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    ‘Ted Lasso,’ Season 3, Episode 3 Recap: Zava Superstar

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    What will the signing of a world-class striker mean for AFC Richmond?Season 3, Episode 3: ‘4-5-1’Welcome to the Zava era. For those who skipped the first two episodes of this third season of “Ted Lasso” — and honestly, shame on you; go back, do the homework and rejoin us — Ted’s team has signed one of the greatest players of the age, a mercurial striker named Zava. (He is based closely on the real-life star Zlatan Ibrahimovic.) This was accomplished by Rebecca rudely accosting him while he was using a urinal last episode. Whatever works, right?Zava is immediately weird — showing up hours late with his cellphone on another continent, ostentatiously meditating while the rest of the team prepares for games, and so on. But so far he seems reasonably friendly, even if his preferred alignment is everyone in the midfield or on defense except him. This is the meaning of the episode’s title, “4-5-1”: He’s the “1.” As the coaches explain, all free kicks will be taken by Zava. All penalty kicks will be taken by Zava. And all corner kicks must be intended to set up Zava. Jamie, who was the team’s best player before Zava’s arrival, is visibly nonplused. But everyone else seems fine with the arrangement.And why not? The first time he touches the ball for Richmond, after Jamie passes it to him at the opening of his first game, he scores a goal from midfield, an insane feat. He follows up with scores off headers, off bicycle kicks, and even off something I’d never heard of called a “scorpion kick.”Again: What’s not to like? Richmond, universally picked to finish at the bottom of the Premier League — which would entail them being once again “relegated” to an inferior league — is now near the top of the standings.That said, I’m guessing the relationship between Zava and his teammates will sour before long, because a) the show has made a big deal about how he changes teams almost every season; and b) his real-life doppelgänger, Ibrahimovic, has a history of violent altercations with teammates. So stay tuned.There is another delightful musical choice for the montage where we see Zava dominating the Premier League and taking Richmond toward its peak: “Prisencolinensinainciusol,” a classic 1972 song by Adriano Celentano, performed with his wife Claudia Mori. It is a song written in nonsense-language that was meant to sound like English to a non-English-speaking audience. There have been various versions, but the original video is, in my modest opinion, one of the greatest of all time. (Again: 1972!)Having already apologized last week for missing a reference to “Jesus Christ Superstar” in the season premiere, I also need to cite the use of its titular song, “Superstar,” with regard to Zava this episode. Although I will confess it is, for me at least, one of the weakest songs of the musical, an unwisely adorned version of the brilliant “Heaven on Their Minds” that opens the show. (And again, that’s Anthony Head’s older brother, Murray, singing as Judas in a genuinely brilliant vocal performance.)Even Roy — Roy! — suggests that Crimm’s book about Richmond’s season might be a “fairy tale.” I offer as a semi-deep cut the idea that his niece, Phoebe, may be letting him play the dragon role more often in their ongoing “Princess and Dragon” game, the casting of which was clearly an issue of contention last season. As Roy requested in Episode 8, “Can I be the dragon this time?” I speak from experience: The male ego is a ridiculously fragile thing.In other news …Sam and RebeccaWe haven’t seen a lot of Sam so far this season, perhaps in part because the show seems reluctant to dive back into the Sam-Rebecca romance it ignited last season. I don’t think there was any mention of it at all in the first two episodes of the season, and it was still very much a live question at the end of Season 2. (I went back and checked!) Readers from last year will recall I was not much of a fan of this story line. Sam is 21 years old, Rebecca is roughly twice that age, and she’s the owner of the club that will make decisions about his salary, his career and all the rest.Last season she gave him the choice of staying with the team or leaving for another, which is something no responsible boss could ever do. However delightful Sam and Rebecca were together, this was a massive lawsuit — from Sam, from his teammates — waiting to happen.This episode, both Sassy (the return of Sassy, played by Ellie Taylor, is always a delight) and Keeley suggest that Rebecca is missing out on a good thing. Seriously, does AFC Richmond have an HR department? Does anyone comprehend employment law? And please don’t think that I’m expressing a double standard here: If she were a fabulously wealthy older man having a relationship with a much-younger female employee — Rebecca’s “grooming” line from last season hit all too close to the mark — the obvious moral, professional and possibly legal quandary would be only clearer. Situations like this are exactly why we rightly revile Rupert. (Remember: “I got bored with the same old, same old,” from last episode.)Rebecca is a beautiful, incredibly successful woman. John Wingsnight notwithstanding (remember him from the Season 2 premiere?), she can certainly find a perfectly kind, decent, loving man who is not her borderline-underage employee.But enough of my re-litigating a relationship that may already be over. Let’s look at Rebecca and Sam separately.RebeccaSo here’s the payoff (or at least early payoff) of Rebecca’s brief call last week with her mother, played by the tremendous Harriet Walter. Now, under pressure, Rebecca visits her mom’s psychic, Tish (Emma Davies). The opening is lovely: Rebecca asks for a White Russian, and Tish responds with a “Big Lebowski” reference. “I was literally just making a joke,” Rebecca allows. And Tish responds, “I know, that’s why I made two.” A psychic with a sense of humor? Sign me up.Rebecca then hears a lot of what sounds like nonsense, including the importance of a “green matchbook.” (Rebecca even checks her kitchen drawer to see if she has any.) And then: “You will have a family … you’re going to be a mother.” This is the cruelest thing one could say to Rebecca, whom you’ll recall Rupert didn’t want to have a child with, before immediately having one with his new, very-young wife, Bex (Keeley Hazell — and yes, she is the real-life Page 3 model whom Juno Temple’s character is named after). As Rebecca notes to Tish, explicitly: “You’re [expletive] cruel.”Ambreen Razia, left, and Juno Temple in “Ted Lasso.”Apple TV+Wow. This is what we call a major plot twist, one that will continue to bear fruit if the green matchbox from Sam’s restaurant is to be believed. But if this plotline is fulfilled, who will be the father or partner? Sam? He’s the obvious choice: It is, after all, his matchbook. But having a child with someone 20-plus years younger does seem a little Rupert-y, no? And Sam and Rebecca no longer seem to be an item. I welcome alternative theories. (No! Not John Wingsnight!)Sam’s RestaurantIt’s so nice to see a bit more of Sam (Toheeb Jimoh) this episode. He was arguably the breakout star of last season. (As he told Rebecca in the closet, “I’m only going to get more wonderful.” If only I could have honestly spoken that line … ever.)It’s the test run for Sam’s new restaurant and obviously a huge night for him. But perhaps not only for him. The moment in which Rebecca, next to Keeley, looks at Sam and obviously wonders what could have been — what might still be — is followed instantly by Keeley giving an all-but-identical look at Roy. What could still happen with Roy and Keeley? What has to still happen with Roy and Keeley? Don’t let me down, “Ted Lasso.” You broke one of the best things you had going, and I’m waiting for you to fix it. “There are better things ahead than any we have left behind,” Keeley tells Rebecca. That may be the least true line ever uttered on the show. Can Keeley do better than Roy? Can Roy do better than Keeley?TedAs noted earlier, a mild gimmick of “Ted Lasso” is that each season opens and closes on the face of the person who follows the clearest evolution. Rebecca, the first season; Nate, the second. This season, it’s Ted, who is long overdue. He came to the U.K. from Kansas and left his 10-ish son behind because he and his wife had split, as we learned in Season 1. His father killed himself when Ted was 16, as we learned in Season 2. This is the season — the presumptive final season — in which we will hopefully witness him healing himself, instead of others.The signs are not, for the moment, terribly good. He has discovered that his wife is dating and perhaps living with a new man, and that man, “Jake” or “Dr. Jacob,” is their former couples’ therapist. (Am I wrong, or is this the first time we’ve seen Ted’s ex-wife refer to herself as “Michelle Keller”?) Ted’s hands shake so much he scarcely sees Zava’s first goal. He has what is clearly a heavy pour of Scotch as he plows through social media confirming the relationship.Cardinal rule: Only see doctors who use either their first names or “Dr. [surname].” “Dr. [first name]” is no longer appropriate once you hit age 14. And while I don’t pretend to know the professional guidelines for dating someone you’ve treated in couples therapy, I think 18 months is not enough time passed. The presumptive rule should be “never.” The conflict between being meaningfully attracted to someone and being the person in charge of rehabilitating their current relationship — well, let’s just say that this is about as direct a professional conflict as I can imagine. You are not in Ted Lasso’s cool book, “Dr. Jacob,” and you’re not in mine either.Odds and EndsLast week, I suggested that Trent Crimm’s theme song should be the Kinks’ “A Well Respected Man,” but after this episode I think Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” would also be pretty terrific. Trent is just so easy to score. Maybe it’s the hair? If anyone has another song they think would be perfect for him, definitely cite it in comments.The moment in which Coach Beard suggests Jamie is being accidentally “ironic,” and Jamie retorts that, no, he’s being deliberately “hypocritical” — and then Ted notes that the whole scenario is ironic? Gold.I liked the moment when Jamie and Roy argued about “prima donna” versus “”pre-Madonna” and Jamie was basically right? He is growing before our eyes.Zava (who owns an avocado farm) asks Sam where he gets his avocados and, when told that they don’t really feature in West African cuisine, says “not yet”? A definite callback to Ted’s “not yet” response last week when Roy lamented his inability to continue enjoying playing at Chelsea once he felt his powers fading.The Coach Beard-Jane story line continues to do nothing for me, and I can’t imagine it does much for anyone else. Drop it, “Ted Lasso.”Perhaps I give myself away too much. But the “favorite Julie Andrews’s movies” scene in which Roy confesses a longstanding crush because of “the way you knew she’d always tell you off if you’d been bad” and Crimm sneaks in with a “Princess Diaries” reference? This is the office I totally want to work in, every day, forever.The “I think you mean ‘In Zava boots’” question addressed to Dani Rojas? No further comment necessary.Additional references: Daniel Day-Lewis(!), Public Enemy, “Mrs. Maisel” and no doubt many others I missed. Please let me know in comments. More

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      For $18,500 (and Up), You, Too, Can Travel Like James Bond

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      When the (real) world is not enough, new luxury tours offer fans a chance to engage with their favorite film and TV worlds.From the post-apocalyptic bleakness of the TV show “The Last of Us” to the glamorous European destinations in the sprawling James Bond movie franchise, one source of travel inspiration is taking on fresh appeal as pandemic restrictions recede: the fictional worlds of film and television.“Set-jetting” — a play on “jet-setting” — will, travel analysts say, heavily influence the choice of destinations this year. With search traffic surging for the filming locations of the most popular streamed movies and television shows, that entertainment is expected to overtake social media as the top source of inspiration for travelers, according to research from online travel companies like Expedia.In response, destinations, tour operators and even film and TV production companies are striving to offer ever more experiential ways for people to engage with their favorite fictional worlds. The government of Alberta, Canada, is even assembling a map of filming locations for “The Last of Us” devotees to follow on a road trip. (The series was shot in the province.)But perhaps none are so immersive — and extravagant — as a new series of James Bond-themed private tours. They include a high-speed race down the River Thames in the same Sunseeker Superhawk 34 speedboat used in “The World Is Not Enough”; a sail on a vintage yacht along the Côte d’Azur to the Casino de Monte-Carlo, featured in “GoldenEye” and “Never Say Never Again”; and a helicopter ride above the snow-capped Ötztal Alps in Austria, where “Spectre” was filmed, accompanied by the special effects veteran Chris Corbould.People are as drawn to the places in the movies as they are to the plots, said Tom Marchant, a co-founder of Black Tomato, a travel company based in New York and London that was enlisted by the Bond movie producer, EON Productions, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first Bond film, “Dr. No.”The goal of the tours, Mr. Marchant said, was “unparalleled” immersion into the 007 world. The cost? From $18,500 per person for a five-night experience, and from $73,500 per person for the full 12-day experience.The Four Seasons in Cap-Ferrat, the location of a scene in the Netflix series “Emily in Paris,” is offering a themed travel package.Stéphanie Branchu/Netflix‘Transported to the set’For many travelers, the high price of immersion is worth it. Inspired by the bucolic hills and lofty Alps in “The Sound of Music,” the 1965 musical film starring Julie Andrews, Natalie McDonald, an entrepreneur in New York, was willing to pay about 10,500 pounds, or about $12,900, for Black Tomato to plan a cross-country railway trip in Switzerland in 2019 with her daughter, then 12.“It quite literally felt like we were transported to the set,” she said, adding that memories of the journey lingered long after they returned home. “In so many ways it extends the trip in our subconscious.”That desire to be immersed in fictional worlds has also been noted by streaming companies like Netflix, which is expanding its slate of interactive (and much more affordable) events. From Regency-era balls in cities like New York to uncovering a secret government lab at a Los Angeles event, attendees are given the opportunity to dress up and engage with plotlines of shows like “Bridgerton” (from $59 a person) and “Stranger Things” (from $39 for an adult).“We want people to leave feeling like they really got to experience this ‘hero’ moment within a world or a story that they’ve loved,” said Josh Simon, the vice president for consumer products at Netflix. Some three million people have attended such immersive events in 17 cities, and the company is planning more experiences linked to series like “Squid Game.”Other operators are paying attention. The Four Seasons in Cap-Ferrat, the location of a scene in the Netflix series “Emily in Paris,” is offering a Girls Trip on the French Riviera package (rates vary, but can run at least $2,000 for a two-person room). Fans of the series “The Last of Us” are flocking to the show’s locations in Alberta, despite the show’s pessimistic premise of a world inhabited by survivors of a global pandemic.Among the most obvious winners of screen tourism this year, travel advisers say, is the cliffside town of Taormina, Sicily, where the second season of the HBO show “The White Lotus” takes place. One $7,500 weeklong “White Lotus” tour was so in demand that it sold out months in advance, according to Quiiky Travel, a tour operator catering to L.G.B.T.Q. clients.Among the popular destinations for travel this year is the cliffside town of Taormina, Sicily, where the second season of the HBO show “The White Lotus” takes place.Fabio Lovino/HBOWeb traffic for the Four Seasons San Domenico Palace, the show’s location, surged more than 60 percent after the first episodes aired, and bookings are set to be stronger this year compared to last year, the hotel said.“‘The White Lotus’ worked as a business accelerator for us,” said Lorenzo Maraviglia, the hotel’s general manager, adding that the sudden interest after the show was something he had never witnessed before. Like their fictional counterparts, guests at the hotel can visit local wineries, cruise on a Vespa around the Sicilian streets and sip an aperitivo in its restaurant (though the underlying tensions are not guaranteed).Bow ties and bubblyAs they wait to learn who will replace the actor Daniel Craig, whose last appearance as James Bond was in 2021’s “No Time to Die,” Bond superfans willing to pay for one of Black Tomato’s 60 custom tours will have the opportunity to peruse Bond costumes and props, with tales from the Bond archive director, Meg Simmonds, in London. If they’re looking for an adrenaline rush, they can learn fight sequences with Lee Morrison, a stunt coordinator and former stunt double for Daniel Craig, also in London. Or they can listen to insider tales over a Parisian dinner with Carole Ashby, the British actress who appeared in “Octopussy” and “A View to Kill.”They will also be able to indulge in the brands featured in the Bond world, including an Aston Martin workshop (the spy’s car of choice) in Millbrook, England, and a private tour of the Bollinger vineyards (the spy’s Champagne of choice) in the village of Ay, France.And then there is the tour’s most lavish offering: the 12-night journey called “The Assignment,” from $73,500 per person, which begins in London and takes travelers on a five-location European tour ending in Venice. A narrative component is potentially in development, Mr. Marchant said, so attendees can live out a Bond plot of their own.For Bond fans on a budget, there are other options. Rob Woodford, a former taxi driver in Britain who runs tours based on popular film and television series, is anticipating a busy year ahead. His James Bond-themed tours try to include an element from most of the 25 films in the series. This year, he is thinking of teaming up with a speedboat company to recreate the breathless scene from “The World Is Not Enough.”“Wouldn’t that be a good idea — to recreate Pierce Brosnan shooting down the River Thames?” he said, adding: “You’ve got to reinvent yourself a bit.”Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2023. More

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      ‘Abbott Elementary’ and the Joys of Living Outside the Main Edit

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      The sitcom has tweaked the mockumentary formula to teach an invaluable lesson about the value of life off-camera.There is a scene, early in the second season of ABC’s “Abbott Elementary,” that neatly captures some most contemporary questions about the power and ubiquity of video. Teachers at Abbott, a public elementary school, are in their lounge, watching something alarming. A charter-school company has been running what’s essentially an attack ad against them, featuring unflattering video clips of them on the job. As they process seeing themselves eviscerated onscreen, a question hovers over the proceedings like chalkboard dust: How did the charter school obtain this footage in the first place? The answer comes from the school’s principal, Ava Coleman, who explains that she welcomed in the interloping camera crew — because she had a hard time telling them apart from the regular camera crew, the one supposedly filming the show we’re watching.“Abbott Elementary,” now reaching the close of its second season, is a mockumentary sitcom; its narrative frame involves the production of a documentary about “underfunded, poorly managed public schools in America.” The teachers are used to being filmed, if not always happy about it. (Ms. Schemmenti, the resident South Philly toughie, turns on the regular crew: “See, this is why I never trusted any of youse! Now get the cameras out of my face before I give you a colonoscopy with it.”) They have been subject to a classic sitcom trope, the misunderstanding that leads to humiliation. But the root of that humiliation is unlike most every sitcom character before them: They’ve been captured by the wrong cameras.The show isn’t exactly subtle in its suspicions about what recording culture has done to education.The way “Abbott” deploys comic mix-ups is a technique the show shares with traditional sitcoms, the 20th-century kind with their multicamera setups, stagelike sets and audience laughter (real or simulated). But “Abbott” exists in a world that has been slowly shedding that style. Many examples still exist, but by the end of the aughts, multicamera shows were already seen as quaint compared with their critically acclaimed new counterparts — single-camera comedies like “Arrested Development,” “The Bernie Mac Show” or “Modern Family.” These shows could borrow techniques from film, documentary and reality TV — cutaways, confessional interviews, voice-over — to access jokes unavailable in the old studio-audience setup. The most obvious predecessors of “Abbott” were among them: the American adaptation of “The Office” and, later, “Parks and Recreation,” both long-running NBC mockumentary sitcoms about close-knit workplace colleagues.“The Office” framed itself as a documentary about work at an ordinary company, then let that premise recede into the background; it wasn’t until its final season that it began to reckon with the camera crew’s yearslong presence. “Abbott” has introduced this quagmire much earlier. Across its sophomore year, it has repeatedly turned its attention to the inescapable surveillance we face today — not just from professional camera crews but from one another. Coleman’s gaffe is, in reality, just another expected incursion. The staff’s flabbergasted reaction is an instance of the characters’ not so much breaking the fourth wall as routinely banging their heads against it.The attack-ad scene parallels one from the show’s pilot, in which the premise is introduced. Principal Coleman barges into the teachers’ lounge boasting about the staff’s chance to become famous. After an older teacher, Mrs. Howard, reminds her why the crew is filming — the school is being cast as both underresourced and badly managed — Coleman replies that “no press is bad press.” It’s often unclear whether the biggest challenge facing the teachers is a lack of resources or the fact that Coleman is such an ineffective, uninterested leader. But the charter-school episode marks the first time that the main threat to their work is their own comfort with being observed. The principal may be hilariously awful, but in this case the teachers have ceded their privacy — and that of the small children they teach — to random strangers with cameras.The whole misunderstanding mirrors what the critic Ian Penman once called “the relentless publicity of modern life,” a quality that leads many of us to constantly re-evaluate our relationships with recording technology. On “Abbott,” the main characters have various levels of attachment to cameras and microphones, which wind through plots in countless ways. In one episode, Ms. Teagues — the idealistic protagonist played by the show’s creator, Quinta Brunson — introduces her co-workers to a TikTok challenge that helps them fund-raise for school supplies. Mr. Hill, the dorky young history teacher, tries to help his students start a podcast. Mr. Johnson, the school’s custodian, helps quash a TikTok-style fad and later mugs for the camera at a Sixers game.They’ve been captured by the wrong cameras.But the show sieves most of its video-​age anxiety through Principal Coleman. She pulls out her phone to record videos of teachers arguing. She spends her time watching survivalist reality-TV shows in her office. She live-streams online auctions. The show isn’t exactly subtle in its suspicions about what recording culture has done to education, for either the children or the staff, but Coleman’s online hustles and schemes are a joke that can point in either direction: Sometimes they’re selfish manipulations that waste everyone’s time, and sometimes they pop up in the final act to rescue the school.Crucially, though, it’s the least-pertinent footage that carries an important lesson “Abbott” has for viewers: the value of life lived outside the main edit. In real documentaries, the richest parts often capture something secret or ancillary, something “caught” from outside formal interviews. But these mockumentaries are scripted, meaning showrunners can simply write those moments in. Their use of such footage suggests that the real meaning of our lives is often found outside the stuff we’re presenting on camera for others to see. Even the attack ad speaks to this: Viewers know that the moments captured in that commercial represent only a sliver of what the characters have to offer.“Abbott” uses such incidental footage to interesting effect. In a first-season episode, we watch Mrs. Howard and Mr. Hill try to plant a garden, though neither really knows how. A stoic former substitute, Mr. Eddie, whose father owns a landscaping company, grumbles about the project. Over the course of the episode, the garden mysteriously improves — until, in the closing minutes, we see that Mr. Eddie has been tending to it in secret. In another episode, Ms. Teagues and her visiting sister get into an argument about deep-seated family trauma — one we see play out incidentally, caught by rolling cameras even though it has nothing to do with the supposed theme of the documentary.The question of why the fictional cameras of “Abbott” take this approach has, thus far, gone unanswered. But the show’s sustained critique of our video-saturated era — conditions that models like “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation” never had to contend with — suggests that the narrative function of this “minor” footage is crucial. TikTok and Instagram, two of Principal Coleman’s favorite platforms, might feature much comedy and the language of storytelling, but neither is all that good at doing what great sitcoms have always done: revealing the ways that people are messy and contradictory and fail to align their private and public selves. In this era of curated video, the way “Abbott” treats seemingly throwaway moments is a reminder that our biographical B-roll, in memories and private impressions, is the most valuable viewing material.Source photographs: Gilles Mingasson/ABC; Tim Robberts/Stone/Getty Images; Manu Vega/Moment/Getty Images.Niela Orr is a story editor for the magazine. Her recent work includes a profile of the actress Keke Palmer, an essay about the end of “Atlanta” and a feature on the metamusical “A Strange Loop.” More

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      Stephen Colbert Calls Nashville Shooting ‘Horrible and Familiar’

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      “Not doing anything about this is an insane dereliction of our collective humanity,” Colbert said on Tuesday.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.‘Horrible and Familiar’An armed assailant shot and killed six people at a Nashville elementary school on Monday.Stephen Colbert called the situation “horrible and familiar, and horrible because it is so familiar,” noting that the tragedy was “the 130th mass shooting of 2023, and 2023 is only 87 days old.”“Not doing anything about this is an insane dereliction of our collective humanity. And the obvious solution here is one President Biden has proposed: an assault weapons ban. We’ve had one before, from 1994 to 2004 — and it worked. During that ban, the risk of dying in a mass shooting was 70 percent lower than it is today. That just makes sense. Fewer guns equals fewer shootings.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It’s not complicated. It might be hard, but it’s not complicated. That’s just math. It’s the same reason these days we have fewer strangulations with a landline.” — STEPHEN COLBERTBoth Colbert and “The Daily Show” guest host John Leguizamo reacted to U.S. Representative Tim Burchett’s comments that, “It’s a horrible, horrible situation, and we’re not going to fix it. Criminals are going to be criminals. And my daddy fought in the Second World War, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese, and he told me, ‘Buddy,’ he said, ‘If somebody wants to take you out and doesn’t mind losing their life, there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.’”“Yes, I suppose as a lawmaker, he could, I don’t know, make a law, but that sounds like a lot of work. Despair — despair is so much more efficient. It reminds me of that sign on the subway: ‘If you see something, whatevs. Bombers gonna bomb.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“That’s the best you have to offer? You’re a congressman! If you don’t have any ideas for how to keep our kids safe, get the [expletive] out of the way — yes! — and go work at a Pinkberry or some [expletive]!” — JOHN LEGUIZAMO“And, by the way, no disrespect to his father, but if going to school in America feels like fighting in World War II, that should be a sign that things are seriously [expletive] up in America, OK?” — JOHN LEGUIZAMO“Counterpoint: Elementary school is not supposed to be like World War II.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Pity Party Edition)“The grand jury in New York is not expected to convene tomorrow, which means the earliest they can vote on an indictment is now next week. In the meantime, Trump has been busy saying goodbye to old friends. Last night, he threw quite a pity party on his pal Sean Hannity’s show.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Former President Trump was interviewed last night by Fox News host Sean Hannity. ‘Thanks for having me back,’ said Hannity and Trump at the same time.” — SETH MEYERS“Yeah, apparently Trump was there to promote his next indictment: [imitating Trump] ‘It’s gonna be huge.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Save it for your cellmate, Donald. We don’t want to hear it anymore.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingJohn Leguizamo challenged legendary B-boy Crazy Legs to a break-dance battle on Tuesday’s “Daily Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe actor Adam Scott, who stars in “Party Down,” will sit down with Seth Meyers on Wednesday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutJoaquin Phoenix praised his working relationship with the director Ari Aster, noting his “willingness to push yourself, and to be pushed and to push back.”A24The “Midsommar” writer-director Ari Aster’s new dark comedy, “Beau is Afraid,” has an all-star cast including Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone and Parker Posey. More

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      Bill Zehme, Author With a Knack for Humanizing the Famous, Dies at 64

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      A prolific biographer, he charmed his way into access to, and insights about, Frank Sinatra, Hugh Hefner, Johnny Carson and many others.Bill Zehme, whose biographies and magazine profiles humanized the celebrities he described as “intimate strangers” — the “shy, succinct” Johnny Carson; the “blank” Warren Beatty; Frank Sinatra, whose “battle cry” was “fun with everything, and I mean fun!” — died on Sunday in Chicago. He was 64.His partner, Jennifer Engstrom, said the cause was colorectal cancer.Mr. Zehme’s biography of Mr. Sinatra, “The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’” (1997), was a best seller. He also shared the author credit on best-selling memoirs by Regis Philbin (“I’m Only One Man!” in 1995 and “Who Wants to Be Me?” in 2000) and Jay Leno (“Leading With My Chin” in 1996).His other books included “Intimate Strangers: Comic Profiles and Indiscretions of the Very Famous” (2002), “Lost in the Funhouse: The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman” (1999) and “Hef’s Little Black Book” (2004), a stream-of-consciousness collaboration with Hugh M. Hefner, the founder and publisher of Playboy magazine.Mr. Zehme’s biography of Frank Sinatra, published in 1997, was a best seller, and he and Mr. Sinatra remained close.Mr. Zehme (pronounced ZAY-mee) conducted what is widely believed to have been the last major interview with Johnny Carson, whom he called “the great American Sphinx” and whom the CBS anchor Walter Cronkite called “the most durable performer in the whole history of television” when Mr. Carson retired in 1992 after some 4,500 episodes of “The Tonight Show.”Mr. Zehme’s “Carson the Magnificent: An Intimate Portrait” was published in 2007, but he never completed the full-fledged biography he had planned.The Chicago-born Mr. Zehme was often said to have cultivated recalcitrant sources with his Midwestern charm. His portraits were not hagiography, but neither were they tell-alls, and he remained close to some of the subjects he interviewed, including Mr. Sinatra and Mr. Hefner.“Bill didn’t dig around for dirt or comb through the proverbial closet hunting for skeletons,” David Hirshey, a former deputy editor of Esquire magazine, said by email. “What interested him was more subtle than that. Zehme looked for the quirks in behavior and speech that revealed a person’s character, and he had an uncanny ability to put his subjects at ease with a mixture of gentle playfulness and genuine empathy.”That’s why,” Mr. Hirshey continued, “Sharon Stone covered by nothing but a sheet allowed Bill to interview her while lying side by side as they enjoyed a couples massage.”Mr. Carson, Mr. Zehme wrote in an essay for PBS in conjunction with an “American Masters” documentary on him, “rose to reign iconic as the smooth midnight sentinel king whose political japes and cultural enthusiasms mightily swayed popular taste at whim or wink.” That wink, Mr. Zehme noted, transmitted “surefire stardom to aspiring personalities, especially comedians, and privileged co-conspiracy to regular viewers who became his spontaneous partners in sly mockery.”Andy Kaufman, Mr. Zehme wrote, was “a pioneering practitioner of various cultural trends long before they ever became trends.”Delacorte PressOf Mr. Beatty, Mr. Zehme wrote: “He speaks slowly, fearfully, cautiously, editing every syllable, slicing off personal color and spontaneous wit, steering away from opinion, introspection, humanness. He is mostly evasive. His pauses are elephantine. Broadway musicals could be mounted during his pauses. He works at this. Ultimately, he renders himself blank.“In ‘Dick Tracy,’ he battles a mysterious foe called the Blank. In life, he is the Blank doing battle with himself. It is a fascinating showdown, exhilarating to behold. To interview Warren Beatty is to want to kill him.”Mr. Zehme provided tips from Mr. Sinatra about what men should never do in the presence of a woman (yawn) and about the finer points of his haberdashery: “He wore only snap-brim Cavanaughs — fine felts and porous palmettos — and these were his crowns, cocked askew, as defiant as he was.”“Mr. Sinatra’s gauge for when a hat looked just right,” Mr. Zehme wrote, was “when no one laughs.”He described the unorthodox and at times controversial comedian Andy Kaufman as “the pre-eminent put-on artist of his generation” and “a pioneering practitioner of various cultural trends long before they ever became trends.”William Christian Zehme was born on Oct. 28, 1958, the grandson of a Danish immigrant. His parents, Robert and Suzanne (Clemensen) Zehme, owned a flower shop in Flossmoor, a village south of Chicago and not far from South Holland, where Bill was raised.Mr. Zehme in 2017. “Bill didn’t dig around for dirt or comb through the proverbial closet hunting for skeletons,” a colleague said. “What interested him was more subtle than that.”Loyola University Chicago School of CommunicationHe graduated from Loyola University in Chicago in 1980 with a degree in journalism.One of his first books was “The Rolling Stone Book of Comedy” (1991). In 2004, he won a National Magazine Award for his profile of the newspaper columnist Bob Greene.In addition to Ms. Engstrom, Mr. Zehme is survived by Lucy Reeves, a daughter from his marriage to Tina Zimmel, which ended in divorce; and a sister, Betsy Archer.Mr. Zehme bridled at being identified as a celebrity biographer, although most of the people he profiled had been famous long before he wrote about them. They had not, however, seemed as familiar as next-door neighbors until Mr. Zehme wrote about them.“The celebrity profile is the bastard stepchild of journalism, and I’m embarrassed sometimes to be associated with it,” he told Chicago magazine in 1996.“The truth is, I have never written about a celebrity,” Mr. Zehme wrote in “Intimate Strangers.” “I have always written about humans, replete with human traits and foibles and issues, who also happen to be famous.” More

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      In ‘Unstable,’ the Sins of the Father Are Comedy Gold

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      LOS ANGELES — John Owen Lowe was 11 or 12 when he first realized that his father wasn’t quite like the other dads. So what was it like to grow up with a father this famous, this problematically handsome?“How about ‘unbelievably’ handsome?” John Owen’s father, Rob Lowe, 59, interjected from the other end of a sofa in a Netflix conference room in early March. His son grimaced.The short answer: Not great, especially for a kid with social anxiety. “I remember thinking, I didn’t ask for all this extra attention,” John Owen Lowe, 27, said. “But the truth is, nobody wants to hear you complain about that.”A few years ago, he found an alternative to complaining. He began to troll his father on social media, dinging him for each humblebrag. “The subtle art of taking a selfie in front of ur Emmy nominations,” an early comment on one of Rob’s thirst traps read. Others include “Maybe skip chest day for awhile” and “Plz god no.”The elder Lowe took the mockery in stride. Eventually he helped to give it a new platform. He had tried to dissuade both of his children — an older son, Matthew, is now a venture capitalist — from pursuing careers in the entertainment industry. But after John Owen graduated from Stanford, with a degree in science technology, he announced that he wanted to write and act. While writing on “9-1-1: Lone Star,” the Fox emergency responder drama starring his dad, he began to suspect that their barbed dynamic was actually pretty funny. So funny that it just might undergird a show of its own. The elder Lowe immediately signed on as a creator and executive producer.That half-hour comedy, “Unstable,” created with Victor Fresco (“Better Off Ted,” “Santa Clarita Diet”), debuts on Netflix on Thursday. Rob stars as Ellis Dragon, a volatile biotech guru grieving his wife’s death, with John Owen as Jackson, the son brought into his company to steady him. The show exaggerates their personal relationship for comic effect — in reality Rob is more self-aware and John Owen is less mean. But according to both men, it doesn’t exaggerate all that much. And it may have improved that relationship, if only up to a point.In the Netflix series “Unstable,” Rob Lowe plays a grieving biotech guru whose son is brought into the company to help steady him.John P. Fleenor/Netflix“Unstable,” both Lowes say, exaggerates the dynamics of their personal relationship for comic effect, but not all that much. Netflix“I have learned to treat him with some level of respect that feels earned,” John Owen said. “But then they call ‘cut’ and he’s like, ‘If you wear your hair like that, people aren’t going to take you seriously.’ And I’m like, ‘Now it’s time for you to get lost.’”In that small conference room, with John Owen in a baggy dotted suit and Rob in a tight, white T-shirt that set off his ridiculously blue eyes, the two men discussed family, trauma and the idea that despite its billionaire, high-tech trappings, “Unstable” is mostly just a story of a child deeply embarrassed by his parent.“The secret weapon of the show is how relatable it is,” Rob said.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.John Owen, when did you realize that your father was famous?JOHN OWEN LOWE It isn’t something you’re born knowing. But there is a time where you go, ‘Oh wait, my existence isn’t like everybody else’s.’ Probably around fifth or sixth grade, I remember looking back and re-evaluating certain things. Like, oh, it’s not a normal experience to get nervous to walk a red carpet with your dad when you’re 8 years old.When you were growing up, did he behave differently in public?JOHN OWEN There’s not that big of a difference. There’s just not.ROB LOWE I came into acceptance of living a public life really, really early, because I’ve seen two types of people: They either come to terms with it and embrace it or they don’t. The don’t crowd is not for me. My heroes are the people who wear it well.JOHN OWEN There’s a certain type of celebrity who’s like, “Just treat me like a normal person.” And I’m like, “But you’re not! You aren’t a normal person. Your life is the furthest thing from normal.” So don’t give me this spiel, because it’s fake. Rob, on the occasional night that he’s feeling it, he’ll say, “Let’s go giraffe.” And we’ll go to a place where he might be seen.Giraffe?ROB Because you can’t walk a giraffe down the street without people pointing.John Owen, when did you start making fun of your father in public?JOHN OWEN I’ve made fun of him my whole life. It’s our love language. He made it really easy for me to do it publicly when he started to become more present on social media — that was when I found it impossible to not chime in. Like when you took a non-ironic workout selfie in front of your Emmy nominations, I had to say something.ROB First of all. I will never, ever, ever——JOHN OWEN ——win an Emmy.ROB ——take an ironic workout photo. You just wait. You get north of 50, there’s no more irony left.JOHN OWEN I don’t think you know what irony means.“I’ve made fun of him my whole life,” John Owen said of his father. “It’s our love language.” Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesDoes his social media persona actually embarrass you? Or do you just enjoy trolling him?JOHN OWEN It’s not a bit. This is very real. He’s very, very embarrassing.Is it funny to you, Rob, or does it hurt?ROB I love it. You have to understand, one of the highlights of my life was my Comedy Central roast.JOHN OWEN He’s a really good sport. I will give him credit there. I’ve said some cutting stuff to you before, for sure.ROB The more cutting, the more I like it.How did “Unstable” come about?JOHN OWEN I was writing on “Lone Star.” The proximity to my dad was driving me insane, the idea of never escaping his shadow. I had a weekly phone call with my manager and agent where they basically served as de facto therapists. I would say, “I’m going crazy. I’ll never separate from him. Is this my destiny?” They would laugh at my pain, but I thought to myself, Maybe there’s something interesting here, like, this might be a show. Then we got Victor Fresco involved, who really helped us structure it.So you made a Netflix show as therapy?JOHN OWEN It’s wildly cathartic for me. For sure. First of all, I get to make fun of him on a public platform. But it’s sweet and rewarding, honestly, to act with him.How close are both of you to your characters?JOHN OWEN Pretty close.ROB Pretty close.JOHN OWEN Ellis is like 90 percent Rob, truly. I do believe that.ROB It’s definitely my worldview and essence, on steroids.What are some of the other inspirations for Ellis?JOHN OWEN Elon Musk. Because he’s an insane person and keeps failing upward.ROB The other was the Zappos founder [Tony Hsieh], who was obsessed with fire and eventually died in a fire. It was just the notion of these brilliant, amazing geniuses, who always have to keep pushing and testing and searching.“Watching Johnny do the hours was amazing,” Rob said. “He’s like a hothouse flower. He’s like, ‘I’m so tired.’ I’m like, ‘Bro, you’re in the prime of your life.’”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesWhat has it been like working together so closely?JOHN OWEN We do have a seamless work flow. I’ve worked with him in different facets before this, but this is the most hands-on we’ve ever been. I’ve never shared carrying a show with him.ROB Watching Johnny do the hours was amazing. He’s like a hothouse flower. He’s like, “I’m so tired.” I’m like, “Bro, you’re in the prime of your life.”JOHN OWEN I learned a lot from him on “Unstable.” How somebody in that position carries himself, when so many people are counting on you to deliver day in and day out. I was impressed. That’s as much of a compliment as I’m going to give you right now.And what was acting opposite him like? Because this man, he’s a brick wall of charisma — it’s a little shattering.JOHN OWEN He does have a lot have charisma. In a scene, if people aren’t bringing it, he’ll suck attention into himself. He’s a black hole of energy and positivity. I use that. There’s two ways to match an actor doing something like that: One is to try and meet them where they are; the other is to just let them go. And that’s really what Jackson’s doing, because that’s what I do in real life around him. Even in the writing, I’ve helped craft set pieces that are built for him to be the spectacle.Has it given you anything new to troll him with?JOHN OWEN Where do I even begin? He may have had to read a line off a cue card. I have that cue card in my car. I’m keeping it.And what has it given you, Rob?ROB I get to do what is probably one of the last great network hits [“9-1-1: Lone Star”], then I get to do this and fulfill my goofy, nerdy comedy side. It’s the dream. It’s literally the dream.JOHN OWEN It’s Rob’s world. We’re all just living in it.John Owen called working on “Unstable” with his father “wildly cathartic.” “First of all, I get to make fun of him on a public platform,” he said. “But it’s sweet and rewarding.”Chantal Anderson for The New York Times More

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      Late Night Recaps Donald Trump’s Waco Rally

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      Hosts raised their eyebrows over the former president’s choice of venue, near the Texas compound where the Branch Davidian cult met with disaster 30 years ago.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.‘If I Did It’Donald Trump held a rally in Waco, Texas, on Saturday, near the site where dozens of members of a religious cult died by fire as federal agents besieged their compound 30 years ago. During his speech, the ex-president addressed the investigation into his alleged payment of hush money to a porn star.“That wouldn’t be the one!” Trump said of the porn star, Stormy Daniels, quickly adding, “There is no one. We have a great first lady.”“Yes, her name is Jill Biden,” Jimmy Kimmel said on Monday.“But, just to be clear, he didn’t do it, he wouldn’t do it, but if he had done it, he wouldn’t have done it with her.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I love that Trump’s running for office and from the law at the same time.” — JOHN LEGUIZAMO, guest host of “The Daily Show”“Trump chose Waco because it’s a powerful metaphor for his campaign: He’s going down in flames, and he’s taking his cult followers with him.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Former President Trump held a rally on Saturday in Waco, Texas, near the site of the Branch Davidian cult’s compound. Or, as it’s now known: campaign headquarters.” — SETH MEYERS“Former President Trump held a campaign rally on Saturday in Waco, Texas, making him the first cult leader ever to escape that city alive.” — SETH MEYERS“Yep, you could tell Trump was nervous about getting arrested, because he gave his speech with one foot in Mexico.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Final Four Edition)“The teams in this year’s Final Four are Miami, Florida Atlantic, UConn and San Diego State. Really? The only way your bracket’s got those four teams is if you filled it out this morning.” — JIMMY FALLON“This Final Four was on nobody’s bracket.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“In a strange turn of events, I found myself rooting for this imaginary school on Saturday. I was all in on Gonzaga because, they’re, really, they’re the ultimate Cinderella story, in that, like Cinderella, they’re also fictional characters who do not exist.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I’ll be honest, I think two of those teams might just be online universities.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingLil Nas X joined James Corden for “Carpool Karaoke” on Monday’s “Late Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe singer-songwriter and actress Mary J. Blige will appear on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutLana Del Rey’s new album is “as sprawling, hypnotic and incorrigibly American as an interstate highway,” our critic says.Neil KrugLana Del Ray’s ninth album, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” asks big, earnest questions and isn’t afraid to get messy. More

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      ‘Perry Mason’ Season 2, Episode 4 Recap: More Than Meets the Eye

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      Perry, Paul and Della aren’t the only people searching for answers about Brooks McCutcheon.Season 2, Episode 4: ‘Chapter Twelve’Life, like a murder case, has its ups and downs. First, the down: Perry, Paul and Della have learned that the brothers Mateo and Rafael Gallardo have been lying and did indeed murder Brooks McCutcheon. Now, the up: Perry, Paul and Della all hooked up. Call it a glass-half-full situation.First, let’s focus on the amorous success of our three heroes. Della scores with her screenwriter inamorata, Anita, at Anita’s retreat in Palm Springs. Paul and his wife, Clara, carve out a little alone time during a rare 40-minute stretch when they’re alone in their crowded house. (Her sultry dance to Louis Armstrong proves persuasive.) And Perry seems downright stunned to discover the fetching schoolteacher Miss Aimes at his door during the small hours.Miss Aimes’s visit caps off the miserable days during which Perry learned of the Gallardos’ guilt, which stretch into a long night during which he briefly takes Lydell McCutcheon’s prize racehorse out for a joyride as retaliation for the negative headlines McCutcheon’s pals have been planting about him in the press. (No one does pointlessly petty like Perry.) It all culminates when Perry shows up at school to pick up his son and winds up socking another parent for calling him “Maggot Mason,” per the nickname generated by the radio firebrand “Fighting” Frank Finnerty (John DiMaggio).Is it reasonable to assume that decking that dude is part of what attracts Miss Aimes to Perry? I’ve never known an educator to respond to an outburst of violence on school grounds by thinking, “Ooh, that guy’s a catch!” Perhaps it’s Perry’s willingness to stick up for himself, and by extension his clients — guilty or not, they’re the victims of vituperative racism among the city’s chattering class — that revs her engine. Either way, we officially have ourselves another new love interest for one of our legal eagles.I wonder if there might be another on the way, too. As part of her research into Brooks McCutcheon’s stadium scheme, Della pays another visit to Camilla Nygaard. A true Renaissance woman, Camilla teaches piano and researches nutrition when she isn’t overseeing her oil empire. Most important, she encourages Della to be direct about her frustration with Perry’s moodiness and about her ambition to have her name on the firm’s front door.Sure, Nygaard may just be providing inspiration as a powerful woman — or, in a more sinister possibility, attempting to throw Della off the scent of her own potential involvement in Brooks’s murder. But considering Della’s already established wandering eye, I don’t think we can completely rule out the possibility of another affair.Getting back to business, Paul is the linchpin figure this week. (Like Juliet Rylance, Chris Chalk has an intense screen presence during his solo sequences that more than compensates for the absence of the title character.) Paul has every confidence that his conclusions about the murder weapon were correct and that the Gallardos used it, just as they later confessed to Perry and Della from jail. But that’s just it: Their confession lines up exactly with what the prosecutors Hamilton Burger and Thomas Milligan say took place. How often does that happen? Paul was a cop long enough to learn that the official story is rarely the correct one.So he does some more digging, bribing the gun dealer who provided the weapon to the Gallardos into admitting that they rented the piece every day for target practice. Where would they get that kind of money, Paul wonders? And is it a coincidence that Brooks’s murder required the skills of an expert marksman?The final scene hints at an answer. Using one of Rafael’s prison drawings as a guide, Mateo’s wife, Sofia, retrieves a huge cache of cash from beneath a nearby car. And since Perry is, ahem, busy at that moment, I’ll provide you a theory of my own about it: The Gallardos were paid to assassinate Brooks in such a way as to make it look like a mugging gone wrong.By whom, though? Was it his disapproving father? A business competitor like Camilla? A rival in the semi-legal casino business? Could it have to do with his violent sexual proclivities, which it seems left Noreen Lawson — the sister of the city councilman in charge of the ward where Brooks’s stadium was to be erected — in her mentally diminished state?Perry, Paul and Della aren’t the only people searching for answers about Brooks, by the way. His employee turned successor aboard the casino boat, Detective Holcomb, is on the hunt for how the guy managed to procure free food. More precisely, he is eager to know how Brooks and his business partners were making money off the operation, since he isn’t seeing a dime. Stumbling upon the man whom Brooks’s father, Lydell, maimed in the previous episode, he learns that Brooks was accepting huge shipments of produce from offshore vessels on a regular basis — from the McCutcheon shipping fleet, no less.Why bring in fruits and veggies in such an expensive manner when California is overflowing with them? Was daddy dearest aware his son was skimming from the family operation? Or, as I suspect, was there a lot more aboard those ships than just potatoes?From the case files:The show’s director of photography, Darran Tiernan, and the director Jessica Lowrey sure know how to light a scene. The huge blue-white stadium lights that illuminate Perry’s devil-may-care ride on that racehorse, the golden sun that illuminates Della and Anita as they kiss and undress, even the familiar flicker of a movie-theater newsreel taken in by Perry (and the sex worker he pays double to leave him alone) — gorgeous stuff from start to finish.“He seems a bit broken,” Camilla says of Perry, nailing it. In fact, it seems she is going to assess his character even more accurately when she says, “It can be a bit difficult to be in the trenches.” But after a pregnant pause, she adds, “with someone like that,” indicating that she was speaking metaphorically instead of speaking about his experience during the Great War. That remains his hero-slash-villain origin story, as far as I’m concerned.The deer-in-the-headlights look Miss Aimes wears when Perry asks her if she wants to come in is priceless. It truly is as if neither of them has any idea what her answer to that question could possibly be — until she answers it by coming in.At the start of the episode, it’s unclear whether Paul will hand over the murder weapon to Perry. Then, it seems as if they and Della might cover it up together. Then it seems as if Perry might quit the case rather than defend guilty men. In all three cases, idealism and illegality go hand in glove. More

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      How the ‘Yellowjackets’ ‘Weirdos’ Fell in Love and Wrote a Hit Show

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      The married creators of “Yellowjackets” always had big screenwriting dreams. Their idea about witchy teen cannibals struck the right alchemy.Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson share a marriage, a house in Los Angeles and a hit TV series that they created together. But not a computer screen, at least not when it comes to doing interviews.“We learned pretty early that one screen is not quite enough to contain us, gesture-wise,” said Nickerson, stationed in the living room. True enough, the creators of “Yellowjackets,” the second season of which began streaming on Friday (and airs Sunday on Showtime), both like to talk with their hands as they discuss the dark, witty psychological horror thriller that gave them their breakthrough after years of working in writers’ rooms for shows like “Narcos” and “Dispatches From Elsewhere.”They also like to share ideas, batting possibilities and pitches back and forth, exploring ideas that might have a chance of rising above the din. “One of those conversations just started around the idea of a girls’ soccer team being lost in the woods,” Lyle said from an upstairs room. Not a meditation on the hell of high school, or the futility of trying to outrun one’s past. This is Rule No. 1 in the Lyle-Nickerson book: Character and situation come first, laying the seedbed for themes and big ideas.“It’s not like we immediately started having conversations around trauma or female friendship,” Nickerson said. “We just started talking about characters and everything grew from there. At least that’s my story.”“I think that’s right,” Lyle confirmed from her post.Whatever the origin, the results have resonated. Showtime has already ordered a third season of “Yellowjackets” and signed the couple to an overall deal. Online discussions overflow with speculation about what might happen next or, sometimes, what the heck is going on now. The surviving members of that New Jersey high school soccer team — whose plane crashes en route to nationals in 1996 and who resort to doing very bad things to survive — have developed an ardent fan base.That those bad things appear to have involved some measure of witchcraft and, as the Season 2 premiere confirmed, cannibalism, is part of the appeal. Their creators, themselves native New Jerseyans who met in 2005 and shared a dream of screenwriting, are just happy they found an idea that stuck.“We’re constantly pitching things at each other, and I feel like 80 percent of the time the other person will go, ‘Huh,’” Lyle said. “And then 20 percent of the time or less, it’s like, ‘Ooh, save that one.’”“Yellowjackets,” it seems safe to say, was an “Ooh.”“I used to spend all day just living in fear of the night because that’s when my imagination was going to run wild,” Nickerson said.Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesLyle, 43, and Nickerson, 44, met at a party given by a mutual friend in Jersey City. The theme was “beer Christmas”: Revelers drink beer from cans and then hang the cans from the Christmas tree. (The festivities continue: The friend now lives in Long Beach, Calif.; Lyle and Nickerson’s production company is called Beer Christmas.)They had heard about each other from other mutual friends, but Nickerson was usually busy helping his father with the family fast-food stand on the Jersey Shore, serving up burgers, hot dogs and sweet sausage sandwiches. “I was free labor all summer long,” he said.They were both outsiders of sorts. Lyle was a horror movie fiend; in eighth grade she was in a band that played Liz Phair and Sebadoh covers. (“Yellowjackets” boasts a killer ’90s indie-rock soundtrack.) Nickerson was a bit of a loner. “I never really found a thing or a group-level identity or a place to feel like I fit,” he said. “By the end of high school, I was just ready to get out of there.”After they finally met, realized they had shared aspirations, and fell in love, they did the natural thing: moved to Los Angeles with a suitcase full of spec scripts for various TV comedies, including “30 Rock,” “My Name Is Earl” and “The Office.” None were made. They wrote a one-hour pilot inspired by one of their favorite shows, “Veronica Mars.” Finally, their agents told them to write an original pilot and make it as weird as they wanted.In response, they wrote a high school murder mystery. It didn’t get picked up, but it helped them find their voice and generated that elusive commodity: industry buzz. Soon they were writing for the CW vampire series “The Originals,” and then the Netflix cartel drama “Narcos.” They were on their way.That they broke through with a witchy story involving cannibalism makes some sense. Lyle, who has an arm tattoo of a palm-reading chart (both are into tarot cards), recalled trying to convince a video-store clerk to rent her the cult horror favorite “Dr. Giggles.” She was 11. Nickerson was too freaked out by horror to give it a chance until he was older. His own mind was terror enough.“I used to spend all day just living in fear of the night because that’s when my imagination was going to run wild,” he said.Shauna (Sophie Nélisse, center, with Courtney Eaton, left, and Jasmin Savoy Brown) gets the cannibalism started in the Season 2 premiere by snacking on her dead friend’s frozen ear.Kailey Schwerman/ShowtimeMelanie Lynskey, who plays the adult Shauna, praised Lyle and Nickerson’s complementary qualities. “They’re such a good team,” she said.Kimberley French/ShowtimeThere’s enough fear to go around in “Yellowjackets,” which, for all its sensational qualities, explores truths that resonate more broadly. As they developed the idea, the creators took long walks though Griffith Park in Los Angeles, talking about the characters and what they mean to one another. Deeper themes emerged.“A lot of the thematics really just grew out of trying to put these people in scenarios together and looking at their relationships,” Lyle said. “It just became quickly apparent that it would be really complicated, in hopefully a great way.”Complication, of course, comes standard in high school relationships, even those that don’t involve witchcraft or cannibalism. Tawny Cypress, who plays the adult version of Taissa, a survivor who grows up to become a state senator, described the story as universal. Her character experiences a frightening form of dissociative identity disorder, and winds up sacrificing the family dog in a cultish ritual. But less extreme versions of life can still be terrifying.“High school sucked for everybody,” Cypress said in a video call. “Nobody came out unscathed, and we carry that around with us still. These girls had a much bigger experience, but we all are stuck with things that formed us back then.”Karyn Kusama, an executive producer on the series and an accomplished film director (“Girlfight,” “Destroyer”), was even more specific.“This idea of girls feeling they need to destroy each other in order to survive felt very emotionally familiar to me,” she said in a video call. “I just thought it was an interesting thing to explore in real terms, and then allow the metaphor to be quite powerful and clean while the narrative event is extremely messy.”Season 1 hinted at the most extreme expression of that metaphor, a taboo subject that never really came to fruition: cannibalism. The pilot all but promised it, to the point that viewers might have fairly wondered: Who will be eaten? When? By whom? And is there hot sauce?“I don’t think people will be disappointed this season,” Lyle said in reference to the cannibalism teased by the first season of “Yellowjackets.” The Season 2 premiere has already begun to deliver. Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesNickerson sounded a little sheepish about what he called the first season’s “lack of cannibalism.” But he swore they weren’t teasing. (They have since confirmed in interviews that the girls would eventually get their fill, and the Season 2 premiere gets things started when Shauna, played as a teen by Sophie Nélisse, makes a frozen snack of her dead best friend’s ear.)“It wasn’t that we set out to be like, ‘Well, there will be no cannibalism in the first season,’” he said. “It was more that it didn’t feel like we had gotten the characters to a place where that would feel organic. We wanted viewers to be with them as much as possible to make this seem like not a salacious choice, but the only choice.”Lyle added: “I don’t think people will be disappointed this season.”Lyle and Nickerson didn’t quite finish each other’s sentences when we spoke. But they came pretty close, glossing and elaborating on a point here, gently correcting there. It’s not all fun and games when they work at home, but they appear to complement each other in productive ways.Melanie Lynskey, who earned an Emmy nomination for her performance as Adult Shauna, said she saw a definite pattern in the couple’s creative relationship.“Ashley’s so funny and so quick and kind of gathers her thoughts in a very businesslike way,” she said by phone. “And Bart is more emotional; he takes a minute to get to the thing. But along the way, there are all these great stop-offs, and they’re such a good team.”Cypress, a fellow New Jerseyan, was more succinct about the couple: “I [expletive] love those weirdos.” More