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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Home Sweet Home’ and ‘Succession’

    A new series from Ava DuVernay debuts on NBC. And the third season of “Succession” begins on HBO.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. 11-17. Details and times are subject to change.MondayNINE TO FIVE (1980) 10 p.m. on TCM. Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin play secretaries who revolt against their revolting chauvinist of a boss (Dabney Coleman) in this classic office satire. When the New York Times critics Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott included the film in their Weekend Watch column last year, they called it “a feminist lark with laughs, crude comedy, wafts of pot smoke and a catchy anthem written by Parton.”TuesdayCHUCKY 10 p.m. on Syfy and USA Network. How much of an origin story can a child doll have? Plenty, if that doll contains the soul of an adult serial killer. Chucky, the spooky doll first introduced in “Child’s Play,” the cult 1988 horror movie, gets his latest refresh in this new TV series. Unlike the 2019 big-screen rethink with Aubrey Plaza, which added an ostensibly brainy artificial-intelligence angle to the killer-doll tale, this new series has the original “Child’s Play” creator Don Mancini as its showrunner — so it should offer some more old-school scares. Syfy is debuting “Chucky” alongside another classically minded horror series, DAY OF THE DEAD, based on the 1985 George A. Romero film of the same name. The first episode of that series will air at 11 p.m. on Syfy and USA Network.A NIGHT IN THE ACADEMY MUSEUM 10 p.m. on ABC. Perhaps mercifully, this hourlong special has no relation to the “Night at the Museum” movies. Instead, the program gives a preview of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the newly opened museum in Los Angeles that displays a history of Hollywood as seen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Tom Hanks and Laura Dern, both members of the museum’s board of trustees, will host the broadcast.WednesdayCMT ARTISTS OF THE YEAR 9 p.m. on CMT. Chris Stapleton, Gabby Barrett, Kane Brown, Kelsea Ballerini, Luke Combs, Mickey Guyton and Randy Travis are the honorees at this year’s CMT Artists of the Year event, an annual celebration of country music. Wednesday’s broadcast is slated to include performances from Barrett, Brown and Combs alongside other artists, including Yola, who will perform with Guyton.ThursdayKara Hayward in “Moonrise Kingdom.”Focus FeaturesMOONRISE KINGDOM (2012) 8:15 p.m. on HBO. Wes Anderson is set to return to theaters next week with “The French Dispatch,” his latest cinematic diorama. In the meantime, consider revisiting “Moonrise Kingdom,” Anderson’s tale of two 12-year-olds who run off into the wilderness together, and eventually reach a dreamy paradise. The film shows the pair’s adventure “with a beautifully coordinated admixture of droll humor, deadpan and slapstick,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The Times. The messy humanity of Anderson’s characters, she wrote, is “rarely more deeply felt than in ‘Moonrise Kingdom,’” despite the fact that the film takes place in one of Anderson’s tidy, idiosyncratic realms. “Sometimes they’re called dollhouse worlds,” Dargis wrote, “though, truly, they feel more authentic than many screen realities.”FridayHOME SWEET HOME 8 p.m. on NBC. Home exchanges, the proto-Airbnb setup in which the members of one household swap places with those in another city as a means of traveling for cheap, can be a ripe source for drama. Ask most anyone who’s done one and you’ll likely hear tales of oddities found stashed away behind the Fritos in kitchen cabinets, or plumbing challenges, or any of the other bumps that can emerge when one family’s lifestyle is transplanted into a home set up for another’s. But you’ll also probably hear about the transcendent experience of essentially stepping into someone else’s life. The latter element is the focus of this unscripted series from the filmmaker Ava DuVernay. Each episode follows two families who swap houses for one week. The pairings are intended to set up each family for revelations about identity, and to challenge potential assumptions about race, religion, gender and other issues.LA FRONTERA WITH PATI JINICH 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The chef and TV host Pati Jinich has long presented food as a tool of diplomacy. “In my kitchen, the border experience is an inspiration,” she said in a 2018 episode of her PBS series “Pati’s Mexican Table.” Her new travel series, “La Frontera,” expands on that notion; it focuses on food in border towns in Mexico and the southern United States, including El Paso and Juarez.ALL ABOUT EVE (1950) 11:45 p.m. on TCM. Bette Davis plays an aging Broadway star whose life is derailed by a young fan (Anne Baxter) in this drama. The film won several Oscars, including two for the writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who got statues for both his direction and his screenplay. (The film also won best picture.) The work of Mankiewicz’s screenwriter brother, Herman, will be on display on TCM earlier in the night in CITIZEN KANE (1941), which will air at 9:30.SaturdayTHOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. The active malevolence of two assassins is dwarfed by the passive lethality of a wildfire in this thriller from the writer-director Taylor Sheridan. The story centers on a smoke jumper, played by Angelina Jolie, whose path crosses with that of a boy (Finn Little) who is being tailed by killers (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult). They’re out to silence him because of a secret he learned from his forensic accountant father (Jake Weber). The pursuit takes them all through the Montana wilderness; it kicks into gear when the forest is set ablaze.SundayJeremy Strong in “Succession.”David M. Russell/HBOSUCCESSION 9 p.m. on HBO. The third season of HBO’s grotesquely lavish satirical drama “Succession” will arrive on Sunday night after being delayed a year by the pandemic. The delay presumably gave viewers some extra time to catch their breath after the gasp of a Season 2 finale, which once again cleaved the fictional members of the Roy family — wardens of a media empire — into warring camps. Don’t expect the time off to have lessened the tension. More

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    Review: In ‘Chicken & Biscuits,’ a Sweet but Dated Comedic Recipe

    Squabbling siblings, familiar stereotypes and a chorus of amens: A new play aims for the pleasures of Broadway’s traditional family sitcoms.“Why we gotta wear black, huh? We already Black!”So grouses Beverly, the kind of woman who features aquamarine hair and a peek-a-boo push-up bra at a funeral.To be specific: her father’s funeral. “We should be honoring my Daddy in style, color!” she proclaims. Certainly the deceased — the late pastor of a church in New Haven, Conn. — has complied; he’s heading to the Pearly Gates in a canary yellow tie.“Canary yellow was his favorite,” Beverly explains. “And he wore it like a pimp!”As I sat alternately laughing and cringing in the audience of “Chicken & Biscuits,” a play by Douglas Lyons that opened on Sunday at Circle in the Square Theater, I couldn’t help thinking that Beverly was voicing more than a personal, sartorial truth. In her impatience with tragedy, her gaudy antics and her beeline for fun, she was also delivering what may be the play’s mission statement. This family comedy, with its cheek and secrets and eulogies and amens, wants to offer audiences living in bad times an old-fashioned good one.Whether it succeeds for you will depend largely on your taste for Broadway comedies of a type that otherwise went out of style a few decades ago. These were supposedly heartwarming domestic stories in which “ethnic” families like the Italian American Geminianis in “Gemini” and the Jewish Chamberses in “Norman, Is That You?” aired dirty laundry (typically involving a gay son) while reaffirming the notion that love conquers all, among kin no less than country.Sidestepping the traffic of somber, formally inventive new plays about Black life, “Chicken & Biscuits” eagerly boards that rickety old bus. To start, there are the requisite squabbling siblings: Beverly (Ebony Marshall-Oliver) and her sister, Baneatta (Cleo King), representing opposite ends of the bawdy-to-churchy continuum. Beverly resents Baneatta’s attitude of superiority; Baneatta, whose tenured professorship seems to be in Disapproval Studies, scorns Beverly’s down-market outfits and outlook.Lewis plays a pastor hoping to prove himself, while also trying to help his wife, played by King, navigate her family’s complicated dynamics at a funeral.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesTheirs is but one of the thin and mild conflicts that the production, directed by Zhailon Levingston, stirs mightily to bring to a boil. On the day of the funeral, Baneatta’s husband, Reginald, will be delivering the eulogy, hoping to prove himself a suitable successor to his father-in-law in the pulpit. (With Norm Lewis in the role, could there ever be any doubt?) Reginald is also hoping that family hysteria will not overtake family healing in the process.Apparently, he has not met his family, or even his own children: the tightly wound, high-achieving, 30-something Simone (Alana Raquel Bowers) and her younger brother, Kenny (Devere Rogers), a struggling actor and the de rigueur gay son. Each comes factory supplied with a pressing problem. Simone has recently been dumped by her fiancé, who took up with a white woman instead. Kenny’s problem is also white: Logan Leibowitz, the Jewish boyfriend (and fellow struggling actor) he has brought to the funeral unannounced.Though Simone repeatedly refers to the couple, with a smirk, as “thespians,” and Baneatta simply ignores the interloper, no one disapproves of Kenny’s gayness deeply enough to prevent a happy hug of an ending. All of the characters’ characteristics are red herrings, and usually stale ones at that. Beverly’s outrageousness recalls that of innumerable stock characters from Tyler Perry’s plays, Black sitcoms of the 1970s and Chitlin’ Circuit farces. Logan (Michael Urie) is a gay stereotype so flittery he cannot follow the service; as he flips madly through the Bible, he asks, “Where’s Corinthians? Is this in alphabetical order?”You will detect in Logan and Beverly — and in Beverly’s sarcastic Gen Z daughter, La’Trice (Aigner Mizzelle) — a kind of equal opportunity minstrelsy. In some ways, trotting out laughable stereotypes of a modern Black family and its white appendages seems almost daring on Broadway today. One of the highlights of Levingston’s production, which can otherwise feel bloated at two hours, comes when Simone, apologizing for her kneejerk hostility toward Logan, says, “Since the breakup, it’s been real hard for me not to see red when I see white people.” Levingston lets this moment sit a good long time, waiting for the (mostly white) audience to get the joke.In their performances, Marshall-Oliver, from left, Urie and Aigner Mizzelle evoke outrageous stock characters of the deep — and recent — past.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSuch insight and provocation is otherwise rare in “Chicken & Biscuits.” So is any real tension. Whether the family will accept Logan, whether the sisters will reconcile, whether the mystery guest at the funeral (NaTasha Yvette Williams) will be explained are barely even questions; they’re more like a packing list. In that sense, the play feels dramatically complacent and underdeveloped, suggesting that its trip to Broadway after a pandemic-foreshortened run at the Queens Theater in 2020 might have benefited from a stop along the way.Yet it’s at least a little unfair to look at a family comedy that way. Lyons, an actor himself before turning to playwriting — this is his Broadway debut as an author, and Levingston’s as a director — is operating here in a different tradition from most contemporary fare, which is built on ideas and argumentation.“Chicken & Biscuits” is built on sensation, more like a musical or even an opera. In the long scene of the funeral itself, the eulogies by several family members function as arias, delivered in the old-school park-and-bark style. They are not concerned with forwarding the action so much as bringing aural pleasure, and indeed Lewis’s satire of a preacherly stemwinder, with drawn out vowels and pounced-on syncopations, is more than halfway to song.In any case, Lyons is more interested in the family’s moment-by-moment byplay — its laugh track and tear track — than in drawing realistic character portraits or scoring sociological points. The cast, including five actors also making their Broadway debuts, for the most part fills in the characters’ outlines confidently. As for sociological points, you could hardly say more in a treatise than Dede Ayite does with the costumes and Nikiya Mathis with the wigs.So if “Chicken & Biscuits” isn’t a profound work, that doesn’t mean it’s pointless. Its gravy is just another name for schmaltz. Thinking back, as a Jew, on the Jewish families that Broadway audiences learned to love in not-very-sophisticated, high-cholesterol comedies, I have to admit that even as I alternately laughed and cringed at their caricatures, I felt relieved of the more pernicious problem of otherness.Representation matters. I see many great and necessary new works about the problem of Blackness in a racist society — or rather, the problem of whiteness. They are filled with anguish and unfunny funerals. What I rarely get to see are works about Black American life that are defiantly not problem plays. Their sunniness is just as necessary, however garish the aquamarine and pimped-out the corpse.Chicken & BiscuitsThrough Jan. 2 at Circle in the Square Theater, Manhattan; 212-239-6200, chickenandbiscuitsbway.com. Running time: 2 hours. More

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    This Bill Cosby Juror is Lobbying for a Clear Legal Definition of Consent

    Stunned by what she learned about the law during deliberations in the sex assault case, Cheryl Carmel is lobbying for consent to have a clear definition: a positive, unequivocal “yes.”Some jurors were stunned during deliberations in Bill Cosby’s 2018 trial on sexual assault charges when they asked the judge for the legal definition of consent.He told them there was none under Pennsylvania law.“He said you, as reasonable people, have to come up with your own definition,” said Cheryl Carmel, who was the jury forewoman.Mr. Cosby had been charged with administering an intoxicant to a woman, Andrea Constand, and then penetrating her without her consent. Ms. Constand had come to his home outside Philadelphia and accepted wine and pills that she said she thought were herbal medicine.Though Mr. Cosby described the sexual encounter in 2004 as consensual, Ms. Constand said she was too intoxicated to physically or verbally resist.“Here was a sexual assault case and there was no definition,” Ms. Carmel recalled in a recent interview. “It just boggled my mind.”Since the trial ended, Ms. Carmel has been working to address what she and many others view as a critical gap in the law, joining an effort to get Pennsylvania to define consent as an affirmative act, one that emphasizes that the absence of “no” does not constitute permission.Mr. Cosby was found guilty of sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, right, but his conviction was later overturned on due process grounds.Corey Perrine/Associated PressIt is an unusual quest for a former juror, most of whom, researchers say, seldom engage in activism precipitated by their experience during a trial. But Ms. Carmel is determined.“This is a problem throughout the United States, that this is not defined,” she said. “There has to be something that can be done to correct this, to ensure that future jurors can more efficiently do the job they need to do.”Many states in America lack definitions of consent in their criminal laws governing sexual assault. Of those that do, some characterize consent as the absence of an objection — that if you didn’t somehow physically or verbally communicate “no,” and were not unconscious or otherwise incapacitated, then you consented.Activists like Ms. Carmel believe that laws should require a “yes” signal to establish consent.Efforts are now underway to add or refine a definition of consent in several states, such as New York, Vermont and Utah. They are an outgrowth, experts say, of a #MeToo era reckoning that has already led to initiatives — some more successful than others — to extend or eliminate statutes of limitations in sexual assault cases and to restrict nondisclosure agreements that can silence victims in sexual harassment lawsuits.“We are in a moment of flux where we are seeing an effort to catch criminal law up to the current cultural understanding of consent,” said Deborah Tuerkheimer, a former prosecutor who teaches at Northwestern University and is an expert on laws regarding sexual assault.Many of those advocating change say the laws should clearly define consent to mean a positive, unequivocal “yes,” an agreement that is indicated verbally or through some other action that is freely given and informed. By this definition, someone who assented to sex but was being coerced, or deceived, could not have actually consented.The proposals roughly mirror regulations already in place in a small number of states like Wisconsin, and at many colleges, where consent in sexual encounters has long been a front-burner issue.Dawn Dunning, who testified at Harvey Weinstein’s trial in New York, has also been involved in efforts to introduce an affirmative definition of consent in sexual assault cases.  Richard Drew/Associated PressIn New York, supporters of the change include Dawn Dunning, an actress who accused Harvey Weinstein at his trial of sexually assaulting her. Without a solid definition of consent, she said in an interview, “It’s just a gray area, which is the last thing you want when you are talking about sexual assault.”In Utah, critics of the current law cite sections like one that says sexual assault is “without consent” when “the actor knows the victim is unconscious.”Professor Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and former federal judge, said the state’s language puts too much weight on proving that the defendant knew there was no consent. “What if a guy says, ‘It was 50:50, I was not sure,’” the professor asked. “In Utah that means you are not guilty of rape.”Specifics vary from place to place, but only a handful of U.S. states now define consent as requiring an affirmative act — a freely given agreement in words or actions. As efforts to expand that number proceed, debates continue about how far the reach of the law should extend into sexual encounters.While proponents of change applaud all efforts to further delineate consent, and eliminate confusion, others question whether it is practical to legislate that every step in a sexual encounter requires an affirmative yes, or to criminalize behaviors where miscommunications and simple misunderstandings, not aggression, are to blame.“The language of sex is complicated,” said Abbe Smith, professor of law at Georgetown. “The criminal law is too blunt an instrument.”Such concerns were raised during an unsuccessful effort to introduce affirmative language into the American Law Institute’s latest reworking of its model penal code, considered a blueprint for state laws.Mr. Cosby had contended that his sexual encounter with Ms. Constand was consensual, but she said she was unable to consent, or resist, because of the impact of wine and pills he gave to her. Matt Rourke/Associated PressIn the Cosby case, the question of consent arose as the panel deliberated inside the Montgomery County courthouse, using a chart on an easel to record the main points of its discussion.In a civil deposition, Mr. Cosby had said he had not asked for permission verbally when he put his hand on Ms. Constand’s midriff during their encounter at his home outside Philadelphia one evening in early 2004. “I don’t hear her say anything,” he said. “And I don’t feel her say anything. And so I continue and I go into the area that is somewhere between permission and rejection. I am not stopped.”According to Ms. Constand’s testimony she was passive and, because of the intoxicants, unable to move, or fight him off, or even understand properly what was happening to her.Some jurors, according to two who were present, wondered aloud whether, if Ms. Constand did not say no, did that constitute consent?When the judge could not provide a legal definition, Ms. Carmel, 62, stepped forward as forewoman. She had a bit of background in the subject because she works in cybersecurity and privacy for an emergency notifications company. At the time, she was helping her company meet new European data protection regulations that require companies to obtain the positive consent of people visiting their websites before using their personal information.She told her fellow jurors how the data protection rules say that consent must be freely given by a clear affirmative act, be specific, informed and unambiguous, and that it can be withdrawn.“By providing that kind of framework it helped everybody get over the hump of ‘She didn’t say no,’ ” Ms. Carmel said. “It helped the conversation move on.”Another former Cosby juror, Dianne Scelza, agreed. “It was important for us to come to some sort of understanding of what it meant and how it played into the verdict,” she said.Mr. Cosby was convicted in 2018 after the jury decided that Ms. Constand had not consented to his actions. Earlier this year the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the conviction, ruling that prosecutors had violated Mr. Cosby’s due process rights. He was released from prison in June.After the trial, Ms. Carmel was approached by Joyce Short, founder of the Consent Awareness Network, who is trying to get affirmative definitions introduced into states’ laws. She had read about the problems the Cosby jury had with consent and Ms. Carmel’s approach as forewoman.Ms. Carmel said she was able to help focus the Cosby jury’s discussion on consent because, in her work, she had been exposed to the definition used in European data protection regulations. Michelle Gustafson for The New York TimesSince then, Ms. Carmel has met several times with local legislators, lobbying on behalf of a bill to define consent that activists plan to introduce into the Pennsylvania legislature.“I recognized it was important to bring Cheryl to the meetings with the legislators because she could really explain,” said Ms. Short. “Their jaws dropped, literally.”Senator Katie Muth, a rape survivor who is supporting the bill, said: “Having a definition in the law makes one less painful step if you do come forward.”But even proponents of the legislation predict it will be difficult to win passage.“This is going to be a really slow process because of the nuances,” said Jennifer Storm, a former victim advocate for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and author of several books on sexual assault. “It’s not that easy to define consent. It’s way too nuanced for that. Sex is nuanced.”Ms. Carmel, though, said she is patient. After she retires next month, she said she hopes to devote more time to what she says has become her passion — refining the law in Pennsylvania and maybe in other states.“How can we make it easier for people like me to be a juror, to listen to what a judge has to say, to listen to the evidence and come to a reasonable decision?” she said. “I want to make sure other jurors get all of the tools they could possibly use.” More

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    Kim Kardashian West Takes Aim at Herself in ‘S.N.L.’ Monologue

    Kardashian West hosted an episode featuring the musical guest Halsey and a parade of celebrity cameos that included John Cena, Chris Rock and Amy Schumer.When it was first announced that Kim Kardashian West would be hosting “Saturday Night Live” this weekend, the feedback was mixed — based on the reaction from some corners, you’d think they had invited Elon Musk or something.But Kardashian West, the reality TV star, entrepreneur, influencer and advocate, gamely poked fun at her own image in a self-mocking “S.N.L.” monologue that also took satirical potshots at her other famous family members and her divorce from the rapper Kanye West.And, as Kardashian West admitted in the routine, she was as surprised as anyone to find herself hosting the show.As she recounted in the monologue: “When they asked, I was like, you want me to host? Why? I haven’t had a movie premiere in a really long time. I mean, I actually I only had that one movie come out and no one told me it was even premiering. It must have slipped my mom’s mind.”Kardashian West said that “S.N.L.” offered her the opportunity to demonstrate that she was “so much more than just a pretty face.”“And good hair,” she added. “And great makeup. And amazing boobs. And a perfect butt. Basically, I’m just so much more than that reference photo my sisters showed their plastic surgeons.”She credited her father, Robert Kardashian, for stoking her interest in social justice while also reminding audiences that he was a member of the defense team at O.J. Simpson’s 1995 murder trial.“My father was and still is such an influence and inspiration to me, and I credit him with really opening up my eyes to racial injustice,” Kardashian West said. “It’s because of him that I met my first Black person. You want to take a stab in the dark at who it was?”Of course, she shouted out Kanye: “I married the best rapper of all time,” Kardashian West said. “Not only that, he’s the richest Black man in America — a talented, legit genius who gave me four incredible kids. So, when I divorced him, you have to know it came down to just one thing: his personality.”And in true “S.N.L.” style, Kardashian West wrapped up the monologue by biting the hand that fed her. “I’m so used to having 360 million followers watching my every move,” she said. “How many people watch ‘S.N.L.,’ like 10 million? So tonight is just a chill, intimate night for me.”Embarrassment of celebrity riches of the weekIf you’re a vaccinated celebrity who lives within driving distance of Rockefeller Center, ask your agent why you weren’t asked to make a cameo on “S.N.L.” this weekend: This one sketch, a send-up of reality dating shows, featured an entire season’s worth of celebrity bookings, with Tyler Cameron, John Cena, Chace Crawford, Blake Griffin, Chris Rock and Jesse Williams appearing as potential suitors for a bachelorette played by Kardashian West.Amy Schumer also appeared as one of the producers of the fictional show, who has decided she wants to vie for Kardashian West’s affections. Maybe don’t get too invested in the hapless contestant played by Kyle Mooney, who is blissfully certain he has just as much of a shot as his famous rivals.Freaky Friday of the weekThere was no way a Kardashian-themed episode of “S.N.L.” was going to leave out the other members of that camera-friendly family. At least some of them are put to good use in “The Switch,” an homage to body-swapping comedies that finds Kardashian West and Aidy Bryant trading identities for what’s supposed to be 24 hours — until Bryant decides she isn’t swapping back. (If that didn’t satisfy your appetite for Kardashian-centric humor, there’s also this parody of “The People’s Court,” featuring a mix of actual Kardashians and “S.N.L.” cast members playing Kardashians and other assorted would-be celebs.)Weekend Update jokes of the weekAt the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on Facebook’s troubled week, in which a whistle-blower, Frances Haugen, testified about the company’s internal research, and the site and its products suffered lengthy outages.Jost began:This week we found out that sometimes a guy in a hoodie actually can be dangerous. Internal documents show that Facebook knew its platform was used to spread hate and misinformation, but they hid the evidence. Now the weird thing is, I went to school with Mark Zuckerberg and I was there when he created Facebook. And I feel terrible. Sometimes, I wish I had a time machine so I could go back to college and find Mark and say, “Hey, man … can I be part of your company?”He added:Facebook’s also denying a report that says using Instagram can cause users to develop a negative body image. Which explains their rival’s new slogan, TikTok: bring your fat ass over here.Che picked up on the social media thread:This week Instagram was down for an entire day. Forcing many Instagram addicts to fill their time with Twitter, TikTok or hosting “S.N.L.” [Behind him, a screen showed an image of Kardashian West delivering her monologue from earlier in the show.]Then he went on to note some other media news, with a personal touch:Fox News turned 25 this week and they celebrated their birthday the same way that I do: by paying white women to say some nasty stuff.Going your own way of the weekIf a whole generation of “S.N.L.” viewers doesn’t actually know what Lindsey Buckingham sounds like, it might be because they recognize him only as a perpetually silent guest (played by Bill Hader) on the overstuffed talk show “What Up With That?”The onetime Fleetwood Mac singer and guitarist has since been cut loose from his old band and released a new solo album, and “S.N.L.” finally let audiences hear Buckingham’s voice on the show — as sung by himself, accompanying Halsey on a performance of her song “Darling.” (Don’t worry, he still didn’t speak at goodnights.) More

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    Shannen Doherty Reveals Ravages of Breast Cancer in Candid Photos

    The actress, 50, who has Stage 4 cancer, said she posted the photos to help raise awareness about breast cancer prevention.One picture shows the actress Shannen Doherty completely bald, a bloody cotton ball in her nose as she stares straight at the camera, looking almost confrontational.Another is more playful — Ms. Doherty, 50, is in bed wearing Cookie Monster pajamas and a Cookie Monster eye mask. She confesses to how exhausted she is, how the chemotherapy she has had to undergo for Stage 4 breast cancer has left her plagued by bloody noses.“Is it all pretty? NO but it’s truthful and my hope in sharing is that we all become more educated, more familiar with what cancer looks like,” Ms. Doherty wrote on Instagram this week.The images are unsettling to any member of Generation X who remembers her as Brenda Walsh, the feisty, polarizing teenager she played for four years on the hit 1990s show “Beverly Hills, 90210,” which brought her international fame and infamy.Ms. Doherty said she was posting the images as part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the hopes that they will jar people into getting mammograms and regular breast exams and help people cut through “the fear and face whatever might be in front of you.”The unvarnished photos align with the frank nature of an actress who never seemed interested in being universally liked and are likely to resonate with a public that is reconsidering how female celebrities were treated in the 1990s and early 2000s, said Kearston Wesner, an associate professor of media studies at Quinnipiac University who teaches celebrity culture.“The photos aren’t touched up,” Professor Wesner said. “They’re not presented in any way than the reality she’s going through. There is some feeling that when she is communicating with you, she is coming from an authentic place.”Ms. Doherty said she learned she had breast cancer in 2015. Since then, she said she has had a mastectomy, as well as radiation and chemotherapy treatment.The photos, which have been viewed about 280,000 times, have elicited comments of sympathy, admiration and praise on her Instagram account, which has more than 1.8 million followers.“Love you Shan,” wrote Ian Ziering, one of her former co-stars on “Beverly Hills, 90210.”“You are a force, Sister!” wrote Kelly Hu, an actress.Ms. Doherty did not often get such adulation when she was younger.In the early 1990s, Ms. Doherty, who was only 19 when she started acting on “90210,” was eviscerated by the press and many in the public who criticized her for smoking in clubs, her tumultuous love life and reports that she was difficult on set.Her character was an outspoken, headstrong and temperamental teenager who had sex with her boyfriend, fought with her friends and rebelled against her father.Brenda Walsh was “relatable in an uncomfortable way,” said Kat Spada, a host of “The Blaze,” a podcast devoted to discussing “90210.”In hindsight, the backlash from fans against the character of Brenda Walsh, and by extension Ms. Doherty, may have been a result of seeing themselves in both women, said Lizzie Leader, the other host of the podcast.“We always ask guests about their ‘90210’ journey and we ask which character they most relate to or identify with,” Ms. Leader said. “Everyone is almost always a Brenda.”But back when the show was airing, some fans became so consumed with vitriol for the character that they began calling for Ms. Doherty to be fired.They formed an “I Hate Brenda” club. MTV News dedicated a three-plus-minute segment to the sentiment, quoting people who mocked her looks and her decision to attend the Republican National Convention in 1992. One clip in the MTV segment showed a group of partygoers hitting a “Brenda piñata.”She left “Beverly Hills, 90210” in 1994, then went on to appear in the 1995 movie “Mallrats” and several television movies and shows. In 2019, she appeared in a brief reboot of the original “90210” called “BH90210.”In an interview with The New York Times in 2008, Ms. Doherty said that the bad publicity around her was often based on exaggerations or “completely false” stories.“I really could care less about it anymore,” she said in the interview. “I have nothing to apologize for. Whatever I did was my growing-up process that I needed to go through, that anybody my age goes through. And however other people may have reacted to that is their issue.”If you were a fan of Ms. Doherty, the headlines hurt, said Professor Wesner, 45, who watched Ms. Doherty grow from a child actor in “Little House on the Prairie” into roles like Heather Duke in the 1988 movie “Heathers,” and Brenda Walsh.“She meant a lot to me,” said Professor Wesner. “I myself was an outspoken girl and I’ve gotten slammed for it, too. For me, seeing someone who was also outspoken and also a ‘difficult woman’ was satisfying.”The coverage of Ms. Doherty was reflective of a time “when publications would attack, would fat shame, would ugly shame, would anorexia shame,” said Stephen Galloway, the dean of the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and a former executive editor of The Hollywood Reporter. “There was no line between taste and vulgarity. It was anything goes.”And it severely damaged Ms. Doherty’s career, he said.Her decision to document the effects of cancer is “a great step toward redemption and meaningfulness” that could help people, said Mr. Galloway, who said he learned about a week ago that he was in the early stages of cancer.He said Ms. Doherty’s openness had made him feel more comfortable talking about his own diagnosis.“I looked at her and I thought, ‘what courage,’” Mr. Galloway said. More

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    Homer Simpson Was Made for Fashion

    Behind the painstaking creation of the Balenciaga-Simpsons episode that took nearly a year to make.Clapping, whispering, cameras snapping, questionable music: These are the sounds of a classic fashion show. Bursts of laughter? Those are less common.Yet several were heard last Saturday night, rolling around the 19th-century Parisian theater where the great and storied house of Cristóbal Balenciaga skipped the traditional catwalk and screened a special 10-minute episode of “The Simpsons.”It was a surprise more than a year in the making, and the result of a sometimes grueling collaboration between two exacting creative entities known for their attention to detail. So far it has been viewed more than five million times on YouTube.In the episode, Homer writes to Balenciaga (“Dear Balun, Balloon, Baleen, Balenciaga-ga,” he says as he struggles to pronounce the famous fashion name) for Marge’s birthday, explaining that his wife has always wanted to own something by the brand. He asks for the cheapest item, which the Balenciaga team interprets as “just one of those American gags nobody gets” and sends him a dress that costs 19,000 euros. After wearing it briefly, Marge returns the dress with a note saying she’ll “always remember those 30 minutes of feeling just a little special.”Back in Europe, the Balenciaga artistic director Demna Gvasalia declares her note “the saddest thing I’ve ever heard, and I grew up in the Soviet Union. This is exactly the kind of woman I want to reach!” He then travels to Springfield and decides to “rescue” the “style-deprived” by inviting them to model his clothes in Paris, explaining that he wants “the world to see real people in my show.”The 10 minutes are packed with Easter eggs for die-hard fans of both “The Simpsons” and Balenciaga. A private Balenciaga jet has landing gear that looks like the brand’s famous sock sneakers; Waylon Smithers chooses a dress to wear when given his choice of outfit; Lisa at first acknowledges that walking a runway is “superficial” but then enjoys it immensely.The collaboration began in April 2020, when Mr. Gvasalia sent the “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening an email about working together.Marge in the golden ballroom dress from the summer 2020 collection.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationMr. Gvasalia, 40, who was born in Georgia and watched the show when he was growing up, said the idea came to him during the first lockdown of 2020. He has a penchant for inserting Balenciaga into mass-market trends: Under his direction, the brand has collaborated with other American sensations, like Crocs and Fortnite.About “The Simpsons,” he said, “I always loved the tongue-in-cheek humor, the romance and the charming naïveness of it.”Al Jean, an executive producer and writer of “The Simpsons,” said that when he learned of the Balenciaga project in January, “my response was, ‘What’s Balenciaga?’” He turned to Wikipedia for answers.His first pitch to Balenciaga had a similar framing to the one they ended up going with — Marge’s birthday wish — but diverged with Mr. Gvasalia’s character deciding that the brand’s next show would be held in Springfield. When the Balenciaga plane lands there, its models aren’t allowed into the United States because they’re too thin and beautiful. Springfield’s residents become the models, their nuclear plant is the runway, and the ghost of Mr. Balenciaga makes an appearance.But Balenciaga preferred that Springfield be brought to Paris, Mr. Jean said. From there, the story was revised and tweaked — to the point that the writers joked about “Draft 52 of the Balenciaga script” — up until two days before the Paris showing.Mr. Gvasalia made specific contributions to the script, Mr. Jean said. For example, the episode ends with Homer embracing and singing “La Mer” to Marge on a post-show party boat on the Seine. But Mr. Gvasalia wanted one final joke, so he asked that Homer’s jacket be set on fire by a Frenchman smoking a cigar. Mr. Jean then suggested that Anna Wintour, who had appeared in the front row of the fashion show, try to put out the fire with expensive champagne, which Homer tries to drink instead.“She said, ‘Please don’t have me do that,’ so it became Demna,” Mr. Jean said. (Ms. Wintour otherwise approved of her likeness being used but declined to voice her character, he said.) And that earlier line about Mr. Gvasalia growing up in the Soviet Union? The “Simpsons” team had decided to cut it, but Mr. Gvasalia asked for it to be reinstated.He also asked, the day before the show, to change the color of a tear Ms. Wintour sheds while watching Marge model. The tear was too light, and it wouldn’t read onscreen unless it was a darker blue. Mr. Jean and the director David Silverman agreed.“They were definitely our match in terms of, to the last detail, making sure everything is perfect,” Mr. Jean said. “The animation crew, this is the hardest thing they’ve had to do since ‘The Simpsons Movie.’”Maggie and Lisa in Balenciaga crushed velvet jersey gowns from the spring 2021 collection.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationBart in a Balenciaga look from winter 2020, including a Wifi vintage jersey XL T-shirt and black leather Cuissard boots.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationMarge wearing a fictional Balenciaga dress in the “Simpsons” episode.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationSmithers in a one-shoulder pantadress from the winter 2020 collection.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationSherri and Terri wearing turtleneck dresses in bonded velvet from the summer 2020 collection.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationMr. Silverman, who directed that 2007 film, said the biggest challenge was getting the “accuracy needed in the clothing,” which involved inventive post-animation effects to capture the distinct textures and movement of, for example, Marge’s runway look: a gold metallic ball gown.Balenciaga sent the “Simpsons” team 15 looks to choose from for the final show, all based on designs from the last five years. But putting them on the bodies of these universally recognizable cartoon characters wasn’t so straightforward.“It was tricky for us, capturing that balance of caricature and the integrity of the clothing,” Mr. Silverman said. “You’re translating the look of real clothing, real designs on these characters that aren’t exactly human proportions.”Mr. Silverman, who joked-but-not-really that this is how he spent his summer vacation, studied runway footage to figure out what the audience should be wearing and how the lighting should be hitting the catwalk.The script also had to capture the particular absurdity of the luxury fashion world and Balenciaga’s stature in that world — something that can’t be absorbed on Wikipedia. Mr. Jean said that in addition to the crash course in Balenciaga earlier in the year, watching the Netflix series about Halston, who was a great fan of Balenciaga, helped him understand the evergreen excessive culture of fashion.The supporting characters are also based on real people and animals, including Mr. Gvasalia’s husband, Loïk Gomez; their two dogs; the chief creative officer, Martina Tiefenthaler (who voiced herself); and workers from Balenciaga’s atelier who are finishing the collection on the plane while singing, “formidable, formidable.”Selma wearing a 3D double-breasted coat and a stretch velvet top from the winter 2018 collection.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationPatty in a swing doudoune from Demna Gvasalia’s fall 2016 debut collection.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationThis is one of Mr. Gvasalia’s favorite scenes in the episode, he said: “It just makes me so happy every time I watch it.”As for Mr. Gvasalia’s voice, “we had to try to talk him into playing himself, but he didn’t want to,” Mr. Jean said. He felt that was consistent with Mr. Gvasalia’s recent decision to fully obscure his face and body during public appearances, creating confusion among observers as to whether it was really him.When asked why he wanted to align Balenciaga with “The Simpsons” and whether he felt the brands had any commonalities, Mr. Gvasalia said that “it’s more personal to me.”“I did not want to align anything or make sense of anything. I just wanted to create an iconic visual story.”While the novelty of the collaboration made it feel surprising, the brands share a similar ethos. They have an appreciation for self-referentiality, breaking the rules of presentation (airing an episode with live animation; turning a red carpet into a runway show without telling anyone) and bridging the highbrow and lowbrow. Mr. Jean called Mr. Gvasalia an “excellent collaborator,” and Mr. Gvasalia described the experience as “the highest level of collaboration” and “a dream come true.”“I did not realize how complex it is to create a 10-minute-long episode, so huge respect to that,” he said.Whether the act was meant to challenge fashion’s self-seriousness or the public’s notions of luxury — to bring Balenciaga to the suburban masses or to bring the suburban masses to Balenciaga — is something he will let the critics debate.What did he want out of this? “A smile and a good dose of fun.” More

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    La MaMa Theater Reopens With Strange, Enchanting Puppetry

    The daring Manhattan theater reopens this month with a gorgeous puppet festival, proving it has lost none of its nerve during the pandemic.Sonia enters naked, far upstage. Even from a distance, she is an imposing presence, taller than either of the men who are helping her walk.All right, making her walk. Sonia is a puppet, and she would be inert without them.Not for an instant does it feel that way, though, in “Lunch with Sonia,” an achingly beautiful entry in La MaMa’s annual puppet festival. These puppeteers are her caretakers, surely — because in this puppet-and-dance piece Sonia is ill, and her faltering body needs assistance as she puts on a gown and moves painstakingly downstage toward her grand, gilt-edged chair. Where, holding court, she proceeds to enchant us.The festival, now in its second week and continuing through Oct. 24, opens the venerable East Village theater’s post-shutdown season. I regret to inform you that “Lunch with Sonia” has finished its run. But of the four productions I have seen in this year’s lineup, it is one of two that made me feel intensely grateful that La MaMa is once again lending its stages to live performance that is strange, daring, gorgeous and far from the mainstream.More about “Sonia” in a moment, because there is still time to catch the other show that absolutely gripped me: Lone Wolf Tribe’s eerie, wistful “Body Concert,” running through Sunday upstairs in the cavernous Ellen Stewart Theater.Like “Sonia,” this is puppetry for adults — ideally the non-squeamish kind, given that a small herd of severed body parts is involved. They are made of foam rubber, but still.Kevin Augustine in “Body Concert.”Richard TermineKevin Augustine, who created this Butoh-inspired puppetry-and-movement piece, performs it clad in a dance belt, with his hands, feet and head colored greasepaint white. In mostly dim, hazy lighting, by Ayumu “Poe” Saegusa, Augustine animates an outsize skull; an enormous eye; and a giant, skin-stripped arm and leg, each a mass of muscles and veins. There’s a heart, too, and a jaw, and a semi-skeleton infant with an unclosed fontanel.I can’t tell you quite why it’s so fascinating to watch the leg use its knee and toes to inch across the floor, or just what makes it slightly poignant — though when Mark Bruckner’s music introduces piano, a note of longing enters. Comical as it is when the arm, with taloned fingers, tap-taps at the skull, there’s an element of yearning there, too. These disparate bits of body, little good on their own, want to be united. Want to be alive.Sonia, on the other hand, wants to be dead. That is the tension inside Loco7 Dance Puppet Theater Company’s celebratory “Lunch with Sonia,” whose matriarch heroine intends to end her life before debilitation takes that choice away. But first, we learn in voice-overs, she will have a month of goodbyes, some with family members who are still trying to talk her out of it.Created and directed by Federico Restrepo and Denise Greber — with choreography and puppet, lighting, video and set design by Restrepo — “Sonia” lifts a grief-tinged tale to a joyous realm, with Sonia at the center, eager to dance in hot pink Crocs. The piece is inspired by Restrepo’s experience with his own aunt Sonia, and it is understandably a bit longer than it needs to be: a result of the fond wish of the living to resurrect our lost beloveds and linger in their company.The other two festival shows I saw, both in the more intimate downstairs theater, were less successful. The first, Watoku Ueno’s shadow-puppet piece “The Tall Keyaki Tree” (whose run has ended), is visually and aurally alluring, with live music by Shu Odamura. But the story — inspired by the Koda Rohan novella “The Five-Storied Pagoda,” about a carpenter who builds a pagoda with wood from a tree he loved as a child — is soporific.Shoshana Bass in “When I Put On Your Glove,” which she created based on her father’s puppetry. Richard TermineSandglass Theater’s “When I Put On Your Glove,” which continues through Sunday, has an affecting premise. Created and performed by Shoshana Bass, it is a tribute to her puppeteer father, Eric Bass, and an exploration of artistic legacy. Using four of his puppets, she re-enacts some of his best known works, but she has not found a way to spark them with life.Directed by Gerard Stropnicky, with design and construction by Shoshana Bass’s mother, Ines Zeller Bass, the piece makes striking metaphoric use of falling sand. It also shows us clips of an Eric Bass performance, which are more magnetic than any live element of this show.Also notable is the festival’s exhibition of Richard Termine’s puppet photography, running through Sunday at La MaMa’s gallery space. It’s a lovely survey of the form as seen on New York stages; there is even a brief but robust section on puppetry during the pandemic.For people who experienced any performances on those walls, the images will be particularly vivid. As a line in “When I Put On Your Glove” says: “What animates the puppet is not the puppeteer, but the breath of memory with which we all fill it.” So it goes, too, with puppets caught on camera.La MaMa Puppet SeriesThrough Oct. 24 at La MaMa, Manhattan; lamama.org. More

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    Brooklyn Academy of Music Plans a New York-Focused Season

    In its first full season since the start of the pandemic, the organization will feature a mix of new and familiar works in dance and theater.There will be dances exploring Black love and relationships, theater works highlighting the impact of technology on daily life and an appearance by the filmmaker Spike Lee.The Brooklyn Academy of Music will focus its coming season on the artists of New York City, the organization announced on Friday, as it seeks to bounce back from the coronavirus pandemic.“This is a season to celebrate artists who give New York City a sense of possibility, a sense of wonder, a sense of effervescence, a glow, a bit of magic,” the academy’s artistic director, David Binder, said in an interview. He said the academy wanted to create a season to mark New York’s recovery from the pandemic, which brought many of the city’s cultural institutions to a standstill for more than 18 months.The season, which runs November to March, is the academy’s first since the start of the pandemic. As the organization tries to lure audiences back to its stages and recover millions in ticket revenue lost during the pandemic, it will feature a mix of familiar hits and new works.Dance will be front and center, starting in November with the world premiere of “The Mood Room,” a Big Dance Theater production, conceived, directed and choreographed by Annie-B Parson. The show, which takes place in Los Angeles in 1980, mixes dance, theater and spoken opera to explore the effects of Reaganism.The dance lineup also includes Reggie Wilson’s “Power” in January, and the New York premiere of Kyle Abraham’s “An Untitled Love,” in February. The work, set to neo-soul music, is described as an “exaltation of Black love and unity.”Also in February comes Pam Tanowitz’s acclaimed “Four Quartets,” a staging of T.S. Eliot’s poems. When it had its premiere at Bard College’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, in 2018, Alastair Macaulay, writing in The New York Times, called it “the greatest creation of dance theater so far this century.”In March, the Mark Morris Dance Group will perform Morris’s classic “L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato” (1988), set to Handel’s oratorio.There will be theater and cabaret offerings as well. In March, SITI Company, the noted experimental New York theater company, will stage “The Medium,” a minimalist meditation on the role of technology in society.The cabaret performers Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman will star as their alter egos Kiki and Herb in a new holiday special, titled “SLEIGH,” which will premiere after Thanksgiving.In December, Lee will appear alongside his brother for a conversation about the filmmaker’s new book, “SPIKE,” a visual look at his career.With coronavirus cases still high, it remains to be seen whether audiences will turn out at prepandemic levels, but Binder said he believed many people were clamoring for live performances. The academy’s brief fall season, which opened in September, has attracted several sold-out crowds, he said.“It seems New Yorkers are really hungry to get back into the theater,” Binder said. “I feel very optimistic and excited.” More