Eliana Willis

It happened around the world, and now it’s happening in the United States: The more people stay home to avoid the coronavirus pandemic, the more they find themselves glued to their screens.In South Korea, as cases spiked, television viewership shot up 17 percent, according to Nielsen. Last month in Italy, the size of the TV audience increased 6.5 percent, with a 12 percent rise in hard-hit Lombardy.The same trend has arrived in the United States. In the Seattle area, total television use increased 22 percent on March 11 from the week before, according to Nielsen. In New York that day, as more people started working from home, use went up 8 percent. (Total use, as defined by Nielsen, includes live television, on-demand viewing, streaming and gaming.)But for media companies, the benefit of having a bigger-than-usual audience may be short-lived as the outbreak threatens to undercut the very structure of their business. With businesses scaling back workers and analysts warning of a recession as global economies slow, a significant number of viewers may decide in the coming months to break away from cable or cut back on streaming subscriptions.The gain in audience size “will be replaced pretty quickly by the necessity of reducing monthly bills, when people will have to deal with the financial impacts of a recession,” said Craig Moffett, a co-founder of the research firm MoffettNathanson. “Cord cutting will accelerate with a vengeance.”The Walt Disney Company, ViacomCBS and other media giants face a pivotal moment as the delicate ecosystem that protects their business — live content tied to high-cost subscriptions — erodes even faster. It started last week with the sudden disappearance of a dependable asset: sports programming.Live sports coverage generates billions of advertising dollars and fuels television subscriptions — a combination that delivers fat profits. Now the industry is facing the postponement and cancellation of almost every major sporting event, including the Masters golf tournament, a CBS staple, as well as the remainder of the National Basketball Association season and postseason, which are consistent draws for the AT&T-owned Turner channels and Disney’s ESPN and ABC networks.The sports coverage has become critical at a time when the audience appetite for dramas and sitcoms has shrunk. Advertisers spend more than $2 billion on live games and tournaments during this part of the year, according to Kantar Media. And with LeBron James benched indefinitely, ESPN is expected to lose $481 million in N.B.A.-related advertising; for Turner, the loss will be about $210 million, according to MoffettNathanson.In statements, ESPN and AT&T’s WarnerMedia said they were confident that they would weather the challenge, but declined to make executives available for interviews. For now, ESPN has filled the gaps by running “SportsCenter” nearly nonstop.NBCUniversal executives have been eagle eyed on the Tokyo Olympics ever since President Trump called last week for a possible postponement. More than $1.25 billion in advertising commitments are on the line for the network and its parent company, Comcast. More

Season 5, Episode 5: ‘Dedicado a Max’There’s a pleasing symmetry to “Dedicado a Max,” an episode that could be more accurately titled “A Tale of Two Coots.” The bifurcated plot revolves around a pair of ornery old men. Both are natural-born fighters who don’t like to be told what to do. One is in a house that people want him evicted from, that he refuses to leave. The other is in a house that people want to stay in that he would like to flee.The latter is Mike, who doesn’t seem particularly grateful for the lifesaving measures taken by Gus Fring, who has created a makeshift hospital somewhere in Mexico, complete with high-tech medical equipment, a surgeon and a housekeeper. Mike’s first thought is to escape this idyll. His second is to call Gus and bark: “This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife. How did I get here?”OK, those are not direct quotes, but they capture the gist. Fring turns up at the end of the episode to explain that he has saved Mike’s life because he needs some muscle and smarts in the coming war with the Salamancas. The scene, the finest of the episode, plumbs a theme dear to the show’s creators, which also loomed large in “Breaking Bad.” Can acts of kindness make up for acts of evil? Is there a karmic ledger that allows this kind of moral accounting, where pluses and minuses are tallied and zeroed out?“The anonymous benefactor,” says Mike, all but sneering. “Well that must make you feel pretty good. And is that supposed to balance the scales, make up for everything else you do?”“It makes up for nothing,” Fring replies. “I am what I am.”This might be a variation of a line by Iago, the ur-villain of “Othello,” who promises to hide his true self when he says “I am not what I am.” Fring is not what he appears to be, either. Or at least there is much more to him than he lets on. This dialogue unfolds next to a memorial to Max Arciniega, the love of his life and the man to whom this health clinic is dedicated. (Hence the episode’s name.) So we get an added layer of pathos, not visible to Mike. We are watching a man remember and mourn as he tries to convey an aura of invulnerability.The other coot in this episode is Everett Acker, a.k.a. Mr. Hell No. As his lawyer, Jimmy has an approach to jurisprudence that could be defined as “strict obstructionist,” and he finds ever more inventive ways to prevent Mesa Verde’s bulldozers from bulldozing.This enrages Kevin Wachtell (Rex Linn), Mesa Verde’s chief executive, who is eager to start building his call center and fumes at every delay. Instead of bouncing Kim off the case because her boyfriend is suing the bank, Wachtell keeps Kim in situ, arguing that he wants the best to manage this brawl. This gets awkward fast and eventually Kim’s boss, Rich Schweikart, suggests it’s time for her to hand off Mesa Verde to colleagues.Schweikart has seen through Kim’s ruse — she’s helping Jimmy undermine Mesa Verde — which might explain her reaction. She expresses the kind of rage one feels after getting caught. This leads to the episode’s most implausible moment. She follows Schweikart out of her office, down the hall and confronts him in full view of other employees.I can understand why Kim would go all-in at this moment. I just don’t grasp why she did it in such a public space, instead of conferring in Schweikert’s office, per his urging. This is out of character, given Kim’s impeccable instincts about professional appearances. So the scene comes across as gratuitously dramatic, at least by the standards of realism set by this show.Let’s hope that Kim is a step ahead of all of us and that this was a ploy.While we’re on ploys, one of the episode’s highlights is the arrival of “Mr. X,” a.k.a. Sobchak (played by the “Walking Dead” veteran Steven Ogg), who was last seen in Season 1, getting disarmed and throat-punched by Mike as he auditioned for a bodyguard gig. He’s far better as a private detective, it turns out. He has been hired by Jimmy, through the “underground Craigslist,” to scrape up raw material that could be used to blackmail Wachtell. Sobchak has broken into Wachtell’s home and photographed the place.What did he find? Apparently nada. The blackmail approach seems doomed. Then, after Sobchak has been ushered out of the back of the nail salon where this debriefing occurs, Kim looks at some interior shots of Wachtell’s home and smiles. She’s spotted something incriminating.So here’s the question: What is it? The two images that improve her mood both include renderings of Mesa Verde’s corporate logo, a horse-rising cowboy. One is a vintage black and white, beside family photographs. Cut to Kim, at her office computer, comparing the outline of that photograph to the corporate logo. Then to a Mesa Verde ad, which apparently refers to the year of the bank’s founding, 1958.Those are our clues, people, and this is classic “Better Call Saul.” The show has a way of turning us all into Watsons to some character’s Sherlock. If you have a notion of what made Kim smile, please share.Odds and Ends:Broadly speaking, “Better Call Saul” is divided into two strands: a legal plot (about Kim’s and Jimmy’s travails as lawyers and people) and a narco plot (about Gus’s and Lalo’s efforts to dominate the local drug market). The last two episodes have leaned heavily into the legal plot, so much so that Lalo has been absent from both, and Hank and Gomez did not appear in this one.As a fan of the narco plot, I hope that Mike’s journey from depression and surgery to health and (eventual) vigor will mean it gets at least equal time on the show, perhaps more.Come back, Lalo. We miss you.We have finally learned what turns Jimmy on, sexually. Role play. He gets a bit hot and bothered when Kim does a fine impression of Wachtell beside his golf course, reacting angrily to news that ground can’t yet be broken on that call center. Most role play revolves around archetypes that include such classics as the naughty nurse. Not Jimmy’s taste. He’s partial to grumpy, middle-aged bank executives.“Kevin,” he says to Kim, when she’s finished with her Kevin impression. “Would you care to take a shower with me?”Different strokes.In the episode’s last line, Fring says he has chosen Mike as his “button man” because Mike understands a crucial concept: revenge. It’s a stellar ending, and it strongly suggests that Gus has studied Mike’s history enough to know his darkest secret: what Mike did in Philadelphia to avenge his son’s murder.Some parting questions. What is up with Howard and his efforts to recruit Jimmy to his firm? It has to be more than a way to keep Patrick Fabian busy, doesn’t it? But what exactly does Howard want?Please share your guesses, about this and other mysteries described above, in the comments section.Meantime, I have to make a call. More

“Saturday Night Live” became the latest topical comedy series to suspend its season amid concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. “S.N.L.,” the late-night NBC variety sketch program, had been on a scheduled hiatus after its March 7 broadcast and was expected to return on March 28. But the series “will now not resume production until further notice,” NBC said in a statement on Monday. The network added, “We will monitor the situation closely and make decisions about future shows on an ongoing basis as further information develops.”“S.N.L.,” which is currently in its 45th season and is broadcast from NBC’s New York headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, joins the ranks of other programs like “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” “Late Night With Seth Meyers” and “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” which have all halted their seasons during the spread of the coronavirus.During its many years on the air, “S.N.L.” has occasionally been suspended in midseason by writers’ strikes. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the show was back on the air in less than a month; its Sept. 29 season premiere that year opened memorably with an introduction by then-Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and the singer-songwriter Paul Simon, who performed “The Boxer,” a song about showing resilience in the face of hardship. More

With schools in New York and many other places closed or closing soon, there’s a good chance that you and your children are about to spend a lot of coronavirus-mandated time together. And let’s face it, not all of that time will be spent on remote learning. You’ll both need a break, and you’ll probably already be in front of a screen.There is, of course, a world of classic content you can explore together, from film masterpieces like “Spirited Away” (for rent at Amazon, iTunes, Google Play and other sites) to vital series like “Adventure Time” (streaming on Hulu). But if you would like to try something fresher, here are four shows, new this year, that you can enjoy discovering with your children, or at least tolerate while you nod and check your email. They’re roughly in order by target audience, youngest to oldest.‘Powerbirds’What “The Powerpuff Girls” did for kindergartners, “Powerbirds” does for parakeets. The premise is simple but cleverly executed. Whenever Max, a comics-obsessed teenager, is hanging out in his room, his pet birds Ace and Polly hop and tweet harmlessly in the background. As soon as he leaves, however, they start to talk — like the pint-size but intrepid crimefighters they are — and zoom down to the Command Coop, donning their superhero tights along the way.Their missions around the neighborhood are not of the super-dangerous variety — one short episode finds them scrambling to keep leaves from falling into the wet cement of a new sidewalk. But the show, created by the editorial cartoonist and children’s-book author Stephen Breen, gives the costumed parakeets a snap, humor and sophistication that you might not expect in a series aimed at preschoolers. That’s especially true with regard to Polly, a plucky dame out of a vintage Hollywood comedy who’s played by the animation veteran Tara Strong, the voice of Bubbles in “The Powerpuff Girls.” (Universal Kids, 10 a.m. Sundays; universalkids.com)‘It’s Pony’It’s the story of a girl and her horse, with a few contemporary twists: They live with her parents in a high-rise apartment building and it’s the pony who’s the nosy, needy, irrepressible attention sponge who constantly gets them into jams. (“I’m friendly,” Pony says. “It’s who I am. It’s never been a problem.”) The girl, Annie, and her friends are a wise and patient group who grudgingly accept Pony’s disruptions as the price of adolescence; the highly driven Annie, voiced by Jessica DiCicco (“The Loud House,” “Adventure Time”), is a little like a kinder-gentler version of Kristen Schaal’s Louise in “Bob’s Burgers,” with the snark level adjusted for early-tween viewers.The full-gallop 15-minute stories, involving Pony’s innocent derailment of school projects or the infinite forbearance of Annie’s parents, are brisk and charming. But the real attraction of this standout show, which was created by the British animator Ant Blades, is the art, with its heavily outlined, scribbled, brightly colored characters moving across lulling, watercolor-like backgrounds. “It’s Pony” is an urban tale and the New York-like cityscapes and apartment interiors are rendered with surprising depth and detail for a Saturday-morning show. And it has an absolutely addictive theme song (“Pony on the sixth floor, pony in the bathroom …”), which, for parents, may or may not be a good thing. (Nickelodeon, 11:30 a.m. Saturdays; nick.com)‘The Owl House’Yes, Virginia, there’s still a Disney Channel, even though the streaming service Disney Plus is getting all the attention at the moment. And this supernatural comedy for tweens is a good reason to seek it out. It’s a wisecracking, fast-paced, pop-culture-savvy coming-of-age adventure in a classic sitcom style, with hints of Matt Groening (in the imaginative monsters) and Seth MacFarlane (in the lightly cynical repartee, pitched, at a guess, for 10-to-12-year-old ears).A Dominican-American teenager, Luz (Sarah-Nicole Robles), stumbles into an alternate world where magic and an ambient ooze are facts of life, and humans are looked down on as talentless wastes of space. It’s a setup for mean-girl and gross-out humor, and for positive lessons as Luz struggles for acceptance and tries to learn magic. The show’s irresistible force, though, is the instantly identifiable, bourbon-soaked voice of the wonderful Wendie Malick, who plays Eda, the impatient witch who takes on Luz as an apprentice and all-around punching bag. (Disney Channel, 8:47 and 9:11 p.m. Friday, then on midseason hiatus; Disney Now)‘Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts’This 10-episode eco-fantasy comes from DreamWorks Animation and Netflix, and it has a visual sophistication that separates it from the other shows here. (The show’s provenance also brings in voice actors like Sterling K. Brown, Dan Stevens, Lea DeLaria, John Hodgman and GZA for supporting characters.) Its story, about a 13-year-old who ventures to the surface of a post-apocalyptic earth and finds overgrown urban ruins and a colorful variety of mutant talking animals, is typical teenage-adventure fare. But its artwork, an integration of practical American action and Miyazaki-inflected anime splendor, will keep you in front of the screen after your bored teenagers have wandered off. (Netflix) More

What’s on TVTHE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA 9 p.m. on HBO. Ed Burns and David Simon’s six-part adaptation of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel conjures an alternative history of the 1940s in which the United States takes a dark path under the sway of a popular demagogue. In the premiere episode, the tension is already beginning to build. Charles Lindbergh, a hero to many for his solo trans-Atlantic flight in 1927, foments anti-Semitic sentiment as he campaigns to prevent the United States from declaring war on Nazi Germany. Herman (Morgan Spector) and Elizabeth (Zoe Kazan), a working class couple Jewish couple in New Jersey, try to shield sons their sons Sandy and Phillip from the growing unrest while also wrangling with more mundane family issues. MY BRILLIANT FRIEND 10 p.m. on HBO. Spurred by the reported disappearance of the mercurial Lila, an aging Elena began to share the story of their transformative friendship at the beginning of the first season of this ongoing adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels. The two met as girls in a poor neighborhood in 1950s Naples. Both were promising students but only Elena was able to pursue her education. Despite her talent and spirit, Lila was left behind to ply her father’s trade and eventually accept the marriage proposal of a suitor. In the second season, based on Ferrante’s “The Story of a New Name,” the ambivalent but deep connection between the women continues to develop as Elena’s academic success takes her further from her community and Lila’s troubled relationship crumbles.What’s StreamingTHE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1948) Stream on the Criterion Channel; rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. This film noir by Orson Welles includes just about everything one might expect: stylized black and white photography, an alluring but destructive femme fatale figure, and a plot rife with misdirection and sudden bursts of revelation. Welles stars as Michael, a sailor conscripted into a yacht trip from New York to San Francisco by Arthur, a wealthy lawyer, and his wife, Elsa (Rita Hayworth). Michael hopes to win Elsa’s affection, and is drawn into a scheme to help fake the death of Arthur’s partner George. But the deal Michael makes is not what it initially appears. In the hands of Welles, a master filmmaker, these conventional elements are used to explore identity, truth and desire.THE RETURN (2003) Stream on Acorn TV. Julie Walters plays Lizzie, a recovering alcoholic who is released from prison after serving a 10-year sentence for killing her husband in a drunken haze. As she readjusts to life on the outside, Lizzie’s memory of that event begins to return and she realizes that she may not have been her partner’s murderer. There’s an investigation, plot twists and salacious details aplenty but this film focuses on its imperfect main character’s struggle to reconcile herself with a past that she largely wasn’t really present for. More

Season 3, Episode 1: Parce DomineThe opening sequence of the third season of “Westworld” naturally recalls the opening sequence of the first, when the wholesome rancher’s daughter Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) was still stuck in her loop, greeting beautiful days that typically ended in rape and murder. Now she remembers everything, including the 1 percenters who made her part of their bachelor weekends, and she’s finally in their world, leading an android vendetta that turns these people’s own technology against them. She can not only breach their security systems but also cue up a killer track from their Spotify playlists.The original idea of “Westworld” was that the hosts were more human than humans — too complex to be understood simply as machines, yet completely vulnerable to man’s worst instincts. Last season muddied that line of thinking, especially as Dolores was concerned. It was not clear how different hosts might respond to liberation, which offers the possibilities and moral responsibilities of being fully human, but it had the curious effect of making Dolores more remote and one-dimensional. The quest for revenge had flattened her out as a character and made her unrecognizable even to Teddy (James Marsden), who took his own life after she engineered the sweetness out of him.Among the many virtues of “Parce Domine,” the first episode of the new season, are distinct signs that Dolores may rediscover her earlier self. In the opening, she is still the righteous angel of vengeance, taking down a Delos mega-investor (Thomas Kretschmann) who didn’t limit his violence against women to the park alone. She has read his “unauthorized autobiography” in the Forge, so she knows everything he’s done, and she swiftly commandeers his high-tech security system, which turns his fortress into a prison. (“You want to be the dominant species, but you’ve built your whole world with things more like me.”)When she makes references to his own “loops,” it’s clear that humans are almost as easy to exploit in their home as the hosts were in Westworld.The subtle revelation in this episode, however, is that Dolores is going to have to come to terms with innocent people. The technicians and guests responsible for her oppression in Westworld are clear targets for revenge, but her assumptions about humanity at large can’t be safely extrapolated from there. Again and again, she is confronted by people who reveal other dimensions: Her first target’s second wife, who is now freed from domestic violence; Liam Dempsey Jr. (John Gallagher Jr.), who she wrongly presumes operates Incite, the insidious data-mining operation founded by his father; and Caleb Nichols (Aaron Paul), the construction worker and part-time mercenary crook who comes to her aid in the closing moments.The sum of these encounters is a promising sign for “Westworld,” which is attempting a hard reboot after a second season that often twisted itself in knots to stay ahead of the Reddit prognosticators. With the addition of new replicants and powerful algorithms this episode, the show will surely become its confounding self in due time. But Dolores is the character at the center of the maze, and it’s crucial that she restore some of the soul that has been coarsened by her relentless pursuit of robot justice. Otherwise, “Westworld” risks becoming an empty puzzle-box or leaning too heavily on supporting characters like Maeve (Thandie Newton) to carry that flicker of humanity.In the meantime, the change in location has given the show a boost. The future looks expensive, like a cross between “Blade Runner” and a credibly advanced version our own, filled with around-the-corner developments like driverless vehicles, smart houses, holograms and other sophisticated forms of automation. Dolores’s efforts to infiltrate Incite have the quality of a spy thriller, complete with automated-car-and-motorcycle chases, open-air shootouts and well-planted twists and double-crosses. After last season’s bloated, confusing finale, there seems to be renewed effort to inject fresh life into the show and emphasize action over talky philosophizing.Still, you can take the show out of Westworld, but you can’t take Westworld out of the show. Questions linger from last season about the host version of Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) and what she has planned for Delos, and the “pearls” Charlotte-bot sneaked out of the park will have to materialize, too.Then there’s Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), who starts the episode in hiding after getting blamed for the park massacre and ends it by commissioning a boat back to Westworld, for purposes unknown. “Westworld” 2.0 may have a gorgeous redesign and increased functionality, but it’s still the same ungainly hunk of hardware.Paranoid Androids:The seamless interactivity of the holograms is good for a couple of fake-outs this episode when it seems at first as if a flesh-and-blood human were present. This future society appears to have no shortage of advancements that will come back to haunt it.Dolores’s makeup (and Wood’s performance) makes her robotic nature stand out more in the human world than it did in the park. Her face and body have a glossy finish, and her movements in the action sequences read as distinctly nonhuman.Caleb’s turning to a disembodied therapeutic version of a fallen comrade plays up humanity’s reliance on simulated humans to stand in for the real thing, to the point where it’s hard to know the difference without asking. Again, another regrettable leap forward for mankind.Black-market crimes? There’s an app for that.Bernard’s doing his own diagnostic while hiding out on an industrial farm opens up new frontiers for self-deception: “Would you ever lie to me, Bernard?” “No, of course not.” Ask Elsie how reassuring that is.Pulp’s “Common People” isn’t the subtlest needle drop for a show about robots aspiring to be more human (“I wanna live like common people/ I wanna do whatever common people do”), but it has a propulsive future-sound that’s ideal. Sometimes the straightforward choice is the right one. More