Eliana Willis

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    Fehinti Balogun's Call to Action Unfolds Onstage at COP26

    A filmed version of Fehinti Balogun’s play about his awakening to climate issues is being shown at the COP26 summit. He is among the theater artists trying to make a difference through their work.The actor Fehinti Balogun knows that theater can mobilize people toward climate action, because that’s what it did for him.Back in 2017, while preparing for a role in “Myth,” a climate parable, he began reading books about climate change and became alarmed by the unusually warm summer he was experiencing in England. The play itself called for him and the other actors to repeatedly run through the same mundane lines, to the point of absurdity, as their environment ruptured terrifyingly around them — the walls streaking with oil, the stove catching fire, the freezer oozing water.The whole experience changed his life, Balogun said. Suddenly, nothing seemed more important than addressing the global crisis. Not even landing the lead in a West End production (a long-coveted dream) of “The Importance of Being Earnest.” His growing anxiety made him feel as if he were living a real-world version of “Myth” in which society kept repeating the same old script even as the planet descended into chaos.“Knowing all that I did made me angry at the world for not doing anything,” the 26-year-old Balogun (“Dune,” “I May Destroy You”) said in a phone interview. “I didn’t get how we weren’t revolting.”That sense of urgency is what he said he hopes to pass along to audiences in “Can I Live?,” a new play that he wrote, stars in and created with the theater company Complicité. A filmed version of the piece, which also features supporting actors and musicians and was originally conceived as a live show, was screened Monday as part of COP26, the United Nations climate meeting in Glasgow. The resulting work is as innovative as any piece of theater to emerge during the Covid-19 era: Initially it appears to be just an intimate Zoom session with Balogun but evolves into an explosive mix of spoken word, animation, hip-hop and dialogue.Balogun in “Can I Live?,” which he conceived and wrote. The play, a mix of spoken word, animation, hip-hop and dialogue, can be streamed online through Nov. 12.David HewittThe hourlong production, which the Barbican Center has made available for streaming on its website through Nov. 12, combines scientific facts about how the greenhouse effect works with the story of Balogun’s own journey into the climate movement. It also focuses on the gap between the largely white mainstream environmental groups he joined, and the experiences of his primarily Black friends and family.Throughout the show, Balogun fields phone calls from family members about issues seemingly unrelated to the central thrust of the play, asking him when he’s going to get married or why he left a bag in the hallway at home. Though at first it seems as if they are interrupting Balogun’s primary narrative about “emissions, emissions, emissions,” as he sings at one point, their interjections hammer home one of his central ideas: If the movement isn’t willing to prioritize someone like his Nigerian grandma, it’s missing the point. Climate action, in other words, is for everyday people with everyday concerns.“The goal is to make grass-roots activism accessible, and to represent people of color and working-class people,” he said. To that end, he interweaves his own story with that of the Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who campaigned against destructive oil extraction on behalf of his Ogoni people. “So often we don’t talk about the global South,” Balogun said. “We don’t talk about the communities who’ve been leading this fight for years.”Though Balogun is the only theater artist on the official COP26 schedule, he is certainly not the first playwright to grapple with climate themes. Climate Change Theater Action, an initiative of the nonprofit the Arctic Cycle, was created to encourage theater-making that might draw greater attention to COP21, the U.N. climate meeting in 2015 that resulted in the landmark Paris Agreement. (The theater group has never been officially affiliated with any of the annual COP meetings.)Since its inception, the group has produced 200 works that have been performed for 40,000 people in 30 countries, said its co-founder, Chantal Bilodeau. The organization commissions plays with environmental themes, paying the writers and then providing the scripts free to theater companies, schools or any other groups that want to stage readings or productions.The first year, Bilodeau said, they ended up with a “whole lot of depressing plays.” Now they try to steer playwrights away from dystopia and toward visions of a livable future, and encourage those staging the works to pair them with programming that helps audiences get a deeper understanding of the issues.Superhero Clubhouse’s after-school program, Big Green Theater, helps produce works focusing on climate issues. One such piece, “The Mystical Jungle and Luminescence City,” being filmed above, was written by fifth-grade students in Queens and is now on YouTube.Rachel Denise AprilLanxing Fu, co-director of the nonprofit Superhero Clubhouse in New York City, spends part of her time focused on those who will be most affected by a hotter planet: the next generation. Through Superhero Clubhouse’s after-school program Big Green Theater, run in collaboration with the Bushwick Starr and the Astoria Performing Arts Center, public elementary school students in Brooklyn and Queens are taught about climate issues and write plays in response to what they’re learning.Over a decade after the program began, Fu said that what is most striking about the students’ plays is how instinctively the young writers understand a basic truth about climate that evades a lot of adults: to find long-term solutions, we’ll need to work together.“A huge element of climate resilience is in the community we build and how we come together,” she said. “That’s always really present in their stories; it’s often part of the way that something gets resolved.”The Queens-based playwright and TV writer Dorothy Fortenberry also spends plenty of time thinking about children’s roles in the movement. Her play “The Lotus Paradox,” which will have its world premiere in January at the Warehouse Theater in Greenville, S.C., asks, What happens when children are constantly receiving the message that it’s their job to save the world? Like much of Fortenberry’s work in TV (she’s a writer on “The Handmaid’s Tale”), “The Lotus Paradox” includes the subject of climate change without making it the singular focus of the story.From left, the actors DeBryant Johnson, Jason D. Johnson and Dayanari Umana during a workshop for “The Lotus Paradox,” which debuts in January at the Warehouse Theater in Greenville, S.C.Andrew Huang“If you’re making a story about anything, in any place, and you don’t have climate change in it, that’s a science-fiction story,” she said. “You have made a choice to make the story less realistic than it would have been otherwise.”That’s a sentiment also shared by Anaïs Mitchell, the musician and writer of the musical “Hadestown,” which reopened on Broadway in September. In her retelling of Greek mythology, Hades is portrayed in song as a greedy “king of oil and coal” who fuels his industrialized hell of an underworld with the “fossils of the dead.” Aboveground, the lead characters, Orpheus and Eurydice, endure food scarcity and brutal weather that’s “either blazing hot or freezing cold,” a framing that was inspired by headlines about climate refugees.It’s worth intentionally wrestling with climate narratives in the theater, not just because they make plays more believable, Mitchell said, but also because theater might just be one of best tools for handling such themes. Like Orpheus trying to put things right with a song that shows “how the world could be, in spite of the way that it is,” Mitchell sees theater as a powerful tool for helping us imagine our way into a better future.“Theater is capable of opening our hearts and our eyes to an alternate reality than the one we’re living in,” she said.That’s why Balogun — though he remarks more than once in “Can I Live?” that he’s “not a scientist” — said he believes he has just as crucial a role to play as any climatologist. “Scientists are begging for artists and theater makers to help deliver this message,” he said. “And there’s a need for it now more than ever.” More

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    Why 'American Crime Story: Impeachment' Won't Stream Until Next Year

    There was a lot of advance hype for the FX series “American Crime Story: Impeachment.” But it won’t be available on any major streaming platform for another 10 months, and that’s a problem in 2021.It was one of the most dramatic episodes of the season. Monica Lewinsky, the heroine of “American Crime Story: Impeachment,” strikes an immunity deal with federal prosecutors, and President Bill Clinton admits to having had an affair to a grand jury and the nation as a whole. The episode also brought Hillary Clinton, portrayed by Edie Falco, to center stage for the first time.The only thing missing was a big viewing audience.“American Crime Story: Impeachment,” a series that attracted lots of media coverage before its September premiere, airs on the FX cable network Tuesdays at 10 p.m. Last week’s episode ranked 15th in the ratings for cable shows that day, tied with ESPN’s “Around the Horn” and MTV’s “Teen Mom.”Produced by Ryan Murphy, “American Crime Story: Impeachment” has a lot going for it, including an A-list cast (Clive Owen, Sarah Paulson, Beanie Feldstein, Ms. Falco) and the sumptuous production touches that Mr. Murphy’s fans have come to expect of his shows.Edie Falco as Hillary Clinton on the FX show “American Crime Story: Impeachment.” An A-list cast has not meant big ratings.Kurt Iswarienko/FX The last two seasons of the anthology series, which tackles a new subject each time out, won Emmys for best limited series. And although Variety criticized the current installment as an “overwrought rehash,” the reviews overall were “generally favorable,” according to the website Metacritic.So why hasn’t the show landed with viewers in a big way? Why isn’t it a regular part of Twitter’s top trending topics? The answer lies in the fact that “American Crime Story: Impeachment” is not available on any major streaming platform and won’t be for another 10 months.The same was true for the initial rollouts of the previous seasons. But millions of viewers have cut the cord since then, ditching cable for some combination of Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, AppleTV+ and other services.Fans of “American Crime Story: Impeachment” who miss an episode can still stream it, but only if they are armed with their cable-subscription user names and passwords. And in 2021, a show that’s not easy to stream risks becoming almost invisible.The reason for its absence from the big streamers has to do with a deal worked out in 2016 by FX’s parent at the time, 21st Century Fox. For an undisclosed sum, the company sold the streaming rights to all editions of “American Crime Story” to Netflix. Both sides agreed that the series would be available exclusively on FX for roughly a year. From then on, Netflix would make it available to its subscribers.The deal seemed reasonable to 21st Century Fox in 2016. Back then, cable was still a robust business, and viewers were still in the habit of watching a program at a certain time on a certain night of the week.The first season of “American Crime Story,” about the O.J. Simpson case, premiered early in 2016 and was a big hit, although it was not available on any major streaming platform. At the time, video-on-demand technology was still emerging, and Netflix had 80 million subscribers, meaning it had less of a reach than FX, which was then available in 92 million households.“The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” with Cuba Gooding, Jr. as O.J. Simpson, came out in 2016, when FX had reached more households than Netflix.Ray Mickshaw/FXThe pandemic accelerated the trend of viewers dropping cable subscriptions in favor of the watch-when-you-want experience of streaming. Netflix now has 213 million subscribers, and FX is available in 76 million homes.Viewers accustomed to the largely commercial-free experience of streaming would have had a flashback to the days of traditional TV while watching the most recent episode of “American Crime Story: Impeachment” on Tuesday night. The roughly 80-minute show included five commercial breaks that took up 18 minutes and 25 seconds. A sixth commercial break, three minutes long, came between the final scene and the preview of the next week’s episode.Scripted cable shows are still very much a part of the cultural conversation — as long as they’re streaming. All of HBO’s scripted shows, a lineup that includes “Succession,” “White Lotus” and “Mare of Easttown,” appear weekly on the HBO channel itself while also streaming on HBO Max. HBO said that digital viewing for the third season premiere of “Succession” was “up 214 percent from last season’s premiere,” which came out in 2019.FX sends most of its new series to a streaming portal, FX on Hulu, which like FX itself, is now owned by the Walt Disney Company. Because of the 2016 deal, “American Crime Story: Impeachment” is not among the shows that go to Hulu.Before the show’s premiere, John Landgraf, FX’s chairman, conceded that the world had changed substantially in the years since the Netflix deal, telling The Hollywood Reporter he could “not remember the last time that there was a really water-cooler show that was scripted on a linear cable channel.”“I just don’t know whether the pipes are still there to galvanize people’s attention,” he continued. “But we’re going to find out.”Mr. Landgraf and FX declined to comment for this article.Despite the lack of buzz, “American Crime Story: Impeachment” still gets weekly write-ups in Vanity Fair and Vulture. The series also has the eighth highest ratings of any scripted show on cable this year. The 2016 installment, about O.J. Simpson, ranked fifth, and the 2018 version, centered on the murder of the fashion mogul Gianni Versace, was also eighth.The audience figures tell a different story, though. “American Crime Story: Impeachment” draws an average audience of 571,000 viewers among adults under the age of 50, according to Nielsen’s delayed viewing data. “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” had more than double that audience, with 1.2 million, and the O.J. Simpson season had an average of 3.9 million viewers.By the time of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” with Edgar Ramirez as Gianni Versace, left, and Penelope Cruz as Donatella Versace, cable was losing viewers to streaming.Ray Mickshaw/FX, via Associated PressIn 2016, the No. 1 rated scripted cable series, AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” averaged 11.3 million viewers among adults under the age of 50, according to Nielsen’s delayed viewing data. By 2018, “The Walking Dead” viewership average had fallen to 5.3 million. This year its adult audience average is 1.3 million — and it still ranks No. 1.Why did 21st Century Fox executives think so highly of the arrangement they had struck with Netflix deal five years ago? At the time, Mr. Landgraf called it a “phenomenal deal from a financial standpoint.” James Murdoch, then 21st Century Fox’s chief executive, said it was “a great deal for the company and for shareholders.”Never mind that many television executives, even then, were already concerned that the sales of their back libraries to Netflix might backfire. The more Netflix had to offer its subscribers, the easier it was for it to attract new subscribers. That, in turn, enabled it to spend billions on original series and big-time talent.In 2018, Netflix signed one of the most successful producers in cable — Mr. Murphy — to a contract worth $300 million. Under the deal’s terms, he was allowed to keep making the series he had already started at FX and Fox. After that, his new shows would belong to Netflix.FX will broadcast the ninth episode of “American Crime Story: Impeachment” on Tuesday and the season finale Nov. 9. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Oratorio’ and ‘Dexter: New Blood’

    Martin Scorsese hosts an hourlong documentary on PBS. And the serial-killer drama “Dexter” returns to Showtime (with a new subtitle).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, Nov. 1-7. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT 11:35 p.m. on CBS. The singer-songwriter David Byrne, currently on Broadway with his “American Utopia,” will take advantage of a show-less night by popping over to the Ed Sullivan Theater on Monday to perform on Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show.” Huma Abedin, a former aide to Hillary Clinton who is releasing a memoir this week, is also slated to appear.TuesdayMURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (2017) 5:15 p.m. on FXM. The actor and filmmaker Kenneth Branagh is set to return to theaters next week with “Belfast,” a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age movie. Branagh was behind the camera for “Belfast,” which he wrote and directed. But he was on both sides of the lens — directing and acting — for this Agatha Christie adaptation, in which he plays the fictional Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. He’s in good company: The cast also includes Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench and Michelle Pfeiffer, among others. Christie fans should have fun seeing the distinguished cast act out the old mystery, though critical reception of the film was mixed. In truth, you might be better off sticking with the book. (If you’re worried about hurting Branagh’s feelings by skipping his movie, you’re in luck: He recorded a “Murder on the Orient Express” audiobook, too.)Shiloh Fernandez and Penn Badgley in “The Birthday Cake.”Screen MediaTHE BIRTHDAY CAKE (2021) 9 p.m. on Starz. Val Kilmer plays a mob boss in this modern-day Mafia drama, alongside a roster of other familiar faces including Ewan McGregor, Lorraine Bracco and Paul Sorvino. All portray characters in the orbit of a young man, Gio (Shiloh Fernandez). The film focuses on one revelatory night in Gio’s life, during which he learns truths about his father’s death 10 years earlier — and gets pulled into a violent life he’d tried to avoid. The movie is “brash, a little hokey and endearingly melodramatic,” Jeannette Catsoulis said in her review for The New York Times. “It’s not the fairly predictable tonal arc that makes this first feature from Jimmy Giannopoulos click,” she wrote, “it’s the deftness with which he weaves multiple threads of unease into a single strand of throttling tension.”WednesdayA JOHN HUSTON DOUBLE FEATURE 8 p.m. on TCM. Here’s a chance to relive John Huston’s early-1940s filmmaking emergence: At 8, TCM will air Huston’s directorial debut, the noir classic THE MALTESE FALCON (1941). Then, at 10, the network will show ACROSS THE PACIFIC (1942), Huston’s third feature, which transplanted three stars from “The Maltese Falcon” — Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor and Sydney Greenstreet — into a World War II spy story, and helped cement Huston’s reputation as an important Hollywood filmmaker. “This time it is certain,” Bosley Crowther wrote in his 1942 review for The Times, “Alfred Hitchcock, Carol Reed and all other directors who have hit the top flight with melodramas will have to make space for John Huston.”ThursdayTHE QUEEN FAMILY SINGALONG 8 p.m. on ABC. As the gentlemen of “Wayne’s World” know well, few bands are as ready-made for over-the-top singalongs than Queen. Seize the opportunity with this hourlong special, in which pop acts including Adam Lambert, Fall Out Boy and Pentatonix cover Queen songs. The actor Darren Criss hosts..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}FridayTHE ORATORIO: A DOCUMENTARY WITH MARTIN SCORSESE 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). When this new, hourlong special begins, it greets viewers with close-up shots of the historic Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral in NoLIta. The camera takes in the holy building’s interior, tilting up stained glass and panning across lit candles, finally settling on a former altar boy, now a gray-haired man, ambling along the cathedral’s aisles. The man is Martin Scorsese. And he’s there to geek out, for Scorsese has come to discuss a landmark performance at the cathedral: A one-off show in 1826 that brought Italian opera to New York. The documentary, which also features interviews with experts, including the musicologist Francesco Zimei, looks at the 1826 performance as a piece of New York’s foundation as an arts hub, and an example of how the city’s immigrants were central to the cementing of its identity. The documentary will be followed, at 10 p.m., by DA PONTE’S ORATORIO: A CONCERT FOR NEW YORK, a program built around footage of a 2018 performance by the Italian opera company Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, which recreated the 1826 show in the present-day cathedral.SaturdayRobin Wright in “Land.”Daniel Power/Focus FeaturesLAND (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. Robin Wright plays a grieving woman who goes into the wild in this sweeping drama, which is also Wright’s feature directorial debut. After experiencing a tragedy, Wright’s character, a lawyer named Edee, buys a cabin in a secluded slice of Rocky Mountain wilderness. She drives there, then she ditches the car. Edee is determined to survive solo, or maybe simply to be alone in nature — whether she actually wants to survive isn’t clear. That is, at least, until a near-death experience causes her to cross paths with a hunter, Miguel (Demián Bichir), with whom she forms a mutually lifesaving bond. “Wright’s movie is ambitious (that location! that weather!), but not grandiose,” Glenn Kenny wrote in his review for The Times. “Its storytelling economy helps make it credible and eventually moving.”SundayJulia Jones and Michael C. Hall in “Dexter: New Blood.”Seacia Pavao/ShowtimeDEXTER: NEW BLOOD 9 p.m. on Showtime. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, or at least makes you grow a beard and buy some flannel shirts. The finale of the original “Dexter” series, which ended in 2013, wrapped up with its titular character, a mild-mannered serial killer played by Michael C. Hall, getting caught in a lethal-looking storm. It didn’t leave any ambiguity about whether he survived, though: The final moments flashed forward to Dexter, alive, having escaped from the authorities in Miami to start a new life in the Pacific Northwest. This continuation of the story, which carries the subtitle “New Blood,” moves the action forward a decade and to a fictional town in upstate New York, where Dexter works to control his violent urges under an assumed identity. When the show debuted in 2006, Hall discussed in an interview with The Times the challenges of approaching Dexter as an actor. “How do you bring your full human self to someone who at least claims to be without the capacity for human emotions?” Hall asked. “It’s tricky.” One wonders, 15 years later, whether that challenge has gotten easier or harder with practice. More

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    ‘Succession’ Season 3, Episode 3: Head Spaces and Hullabaloo

    There was plenty of petty Roy cruelty to go around in this week’s brutal episode.Season 3, Episode 3: ‘The Disruption’“Succession” is often a “fun” show, where all the sniping and the slip-ups of the rich and the arrogant generates some incredibly entertaining schadenfreude. But any given episode — like this week’s “The Disruption” — can be brutal, as the characters we hate to love fall hard.The problem with the Roy family right now is that as far as they’re concerned, coming out ahead in their epic public squabble matters more than saving their company or avoiding federal prosecution. Yet just because they’re preoccupied with petty power games doesn’t mean the F.B.I. is going to wait for them to finish clobbering each other.This is exactly what Kendall’s attorney Lisa Arthur warned him about last week as he bopped around his ex-wife’s apartment, feverishly pitching a coup to his siblings. Lisa has been trying to help the government, to keep her client out of jail. Meanwhile, it turns out that Kendall has been doing exactly what Logan always assumed he was doing: using the Brightstar cruise line scandal as “a play,” to outwit his father and to reinvent himself as a progressive hero.So everything inevitably implodes this week, not just for Kendall, but for his father and for Siobhan — and in a roundabout and sickeningly sad way, for Roman. The first third of this episode is a bit of a romp, as the Roys rapidly punch and counterpunch. And then the walls start closing in.First: the not-so-playful sparring, which keeps getting rougher by the minute. At Waystar, Logan and his loyalists are annoyed at Kendall for an interview where he made noises about “planting a flag” within the company, while saying of his family, “I’m just really happy in my head space and I hope they’re happy in theirs.” Roman mocks this mercilessly around the office, tossing around the term “head space” with glee. (Imitating his brother, Roman adds, “I love my kids, uh, Blur Face and Who Cares.”)Shiv, though, thinks it’s time for a more aggressive public response to Kendall, whose accusations and self-aggrandizing declarations are dominating the business news. She starts by attending the annual gala benefit for the Committee for the Protection and Welfare of Journalists, where she waves away an ATN hater by reminding him her dad’s business has kept a lot of local newspapers alive. She’s defending Logan the only way she knows how: through the wishy-washy talking points she can half-convince herself she believes.Then Shiv runs into Kendall; and it’s here where this episode starts to take a turn. He offers a meek quasi-apology for his misogynistic rant during their last meeting. (“I maybe threw a couple of ugly rocks.”) But when she tries to get him to promise he won’t cause an ugly scene by coming into the Waystar offices, he smirks. Seeing his sister doing the kind of thankless public-facing hack work that used to be his job prompts him to say, earnestly, “Look at this. It’s you now. I’m sorry for you.”Worse than earning her brother’s pity, Shiv may have given him an idea. Kendall does in fact decide, almost on a whim, to show up at the Waystar building, hoping to generate some more positive publicity through an open act of rebellion. The whole sequence where Kendall comes in, just before an employee “town hall” Shiv has organized, is incredibly tense, as no one is quite sure what legal right they have to remove him.This is something that pops up a lot in this episode: the proper chain of command in this new reality where Logan is pretending, for legal and PR reasons, that he’s no longer in charge. Can Gerri swing a deal with the Israelis without Logan’s approval? Does Waystar’s security have to follow Logan’s orders when Kendall — still technically an employee and a shareholder — tries to pass through? Can the staff refuse to admit representatives of the court bearing subpoenas? Can Logan threaten his old buddy, the President of the United States, with bad ATN coverage if the Department of Justice doesn’t back off?This question of authority extends to what Logan asks of his children. He gets annoyed that Shiv would rather take on the job of publicly attacking Kendall than defending her father. The “I wuv my Daddy” gig falls to a reluctant Roman, who agrees to do an interview with ATN Business but then nixes nearly every question about his childhood. (Roman finally makes up a story about going fly fishing in Montana with his pop, then later admits his genuinely happy childhood memory actually happened with Connor.) Logan would rather Shiv play the sweetie-pie and his son be the assassin, but Roman says attacking Kendall “makes me feel unwell.” After all, his brother was more of a father figure to him than his actual father — who, in a painful scene, insinuates that Roman is a weak-willed worm.Sarah Snook in “Succession.”Macall B. Polay/HBOAs for why Shiv can’t bring herself to hail her dad, this is addressed in another remarkable moment, where she tries to get Logan to admit to what actually happened at Brightstar. All he will say is that no one will ever find any evidence that he knew anything about “all of this hullabaloo” — and that he was just trying to shield the family from harm.I’ve written before about how Kendall uses nonsense biz-speak to express how he’s really feeling, but it’s worth taking a moment to consider how Logan uses softening or dehumanizing words — like “hullabaloo” — to insulate himself from criticism. He refers to the women hurt in the Brightstar scandal as “Moaning Minnies.” And he shrugs off the cover-up, saying, “Maybe there were some salty moves.”Logan says this after Shiv asks, “Can we talk?,” which is her code for, “Can we drop the act for a second?” Alas, she’s never brave enough to demand total honesty. One of her pet phrases is “Is there a world where ___?” (fill in the blank with some variation on “be honest”), which is her tacit way of acknowledging that no, there is not.All this dancing around the subject ultimately leads the Roys to skip off the edge of a cliff. Kendall thinks he’s controlling the narrative, with his offers to “open the kimono” to business reporters and his willingness to let himself be roasted in person at the late-night TV comedy show “The Disruption with Sophie Iwobi.” (“This is being in the conversation,” he insists, while watching Iwobi skewer him.) And Shiv thinks she can turn things around with her Waystar town hall, where Hugo has tossed aside all the angrier employee comments in favor of what Roman calls “less question-y questions.”But Kendall pulls a cruel stunt during his Waystar visit, arranging it so Nirvana’s “Rape Me” blares through a few scattered speakers while Shiv is talking. She responds by issuing a statement — which Roman refuses to sign — saying the whole family is concerned about Kendall’s drug addiction and mental health issues.And then the F.B.I. arrives. Maybe there was a world where the Roys could’ve avoided what’s about to happen. But it’s not a world where any of them live.Due DiligenceSophie Iwobi is played by the comic Ziwe, who has been a writer and performer on multiple “The Disruption”-like TV shows, including “Desus & Mero” and her own “Ziwe.”The tone-deaf sloganeers in Waystar’s PR department come through again, pitching a series of full-page apology ads with the tag line “We Get It” — a phrase that, as Shiv rightly notes, sounds more exasperated than empathetic.Cousin Greg — or as Tom calls him, the “leggy princeling of ATN” — blows off a work event to hang with Kendall, who he believes is going to buy him an expensive watch. (“I’ve always been self-conscious about my wrists,” Greg confesses.) It turns out Kendall is just hooking his cousin up with a watch-broker and has no intention of paying; but Greg is coaxed into spending 40 grand anyway because he’s told he left his “patina” on the timepiece. (“I don’t have a patina! I shower!”) And then the watch breaks.Tom has his own troubles this week, as he gets legal advice from an old friend who suggests there’s no way he’s not going to see jail time. Accepting the inevitable, he tells Logan he’s willing to sacrifice himself to the feds. Whether he’s being sincere or whether this too is a “play” remains unclear.When Kendall runs into Tom at the Waystar offices, he claps his brother-in-law on the shoulders with both hands — a gesture Tom briefly misinterprets, moving in as though expecting a hug. Whether this moment was scripted or spontaneous, it’s a brilliant illustration of who these guys are.A neat image: As Shiv walks back to her office after the town-hall humiliation, the reflection of New York in the windows as she walks down the hall briefly makes it look like she’s about to step outside and plunge to her to death. More

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    Raging Prince and Simpering King: A Tale of Two Shakespeares

    Livestreamed productions of “Hamlet” and “Macbeth” from London reflect the vital role directors have in redefining these classic characters.I’ve seen Hamlet cry. And pout. And waffle. And jest. And rave. But I haven’t seen Hamlet rage the way Cush Jumbo’s Hamlet does in a new production of Shakespeare’s tragedy at the Young Vic in London. It’s the kind of determinate rage that convincingly powers him through his revenge.Yet this production gets its spark from the politics of having a Black woman in the role, directing her anger at an injustice.What this “Hamlet” — and its fellow Shakespeare tragedy “Macbeth,” which is also onstage in London right now, at the Almeida Theater — reminds us of is the important role that a director can play in molding these central characters who are defined by their resolve, or lack thereof. Their choices may not only render a classic new again, but also make space for contemporary gender and racial politics.These plays, running in person and via livestream — which is how I saw them — show two different approaches to directing Shakespearean tragedies. Greg Hersov’s “Hamlet” has a compelling, well-defined protagonist inhabiting a not-quite polished production; while Yaël Farber’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” is an appealing production with bland lead performances.Farber typically has a strong command of her stages; her productions are often dark, and hung with a polished, ornate melancholy. (Her gracefully haunting take on “Hamlet,” starring an electric Ruth Negga, felt stolen from the dreams of Edgar Allan Poe.) This “Macbeth” is bleak, spare and gritty. (Soutra Gilmour is the set designer.)The play opens with an overturned wheelbarrow full of soldiers’ boots and a man bathing in a bucket of blood. And yet it’s also delicate, with Tom Lane’s cello score (performed by Aoife Burke); and stately, with the three elder Weird Sisters (Diane Fletcher, Maureen Hibbert and Valerie Lilley) dressed in handsome gray suits that David Byrne would envy. (Joanna Scotcher designed the costumes.)Farber takes a political stance in her direction, making the war imagery brutal and heavy-handed. But the largest surprise, and slip-up, in this otherwise charismatically styled and beautifully filmed production is that the central couple, played by James McArdle and Saoirse Ronan, are rather conventional and unremarkably defined.James McArdle and Saoirse Ronan in Yaël Farber’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” at the Almeida Theater in London.Marc BrennerI say central couple, though Macbeth was never the most interesting part of the play; he is ambitious but irresolute. He must be goaded on by Lady Macbeth, one of the most fearsome, emasculating — and fascinating — women in English literature. Though undoubtedly a great performer with a gleam of Hollywood celebrity, Ronan feels miscast in the role. Even as a murderer, Ronan has a jejune, effervescent quality that’s at odds with the base evil of the character.Farber sometimes positions Lady Macbeth as a sexual figure, her body sprawled in bed or on the floor draped in gauzy cloth, and her legs wrapped around Macbeth’s waist in greeting. But Ronan and McArdle lack chemistry, and this Lady Macbeth is also presented as oddly virginal; Ronan, wearing a playful white-blond bob, and mostly white attire, is the brightest image in this gloomy production.This Lady Macbeth could also represent a certain dangerous white female power that comes at the expense of men and women of color; in one scene, Macduff’s wife (Akiya Henry) and children, who are all played by Black actors, are viciously murdered as Lady Macbeth guiltily stands to the side. It’s an overly violent scene, punctuated by Lady Macduff’s jagged screams, that drags on for an excruciatingly long time.As for McArdle, he gives a believably shocked and earnest portrayal of Macbeth, and, later in the production, manages to deliver a rabid version of the murderous Scottish king. But he bumbles through the steps in between. Ultimately, we’re left with a murderous couple that somehow manages to be forgettable.On the other hand, in Hersov’s “Hamlet,” the trappings of the production are less lively: The music and costumes have an early 1990s vibe, though the reason is unclear. The livestream is, impressively, very accessible. You can watch from various camera angles, and captions and British Sign Language are also provided. Still, the video and audio quality leaves more to be desired.Where Hersov does provides a decisive interpretation is in the melancholy prince — and his suicidal lover. This Hamlet is not the desperate, confused young man so many productions present, but a prince empowered by his feelings. Jumbo gives a fiery, vitriolic performance; this Hamlet’s grief passes through a sieve of righteous anger. His wit is barbed with sneers and eye rolls. Even his jokes are delivered with an acerbic bite.Norah Lopez Holden as Ophelia, with Jumbo as Hamlet, in the production that is streaming through Saturday.Helen MurrayThe decision at the heart of the play — “to be or not to be,” that famous meditation on living and dying — seems less of an open question in this production. Jumbo’s prince philosophizes almost for the sport of it; he always seems resolved to what he must do.Ophelia (Norah Lopez Holden), who so often is just a girlfriend tragically lost to hysterics, is here as clear and confident as Jumbo’s Hamlet. In her first scene, she seductively sways her hips while listening to music, and she fantasizes a sexy Latin dance with Hamlet before she’s jolted back to reality. She isn’t a receptacle of Hamlet’s desire, but a young woman with sexual agency and desires of her own. Holden’s Ophelia has attitude, telling off her elder brother for his hypocrisy and firing back at Hamlet when she’s had enough of his gibes and babble.And when she descends into madness, it does not seem like the insanity of a girl who’s heartbroken and grieving; it seems as much an act as Hamlet’s, and her suicide appears to be a rejection of the world she inhabits.For Ophelia to show such agency within the bounds of the character as written is quietly extraordinary. And to see a Black woman reframe Hamlet as confident and righteously enraged is a political take unusual for the play. Hersov’s “Hamlet” remakes its main man from the ground up. After all, what a piece of work is a man — or a Black woman — on a fresh stage.The Tragedy of MacbethThrough Nov. 27 (streaming through Saturday) at the Almeida Theater in London; almeida.co.uk.HamletThrough Nov. 13 (streaming through Saturday) at the Young Vic in London; youngvic.org. More

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    Kristina Wong’s Pandemic Story: Sewing With Her Aunties

    The performance artist ran a mask-making operation during the pandemic. That inspired her new comedy at New York Theater Workshop.Kristina Wong is an in-your-face performer who, until this month, hadn’t performed for an in-person audience since March 2020. The thought of looking into dozens of eyes, not just the little green light on her laptop, made her feel, well, weird.So her stage manager, Katie Ailinger, came up with a plan to ease her back into the rhythms of live performance: She taped stock photos of people’s faces around the rehearsal room at New York Theater Workshop, where in September Wong began to prepare “Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord,” a one-woman show about running a sewing group during the pandemic.“Just turning my head and having a range of motion is a whole thing — and having eye contact again is huge!” Wong, 43, a comedian, performance artist and community activist, said recently during a phone interview from her dressing room. She was about to run through an afternoon technical rehearsal of the 90-minute production, a hybrid of stand-up, lecture and performance art that is scheduled to open Nov. 4.“I feel like I got more done for the world by running a mutual aid group than as an elected official,” Wong said, who is also a member of the Wilshire Center Koreatown Neighborhood Council.Calla Kessler for The New York TimesWhile Wong was stuck at home in Los Angeles, she stayed busy leading the Auntie Sewing Squad, a volunteer group of mostly Asian American women she founded in March 2020 to make face masks for health care workers, farm workers, incarcerated people and others. She recruited 6-year-old children, her 73-year-old mother and others for the operation, which ballooned to more than 800 “Aunties,” a cross-cultural term of respect and affection for women, as well as “Uncles” and nonbinary volunteers in 33 states. Together, they distributed more than 350,000 masks.“I feel like I got more done for the world by running a mutual aid group than as an elected official,” said Wong, a third-generation Chinese American from San Francisco. (She’s served as an unpaid elected representative of the Wilshire Center Koreatown Neighborhood Council in Los Angeles since 2019, an unusual electoral journey that is the subject of her one-woman show “Kristina Wong for Public Office,” whose national tour was interrupted by the pandemic.)After disbanding the sewing squad (she hosted a retirement party for the Aunties in Los Angeles in September), Wong shifted her focus to bringing the tale of her 504 days leading the group to the stage in a production directed by Chay Yew. And a streaming version of the show ran at New York Theater Workshop in May.In a conversation a few days before previews began, Wong discussed her journey from an out-of-work artist to the leader of hundreds of volunteers, her mother’s changed opinion of her performing arts career and how she hoped the show would reshape people’s perceptions of Asian Americans. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.In March 2020 your tour for “Kristina Wong for Public Office” was postponed. What made you want to start a mask-making group?I was home without income feeling sorry for myself, and I stumbled across some articles that said there was a need for homemade masks. It started with me taking my Hello Kitty sewing machine and fabric and making a naïve offer to the internet: “If you need masks and don’t have access to them, I will help you!” But my ego wrote a check my body couldn’t cash, and within four days I was inundated with requests, so I started a Facebook group of people whom I knew could sew. We had Aunties cutting the elastic off their fitted sheets, the straps off their bras. It was a Robinson Crusoe situation.Why did you call yourself a “sweatshop overlord”?My first volunteers were all Asian women, and I was like, “Oh, my God, this is the sickest moment, we are a modern-day sweatshop.” Our mothers and grandmothers did garment work — my grandmother and grandfather did laundry work as part of their rite of passage to America — and now we find ourselves doing this work again, for free, because the government hasn’t prepared us for this moment. So it was this gallows humor joke that I was the sweatshop overlord — also humor about child labor because I was ordering children around.At what point did you realize this was a show?Within the first 40 days, one of the Aunties — my first mentor, Leilani Chan of TeAda Productions [a Los Angeles-based theater company] — was like, “We’re going to try to figure out how to make work online.” So I’d get a booking from a college or a theater and then would just create new sections up to that point in the pandemic.The shows, which were all [streamed] live, became an event for the Aunties. I would post in our Facebook group “I’m doing a performance about us now,” and they would all change their name to “Auntie So and So” in Zoom. They’d openly chat with audience members during the performance and be there for the Q. and A. afterward, usually at their sewing machines. So it was me half-entertaining them, but also trying to bring our story into existence.“With this show,” Wong said, “I wanted to find a way to tell the story that’s more than us just being beat up, beat up, beat up, but also about how we survived.”Calla Kessler for The New York TimesWhat changes did you make for the in-person production?Doing the show from my home on Zoom — and the fact that we were all in a pandemic — was a great shorthand for the audience, but now I’m moving into a neutral space that is a representation of my home. So I realized I’d have to spend more time laying out context that we might’ve forgotten, and also trying to think about the bigger meaning of all this, rather than just putting moments to memory.You use comedy as a way of talking through micro- and macro-aggressions against Asian Americans. How did anti-Asian sentiment affect you personally?The great irony is that I didn’t even wear a mask for the first few weeks I was sewing them, because I felt like the mask I permanently wear on my face was already a sign to the world: “I’m a foreigner. I’m an immigrant. I brought the virus here. Come get me.” With this show, I wanted to find a way to tell the story that’s more than us just being beat up, beat up, beat up, but also about how we survived.Were you concerned that people wouldn’t want to relive the pandemic?We need to figure out how to visibly see Asian Americans and culture. During the pandemic, I saw Asian American women not as quiet, subservient virus passers but as warriors behind sewing machines doing the work of protecting Americans. If there’s a museum one day about this moment in history, please let there just be a little footnote that remembers our work. And I’ve learned that, especially as an artist of color, I can’t wait for someone else to write that footnote, so this show is really me screaming at people to know how to respect our labor.As recently as 2015, your mother was still sending you newspaper articles with the average pay for careers like doctors and government officials to try to dissuade you from pursuing a performing arts career. Is she more supportive now?My mom called me when I first started this and told me, “You’ve got to stop making those masks; stay inside!” I got really mad at her, but then she completely surprised me — she was like, “OK, mail me some fabric, get me the patterns.” Then she recruited all her friends and got really into it. I think she feels really proud.Is she coming to see the show?She was really scared to come to New York because of hate crimes and the Delta variant, but she and my dad are coming to watch the show. I’m really happy she gets to see it, and I think she’ll be surprised because she doesn’t know how much she’s in it. My shows have been my way to have honest conversations with my parents from a distance — they learn more about me from watching my shows than us sitting at the dining room table, where I’m mostly just lying to them and hiding stuff. And I think they know this!How much of the show is just you, Kristina Wong, on that stage, and how much is you playing a character?This is my great dilemma! I play a character named Kristina Wong who’s mostly me, but highly dramatized. Did I really crawl on my belly to go to the post office? No, but it did feel like life or death a lot of the time. More

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    Cobie Smulders Communes With Sharks

    She plays a deliciously coldblooded Ann Coulter in “Impeachment.”A white shark nudged closer, gliding just above the actress Cobie Smulders, like a fan asking for a selfie. Ms. Smulders welcomed the intrusion. “This is cool,” she said, rapt, as the shark slid past in the waters of the New York Aquarium.Ms. Smulders, adored for her nine seasons on the sitcom “How I Met Your Mother,” has loved aquariums for as long as she can remember. As a mermaid-obsessed child in British Columbia, she visited the Vancouver aquarium often and spent weekends on her father’s sailboat, wondering about the life below the water’s surface. The University of Victoria accepted her to its marine biology program.But a few months before school began, she fell in with some theater actors and deferred for a year. And then another year. And then another.An avid scuba diver and an ambassador for Oceana, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting and restoring the world’s oceans, Ms. Smulders never gave up on the water. She participates in beach cleanups near the Los Angeles home she shares with her husband, the actor Taran Killam, and their two daughters. And she campaigns against the single-use plastics that clog waterways.“It’s a human conversation that needs to be talked about more loudly,” she said.She still has mermaid fantasies. “I still think it could be a possibility,” she said. And she still loves aquariums, though only those that favor conservation.Ms. Smulders studied marine biology before she became an actress.  Daniel Dorsa for The New York TimesOn a recent trip to New York City to promote the FX limited series “Impeachment: American Crime Story,” she took a car to Coney Island to visit the aquarium’s shark exhibit.She breezed in from the boardwalk just before noon, showing her vaccine card to a giddy employee. “I thought I recognized you!” the woman said as she checked Ms. Smulders’s ID. Rather than dressing for the beach, Ms. Smulders had chosen a monochrome look: belted black Chanel blazer, black jeans and black boots with stamped metal buckles that shone in the October sunlight. Pearls plucked from some very talented oysters hugged her neck.In the first building, she cooed over yellow snappers and pointed out some angelfish, then admired the stripes on some zebrafish. “Mother Nature knows what’s up,” she said approvingly.A cow nose ray caught her eye, as did a yellow rose goby. “I want to be the person who gets to name these,” she said. “You can have a lot of fun with that job.”Ms. Smulders, 39, seems to have fun with most jobs. On “Impeachment,” which revisits the impeachment of Bill Clinton, she plays the right-wing pundit Ann Coulter, a member of the Elves, a group of conservative lawyers who advised Paula Jones’s team.With hair like a Westminster-winning Afghan hound, legs like the Eiffel Tower and a voice as clipped and polished as a high-end manicure, her version of Ms. Coulter finds pleasure everywhere she goes, usually because she brings multiple bottles of wine along. And yet she remains as coldblooded as the aquarium’s sharks.“You’re all too nice,” her Ms. Coulter says of her fellow Elves during a late-night strategy scene.Initially, Ms. Smulders had resisted the role. The “Impeachment” producers had approached her a few weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the first in which Ms. Smulders, a proud Canadian who recently became an American citizen, could vote. Ms. Smulders votes a liberal ticket, so sharing head space with Ms. Coulter, who has written books such as “Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism,” didn’t seem healthy or fun.But Mr. Killam was already attached to the series as Steve Jones, Paula Jones’s husband. And “Stumptown,” the moody procedural on ABC in which Ms. Smulders starred, was canceled because of the pandemic, freeing up her schedule.“Isn’t it just so peaceful here?” Ms. Smulders said of the shark exhibit.  Daniel Dorsa for The New York TimesSo after Donald Trump lost the election, Ms. Smulders taped an audition. Playing an ultraconservative — especially an ultraconservative with a miniskirt wardrobe and a champagne habit — no longer felt so dark to her.“She’s the only one who can actually have any fun,” Ms. Smulders said of her character. “This confidence that this woman has, to be able to walk into a room and think you’re the smartest person in the room, that you’re the most powerful person in the room, that is the polar opposite of me and my life.”In the shark building, which Ms. Smulders had entered after passing a harbor seal (“Hi, friend!”) and a waddling penguin (“You can do it, buddy!”), it was clear where the power lay. Crawling into a tunnel just past the coral reef section, she marveled at the zebra sharks and bamboo sharks swimming just inches away. “I want to set up a little cot in there,” she said when she emerged. “Waking up to that? Heaven! Heaven!”Not everyone enjoys intimate encounters with fish that might find you delicious, but Ms. Smulders does. On a recent family trip to Oahu, she went for a cage dive with huge Galápagos sharks. “That was a crazy thing,” she said. She enjoys humbler marine life, too. Polyps are an obsession, as is algae, which has a mutualistic relationship with reefs.Further into the shark exhibit, past a re-creation of a shipwreck, Ms. Smulders stopped at Hudson Canyon’s Edge, a dramatic wall of water. She admired the rays, floating past like cheerful ghosts, and a whiskered fish that swam beneath them. “I love a little mustache on a fish,” she said. A loggerhead cruised by, pausing to admire her Tod’s bag. Sharks surrounded her, some of them grinning toothily. Ms. Smulders smiled at each predator.“Isn’t it just so peaceful here?” she said. More

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    Late Night Savors What’s Left of Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ Plan

    Trevor Noah said the excision of family leave meant that “America will remain the only nation in the world where women try to give birth during their lunch break.”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.Built to ScaleLate-night hosts covered the latest in President Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan on Thursday, or what is left of it.“A lot of what was originally there is now gone,” Trevor Noah said. “Like free community college is out, and so is paid family and medical leave, which means America will remain the only nation in the world where women try to give birth during their lunch break.”“Oh, and Medicare won’t cover the cost of dental or vision care for seniors but it will cover hearing. Which makes sense. You know Biden made sure that that stayed in. When you got a president that whispers as much as he does, you’ve got to make sure people can at least hear him.” — TREVOR NOAH“But don’t worry, moms, you don’t have to go into work while you’re in labor — just Zoom in from the birthing room.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“President Biden met today with House Democrats to discuss his health care spending proposal in the infrastructure bill, which is now down to a 30-day trial for WebMD plus, and they’re going to paint some tunnels on a rock, like Wile E. Coyote.” — SETH MEYERS“The plan features subsidies for child care and universal preschool for more than six million 3- and 4-year-olds, to which parents everywhere replied, ‘But what about 2-year-olds who could pass for 3? Please — I can’t watch any more ‘Peppa Pig.’ My toddler has adopted an English accent, and won’t let me eat bacon.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It’s insane. Everyone deserves the right to be at home with their families and children. And besides, in my experience, the more time you spend with your kids, the more desperate you are to go back to work.” — SETH MEYERS“Free vision care for anyone with perfect 20/20 eyesight. A 1 percent tax hike on billionaires for each trip to outer space. Guaranteed child care for children ages 3 to 4, provided by children ages 5 to 6. For anyone who wants to attend community college, a free copy of ‘Community’ Season 1 on DVD. If anything falls off of a crumbling bridge or overpass and hits you, you get to keep it. For women who have just given birth, a big scoop of Turkey Hill’s Rocky Road ice cream. In lieu of paid leave, they added two more take-your-child-to-work days. Any 12 albums for just one penny. Student-loan forgiveness: You still have to pay it back, but we’ll forgive you for making the mistake of taking one out. Universal wealth care: one extra digit in each American’s Social Security number. Guaranteed pre-K for wacky adult children whose hotel-magnate fathers paid their way through elementary and high school but now would like to prove themselves as competent, functioning adults in order to take over the family business. You can use the bathroom if you asked nicely. Everyone is eligible to receive $1 million from a billionaire, in exchange for just one night with your wife. One free month of Tubi. They’ll throw a traffic cone next to the pothole on your street if you quit whining about it. And finally, a new houseboat for Joe Manchin.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Meta Edition)“Yeah, Facebook changed their name. In response, Spectrum was like, ‘We used to be Time Warner; people still hate us.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, ‘Meta,’ as in when I joined Facebook, I ‘Meta’ lot of crazy people.” — JIMMY FALLON“That’s right, ‘Meta,’ as in your Aunt Gloria saying, ‘I Meta guy on Facebook who says the vaccine made his balls magnetic.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“This feels like when there’s an E. coli outbreak at a pizza place and they just change the name from Sal and Tony’s to Tony and Sal’s. Same gross owners.” — JIMMY FALLON“Companies often change their name to help their image and since it’s up for grabs, Johnson & Johnson is now Facebook & Facebook.” — JIMMY FALLON“The company says, ‘The name Facebook is not going away, but from now on, we are going to be Metaverse first, not Facebook first.’ But don’t worry — the self esteem of teenage girls will always be last.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingDesus and Mero get to the bottom of why Black people love Dave Grohl, with guest Dave Grohl.Also, Check This OutAnya Taylor-Joy, left, and Thomasin McKenzie in “Last Night in Soho.”Parisa Taghizadeh/Focus FeaturesTwo young women from different eras form a psychic bond in Edgar Wright’s thriller “Last Night in Soho.” More