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    Theater to See in N.Y.C. This Holiday Season

    Christmas classics, comedic musicals and a star-studded Sondheim revival: a guide to the shows to see this season.The holiday season is upon us, which means it’s an excellent time for theatergoers to pack into cozy venues for a feast of the eyes. Our critics have selected a handful of options for tourists and locals looking to catch up on Broadway and Off Broadway shows this holiday season. And we’ve included some other choices as well.For those who prefer to be entertained from home, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade this year will feature performances by Broadway shows like “& Juliet,” “Back to the Future: The Musical,” “How to Dance in Ohio,” “Shucked” and “Spamalot,” along with an appearance by Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells of “Gutenberg! The Musical!”Other theater-related streaming options include “Dicks: The Musical,” with Nathan Lane, and the 2015 documentary that the “How to Dance in Ohio” musical is based on.Here is a selection of notable shows onstage in New York City.Fun for the Whole FamilyBig Apple CircusStraw hats thrown like Frisbees. Death-defying aerial acts. Dizzying foot juggling routines. All accompany the contortionist, trapeze and tightrope circus classics that spectators young and old have come to ooh and aah at. This year, Big Apple presents “Journey to the Rainbow,” a collaboration with the German troupe Circus Theater Roncalli, complete with humans dressed as polar bears and cotton candy galore. Through Jan. 1 at Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center, Manhattan. Read the review.Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City RockettesIt’s a New York City classic. It’s a Christmas classic. The Rockettes are back with sensational high kicks set to state-of-the-art lighting and projections. Little ones will be dazzled by animated trains, ribbons and wintry displays. Their adult companions will delight in a Nativity procession and holiday maximalism. Through Jan. 1 at Radio City Music Hall, Manhattan. Read the review.A Christmas CarolSet in a home built in 1862, in an intimate parlor room, this telling of the timeless Christmas tale stars John Kevin Jones as Charles Dickens. Audience members, surrounded by 19th-century holiday décor and candlelight, will travel back more than a century, to when Dickens wrote the story. The production also features a streaming version. Through Dec. 24 at the Merchant House, Manhattan.Craving Song and DanceSweeney ToddJosh Groban stars on Broadway as everyone’s favorite tall, dark and handsome throat slitter. Opposite the demon barber is a superbly zany Annaleigh Ashford as the murder-accomplice-baker Mrs. Lovett (our critic called her “a brilliant comic for whom comedy is not the end but the means”). The two stars will leave the production after the Jan. 14 performance, so be sure to catch them in full bloody glory before they go. Come for the meat pies and Stephen Sondheim’s gigantic score, stay for the shadowy lighting, which won Natasha Katz her eighth Tony Award. At the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, Manhattan. Read the review.Merrily We Roll AlongJonathan Groff stars alongside Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez in this acclaimed revival of the former Sondheim flop, directed by Maria Friedman. Our critic called the show, which sweetly and gravely warns of the dangers of great ambition, “a palpable hit,” with “a thrillingly fierce central performance” by Groff and “high-wattage, laser-focused performances” by Radcliffe and Mendez. Through March 24 at the Hudson Theater, Manhattan. Read the review.Jonathan Groff, obscured, Daniel Radcliffe, aloft, and Katie Rose Clarke in the musical “Merrily We Roll Along” at the Hudson Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHere We AreUnderfed and yet very full: Will the people who have it all ever find something to eat? Inspired by two Luis Buñuel films, David Ives’s chic, surrealist musical was one of the most anticipated Off Broadway shows of the year, and a star-studded farewell to Sondheim’s final work. Through Jan. 21 at the Shed, Manhattan. Read the review.StereophonicFive members of a rock band try to record a studio album. That’s the premise, which hinges upon heartache, copious drug use and fragile rock star egos, of David Adjmi’s first New York production since 2013, set entirely in a recording studio. It’s a play, not a musical, so it’s not squarely in the song-and-dance category, but the music, written by Will Butler (formerly of Arcade Fire), is chock-full of captivating pop songs and gripping ballads. Through Dec. 17 at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan. Read the review.For the FaithfulPurlie VictoriousLeslie Odom Jr. and Kara Young star in Ossie Davis’s raucous 1961 comedy, directed by Kenny Leon, about a charismatic preacher who must outwit a plantation owner to buy and restore the local church. The play exposes racism as laughably absurd in a Broadway revival our critic called “scathingly funny.” Through Feb. 4 at the Music Box, Manhattan. Read the review.Leslie Odom Jr. and Kara Young, center, lead the ensemble cast in a revival of Ossie Davis’s 1961 play, “Purlie Victorious,” at the Music Box Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesCovenantIn his New York debut, the playwright York Walker’s Southern gothic, directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene, follows a small Georgia town’s reaction to a bluesman’s homecoming. The potent little Off Broadway play, about communing with God and making deals with the Devil, is based on the real-life bluesman Robert Johnson, whose technique inspired rumors that he had traded his soul for musical genius. Through Dec. 17 at Roundabout Underground, Manhattan. Read the review.Nearing ExpirationShuckedIf a cornucopia of puns is your thing, this lowbrow comedic musical about a small-town woman who leaves home to save her corn just might scratch the itch. With a book by Robert Horn, songs by the country music songwriters Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally and campy scenes — including a mini-kickline of plastic corncobs — directed by Jack O’Brien, our critic called the show low humor “but hard not to laugh at.” Through Jan. 14 at the Nederlander Theater, Manhattan. Read the review.Sleep No MoreArguably one of New York City’s crown jewels of immersive theater, the Hitchcock-style take on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” is set to close on Jan. 28 after 12 years. In an enchanting act of voyeurism, audiences members wear masks — the Venetian type, not the health-protecting kind (those are optional) — and follow characters from room to room, into densely packed apothecary dens, eerie miniature forests and dark, elaborate dining halls. Through Jan. 28 at the McKittrick Hotel, Manhattan. Read the review. More

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    ‘Squid Game: The Challenge’ Is More Depressing Than the Original

    “Squid Game: The Challenge” keeps the slick design of the dystopian drama but loses the point.Late in the first season of Netflix’s “Squid Game” — two-year-old spoiler alert, I guess — an elaborate, deadly contest among 456 needy contestants is revealed to be an entertainment for the viewing pleasure of a handful of crass, wealthy “VIPs,” who watch the gruesome proceedings wearing golden animal masks.You could look at that situation and see a dramatization of the way a decadent system exploits desperate souls. Or you could look at it and say: All that production effort and they couldn’t monetize the show for a bigger audience?For everyone in the latter group, there is now “Squid Game: The Challenge.” The reality spinoff, whose first five episodes premiered Wednesday on Netflix, keeps the drama’s kaleidoscopic set design, its outfits and many of its competitions. It gets rid of the messy murder business — sort of — along with most of the uncomfortable ideas.What’s left is a beautifully designed but empty game box, a creepy dystopia cosplay, an answer to the question of what happens when you take a darkly pointed TV satire and remove its brains.The worldview of the original “Squid Game,” written and directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, was as subtle as a gunshot. Debtors, criminals and sundry other last-chancers are recruited by a mysterious organization to compete in scaled-up versions of playground games. One player will win a life-changing sum; the penalty for losing is death.Through the protagonist, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), we confront the question of whether one can survive the game, and by extension a ruthless economic system, and still keep one’s soul. The commentary could be blunt and obvious; “there’s a difference between making reference to something and actually illuminating it,” my colleague Mike Hale wrote. But the show had something to say and said it with style.“The Challenge” keeps the style, with the copycat precision of an A.I. image generator. It opens with a montage of colorful re-created “Squid Game” sets and the singsong of the giant robo-doll that presided over the opening game of Red Light, Green Light.That game opens “The Challenge,” with the full mob of contestants, dressed in familiar green track suits, stop-start racing to a finish line. Those who fail, by moving when they are supposed to be frozen, are eliminated faux-execution-style; tiny squibs explode under their shirts, spattering them with black ink. (Apparently a simulated shooting massacre is tasteful as long as you don’t use red.) They fall “dead,” like war re-enactors. The survivors are brought to a re-creation of the cavernous prison-dorm and burst out in cheers. “Best slumber party ever!” one says.The stakes are real, if not life-or-death. For every player fake-murdered, $10,000 is added to the prize pot, represented as in the drama by a giant piggy bank, up to $4.56 million.The idea of basing a real game on a brutal fake one isn’t inherently bad. (The reports of “inhumane” filming conditions are another matter; Netflix has said that “all appropriate health and safety measures were taken.”) Plenty of great reality shows gamify deadly situations. “Survivor” is a stylized shipwreck. “The Traitors,” from the same studio as “The Challenge,” is essentially a murder mystery.The problem with “The Challenge” is symbolized by those little pops of black “blood.” It’s painfully literal, yet colorless.Between contests, the players stay in a hangar-like dormitory as in the original.Pete Dadds/NetflixIt doesn’t want you to forget for a second that you’re visiting the wonderful world of “Squid Game” — that I.P. is too valuable to abstractify. Besides rebuilding the sets, it tries to reproduce characters from the series, finding contestants to fill the roles of hard villains, doomed softies and sympathetic elders. One group of allies dub themselves the “Gganbu Gang,” using the Korean word for a close friend that was a key term in the series.But “The Challenge” shies away from everything in “Squid Game” that cut to the jugular — in particular, the commentary about how capitalism pits ordinary people in gladiatorial combat. Like a lot of reality shows, it peppers in interviews with players who want to win the prize to support family or achieve dreams. But the competition is cast as opportunity, not exploitation. “The Challenge” does not want to bum you out.Why does it matter? Great games don’t just have good mechanics. They have ideas, like Monopoly, the family rainy-day pastime originally conceived to disseminate Georgist concepts about land use and equity. Reality shows have ideas, too, uplifting or cynical or even satirical. A game’s rules are an expression of values; the kind of play that works in a certain game says something about the kind of behavior that works, or should work, in the world.So if you take a reality competition — even a fictional one — and keep its aesthetics while stripping its foundational ideas, you’re left with, in this case, a well-produced, boring version of “Big Brother.” There’s a lot of generic conflict, a lot of stultifying downtime in the bunk room and way too many characters to try to build investment in.And because “The Challenge” wants to reproduce the look and gameplay of “Squid Game” while staying all in good fun (a producer likened it to a theme-park ride based on a movie), it’s a tonal mess.At times, it offers a bleak view of human nature. Players are disdained for cracking under pressure and one contestant, an early “villain” in the narrative, says, “sympathy, it’s only a weakness.” Other times, it is stickily sentimental and heartwarming. Sometimes the show encourages, or at least allows, cooperation; sometimes it forbids it.“The Challenge” does pull off some exciting set pieces. There’s a wicked twist to set up the pairings in the one-on-one marble game (which was also the dramatic high point of the original series). It even manages to improve on the glass-bridge hopscotch game. (Other events, like a board-game-based replacement for the drama’s tug of war segment, feel interminable.) But even at its best, you’re always conscious of watching an escape-room simulacrum of a famous TV show.And that’s where there is a kind of message in “Squid Game: The Challenge,” if an inadvertent one: It is an object lesson in how entertainment can appropriate any artistic or political statement. There is no dystopia so chilling that, with the right production values, you can’t sell it back to the audience as escapist fun.Since “The Challenge” does depend on being escapist fun, though, it can’t embrace this meta idea either. Maybe the biggest loss in this adaptation is the tension between the players and the competition itself. In the original drama, the game was the ultimate villain, and we saw the hero finally rebel against its shadowy makers.In the reality show, I’d expect no such satisfaction. The only way to win is not to watch. More

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    ‘Fargo’ Season 5, Episode 2 Recap: Sowing Disharmony

    Jon Hamm arrives as a lawman who isn’t very concerned with the law.Season 5, Episode 2: ‘Trials and Tribulations’In its persistent engagement with the Coenverse so far, “Fargo” has done best when it tweaks our expectations rather than simply reward fans with references to different movies. The premiere’s restaging of the Jean Lundegaard kidnapping from the movie “Fargo,” for example, was a dynamic way to establish Dot as someone who is surprisingly capable of dealing with a violent disruption to her morning routine.In this episode, Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm) gets an introduction that initially posits him as an upstanding rural lawman in the mold of Tommy Lee Jones in the Coens’ “No Country for Old Men.” It quickly becomes apparent, however, that he is a more unsavory man of justice.The opening monologue nods to Jones’s character, a third-generation sheriff who finds himself overwhelmed by contemporary evils. But Tillman is the type to perpetrate those evils himself under the guise of godly righteousness.His monologue is not delivered to us, in fact, but to a married couple in which the husband has violently assaulted his wife. Tillman is not enforcing the law but rather a patriarchal order that the man has disrupted by hitting his wife for the wrong reasons. In Tillman’s view, a man “only raises his hand when she forgets her place” — rather than book the husband, he has him choked as a “lesson.” The wife is then advised to, among other things, cater to her husband’s carnal needs “in order to sow harmony.”Tillman’s status as an elected official is underlined heavily for political effect here. He is a conservative North Dakotan, to put it mildly — “Jesus was a man, not some bearded lady” — and the laws of God, as he interprets them, supersede those passed by legislators.When two F.B.I. agents disrupt his hot-tub time to ask why he is not enforcing any laws, Tillman remains defiant and unabashed. But at this point, we know that Dot is his runaway wife and that Ole Munch (Sam Spruell), her one surviving abductor, had been working for him in an extremely unofficial capacity. Tillman has enough arrogance to shoo the agents away, but Ole Munch and Dot herself are still in the wind, which makes him a target, too.In another clever reversal of Coen expectations, Lorraine Lyon strongly suspects that Dot was in cahoots with the kidnappers in a ransom scheme but wound up getting cold feet. In the movie, it was Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) who was working with his wife’s kidnappers to pry money away from his father-in-law.But Dot has no interest in Lorraine’s money. Unless Noah Hawley has another card to play, we can believe that Dot wants nothing more than to continue her life with Wayne and Scotty, and that she probably feels like her mother-in-law’s wealth and status is more hindrance than advantage. Wayne’s job as a salesman at a Kia dealership seems like enough to keep their suburban life afloat, as it presumably has for the decade they’ve been married.One obvious problem with maintaining the status quo, however, is that Dot’s story is ridiculous on its face. She has Wayne in her corner, because he is supportive and deferential to his wife in a way that would repulse Tillman. But Deputy Olmstead isn’t buying her story about the two types of blood, neither of them Dot’s, found in her home, and Lorraine is even more suspicious of her motives.Still, despite her wish to return to her role as suburban wife and mother, Dot prepares for the next siege like Dustin Hoffman in “Straw Dogs” or Nick Nolte in “Cape Fear.” In lieu of a modern security system, she enlists Scotty’s help in stripping electrical wire, shattering light bulbs into bits of glass and pounding nails into a makeshift wooden club.“Why is there is sledgehammer in the vestibule?” Wayne asks later. A reasonable question, and a funny one, too. The show’s back-to-basics approach to the fifth season, with its return to the modern-day Upper Midwest milieu of the movie, also includes a greater emphasis on comedy. That doesn’t mean it is wholly successful, as when Hawley leans too heavily on colorful words — “commode” and “hoosegow” in the last episode, “vestibule” and “boudoir” in this one. But the lighter tone and brisker pace is giving “Fargo” an energy boost so far this season. The pace has been nice and snappy.There is also much to anticipate. Multiple parties are coming at Dot from different directions now, with Tillman (and everyone else) knowing exactly where she is and Lorraine poking around Dot’s personal history, which had seemed conspicuously blank upon initial vetting. In addition to having a freshly mangled ear, Ole Munch still hasn’t received full payment from Tillman for a job that wasn’t as easy as he was led to believe.Add to that Olmstead, the F.B.I. agents and a wounded highway patrolman who is curious about the skinny woman who saved his life, and the next peaceful pancake breakfast seems like a ways off.Minnesota nice: Juno Temple, left, and Jennifer Jason Leigh in “Fargo.”Michelle Faye/FX3-Cent StampsOle Munch’s line about being “a nihilist” gives us our first “The Big Lebowski” hat-tip of the season, referencing the German hoodlums who try to pull off a ransom scheme. Which then calls to mind one of John Goodman’s best lines from the film: “I mean, say what you want about the tenets of national socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.”There’s an interesting echo between Tillman and Lorraine about what Dot “owes” them through her marital vows: “She made promises to me, my son, to have and to hold, for richer and for poorer,” Lorraine says. “And that’s a debt we’re going to collect.”There was some overwriting in Tillman’s rebuking of the F.B.I. agents while he sat in his hot tub naked: “Does my discussing matters of state in moist repose bother you?”Why in the world does a conservative county sheriff in North Dakota have nipple rings?A terrific shot across the bow from Dot in Lorraine’s direction: “No Ivy League royal wannabe is going to run me off just because she doesn’t like the way I smell. If you want to tussle with me, you better sleep with both eyes open. Because nobody takes what’s mine and lives.” More

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    In ‘Squid Game: The Challenge,’ the Deaths Are Fake, but the Cash Is Real

    A new reality competition based on the violent Korean hit features 456 players vying for a $4.56 million prize.Player 450, dressed in a green and white tracksuit, lunged forward, rushing to reach the finish line. Suddenly, the head of a gigantic doll swiveled around and she froze, but it was too late. She crumpled to the ground.Those who watched the TV thriller “Squid Game” will remember the Red Light, Green Light blood bath, in which players had to race across a room and stop moving every time a doll’s head turned around, or be shot to death.But in this version of the game, it wasn’t blood soaking Player 450’s shirt — it was black ink from a squib under her T-shirt. And not long after dropping to the ground, Player 450 would get up, disappointed but otherwise unscathed.She and 455 other contestants were competing for a $4.56 million prize as part of “Squid Game: The Challenge,” a Netflix reality competition, premiering Wednesday, that recreates the devilish games of the streamer’s hit Korean drama, including the dalgona candy contest, the glass bridge challenge and the marbles game. When Netflix opened its casting call in 2022, more than 80,000 people applied to join.As their numbers dwindle, the players forge alliances and break promises, making Machiavellian maneuvers to avoid elimination and gain the upper hand in pursuit of the cash prize.“We wanted the show to reveal, just as the drama had revealed, a study of human nature under pressure and what people are really made of,” John Hay, one of the show’s executive producers, said in an interview. The show, filmed in England, is co-produced by the Garden and Lambert Studios.The show recreates the games from the original, like the dalgona candy contest.NetflixUnlike with the original drama, the producers of this show say they didn’t know ahead of time who would ultimately win. Earlier this year, some former players told Rolling Stone that the games were rigged, claiming that some players were preselected to advance to the next rounds.In a statement to The New York Times, Netflix denied that this happened. “All eliminations in the series were approved by our independent adjudicators, who were on set at all times to ensure fairness of all games,” a spokesman said.In an interview, executive producers said they compiled an enormous amount of footage of all the contestants early in the games, which allowed them to edit the show to focus on contestants who survived until later stages.To supplement the games, the producers also introduced a series of “tests of character”: mini-challenges in which contestants are forced to make difficult choices. Early on, two contestants receive the option to either eliminate a player or give another player an advantage for the next game. In a different test, a man gets a phone call and is told he has two minutes to convince another player to take the phone from him and be eliminated.“The drama is all about the alliances and groups people form,” said Stephen Lambert, an executive producer. “We needed to find ways to create challenges for people that would play to their sense of loyalty and sense of trust.”Recreating the games required complex engineering and a scientific attention to detail. To re-enact the dalgona game, in which contestants had to extract part of a candy without breaking it, the show’s designers spent months testing a variety of cookie recipes to find one that would accommodate contestants’ allergies while not being too soft or too brittle.Re-enacting Red Light, Green Light also posed challenges. To design the doll, which is more than 13 feet tall, the show’s designers requested exact dimensions from Hwang Dong-hyuk, the director of the original drama.Then they fed the designs into the largest 3-D printer in the United Kingdom and left it running for a month in order to fabricate the doll’s components, said the lead production designer, Mathieu Weekes. The most difficult task was designing an enormous head that could whip around fast enough to eliminate contestants without flying off the doll’s body in the process, said Ben Norman, the lead games designer. Once the doll was ready, the contestants were brought into a gigantic airship hanger in Cardington, a city north of London, to play the game.Former contestants told Variety and Rolling Stone earlier this year that they were forced to play the game in cold temperatures, resulting in some players receiving medical attention, a claim that Netflix has confirmed.The Red Light, Green Light contest included a working replica of the show’s 13-foot doll.Netflix“On the day of filming Red Light, Green Light, a small number of people were treated for mild medical conditions caused by the cold temperature, and one person was treated for a shoulder injury,” a Netflix spokesman said. “There were no other medical issues with the contestants during the remainder of the games.”The spokesman added that medics were on set at all times and that “all appropriate health and safety measures were taken throughout the filming period.”One of the contestants, Bryton Constantin, 23, said in an interview that he recalls people complaining about the cold, but he doesn’t remember any contestants experiencing severe injuries because of it.“We didn’t sign up for a beach trip in Hawaii,” he said. “We signed up for ‘Squid Game’ to win $4.56 million.”A Netflix spokesman would not say whether or not any contestants were compensated for their physical suffering or other unpleasant experiences on the show.After filming Red Light, Green Light, the show moved to studios in east London, where contestants lived in a large room filed with dormitory-style bunk beds, similar to the living quarters in the original series. Once they entered the studios, the lucky few who survived to the end would not leave for 18 days.“Nobody likes to sit in a room with 200 other people and eat not good food every day,” Constantin said. “But you’re in there struggling because everyone’s there for the same exact reason.” More

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    Jimmy Fallon Weighs in on Trump’s Health Report

    The “Tonight Show” host questioned the checkup results, saying that “Trump’s the only guy who gets his cardio in by storming out of courtrooms.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.The Picture of HealthOn Monday, former President Donald Trump released a statement from his doctor that declared him to be in “excellent health.” The vague report declared that Trump had lost weight through “an improved diet and daily physical activity” and that his “physical exams were well within the normal range and his cognitive exams were exceptional.”Jimmy Fallon questioned the report on Tuesday, joking that “Trump’s the only guy who gets his cardio in by storming out of courtrooms.”“[pretending to read the note] Donald is in excellent health, the most health a man can ever have, that I can tell you. Doctor.” — JIMMY FALLON“In a newly released letter, former President Trump’s physician said his overall health is excellent and his physical exams are within normal range. But take that with a grain of salt, because the letter also said his coat is shiny and he’s negative for heartworms.” — SETH MEYERS“Sure, we all know Donald Trump is the picture of health — specifically, the “before” picture.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“They also said that Trump’s cognitive exams were exceptional. All I know is when your friend is, like, ‘Guys, I took a cognitive exam, and everything’s fine,’ that usually means the opposite.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Remixed Edition)“During the White House turkey pardon yesterday, President Biden appeared to mix up Taylor Swift and Britney Spears, and, just like that, lost 30 million votes.” — SETH MEYERS“Wow, that’s almost as bad as the time former President Trump called Tim Cook ‘Tim Apple,’ thought Frederick Douglass was alive, called Second Corinthians ‘Two Corinthians,’ called Kevin McCarthy ‘Steve,’ called Paul Ryan ‘Ron,’ walked out of an executive order ceremony after forgetting to sign an executive order, and suggested injecting bleach to kill Covid.” — SETH MEYERS“Fortunately for all of us, Biden apologized immediately. Here’s what he said. He said, ‘I want to apologize to Taylor Swift and Britney Spears for my little mix-up. I obviously know who they are. Taylor, I’ve been a fan ever since you said you ‘Ain’t No Hollaback Girl.’ Seriously, not to quote your own songs back at you, but your music sets ‘Fire to the Rain.’ Britney, you touched all of our hearts in ‘Evita’ when you sang ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.’ I love your work so much it hurts. I guess you could say I have a ‘Bad Romance’ with it. So I hope you accept my apology, Saylor and Tritney, two of the people I am definitely aware of.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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    ‘Fargo’ Season 5, Episode 1 Recap: Back to the Basics

    After drifting steadily away from its source of inspiration over the years, “Fargo” appears to be creeping back.Season 5, Episode 1: ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’After drifting steadily away from its source of inspiration — Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1996 neo-noir thriller about the bloody unraveling of a criminal scheme in Minnesota and North Dakota — “Fargo” appears to be creeping back.Over its past few seasons, the series has been mostly a regional crime show with period trappings, seasoned with references to “Fargo” and a host of other Coen brothers movies. (Last season, set in the gangland Kansas City of the early 1950s, tipped its fedora most frequently at “Miller’s Crossing.”) Now we open in Minnesota in 2019, a setting contemporary enough that the politically-connected pose for Christmas photos with assault rifles.The new episode begins, inauspiciously, by citing the end of “Fargo,” when Marge Gunderson, the pregnant small-town sheriff played by Frances McDormand, philosophizes with the dead-eyed pancake enthusiast (Peter Stormare) in back of her squad car. Only here, the cop is Deputy Indira Olmstead (Richa Moorjani) of the Scandia police department and the perp is Dorothy Lyon (Juno Temple), more commonly known as Dot, who has been picked up for tasing a police officer during a melee at the middle-school board meeting. Dot claims it was a case of “wrong place, wrong time” for her victim — and she appears to be right about that — but Olmstead is unmoved. “What’s the world coming to?” she wonders, before adding a quote lifted directly from Gunderson: “It’s a beautiful day.”Moments like these are when the TV “Fargo” is at its worst, glibly referencing a scene that takes moral stock of all the pointless tragedy that had unfolded for, as Gunderson put it, “a little bit of money.” In the movie, Gunderson’s lament follows a bloody and stupefying sequence of events spinning out from a ransom plot. But here, Olmstead is shaking her head over a P.T.A. dust-up that climaxed with an accidental tasing, which gives it no resonance beyond adding another Coens homage to an episode that is absolutely loaded with them.The series’s creator, Noah Hawley, who wrote and directed this first hour, has been oddly undiscerning about his quotations throughout the show’s run. But “Fargo” is most effective when it pivots unexpectedly off the Coens rather than merely tipping its hat.In the season premiere, Hawley pulls off a sequence that lifts directly from the daytime abduction in the movie, which leans into the serio-comic folly of a housewife scrambling to evade two subprofessional kidnappers. Many details are the same, but Dot is far more capable than was poor Jean Lundegaard, whose desperate terror was mostly played for laughs. Beyond their Midwest domestic habit of knitting while watching talk shows, Dot and Jean have little in common.We got a sense of Dot’s capabilities in an earlier scene at the police station, when she frets about her fingerprints pinging some national database. She seemed content to let her mother-in-law, Lorraine Lyon (Jennifer Jason Leigh, using her haughty accent from the Coens’ “The Hudsucker Proxy”), clean up the cop-tasing incident, but the kidnapping later makes clear that Dot is capable of handling things on her own.So as her colorful past finally catches up to her in the form of her abductors, she’s ready to fight back with a lighter, a can of hair spray and an ice skate. Later, she improvises an escape from them during a showdown at a gas station convenience store.More intriguing than Dot’s ability to wriggle out of such a dangerous scenario is her determination to pretend that it never happened. During the time she was under capture, her ineffectual husband, Wayne (David Rysdahl), had contacted the police and enlisted his deep-pocketed mother, who assumes she will be on the hook for ransom money. (“I don’t know why they think I’d break the bank for some low-rent skirt my son knocked up,” Lorraine says bitterly.)Yet when Dot returns home in the wee hours and immediately sets to whisking the Bisquick for her daughter Scotty’s breakfast, she acts as if nothing is amiss. She’d gone away to clear her head, she tells Wayne, and she doesn’t even suggest an explanation for the two different blood types, neither hers, the police found on the floor.Dot’s behavior connects back to the definition of “Minnesota nice” offered in the beginning of the episode, in which “a person is chipper and self-effacing, no matter how bad things get.” What’s missing from that definition is the fact that “Minnesota nice” also can refer to the passive-aggressive hostility that is often nestled beneath the surface sweetness, though perhaps that is a side of Dot we will discover later.For now, she’s a question mark to everyone who knows her, despite her desperate desire to return to the Jean Lundegaard-style role she had fashioned for herself. But she can’t play the chipper Minnesotan for long.Sam Spruell in “Fargo.”Michelle Faye/FX3-Cent StampsAmong the many Coen references: Dot’s booking at the police station is scored with “Gloryland” by the bluegrass musician Ralph Stanley, whose rendition of “O Death” is featured in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”References to the Coens’ “Fargo,” specifically, are even more strikingly abundant: Leigh’s accent may recall her performance in “The Hudsucker Proxy,” but she is filling in the role of Jerry Lundegaard’s rich, tightfisted father-in-law. “Scotty” is the name of Jerry and Jean Lundegaard’s only son, but here she’s a girl. While Olmstead seems to be the series’s equivalent to Marge, her husband is into playing golf rather than designing postage stamps; he also seems far more self-absorbed than the solicitous Norm Gunderson. The goon dabbing his severed ear with a paper towel recalls the injured kidnapper played by Steve Buscemi and, in perhaps the funniest nod, the tourniquet Dot uses on the wounded cop (Lamorne Morris) is secured by an ice scraper, which is a source of great frustration for Jerry.How much you like this episode may relate to how funny you find the word “commode,” because it is used as a punchline three times. Another colloquialism to watch: “hoosegow.”Wayne joking about voting twice for the attorney general is another hint that this season of “Fargo” may be engaging with contemporary politics in a way previous installments have not. More

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    Who’s That Wonderful Girl? How “Nanalan’” Found New Success on TikTok

    She’s Mona, the puppet heroine of “Nanalan’,” an old Canadian children’s show that has found a new audience on TikTok.“Nanalan’” hasn’t been on TV in years, but it’s the hottest show on TikTok.A Canadian children’s program that made its debut in 1999, it has had a resurgence in recent weeks, thanks to its growing popularity on the social media platform, where it has been watched millions of times.A big part of the show’s appeal lies in its fiendishly catchy songs. One of them includes the lines: “Who’s that wonderful girl? Could she be any cuter?”The girl in question is Mona, a little green puppet with pigtails sticking out from both sides of her head. No, she could not be any cuter.The “who’s that wonderful girl?” earworm comes from a scene in which Mona enters a room dressed as a princess. Her grandmother, Nana, is singing the song while accompanying herself on organ. Nana’s dog, Russell, then appears in the garb of a royal courtier.The clip took off in mid-October, after a TikTok user posted it with the caption “When the clothes you ordered arrive and you treat the family to a fashion show.” The video has been viewed over 9.5 million times.

    @nanalanofficial Thewhole video can be viewed on Nanalan Official yu Tube #whosethatwonderfulgirl #wonderfulgirl #nanalan #princess #barbie ♬ original sound – nanalan’ official “Nanalan’” joined TikTok, YouTube and other social media platforms this year. But it didn’t make much of an impression until the video of Mona in her princess regalia began circulating, said Jamie Shannon, who created the show with Jason Hopley. The pair started making “Nanalan’” shorts in 1999, and the series ended up airing on CBC, Nickelodeon and PBS for Kids.In addition to reposting old content, Mr. Shannon, 51, has started making new videos with the “Nanalan’” puppets for social media. He discussed the show’s newfound audience and weighed in on why nostalgia reigns supreme online. The conversation has been edited and condensed.How did you get into the puppet business?I was traveling in Europe, I think it was 1990, and Jim Henson passed away. He was such a big part of my childhood. And I was like, “Well, that’s exactly what I want to do.” I was already kind of a puppet maker and an actor. So I kind of combined it all.For many people online, this is their introduction to your show. What should they know?It’s wild. Fifty-two percent of our audience on TikTok is American. “Nanalan’” is short for Nana Land, which is what I called my nana’s backyard. It’s about a little girl in that backyard. Mom drops Mona off at her nana’s everyday and goes to work, just like a lot of people’s situations. We were so lucky to do it without scripts, improvised.When did the show end?In 1999, we made the original set of three-minute shorts. We did that again in, I think, 2000. In 2003, we made a bunch of half-hour episodes, and that was it.Jason Hopley, left, and Jamie Shannon, the creators of “Nanalan’,” film a scene featuring the puppets Nana and Mona.via Jamie ShannonUntil social media discovered “Nanalan’.”We had a huge viral breakout in 2016 as well. Somebody did this hilarious thing. In one of the three-minute episodes, Mona’s describing the garden to Russell: “There’s a cooshie and a peepo.” Someone put the words up on the screen, just the silly words and then it went crazy on Tumblr. It became one of these things where people were like, “Try not to laugh.”Sorry — a peepo?A pea pod. I’m trying to imitate a kid imitating what a parent told them, but they don’t quite remember the word.Why do you think TikTok has embraced Mona?The world is so, so difficult and scary right now, and the show’s very comforting. Everything looks soft. There’s no special effects. It heralds to what I think people want to see, which is just something that’s real and authentic in the, you know, fake, fake, fake world. Everything’s A.I., and people don’t know what’s real.

    @nanalanofficial Replying to @Brooke backyard dance party #nanalan #dance #puppets #deli #delidancechallenge ♬ original sound – BREANNA🩷 Mona recently joined Cameo, a platform that allows celebrities to send video messages to fans for a fee. What’s that like?I was trying to join Cameo so long ago, and I guess they weren’t accepting puppets. It’s great, I love it. It’s like four or five videos a day. Touching stuff, too. People say, “Grandma died, can you …?” So I do a lot of pep talks. More

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    BBC’s ‘Top Gear’ Will Stop Production

    The BBC decision to halt production of the car show came after a presenter, Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff, was seriously injured in a crash during filming last year.The British car show “Top Gear,” one of the BBC’s most profitable and popular shows, will stop running after a presenter, Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff, was seriously injured in a crash during filming last year, the BBC said on Tuesday.“Given the exceptional circumstances, the BBC has decided to rest the U.K. show for the foreseeable future,” the broadcaster said in a statement, adding that it was excited about new projects that it was developing with the presenters of “Top Gear.” “We will have more to say in the near future on this. We know resting the show will be disappointing news for fans, but it is the right thing to do.”After the car crash, which happened in December at the show’s test track in Surrey, England, the BBC halted production of the series, its 34th season. An independent company then conducted a safety and health review of the show, but the findings were not published, according to the BBC.“Top Gear” has faced criticism of its safety protocol before. In 2006, Richard Hammond, then a “Top Gear” presenter, was in a coma for two weeks after crashing a vehicle going more than 288 miles per hour on a Yorkshire airfield during a “Top Gear” stunt.Mr. Flintoff, a former England cricket captain, reportedly reached a settlement with the BBC that was worth 9 million pounds ($11.3 million), according to The Sun and other news outlets. The Sun published photos of Mr. Flintoff taken in September showing facial injuries. The tabloid, citing Mr. Flintoff’s legal team, reported that he was still recovering from “life-altering” injuries. Mr. Flintoff did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The TV show, which debuted in 1977 as a regional show about cars and road safety and relaunched in 2002, is a cultural phenomenon. It is one of the BBC’s most widely watched shows worldwide. The BBC did not say whether the show would be revived at some point in the future.The show’s most recent season attracted 4.5 million viewers, according to the BBC, and the show generated about £20 million ($25 million) in profit each year as of 2015. Mr. Flintoff became the presenter of the show in 2019, co-starring with the actor and comedian Paddy McGuinness and the automotive journalist Chris Harris.“Top Gear” was also in the headlines in 2015, when the BBC suspended Jeremy Clarkson, the popular host at the time, after he attacked a producer after a night of drinking. More