Eliana Willis

Maggie Griffin, who was a beloved co-star of her daughter Kathy Griffin’s Emmy-winning reality show, “My Life on the D-List,” died on Tuesday. She was 99.Kathy Griffin announced the death on Twitter and Instagram, giving no other details. In 2019 she said that her mother had dementia.On “My Life on the D-List,” which aired on Bravo from 2005 to 2010, Maggie Griffin was a churchgoing, wine-loving, elfin woman who adored the conservative Fox News commentator Sean Hannity. Her daughter, on the other hand, is a brash, liberal comedian given to profanity.The show, self-aware and sometimes self-deprecating, was built around Kathy’s attempts to build fame. Maggie was sometimes the butt of her daughter’s jokes, both on the show and in Kathy’s standup comedy, sent up as a gruff, muumuu-wearing throwback.She was also thrust into situations on camera that might have made her uncomfortable. In one episode, as the two were exploring East Hollywood, Kathy casually handed a print shop employee a partly naked publicity photo of herself to hang on his wall alongside those of other celebrities.“Oh, my God!” Maggie exclaimed upon seeing the picture.There were times when being a part of her daughter’s act irked her.“As you all may know, she loves saying things on television she knows I don’t want to talk about,” Ms. Griffin wrote in “Tip It! The World According to Maggie” (2010), a memoir named after a technique for getting the last drops out of a box of wine. “Certain things she does to provoke me, I could kill her for. And all that foul language!” But, she added: “I do the best I can. I go along with it.”Ms. Griffin also appeared with her daughter on her late-night talk show, “Kathy,” which aired for two seasons on Bravo. They were interviewed together by Anderson Cooper, Ms. Griffin’s longtime partner for New Year’s Eve broadcasts on CNN, and were guests on shows like “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”Kathy Griffin often joked that she felt her mother’s fame was overshadowing hers, but after her mother died she thanked the legion of fans that Maggie had attracted.“I’m so grateful you guys got to be part of her life,” she wrote on Twitter. “You knew her. You loved her. She knew it.”Margaret Mary Corbally was born on June 10, 1920, in Chicago, the youngest of 16 children of Agnes and Michael Corbally, Irish immigrants who ran a grocery store. She went to Catholic school in Chicago and married John Griffin in 1942, then worked part time as a hospital administrator while caring for their children.Mr. Griffin died in 2007. In addition to her daughter, she is survived by a son, John; a sister, Irene Bidinger; and two grandchildren.Ms. Griffin wrote in her memoir that she thought audiences appreciated her because “I’m a regular mom.”“I’m not a mother who pampers Kathy and caters to her,” she continued. “I love my daughter, and I’m immensely supportive of her, but, hey, I tell her off.” More

The beloved sitcom, canceled last year by Netflix, premieres Tuesday on its new home, Pop TV. But it took more than just fan passion for it to get a second chance. More

What’s StreamingTHE BANKER (2020) Stream on Apple TV Plus. Anthony Mackie and Samuel L. Jackson play men who join forces to subvert discriminatory housing practices in this historical drama. Set primarily before the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the film begins by introducing Bernard S. Garrett (Mackie), an African-American entrepreneur who moves to Los Angeles along with his wife, Eunice (Nia Long). There, Bernard meets Joe Morris (Jackson), a club owner with whom he teams up on an admirable scheme: Buying homes in white areas and renting them out to members of the city’s black middle class. They do that with the help of a somewhat guileless white colleague (played by Nicholas Hoult). The characters are based on real people. “It’s hard not to root for them even if they’re obvious and underdeveloped, burdened with dialogue that too often sounds programmatic rather than embodied,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The New York Times. The film, Dargis wrote, “uses laughs, white racism and black righteousness to soft-sell a tale of inequality, heroic capitalism and eye-drooping mathematics.”THE LETTER FOR THE KING Stream on Netflix. In a dramatically lit, expensive-looking high-fantasy world, a short, easily underestimated hero is tasked with transporting a small object across a vast distance. That’s the perhaps not entirely unfamiliar premise of this new series, an adaptation of a popular European children’s book by the Dutch writer Tonke Dragt. The story follows Tiuri (Amir Wilson), a young would-be knight sent on a perilous letter-delivery quest.BLOW THE MAN DOWN (2020) Stream on Amazon. Sex, death and seafood all figure prominently in this eerie drama written and directed by Danielle Krudy and Bridget Savage Cole. Set in a fictional Maine fishing village called Easter Cove, “Blow the Man Down” revolves around two young locals, Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor) and Priscilla (Sophie Lowe), who try to cover up a killing — and wind up in the middle of a larger mystery. “While the sisterhood in Easter Cove is indeed powerful,” Helen T. Verongos wrote in her review for The Times, “the secrets that bind its members prove to be fairly simple, and the result is intriguing enough to make you wonder what these writer-directors might accomplish if they applied their vision to a more expansive canvas.”What’s on TVGREAT PERFORMANCES AT THE MET 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). On offer in the latest installment of PBS’s Metropolitan Opera series: The star soprano Christine Goerke leading Puccini’s “Turandot,” in a recent revival of a popular production by Franco Zeffirelli. This production gives lavish spectacle to the simple story at the opera’s center: A prince tries to win over an uninterested princess. From the conductor’s podium, the Metropolitan Opera’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, brings out “textured, tart and lushly beautiful playing,” Anthony Tommasini wrote in a review of the revival for The Times. Goerke, he wrote, sings her role “with steely sound and chilling intensity.” More

Season 1, Episode 9: ‘Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1’In much of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” the character Data is essentially a fish out of water. He is the lone android in a crowd of humanoids in almost all the rooms he is in. It falls on him to understand everyone else. In this week’s episode of “Star Trek: Picard,” we get a look at a world in which it is the humans who are the outsiders and the androids who are the dominant majority.All it takes is for the La Sirena to travel to the fourth planet of the Ghulion system to find what they’ve long been looking for: Soji’s home planet. Note how much of Picard is about the separate identities of similar-looking people. Rios has several hologram versions of himself to run his ship. Soji and Dahj are twin androids, which is to say nothing of the similar looking ones on their home planet, like Sutra. In the early episodes of “Picard,” we see Data. In “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1,” we see a Data look-alike, a human named Dr. Altan Inigo Soong.The crew heads to the Coppelius station, where they meet several androids. Arcana, one of the first androids the team encounters at Coppelius, refers to Picard as captain rather than admiral. That is, until Altan shows up and calls him admiral. It’s a subtle touch, emphasizing the contrast between the Picard Data knew back then and who Picard is now.It is always a pleasure to see Brent Spiner onscreen in “Trek,” Data or not. Spiner has played several Soongs in the history of “Trek,” including the semi-nefarious Dr. Arik Soong, who had an arc in “Star Trek: Enterprise.” Data’s father, Noonian Soong, was Data’s designer and, Altan presents himself as Noonian’s human son.Altan and Sutra seem to be in charge on Ghulion IV. Where the Zhat Vash see synthetic life as something to be stopped at all costs, Sutra sees an opportunity. After a mind-meld with Jurati in which she sees the Admonition, Sutra sees a premonition of sorts for android domination, as does Altan. (This same premonition is seen as a warning by Romulans.) There are other synthetics out there, the two note, and it’s time to bring them altogether. Screw organic life, Sutra says, much to Picard’s chagrin.Soji even turns on Picard, allowing him to be placed under house arrest. This wouldn’t be the first time an android had less-than-noble intentions in Trek, of course. Data’s brother Lore was a thorn in Picard’s side multiple times in the course of “The Next Generation.” It appears that Sutra takes more after him than Data.Much of this series has been set up to end in a battle between the Romulans and Picard. Now, we have a new layer to deal with: Picard isn’t trying only to save the synthetics from the Romulans, he also has to save them from themselves. But it feels a little late in the game to introduce a new villain when the first ones have barely been fleshed out. I realize there is another season of “Picard” coming, but I would have liked to learn a bit more about Narek and Rizzo.Picard’s relentless optimism, which somehow seems to be increasing with each episode, is one example of the show’s creators staying true to his core. On one hand, it seems that the androids should definitely follow Picard and let him lead them to a safe place. After all, he is true to his convictions and righteous. On the other, Sutra and Altan make a good point: Why would Starfleet ever listen to Picard if they haven’t in the past? Particularly after the Mars incident? If anything, the smart thing to do is to throw your lot in with synthetics who are smarter, stronger and quicker than anything coming their way.One way or another, fun episode, and I have no idea where this season ends.Odds and Ends:Jurati rightly asks if she’s still under arrest near the beginning of the episode. Rios says there’s been a change of plans. I imagine Jurati, in a very “Arrested Development” way, saying, “Well that was a freebie.” (Of course, she ends up siding with possibly homicidal androids by the end of the episode, so maybe Picard will regret not locking her up.)One of the best lines of the whole series is when Picard says, “Well, hope and the odds make poor bedfellows.” Of course, Picard delivers it with gusto.The scene when Picard says goodbye to Elnor on the crashed Borg cube is a touching one, and it has the emotional weight of mentor’s saying farewell to a mentee. Except that for much of this season, Elnor’s arc, if you can call it that, has been separate from Picard’s, so it felt a bit contrived. The terminal nature of Picard’s illness is brought up multiple times in this episode, including with Elnor. Every interaction he has is given with an air of finality. We know he is not dying this season, though.Spot 2! A clone of Data’s old cat was a nice callback.My assumption is that the Borg cube ends up being a crucial defense against the fleet of Romulan warbirds in the season finale. Otherwise, it seems like a waste of the most terrifying vessel in the history of “Star Trek.” It didn’t exactly do much in this episode. More

Two strangers approach a man named George on the streets of San Francisco.“George,” one of them says, “would you yourself participate in a program of inter-protoplasm flow?”George doesn’t hesitate. “If I needed it, I guess I would,” he says.One of the strangers, earnestly impressing on George the seriousness of that commitment, elaborates:“If you knew that you were going to have all of your — let’s face it — your insides taken out or sucked out of you and in return you were going to have the insides of another person placed into the interior of your body, either the insides of one other person or many other people, would you participate in such a program?”George again affirms, “Yes, if I needed it.” Only when the two try to get him to accompany them to a lab, right then and there, to have the procedure done does George balk.The two ersatz medical experts were Mal Sharpe and Jim Coyle, and the exchange, immortalized in an audio track, took place in the early 1960s, one of countless pranks the pair sprung on unsuspecting passers-by decades before “Impractical Jokers” and present-day late-night hosts thought of working similar comedic territory.Mr. Coyle stayed in the punking game only a short while, but Mr. Sharpe made something of a career out of it, influencing the whole field of ambush humor.“Coyle and Sharpe were pioneers of an entire genre of comedy, the Man on the Street bit,” Charlie Todd, founder of the comedy collective Improv Everywhere, said by email. “Every late-night host and YouTube prankster owes a bit of their act to Coyle and Sharpe.”Mr. Sharpe, who was well known in the Bay Area for his wacky interviews and also as a jazz trombonist, died on March 10 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 83. His daughter, Jennifer Sharpe, said his health had diminished since he underwent heart surgery three and a half years ago.Mr. Sharpe first met Mr. Coyle in 1959 when they were bunking at the same San Francisco rooming house. Mr. Coyle asked Mr. Sharpe what he did for a living, and Mr. Sharpe said he specialized in animal-to-human brain transplants and was himself waiting to receive a flamingo brain. Mr. Coyle, in turn, gave Mr. Sharpe his biography: Although he looked 23, he said, he was 80 and had a pension from serving in the Spanish-American War.With such an introduction the two hit it off and began exchanging comedic ideas. They went their separate ways briefly, but returned to San Francisco in 1961 and began pranking in earnest.They used a tape recorder hidden in a briefcase to record their absurd encounters. Comedy albums were enjoying a surge of popularity, driven by the enormous success of Bob Newhart’s 1960 record, “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” and the pair had hopes of landing a record deal with their recordings. Although the first company they tried rejected them, they were eventually signed by Warner Brothers Records, which in 1963 released “The Absurd Imposters.”Its track list gives the flavor of the enterprise: “Selling Insects to a Clothing Store” is one; “Carpenter, Give Us Your Lunch” another. And then there was “Mutant Zebra-Eel in a Paint Store,” in which they tried to persuade a merchant to exhibit a new life form in his shop window.“It’s a cross between a zebra and certain type of sea eel,” one of them explains, “and it’s almost entirely zebralike physically. The eel influence is only in the legs.”The album didn’t sell all that well, but disc jockeys started playing the cuts, and KGO radio in San Francisco signed the pair to do a show, “Coyle and Sharpe on the Loose.”“C & S, who had never done radio work before, were suddenly faced with the terror of filling 18 hours of airtime a week,” Jennifer Sharpe wrote in liner notes for a 1995 album drawn from the tapes from this period. To get better audio quality, they abandoned the hidden recorder and went to a straight-on interview method with microphone and recorder in full view.About a decade ago, Jesse Thorn, founder of the Maximum Fun podcast network, turned some of Coyle & Sharpe’s best material into bite-size podcasts.“What makes it work so amazingly,” Mr. Thorn said in a phone interview, “is that Jim was a genuine weirdo who was also an actual con man, and Mal was an actual cool guy who could pass for a square.”The moment — space exploration just beginning; science asserting itself — was also right, since many of the pair’s bits involved concepts that were on the edge of science fiction.“What you had,” Mr. Thorn said, “was people who were used to living in a world of wonder, and science is the one delivering the wonder.”Malcolm Sharpe was born on April 2, 1936, in Cambridge, Mass. His father, Ralph, who died when Malcolm was 4, managed a shoe store. His mother, Carolyn (Varnick) Sharpe, worked in a clothing store during World War II.Mr. Sharpe enrolled in Boston University’s public relations and communication program, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1958. He later pursued a master’s degree in broadcast communications at Michigan State University. His interest in jazz led him to San Francisco, drawn, he said, by an image on the cover of an album by the San Francisco jazz musician Turk Murphy.He and Mr. Coyle, who died in 1993, called their pranks “terrorizations,” but generally the pranksters and their targets parted as friends thanks to Mr. Sharpe’s genial personality.Well, except for that time the two got arrested.“We were interviewing this guy and told him that we wanted to borrow his car for a few hours to go to a restaurant,” Mr. Sharpe related to The New York Times in 2000. “He said, ‘How do I know you’re going to bring it back?’ We said that would be the great thing for him: We would bring it back and then he’d have more trust in human beings. And he called the police.”The two made a television pilot, but nothing came of it, and in the mid-1960s Mr. Coyle abandoned the partnership. Mr. Sharpe, though, kept doing on-the-street interviews, working in radio and advertising and releasing two albums on his own. In the early 1970s he had a nationally syndicated television show, “Street People.” He worked for several radio stations doing street interviews, and for years he was a host of “Back on Basin Street,” a jazz program on KCSM in the Bay Area. He also had his own jazz band, Big Money in Jazz.In 1964 Mr. Sharpe married Sandra Lee Wemple; in addition to his daughter, his wife survives him.The Coyle and Sharpe radio show lasted only two years. Although Mr. Sharpe did plenty of pranking on his own afterward, he told San Francisco Weekly in 1995 that his partnership with Mr. Coyle was in a class by itself.“You hate to think your best stuff was the first stuff you did, but in a way I’ve always felt that way,” he said. “That stuff was much more artistic, and had more validity and somehow was out there on a level that I really didn’t do again in many ways.” More