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    The Best TV Episodes of 2021

    Among the thousands of hours of television that came out this year, episodes of “Call My Agent,” “For All Mankind,” “Mythic Quest,” “Pose” and “WandaVision,” among others, stood out.From left, “Dave,” PEN15” and “Genius: Aretha” put out some of TV’s best episodes of the year.From left: Byron Cohen/FX; Hulu; Richard DuCree/National GeographicTelevision today comes in big portions, as anyone who spent seven-plus hours with the Beatles over Thanksgiving weekend can attest. But just as a marathon jam session can yield a few tight singles, the most memorable TV is still often the well-crafted individual episode. As Mike Hale, Margaret Lyons and I end another year’s binge as TV critics for The New York Times, here are a few of the installments from 2021 that topped our personal hit parades. JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘Call My Agent!’ (Netflix)‘Sigourney’More than 30 European actors — including stars like Isabelle Huppert, Juliette Binoche and Jean Reno — have graciously and often mercilessly lampooned themselves in this French dramedy, playing clients or prospective clients or angry former clients of the fictional talent agency ASK. In this Season 4 episode, an American stepped in, and Sigourney Weaver, speaking more than passable French and playing herself as an utterly charming manipulator, was flawless. (Streaming on Netflix.) MIKE HALE‘City of Ghosts’‘Bob & Nancy’Plenty of children’s shows are cute but “City of Ghosts” is also beautiful, and its poetic wistfulness about Los Angeles would be at home on a premium cable drama. Instead it’s in this plucky, naturalistic cartoon about ghost-hunting kids who have a podcast. I loved every episode of this show. But I picked “Bob & Nancy” because it’s about a marionette theater, and thus it toys with ideas of animating the inanimate — rich ground for a show in touch with the spirit realm. (Streaming on Netflix.) MARGARET LYONSHarley Quinn Smith in the finale of “Cruel Summer,” which offered both a happy ending and a surprising twist.Freeform/Bill Matlock‘Cruel Summer’‘Hostile Witness’This teen kidnapping mystery took all the hallmarks of prestige-y crime shows — split timelines, dark lighting, tangential secrets — and repackaged them with a kicky ’90s YA flare. It was one of the juicy highlights of the summer. But shows like this are only as good as their finales, and “Cruel Summer” managed the trick of both a happy ending and a thrilling, dark twist. (Streaming on Hulu.) MARGARET LYONS‘Dave’ (FXX)‘Somebody Date Me’Texting can be a crutch for TV shows, a way to use pop-up bubbles to give characters phone-enabled telepathy. Not so in this playful, smart half-hour, in which Dave Burd’s up-and-coming rapper made (and lost) a date with Doja Cat. As the two musicians courted with their thumbs, “Somebody Date Me” showed how context and time can change the meaning and reading of the smallest online (mis)communication. Thumbs-up emoji! (Streaming on Hulu.) JAMES PONIEWOZIKThe Season 2 finale of “For All Mankind,” with Krys Marshall, revolved around multiple white-knuckle missions.Apple TV+‘For All Mankind’ (Apple TV+)‘The Grey’Each season of this space-race alternative history is a multistage booster rocket. The slow-moving early episodes expend a lot of fuel, building energy and narrative force until the show reaches escape velocity. (My aerospace engineer readers, I beg you not to fact-check my metaphors.) The white-knuckle Season 2 finale moved with the deftness of a docking maneuver, as a U.S.-Soviet conflict on the moon and a threatened war on Earth required risk and sacrifice on two celestial bodies and points in between. (Streaming on Apple TV+.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘Genius: Aretha’ (National Geographic)‘Amazing Grace’‘Pose’ (FX)‘Take Me to Church’The music and community of the Black church co-starred in two praiseworthy hours of TV. The Aretha Franklin bio-series peaked as it focused on the recording of the 1972 “Amazing Grace” live album at New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, fusing the artist’s past and present in a crucible of soul. In “Pose,” a grim diagnosis led Pray Tell (Billy Porter) back to his hometown and church community, both to confront the homophobia that drove him from it and give voice to the music that sustained him. (Stream “Genius: Aretha” on Hulu; buy “Pose” on Amazon.) JAMES PONIEWOZIKPerry Mattfeld, left, and David Webster, in the “Somewhere Over the Border” episode of “In the Dark.” CW‘In the Dark’ (CW)‘Somewhere Over the Border’This CW drama about a blind woman and her buddies, who run a rescue-dog agency and get involved in drug dealing and murder, is no more than a serviceable thriller. But the rapport among its central characters, Murphy (Perry Mattfeld), Jess (Brooke Markham) and Felix (Morgan Krantz), has developed into one of the more believable and moving portrayals of friendship on TV. When Murphy found herself stranded in a strange country, the strength of those ties was the foundation of a taut and agonizing hour. (Streaming on Netflix.) MIKE HALE‘Line of Duty’ (BritBox)Season 6, Episode 5Tension and deception pump through the veins of this breakneck procedural about a British internal-affairs unit, and no show does cliffhangers better. You could point to just about any episode; this one, with one of the heroes following a possibly dirty cop into an abandoned industrial park because that’s what the job called for, was off the charts. (Streaming on BritBox.) MIKE HALE‘Love, Death & Robots’‘The Drowned Giant’In just 13 minutes, this elegant short about a giant’s corpse that washes up on a beach one day captures, in a perfect snapshot, humanity’s tendency to desecrate marvels, to behold a world-changing event and decide simply to carry on. Based on a short story by J.G. Ballard, “The Drowned Giant” is rendered here in mostly realistic animation, with the giant’s clean-shaven cheeks, tidy fingernails and muscular chest shown in aching detail. In an era when so many shows just blend together, this episode stands out for its light touch and sad imagination. (Streaming on Netflix.) MARGARET LYONSIn a memorable episode of “Making It,” contestants like Jessie Lamworth, (right, with the host Amy Poehler) made Halloween costumes.Evans Vestal Ward/NBC‘Making It’‘All the Holidays at Once’Post “Great British Baking Show,” lots of reality competition series have gone away from the cutthroat in favor of the warm and fuzzy, and perhaps no show is warmer and fuzzier than the craft competition “Making It.” Each episode has its charms but “All the Holidays at Once” was especially thrilling, because unlike some of the show’s grander projects, crafting your own Halloween costume is pretty standard fare, even for layfolk. The contestants’ giddy joy in presenting their creations to the judges was matched only by my own giddy joy at seeing their silly and spectacular costumes. Jess won with her superb alien-abduction costume but when everything is this fun, don’t we all win? As a bonus, this episode also included Melañio telling a story about a bat in a toilet, a tale that will haunt me for the rest of my days. (Streaming on Hulu.) MARGARET LYONS‘Mythic Quest’ (Apple TV+)‘Backstory!’Having come up with one of the best pandemic-inspired episodes of 2020, this video game-industry comedy is gunning for TV’s high score in stand-alones. This installment gave the back story-obsessed game writer C.W. Longbottom (a wonderfully blustery F. Murray Abraham) his own flashback as a struggling sci-fi author in the 1970s — a funny and poignant tale of irony, professional jealousy and success at a cost. (Streaming on Apple TV+.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘Nuclear Family’ (HBO)Episode 3Ry Russo-Young’s three-part documentary about her lesbian mothers and the sperm donor who sued them for parental rights, threatening to pull apart her family, built to a powerful and eloquent conclusion. It both affirmed the importance of the battle her mothers fought and questioned the assumptions of everyone involved. (Streaming on HBO Max.) MIKE HALEIn a March interview with Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle discussed their separation from the royal family.Harpo Productions/Joe Pugliese‘Oprah with Meghan and Harry’One so rarely gets to receive or send a “turn on your TV right now” text, especially in my line of work. So for that dual thrill alone this interview earned a place in my heart. It was the kind of programming that barely exists anymore: a tell-all network special in which celebrities share genuine new information with Oprah, the patron saint of soul-baring. There were Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, aglow in the California sun, decrying racism and candidly discussing mental health crises. Which would have been enough, but they also reset the royal narrative, gave Oprah eggs, fought back tears and gazed lovingly at one another — all while sitting in chairs sold by Christopher Knight from “The Brady Bunch.” Television, baby! I love you! MARGARET LYONS‘PEN15’ (Hulu)‘Yuki’Mutsuko Erskine had never acted before her daughter, Maya, cast her to play Maya’s mother in Hulu’s brutally funny teen comedy. Sometimes daughter knows best. This showpiece episode, in which a chance meeting with an ex-husband led Yuki to look down a road not taken, was a rich vignette of an immigrant’s experience and a subtle performance to cap off the role, literally, of a lifetime. (Streaming on Hulu.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘The Simpsons’ (Fox)‘The Dad-Feelings Limited’Who would have thought that the origin story of Comic Book Guy, done partly as an affectionate sendup of a Wes Anderson film, would be so lovely? (Streaming on Disney+.) MIKE HALE‘Snowfall’ (FX)‘All the Way Down’This brutal and only-as-sentimental-as-it-needs-to-be drama about a rogue C.I.A. agent and a young Black entrepreneur, partners in the crack wars in early 1980s Los Angeles, still does not get enough attention. That’s especially true of the stories written by the novelist Walter Mosley, like this chilling, tightly packed episode about rage, revenge, gentrification and wanting to go straight. (Streaming on Hulu.) MIKE HALEIn “WandaVision,” Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen channeled multiple eras of TV including, in the premiere, 1950s sitcoms.Marvel Studios‘WandaVision’ (Disney+)‘Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience’Several installments of this superhero psychodrama, set in a bizarro-world version of classic sitcom formats, could have made this list. But might as well start at the beginning, in which Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) played house on a 1950s stage set whose made-for-TV perfection turned horrifyingly (and ingeniously) wrong. (Streaming on Disney+.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘What We Do in the Shadows’‘Casino’“Shadows” is one of the funniest shows on TV right now, and “Casino,” where the gang heads to Atlantic City, was my favorite episode this season. Nandor (Kayvan Novak) becomes entranced by a “Big Bang Theory” slot machine — “‘bazinga’ is the war cry of Sheldon,” he explains — and in perfect, cascading horror, this leads to the total dissolution of his understanding of the universe. “Shadows” is its best when the vampires’ grandiosity clashes with their vulnerabilities, especially their excitability, and I’ll never see another in-house ad on a hotel TV without thinking that it’s Colin Robinson’s favorite show. (Streaming on Hulu.) MARGARET LYONS More

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    What’s on TV This Week: Kennedy Center Honors and ‘Insecure’

    A recording of this month’s Kennedy Center Honors ceremony debuts on CBS. And HBO’s “Insecure” airs its final episode.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Dec. 20-26. Details and times are subject to change.MondayREOPENING NIGHT (2021) 10 p.m. on HBO. In this documentary, the filmmaker Rudy Valdez (“The Sentence”) follows actors, crew members and other employees of the Public Theater as they work to bring Shakespeare back to the Delacorte Theater in Central Park for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic — for this past summer’s production of “Merry Wives,” a Shakespeare adaptation. The film isn’t just about the challenges of bringing back live performances after a long period of dormancy; it also sees the artists working through questions around racial equity as they return to the theater for the first time since 2020.TuesdayIN PERFORMANCE AT THE WHITE HOUSE: SPIRIT OF THE SEASON 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Jennifer Garner is the host of this hourlong special, which was filmed at the White House this month. Musicians including Billy Porter, Andrea Bocelli, Camila Cabello, Eric Church, the Jonas Brothers and Norah Jones perform among holiday decorations in several White House rooms.WednesdayTHE 44TH ANNUAL KENNEDY CENTER HONORS 9 p.m. on CBS. This month’s Kennedy Center Honors ceremony was something of a return to normalcy, with a star-spangled audience and roster of performers gathering in Washington to celebrate this year’s honorees: Bette Midler, Joni Mitchell, Berry Gordy, Justino Díaz and Lorne Michaels. The performers who paid tribute to this group included Chita Rivera, Kelli O’Hara, Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Norah Jones, Ellie Goulding, Brandi Carlile, Brittany Howard, Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder.ThursdayBeanie Feldstein and Steven Yeun in “The Humans.”Wilson Webb/A24THE HUMANS (2021) 5:30 p.m. on Showtime. The playwright Stephen Karam won a Tony Award in 2016 for this one-act comedy-drama about a Thanksgiving dinner where turkey and familial tension are on the menu — and the house is kind of haunted, too. The film adaptation, directed by Karam, casts Beanie Feldstein and Steven Yeun as Brigid and Richard, a young couple who hosts the dinner in a new-to-them (but far from new) Manhattan apartment, where they welcome three generations of Brigid’s family. (The cast also includes Richard Jenkins, Jayne Houdyshell, June Squibb and Amy Schumer.) In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote that Karam uses “the freedom of film to open up and underscore his already powerful material.”FridayA CHRISTMAS CAROL (1938) 10 p.m. on TCM. How do you take your “Christmas Carol?” Sweet? Bitter? Brooding over ice, with a contemporary twist? Different decades have seen different screen adaptations of the Charles Dickens story, some warm, some dark. This classic 1938 version, directed by Edwin L. Marin and starring Reginald Owen as the killjoy Ebenezer Scrooge, falls on the warmer side of the spectrum. (“Good Dickens, good cinema and good for the soul” is how it was described by the critic and screenwriter Frank S. Nugent in a 1938 review in The Times.) On the other end is FX’S A CHRISTMAS CAROL, airing at 4:20 p.m. and 9:40 p.m. on FXM, an icy adaptation from Steven Knight (“Peaky Blinders”) that stars Guy Pearce. This mini-series, from 2019, explores Scrooge’s psychology; it co-stars Andy Serkis as the Ghost of Christmas Past. Also on FXM, at 7:50 p.m., is the 1951 version with Alastair Sim, directed by Brian Desmond Hurst, which has been held up as being particularly faithful to Dickens’s words.CHRISTMAS EVE MASS 11:30 p.m. on NBC. A week after turning 85, Pope Francis will lead Midnight Mass from St. Peter’s Basilica. This broadcast will air some hours after it’s recorded in Vatican City, to compensate for the time difference.SaturdayA scene from “The Lion King.”DisneyTHE LION KING (2019) 8 p.m. on FX. The African savanna has an uncanny-valley flavor in this hyper-realistic computer-animated adaptation of the Disney and Broadway musical classic “The Lion King.” It is rendered here with photo-realistic fur and lighting, giving its cast of very famous voices — Beyoncé, Donald Glover, Alfre Woodard, Chiwetel Ejiofor and James Earl Jones among them — an opulent digital space to retell the story of a lion’s quest to reclaim a stolen throne. “If a movie could be judged solely on technique, ‘The Lion King’ might qualify as a great one,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. “And it kind of wants to be judged that way — for its technical skin rather than its dramatic soul.”CALL THE MIDWIFE HOLIDAY SPECIAL 2021 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). You’d be hard pressed to find a warmer place to spend Christmas night than Nonnatus House, the fictional London convent where the nuns of “Call the Midwife” practice their craft. This holiday special finds the sisters with their hands full, caring for an influx of expectant women.SundayIssa Rae and Kendrick Sampson in “Insecure.”Merie Wallace/HBOINSECURE 10 p.m. on HBO. After five seasons, “Insecure” will air its series finale on Sunday night. This season has seen the two best friends at the show’s center, Issa Dee (Issa Rae) and Molly Carter (Yvonne Orji), recommitting to their friendship (there were some struggles earlier) while Issa’s career begins to move to a new level. The show has been transformative for Rae herself — when the series debuted, she was best known for the web series “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.” It has also had a meaningful impact on how Black people are represented on television. “True representation is the ability to show your vulnerability and be able to say, ‘I don’t have it all together, just like the next white person doesn’t have it all together,’” Rae said in a recent interview with The Times. “I think the show gave Black people permission to also be like, ‘You’re right: We are insecure.’” More

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    ‘Insecure’ Recap, Season 5, Episode 9: Confession Time

    In the penultimate episode of the series, several characters let out what they have been holding inside.Season 5, Episode 9: ‘Out, Okay!?’Almost everyone is carrying around some kind of emotional burden. Most of us have learned to compartmentalize, if only to move forward. What happens when people let go and take a chance? When you tell the person you love how you feel? When you decide to leave everything behind for a chance at something different? Life is what happens.In “Out, Okay!?,” the penultimate episode of “Insecure,” several characters let out what they have been holding inside. Lawrence confesses that he loves Issa. Tiffany says goodbye to her friends in Los Angeles to start a new journey with her family in Colorado. Molly and Taurean cross the line from work friends and casual hookups to something else.While everyone is making big moves, Issa is still pretty grounded. She has not yet decided if she is going to take MBW’s offer or take her chances with Crenshawn. She is looking at apartments with Nathan but has not signed a lease yet. She seems to be in a limbo of her own making. They’re leaving all the resolution for the final episode, and it is enticing.We know that she still has some type of feelings for Lawrence, because she has not been able to stop thinking about him since she learned that he moved back to Los Angeles. We know that she wanted to reach out for closure until Molly stopped her.At Tiffany and Derek’s goodbye party, Nathan and Lawrence meet for the first time. There is obvious tension. The two go back and forth over whether Los Angeles or Houston has better barbecue. It is a petty argument that is more about ego. It is Lawrence sticking his chest out to the man Issa is planning to move in with.Lawrence did not go to the party alone — he showed up with Elijah and Condola. When Condola heads to the kitchen to grab a bottle for Elijah, she bumps into Molly, Kelly, Tiffany and, potentially most awkward, Issa. But the girls are cordial: Issa congratulates Condola on Elijah and Condola congratulates her on her latest community walk. Lawrence and Condola had started seeming like a blended family but when they arrived at the party, Condola noticed Lawrence looking at Issa with his swoon eyes on. She seemed disappointed, so I’m not calling Condola, Lawrence and Elijah the Smiths just yet.Molly and Taurean take edibles without telling anyone. (Molly eventually confesses to the girls.) It seems to be what the doctor ordered — I don’t see how they would have dropped their guard with one another otherwise. When they do, it’s beautiful. Taurean softens; Molly becomes a bit goofy and honest. After bingeing the hors d’oeuvres in secret, they find themselves inside a pantry.“A part of me is kind of worried how much fun I am having with you,” she tells him. “This is easy and feels real natural, and that scares me.”“Why?” Taurean asks.“Because at some point when people get close, I mess things up,” she answers earnestly.“With me, it’s the opposite,” he reassures her. “I hated you at first, but now I’m starting to like you. I’m not going to get tired of you, Molly,” Then he kisses her and they hook up.I’m not mad at this for Molly — Taurean did send her wine and Postmates after a very hard day, which is the modern equivalent of a sonnet and flowers. They might get some trouble from their colleagues, but I think they can make it work if Molly can find a way to let herself be loved.At the end of the party, things finally come to a head between Lawrence and Nathan, who get into a sort of fisticuffs after Nathan finds Lawrence professing his love for Issa. Issa repeatedly asks Lawrence to maybe talk to her another time but Lawrence can’t contain himself. He lets it all out.“When you ended things, I understood,” he tells her. “But things are different now; I’m different now. I would hate to leave here tonight knowing that I didn’t say something that I should have, like I didn’t fight hard enough for you.”“I don’t know that fighting will even matter,” she replies.After Taurean breaks up Lawrence and Nathan’s confrontation, Nathan yells at Issa. She reaches for his arm and he pulls away from her, asking her to give him a minute to cool down. It did not feel right that he yelled at her, regardless of how hotheaded he may have been. It felt like in that moment, she stopped being the woman he loved; she too was the opposition.Here’s hoping Issa stops playing the middle of the road soon. More

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    How Dasha Nekrasova Is Calling the Shots

    The “Succession” star and co-host of the podcast Red Scare has directed her first feature, “The Scary of Sixty-First,” about a house once owned by Jeffrey Epstein.You know how some people are always talking about wanting to direct a movie and co-host a popular podcast and be on the most popular show on television? Somebody has done all of those things: Dasha Nekrasova.Nekrasova, 30, is a self-styled provocateur and artistic polymath whom fans of the recently completed season of “Succession” will recognize as Comfrey, the crisis public-relations rep put through hell by Kendall Roy. Before that, she was best known for Red Scare, an irreverent cultural-critique podcast she co-hosts with her friend Anna Khachiyan.She first came to public attention via a “woman on the street” interview with InfoWars that went viral, and her interest in conspiracy theories can be unnerving to some fans even as friends defend her. But it’s that interest that underpins “The Scary of Sixty-First,” her feature directing debut, which she also stars in and wrote, with Madeline Quinn.The film (now in theaters and opening Dec. 24 on digital platforms) is a louche, scrappy horror movie about young roommates, played by Betsey Brown and Nekrasova’s collaborator, Quinn, who move into an apartment on the Upper East Side.But not just any apartment: it was once owned by Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who killed himself in jail after his arrest on sex trafficking charges in 2019.Nekrasova said she decided to make a horror movie centered on Epstein because she was “obsessed” with his death. “It broke my brain, in a way,” she said in a phone interview. Nekrasova believes, as does her character in the film, that Epstein — “based on my research,” she said — didn’t die by suicide but was killed.“My interest in filmmaking and in Jeffrey Epstein dovetailed in genre,” she said. “Besides me already being preoccupied with it, it was a good way to tell the story. It was so scary. It was so monstrous.”In the film, Nekrasova plays a young woman whose obsession with Epstein’s death, and the many conspiracy theories surrounding it, grows while a demonic force turns the characters into mini-cauldrons of paranoia, sexual mania and butchery. Shot on 16 millimeter, the film looks like a low-fi Sundance breakout circa 1991, and brings to mind the gritty thrillers of the renegade filmmaker Abel Ferrara, whom Nekrasova cites as an inspiration.“The Scary of Sixty-First” is getting a mix of critical responses. Its co-star, Brown, said that as dark as the film is, it’s “a romp to watch” with an audience, especially those drawn to horror, because “it says we can take the absurdity of this disgusting man and laugh” out of discomfort.“Dasha is doing something cathartic,” she said.Betsey Brown in “The Scary of Sixty-First.”UtopiaIn conversation, Nekrasova comes across as definitional Gen X even though she’s a Millennial — a disaffected and misleadingly unambitious slacker with a whatever ethos who’s also intensely interested in understanding people she disagrees with.Nekrasova was born in Minsk, Belarus, and moved a few times with her parents, including to Las Vegas, where she attended a performing arts high school. She said she started to love horror after she watched a trailer for “The Exorcist” and saw Linda Blair descend stairs in a backbend.“That really implanted itself in my consciousness,” she said.Nekrasova went viral in 2018 for a video in which an Infowars correspondent corners her at South by Southwest for an interview about socialism. Nekrasova handled the gotcha exchange with poise but also a “girl, please” detachment. In the video, she wears a fitted sailor top, as if she’s on break from a rehearsal for “Anything Goes” leading social media to call her Sailor Socialism.“It happened around the time that I started my podcast, and it contributed to the audience we’ve been able to amass,” she said. “I’m happy people are still enjoying it.”Three years later, the video doesn’t come across as an act of sabotage against Infowars as much as it does a meet-cute: In November, Nekrasova posted a photo on Instagram of her and Khachiyan playfully flanking Alex Jones, the Infowars host who spread bogus stories about the deadly 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Conn., and was sued for defamation by families of 10 victims, all of which he lost. Nekrasova and Khachiyan also released an interview with Jones and Alex Lee Moyer, the director of a documentary about the far-right broadcaster.On the subsequent episode, Nekrasova called Jones “an incredible entertainer” and wondered if his beliefs about the Sandy Hook shootings may have been a psychotic episode set off by childhood traumas of his own.She stands by her take even as some of her social media followers blanched. (“Ooooof that’s not a good look,” one commenter said.)Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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    Paul Rudd Hosts a Year-End ‘S.N.L.’ Disrupted by the Omicron Variant

    “Saturday Night Live” sought to persevere with an episode featuring special guests, but no musical performer and only two regular cast members.In a week when the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus had disrupted Broadway shows, concerts, sports and numerous other entertainment events, “Saturday Night Live” inevitably found it challenging to broadcast live from New York.Hours before a year-end holiday “S.N.L.” episode that was to be hosted by Paul Rudd and feature the musical guest Charli XCX, NBC suddenly announced several changes to this sketch variety show’s familiar format: citing “an abundance of caution,” the network said on Saturday afternoon that “S.N.L.” was pulling its live audience and would have “limited cast and crew.” A short while later, Charli XCX said that she would be unable to perform on the program at all.Even so, “S.N.L.” tried to persevere, as it has throughout the pandemic. The onset of the coronavirus had forced the cancellation of several live broadcasts in its 2019-20 season, which the show finished out with episodes consisting of sketches its cast members recorded from their home quarantines. Since the beginning of the 2020-21 season, in October 2020, “S.N.L.” has aired a full run of live shows from its Manhattan home in Studio 8H in 30 Rockefeller Plaza with many new protocols in place but little apparent interruption.But this week’s episode, which offered a mix of new segments filmed earlier in the week and vintage sketches from past years, was bound to come across differently. As Rudd told viewers at the end of the night, “I know it wasn’t the Christmas show that you expected but that’s the beauty of this place. Like life, it’s unpredictable.”However, the first performer to cross the show’s threshold tonight was a surprise guest: The opening sketch, which took place on the Studio 8H stage with no set, began with Tom Hanks, who was wearing his smoking jacket from the Five-Timers Club.Hanks offered his gratitude to the program’s “surviving crew members,” adding that it was his intention to induct a new member into the club tonight “but Covid came early this year,” he said.Though many “S.N.L.” cast members would be absent, Hanks said, “I came here from California, and if you think I was going to fly 3,000 miles and not be on TV, you’ve got another thing coming.”He was joined by Tina Fey, an “S.N.L.” alumna, who explained that this was not the smallest audience she had ever performed for, “because I have done improv in a Macy’s,” she said.When Rudd entered, he glanced into the studio audience and said brightly, “I’m extremely disappointed.” He was nonetheless inducted into the Five-Timers Club by Kenan Thompson, one of only two current cast members to be seen onstage tonight. (The other was Michael Che.)Rudd then explained to viewers that the rest of the show would feel “a little bit like that new Beatles documentary: a lot of old footage but enough new stuff that you’re like, OK, yeah, I’ll watch that.”Commercial Parody of the WeekIt may be long and shaggy and constructed of variations on, basically, just one joke. But after the week that just transpired, how can you not be charmed by Aidy Bryant and Kate McKinnon as two senior moms (and frequent customers at HomeGoods) whose participation in a TV commercial boils down to telling its director (Rudd), over and over, the truth about what they really want for Christmas? (It’s grandchildren, by the way. They want grandchildren.)Unexpected Scorsese Homage of the WeekMany of Pete Davidson’s sketches now are about the fact that Pete Davidson is Pete Davidson, and still this latest one proved to be a worthy entry in that surprisingly abundant genre.Beginning with a sendup of the bookend segments from “Raging Bull,” this mostly black-and-white film imagines an aging Davidson in the year 2054, with a gut and a receding hairline, now the star of a meager nightclub act in which he tries to recapture his past “S.N.L.” glories. (At least things appear to have turned out better for him than they did for his pal Machine Gun Kelly.)Weekend Update Jokes of the WeekIn what had to be the loosest, most low-fidelity production of Weekend Update since the Chevy Chase era, the news-satire segment this week featured Che and Fey sitting on the stage in directors’ chairs as they read jokes to Rudd, Hanks and Thompson. (Fey explained that, though she was filling in for the regular co-anchor Colin Jost, “It’s not what you think — he’s having work done.)Among the highlights from their routine:Che: “Well, it’s Christmas, so let’s start with some good news, Tina. O.J. Simpson has been released from parole two months early because of good behavior. Said O.J., ‘I can’t believe I got out of parole early but I did it. I did it.’”Fey: “Time magazine has named Elon Musk ‘Person of the Year.’ You can read more about it on your phone while your Tesla is self-driving you into a lake.”Che: “It was revealed that on January 6, three Fox News hosts all texted Mark Meadows to urge him to get Trump to call off his supporters. And you know you’ve gone too far when Fox News is like, somebody better calm these white people down.”Vintage Sketch of the WeekSeveral of the classic sketches resurfaced tonight were tried-and-true “S.N.L.” Yuletide gems, like “D*** in a Box” and “Christmastime for the Jews.” But then there was this curveball: a 1990 segment called “The Global Warming Christmas Special,” which if nothing else proves that, like climate change, the show’s predilection for bits in which its cast members play random celebrities is not a recent phenomenon.Watch for impersonations of Carl Sagan, Dean Martin, Sally Struthers, George Hamilton and many more. And see if you can keep it together when the late, beloved “S.N.L.” stars Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks walk onstage to perform a duet, as Isaac Asimov and Crystal Gayle. More

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    Rockettes Christmas shows are canceled for the rest of the season over breakthrough Covid cases.

    After canceling all four of Friday’s performances of Radio City Music Hall’s enduring Christmas show starring the Rockettes because of breakthrough coronavirus cases in the company, the show’s producers announced late Friday that they would end this season’s run entirely over “increasing challenges from the pandemic.”The show, “Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes,” had been scheduled to run through Jan. 2 with multiple performances each day. But it did not make it to Christmas, or even to the break that many city schoolchildren will begin next week.It became the latest show to be upended by a rash of coronavirus cases among cast and crew members, as the virus has surged in recent days in New York.Earlier Friday, producers had canceled the four performances scheduled for the day because of what the company described as “breakthrough Covid-19 cases in the production.” By the end of the day, they had canceled the rest of the run.“We regret that we are unable to continue the ‘Christmas Spectacular’ this season,” the show said in a statement released later in the day. “We had hoped we could make it through the season and are honored to have hosted hundreds of thousands of fans at more than 100 shows over the last seven weeks.”The decision comes as Broadway has had to endure a raft of cancellations unlike any in its history. Six of the 32 current shows running on Broadway canceled their performances Friday night, including “Moulin Rouge!”, which hopes to resume Saturday afternoon, “Hadestown,” which hopes to resume Saturday night; “Hamilton,” “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “Tina,” which are closed until Tuesday, and “MJ,” a new musical about Michael Jackson, which said it would close until Dec. 27.The cancellations are affecting a variety of shows elsewhere in New York and around the country. At New York City Center, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater canceled all of its remaining performances this week, citing positive coronavirus tests, while Off Broadway, the Red Bull Theater canceled its remaining performances of “The Alchemist” and Soho Rep canceled the rest of its performances of “While You Were Partying.”In a sign of the increasing level of concern over the Omicron variant, the Metropolitan Opera on Wednesday became the first major performing arts institution in New York to unveil a booster mandate: Beginning Jan. 17, all employees and audience members eligible for booster shots will be required to show proof that they have received them in order to enter the opera house.Michael Paulson More

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    How ‘Succession’ Turns Getting What You Want Into Hell

    The characters in HBO’s prestige hit let us set aside judgment and just marvel at how ardently, how comically, people will chase after the worst thing for them.Two years ago, as HBO’s “Succession” finished its second season, we saw Logan Roy, the head of a right-wing media empire, looking for someone in his inner circle to serve as the scapegoat for a corporate scandal. One candidate was his hapless son-in-law, Tom Wambsgans. But Shiv, Logan’s daughter, asked him to spare her husband, and Logan’s sights turned instead to his second-born son, Kendall. For once, though, Kendall would not do the old man’s bidding: He showed up at a news conference and, instead of taking the heat, blamed his father.The pandemic kept “Succession” from continuing the story until this fall; its third season, nine episodes in all, ended Dec. 12. But it featured, midway through that run, a remarkable moment that captured the series’ great trick: Whenever these One Percenters succeed, the outcome is worse than if they had failed.Because with Kendall gone rogue, it is indeed Tom who volunteers for sacrifice and resigns himself to facing criminal charges. He assumes he has few days left as a free man, so he spends them reading prison blogs and trying to get used to cheap food. It’s only in the seventh episode that he learns the federal investigation he was afraid of will most likely end in a financial penalty. Suddenly spared years behind bars, he heads to the office of his wary sidekick Greg and destroys it in celebration: Screaming, he flips over a desk and leaps atop some filing cabinets, pounding his chest. But his ecstasy is short-lived. An episode later, Shiv — under the guise of role play — tells him she doesn’t really love him, though she would consider having the child he wanted. Having avoided prison, Tom gets to remain in a loveless union, trapped in a cage of wealth he lacks the audacity to leave. He wins, and he may well be worse off for it.Tom’s fate seems to have taken a very different turn in the season’s finale. But those earlier scenes reminded me, more than anything, of “Peep Show,” the sitcom that Jesse Armstrong, the creator of “Succession,” made in Britain between 2003 and 2015. The series, which used point-of-view shots and voice-overs to reveal its protagonists’ inner thoughts, centered on two characters: Mark, a cynical and awkward loan manager, and Jez, his perpetually out-of-work roommate. Its humor derived from many things — Mark’s repressed fury and anxious conservatism, Jez’s sexual carelessness and delusions of cool — but the writer Jim Gavin, creator of the AMC show “Lodge 49,” reported in 2016 that he had discovered the “central narrative conceit” beneath all of it. “Mark and Jez,” he wrote, “ALWAYS get what they want” — and it inevitably turns out to be terrible. “Getting what you want is a form of hell,” he wrote, “and ‘Peep Show’ is nothing if not a complete and terrifying vision of hell.”“Succession,” a prestige hit, attracts far more attention in America than “Peep Show.” Perhaps that’s why, amid obsessive discussion of each episode’s winners and losers, it’s not often noted how much this tradition continues among the Roys. Look at both shows together, and you sense a creeping, overarching worldview. Each sets its characters in looping environments where it’s rare for them to face lasting consequences. Instead, they are constantly humiliated by their own desires — and then, even more so, by the fulfillment of those desires.Throughout the early seasons of “Peep Show,” for instance, we watch Mark pine after a co-worker named Sophie, played by Olivia Colman. But when he finally succeeds in his romantic pursuit of her, it becomes clear that they have little in common — a fact that Mark, clinging to what he suspects is his sole chance to be a normal man, strains to ignore. The two become engaged based on a miscommunication, and Mark spends an entire season trudging toward a wedding he dreads, fearing it will be too embarrassing to back out. But there, again, he gets what he wants, in the worst way: After a catastrophic ceremony, Sophie flees, seeks an annulment and convinces all their co-workers that Mark is a monster.“Peep Show” was unquestionably a comedy, an unglamorous half-hour of laughs. “Succession” is an hour long, with remarkable acting and an HBO budget. As a result, critical discussion around it has often focused on form: Is this a comedy? A drama? A “sitcom trapped in the body of a drama” (as Slate had it)? “Seinfeldian in its cyclical efforts” (The New Yorker)? Has its repetitive nature made it boring? The Nation said the show has a “repetition compulsion”; The Atlantic explained its stasis by asserting that “late capitalism will always insulate the extraordinarily privileged from real consequences.”It’s true that the patterns of a sitcom, in which hardly anything ever truly changes, run the risk of disappointing prestige-TV viewers who tune in anticipating real stakes or didactic punishment for the superrich. But the circularity of such comedy is, typically, cozy. Sitcoms assure us that their worlds will remain stable, that the characters will arrive each week to behave in exactly the manner we’ve become so fond of. This was true of “Peep Show,” but in the most unsettling way possible. Mark and Jez were self-aware enough to realize how hopelessly stuck with each other they were; they knew full well that whenever either of them achieved what he wanted, the other would promptly help ruin it. As Gavin noted, “Virgil makes clear to Dante that all the souls in Hell remain there by choice,” unable to let go of the very thing that damned them in the first place. Mark and Jez will repeat their mistakes forever.It’s as if he literally can’t perish, as if hell cannot exist without the devil.What makes “Succession” a variety of sitcom is the way it, too, relishes this vision of the afterlife. The Roy children’s battle for status mostly immiserates them, yet they can’t abandon it. Each time they help save the family empire, their father lambastes or humiliates them for their trouble. Even Logan’s death scares repeat: It’s as if he literally can’t perish, as if hell cannot exist without the devil. As the show’s third season ended, we saw his children scramble once again to maintain family control of the company — to remain in the very cycle they’ve all toyed with escaping. They failed. But can there be much doubt that the situation will reset, as it has in the past, just as surely as a sitcom character’s new adventure will resolve itself in 30 minutes, leaving things right where they began? In Armstrong’s hands, character flaws are not simply quirks to be blithely repeated for our amusement. They are anchors that are constantly degrading the characters’ own lives. “Peep Show” let that degradation sit, awkwardly and hilariously, on the screen. “Succession” finds the tragedy at the heart of the sitcom form, the structure whose characters can never break free of it.The Roys’ corporation feels like their show’s Sophie. I’ve never had any trouble imagining what would happen if Kendall or his siblings wrested control of it from their father, or what they would do to address its many failings: They’d have absolutely no idea. Like Mark on “Peep Show,” they’d struggle to admit their victory was hollow from the start. This is the joy of Armstrong’s shows: They let us set aside judgment and just marvel at how ardently, how comically, people will chase after the worst thing for them. People, each season suggests, do not change that much. What we share with the Roys and two inept London flatmates might be, simply, that we only think we want them to, and would probably hate it if they ever did.Above: Screen grabs from HBO and YouTube.Alex Norcia is a writer in Los Angeles. He last wrote for the magazine about John Krasinski’s YouTube show “Some Good News.” More

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    Best Comedy of 2021

    The return of indoor shows brought comedy closer to normal, and there were plenty of specials from Bo Burnham, Tig Notaro, Roy Wood Jr. and others.From left, a scene from Tig Notaro’s HBO special “Drawn,” Susie Essman in HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and Tiffany Haddish in Netflix’s “Bad Trip.”From left: HBO; John P. Johnson/HBO; Dimitry Elyashkevich/NetflixComedy got dangerous in 2021. Not cancel-culture dangerous (though after creating one of the loudest controversies of the year with his Netflix special “The Closer,” Dave Chappelle might disagree). More like “I might contract Covid at this show” dangerous. After a (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime shutdown of live performances, audiences returned to indoor shows, and comics picked up where they left off. These are some of the highlights.Best Punch Line Inside a Club to Defuse Covid AnxietyOne night at the Comedy Cellar, Dave Attell told a guy in the crowd: “I’m glad you’re wearing a mask because we need a survivor to tell the story.” But in the basement of the West Side Comedy Club, Bill Burr took down the elephant in the room even quicker: “I’m happy to be down here working on a new variant.”Best Experimental ComedyTig Notaro is not the first stand-up to turn herself into a cartoon, but her “Drawn” HBO special was the most ambitious attempt, using a different animated style for each bit — realistic one moment, whimsically fantastical the next, veering from the perspective of the audience to a cockroach. Imagine if Pixar did stand-up.A scene from “Drawn,” an animated HBO special from Tig Notaro, which uses a different animated style for each bit.HBOBest Musical ComedyThis was the year that visual humor caught up to the verbal kind in comedy specials. Bo Burnham invented a new comic vocabulary with his Netflix hit “Inside,” a filmic meditation on isolation, the internet and ironic distance itself. It was so tuneful and thematically well made that a blockbuster musical is surely in his future.Best Opening BitIn “Imperfect Messenger,” a Comedy Central special packed with refined comic gems, Roy Wood Jr. begins by discussing things that are not racist but feel racist. Things that have, as he puts it while rubbing his thumb and his fingers together as if he’s grasping at something, “the residue of racism” — like when white people use the word “forefathers,” or when you go somewhere and there’s “too many American flags,” which he calls “too much freedom.” He rubs his fingers and thumb again and asks: “How many American flags equal one Confederate flag?”Roy Wood Jr. in his Comedy Central special “Imperfect Messenger.”Sean Gallagher/Comedy CentralBest DirectingWith a jangling horror soundtrack, claustrophobic close-ups and the menacing humor of a Pinter play, the movie “Shiva Baby” offers a modern spin on the postgraduate angst of “The Graduate.” Its director, Emma Seligman, is the most promising cringe-comedy auteur to come along in years.Best MemoirIn the Audible original “May You Live in Interesting Times,” Laraine Newman describes studying with Marcel Marceau, dating Warren Zevon and farting in front of Prince. She gives you what you want in a “Saturday Night Live” memoir, but what makes her audiobook excel is her nimble voice, impersonating a collection of characters, none more charismatic than her own.Best Documentary“Mentally Al” catches up with the unsung comic Al Lubel when he’s near broke, disheveled and struggling with an impossibly dysfunctional relationship with his mother. Onstage, however, he’s consistently hilarious, even when the audience doesn’t think so. After countless documentaries about how a really funny person became a star, there’s finally a revelatory one exploring why one didn’t.Best Political ComedySometimes the most powerful punch is a jab. In “Oh God, an Hour About Abortion” — an understated, humane and deeply funny examination of the experience of having an unwanted pregnancy and an abortion — Alison Leiby uses observational comedy to reframe a political question at a critical moment for reproductive rights.The comedian Alison Leiby performing at Union Hall in Brooklyn in September.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesBest Keystone Cops UpdateNot since Chaplin has running from the police been as funny as Tiffany Haddish in “Bad Trip,” a scripted movie on Netflix that includes unscripted scenes, such as Haddish emerging from under a prison bus dressed in an orange jumpsuit, forcing a male bystander into an uncomfortable decision.Best SpecialThere’s never been a better year for handsome comics making jokes about their fraying mental health. Along with Bo Burnham unraveling onscreen and John Mulaney describing the depths of his addiction in live shows, the British comic James Acaster delivered his masterwork, “Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999,” on Vimeo. It’s a nearly three-hour show, wildly funny and deeply felt, that mocks how easily mental struggles can be turned into entertainment before doing just that.Best Arena SpectacleThere were prop missiles, shining diamonds and a massive sign that announced “World War III” in lights. I’m still not sure what the battle was about, but as soon as the born entertainer Katt Williams charged into the Barclays Center, yellow sneakers a blur, it was clear he had won.Best Netflix DebutNaomi Ekperigin is a natural — a comic that can make you laugh at just about anything: summing up Nancy Meyers movies, vaccines, clichés (why L.A. sucks), the way she says “OK.” In a half-hour set, as part of the collection “The Standups” that will be released on Netflix on Dec. 29, she even has two different jokes about the color beige that earn laughs. It’s a delight.Naomi Ekperigin performs in Season 3 of “The Standups,” coming to Netflix on Dec. 29.Clifton Prescod/NetflixBest Grand Unified TheoryIn describing how the porn industry pioneered everything on the internet, from user-generated content to diversity casting, Danny Jolles, in his endearing and far too overlooked Amazon Prime Video special, “Six Parts,” finds a new way to describe the fragmentation and filtering of the news: fetishes. All news, he argues, has become “kink news,” catering to our narrow, even perverse whims.Best Inside Comedy ParodyLast year ended with the release of “An Evening With Tim Heidecker,” a parody of edgy stand-up comedy that was a bit too vague to really resonate. Now, Heidecker hit the bull’s-eye with his recent YouTube spoof of The Joe Rogan Experience; its 12-hour running time (really one hour on a loop) is its first joke. So precise, so meticulously sensitive to the details, to the cadence and lingo of that podcast, his conversation with two sycophantic guests (played with pitch-perfect smarm by Jeremy Levick and Rajat Suresh) is a master class in sounding absolutely earth-shattering while saying precisely nothing.Best Argument for the Staying Power of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’No comedy that started in 2000 should still be this funny. Part of the reason for this feat is the consistently elite supporting performances, none more important than Susie Essman, who shined this year. Famous for her volcanic fury, she can do dry and understated just as well. I have not laughed louder at a television show this year than after hearing her say the word “caftan.”Susie Essman, left, plays Susie Greene in the long-running HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”John P. Johnson/ HBOMost Underrated Star ComicJim Gaffigan has put out so much material for so long that he’s easy to take for granted. The fact that he’s family friendly probably doesn’t help his press either. His dynamite new special, “Comedy Monster” (premiering Tuesday on Netflix), may be his best, showing Gaffigan at his most dyspeptic. It suits him. Who would have thought that he would so satisfyingly eviscerate marching bands and parades? Or have the most unexpected prop joke of the year (keep an eye out for a grand piano). More