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    The Cathartic Value of Dame Edna’s Extravaganzas of Ego

    Audiences were eager to humbly suffer the stinging quips tossed out by the towering figure that was Barry Humphries’s creation.Listen to This ArticleShe was, lest we forget, the original Real Housewife. Or Surreal Housewife, if you prefer. Possessed of few obvious talents and a bottomless sense of entitlement, this expensively upholstered figure was the archetype for the ordinary middle-class matron who blossomed into improbable, overwhelming, gasp-inducing fame.Her name was Edna Everage (just one vowel away from “average”), and her advent in the mid-20th century anticipated a brash new age of undeserved celebrity. “Oh, my prophetic soul,” she might have said, contemplating the constellation of self-anointed stars who occupy our attention these days. The line comes from “Hamlet.” But Edna was the kind of gal who could convince you that she had coined it all by herself.Dame Edna, as she became known from the early 1970s, was the inspired alter-ego of the sui generis performer Barry Humphries, who died on Saturday in Sydney, Australia. Humphries was 89. Dame Edna, of course, is immortal.To become Edna, Humphries would put on a mauve wig, an increasingly rococo pair of eyeglasses and a glittering gown that screeched conspicuous consumption. Yet it would be a mistake to describe Dame Edna primarily as a drag act.This unfiltered, towering figure — who looked down on the world, in all senses, from a six-foot-plus linebacker’s frame atop stiletto heels — wasn’t a comment on gender. No, Dame Edna was all about blinkered, arrogant class and especially a breed of self-crowned royalty that had become our default deities in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.That would be those who were defined by being famous, whether or not for any discernible reason beyond their willingness to become so. The genius of Humphries’s conceit was to translate the small-minded, unyielding smugness of the middle-class Australian suburbs in which he grew up into the even more invincible complacency of outrageous, drop-dead stardom.As for the rest of us — and that meant, in addition to us peons, her fellow celebrity chums, including the pope and Queen Elizabeth II — we existed to serve as her mirrors, reflecting her own fabulousness.During my tenure as a Times theater critic, there were few events I anticipated more avidly than Dame Edna’s extravaganzas of ego, where I would join the throngs of those she called “possums” and “paupers” to worship at her boat-size feet. Like so many of the greatest comics, she surgically tapped into the ruling obsession of her time.What Lenny Bruce was to the sexual hangups of the late ’50s and early ’60s and what Richard Pryor was to the racial anxieties of the ’70s and ’80s, Dame Edna was to the age of Olympian narcissism. As she said, graciously tossing her signature gladioli into the audience as she was magically lifted into the air at the end of a 1999 performance: “I have to rise above you. It’s the secret of my survival.”Dame Edna in her 2010 show “All About Me” at what is now the Stephen Sondheim Theater in Manhattan.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMy years of reviewing Edna were years when the most commercially successful shows on Broadway were often those that featured faces found on the covers of People, Vanity Fair and supermarket tabloids. Audiences clamored to see Nicole Kidman in “The Blue Room” or Julia Roberts in “Three Days of Rain” not so much to watch a play as to participate in a sacred pilgrimage to the shrines of NICOLE and JULIA.Attending a Dame Edna show thus had its own special cathartic value, rooted in the openly sadomasochistic exchange of energy between her and her audience. She took it for granted that we were there because she was of an unapproachably higher order than we were, a holy order. In a riff that led to a reference to Jesus, she backtracked to say of course she wouldn’t compare herself to him, before pausing to add, “Although there are spooky similarities.”Naturally we humbly suffered the stinging quips she tossed in our direction, collectively and individually. (Pity — and envy — the chosen few she selected for audience participation.) Never mind that when she sang and danced, she sounded like a bullfrog on steroids and moved like a drunken stevedore.She was protected by her impregnable certainty that whatever she did was utterly beyond reproach. Reviewing her 2004 Broadway show “Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance!,” I wrote, “Dame Edna, you see, knows better than anyone that fame means never having to say you’re sorry.”That attitude is less likely to fly in 2023, when being famous seems to mean you’re apologizing all the time. And in writings and interviews in their later years, both Edna and Humphries stumbled with comments that drew outcries from members of the Latino and trans communities and others.So allow me to return to an earlier moment in this century, when Edna was at the peak of her invulnerability, and I received a letter after raving about one of her shows. “I have to say,” the note read, “I almost deserved it.” It was signed Barry Humphries. Had the signature been Edna Everage there would have been no “almost” about it.Audio produced by More

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    ‘Somebody Somewhere’ Celebrates a Life With Tears and Jokes

    When the sudden death of Mike Hagerty, one of the show’s stars, forced the creators to retool the new season, they sprinkled tributes to him throughout the episodes.In the first episode of the new season of “Somebody Somewhere,” the poignant Kansas-set comedy that returned to HBO this week, Sam (Bridget Everett) receives a letter from her father, Ed. The letter informs her that he has gone to join his brother in Corpus Christi, Texas. Ed, a farmer, has charged Sam with feeding the chickens, mowing the lawn and cleaning out the barn. Sam begins her chores, but when she finds Ed’s baseball cap, she begins to tear up.“It just feels really weird to be here with all his stuff,” Sam says. “I know he couldn’t have cleaned out this barn — it would have broken his heart. I didn’t know it would break mine.”Heartbreak might seem like a strong reaction to some rusted farm equipment. But Mike Hagerty, the actor who played Ed, had died unexpectedly in May 2022, at the age of 67, about a month before filming began for the Season 2. Ed lives on, sailing across the Gulf of Mexico; his absence and Hagerty’s absence inform most of the season. In its quiet, fine-grained way, these episodes of “Somebody Somewhere” provide a eulogy in comedy form, with grief triangulated and transformed.“We knew we wanted to dedicate the season to him,” Hannah Bos, a “Somebody Somewhere” creator, said in a recent video call. “We wanted to celebrate him.”Hagerty, a Chicago native and an alum of the Second City comedy troupe, best known for a five-episode run as the building superintendent on “Friends,” joined the series for the pilot in 2019. Carolyn Strauss, an executive producer, had worked with him before, on the short-lived series “Lucky Louie.” She bet that Hagerty — bushy haired, jowly, with a heart as big as a prairie — would bring warmth and solidity to the taciturn Ed. She won that bet.When Everett, a Kansas-born actress and cabaret star, met him for a chemistry read, she started crying before he had even said a word. “I felt immediately really safe,” she said on that same video call. Strauss and Paul Thureen, the show’s other creator, were also on the line.“It just felt like the right match and the right person and also like I’d met a friend,” Everett said. “I’m not trying to be corny; it’s just really how I felt.”Bos and Thureen enjoyed writing for Hagerty, knowing that he could make any line sound grounded and sincere, that he could endow even simple dialogue with depth. And Everett felt that she grew as an actor every time she was opposite him. He felt to her, she said, like a surrogate father.“Often I get really nervous on sets,” she said. “His affable, calm, steady hand, it set me at ease.”Bridget Everett, left, said that when she met Hagerty, “I immediately felt really safe.” (With Mary Catherine Garrison, bottom left, and Kailey Albus.)Elizabeth Sisson/HBOHagerty seemed to enjoy himself, too. In February 2022, in Los Angeles, HBO hosted a special screening for the Season 1 finale. Strauss chatted with him there, and she recalled him cracking that the show had taught him two words he’d never heard before in his long career: “Season 2.” To celebrate, he bought himself a Toyota RAV4.That spring, ‌Hagerty entered Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, feeling unwell. The Season 2 scripts had already been written, and he planned to participate in a table read from his hospital bed. But he was ultimately too ill to join. On May 5, following an adverse reaction to an antibiotic, he died.The initial response from the producers and his co-stars was a mix of shock and grief. There was a group Zoom call, with cast and creators crying in their separate windows, sharing memories of Hagerty.“He really did feel like a North Star in terms of what we were creating and what we had done,” Strauss said. “So it was hard to believe; it felt very unreal.”Twining with the grief was an understandable amount of panic. The shoot was set to begin in two weeks, and Hagerty was meant to be in almost every episode. Amy Gravitt, HBO’s executive vice president of comedy, made many individual calls, telling the showrunners and producers to take all the time that they needed to mourn — to put off worrying about the show. But Bos and Thureen knew that to put it off for too long would risk losing actors and crew members. A frantic rewrite began.At first, no one knew what to do about Ed, but Strauss, Bos and Thureen felt that they shouldn’t have him die. Season 1 had begun shortly after the death of Sam’s sister Holly — as the show follows Sam’s halting steps toward self-acceptance and a full adult life, the thinking went, another death and an explicit focus on grief would set her back too far.Everett wasn’t so sure. Her own sister and father had died a year apart, and she figured the show, which operates with an unusual degree of realism, might as well mirror that. But after sleeping on it, she agreed.Production was pushed back two weeks. Strauss worried that wouldn’t be enough time for a full rewrite, but she didn’t share that worry with the others. As originally written, the season had focused partly on Ed growing too old for hands-on farming and on his relationship with his wife, an alcoholic. He also played a role in a season-ending wedding. All of that had to be retooled. So Bos, Thureen and Everett got to work on Zoom. Thureen said these sessions, however fraught, brought relief.“It helped in a weird way to have something to focus on,” he said. “It turned into a creative problem-solving thing.”With Strauss’s help, they all worked to find a metaphor that would account for Hagerty’s absence and honor his life. Together they came up with the idea of the brother’s boat and sending Ed across the water, finally free. They also made him a presence throughout several episodes, via occasional letters and phone calls.Jeff Hiller and Everett in the new season of “Somebody Somewhere,” which includes several subtle tributes to Hagerty.Sandy Morris/HBOWhen it came time to do the scene in the barn, Everett was anxious about how it would feel to act without Hagerty. “That was going to be an emotional house of cards for me,” she said. “We all kind of felt it. Just being there without him was devastating.” She had learned the monologue about cleaning out the barn by heart, but when it came time to speak it, the loss of Hagerty overtook her. The tears she cries in the scene are very real.“We only did it two times or three times because it was just a little much,” she said. “I just wanted to say it and then let it go.”Later in the season, there is a funeral for a different character. This became an oblique tribute to Hagerty, with his memory shadowing several of the eulogies. “A poetic honoring,” Thureen called it. And in the final episode, a wedding reception pauses to honor Ed.“Raise your glasses everybody, raise them high — this is to Ed,” a character says. It was a way of making sure that Ed was still there, still a part of this family and this community.If “Somebody Somewhere” is renewed for further seasons, Ed, however far away, will remain a part of them. The creative team is already kicking around Ed-centered ideas for Season 3. Hagerty, in his own way, remains with the show, too.“His impact endures,” Strauss said. “He’s left everybody with a gift: that gravity and humor and forthrightness that characterize him, we all carry it.” More

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    Seth Meyers Speculates About Why Fox Dumped Tucker Carlson

    Meyers joked that “firing Tucker for racism now after tolerating it for so long would be like canceling ‘Sesame Street’ because you just found out they were puppets.”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.Cutting TiesFox News has not said why it ousted Tucker Carlson.Late-night hosts speculated he was let go because of the text messages he sent deriding former President Donald Trump and Fox executives.“Fox couldn’t have cared less when Tucker was saying vulgar, offensive stuff on television about other people, but when he said it in private about Fox News executives, they were suddenly outraged,” Seth Meyers said.“I have no idea why he got fired. Fox had no problem with his cruelty, racism and paranoid conspiracy theories, so I doubt he got fired for that. I mean, firing Tucker for racism now — after tolerating it for so long — would be like canceling ‘Sesame Street’ because you just found out they were puppets.” — SETH MEYERS“Whenever something really big happens that involves Fox News, the last people to hear about it are usually the people who watch Fox News. The network tends to hide news about itself from its own viewers. Last night there were probably a bunch of 80-year-olds watching substitute host Brian Kilmeade, saying, ‘Tucker looks different now. ’” — SETH MEYERS“Man, when Fox cuts ties with someone, they cut ties. That’s the Fox News version of rolling up someone in a carpet and throwing them in the East River.” — SETH MEYERS“Yeah, Tucker has a huge following among racist lunatics and people who also want to [expletive] the green M&M.” — SETH MEYERS“It would also be weird if he got fired for being obsessed with incredibly weird [expletive] because that’s also been his thing forever, whether it was sexy candy, or eating bugs, or — this is real — testicle tanning.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Dossier of Dirt Edition)“In honor of Lesbian Visibility Week, the cast of ‘The L Word: Generation Q’ yesterday visited the White House, said Tucker Carlson to a houseplant.” — SETH MEYERS“No one’s heard from Tucker since his surprise firing on Monday, except the pillow he’s been screaming into.” — DESI LYDIC, guest host of “The Daily Show”“Fox News executives reportedly have a dossier of dirt on him. Yeah, to keep him from attacking the network. That’s right, they apparently have him saying the most vile things you can imagine, and the way they compiled it — and this is genius — is by turning on his television show and pressing record.” — DESI LYDIC“One secret weapon Fox News has that they could use to embarrass him is every episode of his show. That’s for starters.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But what could they have on Tucker Carlson that would embarrass him? Did he once try to buy a fuel-efficient car? I mean, does he have a collection of paintings that weren’t by Hitler?” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingBlack Thought and El Michels Affair brought the soul singer Kirby onto “The Tonight Show” for a performance of “Glorious Game” on Wednesday.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightJames Corden will be joined by Harry Styles and Will Ferrell for his “Late Late Show” finale on Thursday.Also, Check This OutWynonna Judd in a scene from the new documentary about her. Paramount+“Wynonna Judd: Between Hell and Hallelujah” follows the singer on a tour she was supposed to share with her mother, the late Naomi Judd. More

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    ‘New York, New York’ Review: The Big Apple, Without Bite

    Based loosely on the 1977 film, a show about performers making it in the big city comes to St. James Theater with the sharper edges of its source material sanded off.There’s a big new Broadway musical called “New York, New York,” and it’s based on the Martin Scorsese film bearing the same title.Sort of.Both the movie and the show have lead characters named Jimmy Doyle and Francine Evans, both are set immediately following World War II and both prominently feature a certain anthem by John Kander and Fred Ebb. You know, the one whose first five notes, plunked on a piano, are enough to automatically prompt the brain to fill in the rest.And it is that title song alone, rather than the movie, that is the true inspiration for the sprawling, unwieldy, surprisingly dull show that opened on Wednesday night at the St. James Theater.Extrapolating from its lyrics, “New York, New York,” directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman, is about the people wearing those “vagabond shoes,” the ones who “want to wake up in the city that doesn’t sleep.” Jimmy (Colton Ryan) and Francine (Anna Uzele) now rub elbows with characters dreamed up by the book writer David Thompson with Sharon Washington. They are musicians and singers, strivers and dreamers. And sadly, none make much of an impression, mired as they are in a syrupy muck of good sentiments and grating civic cheerleading.As the various story lines move toward their inevitable intersection, any sign of wrinkle or kink has been smoothed out. The most prominent victims are the reimagined Jimmy and Francine, who have been flattened into cardboard figures. The film’s Jimmy, portrayed by Robert De Niro, was an obnoxious, abusive, narcissistic jerk of a sax player who fell for Liza Minnelli’s Francine, a passionate singer who worked her way up from canary in big bands to solo star; their volatile relationship would not pass the smell test with 2023 audiences.The new Jimmy is merely a minor irritant who has graduated from good saxophonist to brilliant multi-instrumentalist equally at ease playing jazz with the African American trumpeter Jesse (John Clay III) and Latin grooves with the Cuban percussionist Mateo (Angel Sigala), whose own stories are delineated in broad strokes. That Jimmy ends up as a human bridge between the musical styles of Harlem and Spanish Harlem is quite a feat for a white-bread Irish kid. (A Jewish violinist played by Oliver Prose mostly exists on the sideline.)Meanwhile, Francine comes across as a spunky, empowered free spirit plugged into a 21st-century outlet. A Black woman, she overcomes the treacherous waters of the music scene with relative ease, and setbacks seem to glide off her.Ryan (“Girl From the North Country,” Connor in the film of “Dear Evan Hansen”) and Uzele (“Once on This Island,” Catherine Parr in “Six”) are technically fine, but they don’t fill characters drawn as sketches. They never find the ache that drives both Francine and Jimmy, nor the sexual attraction between them.This creates a central void that further restrains the overly polished book — friction feeds fiction.And if anybody knows that, it’s John Kander. An effective mix of louche syncopation, unabashed romanticism and biting sarcasm long set Kander and Ebb apart on Broadway, from “Cabaret” to “Chicago” to their brilliant earlier collaboration with Stroman, “The Scottsboro Boys.”The score for “New York, New York” juxtaposes new songs Kander wrote with Lin-Manuel Miranda, like the propulsive “Music, Money, Love,” with older ones set to lyrics by Ebb. Of those, the best known (you-know-what and “But the World Goes ’Round”) were pulled from the Scorsese movie, while others were repurposed, such as “A Quiet Thing” from the 1965 show “Flora the Red Menace,” and “Marry Me” from “The Rink” (1984).But no matter when or who they were written with, too many of the songs lack Kander and Ebb’s signature serrated edge. Partly this has to do with Sam Davis’s arrangements and music direction, which have a deficit of oomph, and thus further reinforce the show’s sexlessness — there is no pulse when there is no swing. (Kander and Ebb were capable of that more than most Broadway creators: Just listen to, say, the fantastically driving “Gimme Love” from “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”)Francine, who comes across as an empowered free spirit, seems to overcome the treacherous waters of the music scene and racial animosities of the 1940s with relative ease, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe new show’s rah-rah tone eventually becomes numbing. This is all the more frustrating because ambivalence is baked into the title song, which alludes to the city’s mercurial temperament. “If I can make it there/I’d make it anywhere” — we’re in a tough town — is followed by “It’s up to you/New York, New York,” which deprives the singer of agency. But the show follows the triumphant template set by Frank Sinatra rather than the more ambiguous one imparted by Minnelli. In this rose-colored vision, trials are temporary, everybody gets along, and nobody runs up against New York’s bad side.Stroman has a rare affinity for classic Broadway showmanship, as illustrated by her work on “Crazy for You” and “The Producers,” but she can also veer into radical stylization, as in “The Scottsboro Boys.”Here, the flashes of inspiration are few and far between. A highlight is a tap number staged on high beams, with a couple inscribed with “JK 3181927” and “FE 481928” — Kander and Ebb’s birth dates, and two of the Easter eggs lurking in Beowulf Boritt’s vibrant set, dominated by towering fire escapes. The magical moment known as Manhattanhenge is evoked with a terrific assist from the lighting designer Ken Billington. And there is, as always, the visceral thrill of watching a big band rise up to the stage, when Jimmy’s combo kicks off the title song at the end.It is not much to remember from a show that clocks in at nearly three hours and had such formidable potential. “You can be anyone here,” Jesse says at one point, “do anything here.”If only “New York, New York” had interpreted that line not as a reassurance, but as a challenge to dare.New York, New YorkAt the St. James Theater, Manhattan; newyorknewyorkbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes. More

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    ‘Fatal Attraction’ Review: Here’s Why She Did It

    A somber, psychology-heavy series tries to take the “erotic thriller” out of the erotic thriller.When is a rabbit an Easter egg? When it hops onscreen in “Fatal Attraction,” the oddly tranquil new series inspired by the infamous, bunny-boiling 1987 film of the same title.It’s not a major spoiler to report that this little white cutie avoids the stockpot. Gentle homage to the tawdry, garishly effective original — one of the primary reasons no one calls their productions “erotic thrillers” anymore — is the rule. No one is drowned in a bathtub, but there is a joking reference to the inadvisability of having a tub in the house.Nearly everything about this new “Fatal Attraction,” whose eight-episode season premieres Sunday on Paramount+, has been toned down, often to the point of torpor. The only thing that retains the original’s raciness is the new version of the echt-’80s title font — the “Fatal” still looks like a signature scrawled on a bar tab between bumps of cocaine.Major surgery was inevitable for source material that turned a single, sexually active woman into a horror-movie monster who threatened the sanctity of a suburban family. If that weren’t sufficiently toxic by 2020s standards, the film also cleverly framed the woman’s psychosis as feminism run amok, generating sympathy for the poor upper-middle-class, white male sap who stumbled into an affair with her.So Alexandra Cunningham (“Dirty John,” “Desperate Housewives”) and Kevin J. Hynes (“Perry Mason”), working with the film’s writer, James Dearden, have reimagined “Fatal Attraction” in myriad ways, none of which are erotic and few of which are thrilling. From the moment Dan Gallagher — played by a disheveled, halting Joshua Jackson, subbing in for the sleek Michael Douglas of the film — kicks off the series by shuffling into a parole hearing, the show feels as if it’s shouldering a responsibility, weighed down by the need to apologize for Hollywood’s past misconduct.Dan is up for parole because in this new universe, he has served 15 years for the murder of his stalker, Alex Forrest (Lizzy Caplan). Responding not just to shifting mores but also to the demands of serial storytelling — the show runs close to a full eight hours — Cunningham and Hynes have turned “Fatal Attraction” into a murder mystery, as Dan, a former Los Angeles prosecutor, tries to figure out who really killed Alex while awkwardly reconciling with his ex-wife, Beth (Amanda Peet), and daughter, Ellen (Alyssa Jirrels).The mystery plays out in leisurely L.A.-noir style, introducing clouds of suspects as the show jumps back and forth in time and stretches out its thin narrative by replaying entire episodes from different points of view. The temporal shifts also serve to educate both Dan and the audience about the noxious privilege and entitlement that precipitated his downfall. (This portion of the show benefits greatly from the presence of Toby Huss as Mike, Dan’s best friend and a former cop who was collateral damage in Dan’s debacle.)But apparently converting “Fatal Attraction” into a reasonably diverting crime drama wasn’t enough to remove the stain of the original. So the series also offers an elaborate psychodramatic narrative embellishment — a sort of study guide — expressed in frequent discussions of the work of Carl Jung and his collaborator Toni Wolff. Ellen, in the present, is a psychology student, and we also hear recitations of the fairy tales she delights in as a child. The allegorical, slightly metafictional notions are rammed home: a character who gives Ellen a book of tales is called “an actual fairy godmother”; a pet dog is named Ziggy, short for Sigmund.Ellen’s research leads her to reassess the behavior of her father’s murdered nemesis, and the greatest labor this “Fatal Attraction” takes on is its effort to turn Alex into an understandable, even sympathetic, character. Dan is a chastened version of the narcissistic jerk Douglas played in the film, but the vivid hysteria of Glenn Close’s Oscar-nominated performance as Alex is mostly replaced in Caplan’s version by a jumpy vulnerability, and Alex now gets a back story to explain her sociopathic obsessiveness.This virtue-signaling therapy noir manages, in its peculiarly studious way, to meld the racy ’80s and the censorious ’20s, and it’s not exactly hard to watch. It is competently made and nice to look at, it has a knockoff version of a languorous Southern California vibe, and Caplan and Jackson are both engaging. (Jackson gets extra credit — he has to compensate for hideous haircuts in both the past and present time lines.) They get good support from a large cast that includes Huss, Toks Olagundoye as one of Dan’s former co-workers, Vivien Lyra Blair as the young Ellen and the scream queen Dee Wallace as the owner of the rabbit.What’s missing is the metabolism, the transgressive energy and — at least in the context of its time — the glossy sexiness that the director Adrian Lyne brought to the film. The thing you wonder as you watch the series isn’t why they made the changes they did, but why they bothered making the show at all. Wasn’t there other intellectual property in the Paramount vaults that would have made the jump more easily? (It worked for “Top Gun,” after all.)And what’s noticeable is that despite all the modifications, Cunningham and Hynes didn’t change the basic emotional and psychological architecture: The crucial moments are still Alex’s bursts of antisocial behavior and Dan’s violent reaction to them, and the story is still strung on those slasher-film tentpoles. (If you’ve seen the original, you’ll know exactly when a particular pair of eyes is going to pop open, even though the moment is campy and completely out of character with the rest of the series.) They did their best to scrub the misogyny out of “Fatal Attraction,” but at the end of the day it’s still about the fear of a crazy lady. More

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    ‘Ted Lasso’ Season 3, Episode 7 Recap: Restaurant Week

    Nate pursues a crush, Sam endures a lesson in politics, and the team discovers the cost of “Total Football.”Season 3, Episode 7: ‘The Strings That Bind Us’The episode opens upon a sunny London morning, with stores opening to the lovely song “Dreams” by the Cranberries. And not just any stores: a bakery featuring a rainbow of macaroons in the window; a florist shop whose fragrant, colorful wares are being laid out for the day.An ever-training Jamie is pulling Roy on (of course!) a bicycle, while the latter growls “Mush!” And Nate, whom we didn’t see at all in last week’s Amsterdam episode, pauses as he passes his favorite restaurant, A Taste of Athens. He waves to Jade, the once-hostile hostess with whom he shared some conciliatory baklava and wine two episodes ago, after his model-date ditched him. Jade is surprised at the attention but waves back, and Nate smiles more happily than we’ve seen him since, a season ago? Longer? Oh, the heck with it, let’s go on directly from here.NateI won’t lie. It’s nice to see Nate smile again, and not just any smile: the smile of innocence and insecurity that all but defined his character in Season 1. Jade’s abrupt transformation over baklava may have strained credulity, but it was nonetheless the kind of understated feel-good moment that has long been a “Ted Lasso” specialty. My ongoing prediction that Good Nate would ultimately overcome Bad Nate is looking more and more likely. (A bit more on this — and on what was arguably missing from this episode — in a moment.)Later, Nate’s mother texts to urge him not to forget his sister’s birthday, and he recommends A Taste of Athens, his treat. Now, he would almost certainly have done this under any circumstances: He has made abundantly clear that the restaurant is his family’s default for celebrations of any kind. But now it’s also clear that he has another motive in addition.No such luck, however. Mom has decided to cook at home. “Please don’t be late. You know how your father gets,” she texts, in a brief reminder that Nate’s dad is one of the show’s many problematic fathers.So Nate distracts himself like any lovestruck fool in the age of smartphones, asking Siri, “How can you tell if a girl likes you or is just being kind to you?” The succinct answer supplied by Apple’s engineers: “You can’t.”This is not, of course, how Siri responds to this particular query in real life — I asked my own iPhone the same question and was presented with multiple websites on the topic. And yes, I now fear that some distant corporate subroutine will begin inundating me with ads for dating sites.But back to Nate, who asks his mother and sister the same question at dinner and receives precisely the same response. But after his father, niece and brother-in-law have left, Nate’s sister cajoles his mother into sharing with him the “map” his father had made for her before their first date, showing how they had been growing closer — in geographic terms, to be clear — for years. It’s settled. Nate will ask Jade out.His first effort, however, is abortive. “There’s something I’d like to ask you,” he stammers, “umm … would you … excuse me one moment?” He takes a quick trip to the bathroom — I can’t be the only one who was pleading “Please don’t spit on the mirror!” — where he has an epiphany. Like his father, he will construct a grand gesture-cum-visual-aid to woo Jade.So he puts the decorative-shoebox skills he has honed with his niece to work. And though the box is crushed in the street, Jade says yes to dinner and, despite Nate’s fears, does not stand him up.So, what, as I suggested above, did I think was missing? We only saw half of Nate’s ongoing evolution. He is apparently reverting back toward Good Nate but what does that look like at work, particularly in relation to his boss, the Mephistophelean sleazeball Rupert? We don’t know. Glimpses of what remains of Bad Nate will have to wait for another episode.SamWe first see Sam visiting his own restaurant, Ola, where he asks his chef, Simi (Precious Mustapha), whether there’s an open table on Friday. After a rowdy laugh, she replies that the place is “booked for months. The ‘waiting list’ is a lie we tell people.” But when told that Sam’s “very special guest” is his father, traveling all the way from Nigeria, she agrees to work something out. Yes! Sam’s dad, whom we’ve only heard over the phone to date! The best father — with the possible exception of Higgins, whose parenting of five boys we rarely witness — on a show full of lousy ones!Juno Temple, left, and Hannah Waddingham in “Ted Lasso.”Apple TV+Simi, meanwhile, is furious that the (fictional) U.K. Home Secretary, Brinda Barot, is turning away a boatload of Nigerian refugees from English shores. So Sam being Sam, he sends a mild tweet intended to appeal to her “better angels.” Barot’s Twitter reply, however, falls decidedly short of angelic: “Footballers should leave the politics to us and just shut up and dribble.” For those who may not recall, the show is directly channeling a 2018 quote from the Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who said the NBA stars LeBron James and Kevin Durant should leave politics alone and “shut up and dribble.”The tweets escalate on both sides, until Sam, on the day of his father’s arrival, goes by the restaurant to find it in ruins: the door smashed in, mirrors shattered, tables and chairs broken into kindling. But Sam’s father (played by Nonso Anozie, whom I remember best as the actor saddled with the line “I invoke Sumai” in Season 2 of “Game of Thrones”) preaches patience and forgiveness. “Don’t fight back, fight forward,” he counsels.At the end of the episode, Sam takes his father to see the fractured restaurant, only to find his teammates hard at work repairing it. Now, I confess I’d spent much of the episode trying to remember why Sam had named the restaurant “Ola”; I was planning to recheck Episode 3 and even last season for clues. But no need. When Simi introduces herself to “Mr. Obisanya,” he is having none of it. “Call me ‘Ola,’” he tells her. The look on his face when Bumbercatch re-illuminates the restaurant’s sign is utterly endearing, but still less endearing than the groove he gets into with Sam in the kitchen just before the credits roll.Keeley and JackPresumably having Aurora-Borealised to their hearts’ content last episode, Keeley and Jack mostly limit themselves to coffee this time around, even if those coffees involve signed Jane Austen first editions and jewelry-filled pastry. In between, Keeley — who’d confided to Jack her love of daisies — returns to an office overflowing with them. She is being “love-bombed,” as Rebecca explains, overwhelmed with grand, expensive gestures.A brief aside: When Rebecca compares this love-bombing by Jack to her own wooing by Rupert so many years ago, it is surely a bad sign, no matter how quickly it is waved away. But it also paints Rebecca, deliberately or not, in a somewhat less than appealing light. She accepted a Jaguar from Rupert on their second date? And upon learning that Jack is paying for her and Keeley’s dinner, Rebecca — who is, of course, herself fabulously rich — puts two bottles of 1934 Chateau Cheval Blanc St. Emilion Premier Grand Cru on the tab to go? They sell online for about $2,000 a pop! (Also, is it just me or is it a tad stalker-y for Jack to secretly pay for Keeley and Rebecca’s dinner?)Earlier, in Keeley’s office — the on-again, off-again gag about the opacity of Keeley’s window was a bit much — she wondered about the nature of having a relationship with her boss. (This was the scene for which I waited in vain during last season’s Rebecca-Sam relationship; more on that later.) Jack replies, “We can’t get in trouble because we’re two consenting adults” — this is quite untrue — “and because I’m get-away-with-murder rich.” Which is probably true, but not terribly becoming. And when Keeley presses and Jack compares herself to “everyone connected with Epstein” — well, that’s not the comparison I would be looking for in a romantic partner.Is it just me, or do Rebecca’s Jaguar and Keeley’s Jane Austen, flowers and diamond ring (however quickly returned) stand in stark and probably deliberate contrast to Nate’s grand gesture of a shoe box with glued-on glitter and stars? I see red flags aplenty here — I hadn’t even mentioned Rebecca’s “Sometimes shiny things can tarnish” line — and I’m not sure that any level of love-blindness will ultimately turn them green.The TeamThis was the episode’s weakest link. Following Ted’s hallucinatory reinvention of the Dutch star Johan Cruyff’s 1970s strategy “Total Football” last episode, the coaching staff begins drilling the team in its principles in preparation for their very next match.The first practice, on “conditioning,” is fine. Ditto the second one, on “versatility,” although no matter how “total” Total Football may be, it does not involve swapping out your goalkeeper, especially not in favor of the team’s shortest player. (The Beard-Will swap was modestly amusing, though, and kept to the requisite small dose.)But the “awareness” practice in which the players used red string to tie themselves to one another’s man parts? Count me out. Humor this broad — see also Isaac’s corner kick into Higgin’s office window — has never been a strong suit for “Ted Lasso.” (Given that the show based its episode title on this gag, the writers evidently disagree.)Total Football proves to be a disaster during the first half of the team’s match against Arsenal, with Richmond players colliding all over the field. But at halftime, Good Jamie — who’s beginning to prompt the question “How good can he get?” — suggests he become a facilitator rather than a scorer. And though the team still loses, this plan unleashes a “symphony,” in the words of the match commentators, “with Tartt in the role of conductor.”That said, my favorite part of this story line was Ted’s response when an incredulous Trent asked him if he really intended to swap strategies midseason: “It’s kind of like going on a hike with Robert Frost. It could go either way.”From left, Cristo Fernández, Toheeb Jimoh, Phil Dunster and Moe Hashim in “Ted Lasso.”Apple TV+Odds & endsSee? I’m not alone in doubting the propriety of last season’s Sam-Rebecca relationship. Sam’s father clearly agrees, and I’ll happily be on Team Ola any day of the week.Speaking of Rebecca: She confirms that she and last episode’s mysterious Dutchman did not have sex but shared something that “transcended sex.” It was “Gezelligheid.” Alas, that’s all we get this episode. I, for one, still hope for more.For all of Nate’s positive evolution this episode, it’s still a little disturbing to discover that he’s programmed Siri to address him as “Wunderkind.” He still has a ways to go.I’m sorry, but going back to the early-ish scene of Beard and Ted in the pub: There is no way Ted Lasso knows what “pegging” is. If you don’t know either, feel free to look it up, with caution.In response to Ted’s suggestion that if he’d kept an early beard, he and Coach Beard would look like a ZZ Top cover band, Roy dubs them “Sharp Dressed Men,” before catching himself: “God, I hate what you’ve done to me.” His Sasquatch-themed pun is even better, if unrepeatable here.I mentioned the Cranberries’ “Dreams”.” This was a particularly musical episode, also featuring (among others) the Monkees’ relatively obscure “Sometime in the Morning,” Ray Charles’s “What Would I Do Without You,” Smokey Robinson’s “You Really Got a Hold on Me,” John Fogerty’s “Centerfield,” Primal Scream’s “Rocks,” Supergrass’s “Alright,” and Snoh Aalegra’s “Find Someone Like You.” More

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    Late Night Reacts to Biden’s Bid for Re-Election

    “If the economy collapses, he could just find a never-ending supply of quarters behind your ear,” Desi Lydic joked on the “Daily Show” on Tuesday.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.Gives New Meaning to ‘Eighty-Sixed’On Tuesday, President Biden announced he will run for re-election, and late night responded with some bristling about his age.“The Daily Show” guest host Desi Lydic joked that he wasn’t exactly “running” — he was more accurately “stair lifting for re-election.”“If Joe Biden does win, he would be 86 years old when he reaches the end of his second term, hopefully, which is one reason why 70 percent of Americans don’t think he should run again. And to be fair, 86 is old — not just for president, but for any job. If my Lyft driver rolled up and was 86 years old, I’d be like, ‘Do you need help getting home?’” — DESI LYDIC“But I don’t know, maybe it would be good to have an old man president. If the economy collapses, he could just find a never-ending supply of quarters behind your ear.” — DESI LYDIC“His face could be on money while he is still in office.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Yep, Biden will be the oldest person to ever run for president. So, in two years, he’ll either be leader of the free world or a greeter at Walmart.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (‘Finish the Job’ Edition)“Biden’s campaign slogan is ‘Finish the job.’ Finish the job. Americans said they’d be happy if he could just finish a story.’” — JIMMY FALLON“President Biden announced today that he will run for a second term and said, ‘Let’s finish the job.’ Yeah, good idea. It would be nice to have a country where a guy could safely retire before he’s 86.” — SETH MEYERS“‘Finish the job’ — it sounds like something your fighter yells in a knockoff version of ‘Mortal Kombat.’” — JIMMY FALLON“According to polls, most Democrats don’t want Biden to run again. Then Biden said, ‘Hey, none of you wanted ‘Avatar 2’ either, but look how that turned out.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Can you imagine if it’s Biden versus Trump again? That’s like going into a diner, and the only things on the menu are 2-day-old egg salad and Donald Trump. I guess I’ll take my chances with the egg salad.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingThe actor Natalie Portman recreated iconic roles from her career alongside the host James Corden in his final installment of “Role Call” on “The Late Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe author Judy Blume will talk about the long-awaited film adaptation of her best-selling novel “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret” on Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutAnne Pasternak, who was appointed director of the Brooklyn Museum in 2015, is part of a wave of women who have risen to lead roles at major museums.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesMore than ever, women are running major museums like the Louvre, the Vatican Museums and the National Gallery of Art. More

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    ‘Summer, 1976’ Review: The Path to Freedom Starts With a Friendship

    Two mothers make a life-altering connection during a play date in this production for the Manhattan Theater Club.Holly and Gretchen. Those are the little girls’ names, so dissimilar in the way they hit the ear: one soft, warm and breathy; the other sharp-edged and cramped. Just like their mothers.The children are 5, maybe 6, when they first play together and hit it off, instant pals suddenly eager to see each other every day. In “Summer, 1976” — David Auburn’s bittersweet, comic memory play — that means their mothers, diametric opposites, will be hanging out a lot, too.This is a fortunate thing for us, the audience. Because in Daniel Sullivan’s sun-dappled Broadway production for Manhattan Theater Club, Laura Linney plays the austere, censorious Diana to Jessica Hecht’s vastly chiller Alice — or, as Diana describes this fresh acquaintance, a “sleepy-eyed little hippie with her shorts and her coconut oil.”“I sort of immediately hated her,” Alice tells us in narrator mode, which she and Diana slip in and out of as they recall the time when they were new to each other.But when Alice reaches into her macramé purse and retrieves a joint (“I only took it out because it was the only way I could imagine getting through the next 10 minutes,” she says), Diana tokes prodigiously to prove she’s not a square. On John Lee Beatty’s lyrically midcentury modern set, summer-lit by Japhy Weideman at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, the two women get the munchies and have a feast. Nearly by chance, a life-changing friendship takes root.They are a gorgeous duo, these friends: bickering lifelines for each other, vulnerable and too proud. In one narrated stretch, with Hana S. Kim’s projection design aiding our imaginations, Diana and Alice embark on a cross-country road trip, terminating in San Francisco — which seems ideal, not least because it brings to mind Linney’s ’70s heroine Mary Ann Singleton in the mini-series “Tales of the City.”Auburn, a 2001 Pulitzer Prize winner for “Proof,” another richly female-centered drama directed by Sullivan in its premiere, isn’t breaking any ground with theatrical form here. And the white, college-educated, Midwestern young women at the center of this play are a very particular slice of the culture. Stretching from 1976 to 2003, this is a story of profound connection and awakening disquiet, which Sullivan directs with his customary unostentatious lucidity.If “Summer, 1976” feels too comfortable to be fashionable, it’s sharply observant, too, and subtly, insistently feminist — more than the wisp of a two-hander that it might first appear to be. Auburn, who at 53 was about Holly and Gretchen’s age during the Bicentennial, has once again sown a script with riches for actors. Linney and Hecht mine them for all they’re worth.A frustrated artist who teaches at Ohio State University, Diana is a single mother — the kind with family money as a cushion and a rule against Gretchen watching any TV shows that aren’t on PBS. An inveterate snob who judges the worth of her fellow humans by their design choices and the books they read, Diana is harder to like than Alice is — though in Linney’s hands, no less funny or affecting. The second line out of her mouth gets a laugh with its withering disdain for Alice’s daughter.“I didn’t like her child, actually,” Diana says.Diana’s off-puttingness is partially strategic; it keeps her safe from the harm that other people might cause by getting close. But her brittle-perfectionist facade conceals a deep well of insecurity and loneliness, and a reserve of compassion that’s more capacious than we’d guess.Alice, in her flowing peasant dress (costumes are by Linda Cho), is the kind of fluttery, gentle-voiced woman who is routinely underestimated. She’s smarter and more resilient than she lets on, though, and, like Hecht’s terrific performance, admirably sly. A stay-at-home mother with almost zero interest in cooking, cleaning or decorating, Alice is married to Doug, an economist who’s up for tenure at the university and spends the summer buried frantically in his papers. Invested in believing that she’s happy, and that her marriage is, too, Alice looks after Holly, sunbathes in the yard of their modest house and indulges in best-selling paperbacks.One of those novels, Robin Cook’s “Coma,” not published until 1977, is a slight, seemingly calculated cheat on Auburn’s part in a show that’s otherwise meticulous about period accuracy. (See, for glorious example, Diana’s impeccably turquoise-shadowed eyelids — as well as her hair, styled by Annemarie Bradley, and Alice’s, styled by Jasmine Burnside.)A medical thriller, “Coma” is also about a woman who enters an overwhelmingly male professional world and faces sexist pushback. Not that the play gets into this; it’s just a signal that’s there for picking up.But both Alice and Diana, who meet through a campus child care co-op designed by Doug as an economic model, have seen their creative and career ambitions derailed. They belong to a generation of women who came of age in time for the sexual revolution and took advantage of that freedom pre-Roe v. Wade. Still, there remained the practical matter of how pregnancy could permanently rearrange their lives, and the entrenched expectation that a married woman puts her husband’s career first.Diana got pregnant in art school during a fling with a glassblower; Alice dropped out of graduate school to marry Doug, then had Holly. Columbus — a staid heartland city named for that avatar of heedless white male adventuring — was never the aim for either of them.“Great things were promised me, Alice,” Diana says. “I promised them to myself.”In that red, white and blue summer, they question what’s gone wrong with their American dreams. And they start, with poignant imperfection, to put things right.Summer, 1976Through June 10 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, Manhattan; manhattantheatreclub.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More