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    Burt Metcalfe, Who Left His Mark on ‘M*A*S*H,’ Is Dead at 87

    He was the showrunner of the classic Korean War sitcom for its last six seasons, notably casting David Ogden Stiers as the pompous surgeon Winchester.Burt Metcalfe, who as the showrunner of “M*A*S*H” for the last six of its 11 seasons made a critical casting decision as he began his tenure and helped write the two-and-a-half-hour final episode, contributing ideas he had picked up on a trip to South Korea, died on July 27 in Los Angeles. He was 87.His death, at a hospital, was caused by sepsis, said his wife, Jan Jorden, who played a nurse in several episodes of “M*A*S*H.”Mr. Metcalfe had been an actor and casting director before becoming a producer of “M*A*S*H,” the sitcom about the staff of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War, a show widely regarded as one of the best series in television history. He joined for its first season, in 1972, at the request of Gene Reynolds, a friend and an architect of the show along with the writer Larry Gelbart. When Mr. Reynolds left after the fifth season, Mr. Metcalfe succeeded him as the executive producer running the series.“He was able to successfully guide the show because of his personality, which was unusual,” Alan Alda, who starred in the series as the surgeon Hawkeye Pierce, said in an interview. “He was unselfish, he was gentle, and he was interested in the humanity of the characters.”Mr. Metcalfe did not have to change much of what had been built by Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Gelbart, who left after the fourth season. For instance, he continued Mr. Reynolds’s practice of interviewing doctors and nurses who had served in the Korean War and who provided a rich supply of potential medical story lines. Mr. Alda, who wrote and directed many of the episodes, said he had pored over interview transcripts looking for a phrase that could inspire a story.When, at a conference in Chicago, Mr. Metcalfe interviewed doctors who had served in the war, one told him that the series had made him “a hero” to his family. “They watched the show and my son says to the neighbor kids, ‘My dad is Hawkeye,’” Mr. Metcalfe quoted the doctor as saying in an interview with the Television Academy in 2003.He said that under his direction, without what he called Mr. Gelbart’s “comedic intensity,” “M*A*S*H” had a more serious bent.“We delved more deeply into the characters’ personalities in ways we hadn’t done before,” he told the academy. “We got criticism in later years that it was becoming more serious and less funny.”Before the sixth season, Mr. Metcalfe’s first as showrunner, he faced the task of replacing Larry Linville, who was leaving the show after his run as the officious, rules-obsessed ninny Major Frank Burns. Mr. Metcalfe, who had originally cast Mr. Linville, said he wanted an actor who could play a much more formidable surgeon with a superiority complex. He found him one Saturday night when he saw David Ogden Stiers play a ruthless station manager on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” and he hired him to play the pompous surgeon Charles Emerson Winchester III.“When David Stiers was dying, I wrote him an email,” Mr. Metcalfe said in 2020 on “M*A*S*H” Matters,” a podcast hosted by Ryan Patrick and Jeff Maxwell, who played the food server Igor on the series. He told Mr. Stiers, he said, that hiring him to play Winchester “was the best decision I made of all the decisions I had to make on ‘M*A*S*H.’” Mr. Stiers died in 2018.Mr. Metcalfe, second from right, accepted a TV Land Award for “M*A*S*H” in 2009 alongside the cast members, from left, Allan Arbus, Ms. Swit, Mike Farrell and Mr. Alda.Fred Prouser/ReutersBurton Denis Metcalfe was born on March 19, 1935, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. His father, Louis, was a vending machine distributor who died when Burt was 3. Burt moved with his mother, Esther (Goldman) Metcalfe, a secretary, to Montreal, where he developed a love of acting. He performed comic sketches and imitations in front of his aunts, uncles and cousins; while attending a children’s theater school, he was asked to appear in half-hour radio dramas.Burt and his mother moved in 1949 to Los Angeles, where he finished high school. In 1955, he received a bachelor’s degree in theater arts at the University of California, Los Angeles.Over the next decade, Mr. Metcalfe was a working actor, appearing as a guest star on “Death Valley Days,” “The Outer Limits,” “Have Gun — Will Travel,” “The Twilight Zone” and other series; as a regular on the sitcom “Father of the Bride” in the 1961-62 season; and as a surfer named Lord Byron in the 1959 film “Gidget.”Feeling bored, he moved into casting in 1965. This eventually led Mr. Reynolds to ask him to find actors for two pilots: “Anna and the King,” an adaptation of the musical “The King and I,” and “M*A*S*H.”Both pilots were picked up, but “Anna and the King,” in which Yul Brynner reprised his stage and screen role, was canceled after 13 episodes. Mr. Metcalfe became an associate producer of “M*A*S*H” in addition to overseeing the casting; he became a producer in the fourth season, during which he directed his first three episodes (he would direct a total of 31). He became executive producer when Mr. Reynolds left to run the production of “Lou Grant.”A couple of years before “M*A*S*H” ended, Mr. Metcalfe went to South Korea to talk to civilians about how they had been affected by the war. One story — about a mother who had been with a group of South Koreans trying to escape from a North Korean patrol, and who smothered her baby to avoid jeopardizing their safety — stuck with him.Mr. Metcalfe contributed that story to the script for the series finale. In that episode, Hawkeye has a nervous breakdown on a bus ride with members of the 4077th and refugees after telling one of the refugees to quiet her chicken so as not to alert the enemy, only to realize later, under psychotherapy, that she had actually smothered her baby.Mr. Metcalfe was nominated for 13 Emmy Awards, including four for directing.He is survived by Emily O’Meara, whom he regarded as his daughter. His marriage to Toby Richman ended in divorce.Soon after “M*A*S*H” concluded, Mr. Metcalfe became the executive producer of the series “AfterMASH,” a sequel in which three characters from the original — Corporal Klinger (played by Jamie Farr), Colonel Potter (Harry Morgan) and Father Mulcahy (William Christopher) — worked at a veterans’ hospital in Missouri. It was canceled after 30 episodes.Mr. Metcalfe joked on the podcast that his decision to hire Mr. Stiers “was only a preface to making lots of bad decisions on ‘AfterMASH.’”He later became an executive at Warner Bros. and MTM Enterprises. He retired in the 1990s.“TV had changed by then,” Ms. Jorden said in a phone interview. “He said it had become meaner. And shows like ‘M*A*S*H’ only come around once in a lifetime.” More

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    Review: In ‘The Butcher Boy,’ an Anti-Coming of Age Story

    The new musical, based on the novel by Patrick McCabe, follows a boy in 1960s Ireland as he recounts a tale of childhood mischief and alienation.They creep in from the shadows, snorting and snickering. The singing pigs that skulk and shimmy through “The Butcher Boy,” which opened on Monday at the Irish Repertory Theater, are silly but also half menacing. Below the neck, they’re dressed like townspeople in 1960s Ireland, where the new musical, written and composed by Asher Muldoon, is set. From the jowls up, however, their snout-nosed masks are eerily impassive.The swine chorus appears to be a totem of indecency, embodying the dark and unknown depths of the show’s narrator, Francie (Nicholas Barasch), a jaunty lad with flame-colored hair and an implacably sunny disposition. In his upbeat brogue, Francie recounts a tale of boyhood mischief and alienation with a zeal that belies what seems to be the threat of promised violence. If there’s danger lurking beneath his gleaming grin, Francie may be a bit too good at hiding the knife.Based on the 1992 novel by Patrick McCabe, “The Butcher Boy” presents a myopic view of a troubled upbringing — call it an anti-coming of age tale. Francie claims that his adolescence was idyllic, though scenes in the musical plainly prove otherwise. He and his best friend (Christian Strange) fish and carouse and steal comic books from a nerdy classmate (Daniel Marconi), whose mother (Michele Ragusa) fatefully derides Francie and his parents on the basis of social class, calling them pigs.Barasch with, from left, Teddy Trice, David Baida, Carey Rebecca Brown and Polly McKie in “The Butcher Boy,” a new musical based on the 1992 novel by Patrick McCabe.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“It was a sweet and simple time,” Francie sings as his father (Scott Stangland) belts him across the butt. “We were happy,” he says before walking in on his mother (Andrea Lynn Green) about to hang herself from a fuse wire. The motormouthed Francie turns to the audience with asides and misdirections that dissemble as much as they reveal.In the novel, McCabe’s prose is propulsive and unpredictable, bordering on stream of consciousness and bubbling with proto-punk sensibility, not unlike Irvine Welsh’s “Trainspotting,” published in Scotland a year later.But putting a narrator as unreliable as Francie at the helm of a stage musical is a tricky business. Should an audience believe what they hear or what they see? That depends on which is more convincing, and the results here are tough to decipher. Is Francie fooling only himself, or is he trying to fool everyone else? The answer often seems to be both, and it’s a difficult deception for a performer to pull off, particularly while recounting and participating in two and a half hours’ worth of action.“The Butcher Boy” might have been finessed into a sharper, more forceful black comedy if the score from Muldoon, who is not yet a senior in college, had developed a more distinctive point of view. Its dutiful tour through Broadway-style pop, vaudeville and Irish influences is largely referential.The production, directed by Ciaran O’Reilly, uses graphic shorthand to suggest the tension between Francie’s insular mind and the outside world. The wood-slatted walls of the set by Charlie Corcoran resemble a treehouse, while an oversize rendering of a turn-dial TV serves as a backdrop for Dan Scully’s projections. The screen looms large over the compact stage, nodding briefly to the turmoil of the 1960s and to Francie’s taste for “The Twilight Zone,” but the significance of mass media to Francie’s tortured descent is either overstated or underplayed.“The Butcher Boy” centers Francie’s perspective to a fault, so that the convictions of other characters are mediated through his own. It’s a powerful concept but requires a delicate physics that staging a story in three dimensions tends to defy. When characters who are without emotional agency express themselves in song, whose heartstrings can they claim to be pulling? Francie seems determined to prove that he himself has none.There are promising moments of affecting sentiment at the conclusion of Muldoon’s score, in ballads that seem to offer unlikely resolution, before Francie yanks it away with a still indeterminate rage. But by the time Francie’s own mask finally falls, the revelation feels oddly bloodless.The Butcher BoyThrough Sept. 11 at the Irish Repertory Theater, Manhattan; irishrep.org. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

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    Stream These 9 Titles Before They Leave Netflix in August

    Of the many movies leaving the streaming service for U.S. subscribers this month, these are the ones most worth checking out.There are scares aplenty in the titles leaving Netflix in the United States at the end of the month, with two contemporary horror favorites and one absolute classic departing the service. We can also recommend a handful of first-rate thrillers, one of the most quotable comedies of the 21st century and a Kevin Costner Western that’s neither “Dances With Wolves” or “Yellowstone.” (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.)‘The Conjuring’ (Aug. 20)When this modestly-scaled haunted house movie hit theaters in summer of 2013, few could have imagined that it would not only become so profitable — returning $319 million worldwide on a $20 million budget — but also spawn a multi-movie “universe” of eight films and counting. But that was all to come; the pleasures of this initial entry are simple, rooted in the authenticity of its ’70s setting, the grounded performances by Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga and Lili Taylor and the confident direction from James Wan (particularly his execution of one of the single best jump-scares in recent memory).Stream it here.‘In the Line of Fire’ (Aug. 30)Clint Eastwood made a rare late-career acting-only appearance in this first-rate thriller from the director Wolfgang Petersen. Eastwood stars as the Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan, one of the agents working in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. That connection catches the attention of a potential assassin (John Malkovich), who baits Horrigan into a game of cat and mouse by threatening to repeat history on his watch. Malkovich was nominated for an Academy Award for his chilling turn as the ruthlessly intelligent killer, but Eastwood’s performance is the real deal; the taciturn actor finds striking notes of vulnerability and melancholy for his guilt-ridden character.Stream it here.‘Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy’ (Aug. 31)Will Ferrell’s breakthrough vehicle was one of the most culturally inescapable comedies of the 2000s, endlessly quoted and memed, and for good reason: It’s a screamingly funny comedy, taking an absurd concept (the 1970s-set story of a local “Action News” anchor) to its absolute limit, thanks to a spot-on turn from Ferrell as a dopey blowhard, great supporting work from the likes of Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner and Fred Willard, and Christina Applegate’s perfectly modulated turn as his foil turned love interest. But it was also the feature directorial debut of the future Oscar winner Adam McKay, who was already using broad comedy as cover to smuggle in headier themes (this time, of gender roles, toxic masculinity and media ineptitude).Stream it here.‘Cliffhanger’ (Aug. 31)Few megastars have mounted as many comebacks as Sylvester Stallone (one of the many parallels between the actor-filmmaker and his most famous creation, Rocky Balboa). He was rebounding from an ill-advised attempt at comedy — remember “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot”? — when he fronted this white-knuckle thriller in 1993. The boilerplate script (which Stallone co-wrote) amounts to “Die Hard” on a Mountain, with Stallone as the rugged but desperate hero, John Lithgow as the elegant terrorist villain and the Rocky Mountains as the locale. But Stallone and Lithgow fill their roles nicely, and the director Renny Harlin (previously of, by no coincidence, “Die Hard 2”) orchestrates the mayhem with panache.Stream it here.‘The Dark Knight Rises’ (Aug. 31)Christopher Nolan capped his Batman trilogy — and followed up “The Dark Knight,” one of history’s most commercially and critically successful comic book films — with this 2012 action epic. It’s neither as thrilling as “The Dark Knight” nor as narratively efficient as the earlier “Batman Begins,” and it borders on bloated at nearly three hours. But there’s something boldly operatic to its ambition, to how Nolan folds in new villains, post-Occupy politics and a decidedly unheroic tone of borderline nihilism. Tom Hardy’s Bane is a true terror, and Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman is a gem of complex sensuality.Stream it here.‘Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol’ (Aug. 31)It speaks to the high quality of the entire series that no clear consensus seems to exist on the best film of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise. But there’s a strong case to be made for this, the fourth entry, which was the live-action directorial debut of the Pixar alum Brad Bird (“The Incredibles”). Tom Cruise returns as Agent Ethan Hunt, this time drawn into the complex, globe-trotting pursuit of a nuclear terrorist who frames Hunt and his team for a bombing at the Kremlin. Simon Pegg, back from Part 3, offers welcome comic relief, the new additions Jeremy Renner and Paula Patton add considerable spice, and two of the set pieces — the aforementioned Kremlin sequence and Cruise’s gripping climb of the Burj Khalifa — are among the franchise’s best. (The series’s first and second installments also leave Netflix at the end of the month.)Stream it here.‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ (Aug. 31)Wes Craven went from a genre journeyman to a horror icon — and launched one of the most venerable slasher franchises ever — with this 1984 creeper. Craven wrote and directed this story of suburban teens that find their dreams haunted — often with deadly, real-life results — by the neighborhood boogieman, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). Heather Langenkamp is the resourceful protagonist, while Johnny Depp, in his film debut, is one of the more memorable victims. Subsequent sequels would highlight Krueger with greater prominence but diminishing returns, effectively turning the films into horror-comedies. But this inaugural entry is a lean, mean, scare machine, filled with terrifying images and well-crafted suspense.Stream it here.‘Public Enemies’ (Aug. 31)Twenty-five years later, Depp was at the height of his career, starring as the Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger in this crime epic from the director Michael Mann (“Heat”). Mann also co-wrote the script for this fact-based tale, which tells the parallel stories of Dillinger and Melvin Purvis, the F.B.I. agent using all of the tools of the agency to track him down. Mann’s use of contemporary digital photography was controversial at the time, but it is an inspired choice, giving the picture a contemporary sheen that keeps it from feeling like dusty, unapproachable history.Stream it here.‘Wyatt Earp’ (Aug. 31)Some good movies just suffer from rotten timing. That was certainly the case with this 1994 western epic, which re-teamed the writer and director Lawrence Kasdan with his “Silverado” star Kevin Costner. Unfortunately, their film hit theaters six months after “Tombstone,” which also told the story of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and the gunfight at the OK Corral. But the two films tell the same story in a very different way: “Tombstone” is a brisk, contemporary interpretation, emphasizing action and thrills (it shared a director with “Rambo”), while “Earp” is an old-fashioned, character-driven western in the style of John Ford (who made his own Earp film, the classic “My Darling Clementine,” in 1946). But time has been kind to Kasdan’s take, and the popularity of western TV dramas like Costner’s “Yellowstone” make “Wyatt Earp” ripe for rediscovery.Stream it here.Also leaving:“Taxi Driver” (Aug. 25), “Wind River” (Aug. 27), “The Departed,” “Goodfellas,” “Kung Fu Panda 2,” “Rise of the Guardians,”“Starship Troopers,” ‘Titanic” (all Aug. 31). More

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    Michael R. Jackson, in a Place All His Own in Washington Heights

    The Tony- and Pulitzer-winning author of ‘A Strange Loop’ finally has an apartment to himself in Manhattan.It had to be around here someplace, but Michael R. Jackson could not readily locate his Pulitzer Prize certificate when an importuning visitor asked for a look. He rummaged through piles of paper on a closet shelf. Not there. He inventoried the plastic storage boxes in that same closet, but came up empty again.“It was, like, in a cardboard folder. What did I do with it? What did I actually do with it?” Mr. Jackson said, casting about his two-bedroom condo sublet in Washington Heights and looking stricken. “I could not have thrown it away. This is now going to torture me for the rest of my life.”Do not judge. Do not “tsk-tsk” about carelessness. Of late, it has been a wild loop-the-loop ride for Mr. Jackson, 41, the author and composer of “A Strange Loop,” the hit Broadway show. The metafictional chronicle of an overweight, gay Black man writing a musical about an overweight, gay Black man, “Loop” won the 2022 Tony Award for best book of a musical and the Tony for best musical, to say nothing of the 2020 Pulitzer for drama. (The errant document eventually turned up atop a bookcase in the second bedroom, near photographs taken by Jill Krementz of Mr. Jackson’s proud parents at the opening-night performance of “A Strange Loop” and of the playwright himself during the opening-night curtain call.)“I’ve been traveling so much. I’ve been doing press and running in and out for the last two months,” Mr. Jackson said. “It was, ‘Throw this suit on! Take that suit off!’ It was like a cartoon, clothes flying left and right, and me running out the door.”“It just doesn’t feel like you’re in the city,” said Michael R. Jackson of his Washington Heights neighborhood.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesMichael R. Jackson, 41Occupation: Playwright and composerDesignated designer: “I hated every second of choosing furniture. This is the kind of thing I’m just not interested in. I want it to be done. I just want to be at a point where I can appoint a person who knows me really well and knows my taste to do their thing.”“The apartment was starting to look like a crack den, and I had to bring my attention to cleaning,” he continued. “I got the housekeeper to come yesterday, and we sort of tag-teamed, but there was still a lot to do.”Mr. Jackson moved into his current quarters in May 2021. For the preceding 16 years, he lived around the corner, in a crepuscular three-bedroom rental with a rotating cast of apartment mates, minimal furniture and — for the first few months of the pandemic, thanks to an issue with a gas line — an out-of-commission stove.“It was cheaper to live there, but it just got sort of painful to me personally. I’m not as young as I once was,” Mr. Jackson said. “I was like, ‘I want to live alone.’”Mr. Jackson enlisted the set designer of “A Strange Loop,” Arnulfo Maldonado, to help furnish the apartment.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesHe was determined to stay in the neighborhood — “I find this to be a peaceful space” — but seemed uncertain about the process of securing new housing or, more likely, was just too busy to engage. Accordingly, the lead producer of “A Strange Loop,” Barbara Whitman, recommended Bohemia Realty Group, a niche agency that caters to the New York theater community and specializes in rentals and sales in the northern precincts of Manhattan.The floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room and the views of the Hudson River and the George Washington Bridge from the compact balcony were all that a certain prospective tenant could desire. The roof deck was value added.“I’m a big fan of sunlight and windows, which I did not have in my old place, which for 16 years was so distressing to me,” said Mr. Jackson, who was also impressed with the primary bathroom. “It’s the nicest I’ve ever had, and I don’t have to share it with anyone.”The weighted blanket — lots of loops — has proved a favorite.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesThe décor is a crucial step up from Ikea — anodyne good taste, in shades of sienna and blue-gray, with a pop of burnt orange. The weighted Afghan on the ottoman, a true security blanket, adds texture.“I’ve always sort of lived like a college student,” Mr. Jackson said. “And so when I was able to upgrade a bit, I needed some help to figure out some basic things.”Arnulfo Maldonado, the set designer for “A Strange Loop,” became the furniture whisperer, presenting various options to his decidedly low-maintenance client.“I said, ‘I need a couch,’ and Arnulfo said, ‘You need a rug under the couch,’” Mr. Jackson recalled. “It would never have occurred to me to put a rug underneath the couch.”Perhaps more to the point, it would not have occurred to him to buy a rug.Mr. Jackson borrowed the soap opera magazines from his neighbor, Florencia Lozano, who was, for a time, part of the cast of the daytime drama “One Life to Live.”Desiree Rios/The New York Times“I do not have an interior-design bone in my body,” said Mr. Jackson, who vows to raise his game when he buys a house — something he hopes will happen in the next few years. “I couldn’t tell you whether I prefer neo-Classical to neo-non-Classical. I don’t know any of that. It isn’t something I’ve ever had to think about.”Of course, he has his discrete spheres of expertise. He waxes Talmudic on what he calls his trifecta of “Inner White Girl Inspirations.” Said trifecta comprises a framed poster of Joni Mitchell’s “Dog Eat Dog” album, which hangs over the sofa; a signed vinyl copy of Liz Phair’s “Exile in Guyville,” an opening-night gift from his agent (“This put Liz Phair on the map,” he said. “It blew the roof off the indie rock scene at the time — it’s a really iconic album”); and a vinyl copy of Tori Amos’s “Under the Pink.”“The first song on the album is ‘Pretty Good Year,’ and when I sat down to listen to it in high school, it really changed the game for me in terms of the kind of art I wanted to be making as a writer,” Mr. Jackson said. “She opened up a whole world of thought for me.”He is similarly steeped in the fine points of daytime dramas. “I was a huge soap person,” he said. “I watched all of them, or most of them. I had a subscription to Soap Opera Digest. I came to New York initially to become a soap opera writer. I interned at ‘All My Children’; I interned at ABC Daytime.”During lockdown, Mr. Jackson was able to rewatch many of the sin-and-suffering-in-the-afternoon episodes he had recorded years earlier, courtesy of the still-functioning TV-VCR combo his father bought him just before his freshman year in college.“I’m trying to wrap my mind around the idea that I have more money and time now, and I should put my attention to developing home-décor taste,” he said.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesWithout fanfare, he sat down at the Yamaha keyboard in the second bedroom and played a lovely stretch of melody from “White Girl in Danger,” a musical in development that is drawn in part from his love of soaps.“I do think having a nice setup does make me feel less stressed when I’m working, which is good,” Mr. Jackson said. But he insisted that his previous apartment, gloomy though it may have been, did not impede the progress of “A Strange Loop.”“It didn’t matter,” he said. “My whole life was writing all the time and working on the piece. I had to write. I had to get it done.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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    Late Night Reacts to Biden’s Rebound Covid Case

    “It’s the hottest rebound since J. Lo tested positive for a second case of Affleck,” Stephen Colbert 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.On the ReboundOver the weekend, President Biden tested positive for Covid-19 again, days after being treated with Paxlovid for a previous case. Others, like Stephen Colbert, have similar stories.“Wow, getting Covid twice in a row ’cause you took Paxlovid? Who could’ve seen this coming?” Colbert said. “It happened to me.”“It happened to lots of folks. I don’t know anyone who took Paxlovid who didn’t get it again. It’s the hottest rebound since J. Lo tested positive for a second case of Affleck.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Researchers say Paxlovid rebound is caused by insufficient drug exposure: not enough of the Paxlovid drug gets to infected cells to stop all viral replication. So the Covid pops right back up, which is why the White House is now trying to give Paxlovid to Biden’s poll numbers.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Aunt Barbara Edition)“It’s definitely not the rebound Biden was hoping for.” — TREVOR NOAH“That’s right, over the weekend, President Biden returned to isolation after once again testing positive for Covid in what his doctor called a rebound case. Right now, Biden’s looking on the bright side. He’s like, ‘Well, at least my Covid got a second term.’” — JIMMY FALLON“That’s right, a rebound case of Covid. Usually when a 79-year-old is on the rebound, you’re meeting your new aunt named Barbara.” — JIMMY FALLON“That’s right, the virus came back so fast, staffers didn’t even have time to take down the ‘Get well soon’ balloons.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingOn “The Daily Show,” correspondent Roy Wood Jr. investigated the origins of house music for the latest edition of his segment “CP Time.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightKing Princess will play a song from her new album, “Hold on Baby,” on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutRepresentative Shirley Chisholm of New York on “Meet the Press” in 1972 with her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.Bettmann, via Getty Images“The Only Woman in the Room” collects photos of lone women holding their own among male politicians, athletes, scientists, journalists, jazz musicians and others. More

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    ‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6, Episode 11 Recap: Back to the Beginning

    Gene works a new scam, Francesca takes a phone call, and three guys get to know each other in an RV.Season 6, Episode 11: ‘Breaking Bad’Well, look who’s back.Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) make their much heralded return in this episode, which is named for the show they immortalized. We re-meet them in the immediate aftermath of a scene that took place in Season 2 of “Breaking Bad” in an episode titled, with fitting symmetry, “Better Call Saul.”It’s the moment when Saul completes his pivot from sheer terror at his imminent death — he initially thought that cartel mercenaries were about to kill him in the desert — to a kind of swaggering delight as he looks around the RV that is the duo’s rolling meth lab. He handles some equipment and quickly figures out that Walt is Heisenberg, maker of the famed “blue stuff” that is the most celebrated illicit drug in Albuquerque.Your Faithful Recapper was stunned at how easily and convincingly these two actors resuscitated their roles. Then he wondered at the point of inserting these guys at this particular moment in the tale. A theory: What’s being explored is an origin story, the birth of a trio that earns hundreds of millions in the meth business and leaves in its wake more than a dozen corpses, including those of a drug kingpin (Gus Fring) and an innocent boy on a dirt bike. We see the spark that ends in a bonfire.When Mike shows up later at Saul’s office to report that Walt is a high school chemistry teacher with cancer, he also delivers a prescient warning.“I wouldn’t go near him,” he says. “He’s a complete amateur.”If only Saul had listened. If he had taken Mike’s advice, he would still have his practice in Albuquerque, that spectacularly garish house and a prominent place in the legal firmament of the city.The Return of ‘Better Call Saul’The “Breaking Bad” prequel is ending this year.A Refresher: Need to catch up? Here’s where things left off after the first seven episodes of the show’s final season, which aired this spring.Bob Odenkirk: After receiving a fifth Emmy nomination in July, the star discussed bringing some measure of self-awareness to the character of Saul for his final bow.Stealing the Show: Kim Wexler’s long slide toward perdition has become arguably the narrative keystone of the series, thanks to Rhea Seehorn’s performance.Writing the Perfect Con: We asked the show’s writers to break down a pivotal scene in the ​​transformation of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman.He misses all of it. In the Omaha timeline of the show, he reconnects with Francesca, his benighted assistant, whose life in the aftermath of “Breaking Bad” turns out to be dreary and haunted by law enforcement. She is tailed, her phone is tapped, and her tenants are stoners who expect her to clear their stem-clogged sink. One can only imagine the incredulity of the D.E.A. when she claimed that she had no idea she was an officer of an offshore shell company, owned by Mr. Goodman, called Tigerfish. Small wonder she oozes bitterness during her conversation with Saul-Gene, who calls a pay phone from Omaha — exactly at 3 pm, on Nov. 12, as planned during a flash forward in Episode 5 of Season 4 — to get an update about his carefully hidden fortune.All gone, she reports.The only good news comes at the end of the call when Francesca says that Kim was in touch and asked about Jimmy. Specifically, she wanted to know if Jimmy was alive. This heartens Jimmy so much that he calls Kim at Palm Coast Sprinklers in Titusville, Fla., which is where she seems to work. (The transition from corporate lawyer to public defender to sprinkler sales somehow seems about right.) We don’t know anything about the conversation other than that Jimmy’s side of it is filled with the body language of an infuriated man and ends with him doing his best to destroy the phone and phone booth.The scene strongly suggests that the show is going to revisit the relationship between the two. Now that there are no impediments to construction of the superlab being built by Gus and the Salamancas have decided not to kill “the Chicken Man” over the disappearance of Lalo, the future of Jimmy and Kim looks like the main element of suspense in the remaining two episodes of the show.So here’s a question: Are we rooting for a reunion? If you’re Kim, the answer is clouded by the reality that Saul Goodman became not merely a new work name but also a new persona. Jimmy began to consort with prostitutes and lived in an preposterously decorated mansion, clearly obsessed with earning as many dollars possible. He became a guy that Kim would find repulsive. If Kim followed the news, or did an internet search, she would have seen what became of her husband. She might know that the man she married no longer exists.Whatever she said during that call, it inspires Jimmy to start earning money, pronto. He makes amends, in his own blunt way, with Jeff and his buddy Buddy (Max Bickelhaup) and the three begin a new scam. Jimmy approaches men at bars and gets them soused; Jeff drives them home in a cab, offering a bottle of water spiked with barbiturates; then Buddy enters the home and photographs IDs, tax records and credit card bills, information which is sold to some kind of broker. It’s a three-man identity theft crime spree, and it yields stacks of $20s. That is far better than the Cinnabon money Gene earns but a fraction of the plaintiff’s attorney bucks he pocketed and off-shored as Saul.Exactly why Jimmy-Gene feels so compelled to raise money quickly isn’t clear. He doesn’t seem to need the services of Ed Galbraith, a.k.a. the Disappearer, whom Gene called last season when he was first approached by Jeff. (At least he doesn’t need those services now. Firing Buddy over the morality of robbing a guy with cancer could prove his undoing if Buddy starts talking to the cops, or anyone else, for that matter.)The episode ends with Saul walking in one door and Gene walking in another, events separated by years. Saul is paying a visit to Walt, a meeting we have already seen in “Breaking Bad.” Jimmy is entering the home of the mark with cancer. The confab with Walt, we know, eventually ends in calamity. We’ll see what happens to Gene in Omaha, but it’s a safe bet that Jeff is right when he says that the barbiturates have surely worn off.Odds and EndsFrom that conversation with Francesca, we learn the fate of some key characters from “Breaking Bad.” Skyler White cut a deal with the feds. Huell Babineaux lives in New Orleans, free largely because he was unlawfully detained by none other than Hank Schrader, fans will recall.Saul is apparently a fan of “Frankenstein,” the 1931 movie by James Whale. He calls the R.V. “James Whale’s traveling road show,” a reference to the lab in the film. He calls Jesse “Igor,” who was Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant. And when he recommends the Swing Master to Mike — has there ever been a more useless looking device? — he says it will help him to stop walking “like Frankenstein after he was probed by aliens.”We have to assume that Saul buried the money that he uses to pay Francesca for the reconnaissance phone call. He sounds relieved that it hasn’t been eaten by rats, suggesting it has been in situ for a while. And who else could have put it there?“Better Call Saul” has always had something of a split personality. It has had the drugs-and-crime plot bequeathed to it, in reverse, by “Breaking Bad,” and it has told the story of Jimmy and his relationships with his brother and with Kim. The drug plot is largely physical, the relationships plot mostly interior. The previous two episodes have all but abandoned the cartel element of the story, perhaps because it was buried along with Lalo.Where “Breaking Bad” kept getting bigger as the show progressed — it eventually included Mexican mobsters, neo-Nazis, a German conglomerate, federal agents, prosecutors and a story that purported to make national news — “Better Call Saul” is getting smaller. It has shed old story lines to create new ones that are modest in scale. Our main character is back in bars, where he started.One way to look at this: The show is emphasizing its own identity rather than ending with the sort of crescendo we watched in “Breaking Bad.” Another way: It’s disappointing that viewers are not currently in a frenzy of anticipation over the life and death of any number of people. Instead, we’re waiting to find out if Gene’s secret identity will remain intact, and whether he’ll win back Kim.Two more to go. In the comments, please offer some theories about what is happening to the intro reel of the show. It’s been deteriorating over the seasons, as though it were a VHS tape that’s been viewed too many times. Why? A mirror of Jimmy’s moral degradation? A tribute to Mike’s Betamax machine?Or ponder something simpler: Is that a soggy Funyun in the sink of Francesca’s tenants?If yes, ick. More

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    in Theater

    ‘Paradise Square’ Faces New Complaints Over Payments

    The shuttered show is facing legal action from the actors, stage managers and designers who worked on the production.A union representing the director and choreographers who worked on the recently closed Broadway musical “Paradise Square” is asking a federal court to enforce an arbitration award that was agreed upon in May, according to a lawsuit filed late last month.The Stage Directors and Choreographers Society asked the Federal District Court in Manhattan to confirm and compel payment of nearly $150,000 that is owed to the union; the show’s director, Moisés Kaufman; the choreographer Bill T. Jones; and a few others who worked on the production.The suit, filed on July 22, said the production company still had not “satisfied its obligations under the award.”The lawsuit names as defendants the limited partnership that produced “Paradise Square,” a musical set amid the racial strife of Civil War-era New York City, as well as Bernard Abrams, a producer who is a member of the Broadway League.The show, however, has been most closely associated with the producer Garth H. Drabinsky, who had a successful run as a theatrical impresario in the 1990s until he was charged with misconduct and fraud in the United States and in his native Canada, where he eventually served prison time.Drabinsky had hoped that “Paradise Square,” which ran at the Ethel Barrymore Theater from mid-March until July 17, would be his comeback. The show originated a decade ago as a musical called “Hard Times,” written by Larry Kirwan of the band Black 47 and leaning on the music of Stephen Foster, who wrote “Oh! Susanna” among other American standards. Delayed two years because of the coronavirus pandemic, it made its way to Broadway after out-of-town productions in Berkeley, Calif., and Chicago. The show received 10 Tony nominations but took home only one award, for the actress Joaquina Kalukango, whose performance was a signature of this year’s Tony Awards ceremony. The show struggled at the box office throughout its run, and it did not recover the $15 million for which it was capitalized.Richard Roth, a lawyer for the “Paradise Square” partnership, said on Monday, “My understanding is that everyone is going to be fully paid.”Abrams did not respond to requests for comment Monday.Through Roth — who pointed out that Drabinsky is not a member of the limited partnership — Drabinsky released a lengthy statement arguing that Covid had proved an insurmountable roadblock to the show’s sales and finances. He added that bonds worth nearly $450,000 that were put up by the producers should cover most of what the actors were owed.“Equity holds this bond security,” Drabinsky said, and “the lawsuits that have been filed by unions are simply to evidence the collection of amounts for which the partnership has previously consented. In this regard, I have never been a signing officer of the production, nor do I have any authority with respect to the signing of any bank instruments. Any delay in benefit payments was simply a function of available cash flow.”The Hollywood Reporter first reported the existence of the legal filing Monday.The unions representing actors and designers who appeared in or worked on the musical have also received arbitration awards for hundreds of thousands of dollars. In July, the United Scenic Artists’ local also went to federal court to seek confirmation and enforcement of its award. In the spring, the Actors’ Equity fund trustees went to court to enforce an arbitration award.The unions have also placed Drabinsky on their “do not work” lists. The directors and choreographers union automatically placed the producers on a similar list until the outstanding arbitration award is paid, according to a union official.The president of the local union of the American Federation of Musicians, Tino Gagliardi, said through a spokesman that “Local 802 and the musicians’ benefit funds are taking every legal action needed to recover wages and benefits that are due to the musicians.”Al Vincent Jr., the executive director of Equity, added in an email statement that the dispute was not over, saying, “Our process of getting our members appropriately paid for ‘Paradise Square’ continues with a number of outstanding grievances moving into arbitration.”Local 829, the scenic artists’ union, put Drabinsky on its “boycott list” because of “continued inaction and lack of communication regarding the significant payments and benefits,” said Carl Mulert, the local’s national business agent. “It is unfortunate that the legacy of this Broadway production, which includes the indelible contributions of our colleagues and kin on and off the stage, has been marred by a story of exploitation of and injustice for the many artists that have brought ‘Paradise Square’ to life.” More

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    in Television

    Bill Cosby to Seek a New Trial in Judy Huth Sex Assault Case

    Ms. Huth was awarded $500,000 in damages in June by a California civil court jury that heard her describe how Mr. Cosby had sexually assaulted her in 1975 when she was 16.Bill Cosby’s lawyers have announced they are seeking a new trial in a civil case in California where a jury in June found he sexually assaulted Judy Huth when she was 16.In a filing in Los Angeles County Superior Court in Santa Monica, Calif., his lawyers gave notice that they are asking the court to set aside the judgment in favor of Ms. Huth, which awarded her $500,000 in damages.The lawyers listed a number of grounds, including “irregularity in the proceedings of the court, jury or adverse party,” “misconduct of the jury” and “error in law,” among other reasons, without giving more details.Jurors in the case agreed with Ms. Huth, who first came forward with her accusations in 2014, that Mr. Cosby assaulted her in 1975, when as a teenager she accepted his invitation to join him at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles. It was the first civil case accusing Mr. Cosby of sexual assault to go to trial.Aside from its significance to Ms. Huth, the verdict offered a degree of satisfaction for many of the other women who for years have accused Mr. Cosby, now 85, of similar abuse. For them, Ms. Huth’s case offered an opportunity for public vindication of their accounts after Mr. Cosby’s criminal conviction in the Andrea Constand case was overturned on due process grounds by a Pennsylvania appellate panel last year.A lawyer for Ms. Huth, Gloria Allred, said in an email: “Bill Cosby filed a notice of intention to file a motion for a new trial. He fought our case with everything he had for seven and a half years, and he lost. We expect to be victorious in upholding the verdict against Mr. Cosby, which we fought hard for and won.”But Mr. Cosby’s supporters have said they viewed the monetary damage award in the Huth case as a victory because the jury had the option of awarding a significantly higher sum.Mr. Cosby has consistently denied the many accusations brought against him, but many of his accusers had been barred from filing their own suits because they had not come forward at the time when they said Mr. Cosby had attacked them.Ms. Huth’s suit was able to move forward because the jury agreed she was a minor at the time, and California law extends the time frame in which people who say they were molested as children can file a civil claim. A spokesman for Mr. Cosby, Andrew Wyatt, said changes to California’s statute of limitations had been unfair to Mr. Cosby because they came into effect during his period in prison in Pennsylvania.During the trial, Ms. Huth, now 64, told of how a chance meeting with Mr. Cosby while he filmed a movie in a local park led her eventually to an isolated bedroom in the Playboy Mansion. In often emotional testimony, she described how a famous man she had once admired, whose comedy records her father collected, tried to put his hand down her pants and then forced her to perform a sex act on him. More