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      Takeaways From the ‘Severance’ Season 2 Finale

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      Our critics and editors assess the new conflicts introduced by the Season 2 finale and whether it cleared up enough of the show’s many mysteries.The second season of “Severance” just wrapped up with its longest episode yet. We have thoughts. Spoilers abound.Whose Side Are We On?There are endings that give you what you want. There are endings that don’t give you what you want. There are endings that give you what you don’t want.Then there are endings that make you wonder what exactly you should want, which was what the “Severance” Season 2 finale did.The first season of “Severance” gave us some clear rooting interests. We wanted Mark Scout to find his not-dead-yet wife, Gemma. And we wanted Mark S. and the rest of his innie colleagues to find freedom, self-determination and love. But the finale hit a realization that the season had been building to: These two wants might not be compatible, at least not easily.The two Marks having the world’s weirdest Zoom conversation at the birthing cabin laid the conflict out. The series has shown them to date as twin protagonists wronged by the mighty Lumon corporation. But there’s a power dynamic between the two of them as well, as innie Mark says with growing frustration.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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      ‘Severance’ Season 2 Finale Recap: Mark vs. Mark

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      The season ended with a bizarre but moving episode that found the Lumon employees’ inner and outer selves at cross purposes.Early in the Season 2 finale of the acclaimed, much-memed Apple TV+ series “Severance,” a man has a spirited debate that ends up encapsulating much of what keeps the show’s fans watching. The person he is talking to? Himself, via an old video camera. Mark (Adam Scott) records messages for Mark. And Mark replies.Created by the writer Dan Erickson in collaboration with the producer and frequent director Ben Stiller, “Severance,” which was just renewed for another season, is centered on a cultlike company named Lumon that allows employees to “sever” their work lives and their home lives via a chip surgically inserted into their brains. The people who clock in every day — the “innies” — have no idea what their “outies” do after quitting time, and vice versa.At the end of Season 1, Mark’s innie led his office-mates Dylan (Zach Cherry), Helly (Britt Lower) and Irving (John Turturro) in a mini-rebellion, executing “the overtime contingency,” which allowed them all, very briefly, to live their outies’ lives. This is how Mark learned that his outie’s wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman) — presumed dead in the outside world — was still alive as an innie at Lumon.Season 2 has been primarily driven by outie Mark’s efforts to reintegrate his consciousness with innie Mark, in hopes of rescuing Gemma from Lumon. In the finale, the two Marks argue over whose needs are more important: If Gemma leaves Lumon, will outie Mark terminate his employment there — and in the process terminate innie Mark?“Severance” Season 1 arrived not long after the pandemic, at a time when people were questioning how much of their lives were being spent in an office — and how much needed to be. As the story has expanded into more existential mysteries, it has spoken more to the “rise and grind” mind set sweeping through much of the modern world, where having relationships or hobbies — or even a good night’s sleep — is considered somewhat suspect. The Season 2 finale brings to a head some of the story lines inspired by our increasingly out-of-whack work-life balance.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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      ‘Yellowjackets’ Season 3, Episode 7 Recap: ‘Barbecue’

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      Our new arrivals smell something sizzling in the woods. Here comes a meal with all the fixin’s.Season 3, Episode 7: ‘Croak’R.I.P. Edwin. We hardly knew you.The timid herpetologist (Nelson Franklin) who finds the Yellowjackets dancing by the fire in their cannibalistic ritual meets a quick end this week.Almost immediately after his cheery greeting — followed by his revulsion upon discovering Ben’s decapitated noggin — Lottie creeps up behind him and whacks him in the back of the head with a hatchet. That’s what the Wilderness wants, she declares. All the other Yellowjackets are rightfully upset. Finally, they have contact with the outside world, and she immediately goes and murders someone? What gives?But Edwin wasn’t the only visitor to the Yellowjackets camp. He arrived with two other souls who end up in the Yellowjackets’ custody: His girlfriend and fellow scientist, Hannah (Ashley Sutton), and their guide, the mysterious loner Kodiak (Joel McHale, even more sardonic and surly than usual). If the end of Episode 6 was a thrilling tease, Episode 7 is the confirmation that “Yellowjackets” is moving its plot forward both in the past and the present.All of that revolves around the arrival of these new figures, whom we’re introduced to in a prologue of sorts that begins three days before they meet our deranged soccer team. Edwin and Hannah are deep in the woods studying the mating habits of “Arctic banshee frogs.” The hilariously-named Kodiak is their guide.Hannah is intrigued and somewhat aroused by Kodiak. Edwin is deeply suspicious of him. One night, after smelling what he thinks is “barbecue,” Edwin goes wandering off looking for other souls in this forest. He finds the Yellowjackets.He instantly dies thanks to Lottie. Kodiak shoots Melissa with one of his arrows and he and Hannah start running, pursued by our girls and Travis with torches. Their hunt for Kodiak and Hannah has a double purpose. On one hand, they can’t leave any witnesses behind; on the other, they need people to get back to civilization.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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      When the Walls Close In on the ‘Wolf Hall’ Saga

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      Viewers thrilled to the scheming Thomas Cromwell’s rise. Now, in the new TV series “The Mirror and the Light,” comes the fall.Mark Rylance sat quietly and alone, his black-capped head bowed, his eyes closed. Nearby in a grand chamber, Damian Lewis stood resplendent in a huge gold jacket, playing King Henry VIII, as the director Peter Kosminsky rearranged some actors playing courtiers.It was Shoot Day 77, last spring, at Bishop’s Palace in Wells, England, one of the locations for “The Mirror and the Light,” the second and final television series based on Hilary Mantel’s dazzling trilogy of novels. The books, and the show, chart the rise and fall of the energetic, inscrutable Thomas Cromwell — a blacksmith’s son who became chief minister and all-around fixer to the king before his astonishing career took a tragic turn.The six-part “Mirror and the Light,” which will air on PBS’s Masterpiece starting Sunday, begins exactly where the last one ended, in 1536, as Anne Boleyn (Claire Foy) is beheaded.That series, which aired on PBS in 2015, encompassed the trilogy’s first two novels: “Wolf Hall” and “Bring Up the Bodies.” It was a miracle of writerly and filmic compression, giving us Cromwell’s ascent to prominence; his successful negotiation of the king’s first divorce; the break with the Catholic church; and Anne Boleyn’s rise, and her fall, which is engineered by Cromwell at the king’s behest.“The Mirror and the Light” has a near-identical creative team: written by Peter Straughan (who recently won an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay for “Conclave”), directed by Kosminsky and starring Rylance and Lewis, with British acting royalty, including Alex Jennings, Timothy Spall and Harriet Walter, in small roles. (This time, though, there is no comparably meaty female role to equal Foy’s turn as Anne Boleyn.)Rylance and Damian Lewis, who plays King Henry VIII.Nick Briggs/Playground Television LtdWe 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 Gives Trump’s Education Agency Shutdown a Failing Grade

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      “Trump famously said he loves the poorly educated, and now he will have so many more people to love,” Jimmy Kimmel said on Thursday.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.This Wasn’t on the SyllabusOn Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order gutting the Department of Education.“They say ignorance is bliss,” Jimmy Kimmel remarked during that night’s monologue.“I know it sounds like a joke, but it’s not. Trump famously said he loves the poorly educated, and now he will have so many more people to love.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Trump signed the order during an event at the White House they invited a group of children to attend. They’re like ‘Hey, kids, who hates school?’ And they’re like ‘Well, we do!’ and they said, ‘Well, good news, it’s over.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The idea behind this is to let the states come up with their own educational standards. For instance, from here on, in order to receive a high school diploma in Florida, all you have to do is complete the maze on the back of the kids’ menu at Fuddruckers.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Today, President Trump signed an executive order to shut down the Department of Education. It’s a historic move that years from now kids will not read about in history textbooks.” — JIMMY FALLON“President Trump signed an order today to dismantle the Department of Education. Yep. Soon employees will be reading their pink slips at a third-grade level.” — GREG GUTFELD“Meanwhile, one angry ex-employee claims it was the worst thing to happen since Nazis won the Civil War.” — GREG GUTFELDThe Punchiest Punchlines (D.E.I. Takedown Edition)“Yesterday, the Department of Defense, as part of their war against woke, removed a page about Jackie Robinson’s distinguished military career. They pulled it down. A spokesperson for the Pentagon said, ‘We do not view or highlight them’ — not sure what he means by them, but — ‘through the prism of immutable characteristics such as race, ethnicity or sex.’ Right, Jackie Robinson was just a baseball player; nothing special about him. Rosa Parks just loved to ride the bus. She was a commuter.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Imagine how racist you have to be to be racist against Jackie Robinson today.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Don’t blame us — blame our racist software. We should have never used ChatKKK. Classic mistake.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“I don’t get it: How can something like this happen under the president who’s done more for Black people than Abraham Lincoln?” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingBob Mould performed his new single on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutFlannery O’Connor’s caricature of an aristocratic couple. The darkly comic Southern writer Flannery O’Connor was (quietly) a visual artist, too. A new exhibition in Georgia showcases 70 of her pieces. More

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      ‘Shared Custody’ Is a Prickly Spanish Divorce Drama

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      And as with many European series, this one, on Hulu, features plenty of cool sweaters and hot tempers.“Shared Custody” is a light divorce drama, though it is perhaps better seen as a cellphone drama: the buzzing, the ringing, the texting, the “just one second,” the deleted messages, the accidental photo uploads, the app notifications. Is everyone disconnected, or is everyone too connected?The show, on Hulu (in Spanish, with subtitles, or dubbed), follows Cris (Lorena López) and Diego (Ricard Farré) through the early stages of their divorce. They each tell their parents that they’re going to do things amicably, without lawyers, and that figuring out custody of their little girl won’t be that big of a headache.“You can’t do that,” Diego’s father grumbles. “And if you had gone to law school, you’d know that.”Episodes themselves have a sort of split custody. We see Cris at work, where she is told to keep her child and her separation a secret, lest she be pushed aside. Diego’s client, on the other hand, declares that fathers are inherently trustworthy and that she is impressed by his family life.We see each parent on a too-boozy night with friends and how each set of abuelos is both the cause of and solution to some of the issues at hand. Cris is too rigid and selfish — or wait, Diego is too lazy and has mooched off his family and wife forever. (“I’ve taken two degrees worth of digital marketing courses!” he brags to a friend.)As with many shows that cattily dissect the bougie, “Custody” includes a party held at the richest friend’s ostentatiously artsy house, where all the kids are screaming and running around, and all the grow-ups are forming hostile cliques. Things boil over! As with many European shows, this one features interesting sweaters and fabulous bathroom tiles. And as with many contemporary domestic dramas, it captures the misery of being around other people’s poorly behaved children.“Custody” is not dark or brutalizing, but neither does it shy away from how quickly Cris and Diego can take a whisper of disagreement and turn it into an opera of “you are in fact just like your parents, specifically in the ways you most fear and resent.” You know what, maybe we should get lawyers after all. More

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      Lenny Schultz, Comedian Who Made a Lot of Noise, Dies at 91

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      A highly physical performer, he said he couldn’t tell jokes. But he became well known for a wild act that fellow comedians didn’t want to follow.Lenny Schultz, a wild-eyed comedian who became known in the 1970s and ’80s for high-energy performances that he delivered with a mouthful of sound effects and a table full of silly props, died on Sunday at his home in Delray Beach, Fla. He was 91.His son and only immediate survivor, Mark, confirmed the death.“I can’t tell a joke,” Mr. Schultz told The Orlando Sentinel in 1972, but that didn’t matter. “The guys I like and the guys I identify with,” he added, “are Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Guy Marks — the zanies. I like the zanies. I am a zany!”With his expressive face, his physicality and the rapid pace of his act, Mr. Schultz exuded a loony intensity. He began his comedy career in the late 1960s while keeping his day job as a high school gym teacher.Onstage, he described the start of life on Earth, punctuating his narrative with explosions and other noises; bowed a banana as if it were a violin (while taking bites out of it); played the Lone Ranger, wearing a mask and a tiny cowboy hat while riding a small toy horse on a stick and flinging Froot Loops from a box; rendered a cockfight between game fowl of different ethnicities; and admonished the baby doll in his backpack to stop crying because William Morris agents were in the audience.Mr. Schultz in 1977 on the first episode of the rebooted “Laugh-In.” The original show had revolutionized TV comedy, but the new version was canceled after six episodes.NBCUniversal Photo Bank, via Getty Images“Lenny has a special place in the hearts and memories of everybody in his peer group,” David Letterman, who met Mr. Schultz when they were performing in Los Angeles, said in a phone interview. “He is talked about more often, randomly, than any single person we spent time with at the Comedy Store in the 1970s.”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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      ‘The Residence’ Review: Murder and Mystery in the White House

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      The Netflix series, executive produced by Shonda Rimes, is the latest lighthearted murder mystery on streaming TV.At a certain point, we have to start feeling bad for the last five famous actors who have not yet appeared on a lighthearted streaming murder show. They didn’t get to be the detective, or the murderer, or the one with the biggest secret, but not even being cast as themselves in a winky, self-aware cameo? Yeesh.As with many current show in its pitch and timbre, “The Residence” is a conveyor belt of famous faces, including Uzo Aduba, Eliza Coupe, Jane Curtin, Giancarlo Esposito, Al Franken, Taran Killam, Jason Lee, Ken Marino, Randall Park, Bronson Pinchot, Susan Kelechi Watson and Isiah Whitlock Jr. (Kylie Minogue makes a winky, self-aware cameo as herself.) It is certainly one way to thwart viewers’ “Law and Order”-honed skill of identifying the famous guest star as the central criminal.“The Residence,” on Netflix, is a boppy little murder mystery set in the White House. Paul William Davies is the show’s creator and the writer of every episode, with Davies, Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers as executive producers; it is based on the nonfiction book “The Residence,” by Kate Andersen Brower.Davies’s previous work includes “Scandal,” and the shows share a similar vague relationship to presidential history, but there is no screen-melting romance here. “The Residence” does not have the sizzle or sudsiness of other Shondaland titles, nor is it particularly provocative; its big innovation is that the president (Paul Fitzgerald) is a white gay man who lives in the White House with his husband (Barrett Foa), brother (Lee) and mother-in-law (Curtin).That’s not to say it isn’t fun. It is, with ample Agatha Christie references, a whooshing momentum and plenty of intrigue.It’s the night of a chaotic state dinner, and the White House chief usher, A.B. Wynter (Esposito), turns up dead. (Andre Braugher, who died in December, was originally cast in the role.) Everyone’s a suspect: the guests, the staff, the first family. This calls for a genius investigator, and not just any genius. A quirky genius! Enter Cordelia Cupp (Aduba), an avid birder and obsessive observer of details. The game is afoot.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