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    Jessel Taank is Back For More on ‘RHONY’ Season 2

    Early on a Monday evening during New York Fashion Week, Jessel Taank breezed into the Sabyasachi boutique in the West Village, passing a life-size elephant sculpture near the sidewalk. But the “Real Housewives of New York City” star couldn’t quite say what it was doing there.“Good question,” she said with a laugh. “There’s apparently a great elephant migration that I wasn’t aware happens this time of year, and Sabyasachi is celebrating that tonight.”In fact, The Great Elephant Migration is a touring art installation featuring a herd of 100 faux pachyderms, handcrafted in Tamil Nadu from a dried invasive shrub. (Actual Indian elephant migration in India happens year-round.)Such obliviousness to details seems on brand for Ms. Taank, 41. After all, who could forget when she called TriBeCa “up and coming” on the last season of the “Real Housewives of New York City”?Ms. Taank with an art installation outside the Sabyaschi fashion week party she attended on a recent Monday night. Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesBut when she commits these faux pas, she does so with a disarming smile, one that has won over prickly fans. By the end of the show’s 14th season — and the first of the cast reboot — it was clear that she had received the villain edit, criticized for what came off as willful ignorance and bratty behavior. But she had also found a fan base so ardent that, according to Rolling Stone, its members call themselves “Taank Tops.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Jessel Taank is Back For More on Season Two

    Early on a Monday evening during New York Fashion Week, Jessel Taank breezed into the Sabyasachi boutique in the West Village, passing a life-size elephant sculpture near the sidewalk. But the “Real Housewives of New York City” star couldn’t quite say what it was doing there.“Good question,” she said with a laugh. “There’s apparently a great elephant migration that I wasn’t aware happens this time of year, and Sabyasachi is celebrating that tonight.”In fact, The Great Elephant Migration is a touring art installation featuring a herd of 100 faux pachyderms, handcrafted in Tamil Nadu from a dried invasive shrub. (Actual Indian elephant migration in India happens year-round.)Such obliviousness to details seems on brand for Ms. Taank, 41. After all, who could forget when she called TriBeCa “up and coming” on the last season of the “Real Housewives of New York City”?Ms. Taank with an art installation outside the Sabyaschi fashion week party she attended on a recent Monday night. Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesBut when she commits these faux pas, she does so with a disarming smile, one that has won over prickly fans. By the end of the show’s 14th season — and the first of the cast reboot — it was clear that she had received the villain edit, criticized for what came off as willful ignorance and bratty behavior. But she had also found a fan base so ardent that, according to Rolling Stone, its members call themselves “Taank Tops.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Late Night Roasts New York Mayor Eric Adams Over His Indictment

    Jimmy Fallon joked that it’s “always fun when the city mimics the exact plot of a Batman movie.”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.You Never Forget Your FirstNew York City Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted on five federal charges of bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations.“Yeah, it’s always fun when the city mimics the exact plot of a Batman movie,” Jimmy Fallon said on Thursday.“Yep, Adams is the first sitting mayor of New York City to be indicted. It’s shocking. When Rudy Giuliani heard that, he was, like, ‘That can’t be right.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Well, it turns out Eric Adams was right — crime is way up in New York City.” — SETH MEYERS“Imagine having to call Rudy to ask, ‘You never got indicted as mayor — what’s your secret?’” — SETH MEYERS“I’ll bet he’s really regretting holding that press conference with a trash can full of shredded evidence.” — SETH MEYERS“Can someone check if there’s bottle service at Rikers?” — DESI LYDICThe Punchiest Punchlines (More Eric Adams Edition)“New York Mayor Eric Adams was indicted yesterday on federal criminal charges, and that distant laughter you hear is coming from every rat in New York City: ‘[imitating rat] You thought you was gonna take us out? Now what, wise guy?’” — SETH MEYERS“Fellow Democrats are calling on him to resign, whereas Republicans are urging him to run for governor of North Carolina.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That’s right, Eric Adams was indicted yesterday on federal criminal charges. Oh, please let his little robot cop do the arrest. It’ll be like when Allison Williams realized she shouldn’t have built M3gan.” — SETH MEYERS“Now, to be fair, Adams is, of course, innocent until proven guilty — although it would be a lot easier to believe he wasn’t doing crimes if he didn’t dress like a gangster from ‘Guys & Dolls.’” — DESI LYDIC“It’s a sad day in New York City when foreign nations are bribing the mayor to rush permits. That is the mob’s job, OK? Those should be American bribes!” — DESI LYDICThe Bits Worth WatchingStephen Colbert harmonized with the country singer Chris Stapleton on Thursday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This Out“We really did consider each other brother and sister, even though I might have had a small crush on her as well, which was weird,” John Francis Daley said of his relationship with Linda Cardellini.Chris Haston/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal, via Getty ImagesPaul Feig, Judd Apatow, and several cast and crew members reflect on the sleeper hit status of “Freaks and Geeks” as the show celebrates its 25th anniversary. More

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    The Stage Combat Is Verbal in These Off Broadway Plays

    Belarus Free Theater’s “KS6: Small Forward” and three other shows are reminders that there are many ways to portray conflicts and confrontations onstage.When feeling cornered by real-world drama, I catch myself thinking that theater should stand aside from time and space, like a self-contained capsule of pure art. But a recent tour of Off and Off Off Broadway offerings is a bracing reminder of how exhilarating a show can be when it connects one person — onstage, in the audience — with the world.Here are four plays around New York that are small (in scale and budget, not heart or ambition) and tackle political issues in imaginative ways.‘KS6: Small Forward’This is a show by the defiantly activist Belarus Free Theater, whose artistic directors, Natalia Kaliada and Nicolai Khalezin, fled their homeland’s dictatorship in 2011, so naturally dissension and discord form a crucial part of the story.In “KS6: Small Forward,” through Oct. 13 at La MaMa, the retired professional basketball player Katsiaryna Snytsina looks back on her path from a child in a then-Soviet Republic to the hardwood courts of Europe. Kaliada and Khalezin’s staging includes plenty of video footage of Snytsina in action, particularly of her last team, the London Lions, triumphing in a European final just a few months ago. Khalezin’s scenic design is delineated by a three-point semicircle and a basket used for a good-natured, mid-show shooting competition.Speaking in English, the lanky Snytsina, who is not a polished actor but has effortless charisma, describes growing up in a sports system based on bullying, living out of a suitcase and coming out as a lesbian (“my Instagram is considered extremist material by the Belarusian regime”). She also talks about what the violent repression of the pro-democracy protests of 2020 in Minsk meant to someone who had never voted — the episode is effectively staged with a basketball spurting out blood as it’s being pulverized.The one time Snytsina, who now lives in London, verbalizes thoughts that might occur to some American viewers is when she brings up ballot results: “The Belarusian dictatorship is over 30 years old,” she says. “Just imagine if you vote Trump in, and he falsifies the next 30 years of elections. What will happen? Just imagine that!”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘The Queen of the Villains’ Is a Complex Japanese Wrestling Drama

    The five-part Netflix series tells the story of a female wrestler in the 1980s who might have gone a little too deep into character.Yuriyan Retriever stars as Dump Matsumoto in “The Queen of the Villains.”NetflixDump Matsumoto was a reviled — and thus beloved — heel in the All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling league in the 1980s. “The Queen of the Villains” (on Netflix, in Japanese with subtitles, or dubbed) is a colorful five-part scripted drama based loosely on her young life and early career, and it traces both her rise and the increasing popularity of women’s pro wrestling in Japan at the time.The show lands more as a boppy superhero origin story than as an earnest biopic: It is at times bright and exaggerated, a tidy tale about messy people and an absolute bonanza of retro tracksuits. Yuriyan Retriever stars as Dump, though for much of the show she is simply Kaoru, a young woman with nowhere to put all her anger and ambition. Her father is an abusive drunk who drifts in and out of her life, stealing from her mother and belittling her and her younger sister. As a tween, she learns that her father has a secret other family — including another daughter also named Kaoru. It’s enough to make a good girl go bad.Our Kaoru falls in love with wrestling, with being encouraged to be strong, tough and violent. A grim determination to simply keep going is as powerful as any suplex, and the ring is one of few places where being a larger woman is an asset.But it isn’t always easy for Kaoru to keep track of what’s real and what’s just for show, and as she dissolves into her Dump persona, some other wrestlers recoil. It’s all a fun sisterhood until Dump brings a chain into the ring and starts choking people. And few friendships survive repeated stabbings in the scalp with a fork.“Queen” itself reflects Dump’s ambiguous realities. We’re never sure how cranked up the artifice of it all is, how much of a match is choreographed, the degree to which the wrestlers agree on what is fake. Dump wrestles in a few “hair matches,” in which the winner cuts the loser’s hair, but she also holds a colleague down and shaves her hair outside the ring, at their dorm. Inept, indifferent management leaves the wrestlers to establish standards on their own. But they don’t always agree on what’s safe and acceptable, or on whose star-making moves should get priority.Appropriately for a show about pro wrestling, “Queen” feels both illicit and wholesome. Retriever’s performance captures Kaoru’s innocence and ferocity — the turmoil of being proud of and afraid of what’s inside you. More

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    ‘The Rings of Power’ Season 2, Episode 7 Recap: ‘Light Endures’

    Something is wrong with the candles in Celebrimbor’s workshop. Things are even worse outside.Season 2, Episode 7: ‘Doomed to Die’At the start of this “Rings of Power” season, Sauron — still in his Halbrand form — allowed himself to be captured in Mordor so that he could manipulate Adar into marching his orc armies toward Eregion. Sauron then arrived in Eregion well ahead of the orcs, transformed into Annatar and began manipulating Celebrimbor into forging rings for dwarfs and men, tainted with Sauron’s corrupting influence.This has been Sauron’s big plan in Season 2; and in the penultimate episode, it’s all starting to come to fruition. Throughout this episode, a battle rages outside Eregion, while inside Annatar pushes Celebrimbor to complete the rings — at the cost of the elf-lord’s reputation and sanity. Sauron is getting one step closer to his ultimate goal: total control of Middle-earth and what he promises will be “a perfect and lasting peace,” very different from the cruel rule of Morgoth.But does he actually believe his own pitch? Or is he more like some politicians, promising his future constituents whatever he has to in order to acquire enough power to never have to listen to them again? These are not idle questions. Whether Season 2 ends in hope or hopelessness will depend largely on whether Sauron can win enough small victories to tip the balance in his favor, forever.These are the stakes in an eventful and action-packed Episode 7. Here are four takeaways and observations:Celebrimbor sees the light … and then the darkAt the end of last week’s episode, we saw how Annatar had cast a spell to hide from Celebrimbor the reality of what Adar’s armies were doing to Eregion. This week, in a few remarkable scenes — notably and disturbingly quieter than the combat throughout the rest of the episode — we see more of how this illusion looks from Celebrimbor’s perspective as he works on the next set of rings, on what appears to be a lovely day.But there are glitches in the mirage. Celebrimbor keeps seeing the same mouse scurrying in the same way across the same stretch of floor. The gems in his hammer come and go. His candles never burn all the way down. Sometimes he catches a reflection of himself that shows how haggard he actually looks.Finally, Celebrimbor confronts Annatar and accuses of him of malicious trickery, howling, “No emissary of the Valar would do this!” He smashes a window, revealing the true horrors happening outside. But it’s too late. Annatar has effectively seized control of Eregion, having convinced the elves that Celebrimbor has become dangerously delusional. The city is already in ruins. And the worst is yet to come.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    What to See on the West End This Fall

    Some recommendations for visitors and residents who want to get the most from the city’s varied theater scene.This fall’s London theater season promises star vehicles aplenty alongside robust reimaginings of the classics and even a notable song or two. What follows is just a sampling of the city’s abundance of new openings, anticipated revivals and Off West End discoveries — something to keep everyone cozy as the nights draw in.Time-honored classicsBen Whishaw, left, and Lucian Msamati in “Waiting for Godot.”Marc BrennerWaiting For GodotSamuel Beckett’s epoch-defining tragicomedy returns with some frequency to London stages. But I’ve rarely seen it better served than by the dream double-act of Ben Whishaw and Lucian Msamati as those engaging existentialists, Vladimir and Estragon, alongside the no less memorable Jonathan Slinger and Tom Edden as the itinerant Pozzo and Lucky. The director James Macdonald brings the same gift for textual illumination to the production that has distinguished his career over several decades. Runs through Dec. 14 at the Theater Royal, Haymarket.Roots / Look Back in AngerThe Almeida Theater is reviving two English classics, running concurrently, whose kitchen-sink realism ushered in a more urgent, socially conscious school of theater in the 1950s. Billed as the “Angry and Young” season, Arnold Wesker’s “Roots” and John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger” both feature outspoken firebrands trying to make sense of the world. The two productions share a single cast, led by Billy Howle and Morfydd Clark; Diyan Zora and Atri Banerjee direct. Both shows run through Nov. 23 at the Almeida Theater.A scene from “Roots” at the Almeida Theater.Marc Brenner More

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    When the Devoted Wife Becomes a Winning Brand

    “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” the new Hulu reality show, centers on a clique of influencers in Provo, Utah. In their community, they are steered at young ages into marriages and pregnancies. But on TikTok, they converge into a #MomTok squad, executing coordinated dances in crop tops amid beige McMansions as they rack up followers and brand deals. Now they’ve been upgraded to reality television stars, a cast of frenemies who act out mean-girl scenes and hunt for loopholes in the strict codes of their church.It’s significant that the show identifies these women first as wives, not as influencers. They are professional content creators and, in some cases, family breadwinners. It is their social media popularity that landed them the show, not their unexceptional husbands. Several cast members are actually divorced.The “Mormon Wives” join an extended wife universe — see also: Bravo’s chaotic “Real Housewives” and Instagram’s ethereal tradwives — where the term “wife” no longer strictly refers to a woman’s marital status. “Wife” is a brand. In “Mormon Wives,” it suggests a woman whose public identity is defined by her relationship to the home. A woman whose worth is still measured by her proximity to the patriarchy, even as she claims that her profitable TikTok presence challenges it.These wife-themed shows and tradwife social-media accounts might qualify as simple brain-bleaching distractions, were they not proliferating during this particular presidential election season. The Trump campaign and some of its allies have repeatedly suggested that a woman’s domestic contributions are her highest calling — so much so that they have cast motherhood as a prerequisite for her participation in work outside the home. If a woman hopes to claim a role in public life, she must play the wife and mother everywhere that she goes.In comments from three years ago that resurfaced recently, Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, complained of “childless cat ladies” in business and politics, and railed against the “leaders of the left,” like the American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, whom he called “people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children.” (Like Kamala Harris, Weingarten is a stepmother.) Last week, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas appeared alongside Donald J. Trump and suggested that because Harris has not birthed children, she has acquired a character defect unbecoming of a leader: “My kids keep me humble,” Sanders said. “Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.”Meanwhile, since Elon Musk took over Twitter, rebranded it X and transformed it into what Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic has called “a right-wing echo chamber,” my feed has featured commentary about how infant formula is poison, day care causes mental illness and children ought to be home schooled or “unschooled” by devoted mothers. Instagram and TikTok supply montages of fantasy housewives: white women in pastoral settings, wearing aprons and kerchiefs, kissing their husbands, rubbing their baby bumps and proselytizing about the benefits of beef tallow.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More