Eliana Willis

The docu-series about Navarro College’s competitive cheerleading team has taken over the internet. Here’s the best of the conversation to dive into next. More

“Trump is, in effect, a king,” Bee joked on Wednesday. “Not like King Arthur — more like a Burger King.” More

The former “Nanny” is back with a new NBC sitcom, “Indebted,” young fans like Cardi B and an arsenal of GIFs. “I’m kind of an influencer,” she said. More

There is “Atypical,” on Netflix, a coming-of-age comedy that features young adults on the autism spectrum, and “This Close,” on Sundance Now, about besties who are deaf. Both shows are part of a gradual trend toward the authentic casting of characters with disabilities. But according to new research, they are also anomalies.A new white paper from the Ruderman Family Foundation reports that some 80 percent of all disabled characters on the small screen are portrayed by non-disabled actors. The imbalance is an indication, the report’s sponsors say, that efforts to diversify Hollywood are far from inclusive. And even with examples of authentic casting on “Atypical,” the lead character, who is autistic, is played by an actor who is not.“We wouldn’t accept it with other minorities,” said Jay Ruderman, president of the Ruderman Family Foundation, which published the report. “But with disability it is still routinely accepted. And that’s wrong.”The research, covering about 280 network and streaming shows from 2018, found that roughly half featured characters with physical, cognitive or mental health disabilities. Yet, the report said, “even where disability is present in television and films, it is almost always portrayed as an undesired, depressing and limiting state”There were signs of shifts. Of the Top 10 Nielsen-rated shows from 2016, just 5 percent of disabled characters were played by disabled performers. In 2018, that figure jumped to 12 percent.Still, the raw figures tell a less rosy story. In 2018, there had been just two authentic castings in the Top 10 shows: Gavin McHugh from “9-1-1,” and Chrissy Metz from “This Is Us.” (McHugh has cerebral palsy; and Metz was included because obesity is considered a disability.) That was up from 2016, when there had been just one.Ruderman said the low representation had far-ranging implications in shaping attitudes. Shows like “Will & Grace” and “Ellen” have been credited with widening the popular embrace of people who are LGBTQ.Disabled people — who face an unemployment rate that is more than twice as high as their non-disabled peers — have little clout in the entertainment industry. Ruderman faulted the historic isolation disabled people have faced. While that is slowly changing, he said, most decision makers in the entertainment industry do not see disability as part of general life.And having that personal connection is key. For his show “Ramy,” Ramy Youssef, who recently won a Golden Globe for best comedy actor in a series, cast his close buddy Steve Way, who has muscular dystrophy, as his character’s best friend.The foundation has been pressuring studios and networks to include more disabled talent, and is partnering this year with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for a series of initiatives toward that end.Last year, CBS Entertainment became the first — and so far only — studio to sign a pledge with the foundation to audition disabled actors for series that get picked up (CBS had more authentic castings than any other network or streaming platform).“This is an issue of fairness,” Ruderman said. “This is an issue of over 20 percent of the population not being seen.” More

What’s on TVLEGO MASTERS 9 p.m. on Fox. Pop quiz: What’s the plural of Lego? That question is addressed at the start of this competition series, which has aired in different forms overseas but is now coming to United States audiences. Will Arnett (known in certain circles as the voice of Lego Batman) hosts the United States version of the show, alongside a pair of Lego designers. The competition pits teams from around the country against one another in a variety of brick-building challenges. The contestants’ first assignment: to create a model theme park. Their time limit? 15 hours. The prize for winning the competition at large is $100,000 — though surely any contestants who make it through without stepping on a brick can be considered successful.MONEYBALL (2011) 6:47 p.m. on Starz. The New York Times’s co-chief film critic Manohla Dargis recently wrote an article arguing that Brad Pitt has been undervalued as a performer. Pitt was nominated for an acting Oscar this year, but that’s a relatively rare thing — the last time he was up for one was toward the beginning of the 2010s, when he was recognized for his performance in this baseball drama. In it, Pitt plays Billy Beane, the Oakland Athletics manager whose innovative methods helped the A’s compete against teams with far higher budgets in the early 2000s.FENCES (2016) 10 p.m. on BET. Baseball also plays a role in “Fences,” August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play about love and contention in a 1950s Pittsburgh household. This film adaptation stars Denzel Washington as the protagonist, Troy Maxson, a former Negro Leagues player who might have been a Major League star if he’d been born in a different decade. The plot hinges on Troy’s struggles to accept the athletic potential of his teenage son, Cory (Jovan Adepo), and the sometimes strained relationship between Troy and his wife, Rose (Viola Davis). “If the sound were to suddenly fail — or if the dialogue were dubbed into Martian — the impact of the performances would still be palpable,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times.EXPEDITION UNKNOWN 8 p.m. on Discovery Channel. Josh Gates has explored many exciting places as the host of this travel series: He’s visited an archaeological dig site in Egypt, a sinkhole in Siberia and Australia’s Shipwreck Coast in his mission to investigate historical mysteries. In the first episode of the new season, debuting Wednesday, he’ll be in Normandy, where he follows historians studying D-Day and tours a newly discovered World War II bunker. Don’t expect him to stay there long, though: By the end of the season, he’ll be in the Bermuda Triangle.What’s StreamingMcMILLIONS Stream on HBO platforms. The life and death of a scam in six parts, this new documentary series revisits an elaborate real-life scheme that involved a former police officer defrauding McDonald’s out of $24 million. The first episode aired on HBO on Monday; it’s available to stream for those who want to catch up before next week’s episode. More

Gene Reynolds, an Emmy-winning producer and director who was a force behind two of the most acclaimed television series of the 1970s and early ’80s, “M*A*S*H” and “Lou Grant,” died on Monday in Burbank, Calif. He was 96.He wife, Ann Sweeny Reynolds, said the cause was heart failure.Mr. Reynolds started his prolific career on the performing side of the camera, appearing in some 80 films and television shows, beginning when he was a child. He developed an unusual sort of specialty: playing the younger versions of characters played by top film stars of the 1930s.He was the adolescent version of Don Ameche’s character in “Sins of Man” (1936), and of Ricardo Cortez’s character in “The Californian” (1937), and of Tyrone Powers’s character in “In Old Chicago” (1938), among others. A breakthrough was when he played the young version of James Stewart’s character in “Of Human Hearts” (1938), an MGM movie that earned him a contract with that studio.Mr. Reynolds racked up dozens more TV and film acting credits, including more than 40 in the 1950s, but by the end of that decade he had shifted his focus to directing and, soon after that, to producing.In the 1960s, he directed numerous episodes of television comedies, including “Hogan’s Heroes” and “F Troop,” both of which found humor and absurdity in military settings. That experience served him well in 1972, when, at the instigation of the producer William Self, he helped Larry Gelbart develop “M*A*S*H,” the sitcom about an Army hospital during the Korean War. (Robert Altman’s film, based on Richard Hooker’s novel, had come out two years earlier.)The series, addressing serious themes with a mix of slapstick and dark humor, is still considered one of the finest in television history. Its final episode, in 1983, set a ratings record. By then, though, Mr. Reynolds had moved on and already had another acclaimed series to his credit: “Lou Grant,” which he helped create in 1977, the year he left “M*A*S*H.” The show, about a fictional newspaper, with Ed Asner as the title character, twice won the Emmy Award for outstanding drama series.Mr. Reynolds directed episodes of each of those series (including the first episodes of both), winning two Emmys himself for outstanding direction of a comedy for “M*A*S*H.” He won six Emmys in all, including one for “M*A*S*H” for best comedy series and one for an earlier show he developed, “Room 222,” which was named outstanding new series of 1969-70.One of the most memorable moments of “M*A*S*H” that he directed was not a specific episode, but the opening sequence, which shows two helicopters landing at the medical unit, presumably with casualties aboard. Mr. Reynolds had wanted a shot of nurses running to help. Several assistant directors tried but failed to get the effect he was after, as the actresses were “just kind of trotting along,” as Mr. Reynolds put it in an oral history recorded for the Directors Guild of America (of which he was president from 1993 to 1997).He took over and gave the women a simple direction.“I said, ‘They need you,’” he recalled, referring to whoever was aboard the helicopters. “They came flying out of that goddamn tent. They came flying out.”The resulting shot, which shows five determined women racing straight at the camera, is among the show’s signature images.Eugene Reynolds Blumenthal was born on April 4, 1923, in Cleveland and grew up in Detroit. His father, Frank, was a businessman who later went into real estate, and his mother, Maude (Schwab) Blumenthal, was a model before becoming a homemaker.“I was a very energetic child,” Mr. Reynolds said in an interview for the book “Growing Up on the Set: Interviews With 39 Former Child Actors of Classic Film and Television” (2002), by Tom Goldrup and Jim Goldrup, “and my mother mistook that for talent.”She took him to an acting group for children, and soon he was appearing in radio commercials and amateur plays. After the family moved to California when he was about 11, he began working as an extra in TV shows and movies. One of his first roles was in the 1934 Laurel and Hardy film “Babes in Toyland.”He appeared in movies with other child and teenage stars, including Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. He set aside his film career when World War II broke out, enlisting in the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps and serving on ships including the destroyer-minesweeper the Zane.“Herman Wouk was the senior watch officer,” Mr. Reynolds recalled in “Growing Up on the Set,” “and he would get up every morning very early and would write.” In 1951, of course, Wouk published his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Caine Mutiny,” which drew on his experiences on that ship.After the war ended in 1945 Mr. Reynolds earned a degree in history at the University of California, Los Angeles, and resumed acting. He landed few leading roles, though, and became frustrated with his career progress. Soon he was directing episodes of some of the most popular series of the 1960s, including “Leave It to Beaver,” “The Andy Griffith Show” and “My Three Sons.”Among his biggest television successes before “M*A*S*H” was “Room 222,” a comedy-drama about a black teacher, for which Mr. Reynolds served as executive producer. It ran for more than 100 episodes and tackled subjects including prejudice, drugs and dropouts.“It was a tumultuous time, and I think we took advantage of it,” he said in an oral history for the Television Academy Foundation, “but unfortunately ABC looked at numbers and said, ‘This could be funnier.’” He was shown the door, right when Mr. Self was looking for someone to bring “M*A*S*H” to television.Mr. Reynolds’s first marriage, to Bonnie Jones, an actress, ended in divorce. He and his wife, also an actress, married in 1979 and lived in Los Angeles. In addition to her, he is survived by a son, Andrew.“M*A*S*H” is a classic example of ensemble acting, and members of the cast often credited Mr. Reynolds with the chemistry that made the show work.“It started when Gene Reynolds was producing the series,” Mike Farrell, who starred in the show for most of its run alongside Alan Alda, Loretta Swit and others, told The Boston Globe in 1979. After a table read of the week’s script, he said, Mr. Reynolds would invite the cast members to offer suggestions.“This is unheard-of in television,” Mr. Farrell said. “On most shows they not only don’t care what the actors think, they would prefer actors who don’t think.” More

Monday night’s episode of “The Bachelor” seemed to be going well, drama and head injuries aside. The contestants dating this season’s eligible man, Peter Weber, spent a group date modeling for a Cosmopolitan magazine photo shoot in the Costa Rican jungle. They picked out swimsuits, posed alongside a scenic backdrop of trees and waterfalls — and one woman, Victoria Fuller, was chosen to adorn the magazine’s March cover.And then, trouble in paradise.The magazine — in a letter from the editor, Jessica Pels, posted minutes after scenes from the date aired — said it would not publish the cover with Ms. Fuller, citing an ad campaign in which she modeled “White Lives Matter attire.”“Unequivocally, the White Lives Matter movement does not reflect the values of the Cosmo brand,” Ms. Pels wrote. “We stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, and any cause that fights to end injustices for people of color.”When “The Bachelor” premiered in January, photos circulated on Twitter showing Ms. Fuller, 26, a medical sales representative from Virginia Beach, Va., posing in a blue “WLM” hat. Other apparel from the same, now-defunct Instagram account featured an altered version of a Confederate flag — which, in place of stars, featured tiny fish — the words “White Lives Matter” and a web address: “MarlinLivesMatter.com.”George Lamplugh, who began selling the apparel out of his store on the Ocean City boardwalk in Maryland, said in an interview Tuesday via Facebook Messenger that the “White Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter” items were “designed to promote the conservation of white and blue marlin” among the sport-fishing community.Both phrases have been used to discount the “Black Lives Matter” movement, and the clothing raised questions about the appropriateness of the name and whether it concealed another meaning.Ms. Pels acknowledged the reports of the campaign’s origins in the letter, but said that did not change the decision: “In my view, the nature of the organization is neither here nor there — both phrases and the belief systems they represent are rooted in racism and therefore problematic.”Representatives for ABC and “The Bachelor” did not comment. As of Monday night’s episode, Ms. Fuller was still a contestant on this season, which was filmed last fall.Ms. Fuller will still appear inside hard copies of the magazine, which have already been printed, Ms. Pels wrote. She also appears in two photos on Cosmopolitan’s website, accompanying the magazine’s interview with Mr. Weber.“The Bachelor” has had issues with its contestants’ pasts before. Last year, with Hannah Brown’s season of “The Bachelorette,” the show began releasing the list of contestants in advance of the premiere, in what seemed to be an attempt to crowdsource contestant background checks. Thirty-three names and photos were released for Mr. Weber’s season, but only 30 women remained by the premiere.“I think, for lack of having a better process, two seasons into trying it this way, it’s as good as we have,” Chris Harrison, the show’s longtime host, said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in January. “We’re trying to evolve as well, and giving everybody a chance to see who’s on the show and hear anything that’s out there; we do our best to do our due diligence.”Ms. Pels, who went to Costa Rica for the photo shoot, wrote in the letter that she did not know much about the contestants while filming the episode — details about the season, she wrote, were as “closely guarded as nuclear codes.”“When my team and I flew down to Costa Rica for our challenge, we weren’t told who our models were going to be,” she wrote. “We didn’t even meet them until we were all on camera on set, ready to start our shoot.”All she knew about the contestants, Ms. Pels added, “were their first names and the energy they conveyed through the camera lens.” More