Eliana Willis

Chuck joins the mutineers in a spectacular way as Mike sets traps for Wendy and the rest.Season 7, Episode 9: ‘Game Theory Optimal’Think of this week’s episode of “Billions” as the Death Star trash compactor. In this memorable scene from “Star Wars,” our heroes, Luke, Leia, Han and Chewie, are stuck waist-deep in refuse as the walls of the compactor slowly close in on them. Shooting at those walls, climbing them, bracing them with metal beams — nothing works. It is simply a race against time: Either their robotic friends C-3PO and R2-D2 figure out how to shut down the space station’s trash compactor, or — well, as Han Solo puts it, “We’re all going to be a lot thinner.”In this crackerjack episode, the role of the left wall is played by Chuck Rhoades. Chuck has a long, dark, drunken night of the soul at Patsy’s restaurant with Richie Sansome (Michael Rispoli), a former top brass in the N.Y.P.D. Half cop, half gangster (you can take the actor out of “The Sopranos,” but you can’t take “The Sopranos” out of the actor), Sansome advises Chuck on the logistics and ethics of framing a guilty man, primarily in the negative.But he does offer this to the beleaguered attorney: If Chuck wants to take down a king, he has to recruit members of the royal court. If those conspirators wind up going down with their monarch regardless, Sansome rationalizes, they probably deserve it for having been part of the regime in the first place.But that won’t work for Chuck. For one thing, he cares about Wendy, one of the key courtiers he’ll need in order to stop Mike Prince from getting his finger on the nuclear button. (The stakes on this show have gotten insanely high all of a sudden!) For another, while Wendy might be willing to trust Chuck again, her colleagues and friends, Taylor and Wags, would not. No, to win them all over he’ll have to somehow guarantee his honesty.He does so in a spectacular way — a way hidden from everyone, by the writer Beth Schacter, until Chuck’s allies and we in the audience are jumping out of our chairs to uncover it. Starting with Dr. Ari Gilbert (Seth Barrish), the Axe-associated convict whom Chuck used, framed, tossed aside and even taunted, he makes a videotaped record of every crime he has ever committed in any of his offices.He rattles off all the greatest hits, up to and including his undermining of the infamous Ice Juice I.P.O. that briefly ruined his father, Charles, and best friend, Ira. This time, however, both men are brought in to advise on the plan; you get the sense this, too, is part of Chuck’s drive to prove his trustworthiness.What’s the big idea? Simple: He gives the recording’s only copy to Wags, a man who just minutes before threatened to dedicate his life to annihilating Chuck should he ever hurt Wendy again. This way, everyone involved — Chuck, Wendy, Wags, Taylor, Charles, Ira and Karl — will know that if Chuck pulls any of his usual shenanigans, his destruction will be both guaranteed and, this time, irreversible. Thus, the alliance between both anti-Prince brain trusts is forged.Unfortunately, there is that other trash compactor wall to consider, and it is closing in fast. Mike Prince has been alerted by Kate, astute and increasingly repugnant, that a mutiny may be afoot.With her help, and that of Scooter, an expert in English architecture, and just-this-side-of-legal surveillance equipment throughout the Prince Cap offices — including in Wendy’s therapy office — Mike learns it all. Wendy, Wags and Taylor are conspiring against him. They have at least tried to involve Bobby Axelrod, lying about their whereabouts in England while they wooed him. And Philip, the dauphin of the operation, refuses to have anything to do with it.So Prince springs his trap. He won’t fire them, because slashing his C-suite during a presidential campaign will make him look decidedly unpresidential. He’ll simply freeze them. Wendy will take a chief executive position at a mental-health start up, as she has spent the episode building up the willpower to do — but Mike has gone behind her back and bought it, so he’ll fire her as soon as the election is over, leaving her with nothing.Wags has his authorization privileges taken away; he will be a mascot for the boys on the trading floor, nothing more. (In this respect, Prince adds with malice, little will really change.) Taylor will not be allowed to so much as log into a company computer; the effect is like locking away the firm’s most brilliant mind in a rubber room, which Prince clearly realizes is the worst punishment a genius like Taylor could endure.So there we are, in the middle of the compactor for nearly the full hour. Chuck concocts some outrageous scheme of unknown nature on one side, and Prince and his minions uncover the truth about the mutineers on the other. All we can do is watch the inexorable progress of both plots, until the walls either stop just in time or finally squeeze shut, with the fate of our heroes in the balance.Ain’t it grand? Beyond the wealth porn and barrage of pop-culture and sports references, the charm of “Billions” has always been that it is simply a well-made financial thriller, written by smart people who, like the characters they chronicle, enjoy being five steps ahead of everyone else. Personally, I love that feeling. I love not knowing what Chuck is up to, or whether Prince can root out the conspirators before they close ranks with Chuck, or what fate worse than death Prince is planning for his enemies once he has them in his clutches. I love being outsmarted by a television show, and that is the stock in trade of “Billions.”Loose changeNot only does Billy Joel’s simultaneously cynical and elegiac ode to the high life, “I’ve Loved These Days,” open and close this episode, it actually replaces the composer Brendan Angelides’s trademark electronic “chug-chug-chug-chug-whirr-whirr-whirr-wirr” over the “Billions” title card. Yes, the showrunners Brian Koppelman and David Levien are from Long Island. How did you guess?The aforementioned opening involves late-night shots of a host of landmark New York City restaurants and venues, all of which are made to look like portals to realms undiscovered. Watch most big-budget sci-fi and fantasy shows of recent vintage, then watch “Billions,” then tell me which makes its setting look most like a magical moonlit wonderland of possibility and danger.I want to call out Ben Shenkman’s performance as Ira in this episode. Ira is an interesting character in that he serves as Chuck’s one-man Greek chorus or a Jiminy Cricket who can be routinely ignored; his job is mostly to watch his friend and react with dismay and resignation. This episode, in which he grows increasingly tongue-tied and visibly uncomfortable in his chair watching Chuck prepare to commit career suicide on camera, is his finest hour. It’s a vital role to this show, and Shenkman, who makes the character look as if he’s always nervously eyeing the exit even though he’ll never really use it, is indispensable.This season has demonstrated that few of the players in this high-stakes game of chess make a move without anticipating the response. A few episodes back, for example, Philip approached Wendy with his concerns about Prince, knowing full well she would relay them to Chuck. With that in mind, we are left to wonder why Wendy asked Rian to vet that mental health start-up for her. Was it just to survey its financial and ethical soundness? Or did she know Rian would take it to Prince, anticipating that he would buy it on the sly? Does Wendy need him to own it for some unknown purpose integral to their mutiny? Or is it simply that Wendy is every bit as screwed as it seems?Not to sound like a broken record, but it’s been that kind of season: This is the best “Billions” in quite some time. More

“Ted Cruz must be glowing,” Kimmel said on Thursday about the scorn piling onto Representative Matt Gaetz.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.Tough CrowdWith Kevin McCarthy ousted as speaker this week, the polarizing Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida seems to be the House’s next target.On Thursday, Jimmy Kimmel called Gaetz “the least popular guy in Congress right now.”“Ted Cruz must be glowing.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Unfortunately, you can never really fully get rid of Matt Gaetz. You can only suppress him temporarily with Valtrex.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (TMI Edition)“In a new interview, Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin criticized Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz and said that Gaetz had bragged that he would crush erectile dysfunction medicine and ‘chase it with energy drinks so he could go all night.’ He added that sometimes, Gaetz would even have a woman with him.” — SETH MEYERS“Wow, they’re feeding on themselves. It’s like ‘Alien Vs. Sexual Predator.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Not only does Matt Gaetz definitely look like the spokesman for an E.D. medicine-infused energy drink, his name even has a ‘Z’ that you know is on the can.” — SETH MEYERS“So this guy is claiming Matt Gaetz was running around on the floor of the House showing his amateur porn to anybody he could find, to everybody who works with him. That makes him sound like the over-the-top bad employee example they use in H.R. training videos.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth Watching“The Tonight Show” hosted a Battle of the Instant Songwriters on Thursday, with audience members creating on-the-spot ditties about a haunted Airbnb and Taylor Swift’s relationship with the N.F.L. player Travis Kelce.Also, Check This OutClockwise from top left, Nathan Lane, Josh Sharp, Aaron Jackson and Megan Mullally in “Dicks: The Musical.”Justin Lubin/A24Nathan Lane and Megan Mullally star in “Dicks: The Musical,” an outrageous new comedy from A24. More

The commentary was sharp and the drinks were virgin at a watch party for the new dating show featuring singles between 60 and 75.After Zumba class wrapped up at the Oakland Senior Center on Friday, regulars gathered around a projector screen with mocktails and plates piled with cheese and crackers to watch the premiere of “The Golden Bachelor,” the reality franchise’s latest spin on its dating show formula.“I haven’t been a bachelor in 55 and a half years,” said John Nicolaysen, 88, one of the two dozen viewers gathered in this leafy New Jersey suburb. He wore his age proudly on a baseball cap: “Est. 1935.”The new show features daters in their 60s and 70s, centering on a mild-mannered 72-year-old man from Indiana named Gerry Turner, who is looking for love again after his wife died several years ago. Eager to generate buzz around the spinoff, ABC has helped to facilitate watch parties at retirement homes around the country, targeting a television audience — people over 60 — that has effectively become the core constituency for broadcast networks.This watch party, however, was homegrown.“I just fell in love with his laugh — and his blue eyes,” one senior center visitor said of Gerry Turner, 72, the show’s star. Craig Sjodin/ABCAs the center’s director, Arielle Preciado, arranged chairs for the incoming audience, she recalled the disapproval of some regulars when she screened a movie about 20-somethings falling in love. “Everybody was like, ‘No one wants to watch our grandchildren getting together!’” Preciado said.So when chatter about “The Golden Bachelor” reached her social media feeds, Preciado decided to organize a viewing in Oakland, where members of the Greatest Generation flocked to after World War II. The senior center now sees a few hundred visitors a week, offering exercise classes and free activities such as Mahjong and knitting.After attending the morning Zumba class on Friday, three girlfriends who met at the senior center more than a decade ago returned to the building for the 2 p.m. “Golden Bachelor” screening. (The premiere aired on ABC the previous night.)Their take on Turner, whose bronzed image has been plastered across billboards, buses and commercial breaks for weeks?“He’s too young for me!” Joanne Craw, 78, said.“Well, he’s right up my alley,” her friend Toni Pflugh, 68, replied. “Except I have a husband.”“I do, too,” their friend Chris Lill, 73, said, joking, “but we’re ready for a change after 50 years.”A scene of Turner putting in hearing aids was a relatable moment for some viewers.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesPflugh, once a devoted “Bachelor” viewer who fell out of the habit after getting tired of what she considered a lack of realism, hoped that this version would be different.As a beaming Turner greeted a cast of hopefuls in the premiere episode, the senior center crowd tittered at attention-getting strategies like riding up to the Bachelor Mansion on a motorcycle, groaning at the franchise’s wink-wink, nudge-nudge innuendo.The group of friends offered guesses on which women had “had work done,” while others simply watched silently. The room broke into gasps and cheers when one of the contestants shared that she was from Teaneck, N.J., a short drive down the highway.“She’s only 60, she’s a baby!” Pflugh called out as one contestant stepped out of a limo in a shimmering golden gown.“I need alcohol,” cut in Craw as she ventured out to the snack table.(She was joking: The senior center does not serve alcohol, so the best Craw could do was an “Orchard Spritzer,” a mixture of pear juice and sparkling white grape juice.)The watch party’s refreshments were nonalcoholic.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesAs the episode concluded with a preview of a season of flirtation, heartbreak and a heavy dose of messaging around aging and female empowerment, the reviews trickled in.“Not my cup of tea,” Nicolaysen said, though he found seeing Turner putting on hearing aids while getting ready relatable. He was certain his wife would ask him to turn it off at home.“I think reality TV is the downfall of civilization,” offered Vicki Wyan, 69, as her group of friends debated how “real” this reality show actually is.Linda Arns, 78, was far more charmed. “I just fell in love with his laugh — and his blue eyes,” she said of Turner.It was an innocent crush: Arns has been with her husband for more than 50 years. But she offered Turner some advice in case he decided to be married again: “Love is blind, but marriage is an eye-opener,” she said.“I think reality TV is the downfall of civilization,” said Vicki Wyan, 69.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesABC’s efforts to capture audiences are off to a decent start, with 4.4 million viewers watching the show the day it premiered, according to data from Nielsen.Not all of the singles at Oakland Senior Center bought its message, though. Sure, a “second chance at love” is good for some people, but what if their era of dating is simply over?“I couldn’t do it again; I had the best, so I really couldn’t do it again,” said Ann Bernhard, 84, who has been visiting the senior center since shortly after her husband died more than 20 years ago.Another widow, Marilu Irizarry, 78, was also thoroughly uninterested in joining the population of older single women searching for love — either on television or in real life.“I don’t know,” she said, looking around at the other women sitting at her table. “Maybe just a good friendship.”John Koblin More

Eric Martin discusses the second installment of the Disney+ series starring Tom Hiddleston as the God of Mischief.Loki has worn many hats since his initial appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2011.In the first “Avengers” movie, the God of Mischief, played by Tom Hiddleston, descended on New York City with an alien army. In “Thor: Ragnarok,” he teamed up with his brother to protect the people of Asgard, morphing from villain to antihero. And now, in the second season of the “Loki” television series, which premieres Thursday on Disney+, he embarks on a new and unlikely mission — saving the Time Variance Authority.Season 2 of “Loki” takes place in the aftermath of the mayhem from the first installment, in which Loki and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), a free-spirited Loki variant, arrived at the end of history. There, they discovered He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), the time-bending scientist who masterminded the T.V.A. to prevent another war between the many variants of himself.When Sylvie stabs He Who Remains, she plunges the T.V.A. and the Sacred Timeline into chaos, unleashing the multiverse. As Season 2 commences, new worlds branch from the timeline, T.V.A. forces splinter into factions and Loki grapples with a problem called time-slipping as he is caught in a tug of war between past and present.To preserve the T.V.A., Loki reunites with familiar characters — including the wry Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) — as well as new ones, such as O.B., a T.V.A. fix-it man played by the Oscar-winning actor Ke Huy Quan, and Victor Timely, a 19th-century inventor and Kang variant played by Majors. (Majors is facing charges related to a misdemeanor assault case after being arrested in March in New York. Filming for Season 2 of “Loki” had already finished before the arrest.)With the original director Kate Herron leaving the project, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who helped direct “Moon Knight,” became the new lead directors on a majority of the episodes. Eric Martin, who helped write some of the first season’s episodes, has become head writer.In a video call from his writing studio in Los Angeles, Martin spoke about crafting the plot and characters of Season 2 and working with Quan in his new role.Ke Huy Quan as O.B., Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15, Tom Hiddleston as Loki and Owen Wilson as Mobius.Marvel/Disney+What were some of the themes you had in mind as you wrote the script for this show?I think the most important thing to me is just character and emotionality. I wanted to have everything driven by the wants and needs of our characters and really just focus on their emotional journeys first and foremost. That is the basis for all the drama: Who are our people? Where are their heads at? What do they need? Those are the dramatic questions that drive everything.As for themes, we still have the ideas of free will and destiny that continue on from Season 1. But for new things, I think order versus chaos is a continual theme. And then a power vacuum. What happens in a power vacuum? I think like the overarching concept of Season 2 is, “You break it, you buy it.” That’s what happened at the end of Season 1. They broke the system. And so now they own this nebulous thing, and it needs to reform and become something new.How do you see Loki evolving as a character through the first season and into the second?Season 1, and like Episode 1 especially, scrambled his brains. He sees his own death by the end of that. He realizes that even the infinity stones are pointless at this new level of things. And so he had to completely reset and figure out who he was. And so I think Season 1 we see him make this hero turn although he is still an antihero or villain. But I think Loki had kind of forgotten who he was, and Season 2 is like rebalancing that. So we still have this hero Loki, but we’re getting back to the meat and potatoes of who this guy is. We’re getting back to the God of Mischief. So we see him using all those talents of the God of Mischief but as a hero now.All these characters are so intertwined across multiple different movies and TV shows in the MCU. So, I’m curious, how much creative freedom do you have in writing for this particular show?We’re fortunate that we really have our own little sandbox here where we’re able to be really creative and branch off into other directions without stepping on other projects. And some of that’s by design, while some of that is just what we found along the way. In terms of actual marching orders, there have been certain points where it’s like, “Oh, you know what, this character is being used by another project,” and you just have to pivot. But in terms of our drama and our story and where we’re taking our characters, it really is just following them and their needs and proving them on the page. And if we can prove that then nobody steps in and says you need to do something different.The interactions between Loki and Mobius and between Loki and Sylvie were captivating in Season 1. What should we expect from those interactions in Season 2?Let me start with Loki and Mobius. They’re a lot of fun to write because they’re an odd couple. They are very different in how they do everything. They are on the same side. They’re on the same page, but they’re reading different books. They do not have the same path to getting the same thing done, and that’s what’s fun. You have that friction to play with, but they are on the same side. So scene to scene, there’s so much fun to have with them.And with Loki and Sylvie, they’re a little bit of friends, couple, I’m not sure how you even want to look at them. These are two people that have had this intense experience together, and they split apart and went separate ways. Inevitably they’re going to come together, but how have they each changed? Where have they each gone? And are they going to be able to mesh again?Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Ke Huy Quan as O.B. and Owen Wilson as Mobius.Marvel/Disney+So O.B. is definitely an important character in Season 2. What was it like to create this character?O.B. was born out of a desire to see the rest of the T.V.A. I feel like Season 1 we existed on a couple different levels, but this is a massive place. Like, what else is there? Who else is there? And as I was getting into the first episode of Season 2, I really started to think about who’s the person who is down there in the engine room of the ship. He’s the one who is looking over everything. He’s the fix-it guy. I just started to imagine a guy who was so busy running the machinery that he just doesn’t see anybody. But he loves his job. It very much is like the seven dwarfs and Snow White. They’re just whistling while they work because they love it.And so Loki and Mobius show up there, and they’re like the first visitors O.B. has had in years. O.B. is just happily doing his job. It really crystallized in my head who that person was — somebody who loved his job. That conception of the character stuck and stayed. And when Ke came on, he just added a layer of sweet humanity to it that I thought brought a whole different level to what O.B. is.How was Ke brought on for this role?That was Kevin Feige. He saw him in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and Kevin fell in love with O.B. on the page, and I think he just saw him and then he’s like, “This is our O.B. He’ll just step right in and be perfect for this.” The first day Ke came, he hadn’t started yet. He just wanted to visit the set and say hi. That’s who Ke is, he wants to know everybody. And we got to talking and had lunch together and it was just this nice lunch talking about his character and getting to hear him dig in and get under the skin of that character and how he was going to approach it. And all just over some cold Chinese noodles. More

“Only the Republicans would consider giving the job of speaker to someone who is under a gag order,” Meyers said. 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.Floating TrumpThe ouster of Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House continued to dominate late night on Wednesday, with hosts discussing potential replacements.Seth Meyers said that because “you have to be insane to actually want this job, some Republicans are floating the name of a person who is, in fact, insane” — with President Donald Trump as one possibility.“Incredible. Only the Republicans would consider giving the job of speaker to someone who is under a gag order. It’s like hiring a French mime as your new N.F.L. play-by-play guy.” — SETH MEYERS“Don’t worry. There’s no way he can be drafted — he’s got the bone spurs.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (National Kevin Day Edition)“We got a new episode of ‘The House Floor Is Lava’ last night.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That’s right, the House voted yesterday to remove a speaker from power for the first time in 234 years. Well, they removed him from office. It’s hard to have power when you have all the fire and charisma of the Facebook silhouette guy.’ — SETH MEYERS“After just nine months of sucking at his job, McCarthy was stripped of the gavel by eight members of his own party. To make it even worse, this all happened — and this is true — on National Kevin Day.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Today, of course — and, again, this is true — is National Taco Day and National Vodka Day. Tacos and vodka, or as Kevin McCarthy called them this morning: breakfast.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Well, Kevin, don’t cry because it’s over; cry because it happened.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingChelsea Handler cleared up rumors brought on by tabloid headlines while on Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightDavid Byrne, the frontman for the Talking Heads, will talk about the rerelease of the band’s 1984 concert film, “Stop Making Sense,” on Thursday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutA self-portrait of Tove Jansson with the Moomins.Moomin CharactersA new exhibit in Paris explores the life and work of the Scandinavian writer and artist Tove Jansson, the talent behind the beloved Moomin characters. More

Pete Davidson — who left the cast of the show in 2022 — will host the season premiere on Oct. 14.With the five-month writers’ strike ending last week, a certain corner of television is coming back to life: first with the return of the late night shows on Monday, and now with “Saturday Night Live,” which will kick off its 49th season on Oct. 14, the show announced Wednesday on X, formerly known as Twitter.Pete Davidson, who left the long-running NBC sketch comedy program in May 2022 along with other big-name cast members including Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant, will host the season premiere; the Bronx rapper Ice Spice will be the musical guest. On Oct. 21, the Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny will serve as both the host and musical guest. On Wednesday, “S.N.L.” also posted a welcome to its newest cast member, Chloe Troast.Season 48 was supposed to run through May 20 but concluded early because of the strike. The Writers Guild of America, which represents more than 11,000 writers, reached a tentative deal with the major entertainment studios on Sept. 24, and the guild’s board members approved of the deal on Sept. 26, announcing then that the strike would end the following morning. SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents tens of thousands of actors, on strike since July, returned to the negotiating table this week.While Davidson is also an actor, starring in the recently released film “Dumb Money” and the Peacock dramedy “Bupkis,” the actors’ union does not consider hosting to be a violation of their strike. In a letter to members that was posted online on Wednesday, SAG-AFTRA made clear that union members who appear on “S.N.L.” as either hosts, guests or cast members are not in violation of their strike rules because they are working under the Network Code Agreement, not the contract the union is striking.“The majority of our members who are regular cast on ‘Saturday Night Live’ had contractual obligations to the show prior to the strike,” the letter also states. “Many are under option agreements that require them to return to the show if the producers exercise their option, which the producers have done.” More