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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ and ‘Queens’

    Season 11 of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” begins on HBO. And a new musical drama series debuts on ABC.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, Oct. 18-24. Details and times are subject to change.MondayPOV: LA CASA DE MAMA ICHA 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Decades after emigrating to the United States, a 93-year-old woman returns to Colombia in this new documentary. It’s a bittersweet journey chronicled with intimacy by the Colombian filmmaker ​​Óscar Molina, in his feature debut.TuesdayAMERICAN MASTERS: BECOMING HELEN KELLER 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This new documentary, which revisits Keller’s life and legacy, has a secret weapon in the actress Cherry Jones, who reads written work by Helen Keller. Jones’s readings are paired with archival film and photographs, plus contemporary interviews with historians, scholars and disability rights advocates.Eve in “Queens,” a new musical drama.Kim Simms/ABCQUEENS 10 p.m. on ABC. Zahir McGhee, a producer of “Scandal,” is behind this new musical drama. The plot kicks off with the reunion of four women who were part of a hip-hop group in the 1990s, and who hope to stage a present-day comeback. (It has no relation to the Peacock series “Girls5Eva,” also about a musical reunion.) Naturi Naughton, Nadine Velazquez and the performers Eve and Brandy star. Tuesday’s debut episode was directed by the filmmaker Tim Story (“Barbershop”), who is an executive producer of the series.WednesdayFOUR HOURS AT THE CAPITOL (2021) 9 p.m. on HBO. This feature-length documentary, a presentation of HBO and the BBC, looks at the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. It uses footage from the actual event to chart out how the violence escalated, and includes interviews with lawmakers, members of law enforcement and others who were at the Capitol that day.ThursdayZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP (2019) 5:30 p.m. on FX. There are plenty of straightforward horror movies to choose from on TV this month. But if you prefer that your monsters be sacrificed in service of comedy, consider turning to this goofy “Zombieland” sequel. The movie reunites the quartet from the original “Zombieland” — Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Abigail Breslin and Emma Stone — for another riff on post-apocalyptic horror. If you actually want to be scared, you can stick around for HALLOWEEN (2018), which FX is showing afterward, at 7:30 p.m.FridayFrancesca Annis and Kyle MacLachlan in “Dune.”Universal PicturesDUNE (1984) 9:30 p.m. on HBO 2. Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” hits theaters this weekend. Any new sci-fi movie from Villeneuve, the director of “Arrival” and “Blade Runner 2049,” would be eagerly anticipated, but “Dune” brings an added layer of suspense in the form of a question: Could Villeneuve finally — finally — have made a successful movie out of Frank Herbert’s novel? That question is in part a product of this 1984 attempt. Directed by David Lynch (who has since called the experience “a nightmare”), the 1984 movie gilds Herbert’s novel, originally published in 1965, with Hollywood money, an enormous ensemble (Kyle MacLachlan; Patrick Stewart and Sting are among the supporting players), and a soundtrack composed primarily by Toto. The “ornate affair,” Janet Maslin wrote in her 1984 review for The New York Times, is “awash in the kind of marble, mosaics, wood paneling, leather tufting and gilt trim more suitable to moguls’ offices than to far-flung planets in the year 10191.” Several characters, Maslin noted, “are psychic, which puts them in the unique position of being able to understand what goes on in the movie.”HARLAN COUNTY, USA (1976) 10 p.m. on TCM. The documentarian Barbara Kopple won an Academy Award for this chronicle of a coal miners’ strike in eastern Kentucky. In his 1976 review for The New York Times, Richard Eder called the film “a fascinating and moving work.” Just don’t expect neutrality: The documentary is “forthrightly an effort to see the struggle through the miners’ own eyes,” Eder wrote.SaturdayYeri Han and Steven Yeun in “Minari.”Josh Ethan Johnson/A24MINARI (2020) 9 p.m. on Showtime. The filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung tells a semi-autobiographical American immigrant story in this warm heartland drama. The actors Steven Yeun and Yeri Han play young parents who move to rural Arkansas with the idea of opening a vegetable farm. The challenges that spring from that pursuit — interpersonal and irrigational — put a strain on the household, and provide much of the drama. But there are a lot of laughs, too, thanks in no small part to a standout performance from the veteran Korean star Yuh-Jung Youn, who plays a nervy grandmother. “The chronicle of an immigrant family, often told through the eyes of a child, is a staple of American literature and popular culture,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. “But every family — every family member, for that matter — has a distinct set of experiences and memories, and the fidelity to those is what makes ‘Minari,’ in its circumspect, gentle way, moving and downright revelatory.”SundayCURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM 10:40 p.m. on HBO. “I’m not an Everyman,” Larry David says in the new season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” That may be true, but David’s idiosyncrasies — a more fitting label for him might be Easily Irritated Man — are much of what sets this show apart, so it’s probably good that he’s no Charlie Brown (at least as far as ratings are concerned). The show’s new, 11th season includes appearances from Jon Hamm, Lucy Liu, Seth Rogen, Vince Vaughn and Patton Oswalt. It’s slated to debut on Sunday night, after INSECURE, another Los Angeles comedy with a writer-producer-performer (Issa Rae also plays a fictional version of herself). That show will air the debut episode of its fifth and final season at 10 p.m. More

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    ‘Succession’ Recap, Season 3, Episode 1: Action Stations, Let’s Go

    In the Season 3 premiere, the Roys and their surrogates hustled to secure allies in the coming fight between father and son.Season 3, Episode 1: ‘Secession’The “Succession” Season 3 premiere opens with a shot of two helicopters speeding across the sky, with a stunning mountain landscape in the distance. It’s an immediate reminder of what this show is about: ridiculously rich people, rushing from one ritzy location to another, doing endless damage control while living the highest lives imaginable.For the rest of this episode, the Roy family and their inner circle of associates spend time in private jets, lavish apartments, luxury hotels, limousines and high-end offices, as they hustle to secure allies in the coming fight between the media conglomerate Waystar Royco’s CEO Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and his rogue son Kendall (Jeremy Strong). Both factions know they have to project strength to win over the press, the public and the politicians. It matters what they wear, where they’re seen, and who they’re seen with. That’s why when the veteran Waystar fixer Hugo Baker (Fisher Stevens) meets the Roys at a private airport and tells them he’s secured “a nice room” to wait in, he immediately lowers their expectations and admits it’s not as nice as it probably should be.Given that the cleverly titled “Secession” is the first new “Succession” episode in nearly two years, it has a lot of work to do, getting viewers back up to speed on where we are in the story — all while reminding us why it’s such a treat to spend an hour each week with some of the most selfish, meanspirited characters in TV history. The show’s creator and head writer Jesse Armstrong, working alongside the most frequent “Succession” director Mark Mylod, doesn’t waste much time. This episode barrels forward, generating much of its tension and humor from the people who are on the periphery of Logan and Kendall’s feud and are scrambling to keep up.Kendall, for the most part, seems to have the upper hand at the moment. In the Season 2 finale, he dropped a bomb on Logan, revealing to the press that he had evidence — secured by his cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) — that the Waystar higher-ups had covered up sex-crimes committed by a longtime employee of their Brightstar cruise line. Relishing his moment in the spotlight, Ken has dozens of plans he wants to roll out immediately, to rebrand himself as the courageous whistle-blower putting an end to corporate sexism.With an increasingly befuddled Greg by his side, Kendall makes a flurry of phone calls and takes meeting after meeting, speaking a mile a minute while firing off long sentences filled with nigh-incomprehensible biz-speak. (One of Ken’s funniest character traits is how fluent he is in meaningless jargon like, “I need a clean jar,” and, “Just feed me metadata on anything that’s going to move the market on me, reputationally.”) He wants to write an “alternative corporate manifesto” in an op-ed for The New York Times. He wants to bring in “some BoJack guys” to make his Twitter feed a must-follow. And he wants to hire Lisa Arthur (Sanaa Lathan), a noted feminist attorney who makes old billionaires quake.Jeremy Strong, center, in the season premiere. Kendall still needs a clean jar.David M. Russell/HBOBut there are already signs that Kendall is overconfident and in over his head — besides his overreliance on Greg, who is supposed to be tracking his cousin’s media presence but so far can only figure out that Ken is out-trending “tater tots” on Twitter. Kendall’s most questionable decision this week sees him holing up at the home of his ex-wife Rava (Natalie Gold), insisting he needs the emotional grounding of seeing her and their kids, but also inviting his occasional girlfriend and drug buddy Naomi Pierce (Annabelle Dexter-Jones) to drop by.As for Logan, he drags his son-in-law Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) and Waystar veterans Frank Vernon (Peter Friedman) and Karl Muller (David Rasche) to a Sarajevo airport hotel, where he plots his own next moves while ducking any potential extradition. He refuses to be bled dry by this Brightstar scandal, which he sees as an opportunity for “chancers” who’ve suffered no real harm to siphon off his billions. Logan sounds the alarm with the pundits in Waystar’s pocket, warning them they’ll end up looking stupid if they turn on him now. And he surprises everyone — and gives this episode its title — by saying that he’s ready to take a step back and name someone else CEO.The problem? He has no good candidates. Karl volunteers and gets ridiculed. Frank sounds a meek “ahem” and Logan quickly says (correctly, given that Frank is in constant contact with Ken) that he’s untrustworthy, and that he’s as unimpressive as “mashed potatoes.” That leaves Logan’s sneakily ambitious daughter Siobhan (Sarah Snook), his anarchic jokester son Roman (Kieran Culkin), and his faithful counsel Gerri Kellman (J. Smith-Cameron). Whoever gets the job will be the face of Waystar during what looks to be a bloody skirmish over Brightstar; and they’ll only be a figurehead while Logan retains the real power. (“It’s nameplates,” he shrugs, as he asks his team to make his decision for him.)Shiv is probably the best choice, but she loses out after failing at the one assignment her father gives her: to sign her old friend Lisa Arthur as Waystar’s attorney before Kendall can. In one of the most genuinely emotional scenes in this episode, Shiv lays out her dilemma with Lisa, telling her honestly that she has no idea what anyone involved with Brightstar actually did, and that she needs an ally before she gets crushed between two men’s egos. Alas, Shiv has arrived at Lisa’s office a few hours late. Ken is moving too fast.Roman, meanwhile, is an early front-runner because he doesn’t mind hurting people or making them mad. (Asked what they should do about Kendall, Roman says, “This is not a nice thing to say about your son but maybe you chop him into a million pieces and toss him in the Hudson?”) But when he finds out Logan is considering him for CEO, he makes a disastrous — and hilarious — phone call, where he first asserts himself and then retreats, mentioning Gerri and saying he would understand if Logan thinks, “Maybe a couple of years under the wing of an older hen could see me crack out of the ol’ egg.” As soon as the call ends, Logan snaps, “Roman’s out.”So Gerri it is: competent, loyal, unremarkable Gerri. She has her own memorable phone call this week, ringing up the White House to remind the President’s people that an election is coming up and that they’ll need the support of Waystar’s right-wing cable news network ATN. Just as Kendall is a master of MBA bluster, so Gerri is good at sounding pleasant and conversational — “Do we want to get the old guys on the blower so they can just chat for five?” she cheerily asks her D.C. contact — while subtly delivering threats and digs.Gerri understands — as Logan does — that much of what’s happening here is a game. In fact, Logan gets offended by Kendall’s turn toward saintliness, because he thinks what his son did was “a play,” not a moment of righteous clarity. It’s telling that both these men tell their people to head to their “action stations” as the episode begins. But the ultimate victor may be the commander who thrives on all-out battle. Right now, Ken seems manic. And Logan? He hasn’t looked this alive in years.Alan Ruck and Justine Lupe in “Succession.”Graeme Hunter/HBODue DiligenceLast season’s subplot involving Connor and Willa’s flop play gets only a passing mention this week, as Connor suggests they try to recoup some of their money by embracing their terrible reviews, marketing the show to hipsters as a “hate-watch.” Poor Willa meekly agrees to letting her labor of love get reframed as camp trash. Such is the cost of doing business with the Roys.The implication at the end of this episode is that Shiv — stung by Lisa’s and Logan’s rejections — may be about to defect to the Kendall camp. If so, part of the blame belongs to Roman, who childishly mocks her for her losing streak, calling her to sing a song he made up: “Your friend doesn’t like you / boohoo boohoo / and Dad wants to fire you / woo-hoo.” (Shiv doesn’t know about this, but Roman also belittled her in his call with Logan, saying, “I love her like a brother,” then making one of his “nothing I say should ever be taken seriously” vocal squeaks.)In the list of the most difficult eras the Waystar executives have ever gotten through, Karl and Frank rattle off several major international crises and then end with “the black cloud after Sally Ann.” Remember Sally Ann, mentioned last season? With the horses? And the harp? If there’s ever a “Succession” prequel, it should take place exclusively in the era when Logan loved and lost this mysterious Sally Ann. More

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    Review: In the Disturbing ‘Dana H.,’ Whose Voice Is It Anyway?

    Deirdre O’Connell brilliantly lip-syncs the testimony of a woman abducted by a white supremacist in a play by Lucas Hnath.Dana Higginbotham had recently lost her job as a chaplain in the psychiatric unit of a Florida hospital when, in 1997, she was abducted by one of her former patients, a methed-up ex-con named Jim.For the next five months she lived in captivity, in a blur of hide-outs and motel rooms, as Jim, called Cowboy by his associates in a white supremacist crime syndicate, dragged her along on his “jobs,” sometimes by the hair.Though she was “never not covered with bruises,” and often signaled her distress nonverbally, almost no one tried to help her; eventually, in a kind of transference or Stockholm syndrome, or what she calls adaptation to maladaptation, she came to see Jim as her “protector” because certainly “the cops weren’t.” Indeed, the police had little power, and thus little interest in, the world beneath our own she had somehow fallen into, a world where “everything that was suppose to be right was not.”I’m quoting Higginbotham verbatim, dropped d and all, because that’s the way her words come to us in “Dana H.,” the profoundly disturbing new play by Lucas Hnath that opened on Sunday at the Lyceum Theater on Broadway. It’s her voice, recorded over a period of several days in 2015, we hear on tape, telling the story of those five months in Jim’s thrall — and the two-and-a-half years hiding from him on a construction gang afterward.Yet this is not simply verbatim theater of the kind the Civilians, the “investigative” company that commissioned and developed “Dana H.,” has pioneered in works like “Gone Missing” and “This Beautiful City.” Nor is it like “Is This a Room,” the verbatim drama by Tina Satter that opened on the same stage last week and will now alternate performances with “Dana H.,” each playing four performances a week.In Hnath’s play, the transcript is not dramatized as it is in those others, with actors speaking and performing each role. Rather, just one actor, Deirdre O’Connell, embodying Higginbotham, lip-syncs the entire 75-minute text, brilliantly pulling off one of the strangest and most difficult challenges ever asked of an actor.Call it Thriller Karaoke, a form in which the story is almost as dangerous as the mode of storytelling. You worry that O’Connell will fall out of sync with the recording, which never stops once the play begins. Gradually, though, as her inerrancy becomes clear, you let go of that concern and switch to related ones: Why tell the story this way in the first place? What do you get from the astonishing feat, besides astonishment, that you wouldn’t get if the same material had been acted out as it might be in a typically effective television procedural?One thing you get, or rather don’t, is the violent imagery that in a literal representation can short circuit other values. Higginbotham’s tale is so brutal that, were it visualized, you would spend the entire play worrying about her survival.Instead, the director Les Waters, in his nerves-of-steel staging, offers just one spot of blood to stand for the rest. The story is still plenty savage, but by placing O’Connell, a beloved New York theater veteran, in a comfortable-looking club chair, in the middle of a generic motel room, he in some way abstracts and domesticates it. (The diorama-style set design is by Andrew Boyce, the shadowy-then-glary lighting by Paul Toben.) You are implicitly asked to focus not on the terror of her experience but on the terror of her survival.O’Connell lip-syncs most of the show nonstop.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd your own: While mimicking Higginbotham’s mental dissociation, the uncanniness of the lip-sync destabilizes most other notions of normalcy in the world as well. It suggests an underlife, parallel to the comfortable, familiar one, that threatens at any moment to erupt through the rather thin barrier of routine, just as Higginbotham’s voice seems to erupt through O’Connell’s body in the process of possessing it.The question of voice is obviously central to Hnath’s concern here, only in part because Higginbotham — it’s no spoiler to say — is his mother. At the time of the abduction, he was a thousand miles away, a freshman at New York University, apparently knowing nothing of what was going on in Florida. She did not want him to know: Jim held her son’s safety over her head, she says, to enforce compliance. “Everything I ever did was all based on what was for Lucas, you know?”In the silence that follows that line, you can almost hear the eternal maternal follow-up plaint: “But what has he done for me?”To say he has honored her story, though that’s true, is the skimpiest possible way to look at the achievement of “Dana H.” When the play ran Off Broadway at the Vineyard Theater in 2020, after productions in Los Angeles and Chicago, I was electrified by the way O’Connell turned herself into a kind of musical instrument, letting the recording of Higginbotham “play” her. With her own voice shut off, she emphasized the other tools at her disposal, so that even the smallest shifts of posture and expression became immensely expressive.Those effects have grown more complex in the Broadway production, shifting its weight in the process. More often now, O’Connell seems to work against the apparent veracity of the text: miming Higginbotham’s odd laughter a little more vividly, underlining moments in which she doubts her memory. Though I never previously questioned any aspect of the story, I now found myself wondering whether a woman so traumatized could be a reliable narrator and whether a play is “true” just because its words are.Hnath is at pains to signal that it is, in part by exposing his technique at every turn. We see O’Connell put on her earpieces at the beginning of the play and take them off at the end. Beeps indicate spots where the transcript has been edited. (The sound design and skin-crawly music are by Mikhail Fiksel.) The interview was conducted by Steve Cosson, the artistic director of the Civilians, rather than by Hnath because, as he explained to The Times, he wanted his mother to tell the story “to someone who knew nothing.” That way there would be no shortcuts that might introduce doubt.And yet it is the introduction of doubt, despite all those dams put in place to block it, that I find so wonderfully complicating now. Tiny strange moments Hnath chose to leave in the transcript — references to Higginbotham’s having “played around in” Satanism when she was young, or to her fantasy that converting Jim “would be a great addition” to her “ministry” — make you wonder about her reliability, and what even stranger material was cut.Through such holes in the storytelling, the play’s richest emotions seep. Near the end, when Higginbotham is contacted by Jim’s father, apologizing for what his son did to her, Cosson, on tape, asks if that “helped in any way.” She says it did: “It kinda felt almost like a family. The way a family should have reacted — if I had one.”You may well gasp louder than at the reveal of a corpse.That’s when I realized that “Dana H.” is not just the story of a woman brutalized by a psychopath; it is also the story of a mother abandoned by a son. What else would a playwright do to make reparations but write a play about just that, in the process returning to her what the world had stolen: her voice.Dana H.Through Jan. 16 at the Lyceum Theater, Manhattan; thelyceumplays.com. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. More

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    ‘Saturday Night Live’ Takes on the N.F.L.’s Jon Gruden Scandal

    An episode hosted by Rami Malek also featured appearances from his “No Time to Die” co-star Daniel Craig.You know an N.F.L. scandal has wide-reaching implications when it makes it as far as a “Saturday Night Live” opening sketch.This week, in an episode hosted by Rami Malek and featuring the musical guest Young Thug, “S.N.L.” led off with a segment about Jon Gruden, the former coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, who stepped down on Monday. A New York Times report had detailed emails from Gruden that contained misogynist and homophobic remarks, following the disclosure of another email from him in which he used a racist stereotype to describe a Black union leader.The “S.N.L.” sketch made use of several members of the show’s cast — even Colin Jost, who’s rarely seen away from the Weekend Update desk, and who played the N.F.L. commissioner Roger Goodell.Speaking as Goodell, Jost said, “When you see me on TV, it’s never good. This time, one of our coaches is accused of racism, misogyny and homophobia. But hey, at least no one’s talking about concussions.”Jost added, “I assure you all 32 teams in our league understand that diversity is our strength. And I know our Black coaches would agree. Both of them.”He then introduced Gruden, who he said “got on his knees and begged, and you know how much I hate seeing someone kneel.”James Austin Johnson, a new cast member who is rapidly adding to his roster of impersonations, played Gruden with some prominent cheek prosthetics. “I hope you won’t judge me on one email I sent 10 years ago,” he said. “Or the 20 emails I sent last Tuesday.”Alex Moffat, wearing a closely cropped wig, played the Raiders owner Mark Davis. “We need to do better,” he said. “We need to, as I always tell my barber, aim higher.”The lineup also featured Pete Davidson as the team’s new coach. “It is an honor to take over this storied franchise and a real shame that I have to immediately resign,” he said. “They just found my emails, too, and they are so much worse than the old coach’s.”He was followed by Andrew Dismukes, playing an equipment manager, who just learned he’d been made coach and must now also resign because of his old tweets. “I never should have dressed up as Jackie Chan for Halloween,” he explained. “But 2019 was a different era.”Chris Redd as appeared as the former N.F.L. quarterback Colin Kaepernick. “So much stuff coming out about the NFL is maybe racist, kinda,” he said with a dramatic pause. “Huh. I wonder if anyone tried to warn people about this before.”Finally, Moffat said he’d found the perfect coach for the team — “someone even Twitter can get behind” — fan favorite LeVar Burton (played by Kenan Thompson).‘Squid Game’ Segment of the WeekIt was only a matter of time before “S.N.L.” took on “Squid Game,” the dystopian South Korean serial that’s become a widely watched hit on Netflix. The show came at it from a somewhat oblique angle in this country music video where Davidson and Malek start out singing about the unusual lengths they will go to in order to earn money. As the lyrics run:Yes I’m broke and it’s a damn shameGuess I gotta play the Squid GameYes I gotta play the Squid GameMy only option is the Squid GameHave a number not a real name‘Cause I’m playing in the Squid Game.You know what comes next, of course: masks, jumpsuits, and a giant talking doll leading a murderous round of Red Light, Green Light.Celebrity Overload of the WeekA satirical game show called “Celeb School” allowed several “S.N.L.” cast members to indulge in offbeat impressions of famous figures, including John Oliver (Mikey Day), Jennifer Coolidge (Chloe Fineman), Adam Driver (James Austin Johnson), Kristen Wiig (Melissa Villaseñor), George Takei (Bowen Yang) and Lil Wayne (Chris Redd). But its real achievement may be providing a platform for Pete Davidson to play Rami Malek and for Rami Malek to play Pete Davidson. (One of them nails the assignment, but in fairness he has an Academy Award.)If that’s too conceptual for you, there’s also this segment in which Malek and Thompson play themselves, competing for the role of Prince in a biopic directed by Jordan Peele (Redd). Stick around to the end and your reward is a cameo appearance from Daniel Craig, dressed as a Renaissance-era prince and air-guitaring the opening riff from “Kiss.” (Craig also appeared in a later sketch, playing an audience member at an unusual improvised musical performance.)Weekend Update Jokes of the WeekOver at the Weekend Update desk, Jost and his co-anchor Michael Che riffed on President Biden and the latest challenges facing his legislative agenda.Jost began:The Biden administration’s climate plan is likely to be dropped from the budget bill after Senator Joe Manchin refused to support it. But you know what? I’m not going to let some bad climate news ruin this beautiful, 80-degree October day. Manchin, who’s from West Virginia, said he would only agree to Biden’s bill if it cuts clean energy and officially makes coal one of the five food groups.Che followed that up:A new report shows that President Biden is, on average, 22 minutes late for public events. Worse, he only does it to appeal to Black voters.Bowen Yang Sketches of the WeekIf you’ve felt like you haven’t seen enough Bowen Yang since he became a full member of the “S.N.L.” cast this season, this weekend’s episode made up for that in a big way.Yang got the spotlight first in a sketch about a middle school bug pageant, where he played a 7th grader cast as a feisty, fashionable daddy longlegs. (Asked how he traps his prey, Yang replied, “I slam my credit card down and say daddy’s got it.”)Yang later turned up at the Weekend Update desk, playing a gay Oompa Loompa who finds all the coverage of Timothée Chalamet’s “Wonka” movie to be “scrum-diddly-umptious,” but has not yet come out to his parents.“They live in Loompaland,” Yang explained to Jost. “It’s not as progressive as here. They, like, just got ‘Will & Grace.’” More

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    Succession Season 3: What You Need to Know From Season 2

    Two years have passed since Season 2 ended, and the alliances and schemes were as layered as an insult from Roman Roy. Here’s a quick catch-up guide.Because of the pandemic, the HBO drama “Succession” has been on hiatus for two years. People who had never seen “Succession” when it racked up seven Emmys last year had plenty of time to catch up ahead of Season 3, which premieres on Sunday. But fans who haven’t seen an episode since the Season 2 finale aired — back in October 2019! — could maybe use a refresher.In that finale, the emotionally unstable corporate stooge Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) detonated a bomb under his family’s media empire, delivering damning evidence of a criminal cover-up at a news conference where he was supposed take the blame. It was an unforgettable cliffhanger, capping an eventful Season 2.Here’s a quick overview of what this show’s major characters and companies were up to before Kendall knocked everything askew.From left, Sarah Snook, Strong and Brian Cox in the Season 2 finale. Who will be the sacrificial lamb?Graeme Hunter/HBOWaystar RoycoThe show’s primary setting — and its main plot driver — is the media conglomerate Waystar Royco, a powerful corporation known primarily for its Fox-style conservative cable news channel, ATN. (The similarities to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation are, to put it mildly, intentional.) The company is also active in online media, publishing, entertainment, theme parks and cruise ships. Through the first two seasons, Waystar has been under attack from politicians and business rivals, and has been the target of multiple attempts at both negotiated mergers and hostile takeovers.In Season 2, news leaked that top Waystar executives had buried internal reports about a longtime associate in the company cruise line: Lester McClintock, nicknamed “Uncle Moe” (as in “moe-lester”). McClintock, now dead, had a history of sexual harassment and assault — and possibly murder. The scandal has led to embarrassing media investigations and congressional hearings. It’s what ultimately prompted Kendall to betray his father, Logan.Brian Cox as Logan Roy, in one of his quieter moments.Graeme Hunter/HBOLogan RoyIn the series’s first episode, Waystar’s irascible, monolithic, octogenarian founder, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), was felled by a stroke. The timing wasn’t great: He had just been about to announce a plan of succession, which would have seen him stick around as his company’s chief executive while his third wife, Marcia (Hiam Abbass), would have the power to name his eventual successor. The medical crisis set off a scramble, dividing the Roy children and Waystar’s inner circle of advisers.Logan recovered … sort of. (He has had multiple public moments of unprovoked fury and foggy memories since the stroke.) By the start of Season 2, he had called in enough favors and played enough on his family’s sympathies to bring most of his loved ones and his associates back together — although Kendall’s power-play in the Season 2 finale proved how tenuous that truce actually was.A complicated and volatile man, Logan had a childhood in Scotland marred by want and abuse. His relationship with his children and his underlings has been pretty raw at times, with Logan defaulting almost by habit to psychological manipulation and fits of rage. His capriciousness has tested his marriage to Marcia, who toward the end of last season grew frustrated by her husband’s rumored affair with Rhea Jarrell (Holly Hunter), a rival media magnate he tried — and failed — to sway into running Waystar.Strong with Nicholas Braun, who plays Cousin Greg, in a scene from the coming season.David M. Russell/HBOKendall and GregOne of the few members of the Roy family who seem genuinely excited by corporate jargon and robber baron blindsides, the longtime Logan loyalist Kendall rebelled in Season 1 after realizing that his father had no intention of naming him as next in line. He then orchestrated a plan to steal the company from his father before a relapse into substance abuse — culminating in a tragic car accident at his sister’s wedding — led a newly contrite Kendall back into the fold.In Season 2, Kendall settled into a role as Logan’s shameless hatchet-man, willing to humiliate himself and to eviscerate the undeserving to promote Waystar’s interests. But his dad’s demand that Kendall take the fall for the cruise ship scandal went a step too far, prompting him to pull the big switcheroo in the season finale’s climactic news conference.Kendall’s unlikely accomplice in that ambush is his cousin Greg Hirsch (Nicholas Braun), the grandson of Logan’s disapproving brother Ewan (James Cromwell). The gawky, bumbling Greg is a frequent target of the Roy family’s jokes and bullying — a fate that he accepts as a trade-off for access to their money, power and drugs. In Season 1, he smartly held onto some damning documents about Brightstar’s troubles, anticipating the moment when he could use them as leverage.That moment arrives after the family openly considers adding some “Greg sprinkles” to whomever they serve up on a platter to take the fall for the cruise fiasco. And after Kendall finds himself in need of a plan.Matthew Macfadyen and Sarah Snook as Tom and Shiv, whose marriage is … very complicated.Zach Dilgard/HBOSiobhan and TomIt’s hard to say who in the Roy family has been most hurt by Kendall and Greg’s betrayal, but the situation is pretty dire for Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), the husband to Logan’s daughter, Siobhan (usually called Shiv, played by Sarah Snook). A former executive in Waystar’s parks and cruises division — and Greg’s immediate superior — Tom not only knew about Uncle Moe’s crimes but also helped in the cover-up.At the end of Season 1, Tom learned — on the day of his wedding, no less — that his then-fiancée, Shiv, wanted to have an open relationship. He suffered through that arrangement for most of Season 2 before finally admitting his unhappiness in the finale. A major part of Tom’s frustration has to do with his taking a thankless position at ATN in hopes of setting himself up for more responsibility down the line … only to find that Logan had secretly named Shiv as the big Waystar successor.As for Shiv, she quickly learned last season that her dad’s promise to let her take over was a ploy to keep his left-leaning feminist daughter under his control rather than allow her to cozy up to political enemies. As soon as Logan saw the potential advantage in setting up Rhea as the next in line, he let Shiv dangle. Ever since, his daughter has been staying publicly faithful while working behind the scenes to sabotage her rivals and get back onto Logan’s radar as a future Waystar boss.Roman and Gerri (Kieran Culkin and J. Smith-Cameron): also complicated.Peter Kramer/HBORoman and GerriThe Roy family’s unexpected Season 2 all-star was Logan’s youngest son, Roman (Kieran Culkin), a notorious cynic and an unapologetic slacker, who suddenly set out to prove to his father that he could make smart deals on Waystar’s behalf. While Kendall has wanted to lead the company into a new era and to protect his dad’s legacy, and while Shiv has wanted to distance Waystar from its toxic reputation, the incorrigible troll Roman relishes the idea of running a powerful organization that annoys a lot of people.Roman surprises even Logan by securing enough foreign money to take Waystar private — before advising his father to reject the deal and to try working with someone closer to the family’s political interests. For his industriousness, Roman is named Waystar’s sole chief operating officer (a position he previously shared with Kendall) in the Season 2 finale.Throughout this shift toward ambition and guile, Roman has been quietly assisted by Gerri Kellman (J. Smith-Cameron), a longtime Waystar lawyer who has worried often that her boss might throw her to the wolves to save himself. As she has whispered ideas in Roman’s ear, the two have developed a freaky quasi-sexual relationship, in which Gerri turns him on by playing the demanding mommy figure.Justine Lupe and Alan Ruck as the aspiring playwright Willa and the Roy brother from another mother, Connor.Zach Dilgard/HBOConnor (and company)Kendall, Shiv and Roman are Logan’s children from his second wife; but the siblings also have an older half brother, Connor (Alan Ruck). Connor has never been that active in the family business, opting instead to spend money and promote himself as a libertarian firebrand.In Season 2, these hobbies create headaches for Logan. Connor announces a run for president of the United States, arguing for free market reforms that wouldn’t serve Waystar’s interests. At the same time, he pours much of his fortune into the Broadway dreams of his ex-sex-worker girlfriend, Willa (Justine Lupe), who has written a flop play. Logan handles both of these problems at once, agreeing to cover his son’s showbiz losses in return for his dropping the presidential campaign.Connor is a minor “Succession” character compared to some; but while this show’s cast is huge, the creator Jesse Armstrong has had a long-term narrative use for nearly everyone. A case in point is Stewy Hosseini (Arian Moayed), who was introduced in Season 1 as an old friend of Kendall’s with enough money to help get Waystar out a financial jam; he has since become a pesky enemy, determined to hold onto his stake in the company and to outlast the Roys on the board.Anyone could end up being a power-player in “Succession” Season 3. This is a show where loyalties shift overnight, and no grudge is forgotten. More

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    Gadsby and Netflix Employees Pressure Executive Over Dave Chappelle Special

    Tensions at Netflix continued to flare on Friday, 10 days after the release of a special by the comedian Dave Chappelle that critics inside and outside the company have described as promoting bigotry against transgender people.Early on Friday, a Netflix star criticized the company and Ted Sarandos, a co-chief executive, in a stinging social media post. Later in the day, Netflix said it had fired an employee for sharing documents related to Mr. Chappelle with a reporter, and Mr. Sarandos fielded pointed questions from employees during a companywide virtual meeting.In a rare public rebuke, the Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby upbraided Mr. Sarandos by name for his defense of Mr. Chappelle. Ms. Gadsby, whose 2017 Netflix special, “Nanette,” earned an Emmy and a Peabody Award, is the most prominent entertainer to criticize Mr. Sarandos and Netflix, which she referred to in an Instagram post as an “amoral algorithm cult.”Mr. Sarandos and Netflix’s other co-chief, Reed Hastings, have been unwavering in their support of Mr. Chappelle, who signed a lucrative multiyear deal with the company in 2016 and has won Emmys and Grammys for his Netflix work. In a note this week, Mr. Sarandos countered the arguments of Netflix staff members who had suggested that Mr. Chappelle’s special, “The Closer,” could lead to violence against transgender people, writing that he had the “strong belief that content on-screen doesn’t directly translate to real-world harm.”Mr. Sarandos, who joined Netflix two decades ago and became its co-chief executive last year, also said that the company would go to great lengths to “ensure marginalized communities aren’t defined by a single story.” He cited inclusive Netflix programs like “Sex Education” and “Orange Is the New Black” as well as Ms. Gadsby’s specials, which also include “Douglas,” released in 2020.In her social media post on Friday, Ms. Gadsby, who is a lesbian, objected to the executive’s references to her in his defense of the company and Mr. Chappelle’s special.Hannah Gadsby, whose Netflix specials were critical and popular successes, called the company “amoral” in a social media post on Friday.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Hey Ted Sarandos!” Ms. Gadsby wrote. “Just a quick note to let you know that I would prefer if you didn’t drag my name into your mess. Now I have to deal with even more of the hate and anger that Dave Chappelle’s fans like to unleash on me every time Dave gets 20 million dollars to process his emotionally stunted partial world view.”She continued: “You didn’t pay me nearly enough to deal with the real world consequences of the hate speech dog whistling you refuse to acknowledge, Ted.”Netflix declined to comment on Ms. Gadsby’s remarks.At a virtual company meeting that started at 10 a.m. Pacific time on Friday, Mr. Sarandos replied to a series of tough questions from employees, who asked about Mr. Chappelle’s special and how the company had responded to criticisms of it, according to three people with knowledge of the gathering. The event became emotional when several employees were persistent in their questioning of Mr. Sarandos and his support for someone who they feel engages in hate speech, the people said.After the meeting, Netflix said in a statement that an employee had been fired for sharing internal documents pertaining to Mr. Chappelle with the press.“We have let go of an employee for sharing confidential, commercially sensitive information outside the company,” the statement said. “We understand this employee may have been motivated by disappointment and hurt with Netflix, but maintaining a culture of trust and transparency is core to our company.”The documents included private financial information regarding Mr. Chappelle’s Netflix specials that were published this week by Bloomberg, according to a person with knowledge of the termination. The documents included the costs for the specials — $24.1 million for “The Closer” and $23.6 million for Mr. Chappelle’s previous special, “Sticks & Stones” — as well as an internal metric that determines the value of the specials relative to their budgets.Such data is available to Netflix staff but rarely made public. The appearance of the statistics in a published article is a further sign of how deep the schism is between some Netflix employees and company leadership.Several organizations, including GLAAD, which monitors the news media and entertainment companies for bias against the L.G.B.T.Q. community, have criticized Mr. Chappelle’s special as transphobic. A group of Netflix workers has planned a walkout for next week in protest.Nicole Sperling More

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    Penn Badgley Flexes New Dance Moves

    The former “Gossip Girl” star returns in the third season of the Netflix thriller “You.”“It feels good,” the actor Penn Badgley said on a recent Friday morning, in an echoing studio at the Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn. “I’m clumsy as hell. But it feels good.”Mr. Badgley, 34, who played lonely boy Dan on the original “Gossip Girl” and now stars on the Netflix thriller “You,” hadn’t visited a gym in two years. He hadn’t taken a dance class in far longer.But at a fashion shoot a month before, he had found himself moving in tandem with the photographer and missing dance acutely. So he reached out to Mr. Zachery, his gyrotonics instructor and the artistic director of Renegade Performance Group, a contemporary dance company in Brooklyn. Mr. Zachery was willing to put him through his paces.In the yawning dance studio, mirrors lined one wall. Ice-white tube lights glared overhead. Mr. Badgley had dressed for class in a villain-black T-shirt and shorts. A luxurious dad beard and a corona of mink-brown hair framed his face.They began with a warm-up: stretches, lunges, isolations of the neck, shoulders, chest and hips. Roy Ayers’s “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” set the groove; Mr. Badgley, his brooding face etched into a frown, inhaled and exhaled in time, rolling his spine down and up.Mr. Zachery integrated the stretches into a simple routine, and Mr. Badgley lumbering and somewhat stiff, like a bear who hadn’t fully shaken off hibernation, danced his way through the initial eight count, then repeated the steps again.“All right, not bad,” Mr. Zachery said encouragingly. “You want to go a little faster?”Mr. Badgley paused to tie his hair back with a blue-and-white bandanna. He asked to take it slow again. “As much as I love to move and I love to dance, it’s not a language that I speak regularly at all,” he said. “So even just getting into this feels great. But it also feels very clumsy.”Mr. Zachery reassured him, gently countering Mr. Badgley’s perfectionism. “Be imperfect with this,” he said.As Mr. Zachery prepared the next combination, the track switched to Donny Hathaway’s “The Ghetto,” and Mr. Badgley’s face stern face split into a smile. “This is one of my kid’s favorite songs,” Mr. Badgley said. “He loves classic soul.”Last summer, Mr. Badgley and his wife, Domino Kirke, welcomed a son, James. (They also share custody of Ms. Kirke’s son from an earlier relationship.) On “You,” Mr. Badgley plays Joe, the sociopath next door. Joe has also had a son with his wife, Love (Victoria Pedretti), who has a body count of her very own.“I wouldn’t recommend fame to anybody,” Mr. Badgely said of his early success from “Gossip Girl.”Sabrina Santiago for The New York TimesIn the third season, which premieres on Oct. 15, Joe muses about his new life in a Bay Area suburb. “Me, a boy and his mom, who is usually great, but occasionally murders people with her bare hands,” Joe says. “What could go wrong?” A lot, it turns out.Mr. Badgley has some experience playing characters with dark motives. The final episodes of “Gossip Girl” revealed that Dan, the Deuxmoi of his day, had surveilled his friends and lovers, uploading their secrets to the pre-Instagram internet.Making the show was, as Mr. Badgley described it, “an existential endurance test.” As a 20-something, he struggled with the glitzy ethos of the series. Fans’ failure to differentiate between him and Dan nagged at him, too. “I wouldn’t recommend fame to anybody,” he said. “It just doesn’t make anything better or help it make more sense. It doesn’t help you as a person.”When “Gossip Girl” ended in 2012, he spent half of a decade shooting indie movies and touring with his band, MOTHXR. He wasn’t sure he wanted to return to mainstream TV and he had further doubts about Joe, a character who imprisons, tortures and kills women (and the occasional interfering man), all in the name of true love. Boy gets girl? Absolutely.Still, he thought that “You” had something to say about the tropes of romantic love and the queasy nexus of desire, power and abuse. Many viewers responded a lot more swoonily and for a while Mr. Badgley took time to razz fans asking to be kidnapped. (“No thx,” he replied.) Now he tries to focus on the work itself, which he likens to a dance, “a torturous and ugly dance.”Back in the studio, Mr. Badgley was trying to dance more beautifully. He can become overwhelmed by his own thoughts, he said, so Mr. Zachery introduced a guided meditation, occupying Mr. Badgley’s mind so that his body could move more freely.As Robert Glasper’s cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” played, he had Mr. Badgley imagine himself at the beach, his body buoyed by the waves. They also played a game of avant-garde Twister, in which had Mr. Badgley had to keep either both hands and one foot on the floor, or both feet and one hand.“Yo, man,” Mr. Zachery said approvingly. “You’re actually more in your body than you think.”Finally, at a suggestion from Mr. Badgley, he switched the music to “Promises,” a mellow album form Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra. The two men began to move across the floor together, limbs slowly cartwheeling as they improvised. Politely, Mr. Badgley asked to turn the music up.“Now we’re dancing,” he said, back arched, head tipped back, arms like wings. “It feels so good.” More

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    Late Night Isn’t Threatened by Trump’s Latest Stunt

    This week, Donald Trump said Republicans should not be voting in the 2022 or 2024 elections. “Wow, he’s been out of office so long, he’s forgotten how threats work,” Seth Meyers said.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Is That a Threat?In a written statement this week, Donald J. Trump said Republicans would not be voting in the 2022 or 2024 elections.“Wow, he’s been out of office so long, he’s forgotten how threats work,” Seth Meyers said in his opening monologue Thursday.“That’s right, Trump is urging Republicans not to vote in the midterm elections unless the ‘fraud of the 2020 elections’ is uncovered, but for some reason, the thought of only Democrats voting still isn’t reassuring to me.” — SETH MEYERS“I do like that Trump is constantly making life difficult for Republicans who just want to use him to win power. Sorry, you guys bought a ticket on this train wreck, and now you can’t get off.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Election Fraud Edition)“In a new statement, former President Trump is suggesting that unless the issue of election fraud is addressed, Republicans should not vote in 2024. Democrats heard and were like, ‘Let’s get this guy back on Twitter.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Did Nancy Pelosi write this for him?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It seems like he’s telling Republicans not to vote. And of course, this brings up the age-old question, how do you solve a problem you made up?” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingOn Thursday’s “The Daily Show,” Trevor Noah looked into why no one wants a job anymore.Also, Check This OutBrian Cox in the new season of “Succession” premiering Sunday on HBO.Graeme Hunter/HBO“Succession” returns this Sunday for Season 3, in which the Roys resemble wealth more than they do real people. More