Eliana Willis

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    Loved ‘Couples Therapy’? Read These 11 Books

    These stories of relationship dramas and evolving partnerships will fill the “Couples Therapy”-sized hole in your life with wisdom, schadenfreude and humor — and sometimes all of the above.It can be hard when shrinks go on summer vacation — especially in a summer when each news cycle seems to bring more upsetting developments to process. And it doesn’t help that the fourth season of the cult favorite Showtime docuseries “Couples Therapy” has just wrapped, so even affordable, vicarious therapy is off the table. Without our weekly fix of Dr. Orna Guralnik’s deep nods and cathartic sympathy crying — and with the good doctor’s own much-anticipated book still months off — what are we to do?The series, which started airing in 2019, did not seem to have the makings of a hit: real couples, sitting on a Brooklyn sofa, telling a therapist their problems. At worst, thought skeptics, it sounded voyeuristic and upsetting; at best, boring and contrived. Long before Annie and Mau were a twinkle in my eye, or I’d wept over Season 2, or I’d had wildly differing feelings about different strangers named Josh, I, too, was one of those people. “Watch it,” said a co-worker. “Nothing you thought will ever be the same.” Forty-five minutes in, I was hooked.There are many reasons “Couples Therapy” has broken through: the happy surprise of seeing our perceptions change, the age-old distraction of other peoples’ problems, the actual applicable advice, Dr. Guralnik’s glossy mane and teeny tiny braids (a major discussion point on message boards).But even if you aren’t a fan of the show, these shoulder-season reads will get you through August with wisdom, schadenfreude, dysfunction, pain and humor — and sometimes all of the above. It’s not a spoiler that most of these couples could use a session or 10.Desperate Characters, by Paula Fox (1970)Otto and Sophie Bentwood are a childless couple in their early 40s living in a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn (they’re the gentrifiers). Life seems comfortable — until Sophie is bitten by a feral cat and their carefully ordered existence begins to crumble. There’s even a kitchen renovation in this sharply observed, humane classic of New York marriage. (Read about the book’s legacy.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Jon Stewart Razzes a ‘Daily Show’ Guest: Bill O’Reilly

    The former Fox host, a longtime foil of the show, said he knew he had “no friends here.” “Well, not just here,” Stewart replied.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.Sparring Partners“The Daily Show” was supposed to be in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention this week, but the attempt on Donald Trump’s life changed that. “What a terrible [expletive] week,” Jon Stewart said as he opened Tuesday’s show from New York.“‘Hey Jon, come back to ‘The Daily Show,’ just for the election. It’ll be fun! You’ll do one day a week, it’ll be a laugh! What could go wrong?’” — JON STEWARTWith security at the convention enhanced, the theater where they’d planned to tape the show was locked down, Stewart explained. In security parlance, it was now in the “hard perimeter,” not the “soft perimeter.” “You really don’t want to be in the hard perimeter,” he said.While Stewart touched on the convention’s first two days in his opener, the real amusement came from his sit-down with Bill O’Reilly, the former Fox host who provided fodder for many “Daily Show” jokes in years past.The two have squared off before, and O’Reilly nodded to that history: “We are able to disagree without hating each other. Now, I truly hate him. But I don’t show it.”“I like coming on here, in front of all of your friends out here — and the audience should know, I have no friends here.” — BILL O’REILLY“Well, not just here.” — JON STEWARTO’Reilly tried to distance himself from Trump, saying that as a registered independent, he didn’t have a candidate. Then he pulled out a sheet of paper and rattled off a list of prices, mortgage rates and overdose rates that had risen during the Biden administration.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    NBA Agrees to Massive Rights Deals With Disney, Comcast and Amazon

    The agreements, set to begin after next season, could potentially pay the league about $76 billion over 11 years.The National Basketball Association’s Board of Governors has approved a set of agreements for the rights to show the league’s games, Commissioner Adam Silver said on Tuesday, moving one step closer to completing deals that would reshape how the sport is watched over the next decade.Mr. Silver declined to discuss any financial details or even the companies involved, though there have been reports for months that Disney, Comcast and Amazon were close to deals with the league. TNT, which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, has shown N.B.A. games since the 1980s, but its prominent on-air personalities like Charles Barkley talked during the playoffs about how they worried that the network would lose the rights after next season, the last covered by the current nine-year TV deal.The companies are expected to pay the N.B.A. a total of about $76 billion over 11 years. On average, ESPN would pay the N.B.A. about $2.6 billion annually, NBC around $2.5 billion and Amazon roughly $1.8 billion, according to three people familiar with the agreements, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the financial details.The Board of Governors voted to approve the deals at its yearly meeting in Las Vegas. The N.B.A. must now present the deals to Warner Bros. Discovery, and once that happens, the company will have five days to match one of them to remain in the mix.“We did approve this stage of those media proposals, but as you all know there are other rights that need to be worked through with existing partners,” Mr. Silver said.Warner Bros. Discovery was expected to try to match Amazon’s offer, according to two people familiar with the company’s thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the negotiations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    James B. Sikking, Actor Best Known for ‘Hill Street Blues,’ Dies at 90

    His natural rectitude landed him roles on hundreds of TV dramas and comedies, including the beloved “Car Pool Lane” episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”James B. Sikking, an actor who specialized in comically and threateningly stern men, died on Saturday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 90.The cause was complications of dementia, a spokeswoman, Cynthia Snyder, said in a statement.Mr. Sikking combined a soldier’s leanness and square jaw with a gentleman’s horn-rimmed spectacles and neatly combed hair. As a Federal Bureau of Investigation director involved in high-level power players in the 1993 movie “The Pelican Brief,” he looked the part.“I have that professional, intelligent look in my eye that hires me as doctors, lawyers, professional people,” he told The New York Times in 1988.Among hundreds of roles on television, Mr. Sikking was best known for playing Lt. Howard Hunter on the police drama “Hill Street Blues” (1981-87). The show won 26 Emmys, a record for a drama until “The West Wing,” which ran from 1999 to 2006, reached the same total. The show “paved the way for today’s golden era of TV drama,” The Los Angeles Times wrote in 2014, a claim that many other commentators have made as well.Mr. Sikking’s character, who appeared in every episode, was a pipe-smoking disciplinarian and weapons expert who, when alone at home, might whisper lovingly to a puppy.He based the character’s persona and even dress on a drill instructor he had during a stint in the Army. “He was so ‘army’ that it was maddening,” Mr. Sikking told the entertainment and lifestyle publication Parade in 2014. “And he had just gotten his second lieutenant bars and he worked our butts off and he was totally unbending.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘UnPrisoned’ Depicts the Burden of Incarceration With a Light Touch

    Delroy Lindo and Kerry Washington discuss their series, which finds humor and struggle in a father and daughter repairing their relationship after a long prison term.“UnPrisoned” on Hulu is the rare show to focus on the aftermath of incarceration and its ongoing effects on families rather than on imprisonment itself.Created by Tracy McMillan and loosely based on her 2011 memoir, “I Love You and I’m Leaving You Anyway,” the series stars Delroy Lindo and Kerry Washington as Edwin and Paige, a father and daughter trying to repair their relationship when Edwin comes back into Paige’s life after serving 17 years in prison.The first season explored the emotional injury that Edwin’s long absence inflicted upon Paige, an avid Instagrammer, therapist and single mother who struggles with a string of unhealthy romantic partners. Season 2, premiering Wednesday, delves deeper into how the issues of abandonment, anxiety and mistrust have been passed down through three generations, and it depicts the hard work it takes for the family to break the trauma cycle and begin to heal.Though the show spotlights a serious societal problem — mass incarceration — it does so with a light touch, finding humor as well as difficulty in the challenges of re-entry. Such nuance is what drew both Lindo and Washington to this story about, as Lindo put it, “the problems of families that have been decimated by the penal system and their trying to reconnect.”“Shining light on that process and on one individual who has been imprisoned for as long as my character was, while also doing it somewhat comedically, was genuinely very, very interesting to me,” he said.Washington helped develop “UnPrisoned” through her production company, Simpson Street. She said Lindo was her only choice for Edwin because she needed someone who could handle the comedy while also being able to convey the complexity and charisma of McMillan’s father, who inspired the character.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Returns to RNC With a Different Look, but Some Things Were Familiar

    The first night of the Republican National Convention sought to strike a new note. But some of the lyrics were familiar.Donald J. Trump, a former reality-TV star, has always been conscious of his set dressing as a presidential candidate. At the 2016 Republican National Convention, he made a pro-wrestling-style walk-on in front of blinding lights. In 2020, he used the White House itself as the backdrop for his acceptance speech.But on the first night of the 2024 convention, Mr. Trump — in a way that he could not have anticipated before Saturday — was his own biggest prop.Just as the major networks’ prime-time coverage began, Mr. Trump entered the V.I.P. box in Milwaukee with a large white bandage on his injured right ear, the result of a close call on Saturday with a would-be assassin’s bullet at a rally in Pennsylvania. A reminder of mortality, a badge of survival — it was a blank rectangle on which the crowd could read what it wished, and that made it the most potent placard in the hall.Mr. Trump’s rallies and appearances have always been about firing up big feelings: rage, fear, grievance, defiance. This, as Mr. Trump walked out to the sounds of Lee Greenwood performing “God Bless the U.S.A.,” was something a little different.The mood of the moment was emotional and warm. Much of the night felt like a merger of political rally and gospel service, full of exhortations for divine protection, not simply for the country but also for the party’s returning leader.And Mr. Trump, who has said in interviews that he does not cry, looked as close to misty as I can remember in decades of seeing him onscreen.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    What to Expect From Wednesday’s Emmy Nominations

    The top nominees are announced at 11:30 a.m. ET. “Shogun” and “The Bear” are poised to have a big day.Just six months after a strike-delayed ceremony, the Emmys are back.Nominations for television’s most prestigious award show will be unveiled on Wednesday morning. “Shogun,” the lush period drama, and “The Bear,” the anxiety-inducing comedy, are poised to have a big day. Netflix’s “Baby Reindeer” is expected to stand out among limited series.There is a considerable cloud hanging over Emmy nomination day this year. Last year’s double strikes, along with several years of cost cutting, have put the industry in the throes of a contraction. The Peak TV era is now firmly in the rearview mirror. To wit, the number of shows submitted for Emmy consideration this year plummeted.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    With a Killer Onstage and a Body Part in the Back, the Show Went On

    Fourteen years ago in Orange County, Calif., Daniel Wozniak killed two people: Sam Herr, a 26-year-old Army veteran and neighbor, and Julie Kibuishi, a 23-year-old student and Herr’s close friend. Wozniak was convicted of the murders, received a death sentence and is serving time on death row, though California has a moratorium on executions.Those circumstances alone would be enough to adapt the case into a play in our true-crime-loving era. But additional details about the heinous murders shoot a cold dose of evil through that old theater maxim “The show must go on.”Wozniak performed twice in a community theater production of the musical “Nine” as Guido, the ladies-man lead, in the hours after the separate shootings of Kibuishi and Herr, whom he also dismembered and whose savings he wanted. Investigators found Herr’s torso inside the theater where Wozniak and his fiancée, Rachel Buffett, had performed in the show. Buffett was later convicted of lying to the police about the murders.What kind of person would gamely act between gruesome acts? That’s the question Ryan Spahn set out to explore in his darkly comic new play, “Inspired by True Events,” running through Aug. 4 at Theater 154 in the West Village, in an Out of the Box Theatrics production.Directed by Knud Adams, the show takes place inside a community theater’s intimate green room, where Mary (Dana Scurlock), a mama bear stage manager, helps the actors Colin (Jack DiFalco), Eileen (Mallory Portnoy) and Robert (Lou Liberatore) prepare for the play-within-the-play. The audience of 35 (seated on chairs inside the theater’s green room) watches the humdrum thrum of a dressing room: Mary makes coffee, Colin showers, Eileen puts on her wig, Robert steams his costume. That is until Robert finds a duffel bag that reeks of Colin’s gym clothes — and it’s no spoiler to say that what’s in the bag are not Colin’s gym clothes.Dana Scurlock, left, and Jack DiFalco in the Out of the Box Theatrics production.Thomas BrunotWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More