to hear you be funny and be truthful and be transparent. When you try to do the Hollywood stuff, it just doesn’t work. I had to follow Gina Yashere from “Bob Hearts Abishola.” She’s an amazing comic, and she was very New York-style. And I thought, “Oh please, I go up in L.A. at the Comedy Store all the time.” Well, I tell you, I bombed like crazy. I had to go back, sit down, reassess and go, “Sherri, you’ve got to get more honest.” Went up there the next night — killed it. I think New York crowds can see through all of the bull.6Roller SkatingI’m not one of those roller skaters that do all of the tricks and turning. But there’s something about going around in a rink, or if I’m at a great beach where I can roller skate, with the air hitting my face. I love that feeling of coasting. It’s very cathartic for me. Before I leave my studio, I skate around because they push everything out of the way. I’ll sneak my skates and hope they don’t have me on camera.7Gregory PorterHe’s a jazz artist, and he wears a black hat with a black scarf around his face. He used to be a football player. He is a big, hulking, over-six-foot-tall Black man, and the most beautiful gentle music comes from him. I was dating somebody who was like a thug gangster, and this was a person who you would think all he listened to is rap. But he introduced me to jazz, and it was Gregory Porter.8The Blue NoteLalah Hathaway invited me to the Blue Note, and a gentleman by the name of Robert Glasper, who just won a Grammy, was playing. And he packed it. It was just amazing to see all of these people who had an appreciation for really great music. The jazz crowd is like a comedy-club crowd. They sit back and they listen.9Oprah DailyI love that she has used her platform to continue beyond her show and still gives you tips on how to live your best life. I used to journal, and I don’t too much anymore. And Oprah said on Oprah Daily, “You really should be journaling.” So I pulled out and dusted off my journal, and I started writing some more.10Dunlevy Milbank Community CenterThis is a center in Harlem, and they are really into kids that come from a lower income and teaching them life, especially the young men. They have basketball coaches there, they have swim teachers, they have teachers for after-school tutoring. This center is very close to my heart because Jeffrey goes after school at 3 p.m. and I don’t see him till 7:30. They have a leadership class for young men that he goes to. I was a little skeptical, but they said, “We guarantee you: Let Jeffrey go here for two weeks, and he is not going to want to come home.” And that is so true. Literally at 7:30, I’m texting him, going, “Get your butt in that Uber and spend some time with your mother.” More

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    ‘Succession’ Season 4, Episode 3 Recap: Long Live the King

    Connor’s wedding doesn’t go quite as planned. Neither does just about anything else.‘Succession’ Season 4, Episode 3: ‘The Wedding’Up until tonight, the succession part of “Succession” has been a lot like the Godot part of Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot.” Over and over, Logan Roy has made plans to step down as the big boss of Waystar, either by appointing one of his children or underlings as his successor or by selling out to another company. But again and again, either Logan has changed his mind or something else has happened to scotch the deal. Godot never comes. The essential does not change.So what happens this week, with no warning? The old man dies. In an instant, everything is different — for a little while anyway.I say “with no warning,” but that is not entirely so. “Succession” has been building up to this moment since the series premiere, when Logan was felled by a stroke. From time to time in the ensuing seasons, Logan has been worryingly incoherent or sickly. Then in the first episode of Season 4, he delivered a morbid little speech to his bodyguard Colin about how when people die, nothing comes after. Clearly, the shadow of death has been chilling him for a while.As this week’s episode begins, Logan is on his way to sweet-talk Lukas Mattson, with Tom, Kerry, Frank (Peter Friedman), Karl (David Rasche) and Karolina (Dagmara Dominczyk) by his side. At the same time, much of the rest of his Waystar power structure — including Logan’s immediate family — is on a yacht in New York Harbor for Connor and Willa’s wedding. Roman, whom we saw Logan recruit once again to his side at the end of last week’s episode, receives a call from Logan on his way to Connor’s wedding. He assumes his father will be there, too, but no: Logan is calling to to test his son’s loyalty by ordering him to fire Gerri.Against his better judgment, Roman does this as soon as he sees her on the boat. (Actually he says, “It’s not official,” adding, “I’m just heads-upping you.” He also notes that, “I am, like, on a human level, obviously sad.”) More on this later.Suddenly phones start buzzing. Shiv’s rings, and it’s Tom, but she ignores it. Kendall’s does, too. Then, while Kendall and Roman are sequestered off from the rest of the guests and Shiv is elsewhere on the boat being social, Tom finally gets through to Roman. Logan is “very, very sick,” Tom says. It is “very, very bad.”The next 10 to 15 minutes of television are absolutely harrowing. All we can see of Logan is his lifeless body, stripped to his waist, as crew members aboard the plane give him CPR — even though his heart and breathing have stopped. The kids fall into a state between panic and denial. Shiv — who has to be retrieved from the party one deck below — is practically catatonic when she finds out why she has been summoned. Her first response when she gets the news is, “No, I can’t have that.”The hero of the day — though he is a complicated hero — is Tom. He maintains a sense of calm while talking with his freaked-out in-laws, reassuring them that, “The plane people are lovely.” And he has the good and humane idea to get the younger Roys to say goodbye to Logan by phone, holding the phone up to Logan’s ear even though the old man is almost certainly already dead.Granted, none of them can summon much to say. Roman starts out by trying to reassure his father — or is it himself — that he was a good dad; then he cuts himself off, says, “I don’t know how to do this,” and passes the phone like a hot potato. Kendall gives a little Logan-esque “yeah,” telling him to “Hang in there” before his complicated resentments take over and he declares, “I can’t forgive you, but it’s OK and I love you.” Shiv is reduced to utter confusion and tears, a little girl suddenly pleading with her “daddy” to, please, “don’t go.”As nerve-racking as the middle section of this episode is, the rest of the hour is often very funny, in that gallows-humor way at which “Succession” excels; the tone even brightens a bit once everybody starts shifting into post-Logan mode. Although the contingent on the jet and the folks at the wedding are in shock, both groups also know that how they react will eventually be judged by the press and the markets. As such, they do not want to make any move that, as Kendall says, “restricts our freedom of movement.” Naturally, they all blunder into further trouble.The chaos that follows is a perfect storm of Roy family greed and pettiness. Logan’s big plan to sell to GoJo and to buy Pierce Global Media might have gone off without a hitch had his children not decided to pursue Pierce themselves and tried to squeeze extra money out of GoJo — largely, whatever they might say, out of revenge, which rarely makes for smart decision-making. (And who knows? Maybe all that aggravation added some extra stress, contributing to Logan’s death.)But then there are all the questions left behind by Logan’s death — unanswered partly because of Logan’s insistence on always keeping even his closest allies in the dark. Is Gerri still fired? Do the kids have any say on what happens next? Logan’s stalwarts and the Rebel Alliance each want to get in front of the press as soon as possible — partly to shape the narrative about who is in charge and partly to protect the stock price. But no one really knows what Logan would have wanted, or what the smart play here is.Perhaps the most devastating casualty of the day is Logan’s oldest son, Connor, whom Logan never even bothered to inform that he was going to miss the wedding. Alan Ruck has been a stealthy M.V.P. of this season, wringing pathos from Connor’s realization that neither the American voters nor his family really care about him. In an uncommonly touching heart-to-heart with Willa, he admits that he is scared she will leave him — he is pretty sure she agreed to this marriage, he says, only because she wants to be rich. (Willa doesn’t exactly deny this, though her response is charming enough that they end up getting married anyway, after nearly everyone has gone.) When Kendall gives him the news about their dad, all he can mutter is, “He never even liked me.”Perhaps because of some lingering sympathy for and loyalty to Logan’s children, the Waystar execs ultimately allow the Roy kids to draft the statement to the press — with the idea that Frank or someone on the board will sign off. The statement, which Shiv will deliver, is meant to be a simple expression of fact and sorrow, leaving an impression of stability and continuity at the company. The statement should also include mentions of Karl, Frank and Gerri by name, Frank insists, for the sake of “market confidence.”Instead Shiv ignores the executive team’s edits and makes no mention of any of them. And although she said she would not take any questions, she lets it slip on the way out that she and her brothers plan to be involved with Waystar going forward. This, no doubt, will cause trouble in the weeks ahead. The stock plunges immediately.“There he is,” Roman says, pointing to a line graph on his phone that looks like a cliff. “That is Dad.”So this is the Logan Roy legacy: No clear line of succession, a company in trouble, a multi-billion-dollar deal in limbo and none of his loved ones in agreement on what to do next. Nothing is certain. Nothing to be done. Still no Godot.Due diligenceI called Tom “a complicated hero” because while he manages this particular crisis well, in private moments he reveals some of the cunning, evil side that we have seen in the past. Before Logan dies, he mocks Cousin Greg for being left out of the Mattson trip, quipping that, “I’ve got three, four people Gregging for me.” (Greg’s morose reply: “Don’t turn me into a word.”) Then, after the death he admits that he is mainly upset because he just lost his “protector” in the company, then urges Greg to “sing my song” by spreading the word that he was by Logan’s side.After “firing” Gerri — who now appears very much not fired — Roman leaves his father a voice mail message letting him know how much he hated doing it. Then when he finds out Logan died, he worries that his message was responsible. As always, Kieran Culkin is so good at playing Roman’s deep-rooted guilt and self-loathing, which often overwhelms the man so much that he just physically collapses and has to lean against whatever is handy — as though keeping his whole horrible self animated were too taxing.If nothing else, this tragedy may have just rid Waystar and ATN of its Kerry problem. Her reaction to Logan’s death is so wildly inappropriate — saying, with an awkward smirk, that the whole experience of watching Logan die was “nuts” and “weird” — that everyone quickly sidelines her from any of the post-Logan planning. (Tom notes that her grin made it look like she just “caught a foul ball at Yankee Stadium.”)Kendall, calming his siblings when they can’t wrap their heads around planning a memorial for their father: “We’ll get a funeral off the rack. We can do Reagan’s with tweaks.” More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Waco: The Aftermath’ and ‘The Hummingbird Effect’

    A limited drama series from Showtime puts the resurgence of the militia movement into context, and a new slate of programming comes to PBS in celebration of Earth Month.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, April 10-16. Details and times are subject to change.MondayFrom left, Tim Holt, Walter Huston and Humphrey Bogart in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”Warner Bros., via Everett CollectionTHE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948) 8 p.m. on TCM. Adapted from the 1927 novel of the same name by B. Traven, this Golden Globe and Academy Award winning film follows Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) and Bob Curtin (Tim Holt), two drifters living in Mexico, as they team up with a prospector (Walter Huston) and head for the hills of the Sierra Madre in hopes of finding gold. The film not only explores concepts of greed and self-preservation “in a most vivid and exciting action display,” Bosley Crowther wrote in his review for The New York Times, but it is also “a swell adventure film” with “fast and electric” details. Though the movie has been the subject of criticism for its stereotypes of Mexicans, in 1990, the Library of Congress selected “Sierra Madre” for preservation in the National Film Registry.TuesdayROAD WARS 10 p.m. on A&E. This documentary series centered around road rage in the United States is back for a second season, as the show’s film crew gets back on the road to document the accidents, wacky weather events and instances of extreme human behavior that take place on America’s roadways.WednesdayA female green-crowned brilliant hummingbird in “The Hummingbird Effect.”Filipe DeAndradeNATURE: THE HUMMINGBIRD EFFECT 8 p.m. on PBS. In celebration of Earth Month this April, PBS is featuring a new collection of programs, documentaries and specials devoted to the topics of climate change and sustainability. “The Hummingbird Effect,” a new episode in the natural history documentary series “Nature,” is one such special. Set in Costa Rica, the episode explores the tiny birds’ relationship to the flora and fauna around them, and how their existence is vital to the health of the overall environment in which they are a part.NOVA: WEATHERING THE FUTURE 9 p.m. on PBS. This new episode from the documentary series NOVA documents the effects of climate change in the United States. From heat waves and megafires, to intense rainstorms and long-lasting droughts, the documentary focuses on how Americans are adapting and innovating in reaction to extreme weather.ThursdayHEADLINERS WITH RACHEL NICHOLS 10 p.m. on SHOWTIME. Featuring interviews with “players, coaches and front office personnel” in the world of basketball, the show, which is hosted and co-executive produced by the veteran NBA reporter Rachel Nichols, will offer fans a more intimate portrait of the industry, while still establishing an on-site presence during important game days. Nichols previously hosted “The Jump,” a daily basketball show on ESPN, until its cancellation in 2021, when it was reported that Nichols had made disparaging remarks about one of her colleagues.THIS IS MARK ROBER 10 p.m. on DISCOVERY. Produced by Kimmelot and ITV America, this new series offers a behind-the-scenes look of the concepts and processes of some of the most engaging viral videos of the former NASA engineer and YouTube star Mark Rober. He first gained notoriety in 2018, when he posted a video pranking package thieves with an engineered glitter bomb box. Since then, Rober has amassed over 20 million followers on his YouTube channel, where he is known for his intricate engineering experiments, pranks and gadget videos. “This is Mark Rober” is a companion series to “Revengineers,” a prank show executive produced by Rober and Jimmy Kimmel, which premieres next week.FridayDandara Veiga, center, and the ensemble of Ballet HispánicoTeresa WoodNEXT AT THE KENNEDY CENTER: BALLET HISPÁNICO’S DOÑA PERÓN 10 p.m. on PBS. Through movement by the versatile choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, the dance company Ballet Hispánico paints a portrait of the life of Eva “Evita” Perón — the Argentine actress turned populist first lady. The ballet follows Evita’s ascent from poverty, showcasing her time as a performer and as first lady, and ends with her death from cervical cancer at age 33. In her review for The Times, Siobhan Burke highlights the ballet’s “thoughtful integration of movement” with its “handsome design elements,” adding that “this harmony stands out from the first, saintly image” of the performance.SaturdayKazunari Ninomiya at Saigo in “Letters from Iwo Jima.”Merie W. Wallace/Warner Brothers Pictures and DreamWorks PicturesLETTERS FROM IWO JIMA (2006) 3:30 p.m. on FLIXe. This Golden Globe and Academy-Award winning Japanese-language film portrays the Battle of Iwo Jima — the monthlong battle in 1945 between the Imperial Japanese Army and the United States Marine Corps and Navy that became memorialized through Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.” Directed and co-produced by Clint Eastwood, it is the companion film to Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers,” which was released two months earlier. “Letters From Iwo Jima” portrays the battle from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers, while its companion depicts the same battle from the American perspective. In the film’s observation of the lives and deaths of Japanese soldiers “it is unapologetically and even humbly true to the durable tenets of the war movie tradition, but it is also utterly original, even radical in its methods and insights,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times, calling the film “the best Japanese movie of the year.”SundayWACO: THE AFTERMATH 10 p.m. on CMT, PARAMOUNT and SHOWTIME. This five-part limited series looks at the so-called Waco siege, — when federal agents raided the Branch Davidian religious group’s compound northeast of Waco in 1993. At the compound, 75 people were killed, a third of them children. Coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the tragedy, the series puts into context the recent resurgence of the militia movement in the United States through its focus on what happened after the siege: the trials of Branch Davidian members who survived, and the indoctrination of the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh. More

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    ‘S.N.L.’ Brings Donald Trump to the Last Supper for Easter Weekend

    In an episode hosted by Molly Shannon, the former president, as played by James Austin Johnson, compared his recent indictment to the persecution of Jesus.What started out looking like an almost reverential treatment — at least by “Saturday Night Live” standards — of the Easter holiday quickly gave way to a satirical monologue from former President Donald J. Trump, comparing his own recent indictment on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records to the victimization of Jesus.This weekend’s “S.N.L.” broadcast, hosted by Molly Shannon and featuring the Jonas Brothers as musical guests, began with a recreation of the Last Supper, performed by its cast and featuring Mikey Day as Jesus.“Alas, one of you will betray me,” Day told the other cast members playing the Disciples, adding: “Though I have committed no crime, I will be arrested, tried and found guilty.”Enter James Austin Johnson, in his recurring role as Trump. “Sound familiar?” Johnson said, taking over the scene. “A famous, wonderful man, arrested for no reason at all. If you haven’t put it together, folks, I’m comparing myself to Jesus, again. And what better time than on his birthday, Easter.”Johnson continued, “As we speak, I am being persecuted on a level the likes of which the world has never seen, even worse than the late, great Jesus.” He pointed to other ways in which he felt he was comparable to Jesus, if not superior: “He rose from the dead on the third day,” Johnson said. “I would have done it faster. Possibly two days. I think we could have done it a lot faster. He had a good mind for business. Water into wine — pure profit. And he had big, big rallies just like me.”Similarly, Johnson said a lot of his followers got into trouble too: “All because I told them exactly what Jesus would have said, ‘Get very violent and start a war.’”The holiday, Johnson said, had him excited to hide Easter eggs. “I have many beautiful eggs from my time at the White House,” he said. “And now the Department of Justice is saying: ‘Where are the eggs? We need the eggs back.’ But I hid them. They’re my eggs. They’re my eggs to take, OK?”As he wrapped up, Johnson struck one more comparison: “Just like Jesus, all I did was be friendly to a sex worker, and now they want to put me in jail,” he said.Visiting alumna of the weekReturning to host “S.N.L.” for only the second time since she left the program in 2001 (the first time was in 2007), Shannon was in no hurry to revisit the revered sketch characters she portrayed during her time on the show. If you waited until nearly the end of the night, though, you at last got this segment in which her high-kickin’ dancer Sally O’Malley returned to become a choreographer for the Jonas Brothers. (The JoBros eventually shed their breakaway outfits to reveal they were wearing O’Malley-esque red dresses, too.)Earlier in the night, Shannon’s less heralded stand-up comic character Jeannie Darcy got an ad for her own, low-energy Netflix special. And a video segment from the Please Don’t Destroy team paid tribute to Shannon’s convivial energy by imagining her as the unlikely protagonist of a video game (which Shannon herself tries to play).Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on Trump’s indictment.Jost began:The Wall Street Journal is calling on Russia to release one of their journalists, who was arrested on espionage charges. And I might have the perfect idea for a prisoner swap. [His screen shows a photograph of Trump in court.] Former President Trump was arraigned on Tuesday, and a photographer released this photo of Trump in the courtroom. And I don’t like that he’s flanked by an O.J. amount of lawyers. Because that tells me he’s definitely guilty and that he’s definitely getting away with it.He continued:Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina, a.k.a. Phony Soprano, said he doesn’t think Trump is going to get a fair trial in Manhattan, and I agree. Even the courtroom sketch artist seems to hate him. I thought Trump looked perfectly nice. He had blended his foundation. Stapled down his hair. But then he drew him like the mud monster from Scooby-Doo.Che picked up the thread:After his arraignment, Donald Trump spoke to supporters at Mar-a-Lago and said there was a very dark cloud over our beloved country. Which is also what he used to call Obama. Insiders are saying that since Donald Trump’s indictment, his daughter Ivanka has been absent and his other daughter Tiffany is trying to take her place by his side. Just as soon as she gets through security.Weekend Update character of the weekMining the latest developments in the conflict between Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and the Walt Disney Company, Bowen Yang appeared at the Weekend Update desk as Jafar, the antagonist from Disney’s animated musical “Aladdin.”Affecting a very respectable Jonathan Freeman impersonation, Yang said that DeSantis was “an amateur” when it came to villainy: “He has no rizz, no spark, no drip.” Still, Yang said the governor was “plenty evil,” adding, “I mean, banning Rosa Parks in schools? I’m a dark sorcerer and even I was like, Jesus, dude, it’s Rosa Parks.”But if DeSantis wants to keep gay people out of Disney and its theme parks, Yang said, “That carpet has flown, know what I mean?” Besides, Yang added: “There’s already a Disney World where nothing gay happens. It’s called Six Flags.”Fake advertisement of the weekYou had to hang in there until the end of the episode to catch this, but it was worth staying up for: a fake commercial for a service called CNZen that is partly a news source and partly a meditation app — but one that’s intended for stressed-out people who have made hatred of Trump the basis of their entire personalities.When needed, the app serves its users salient details about Trump’s indictment and gentle voice-overs from CNN talent (and The New York Times’s Maggie Haberman, played by Shannon). If you find yourself feeling lethargic at any time of day, Sarah Sherman as a whispery, wide-eyed Wolf Blitzer will either lull you to sleep or startle you back to full attention. More

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    How Will ‘Welcome to Wrexham’ Write Notts County’s Story?

    Notts County is having one of the most remarkable seasons in its long history. It might even win the league. But you don’t get to star in someone else’s drama.NOTTINGHAM, England — The irony of it all, really, is that Notts County would make a terrific subject for a documentary.The elevator pitch is simple. After more than a decade of financial strife and rolling existential crises — featuring both a convicted fraudster and fictional Gulf investment — the oldest professional soccer club in the world puts together a record-shattering campaign, one that promises to restore the team to something close to its former glory.The casting is rich and compelling. There is a fallen Premier League prodigy searching for a home, a virtuoso Portuguese playmaker who has never seen an opponent he cannot nutmeg, and a 26-year-old striker experiencing such an absurd hot streak that he was, at one point, being compared to Erling Haaland. Tasked with shaping them into a team is a manager whose adventurous, accomplished approach is still just a little unorthodox in the mud-spattered lower reaches of English professional soccer. But the results are spectacular.In a division that is competitive to the point of arbitrary, the team loses only twice all season. It has scored more than 100 goals, and it’s on course to break the league’s points record with four games left. It might yet win the title. Plenty of shows have been commissioned on less.That is the story of Notts County’s season, but that does not mean it is the story that will be told. Millions of viewers will, in all likelihood, come to think of the club as an antagonist: an obstacle to be overcome, a threat to be parried, a challenge to be met. And that means one of the most remarkable campaigns in Notts County’s long and occasionally illustrious history will be relegated to a supporting role in someone else’s story.Notts County will enter Monday’s game tied with Wrexham on points. But only one of them can win the league.Mary Turner for The New York TimesTwo Teams, One NarrativeA few weeks ago, the producers of “Welcome to Wrexham” — the FX documentary following the takeover and attempted revival of the Welsh town’s forlorn soccer team by the actors and entrepreneurs Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney — made contact with executives at Notts County. Out of courtesy, they said, they wanted to establish how much the club wanted to feature in the show’s second season.It is hard to see how Notts County will not play a prominent role. For months, it and Wrexham have been locked in a breathless race to escape the National League, the fifth tier of English soccer. There is only one automatic promotion slot available — bringing with it a guaranteed return to the ranks of the Football League — and neither side has blinked in its pursuit of it.The pace has been eye-watering. Both are expected to end the season with more points than the division has ever seen. Their nearest rival is 25 points adrift. Each has fed off the other’s refusal to wilt. “We’ve been pushing each other,” said Connell Rawlinson, the Notts County captain. (He was born in Wrexham, and still lives close by: add that to the list of subplots.) “If Wrexham didn’t have us and we didn’t have them, would either of us be as good as we are?”Strictly speaking, Wrexham has long had the edge. Its squad is deeper, and more expensive. It has an extra game to play, as well as the home-field advantage when it meets Notts County on Monday evening, a match with the air of a ready-made season finale.In public, Notts County’s manager, Luke Williams, has done what he can to prepare the club — the fans, the executives, his players — for disappointment. “It’s not that we’re not clear,” he said after watching his side pick apart yet another opponent in late March. “It’s that we’re not even close. We need a two-loss swing.” One of those defeats duly arrived on Friday — Wrexham lost at Halifax — but it still held that crucial game in hand.In private, Williams acknowledges that the prospect of being forced to go through the National League’s somewhat arcane and distinctly treacherous playoff system in search of a second chance at promotion “haunts” him. “I haven’t slept since Christmas,” he said.Mary Turner for The New York TimesNotts County, founded in 1862, is the oldest professional soccer club in the world. Mary Turner for The New York TimesThe players have reacted slightly differently. “I’d rather be part of doing something like this, having that pressure and that stress, than sitting in mid-table with nothing to compete for,” Rawlinson said. “I’m sure the Wrexham team and the fans are enjoying it, too.” He paused, at that point, and thought about the truth of that statement. “Well, maybe not the fans, so much.”That graciousness is fairly typical of relations between the clubs. Given the intensity of their title race — and the stakes involved — it might be expected for a sporting rivalry to metastasize into an outright hostility, particularly given the advantages at Wrexham’s disposal.It is the Welsh club, after all, that can call on TikTok and Expedia as sponsors, and McElhenney, Reynolds and his wife, Blake Lively, as regular guests. Notts County’s stardust extends no further than the singer Jake Bugg, born in Nottingham, who sponsors the club’s away jerseys.That financial primacy has a real-world impact. When Wrexham was short of a goalkeeper, it coaxed Ben Foster, a former England international, out of retirement. Notts County had to recall a 19-year-old from a loan at a club two divisions below.For the most part, though, there is no sense of outrage or oppression. Instead, Rawlinson, said, there is a recognition that both teams are “steeped in history, and that neither club should be where they are.”“The publicity Wrexham has brought has been great for the division as a whole,” he said. “There are a lot of eyes on these games now.”There will be far more, though, who encounter them not as contemporaneous sporting events but as something else: a small part of a broader narrative, one that is packaged and polished and consumed on a delay of several months, once the conclusion is known.“I was coming out of a game a few weeks ago, when we’d just got to 97 points,” said Tom Wagstaff, a founder of the Notts County Talk YouTube channel. “As annoying as it is that we’re not clear at the top, it is incredible to be involved in something like this. I genuinely think it’s the best title race the league has ever seen. But I don’t know if that is how it will be perceived.”“The publicity Wrexham has brought has been great for the division as a whole,” Notts County’s captain said. “There are a lot of eyes on these games now.”Mary Turner for The New York TimesEnd GameThe framing, after all, is not in Notts County’s hands. The act of making television, after all, involves not simply telling a story but choosing which aspects of that story should be accentuated. Documentaries necessarily have a perspective. And that perspective changes the way a story is not only told, but understood.Nobody in Nottingham is particularly worried that “Welcome to Wrexham” will cast Notts County as the bad guys, the villains of the story of this season. Nobody at the club seems especially offended at the idea that the show might present the team backed by Hollywood money as in some way “plucky.”But they know that, however the season ends, far more people will watch the documentary than follow the National League in real time. For those viewers, Notts County’s story will not be a stand-alone achievement, a thing that happened in its own right and with its own meaning, but rather something that exists solely as it pertains to its effect on Wrexham. Its meaning will be contorted and confused and to some extent lost. It will not be consumed as sport at all, not really. It will just be part of the plot.In that, perhaps, there is a solace. “Really, we’ve done them a favor,” said George Vizard, Wagstaff’s co-presenter on YouTube. “If it wasn’t for us, they’d have won it weeks ago. And for the show, it must be better to win it like this than it would be if they had won it at a canter.” The story will, in the end, be about Wrexham. But it will be thanks to Notts County that there is now a much better story to tell. More