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    How Dasha Nekrasova Is Calling the Shots

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

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

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

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

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

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    How ‘Succession’ Turns Getting What You Want Into Hell

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

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    Best Comedy of 2021

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

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    Seth Meyers Wants Fox News to Stop Saying ‘Big Meat’

    As Fox hosts went after President Biden over rising prices, Meyers found their choice of words a little distracting.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.Where’s the Beef?On his last “Closer Look” of the year, Seth Meyers tackled some Fox News coverage of President Biden’s response to inflation — specifically, rising meat prices.“Recently, the White House said the blame for rising meat prices rests in part with meat conglomerates, and then Fox News decided to repeat a term for those companies to deride Biden that — well, let’s just say the term was a little distracting,” Meyers said on Thursday.That term? “Big Meat.”“Why are they saying ‘Big Meat’ so much? Is this ‘Fox News After Dark’?” — SETH MEYERS“They sound like they’re on a press tour for a porno about a pizza delivery guy.” — SETH MEYERS“The worst part of that segment came when Rudy got confused and accidentally Googled ‘Big Meat.’”— SETH MEYERS“Maybe they’re just sticking up for Big Meat because that was Trump’s Secret Service code name.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Thong Edition)“If you fly Spirit, that’s the oxygen mask that drops down in an emergency.” — JIMMY FALLON, on a United Airlines passenger who wore a red thong on his face to protest mask requirements (and who later compared himself to Rosa Parks)“A few minutes later, an air marshal walked over and gave him a mouth wedgie.” — JIMMY FALLON“Rosa Parks? My man, don’t be so modest — you’re more than Rosa Parks. If anything, you’re the Martin Luther King of white dudes comparing themselves to Black heroes for no reason.” — TREVOR NOAH“You know, for real, sometimes I think conservatives are right: America shouldn’t be teaching the history of racism in schools, because then at least white people wouldn’t know who to compare themselves to when they get kicked off airplanes for doing dumb [expletive]. ‘I’m exactly the same as — huh, I can’t think of anybody, you know? Maybe I’m just a [expletive] wearing panties on my face. I need to re-evaluate my behavior.’” — TREVOR NOAH“And, by the way, can we all agree there’s no way this dude just starting sniffing thongs during the pandemic? I bet you he’s been going around for years like, ‘Looks like I got kicked out of the dorm because I’m once again the Rosa Parks of my sister’s friend’s underwear drawer.’” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingScarlett Johansson tells Jimmy Fallon about meeting Judge Judy (she was star-struck).Also, Check This OutOlivia Rodrigo, members of the cast of “Reservation Dogs” and a scene from “Sanctuary City.”Clockwise from left: Mat Hayward/Getty Images; Jeremy Dennis for The New York Times; Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOlivia Rodrigo and the cast of “Reservation Dogs” are among the breakout stars of 2021. More

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    ‘And Just Like That’ Recap, Episode 3: A Week of Discovery

    Miranda ponders new directions while Carrie is drawn back into the orbit of an old rival.Season 1, Episode 3: ‘When in Rome’It turns out Miranda doesn’t need red hair to be spicy.If you picked up on a bit of flirtation between her and Che right after their decidedly uncute meet in Episode 2, you might have been onto something. At the very end of Episode 3, after she, Carrie and Charlotte take in the live comedy set Che is recording for Netflix, Miranda fibs to her pals that she’s headed home but instead sneaks back in to see her new friend at the after party.Showing a bit of nerves, Miranda is a chatterbox and can’t keep herself from fawning over Che, who tells her to breathe. Oh, Miranda breathes. In a sexy, showstopping move, Che shotguns a drag of weed smoke into Miranda’s mouth, nearly kissing her, and quite possibly shaking her to the core.How did we get here?Well, Miranda told us long ago, in the original “Sex and the City” series, that her husband Steve Brady (David Eigenberg) isn’t a “core-shaker.” He and Miranda were more congenial than amorous, and in “And Just Like That,” this still seems to be the case.Miranda and Steve haven’t had sex in years, she reveals to Charlotte over coffee, somewhat casually. She wonders if they’re even still a couple, or just “roommates with ice cream and a kid.”Che’s act offers an exciting counterpoint to such humdrum domesticity. It is a raucous, LGBTQ+-centered party filled with jokes that feel more like rallying cries, with the comedian telling the crowd that confusion is a good thing — a notion Miranda realizes she relates to — and that if there’s something they don’t like, whether it’s their shirt or maybe even their identity, they can change it. Could Miranda be ready to upset her settled life in favor of a personal revolution? And if so, might it alleviate the need she feels to carry mini bottles of vodka around in her backpack?The ‘Sex and the City’ UniverseThe sprawling franchise revolutionized how women were portrayed on the screen. And the show isn’t over yet. A New Series: Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte return for another strut down the premium cable runway in “And Just Like That,” streaming on HBO. Off Broadway: Candace Bushnell, whose writing gave birth to the “Sex and the City” universe, stars in her one-woman show based on her life. In Carrie’s Footsteps: “Sex and the City” painted a seductive vision of Manhattan, inspiring many young women to move to the city. The Origins: For the show’s 20th anniversary in 2018, Bushnell shared how a collection of essays turned into a pathbreaking series.The wisdom layered within Che’s rowdy, raunchy set isn’t lost on Charlotte either, who takes mental notes between chuckles on how the message relates to her own life. Rose, her youngest, has just confessed that she doesn’t always feel like a girl. Charlotte isn’t quite sure how seriously to take this at first, nor is her best friend Anthony, who basically tells her to ignore it.But during Che’s show, the vibe of acceptance and self-love pulsing through the crowd encourages Charlotte to follow her instincts and ensure that Rose feels supported. She calls Rose after the performance just to say “I love you.” Like a typical teen, Rose just wants to go back to playing Mario Kart.For Carrie, Che’s event is mostly an escape from a week otherwise filled with heartache and humiliation. Natasha Naginsky (Bridget Moynahan), a.k.a. the “idiot stick figure with no soul,” reappears and, to my own personal delight, so then does nutty, neurotic Carrie.Early on in the episode, in the reading of Big’s will, Carrie finds out that her late husband has left a cool million to Natasha, his ex-wife. Carrie can’t help but wonder — no, completely obsess over — why.Carrie spirals (classic Carrie) and becomes convinced that Big and Natasha were still in touch before his death — perhaps they even were having an affair.She roots through her and Big’s apartment for clues and is taunted by a photo she finds in his wallet of Gogi, an old dog she never knew about. What else doesn’t she know? It’s an urgent question that seems to have only one answer: that Natasha was really the love of Big’s life, and he regretted choosing Carrie over her.Despite Miranda and Charlotte’s reassurances, Carrie has to hear from the woman herself whether this is true. She emails Natasha but gets stonewalled. She messages her on Instagram but gets blocked. So Carrie concludes that the logical next step is to show up unannounced at Natasha’s office.In a demoralizing sequence of events, Natasha’s assistant lies to Carrie’s face, saying Natasha is in Rome as a means of shooing her out of the lobby, only for Carrie to see Natasha moments later in her office window. Worse, Natasha sees Carrie on the sidewalk, pointing up at her like a deranged stalker. As if that weren’t mortifying enough, a few days later Carrie walks in on Natasha using the bathroom at a coffee shop.They are both so startled that Carrie spills her hot drink and badly burns her hand. Despite not wanting to engage with Carrie, Natasha takes pity on her in a scene that harkens back to the moment in the original series when she caught Carrie sneaking out of her and Big’s marital abode.During that scene, Natasha injures herself, and Carrie takes care of her. Now it is Carrie who needs the first-aid, and Natasha owes her one. She gives Carrie ice and some desperately needed closure, telling her that she and Big haven’t been in contact since their divorce. Natasha has no idea why he would leave her money, and she doesn’t want it. There was no affair, and no love lingering between her and her ex-husband.Carrie reasons that the gift was probably Big’s way of apologizing to Natasha, something Carrie feels compelled to do as well. They part ways cordially with a promise not to bother each other on social media.Big not alerting his wife to the loaded line item in his will was wildly inconsiderate, which happens to be his signature trait. Even from beyond the grave, he still has the power to knock Carrie off balance and worse, make her feel like she isn’t enough.Which is to say that Big is still classic Big, even when he’s dead. More

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    Chris Noth Peloton Ad Pulled After Sexual Assault Allegations

    The online ad, a response to the “Sex and the City” reboot, was removed after The Hollywood Reporter published an article in which two women accused the actor of sexual assault.Peloton pulled down a popular online ad featuring the actor Chris Noth on Thursday after The Hollywood Reporter published an article in which two women accused him of sexual assault.The article detailed the accusations of two women, identified with pseudonyms, who claimed Noth — who played Mr. Big on “Sex and the City” and stars in its new reboot — sexually assaulted them in separate incidents in 2004 and 2015. In a statement, Noth called their accusations “categorically false.”After the allegations surfaced, Peloton, the stationary-bike maker, removed a widely viewed online ad featuring Noth. It had quickly put up the ad after the first episode of the “Sex and the City” reboot — the HBO Max limited series, “And Just Like That” — depicted Mr. Big dying of a heart attack after riding a Peloton bike.“Every single sexual assault accusation must be taken seriously,” Peloton said in a statement. “We were unaware of these allegations when we featured Chris Noth in our response to HBO’s reboot.”One woman told The Hollywood Reporter that Noth, 67, raped her in 2004, when she was 22, after inviting her to his apartment building’s pool in West Hollywood; the woman said that after the assault, a friend took her to the hospital, where she received stitches. Another woman said he assaulted her in 2015, when she was 25, after a date in New York City.“The encounters were consensual,” he said in the statement. “It’s difficult not to question the timing of these stories coming out. I don’t know for certain why they are surfacing now, but I do know this: I did not assault these women.”Noth, who also had roles in “Law & Order” and “The Good Wife,” is best known for his role as Mr. Big, the central love interest and eventual husband of Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) in “Sex and the City.” His death in the reboot shocked fans and set social media ablaze. Peloton’s stock dropped the day after the episode became available.Three days after the episode debuted, Peloton tried to make the most of the ill-fated product placement by releasing the parody ad, which features Noth lounging with his Peloton instructor, extolling the health benefits of the exercise machine while he flirted with her. In the clip, Mr. Noth suggestively raises an eyebrow, seemingly glancing back toward the bedroom, and asks, “Shall we take another ride? Life’s too short not to.”Then, after the sexual assault allegations surfaced, Peloton’s post on Twitter that included the video disappeared. In a statement, the company said it had archived social media posts related to the video and stopped promoting it while it sought to “learn more” about the allegations.HBO declined to comment. More