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      Where New Yorkers Start Being Polite and Stop Getting Real

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      The Portal, a video art installation connecting the city with Dublin, is open again, now with safeguards. But does changing the rules change the artwork?At 2:45 p.m. on a sunny Wednesday in a plaza near the Flatiron Building, a crowd of a few dozen was watching, and appearing in, New York City’s most infamous new reality show.On a round video screen, encased in a porthole-like structure behind a railing, they could see a livestream of onlookers across the Atlantic, in the center of Dublin. “They can see you just like you see them!” a staff member minding the exhibit told the crowd.Therein lay the attraction, and the problem. The Portal, a two-way-video art installation, opened on May 8, then promptly closed down on May 14, because of “inappropriate behavior.”On the American side, an OnlyFans model had flashed her breasts at Dublin, a stunt that, she later said, netted her a boost in subscribers worth tens of thousands of dollars. From the Irish side, people displayed images of swastikas and of the 2001 World Trade Center attack. The transgressions went viral, not the sort of global connection and sharing that the organizers were hoping for.Who, besides everyone, would have thought that some people would behave badly given access to a public live camera? When the Portal reopened on May 19, it had new hours — 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. New York time — and new safeguards, including a “proximity-based solution” that would blur the livestream if anyone or anything got too close.Today, the crowd was keeping it on, keeping it all on. At least on this side of the ocean. Onscreen in Dublin, a pair of high-spirited lads lifted their shirts and exposed their bellies to America. In a few minutes they graduated to full topless, whirling their shirts over their heads, before they were seemingly encouraged to leave by security.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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      ‘Zarqa’ Is a Madcap Canadian Comedy

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      This new YouTube sitcom from the creator of “Little Mosque on the Prairie” follows a divorced Muslim mother trying to pull one over on her ex.The Canadian sitcom “Little Mosque on the Prairie” premiered in 2007 and centered on a small Muslim community in a fictional Saskatchewan town. It ran for 91 episodes over six seasons, eventually showing around the world (it is streaming on Freevee, the Roku Channel and Tubi). Now its creator, Zarqa Nawaz, has a new short-form comedy with a narrower focus but a similar cartoony vibe.“Zarqa,” created by and starring Nawaz, is on YouTube and follows a divorced Muslim mother in Regina, Saskatchewan. In the opening moments of the show, she learns on social media that her ex-husband is marrying a younger woman — a white yoga instructor. Zarqa panics and posts that she is dating a white brain surgeon, which she is not, and the shenanigans are afoot.She begins a contrived romance with a pasty neurosurgeon, Brian (Rob van Meenen), though neither of them can tell if they’re actually interested in each other or just in pulling one over on everyone else. Zarqa wants to show off at her ex’s wedding, and Brian gets a rush from freaking out his tightly-wound, racist parents. Adding to the rom-com of it all, Zarqa is surprised and delighted to learn an old college flame (Rizwan Manji) has been appointed as the new imam at her mosque — and wouldn’t you know, her ex (Anand Rajaram) might be having cold feet.“Zarqa” has a madcap urgency to it, partly because the episodes are barely 10 minutes long and partly because of Zarqa, who is brusque and driven and tends to stir up drama. Her grown son recoils from some of her antics but reminds himself, “We don’t say ‘crazy’ anymore.” Her parents lament that she is “a double D: divorced and difficult.”Both “Zarqa” and “Little Mosque on the Prairie” have an exaggerated sitcom style; most characters repeat one behavior and express one idea, which sometimes can make both series feel a little like kids shows with grown-ups in them. On “Mosque,” the central theme was the perceived differences — and lo, the similarities — between Muslims and non-Muslims. On “Zarqa,” the focus is on race. “I sell white people brown-people things,” Zarqa tells Brian.The jokes and observations in “Zarqa” are pretty mild, but the story is fun, and it is told with endearing warmth and energy. So far all six episodes of Season 1 and some of Season 2 are on the CBC’s YouTube channel, with the rest arriving shortly. More

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      ‘The Daily Show’ Skewers Samuel Alito Over Another Provocative Flag

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      “Did this guy get a two-for-one deal at the MAGA flag store?” Michael Kosta said of the Supreme Court justice on Thursday’s “The Daily Show.”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.Flagging RightDays after reports surfaced of an inverted U.S. flag being flown outside his home around the time of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is facing criticism for flying a second flag associated with that riot, this one at his vacation home in New Jersey last summer.“Another flag? Did this guy get a two-for-one deal at the MAGA flag store?” Michael Kosta joked on “The Daily Show.”“That’s right, a second flag at a second home. Alito’s second wife better watch her back.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But if you’re upset about this, the good news is the Supreme Court has a code of ethics. Now, the bad news is they wrote that code of ethics, and they don’t follow it.” — MICHAEL KOSTAThe Punchiest Punchlines (Daily Habits Edition)“Daily pot smokers are beating daily alcohol drinkers in the race to see who can escape their sad lives more quickly.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“Some may be surprised by this, but as a New Yorker, I am not. I smoke weed every single day, whether I want to or not on the sidewalk, literally everywhere I go.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now remember, this is daily or near-daily use because, in overall numbers, alcohol is more widely used. So, congratulations, weekend binge drinkers, you still have the biggest problem.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“This news has alcohol makers worried. They’ve changed their standard disclaimer from ‘Please drink responsibly’ to ‘Please drink.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth Watching“The Garfield Movie” star Chris Pratt and Jimmy Fallon played a game of lasagna cornhole on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutTemilade Openiyi, better known as Tems. “You can control what you do, but you can’t control how life lifes,” she said after recently experiencing an earthquake.Erik Carter for The New York TimesAfter working with Beyoncé, Drake, and Rihanna, the Nigerian Grammy-winning R&B singer-songwriter and producer Tems will release her debut album in June. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel Roasts Republicans for Crying Wolf

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      President Biden “sent an elite team of ultraliberal F.B.I. agents to assassinate Donald Trump, but somehow he slipped out the back door,” Kimmel joked on Wednesday.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.Losing the PlotNewly unsealed files from the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago in 2022 showed that agents were authorized to use deadly force if necessary.“Which is standard operating procedure, whenever the F.B.I. execute a search warrant,” Jimmy Kimmel noted on Wednesday, “but in the MAGA-verse, it is a plot to kill Donald Trump.”Conservatives reacted with outrage to what some have called an assassination attempt, with Trump writing in a campaign email, “Joe Biden was locked and loaded ready to take me out and put my family in danger.”“I always thought of Biden as a doddering old man, but Donald Trump makes him look like one of The Expendables.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“‘Locked and loaded’? ‘Ready to take me out’? I’ve never heard Joe Biden sound so [expletive] cool in my life.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“The diabolical mastermind Joe Biden sent an elite team of ultraliberal F.B.I. agents to assassinate Donald Trump, but somehow he slipped out the back door. Somehow, they missed the fact that the loudest and most famous man in America and all 15 of his Secret Service agents were in New Jersey at the time that they raided Mar-a-Lago.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Trump’s Bedroom Edition)“Well, speaking of the former president, according to a new report, Trump’s attorneys found classified documents in his bedroom four months after the F.B.I. searched Mar-a-Lago. The lawyers knew Trump was hiding something when they saw a box labeled ‘books.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Oh, my God, the only thing more shocking to find in Donald Trump’s bedroom would be a current wife.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, to be fair, Trump rarely goes into his bedroom. As we’ve recently learned, he does most of his sleeping in court.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingJay Pharoah performed diss raps in the style of Shaquille O’Neal, 50 Cent, Katt Williams and more on Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightThe musician and “The Voice” star John Legend will appear on Thursday’s “Daily Show.”Also, Check This OutOn his 41st  wedding anniversary, the actor Peter Gallagher talks about happy matrimony.Photo Illustration by The New York Times; Photo: Charley Gallay/Getty Images For NetflixThe actor Peter Gallagher discussed his four-decades-long marriage to Paula Harwood on this week’s Modern Love Podcast. More

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      ‘Evil’ Review: Is It Satan, or Is It Us? It’s Time to Find Out.

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      Michelle and Robert King’s macabre comedy about the possibility of demonic possession and the certainty of evil begins its final season.Season 3 of “Evil” ended on a typically funny but creepy, outlandish yet somehow understated note. With moments to go in the final episode, Kristen Bouchard, the show’s demon-investigating psychologist, found out that one of her eggs had been fertilized by the sperm of a possible demon. The last thing we saw was her dumbfounded face.Coming into Thursday’s premiere of the show’s fourth and final season on Paramount+, she and we have had nearly two years to think about how to respond. Kristen’s choice? To laugh, like an only slightly crazy person. “I giggle at the thought of you waking up at 3 a.m.,” she tells her nemesis and baby daddy, Leland Townsend, “because the Antichrist needs changing.”Like just about everything in “Evil,” her riposte works on both the human and the supernatural planes. (All babies can seem like the Antichrist, after all.) This is appropriate given that, with 14 episodes to go, the show’s central characters remain conflicted about whether the weird stuff they experience is a product of the devil or of human malevolence amplified by their own overactive imaginations.Their indecisiveness goes to the heart of the show, whose fundamental message is that supernatural evil abets, hides behind and jealously competes with everyday human evil. It’s a continuum. You can’t have one without the other.On the basis of the season’s first four episodes, “Evil” remains one of the smarter, more entertaining and more stylishly produced shows out there, and it continues to carry the hallmarks of its creators and showrunners, Michelle and Robert King.The music cues are refreshingly offbeat; a character whispers the “Green Acres” theme during a nighttime stakeout in a corn field, and the show reprises its fondness for the novelty songs of Roger Miller. There is the somewhat self-conscious engagement with and critique of digital technology, as characters try to blame social media or rogue hackers for what look like demonic possessions.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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      Late Night Laments That Trump Didn’t Testify at His Trial

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      Jimmy Fallon said Trump wanted to take the stand in his criminal case on Tuesday, “but then he saw it was three steps without a handrail.”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.False TestimonyDonald Trump’s defense rested in his criminal trial on Tuesday. Despite previous statements, Trump did not testify on his own behalf.“He wanted to take the stand, but then he saw it was three steps without a handrail,” Jimmy Fallon joked on Tuesday.“That is shocking. Trump is not talking? What happened — did he write himself a check for $130,000?” — STEPHEN COLBERT”So he’s doing the opposite of what he told us he was going to do over and over again? That’s not the Donald Trump I know, and I played full-contact hockey without a helmet this morning.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“Is it possible that Donald Trump is full of [expletive]?” — MICHAEL KOSTAThe Punchiest Punchlines (‘Fourth Reich’ Edition)“OK, if you zoom in, you can see they slipped in the words ‘A Unified Reich.’ A Fourth Reich, if you will.” — JIMMY KIMMEL, on a video reposted on Trump’s Truth Social account“The good news is Trump wants to bring the country together. The bad news is that country is Germany in 1933.”— JIMMY KIMMEL“Evidently MAGA now stands for ‘Make America Germany Around 1938.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“When they saw the ad, even Confederate statues were, like, ‘You should take that down.’” — JIMMY FALLON“What else does this man have to do for people to see what he is? Grow the mustache?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“How many of his supporters do you think would say, ‘All right, that’s too much for me.’ I’d guess maybe 10.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingBillie Eilish performed her new single “Lunch” on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star J.B. Smoove will appear on Wednesday’s “Daily Show.”Also, Check This OutGraceland served as Elvis Presley’s personal home in Memphis from 1957 until his death in 1977, at the age of 42.Brandon Dill/Associated PressThe actress Riley Keough claims that a company is fraudulently planning to auction off the Memphis home of her grandfather, Elvis Presley. More

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      ‘Outer Range’ Is a Dizzying Sci-Fi Drama, With Buffalo

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      The second season of this Amazon series, all of which is available now, cranks up both the time-travel and the outrageous soapiness.Season 1 of “Outer Range,” on Amazon, was intriguing and unsatisfying — lush, expansive and compelling, but also marred by abundant faux-deep nonsense and a total lack of resolution. It’s a “this is my family’s land, grumble grumble” ranch drama ostensibly starring Josh Brolin, but the real star of the show is a big hole. And not just any hole — a magic hole! A hole that transports you through time! Sometimes people disappear. Sometimes the hole disappears.I happily devoured that first season but didn’t think I cared much about it. And yet, I kept thinking about “Outer Range” in the two years since its debut. When I watched other shows in which people dejectedly shook their heads, slowly put on their cowboy hats and then sadly — maybe … sexy-sadly? — stammered wisdom, I thought, “What ever happened to that hole show?” When I saw other dramas include bar fights that went way wrong, I wondered, “Is that the exterior of that bar from that hole show?” What was that other series where people were constantly tripping on earthy psychedelics? Where did I just see that actress play a different zany lady? Ah, right: the hole show.I don’t know if Season 2, which premiered last week, rewards my devotion per se, but I also marathoned its seven episodes, bouncing between enchantment and eye-rolling. I love my dumb show! Sometimes you just want to see a Native American sheriff fall into a hole, travel back to 1882, reconnect with her Shoshone ancestors, meet another time traveler à la “Outlander,” come back to the present day and be driven to the hospital by Josh Brolin under tense circumstances. Sometimes you want to see people’s eyes go black like in that episode of “The X-Files” with the snake lady. There’s something invigorating about a show that just does not care if the actors playing the younger and older versions of the same person resemble one another whatsoever.“Outer Range” emphasized drama over sci-fi in Season 1, but Season 2, all of which is available now, cranks up both the time-travel-portal aspect and the outrageous soapiness. The hole is less a profound mystery and more an incredibly handy mechanism for creating bananas telenovela moments. I’m your son! Or I didn’t die! Or I’m … you! Work your magic, magic hole.The show loves its musings and mantras about time. “Time doesn’t have a beginning or an end, it just is,” we’re told. “Time is a river.” “Time reveals all.” Such lines are fine on their own, though they inevitably recall “time is a flat circle,” the “True Detective” quote that has become synonymous with TV shows getting high on their own supply.The performances in “Outer Range” hail from different planets. Brolin grounds his work as Royal, who is secretly a time-traveler from the 1800s, in a simmering, fragile stoicism, whereas Lili Taylor, as his long-suffering wife, channels the aggression and frustration of a Melissa McCarthy character. Imogen Poots is the dreamy, dangerous boho blonde, out of the “Orphan Black” Rolodex of crazy sages, while Shaun Sipos and Noah Reid, as embittered brothers, would be at home in “The Righteous Gemstones.”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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      ‘Doctor Who’ Episode 3 Recap: Scenes of Destruction

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      In an episode simmering with tension, the Doctor and Ruby discover an army of religious soldiers on a largely deserted planet.Season 1, Episode 3: ‘Boom’After an opening double episode featuring talking babies and a jazzy villain, the latest “Doctor Who” installment is a clear attempt by Russell T Davies, the showrunner, to convey a more serious side.To write the show’s latest installment “Boom,” Davies recruited Steven Moffat, a former “Doctor Who” showrunner, who is best remembered for a dramatic 2007 episode called “Blink” that fans revered.With that episode, Moffat struck fear in a generation of British kids (myself included) by inventing the Weeping Angels, terrifying stone statues that only move when you look away. Seventeen years later, the episode remains a master class in small-screen tension building.Moffat evokes the same simmering tension with “Boom,” right down to the onomatopoeic episode title. Here, though, it’s a land mine, activated when the 15th Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) steps on it and ticking closer to detonation, that causes the stress.It’s a compelling setup that gives Gatwa the chance to show new emotional depths for the Doctor. But the script and effects are bombastic, and I found myself wishing for something to be stripped back. In this first season with Disney dollars, “Doctor Who” is clearly not doing anything by halves, but the lavish “Mad Max”-esque scenes of destruction threaten to overshadow Gatwa’s pitch-perfect performance.The episode opens with two soldiers — both deeply religious, one of them blind — hobbling through dense, flame-flecked smoke. The place? Kastarian 3, a planet ravaged by war. The year? 5087. Carson (Majid Mehdizadeh-Valoujerdy) has heard that his army’s enemies are lurking in the fog, but John (Joe Anderson), a devoted father with bandaged eyes, insists this isn’t the case.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