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      ‘Squid Game: The Challenge’: Hits, Misses and the Bizarre Ending

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      On Wednesday, the winner of the Netflix competition reality show based on the blood-drenched drama was crowned. But did the spinoff deliver? Spoilers below.It all came down to rock, paper, scissors on Wednesday night’s finale of “Squid Game: The Challenge.” After many rounds of trying to deduce her opponent’s next move, Mai Whelan (Player 287), an immigration adjudicator, grandmother and Navy veteran from Virginia who came to the United States as an 8-year-old refugee from Vietnam, triumphed over Phill Cain (Player 451), a scuba instructor from Hawaii — and 454 other players.Her prize: a staggering $4.56 million. “Anything is possible,” she said after her win. “Even when you feel down and afraid, you have to pick yourself up, be a strong person and focus.”“The Challenge,” a reality competition show, is based on Netflix’s dystopian, blood-drenched South Korean blockbuster drama “Squid Game,” in which contestants play schoolyard games for the chance to win an exorbitant cash prize. On the original series, however, the hundreds who lose die gruesome deaths. On “The Challenge,” filmed on a set in England, no one died, of course; they only pretended to.And like on the drama, they made alliances, broke alliances, back stabbed, shot daggers with their eyes, and wept and wept. They also played a few games from the original, including the glass bridge challenge (no, the players didn’t free fall), the marbles face-off and the dalgona candy game (which, in real life, involved copious saliva).On Wednesday, Netflix announced that the highly popular show was renewed for second season; Season 2 of the drama is also in the works. Also on Wednesday, a Netflix live fan experience, Squid Game: The Trials, opened on the “Price Is Right” soundstage in Los Angeles.As for the televised competition, it required some mental gymnastics, and was alternately disappointing and delicious. Here’s what the competition got right, and what may have left some viewers underwhelmed or unsettled.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?  More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in December

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      Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic, “Maestro,” and a “Chicken Run” sequel highlight this month’s slate.Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of December’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)‘May December’Now streamingBased loosely on the story of Mary Kay Letourneau — a woman who made tabloid headlines in the 1990s for having a sexual affair with a teenage boy, whom she later married — this arch melodrama stars Julianne Moore as the scandal-plagued Gracie Atherton-Yoo, who is about to be played in a movie by Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman), a popular TV actress. As Elizabeth spends time with Gracie to try and understand her life better, her questions disrupt the Atherton-Yoo family and push Gracie’s husband, Joe (Charles Melton), to reflect more deeply on what happened to him when he was a kid. Directed by the venerable indie filmmaker Todd Haynes (best-known for “Far from Heaven” and “Carol”), “May December” is at times discomfiting and at times darkly funny. It’s an artful, absorbing look at a performer using the excuse of researching a role as a way to explore the taboo.‘Leave the World Behind’Starts streaming: Dec. 8The “Mr. Robot” writer-director Sam Esmail adapts Rumaan Alam’s novel “Leave the World Behind,” about a Brooklyn family that rents a vacation home on Long Island, right before a massive cyberattack leads to power blackouts and internet outages across the country. Complicating the situation further, the house’s owner G.H. Scott (Mahershala Ali) shows up with his daughter, Ruth (Myha’la), asking to take refuge — a request that rankles his renter, the cynical misanthrope Amanda Sandford (Julia Roberts). Ethan Hawke also stars as Amanda’s genial husband, Clay, who tries to make peace and to protect the Sandfords’ kids as the natural world around them starts to go haywire. Esmail leans into the eerie beauty of a collapsing society while also probing the tense relationship between these privileged strangers — of similar social backgrounds, yet divided by race — as together they navigate the early days of a possible apocalypse.‘Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget’Starts streaming: Dec. 15This sequel to Aardman Animation’s hit 2000 film “Chicken Run” features a mostly new cast, voicing the original’s beloved characters. Thandiwe Newton now plays Ginger, who in the first movie led a band of rebellious poultry on an escape mission, fleeing an egg farm for the safety of a remote island bird sanctuary. In “Dawn of the Nugget,” Ginger and her mate Rocky (now voiced by Zachary Levi), need to break into a factory, to save their daughter, Molly (Bella Ramsey), and to keep their former captor Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson) from exacting revenge on all of chicken-kind with her fast-food innovations. The veteran animator Sam Fell (who previously co-directed Aardman’s “Flushed Away”) takes over as the film’s director, working from a script co-written by the original’s screenwriter, Karey Kirkpatrick.‘Maestro’Starts streaming: Dec. 20After the critical, commercial and Oscar success of Bradley Cooper’s 2018 directorial debut, “A Star Is Born,” the actor takes an even bigger swing with his second film: a biographical drama exploring the life, loves and career of the esteemed American composer Leonard Bernstein. Cooper plays Bernstein and Carey Mulligan plays Felicia Montealegre, who became the musician’s wife and conscience, remaining a valued companion even throughout his extramarital affairs. “Maestro” balances glimpses of Bernstein’s personal life with a celebration of his efforts to bring music education to the masses. Cooper and his crew also bring some visual splendor, making the film look as lush and richly detailed as the kinds of movies Bernstein would have seen in his 1950s heyday.‘Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire’Starts streaming: Dec. 22The “300” and “Justice League” director Zack Snyder launches his second Netflix franchise (following his “Army of the Dead” series) with this ambitious space opera, inspired by the science-fiction and martial arts movies and comic books that Snyder loved in his youth. “Rebel Moon” is set on Veldt, a relatively peaceful satellite within a vast and tyrannical interstellar empire. When the powers that be suddenly take an interest in Veldt, a former imperial soldier named Kora (Sofia Boutella) finds herself having to recruit an eclectic band of locals to fight against the authoritarian regime. The first movie has been divided into two parts, although with the time Snyder has reportedly put into mythology-building — and that the production team has put into set-building — expect more stories to be told in this universe.Also streaming now:“Sweet Home” Season 2“Blood Coast” Season 1“The Archies”“Hilda” Season 3“I Hate Christmas” Season 2“My Life with the Walter Boys” Season 1Coming soon:Dec. 12“Under Pressure: The U.S. Women’s World Cup Team”Dec. 14“The Crown” Season 6, Part 2Dec. 15“Carol & The End of the World”“Face to Face with ETA: Conversations with a Terrorist”Dec. 22“Gyeongseong Creature” Season 1Dec. 25“Star Trek: Prodigy” Season 1Dec. 26“Thank You, I’m Sorry”Dec. 27“Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare”Dec. 28“Pokémon Concierge” Season 1Dec. 29“Money Heist: Berlin” Season 1 More

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      Who Is Meg Bellamy, Who Plays Kate Middleton in ‘The Crown’?

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      When Meg Bellamy got the call that would change her life — the one telling her that after months of auditions, it was she, among thousands of hopefuls, who would play Kate Middleton in the final season of “The Crown” — she was already standing in the shadow of Windsor Castle. But she wasn’t looking the part of a royal just yet.“I was crouched in costume among the bin lorries of a delivery car park at Legoland,” Ms. Bellamy, 21, said at a London hotel suite last month. “Until that point, my most regular acting gig had been playing a red plastic brick.”In 2022, and with no professional acting experience, she was working as a performer at the theme park when she spotted a casting call on Twitter for the role of Kate Middleton. Competition to play one of the most famous women in the world during her college years was fierce. Thousands of young actresses were posting videos about their auditions. But after a neighbor remarked on her resemblance to Britain’s future queen, Ms. Bellamy, crushed after several drama school rejections schools, decided to try out for the part. Three weeks after sending a tape, she got a call — the first in what would be a several monthslong casting process.“I never really believed I would get the role, not in the beginning anyway,” she said. “But then with every round, I started to feel like I had a real chance, and that it might actually be mine to keep. When it was, I was completely shellshocked.”Now, more than two years after that call, Ms. Bellamy’s trajectory from obscurity to the brink of stardom appears to be well underway. Last week, she appeared on the front of The Daily Telegraph, which used a still from the series that recreated the moment in 2002 when Ms. Middleton, on a charity fashion catwalk in a daringly sheer dress, was rumored to have first turned the head of Prince William.This week, ahead of the release of Part 2 of “The Crown” on Dec. 14, Ms. Bellamy was on the red carpet at the London premiere in a creamy Valentino column gown — 24 hours after attending the Fashion Awards, where she wore a blazer dress with a suit and tie by Huishan Zhang.And for months she has been courted by big fashion names like Gucci and Dior — she attended Dior shows in Paris in July and September — which have a habit of snapping up emerging talent with juicy contracts before they ascend to heights of celebrity. After all, if a fashion house can’t hire the Princess of Wales to sell lipstick and handbags, perhaps the unknown actress playing her to an audience of millions is the next best thing.Ms. Bellamy at a finale celebration of “The Crown” in London this month. “Until last month I’d never been to Hollywood,” she said. “Then I was not just there, but on a red carpet with people shouting my name.”Lia Toby/Getty ImagesMs. Bellamy at the annual Fashion Awards in London in December.Dominic Lipinski/Getty ImagesShe attended the Los Angeles premiere in November.Michael Tran/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOver its six seasons, the casting of “The Crown” has largely been anchored by a constellation of established performers, though it has also boosted the sparkly careers of several new faces, including Emma Corrin, who played Princess Diana in Season 4. What was it about Ms. Bellamy that prompted executives to take a chance on her for this role?“We found that there was an openness to her, an intelligence and a sweetness to her, and a chemistry between her and Ed McVey, who plays Prince William,” said Robert Sterne, the casting director for “The Crown.” “You wanted to go on the journey with Meg. You wanted her to tell you the story.”Doing Kate JusticeMuch has already been made of the parallels between Ms. Bellamy and Ms. Middleton, beyond their delicate features and masses of glossy auburn hair. How both were raised by close families in the royal county of Berkshire. (Ms. Bellamy was actually born in Leeds, in Yorkshire, and has a light Northern twinge that still lingers on some of her vowels.) How both were extremely sporty at school, with a particular love of lacrosse. (Ms. Bellamy, who said she was academic, was also head girl, which is similar to a class president.)But unlike the Princess of Wales, who studied art history at the University of St. Andrews, Ms. Bellamy didn’t attend university. After a number of star turns in school musical productions, including Sandy in “Grease” and Scaramouche in “We Will Rock You,” she wanted only to act. She is acutely aware that people wait a lifetime for a break like hers, which came months after leaving high school.Before the six month shoot, Ms. Bellamy spent months preparing to play Ms. Middleton. She watched documentaries and read newspaper clips compiled by researchers. She also worked with movement and voice coaches to perfect her performance. She took home costumes — a nostalgic Noughties-inspired wardrobe of low-rise flared jeans, peplum tops, chunky belts and fringed suede knee-high boots — to wear as she practiced her lines.Ms. Bellamy as Kate Middleton and Ed McVey, who plays Prince William, in a scene from “The Crown.” Netflix/The Crown“I must have looked insane,” Ms. Bellamy said. “I would be dressed as her, reading a book about her and trying to sound like her while walking around the house.” She noted that while there is endless footage of Ms. Middleton after she formally joined the royal family in 2011, there is little — beyond a handful of paparazzi photographs — from her time at St. Andrews, where she first befriended and then fell in love with Prince William.“Her first press interview was when she became engaged at 29, so she was something of a blank canvas,” Ms. Bellamy said. “I spent a lot of time thinking about what she would have been like before she knew where life would take her and that William would become her husband. I hope that I’ve done Kate justice.”At the same time, she added, it was nice to remove the layer of complexities that come with being a royal and just play her as a girl who’s going to university and falling in love.When photographs of Ms. Bellamy and Mr. McVey filming at St. Andrews emerged this spring — and ever since then — there was intense online interest in her private life and next career steps. (So far, Ms. Bellamy has yet to announce her next role.) Lately she has been working with the stylist Felicity Kay to hone her public image and build a brand for herself.Has being thrust into the spotlight given her a vague notion of what it must be like to be a royal?“It’s something I’ve been thinking about, especially as we’ve done more press ahead of the release,” she said. “I really can’t imagine the level of pressure royals face day to day. I mean, until last month I’d never been to Hollywood. Then I was not just there, but on a red carpet with people shouting my name.”She added: “But I keep telling myself that this is something I’ve always dreamed about. You have to remember that, before all of this, I wore a school uniform and could only afford high-street brands like Primark.” More

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      Jimmy Kimmel Is Perfectly Prepared to Believe Trump Will Be a Dictator

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      Kimmel skewered the former president for telling Sean Hannity he would act like a dictator on his first day in office if elected again.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.A Swing and a MissIn a Fox News town hall with Donald Trump on Tuesday night, Sean Hannity asked the former president if he planned to abuse power if elected to a second term. Trump declined twice to give an outright denial, saying he wouldn’t be a dictator, “except for Day 1.”Jimmy Kimmel called Trump “Scammy Sosa” on Wednesday, saying that Trump “somehow managed to swing and miss at the softest of all balls.”“I’m tired of these fake questions, like, ‘Will you become a dictator?’ Of course, he’s going to become — he said he’s going to become a dictator. Basically, in November, we’re going to be voting on whether we will ever vote again.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Here we go again, OK? Once again, Trump is telling us exactly what he is going to do, and no one’s believing him. You Trump supporters are all in my mentions with your clown emojis saying, ‘You Democratic shill! You’re overreacting. Trump’s not a dictator!’ He is telling you, OK? And, no, it doesn’t make it any better that he says he will just be a dictator for one day.” — CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD“All kidding aside, how about Sean Hannity having to squeeze him to say he won’t be a dictator? I mean, how clear does Trump have to make it? Hannity was like, ‘Eh, want to take another stab at that one, bro?’ ‘Nope!’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And by the way, I can’t believe I have to say this, but ‘Are you going to be a dictator?’ is not a normal question you should have to ask a presidential candidate. If you have to ask your babysitter, ‘Are you going to eat my kids?’, it doesn’t matter what their answer is. The fact that you needed to ask them means you should get another babysitter.” — CHARLAMAGNE THA GODThe Punchiest Punchlines (On Taylor Time Edition)“Time magazine today named their person of the year for 2023, and that person is Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift beat out Vladimir Putin, the president of China and King Charles. And, I don’t know, it makes sense — those guys are terrible singers.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The editor in chief for Time said Taylor Swift is ‘the rare person who is both the writer and hero of her own story.’ And also, he said, ‘We really wanted to sell some magazines this year.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Taylor was like, ‘Of all the honors I’ve had today, this is definitely in the Top 50.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Time actually released multiple covers of Taylor, including this one where she’s posing with her cat. Most cats think they’re better than you, but that cat knows it’s better than you.” — JIMMY FALLON“Taylor Swift is Time’s person of the year, which is terrible news for Taylor Swift. Have you seen how the past few winners of this are doing? Last year, Zelensky won — how’s Ukraine doing now? Year before that, Elon Musk got the cover — how’s Twitter doing now? Year before that, Biden and Kamala got the cover — enough said! Forget Travis Kelce: if this pattern keeps up, next year, Taylor Swift is going to be dating the punter for the New York Jets.” — CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD“Anyway, congratulations to Taylor. Now, maybe people will finally start talking about her.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth Watching“The Daily Show” entered the “RamaVerse” with the Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightOlivia Rodrigo will sit down with Jimmy Fallon on Thursday before her return to “Saturday Night Live” this weekend.Also, Check This OutFrom left, Carroll O’Connor as Archie Bunker, Rob Reiner as Mike Stivic and Sally Struthers as Gloria Bunker Stivic in Norman Lear’s “All in the Family.” CBS, via Getty ImagesRob Reiner remembered his friend, the television pioneer Norman Lear, whom he called “a real champion of America.” More

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      Andrea Fay Friedman, Who Built a Breakthrough Acting Career, Dies at 53

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      Ms. Friedman, who called Down syndrome her “up syndrome,” forged an unlikely path in acting by playing characters with developmental disabilities.Andrea Fay Friedman, an actress who starred in the groundbreaking television series “Life Goes On,” died on Sunday in her home in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 53.She died from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, according to her father, Hal Friedman. He said that she had not been able to speak for the past year because of the disease, which is common in people with Down syndrome who are over 50.Ms. Friedman was known for her portrayals of people with developmental disabilities. She called her Down syndrome her “up syndrome,” Mr. Friedman said in a phone interview.Ms. Friedman was born on June 1, 1970, in Santa Monica. After graduating from West Los Angeles Baptist High School, she studied acting and philosophy at Santa Monica College for two years.Her breakthrough in acting came in 1992 on the TV drama “Life Goes On,” in which she played Amanda Swanson, the girlfriend and later wife of the main character Charles “Corky” Thatcher, who also had Down syndrome. She played the character for two seasons.Mr. Friedman said that she got involved in the show while working at a child-care center during her college years. A parent there was writing the music for “Life Goes On,” he said, and suggested she pitch her ideas to the writers.She eventually convinced the producers to include another character who had Down syndrome, Mr. Friedman said. She was originally going to appear in just one episode, but “she did such a great job that they made her a regular on the show,” he said.She would later occasionally appear in other hit shows, like “Baywatch,” “ER” and “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.”In 2010, she had a “dispute” with Sarah Palin, the former Republican governor of Alaska and 2018 vice-presidential nominee, Mr. Friedman said.In an episode of “Family Guy,” Ms. Friedman voiced a girl with Down syndrome named Ellen, who dates the teenaged character Chris. Ellen tells him over dinner that her mother is “the former governor of Alaska.”Ms. Palin, whose son Trig has Down syndrome, said that the show “really isn’t funny” and was the work of “cruel, cold-hearted people.”Ms. Friedman wrote in an email to The New York Times at the time that Ms. Palin “does not have a sense of humor,” adding, “I think the word is ‘sarcasm.’”“In my family we think laughing is good,” she said. “My parents raised me to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life.”Her final appearance on screen was in the 2019 holiday drama “Carol of the Bells,” in which a man searches for his biological mother, played by Ms. Friedman, and learns she is developmentally disabled.Ms. Friedman also worked with students with intellectual disabilities through a program at U.C.L.A.She is survived by her sister, Katherine Holland, her brother-in-law, Grant Holland, her two nephews, Lawson and Andrew Holland, and Mr. Friedman, an entertainment industry lawyer. Her mother, Marjorie Jean Lawson, died about 10 years ago, Mr. Friedman said. More

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      Sandra Elkin, Creator of a Pioneering Feminist Talk Show, Dies at 85

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      “Woman,” which she hosted, brought frank talk about issues like birth control, pay inequality and homosexuality into millions of homes in the 1970s.Sandra Elkin, who as the creator and host of the weekly PBS talk show “Woman” in the mid-1970s brought frank discussions about birth control, job discrimination, health care and other issues confronting American women into millions of living rooms across the country, died on Nov. 8 at her home in Manhattan. She was 85.The cause was a heart attack, said her son Todd.Ms. Elkin was a stay-at-home mother in suburban Buffalo in 1972 when she approached the management of WNED, the local PBS member station, with an idea: a half-hour public affairs show focused on women and their concerns as the sexual revolution and second-wave feminism reshaped the gender landscape.Although she had no experience working in television, the station was sufficiently impressed with her pitch to give it the green light after just two weeks of negotiation.“Woman” was an immediate local hit, and after its initial season PBS picked it up for nationwide distribution. By 1974 it was reaching about 185 stations as far-flung as Fairbanks, Alaska, and Corpus Christi, Texas, distant from the liberal cities where the women’s movement had first emerged.Guests included a Who’s Who of contemporary feminism. Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Susan Brownmiller all trooped to Buffalo to speak with Ms. Elkin. She also led an all-female crew to Paris to film an interview with Simone de Beauvoir.But most of her guests — housewives (and househusbands), prisoners, blue-collar workers — were far from famous, by intention. Ms. Elkin insisted that the show was about information, not entertainment, and that she was there merely as a “conduit.”“We don’t play the usual talk-show games,” she told The Buffalo News in 1975. “There’s no baiting guests or embarrassing them.”That’s not to say Ms. Elkin and “Woman” shied from controversy. Ms. Brownmiller sat for a two-episode interview about rape. An episode about birth control featured diaphragms and intrauterine devices, intimate items that many viewers probably considered exotic or even frightening, especially in conservative corners of the country.Still, the show won broad viewership among both men and women, in part thanks to Ms. Elkin and her unguarded warmth as a host. She had never wanted to be on camera, and she agreed to do so only after the first season ended and the original moderator, Samantha Dean, moved to another station.Sitting on a couch facing her guest, often with one leg tucked under her and casually dressed in jeans and a sweater, Ms. Elkin made viewers feel they were simply listening in on two friends talking.“Women love to teach each other things, to tell each other what they think,” she said in 1975. “I love being a part of this.”Sandra Ann Marotti was born in Rutland, Vt., on Oct. 16, 1938. Her father, John, was a tailor, and her mother, Lisle (Thornton) Marotti, was a secretary for an investment firm.She studied theater at Green Mountain College. While working in summer theater in Vermont she met Saul Elkin, a theater student at Columbia University. They married in 1958.The couple settled first in Vermont and in 1969 moved to Buffalo, where Mr. Elkin taught at the State University of New York.Ms. Elkin and a friend, who were growing bored as homemakers, pitched a conventional women’s show to WNED, focused on things like cooking and decorating. But they shelved the proposal when the friend moved to Florida.In 1972, the station asked if she was still interested. Yes, she replied. But she had a different idea.“A few years ago I started writing questions that were bothering me and my friends,” she said in an interview with The Kane Republican, a newspaper in Pennsylvania, in 1977. “I found that they broke down into categories that turned into the list of topics I first presented” to the station.She started with 30 show ideas, enough for a full season and then some. She didn’t need to search for more — within weeks of the first episode, Ms. Elkin found herself inundated with suggestions, via letters, phone calls and casual cocktail party conversations.After some 200 episodes, “Woman” went off the air in 1977. It ended for a variety of reasons, among them Ms. Elkin’s move to New York City and PBS’s decision to withdraw support from the show in favor of a more slickly produced women’s interest series with a magazine-style format.Ms. Elkin and Mr. Elkin divorced in the early 1980s. She married her longtime partner, Anke A. Ehrhardt, in 2013. Along with her son Todd, Dr. Ehrhardt survives her, as do another son, Evan, and two grandchildren.In New York, Ms. Elkin pursued a second career as a literary agent. She also produced videos on H.I.V. education at the height of the AIDS crisis and later traveled to South Africa to produce similar videos for local viewers.For the last two decades, she had pursued a series of long-term photography projects. One involved portraits of women around the world. Another focused on women town clerks in Vermont, the sort of people she considered the “first firewall of our democracy” — people she said were needed now more than over.“We’re at the precipice with democracy,” she said in a 2020 interview with the website Think Design. “We’re certainly at the precipice with climate change and with institutionalized racism and sexism. We’ve just got to step up and do what we need to do.” More

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      Late Night Foresees a Limited Audience for Fourth G.O.P. Debate

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      Wednesday’s debate will air on platforms like NewsNation and the CW. “So, in other words, look for it wherever you get your computer viruses,” Seth Meyers joked.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.Limited AudienceThe fourth Republican presidential primary debate will air Wednesday night on select platforms, such as NewsNation, Rumble and the CW.“So, in other words, look for it wherever you get your computer viruses,” Seth Meyers joked on Tuesday.“And the debate will air on the CW network and NewsNation. So if you want to know how good a chance these candidates have, the debate is airing on the CW network and NewsNation.” — JIMMY FALLON“At this point, watching these debates is like watching a middle school play — it doesn’t really matter, you just hope that they’re having fun up there.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Mariah is Shaking Edition)“The new No. 1 song in the United States, according to the Billboard Hot 100, is 65 years old. ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ by Brenda Lee, which was released in 1958, is at the top of the charts for the very first time. Brenda Lee was 13 when she recorded the song, which is crazy. A 13-year-old named Brenda? It’s insane.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s never been No. 1 before, but for whatever reason it is now, and now Brenda Lee has a No. 1 hit at 78 years old. It’s nuts. I mean, between the president, the Golden Bachelor, and now Brenda Lee, old people are hotter than ever.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Yep, Brenda’s having a moment. Not only does she have the No. 1 song, today, she was seen holding hands with Travis Kelce.” — JIMMY FALLON“That’s right, Brenda Lee’s ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ has hit No. 1. Meanwhile, Mariah Carey spent the day cutting letters out of magazines: ‘Back off, B.’” — JIMMY FALLON“People are loving something that’s been around for over six decades. This is actually the best news Joe Biden’s had in years.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingRobin Thede, who appears in the holiday movie “Candy Cane Lane,” touched on Black Santa and the legacy of her Emmy-winning series, “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” on Tuesday’s “Daily Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightMahershala Ali, a star in “Leave the World Behind,” will appear on Wednesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutRooney Mara and Cate Blanchett in “Carol.”Wilson Webb/The Weinstein CompanyFrom “Eyes Wide Shut” to “Carol,” classic holiday films don’t always center on Christmas. More

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      ‘Fargo’ Season 5, Episode 4 Recap: Trick or Treat

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      Halloween provides the perfect disguise for a home invasion. Of course, this is “Fargo,” so nothing goes quite as planned.Season 5, Episode 4: ‘Insolubilia’One of the strengths of “Fargo” this season is the way it has drawn closer to the Coensverse by re-contextualizing major pieces of it, rather than by tucking in referential Easter eggs for fans to collect. (Although it has done plenty of that, too.) The first attempt to abduct Dot, for example, closely mirrors the sequence in the Coens’ “Fargo” where Jean Lundegaard has her morning routine disrupted by intruders, though Dot proves far more capable of defending herself. She is determined, beyond all reason, to be like Jean, the housewife and P.T.A. mom who carves out a little time to knit in front of weekday talk shows. But she cannot escape who she really is.Roy Tillman has no interest in escaping from his past. He is building it out into a corrupt, theocratic fief across North Dakota and the open expanses of the Upper Midwest. He is a third-generation lawman, just like Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) in “No Country for Old Men,” but he doesn’t share Bell’s fears about facing a world of overwhelming evil because voters have put him in a position to perpetuate it. Whatever justice might be achieved in this season of “Fargo,” it is going to happen despite him and the tremendous political and tactical arsenal he has at his disposal.Late in this week’s episode, Roy is framed exactly like Bell at the end of “No Country,” as a retired Bell sits at home in front of a windowsill with his wife, recalling bleak, dead-haunted dreams about his father. Only here, the windowsill is in another couple’s mobile home and Roy expresses no misgivings about the violence he is about to unleash. We had seen him in an earlier episode counseling this same couple about an incident of domestic violence that Roy chose to manage in typically extralegal fashion, with a threat to the husband about his behavior and, let’s say, some antiquated advice on how his wife might fulfill her duties.As he smugly holds court on a Biblical passage relevant to this situation, Roy anticipates everything that is about to happen, just as he anticipated the likelihood of the husband’s getting physical with his wife again. He knows that he can goad this “beta man” into trying to shoot him, and he knows that he’ll be the quicker draw. He also knows that he can count on the wife to support his cover story: that the man he just shot is Munch, who had come home bragging about killing a state trooper and wounding another one. On Roy’s turf, the best way to cover up his connection to dead bodies is with other dead bodies.Roy’s extralegal tendencies have drawn the attention of Meyer and Joaquin, the two F.B.I. agents itching to impose law to the lawless lawman. But their appetite for justice isn’t shared by their overseer, who tells them, “Maybe he loses the election and the whole thing goes away.” The political allusion to Donald Trump here is unmistakable: Should the law be applied to Roy as if he were any other citizen, or do the voters get to decide whether his alleged sins are forgivable? In Roy’s case, as in Trump’s, there’s the considerable threat of “what happens next” that separates him from an ordinary candidate for prosecution. The agents are reminded that Roy is “the most powerful sheriff in North Dakota” and he is connected to “the most powerful militia in the Upper Midwest.” A lost election might guarantee a quieter withdrawal from public life.Yet the voters may not have a voice in this matter, after all. This week, we learn that Dot, formerly Nadine, was Roy’s second wife. And despite her valiant attempts to deny her identity and everything that has happened to her, Dot has been identified as the woman on the surveillance camera who outwitted Munch and his partner and saved Witt Farr, the wounded state trooper. In the aftermath of a home invasion that left her husband electrocuted and their home burned to cinders, Dot tries to brush off the whole thing as a case of bad wiring and refuses to acknowledge Witt, who wants to thank her for saving his life.The obvious question for Witt and Olmstead is why Dot would deny such acts of valor ever happened. Surely the Roy connection will give them some clues.Another big question to consider: What is supposed to happen if Dot/Nadine is brought back to Roy? He does not want her killed but returned, and she has proved to be an exceptionally wily captive. Perhaps that speaks to a key parallel between Dot and Roy, which is that they will deny reality if they have the opportunity to manipulate it to their own ends. Roy believes himself mandated by God and the voters to manage his domain as he sees fit, like tagging one gunshot victim as Munch and burying another before he can be verified as the victim of a “car accident.” Dot still refuses to loosen her grip on a domestic utopia that is now literally turned to ash. Perhaps the two are made for each other, after all.3 Cent StampsThe Gator-led assault on the Lyons’ den is thrillingly staged, from the half-silly/half-menacing “The Nightmare Before Christmas” masks to the small twists on expectations. Although Dot is able to fend off her attackers, some of her home security innovations backfire, like the lightbulb rigged to work as an alarm and the exposed wiring that ends up electrocuting her husband.Roy and Dot are both rooted in spiritual conviction, which the episode puts in pointed contrast. At the chapel on his ranch, Roy refers to the crucified Jesus as “old friend” while recalling an incident in which he watched Beelzebub himself whisper into the ear of a killer. In another scene, Dot assures a shaken Scotty that “the wicked stick to the darkness while we get to stay in the light.”Shrewd juxtaposition between Olmstead’s call from a predatory “debt-relief specialist” and Lorraine’s spin job to a Forbes reporter on Redemption Services, the business that netted her $1.6 billion in profit the previous year. Perhaps the funniest moment of the episode is the way Jennifer Jason Leigh quietly nods, “of course,” when a lackey whispers in ear that her son’s house has been burned down.“With all due respect, we’ve got our own reality.” — Danish Graves, giving voice to the episode’s thesis.Munch asks for “pancakes,” affirming him as a much smarter (and chattier) version of Gaear Grimsrud in the movie. More