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    Late Night Finds the House Speaker Pool Lacking in Diversity

    Stephen Colbert named actual candidates for the job before switching to made-up politicians — “and literally no one knows when I did, including me.”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.Speaking for Whom?With Jim Jordan officially out of contention, Republicans continued their struggle to pick a new speaker of the House on Monday. In the running were nine potential candidates — later eight, with Dan Meuser dropping out — a group that Stephen Colbert found unremarkable. “This time, nine Republicans will battle for the top post: Tom Emmer from Minnesota, Kevin Hern from Oklahoma, Jack Bergman from Michigan, Byron Donalds from Florida, Mike Johnson from Louisiana, Sam Nayman from Tennessee, Dan Marks from Wisconsin, Ben Warner from Georgia and Ken Sherman from Pennsylvania — and I started making up names partway through that list, and literally no one knows when I did, including me.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThis week’s guest host of “The Daily Show,” Desus Nice, pointed to the sole Black contender, Byron Donalds, among a group of white men.“I’m going to be honest: I kind of want to root for Byron. I feel like he might be my guy. I mean, no particular reason,” Nice joked.“It looks like someone put a bottle of Hershey’s syrup in the mayonnaise aisle.” — DESUS NICE“Yo, all these white dudes look the same. In fact, three of them are the same guy, and you didn’t even notice.” — DESUS NICE“There are now eight candidates for speaker — seven white men and one Black man, or as Republicans call it, a very diverse slate of choices.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s like the reunion of a college basketball team from 1955, you know?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Nine House Republicans have announced plans to run for speaker. But if you wanted to see nine people who have no chance of winning, just go to a Mets game.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Sports News Edition)“Let’s ease into everything with some sports news, and by sports news, I mean Taylor Swift: America’s sweetheart. She did some charity over the weekend by shining a spotlight on a little, unknown sport called football.” — DESUS NICE“Also, props to Brittany Mahomes. She leveled up. She went from being the quarterback’s wife to Taylor Swift’s B.F.F. — that’s like the highest level a white woman can get.” — DESUS NICE“Yeah, I guess it works, because Travis Kelce had his best game of the season yesterday. He finished with a touchdown, 12 catches, 179 yards, and 35 friendship bracelets, so, what a haul.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I will say it’s a good thing Taylor is dating someone on a good team. If she was dating someone on the Jets, she wouldn’t have a touchdown handshake. She’d just have a reassuring shoulder tap: ‘We’ll get ’em next time. You can’t win ’em all. Or any of them.’” — DESUS NICEThe Bits Worth WatchingThe “Priscilla” star Jacob Elordi talked about his childhood celebrity crush — Brad Pitt — on Monday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah will chat with Desus Nice, the guest host, on Tuesday’s “Daily Show.”Also, Check This OutIn “Fellow Travelers,” Jonathan Bailey, left, and Matt Bomer play men who move in and out of one another’s lives as history unfolds around them.Ben Mark Holzberg/ShowtimeThe Oscar-winning screenwriter Ron Nyswaner’s debut TV series for Paramount+, “Fellow Travelers,” is an adaptation of the 2007 novel by Thomas Mallon. More

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    ‘S.N.L’ Welcomes Bad Bunny and Mick Jagger

    Bad Bunny was the host and musical guest in an episode that included cameos from Jagger and Pedro Pascal.The chaos surrounding efforts to choose a new speaker of the House may be less than ideal for the nation, but it’s practically a gift to “Saturday Night Live,” which satirized House Republicans’ political turmoil in an opening sketch this weekend.The broadcast began with Mikey Day playing Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who on Friday lost a secret ballot vote to remain the Republicans’ nominee for the speakership after losing a third vote for the position on the House floor.Speaking on a phone in his office, a seemingly calm Day said, “No, I didn’t win, honey. No, not this time either. It’s OK. I’m feeling good.” Then after completing the call he broke the receiver in two.“Some of us are here to actually serve the American people,” Day said angrily. “All I want to do is get Congress back to work so I can shut it down again.”An assistant (Heidi Gardner) offered him a new phone and introduced a visitor: Representative George Santos (Bowen Yang), who was holding a baby.Asked why he had the baby, Yang answered, “No one seems to know.” He handed it to Gardner and said, “Just put him in an Uber.”Offering his consolations to Day, Yang said, “I want you to know I voted for you and — get this — so did Shoshanna Loggins.” Day asked, “Who’s that?” Yang responded, “Also me.”Day asked him if he should try running for speaker one more time. “Well, look, I would be lying if I said yes,” Yang answered. “So, yes.” Then he took a call on his cellphone that he said was from Tupac: “Girl, I know,” Yang said into his phone. “Jada is crazy.”Day received a call from Representative Lauren Boebert (Chloe Fineman), who offered her support while a hand reached in from offscreen and groped her. “Are you out somewhere?” Day asked her. “Yeah,” Fineman said, “I gotta go. I’m at the theater seeing ‘Aladdin.’”Finally, Day was visited in his office by former President Donald J. Trump (James Austin Johnson). “Yoo-hoo, is this the loser’s office?” Johnson asked as he knocked and entered.“You endorsed me and then you kind of disappeared,” Day told him.“Yeah, well, that’s because I prefer the Jordans who win, OK?” Johnson said. “Like the great Michael Jordan or the even greater Jordin Sparks. ‘No Air,’ remember that? Now that was a song. Tell me how I’m supposed to breathe with no air? You can’t. You can’t do it.”Johnson boasted he’d make a great speaker himself if he weren’t otherwise occupied. “Sadly, I’ll be too busy campaigning, traveling from city to city, visiting their beautiful courtrooms,” he said.Day complained, “I did exactly what you would do. Intimidation. Threats. Why didn’t it work?”Johnson answered, “Well, because, frankly, you’re not me, OK? You’re no fun, I’m hilarious.”Opening Monologue of the WeekBad Bunny, the Puerto Rican pop star who was both host and musical guest this weekend, continued a recent “S.N.L.” tradition of Spanish-speaking hosts who delivered a portion of their monologue in Spanish. As he spoke, a satirical caption appeared below him on the screen that read “[SPEAKING IN NON-ENGLISH],” tweaking a (nonhumorous) incident in which similar captions were shown at the 2023 Grammy Awards when Bad Bunny performed and during his acceptance speech for the Best Música Urbana Album.“Not again, please,” Bad Bunny said, and the caption below him changed to say “[SPEAKING A SEXIER LANGUAGE]”.As a surprise guest, Bad Bunny was joined by Pedro Pascal, the star of “The Mandalorian” and “The Last of Us,” who translated some of the host’s remarks into English and offered him advice on connecting with the audience.“Audiences love it when you show an embarrassing photo of yourself,” Pascal suggested, and the screen displayed a beefcake-y photo of Bad Bunny.“I’m sorry, how is that embarrassing?” Pascal asked. “Because I forgot to put on clothes,” Bad Bunny answered. (If that’s not enough Pascal content for you, he returned later in the night for a sketch where he reprised a past role as Marcello Hernández’s wryly judgmental mother.)Filmed segment of the weekEven rarer for “S.N.L.,” a filmed segment called “La Era del Descubrimiento (The Age of Discovery)” was presented entirely in Spanish.It featured Bad Bunny as a 16th-century Spanish monarch, Hernández as his son, and Day and the “S.N.L.” alum Fred Armisen as explorers who have come to share the wonders of un nuevo mundo to their unimpressed rulers. A turkey is described as having “testicles on its face,” while the king and prince recoil at the sight of a pumpkin: “That melon has herpes!” they scream.Celebrity cameo of the weekNo disrespect intended to Pascal or to Lady Gaga (who popped up to introduce Bad Bunny’s first musical performance), but we’ll give the edge to the Rolling Stones lead singer and longtime Lorne Michaels pal, Mick Jagger, making the latest in a long string of “S.N.L.” appearances that stretch back to the late 1970s.Jagger was a beast of burden in two sketches tonight: once in a fake mustache, playing a cackling character in a Spanish-language telenovela, and later on playing a lusty Lothario hiding out in a convent. If his comedy career doesn’t work out, there’s always rock music.Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on President Biden’s diplomatic efforts during the Israel-Hamas War, and Republicans’ struggles to choose a new speaker of the House.Jost began:In what many people are calling a high point of his term, President Biden gave multiple speeches this week in which he issued the same strong warning to anyone thinking about attacking Israel. And here was his message: [The screen showed a video montage of Biden saying, “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.”] I won’t. I really like that Biden only needs one word to get his point across. He’s basically the Groot of presidents. But to give you an idea of how effective “Don’t” is, it’s the same thing Biden says to his dog right before it bites another Secret Service agent.Also while he was in Israel, Biden said the Hamas attack was like “15 9/11s.” OK, you can’t go somewhere to calm people down and then start rating things in numbers of 9/11s. That is not a calm scale. It would be like if your doctor gave you Ambien, and said, “This will make you sleepier than 20 Cosbys.”Che continued:Jim Jordan, seen here describing how he attacks the nipple, is no longer the nominee for House speaker after Republicans dropped him Friday, which by the way he’s used to because he was dropped a lot as a child. Potential new candidates for speaker include Tom Emmer, Kevin Hern, Jack Bergman and six more candidates who are clearly George Santos. [The screen showed six images of George Santos in obvious disguises.]Weekend Update desk segment of the weekCapping a highly quotable and often baffling period of promotion for Jada Pinkett Smith’s new memoir, “Worthy,” Ego Nwodim appeared at the Weekend Update desk to impersonate that actress and on-again/off-again spouse to Will Smith.“Sorry if I seem a little tired,” Nwodim said to Che. “I’ve been on the ‘Today’ show 14 times in three days.”She shared what she said was the secret to a successful marriage — “Never go to bed happy,” Nwodim said — and explained why she would never divorce her husband.“Divorce is not an option,” Nwodim said, adding: “I have principles, Michael. If we got divorced, he could mess around and end up happy.” More

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    To Make ‘Fellow Travelers,’ Ron Nyswaner Had to Fall in Love

    The new drama, which follows a gay romance over several decades, is the first TV series created by the Oscar-winning writer of “Philadelphia.”Ron Nyswaner, the Oscar- and Emmy-nominated screenwriter, can still recall a chance meeting on a beach more than 50 years ago. Then a teenager and a self-described “Jesus freak,” he’d come to Ocean City, N.J., to attend a Youth for Christ conference. Late one night, he said, while walking alone, he saw “a gorgeous, muscular guy” across the sand.That young man asked him to speak in tongues — it was an invitation to religious ecstasy and nothing more. Nyswaner complied. He told me this story over lunch in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood, on a stormy afternoon in September, as a way to explain that, for him, “sex and the sacred have always been united.”He wanted that same union for “Fellow Travelers,” a new series that premieres Friday on Paramount+ and then on Showtime on Sunday.Moving back and forth from the early 1950s to the late ’80s, “Fellow Travelers,” based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Thomas Mallon, is a précis of 20th-century queer history viewed through a turbulent relationship between two men. Matt Bomer (“White Collar,” “Magic Mike”) stars as Hawkins Fuller, Hawk to his intimates, a State Department employee. Jonathan Bailey (“Bridgerton”) plays Tim Laughlin, a milk-drinking, God-loving naïf who dreams of working for Senator Joseph McCarthy.As they tumble through the decades — in and out of bed, in and out of love — the lavender scare, the gay liberation movement and the AIDS crisis happen around and through them.In “Fellow Travelers,” Jonathan Bailey, left, and Matt Bomer play men who move in and out of one another’s lives as history unfolds around them.Ben Mark Holzberg/ShowtimeNyswaner, who was dressed in all black save for a tan raincoat, claims to dislike love stories. “Yuck!” he said. (The two chunky rings he wore, mementos of former relationships, may have belied this.) But his genius resides in making the political feel shockingly intimate. Despite its many congressional hearings, “Fellow Travelers” is a love story, one illustrated with some of television’s most screen-fogging queer sex scenes. The first time Nyswaner read the novel, he fell in love with Tim and Hawk. It was that love — sexual, sacred — that inspired him to make the series, the first he has created for television.Nyswaner, 67, grew up in small-town Pennsylvania. Gay and closeted, he was an outsider as a child, an observer. That, he believes, is what made him a writer. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, he enrolled in Columbia’s film school. While still a student there, he slipped a script to the director Jonathan Demme. Demme optioned it, and Nyswaner has supported himself as a writer ever since.His first major success came in 1993 with “Philadelphia,” directed by Demme, the story of Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks), a lawyer who believes he has been wrongfully terminated by his firm because of his AIDS diagnosis. (Nyswaner, whose script earned him an Oscar nomination, makes a cameo in a party scene dressed as a priest.)By that time, Nyswaner was in the throes of drug and alcohol addiction. In the five years after the film’s release, newly flush with fame and cash, his addiction worsened.“I dedicated myself to cocaine and alcohol and sex, with tragic results,” he said. (He details this tragedy, which involves the suicide of a sex worker, in his 2004 memoir, “Blue Days, Black Nights.”)There was heat on him in Hollywood then. But he showed up to more than one meeting high on methamphetamines, and the heat dissipated. Which didn’t especially bother him. Having found success early, he has rarely been swayed by the demands of the market.“I always just wanted to write what I wanted,” he said.“The best thing you can do with any marginalized character is to make them as fully human and complicated as every other straight character that’s out there in the world,” Nyswaner said.Erik Tanner for The New York TimesNewly sober, he proved this. He scripted the 2003 true-crime Showtime film “Soldier’s Girl,” about an Army private’s relationship with a transgender cabaret performer, and followed that with the 2006 adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s doomed romance, “The Painted Veil.” Neither was intended for mainstream success, but these works had the heartbreak he loved, the passionate intensity.In 2012, his management team asked him what he wanted to do next. “Get me out of my house,” he told them. He had spent two decades living in upstate New York. Now, he found himself craving the crush of a big city and the camaraderie of a writers’ room. Though he had already optioned “Fellow Travelers,” he back-burnered it in favor of moving to Los Angeles and joining two Showtime series: first the punchy noir “Ray Donovan,” and then “Homeland,” the fervid espionage thriller. In 2018, when his time on “Homeland” ended, he felt ready to turn to “Fellow Travelers.”In “Fellow Travelers,” Nyswaner expands on the themes that define much of his film work — the ways in which longing, sex and secrets intersect with the law. In the series, the historical characters and events are meticulously researched. (There are perhaps a few aesthetic lapses — did men really work out this much in the 1950s?) But Nyswaner wanted to offer something more than a history lesson. Hawk and Tim and the show’s other queer characters are intimately involved in this history, and they are not mere bystanders and victims. Occasionally, they are aggressors.“The best thing you can do with any marginalized character is to make them as fully human and complicated as every other straight character that’s out there in the world,” he said.Many of those complications are revealed in the sex scenes. Thirty years ago, “Philadelphia” received criticism for shying away from gay sexuality. “Fellow Travelers” is not so shy. “Perhaps I overcompensated,” he said, laughing.Nyswaner said each sex scene was intended to move the story forward and dramatize a power exchange.ShowtimeNyswaner, who has something of the provocateur in him, described a scene late in the series, a threesome that leads to a nervous breakdown, as “very much me” and “one of my proudest achievements.” (For that scene he educated the director on the uses of amyl nitrate.)If these scenes are not especially graphic, they are unusually specific in their mapping of power and desire. Nyswaner had rules for these scenes, which were carefully choreographed and scripted. Each had to move the story forward. Each had to dramatize a power exchange. And no act could be repeated, which invited creativity in the later episodes.The queer characters are all played by actors who openly identify as queer. “It wasn’t a requirement, but it was certainly a strong motivator for us,” Nyswaner said. He believes the casting may have contributed to the veracity and intensity of these scenes.“I do think it might have really made a difference and made everybody more comfortable,” he said.Nyswaner isn’t sure if writing about gay characters is a path that he chose for himself or one that the success of “Philadelphia” forged for him. Either way he is glad to walk it.“I so love, love, love being a gay man,” he told me over lunch. “I enjoy being slightly to the side of everything.” He worries, of course, for the state of L.G.B.T.Q. rights, but he has always enjoyed this feeling of being an outsider. “Outlaw” was another term he used.He isn’t dating anyone just now. His preference, he said, is for “unsuitable men, some of them are quite delicious.” Colleagues keep encouraging him to download a dating app, but so far he has resisted. These past few years, his primary relationship has been with Tim and Hawk, the characters he fell for a decade ago.“I wanted to live within that relationship,” he said. “And I have.” More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Fellow Travelers’ and ‘Winter House’

    Showtime premieres a new show about a romance in the 1950s. The Bravo reality show is back with a new cast.With 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, Oct. 23 – 29. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE NOTEBOOK (2004) 8 p.m. on E! If the line “I wrote 365 letters, I wrote you every day for a year,” delivered by Noah (Ryan Gosling) to Allie (Rachel McAdams) as they stand in the pouring rain, doesn’t bring tears to your eyes I don’t know what will. This film, based on the Nicholas Sparks novel, follows them as they meet, fall in love, are separated by Allie’s family and reunited, there is a simultaneous story playing out of an older man reading their story to his wife, who has Alzheimer’s. Come for Gosling’s charm and McAdams’s cute southern accent and stay for the heartbreaking (but also kind of happy) ending.Eduard Fernández in “30 Coins.”Manolo Pavón/HBO30 COINS 10 p.m. on HBO. This Spanish language show, which is back for a second season, is all things spooky, supernatural and gory. The story of this season follows Father Vergara (Eduard Fernández), an exorcist, as he is exiled to the remote Spanish town of Pedraza. The problem? He is in possession of one of the 30 pieces of silver that Judas was paid to betray Jesus and is part of a dark conspiracy that wreaks havoc on the town.TuesdayHELP! I’M IN A SECRET RELATIONSHIP 9 p.m. on MTV. I like to think of this show as a sequel to another of MTV’s reality shows. On “Catfish: The TV Show,” the hosts try to figure out if people in online relationships are really who they say they are. On this show, the hosts, Travis Mills and Rahne Jones, investigate whether people are keeping their relationships secret and trying to do some sneaky stuff on the side.WINTER HOUSE 9 p.m. on Bravo. I’m in luck. I have another reason to talk about my favorite Bravo show again, because what would happen if I didn’t mention “Below Deck” every couple weeks? “Winter House” is a reality show that sends stars from different Bravo franchises, a.k.a. Bravolebrities, to a house in Steamboat Springs, CO to hang out. The new season features five previous “Below Deck” yachties as well as alums from “Vanderpump Rules,” “Summer House” and “Family Karma.”WednesdayREPAIRING THE WORLD: STORIES FROM THE TREE OF LIFE 7 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Just over five years ago, 11 people were slain at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh after a gunman entered shouting antisemitic slurs. This documentary covers the days and months that followed as the filmmaker Patricia O’Neill spoke to survivors, their family and members of the community.ThursdayFrom left, Kate O’Flynn, Ali Khan and Simon Bird in “Everyone Else Burns.”James Stack/Channel 4EVERYONE ELSE BURNS 9:30 p.m. on The CW. Before airing here, this show originally came out in the U.K. and is chock-full of that deadpan British humor. The story follows a puritanical Christian family focused on preparing for Armageddon and trying to avoid the eternal damnation that comes from falling prey to modern-day temptations.FridayFRANKENSTEIN (1931) & THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) starting at 8 p.m. on TCM. This pair of movies might be among the quintessential stories in the horror landscape. The first film, “Frankenstein,” follows Dr. Henry Frankenstein as he tries to give life to patched-together parts of dead bodies. His creepy science experiment works and everything is fine and dandy until the monster escapes the lab and creates chaos. The follow-up film, “The Bride of Frankenstein,” takes place immediately after the close of the first film, with the monster on the run from the angry mob. He runs into Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger), Frankenstein’s former mentor, who wants to create a mate for the monster. Things don’t end well for Pretorius.SaturdayFrom left: Avis-Marie Barnes, Jon Beshara, Gina Phillips and Justin Long in “Jeepers Creepers.”Gene Page/United Artist FilmsJEEPERS CREEPERS (2001) 8 p.m. on AMC. This film follows the brother and sister Trish and Darry Jenner (Gina Philips and Justin Long) as their road trip home from college turns into a sinister and supernatural fight for their lives. This “cannier-than-average teen horror movie makes you shudder in its early scenes, then turns into a noisy carnival attraction once its designated monster finally materializes,” Stephen Holden wrote in his review for The New York Times.SundayBILLIONS 8 p.m. on Showtime. This series about hedge funds and attorneys and high-stakes games (oh my!) is wrapping up this week after seven seasons. For the final season, Damian Lewis reprised his role as Bobby Axelrod to properly tie up all the loose ends of the series. This probably won’t be the last you hear about some of these characters, though — apparently there are spinoffs (aptly named “Millions” and “Trillions”) in the works.FELLOW TRAVELERS 9 p.m. on Showtime. Thankfully, 2023 has given us lots of heartfelt queer media, including “Heartstopper” and “Red, White & Royal Blue”— and now we can add this new series to the roster of shows and movies that portray a diversity of experience beyond heterosexual relationships. The love story here begins between Hawkins Fuller (Matt Bomer) and Timothy Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey) in the 1950s at the peak of McCarthyism in Washington and spans decades, with political and cultural events like Vietnam War protests, disco hedonism and the AIDS crisis, as the backdrop. More

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    Hulu, HBO and Apple TV+ Know What You’re Going Through at Work

    Workplace shows, a hit genre of the streaming era, are homing in on a knotty question: Do you have to sacrifice personal happiness to excel at your job?On a recent episode of Apple TV+’s “The Morning Show,” the television host Alex Levy is conducting a live television interview with a therapist when things take a turn toward the personal.With millions of home viewers watching, the therapist asks her to complete the sentence “I feel most alive when … ”“When I’m working,” Alex replies, with zero hesitation.The therapist responds: “Why only at work?”Alex, played by Jennifer Aniston, looks stunned. The interview has taken her into uncomfortable territory, and it takes her a moment to gather herself.The tension between personal needs and professional ambition is a common theme of the current crop of workplace shows, a dependable television genre that has found new popularity at a time when millions of people have changed their relationship with work — whether by switching jobs in the “Great Resignation,” organizing their workplaces or fighting for remote work flexibility.Alex and her fellow workplace TV protagonists struggle to separate their professional identities from their true selves. They’re wondering if they can excel in their chosen fields without letting their jobs eat them alive.On Hulu’s “The Other Black Girl,” the assistant editor Nella Rogers learns that there is danger in deciding to “bring your whole self to work” — contrary to the messaging of corporate diversity managers.On Apple TV+’s “Ted Lasso,” the perky soccer coach who gives the show its name has a series of panic attacks that seem to arise from the guilt he feels over having taken a job thousands of miles from where his son and ex-wife are living.Carmen Berzatto, the genius chef on Hulu’s “The Bear,” finds himself locked in a walk-in refrigerator at the end of the show’s second season, unleashing a stream of curses as he castigates himself for having allowed his personal life to get in the way of his ambitions.In many ways these characters reflect the feelings of millions of restless workers of recent years. Some 50 million Americans are now doing their jobs from home, at least part time, and many have grown attached to the flexibility. Others have been job-hopping or fighting for higher wages. And so far this year, some 472,300 workers have gone on strike, up from 58,100 two years ago.When managers began insisting that employees return to the office in the wake of the pandemic, hundreds of workers walked out of Amazon’s headquarters in protest, and dozens of Apple employees signed petitions demanding permanent flexibility.Across industries and companies, workers have been asking how much of their lives they are willing to give over to their bosses.Julia DufosséIn the years leading up to the pandemic, plenty of employers subtly and not so subtly communicated that a workplace could be a substitute for home. Silicon Valley executives offered their employees free meals, lavish happy hours and on-site Zumba. The underlying assumption seemed to be that workers didn’t have to leave the office to find community, which some interpreted to mean that they never should.Human resources executives encouraged employees to dress as “your authentic self” (per emails to Meta’s recruits), further blurring the boundaries between the private person and the worker who is expected to trade more than 40 hours a week for a paycheck.But is it wise to “bring your whole self to work” when you may be feeling sad, frazzled or in the mood to loaf? And what if the real you has values that don’t align with the aims of the company you work for?Those tensions are at the heart of “Severance,” whose employees come to realize the mysterious entity they work for is up to no good, and “The Other Black Girl,” in which Nella suffers professional consequences after confronting the publishing house’s literary star about a racist depiction in his latest book. Hazel-May McCall, the company’s “other Black girl,” had promised to support Nella’s righteous stance, only to step back at the crucial moment.“You just have to be the person they want you to be,” Hazel-May tells Nella at one point.Workplace shows have long been a television staple, but the characters who populated earlier programs in the genre seemed to get very little work done. Jim, on “The Office,” sticks Dwight’s stapler in Jell-O; Kenneth, on “30 Rock,” insists that he has to marry an envelope before he licks it.There is less goofing off in the workplace shows that have been among the most talked about programs since the rise of streaming. The main characters tend to be dead serious about their jobs, nakedly ambitious. Carmy, of “The Bear,” desperately wants that Michelin star; Alex, of “The Morning Show,” would be crushed if her Nielsen numbers were to slip; even the sweet-natured Ted Lasso would be sorely disappointed if the people around him didn’t consider him the very model of the modern-day boss.A rare old show that focused on coldblooded strivers was the NBC series “L.A. Law.” Given the current appetite for workplace shows that actually show the work, it’s no wonder that it’s making a splashy return to Hulu next month, with all its 172 episodes remastered.The characters on that series have their 21st century equivalents in the members of the Roy clan and their acolytes on HBO’s “Succession,” probably the buzziest workplace show since “Mad Men.” In almost every episode up to its finale last spring, it presented one hideous variation after another on the theme of how people intent on corporate maneuvering end up cannibalizing their deepest relationships and betraying those closest to them.At one point, the back-room operator Tom Wambsgans, in the middle of a typically brutal argument with his wife, Shiv Roy, tells her that she would make a bad mother. He doesn’t realize she’s pregnant when he says this. In a milieu where the distinctions between personal and work selves are hazy at best, he seems unable to fathom who she might be when detached from her ruthless corporate persona.The notion that we might be able to separate the people we are at home from the people we are at work is made literal in the sci-fi series “Severance.” Its main characters have undergone brain surgery to sever their work and personal selves: the nonwork personas are called “outies,” the workplace versions are “innies,” and neither has any idea what the other is up to. When the protagonist’s two selves begin to bleed into each other, he is distraught — and he assumes a leading role in a workers’ revolt.For Carmy, on “The Bear,” there is little separation between life and work, and he seems to believe that excelling at his job must come at the cost of personal misery. Flashbacks to his family’s household Christmas celebration on Season 2 of “The Bear” show his mother making everyone around her suffer as she prepares a sumptuous feast. It’s clear that she’s a wonderful cook, but the ambience around her meal leaves something to be desired. (After much screaming, fighting, fork-throwing and tears, she crashes a car into the side of the house.) Carmy’s challenge is to push himself to greatness in the kitchen without repelling anyone who might want to get close to him.It’s a problem he has yet to solve by the season finale, when he is reciting a soliloquy of self-loathing in the locked walk-in refrigerator on the opening night of his restaurant. He blames the fact that he has been too involved with his new girlfriend — too content, too soft, too much in love — to give the workplace the intense level of attention it requires.When the slightly less tortured Ted Lasso faces his own work-versus-personal-life crisis, he goes in the opposite direction, deciding that he must leave his job in England so that he can be a better father to his son, who is in Kansas.The “Ted Lasso” team and Apple have been coy about whether the series will return for a fourth season. But if it does come back, and if it continues to follow the ups and downs of its titular character, it might be a tough sell. A show about a contented father who has hit upon the correct approach to work-life balance doesn’t seem like the kind of thing people want to watch these days. More

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    Ali Stroker Has Tips for Fellow Sleep-Deprived Working Moms

    The Tony winner and author talked about the Broadway shows she’ll see once she can stay up late again, and the podcast that comforted her during the pandemic.The actress Ali Stroker never thought she would write a book.“Growing up, I didn’t like reading,” said Stroker, who in 2019 became the first performer who uses a wheelchair to win a Tony Award. “Books didn’t have any characters I related to.”But when Stacy Davidowitz, the author of the middle-grade series Camp Rolling Hills, asked to interview her because a character she was working on had a disability and worked in theater, Stroker had an idea: What if they wrote a story together?“That’s what I always tell anybody who wants to do something they’re not sure they know how to do: Find somebody who does and collaborate with them,” Stroker, 36, who lives in Westchester County, said in a phone interview on the way to a rehearsal in Manhattan.Their partnership led to “The Chance to Fly,” a middle-grade novel published in 2021, and a sequel out this month, “Cut Loose!”“I needed characters like this in middle school,” said Stroker, who was paralyzed from the chest down after a car accident when she was 2.The Broadway star, who gave birth last year to a son, Jesse, talked about the shows she plans to see once she can stay awake past 9 p.m., and the activities and advice that are helping her out in the meantime. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1Broadway (Eventually)I have not seen a lot of shows in the past year because mom life, and I’ve usually been asleep by 9 p.m. But I want to see “Sweeney Todd,” “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and “Hadestown.”2‘Cook This Book’ by Molly BazThere’s a recipe in this book that I’ve made probably 100 times: the pastrami chicken. It’s so good. She’s coming out with a new book, and my sister and I are going to Brooklyn to get our books signed.3Cookbook ClubThis is something my sister, Tory, started last year. Women from the town we grew up in, Ridgewood, N.J., gather once a month to make a recipe from a cookbook. It’s been nice for me to have a community of moms to talk to and relate to.4Hudson Valley Farmers’ MarketsI live in Westchester, and it’s been so nice having farmers’ markets every weekend. We go to the Ossining and the Pleasantville ones. They make these cinnamon doughnuts, and they’re just to die for.5Accessibility at HomeI don’t want Jesse living in a world where Mommy can’t do things in our very own house. It’s important to model that you can get creative and make accessibility for yourself. For instance, I found a chopping block for our kitchen that’s my height so I can chop vegetables, and we have this induction hot plate that I use because the stove is high.6‘Rent (Original Broadway Cast Recording)’That show is so raw, and that recording is so emotional. Hearing the intro to these songs makes me feel like I’m in middle school again and listening to it in my room on my CD player. It captures for me first falling in love with theater.7‘The Goal Digger Podcast’What I love about Jenna Kutcher is that she’s so relatable. It feels like she’s like hanging out with you. I love hearing her talk about business and finance and all the ways you can elevate your life. She also brings on really cool people to interview. I started listening to her during the pandemic because my husband and I were out on Cape Cod, at the home of a family friend, and I would go for a push every day. It became a comforting ritual at a time when so much was unknown.8AudiobooksI like to listen to Audible in the car, especially on long drives, so I’ve been fortunate this year to have a lot of concerts booked. Two of my recent favorites are Stanley Tucci’s memoir, “Taste,” and “Driving Forwards,” by the TV presenter and disability advocate Sophie L. Morgan.9First Village CoffeeLuis, the [co-owner], and the people who work in this cafe in Ossining, N.Y., are just so wonderful. They feel like extended family. And the scones are so good. They’re fluffy inside, crispy on the outside, they have this amazing vanilla chai icing on top. They’re heavenly.10Taking Cara BabiesNo one can prepare you for what the sleeping situation is with a brand-new baby. But this woman, Cara, who’s a mom herself, has come up with these plans and tips for new parents — when to do naps or how often or schedules. New parents kept recommending her, and it has been so so helpful. More

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    Alan Eisenberg, Longtime Actors’ Union Head, Dies at 88

    In his 25-year tenure at Actors’ Equity, he helped build Equity Fights AIDS and challenged the casting of the top roles in the hit musical “Miss Saigon.”Alan Eisenberg of Actors’ Equity Association was honored by the Actors Fund of America at a gala in New York in 2006. With him was the actress Lynn Redgrave.Peter Kramer/Getty ImagesAlan Eisenberg, a lawyer who during his 25 years as the top executive of Actors’ Equity Association helped to build its membership and stabilize the finances of its health plan, and also dealt with a highly publicized controversy involving the casting of the hit musical “Miss Saigon,” died on Oct. 7 in Rhinebeck, N.Y. He was 88.His wife, Claire Copley, said he died in a hospital of lung cancer.Mr. Eisenberg had worked at law firms for two decades before he was hired in 1981 as the executive secretary (his title was later changed to executive director) of Actors’ Equity, which represents theatrical actors and stage managers.In the 1980s, the union was confronted with the AIDS crisis, which had a particularly harsh impact on the theatrical community. Mr. Eisenberg was a champion of Equity Fights AIDS, the philanthropic fund formed within Actors’ Equity in 1987 to directly help members in financial need.Tom Viola, the executive director of the nonprofit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS (the two organizations merged in 1992), said in a phone interview that Mr. Eisenberg offered “ballast and direction” to the “emotional understanding of what needed to be done” that was provided by the actress Colleen Dewhurst, who was president of Equity Fights AIDS from 1985 until her death in 1991.We 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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    ‘Lessons in Chemistry’ and TV History

    Brie Larson plays the fictional host of a 1950s cooking show in this period drama. But the story is inspired by the real TV homemakers who flourished back then.In a scene in the Apple TV+ period drama “Lessons in Chemistry,” Elizabeth Zott (Brie Larson) prepares for her new job as host of a local cooking show with scientific rigor. Poised with pad in hand, Elizabeth, a chemist, concentrates keenly on her home television set, as if she were observing a chemical reaction.“How does one study TV?” her neighbor asks playfully.“Turn on Channel 4,” Elizabeth retorts.Based on Bonnie Garmus’s 2022 novel, “Lessons in Chemistry” follows the brilliant but frequently undervalued Elizabeth as she jumps from one chauvinistic 1950s milieu — an elite research institute — to another: local television.While the character, her show (“Supper at Six”) and the Los Angeles TV station that carries it are all fictional, they are inspired by the robust culture of local broadcasting, rooted in radio, that flourished in the 1950s and early ’60s in cities across the nation. These early days before television went Hollywood, when local stations produced much of their own original programming, allowed for plenty of experimentation and gave women ample opportunity to work both behind and in front of the camera.In its depiction of a fictional cooking show, “Lessons in Chemistry” is a kind of companion piece to the series “Julia,” which tracks Julia Child’s rise to fame and returns next month for its second season on Max. Both follow protagonists who reinvent local television in their own iconoclastic images — Child, played by Sarah Lancashire, as a down-to-earth contrast to a pompous WGBH host (Jefferson Mays), and Elizabeth as a foil to an elderly predecessor who likes to drone on about stockings.Jefferson Mays and Sarah Lancashire in “Julia,” which depicts Julia Child’s rise to TV fame.Seacia Pavao/HBO MaxOne of the writers on “Lessons,” Elissa Karasik, used television chefs like Child, Alma Kitchell and Dione Lucas (who toured Australia), as models for how an “independent thinker” like Elizabeth might use the format of the cooking show to subvert gender expectations. While men like the BBC’s Philip Harben, generally considered to be the first TV celebrity chef, were staged in restaurant-quality kitchens and touted as professionals, female chefs were often filmed on sets meant to recall home kitchens and shoehorned into nurturing, domestic personas.In “Lessons in Chemistry,” this attitude is exemplified by an executive producer, played by Rainn Wilson, who pressures Elizabeth to endorse undesirable sponsors and rails against her penchant for wearing pants. “Big hair, tight dress, homey set!” he rants in one scene. “We need a sexy wife, loving mother that every man loves to see when he comes home from work.”Most daytime television, however, was not actually oriented around male viewers, according to researchers who have written about this period. Marsha Cassidy, a media scholar and the author of “What Women Watched: Daytime Television in the 1950s,” said that these shows were geared toward women’s tastes — even the non-homemaking segments like interviews, musical performances and games. And they were abundant at a time when many middle-class wives still stayed home during the day: Cassidy cited a 1952 Iowa State College survey that found that 72 of the country’s 108 local TV stations were producing homemaking programs.Such shows were mostly locally produced, and nearly every major market cultivated its own personalities in the genre, said Donna Halper, a media historian and professor at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.Standouts included Monty Margetts, an actress — she would go on to appear in “Dragnet,” “Bewitched” and other network series — who was hired to host “Cook’s Corner” out of an NBC affiliate in Los Angeles. Unmarried, child-free and with little actual cooking knowledge, she was hardly a natural pick for the job, said Mark Williams, an associate professor of film and media studies at Dartmouth. But “she was quick on her feet,” he said, and she and her viewers created a kind of community around the effort to become more skillful housewives.“It was everything local television made affordances for,” said Williams, who writes about Margetts and that era in his forthcoming book, “Remote Possibilities: A History of Early Television in Los Angeles.”Ruth Lyons hosted “The 50/50 Club” and other shows in Cincinnati in the 1950s and ’60s.Cincinnati Museum Center, via Getty ImagesRuth Lyons hosted “The 50/50 Club” in Cincinnati. Though elegantly dressed in white gloves, she was “anything but a model for demure postwar femininity,” Cassidy said. “She was brash, outspoken, had a ‘sandpaper voice.’” She even teased her male co-stars on the air about who was really running the show, and audiences adored her for it.Lyons began on radio, like many early television performers, but not every radio personality made the jump. Some failed to look the part or find their audiences, said Halper, the media historian, and others simply chose not to go on camera. And still others, like Willa Monroe, didn’t have the institutional support in place.Monroe was one of the most popular personalities at Memphis’s WDIA, a white-owned radio station that catered to a Black market. “She took the genre of women’s show and made it appeal to the Black woman at home,” Halper said. “She had interesting guests, she did the recipes and homemaking tips and so on, but she also did a lot of appearances all over the city.”But because neither national television networks nor local stations (or their sponsors) were particularly interested in reaching Black women, Monroe never crossed over to this new medium. “Lessons in Chemistry” alludes to such racial disparities through the character of Elizabeth’s friend Harriet (Aja Naomi King), a Black attorney and mother. “You’re always talking about the things that keep women down, but who does that include?” Harriet asks her at one point. “Have you looked at your audience lately?”Left, Larson and Aja Naomi King in “Lessons in Chemistry.” The show touches on the racial disparities of the era.Apple TV+By drawing attention to race and class alongside gender, “Lessons in Chemistry” spotlights the shortcomings of midcentury feminist politics. In that vein, while wooing Elizabeth to take the job, her producer Walter (Kevin Sussman) vows, “This would be your show. You would be in charge of virtually every aspect of it.” But the dream of total creative autonomy ultimately did not bear out for most women in this era of broadcasting — nor does it materialize for Elizabeth.In 1952, the Federal Communications Commission lifted its freeze on new station licenses. The growth of the medium that followed, together with the establishment of a coast-to-coast coaxial cable, led to the ascent of national network programming at the expense of local stations. Live and prerecorded shows, mostly out of Los Angeles and New York, would come to take the place of locally produced homemaking series.Child would debut “The French Chef” as a weekly public television series in 1963 and go on to become a national treasure. While her local contemporaries are comparatively more obscure now, in “Lessons in Chemistry” Elizabeth Zott stands on their shoulders and channels their style and purposeful spirit. More