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      ‘The Idol’ Season 1, Episode 4 Recap: Just a Jealous Guy

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      Destiny goes undercover as tensions rise at Jocelyn’s mansion. Tedros’s hair evolves from rattail to ponytail.Season 1, Episode 4: ‘Stars Belong to the World’On the track that plays over opening and closing of this week’s episode of “The Idol,” the Weeknd sings: “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry that I made you cry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m just a jealous guy.” It’s the classic text of an abuser now made to sound pretty in Abel Tesfaye’s sensitive warble.The Weeknd music that scores scenes has been a confusing element of the series. Is this just the star and co-creator putting more of his stamp on the show? Or is he actually in character? This song, at least, sounds to be coming less from the Weeknd and more from Tedros. That is, if you listen to the lyrics. (I’m not sure if Tedros can sing.)In the fourth — and apparently penultimate — episode of this season, we finally get some details on Tedros Tedros’s past. His real name, it turns out, is Mauricio Costello Jackson. In 2012 he was arrested and accused of kidnapping his ex-girlfriend, holding her hostage for three days and beating her. During his trial more accusations arose.He told a version of this story to Jocelyn, apparently, that turned him into a victim of a “crazy ex-girlfriend.” Jocelyn blithely explains to her manager Destiny that he was acting in self-defense when he hit her, and that the other girls that emerged with charges that he was their pimp were just musical artists he was working with trying to extort him for money.It seems unbelievable, frankly, that anyone could believe that story, but in the context of “The Idol,” everyone is somehow seduced by Tedros, no matter how suspicious they are of him or how violently he acts toward them. This is the most baffling aspect of the series. In an interview with GQ, Tesfaye explained that Tedros is a “douchebag,” a fact that is painfully obvious to any viewer. And yet this “douchebag” is apparently so alluring that he can assault people in plain view while everyone just shrugs and chalks it up to his unorthodox methods. The only character who is seemingly immune to all of this is Jocelyn’s best friend and assistant, Leia, the lone voice of reason who ends up getting blasted with a water gun full of tequila.Take Jocelyn’s manager Destiny, for instance. After digging up the facts of Tedros’s life — and suggesting that he might need to be literally assassinated — she decides to go on an undercover mission at the compound to gather information. At first, she reports back to her partner Chaim that there is “weird, scary” stuff going on after she watches Tedros blindfold and get Jocelyn off in front of a room full of people in order to re-record her vocals as she builds to a climax. But eventually, even Destiny is at least a little impressed. After about a week there, she is telling Chaim about the talented people that Tedros has assembled and saying, “Tedros is Tedros.” In her assessment, he is making hits with Jocelyn, and even though his methods are brutal, ‌‌the hits are worth preserving. She still wants to handle the situation, but for now she’s letting it play out.That’s nothing, however, compared to how Xander turns around over the course of this hour. In one of the more messily constructed plot threads, Tedros listens to Xander sing in the shower and then pops up like a poltergeist. What begins as an interrogation as to why Xander no longer sings professionally eventually turns into a torture session in which Jocelyn participates almost gleefully.The contours of Jocelyn and Xander’s relationship are muddy. They were both child performers. Xander lived with Jocelyn and her mom and stood by while the abuse took place, but also Jocelyn’s mom outed Xander and possibly made him sign a contract saying that he wouldn’t sing anymore. Clearly there is resentment that might be worth exploring if this were a more nuanced show, but the situation ends with Xander tied up and relentlessly shocked by a collar around his neck.Despite all of that, by the end of the episode he appears to be doing Tedros’s bidding, orchestrating a situation to humiliate Jocelyn’s superhero actor ex-boyfriend, Rob (Karl Glusman), whom she invited over for sex in an act of revenge.Yes, Jocelyn at least starts to stand up for herself just a little bit when she learns that Dyanne, who has now been offered the chance to record “World Class Sinner” as a debut single, brought her to Tedros’s club on Tedros’s bidding. Rob is genuinely concerned for her when he arrives. She has just gone public about the abuse her mother inflicted upon her, recording a teary iPhone video for social media. But she doesn’t want to talk about that with Rob. She just wants to seduce him in a play to make Tedros jealous. Cue: an extremely explicit sex scene.As Rob is leaving, Xander and a bikini-clad woman accost him. The woman poses seductively as Xander snaps photos in what is likely some sort of blackmail attempt.With only one episode remaining, it feels as if “The Idol” is both running out of steam — how many times can we watch Tedros blindfold Jocelyn? — and has too many threads left dangling. Most crucially: I still don’t feel I understand Jocelyn or why she is so drawn to Tedros beyond the thin explanation of her history of being abused. And as for Tedros, by this point I’m not sure why we’ve spent so much time watching a man who is a one-note abuser himself.I expect that Jocelyn will reclaim some of her power and there will be some moment of comeuppance for Tedros. Will it answer any of my questions or be at all satisfying? That remains to be seen.Liner notesI still think “World Class Sinner” is a better song than any of the tracks Jocelyn is making with Tedros.Yes, Mike Dean is a real record producer. No, I do not know whether that is his giant bong, but it is a very large bong.Is Tedros really that connected that he would know Dean? Or is that just another messy blurring of the lines between the Weeknd and his character?Suzanna Son, so great in Sean Baker’s “Red Rocket,” is also a standout here. I genuinely enjoyed her scene opposite Da’Vine Joy Randolph and her crocodile song.I will admit, the shot of Tedros watching Xander in the shower was a pretty good jump scare.I was wondering when the noted pop star Troye Sivan (as Xander) was going to sing.Five episodes does feel awfully short for as hyped an HBO project as this is. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Bachelorette’ and ‘Casa Susanna’

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      The 20th season of the reality dating show premieres on ABC, and PBS presents a documentary about a safe home for trans women in the ‘50s and ’60s.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, June 26 — July 2. Details and times are subject to change.MondayKevin Jonas, left, and his youngest brother, Frankie Jonas, in “Claim to Fame.”John Fleenor/ABCCLAIM TO FAME 8 p.m. on ABC. A new group of 12 A-list celebrity relatives will live together and compete in a series of challenges while trying to conceal their identities in the second season of this game show from the executive producer of “Love Is Blind.” Hosted by the singer Kevin Jonas and his youngest brother, Frankie, these lesser-known relatives must guess whom their fellow housemates are related to before they themselves are found out and eliminated. The last person standing will win $100,000.THE BACHELORETTE 9 p.m. on ABC. Charity Lawson, a child and family therapist from Georgia, will be “The Bachelorette” in the 20th season of this reality dating show. Last year, Lawson was a contestant on the 27th season of “The Bachelor,” becoming a fan favorite before she was eliminated in Week 8. Hosted by Jesse Palmer (a former football player and Season 5’s “Bachelor”), the show will follow Lawson on her search for lasting love as she is courted by 25 men in dates across the globe.POV: AFTER SHERMAN 10 p.m. on PBS. The 36th season of this documentary series follows the New York-based filmmaker Jon-Sesrie Goff as he explores his Gullah Geechee heritage by returning to the South Carolina Lowcountry, where his family purchased land after emancipation. Through interviews with his family and locals and a mix of animation and home movies, Goff explores themes of Black inheritance, trauma and survival. “The film is expressionistic but never at a cost to its subjects and archival material,” wrote Lisa Kennedy in her review for The New York Times, adding that the documentary is an “investigative and intimate work of belonging.”TuesdaySusanna “Tito” Valenti in “Casa Susanna.”Collection of Cindy ShermanCASA SUSANNA 9 p.m. on PBS. As a part of its Pride Month programming, PBS presents a documentary about Casa Susanna, a home in New York’s Catskills region where transgender women and cross-dressing men found refuge during the 1950s and ’60s. Through a collection of photos, archival footage and interviews, the film explores the cultural significance of the house and dives deep into the lives of the transgender woman Susanna Valenti and her wife, who owned it.WednesdayMarcus ScribnerMike Taing/FreeformGROWN-ISH 10 p.m. on FREEFORM. The sixth and final season of this “Black-ish” spinoff follows Andre Johnson Jr. (Marcus Scribner) as he navigates college. The first episode of the new season begins the summer before Andre’s sophomore year, which finds him stressing over choosing a major, his relationship with his girlfriend and what the new school year might have in store for him. The season will also feature his older sister, Zoey (Yara Shahidi), as she attempts to revive her company, in addition to a number of guest stars including Kelly Rowland, Lil Yachty and Anderson .Paak.ThursdayREVEALED 10 p.m. on HGTV. This home renovation show blends design with culture as the interior designer Veronica Valencia Hughes remodels homes into modern spaces that reflect her clients’ family histories and life stories.FridayMichel Serrault, left, and Ugo Tognazzi in “La Cage aux Folles.”United ArtistsLA CAGE AUX FOLLES (1978) 10:30 p.m. on TCM. Based on the 1973 play of the same name by Jean Poiret, this French-language farce tells the story of a middle-aged gay couple — Renato Baldi (Ugo Tognazzi) and Albin “Zaza” Mougeotte (Michel Serrault) — who operate a drag nightclub in a French resort town. Comedy ensues when Renato’s son brings his fiancée and her conservative parents home to meet them. Despite its multiple Academy Award nominations and two sequels, the movie failed to impress The Times movie critic Vincent Canby, who wrote that the performances were “energetic, broad, much too knowing and superficial.”SaturdayTrevante Rhodes, left, and André Holland in “Moonlight.”David Bornfriend/A24MOONLIGHT (2016) 5:05 p.m. on HBO2e. This coming-of-age drama begins in a Miami housing project and follows the young Black protagonist, Chiron, through childhood, adolescence and early adulthood as he grapples with his sexuality and masculinity. In his review for The Times, A.O. Scott said it is “both a disarmingly, at times almost unbearably personal film and an urgent social document, a hard look at American reality and a poem written in light, music and vivid human faces.” Directed by Barry Jenkins, who received an Oscar nomination for best director and won the award for best adapted screenplay with Tarell Alvin McCraney, “‘Moonlight’ is about as beautiful a movie as you are ever likely to see,” Scott concluded.SundayTOUGH AS NAILS 8 p.m. on CBS. From the Emmy Award-winning producer Phil Keoghan (“The Amazing Race”), this competition show takes place, for the first time, in Ontario, with 12 American and Canadian contestants vying for $200,000 and a pickup truck. The premiere of the fifth season challenges them to see who can cut, grind and torch 500 pounds of scrap metal the fastest. More

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      ‘The Bear’ Season 2 Puts a Little Optimism on the Menu

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      With a gentler tone and reverence for hospitality, the Hulu show reaches beyond the chef to give other workers the spotlight.This article contains spoilers for the Hulu series “The Bear.”Even before the bump in Italian beef sandwich sales last year, you could sense an immediate, almost feverish enthusiasm for “The Bear.” You could measure it, not in actual views (Hulu doesn’t release streaming data), but in thirsty memes of Carmen (Carmy) Berzatto, the broken chef with a wavy jumble of unwashed hair and a startled, pink face that always seemed recently slapped.Carmy, played by Jeremy Allen White, is the tortured chef at the center of “The Bear,” determined to, though not always capable of, doing things differently.Chuck Hodes/FXCarmy, played by Jeremy Allen White, became the patron saint of obsessive chefs, their personal lives obliterated by a dedication to restaurant work. After his brother’s death, Carmy was determined to get his family’s ancient, grimy, lawless sandwich shop into shape while also, somehow, being a good guy — a dilemma he tackled between exploding toilets, fights, Al-Anon meetings and panic attacks.“I’m fine, really,” Carmy told his sister over the phone, “I just have trouble breathing sometimes and wake up screaming.”The breakout show’s portrayal of the anxiety and tension that rule restaurant kitchens was darkly realistic. And while the second season, which premiered Thursday on Hulu, doesn’t completely leave those pressures behind, it conveys an unexpected optimism about the restaurant industry and the people who make it run.The new season of “The Bear” follows its workers on their various adventures as the restaurant closes for renovations.Chuck Hodes/FXSeason 2 of “The Bear” swivels attention away from the chef and his trauma to spend time with other characters and, in the process, does something that TV and movies about restaurants hardly ever do: It subverts the power structure of the brigade system and invites more workers into the center of the story, where they belong.Though it never feels instructive or moralizing, there’s a sense of hopefulness as “The Bear” wrestles with larger themes of hospitality. Each member of the kitchen crew finds moments of joy and deep meaning in their work, whether they’re drawn to it by devotion or dysfunction (or a broken emulsion of both).In its second season, “The Bear” sends two of its characters on transformational internships, or stages, at other restaurants. Lionel Boyce, left, is Marcus, a pastry chef who finds inspiration on a gentle internship in Copenhagen.Chuck Hodes/FXOne episode focuses on Marcus, the young pastry cook who’s a sponge for new techniques and ingredients, played by Lionel Boyce. In Copenhagen, he interns with a brilliant pastry chef played by Will Poulter.It doesn’t matter that recent reporting on the stage economy of Copenhagen, one of the world’s fine-dining capitals, has revealed a pattern of abuse and dangerous working conditions for unpaid interns. In “The Bear,” the stage is a dream: Marcus’s tasks are simply to learn from a skilled but kind and patient mentor, to get out and about and feel inspired, and to come up with some new dishes of his own.A stage at a fine-dining restaurant transforms Richie, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach.Chuck Hodes/FXNo one was more suspicious of the fussy quirks of fine-dining kitchens than Richie, the fragile chaos machine played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach. But after a stage of his own in a Chicago fine-dining restaurant, Richie is completely transformed. He cares about organizing pens and polishing silverware. He wears suits now.In an arc that made me weep, Richie learns that he has the aptitude and composure for expediting, for being in the eye of the storm, for channeling all of his pettiness and intensity into fixing problems and making diners happy.There were flashbacks, in the first season of “The Bear,” of a toxic chef who trashed cooks on the line, telling them they’d be better off dead. But here the show seems keen to remind us that fine dining can work differently, and that wonderful people are still scattered throughout it.“The Bear” always blurred the lines between family and workplace in ways that felt both tender and menacing, and the most nightmarish kitchen scene takes place not in a professional kitchen, but at a Berzatto family Christmas at home a few years back, when Carmy’s brother Michael was still alive.Jamie Lee Curtis is devastating as their alcoholic mother who can’t get through cooking and serving a beautiful holiday dinner — an elaborate Feast of the Seven Fishes — without wringing guilt and shame from her children. Her inability to host offers a glimpse at what shaped the siblings and warped their relationships to cooking, but it’s also a razor-edged contrast to the cooks’ growing sense of hospitality as instinctual and deeply fulfilling.Sydney, played by Ayo Edebiri, is the enterprising stagiaire who quickly turned her internship into a serious job.Chuck Hodes/FXSydney (Ayo Edebiri) is crushed by her anxiety about the restaurant opening and herself as a leader. She worries about failure, but also about not having a financial stake in the business.Despite all of that, she’s delighted and re-energized after making a simple omelet for Carmy’s woozy, hungry sister, Natalie (Abby Elliott). She tops it with chives and crushed potato chips, plating it beautifully on a tray, as if she were carrying it to her own mother on a holiday morning. As she stands behind Natalie, watching her eat, Sydney looks happier than she’s been in ages.It’s a beautiful and agonizing scene that compounds the hospitality industry’s complications, and the ways a calling to it can both hurt and heal. Sure, Sydney deserves more than the pleasure of watching someone fill with happiness when they eat her food. But also, that pleasure is real and, sometimes, there isn’t anything else.Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More

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      ‘And Just Like That …’ Is Back. Here’s What to Remember.

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      The new season, premiering Thursday on Max, promises the return of beloved figures from the franchise’s past. Here’s a quick primer on who’s who and how they all fit together.“Sex and the City” premiered just over 25 years ago, on June 6, 1998, and since then much has been lost in a franchise that now includes six seasons of the original HBO show, two films and the Max follow-up series, “And Just Like That …”The formerly carefree Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) still mourns the death of her husband, John (played by Chris Noth and known to all as Mr. Big). Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is nostalgic for the art career she gave up in order to raise children. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) perhaps misses her past consistency of character. And then there’s Samantha (Kim Cattrall), always a reliable source of wit and wisdom, who appeared only by text message in Season 1 because Cattrall declined to participate.Season 2, however, which premieres on Thursday and picks up a few weeks after the events of Season 1, promises a Samantha cameo and the return of several other beloved figures from the franchise’s past. How do all the characters fit together? And what do you need to remember before dipping into the new episodes? Read on.Aidan returnsMr. Big wasn’t Carrie’s only big love. She was also once engaged to Aidan (John Corbett), who returns to the extended story this season. It’s worth remembering how things went the first time around. And the second.“Sex and the City” presented Aidan as Mr. Nice Guy, and Carrie might still blame herself for their breakup. After all, she cheated on him. (Big time, you could say.) And then Aidan punished her with passive aggression, even letting her know he was contemplating cheating on her in retaliation. Later, when Carrie freaked out about their impending nuptials (to the point where she developed a rash) and requested more time, Aidan pressured her to get married right away. So maybe Aidan wasn’t the Good Boyfriend who got away but rather a dodged bullet.Aidan subsequently married a fellow furniture designer and had three sons. This didn’t stop him from kissing Carrie during their rendezvous in Abu Dhabi in the second film. Carrie was quick to tell Big about this, but did Aidan do the same with his wife? Whatever trust issues he had before, he would have to accept that he is just as flawed as Carrie if not more so. Should he and Carrie ignore all this history to get together one more time? If so, they would need a memory-free environment: Carrie’s old apartment, despite its renovations, contains their past, not their future.Carrie’s careerCarrie Bradshaw, sexual anthropologist, has written a long-running newspaper column, a number of pieces for Vogue and several books. The latest of these, “Loved & Lost,” is a weepy grief memoir with an optimistic epilogue.That upbeat ending was added at the behest of Carrie’s editor Amanda (Ashlie Atkinson), who pushed the author to re-enter the dating pool to offer readers a taste of hope. This led her to dip her toes in with the widower Peter (Jon Tenney) — no oomph — and with her podcast producer, Franklyn (Ivan Hernandez), who definitely has potential. More research may be required.Amanda is prepping next steps: setting up readings, interviews, audiobook recordings. None of these things will give Carrie what she still needs, which is time to reboot more fully after Big’s death.For that, Carrie will have to turn to other projects and other editors — perhaps even her role model and mentor, the Vogue editor Enid Frick (Candice Bergen), who also returns this season. When we first met Enid, in Season 4 of the original series, she was ripping Carrie to shreds for not completing an assignment to her liking; the last time we saw her, she was trying to talk Carrie into posing for a photo shoot in wedding couture, in the first film.Carrie’s career at Vogue had a bumpy start, but as she came to appreciate Enid’s style, their relationship deepened into both a friendship and an odd romantic rivalry. When Enid was 50-something, she rightfully resented younger women who were dating older men. (“Why are you swimming in my wading pool?” she asked Carrie back then.) Now that Carrie is 50-something herself, she might understand that predicament better.Pod peopleIf it’s diversion she wants, Carrie can always concentrate on her podcast. This isn’t the insufferable “X, Y and Me,” which appears to be dead, as her comedian co-host, Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez), has relocated to Los Angeles for pilot season.In the new season, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Che (Sara Ramirez) relocate to Los Angeles.Craig Blankenhorn/MaxCarrie’s retooled pod is called “Sex and the City” (why not?), and if she wants it to continue, she will to have to sort out some important questions. Like why, after years as a sex columnist, is she still uncomfortable talking about sex and body parts? Who owns the podcast and the studio, and what do they want from Carrie? Also, as stimulating as romantic attention from Franklyn may be, won’t it complicate their working relationship?Arty aspirationsCharlotte York Goldenblatt gave up her career as an art dealer and gallery director and her dream of one day owning a gallery in order to start a family. Her family — her husband, Harry (Evan Handler); her musical prodigy daughter, Lily (Cathy Ang); and her nonbinary child, Rock (Alexa Swinton) — still needs her but what she needs is a more tangible sense of accomplishment.As a more woke Charlotte reminded everyone last season, her eye for art is as keen as ever. She defended her friend Lisa Todd Wexley’s art collection against the criticisms of a judgmental mother-in-law, identifying the value of works by Gordon Parks, Carrie Mae Weems, Deborah Roberts and Mickalene Thomas and others. Could Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker) repay the favor and jump-start Charlotte’s re-entry into the art world, maybe by introducing her to a few key gallerists?What about Che?The polarizing Che is definitely back in Season 2, with Miranda in tow. A Harvard-educated lawyer who has never devoted herself so completely to her significant other, Miranda forgoes a prestigious internship in order to follow Che to Los Angeles. (This is probably not the wisest move for an alcoholic in early recovery.) It remains to be seen how Miranda’s husband and son will handle the divorce.Other characters are less certain about their romantic prospects. Dr. Nya Wallace (Karen Pittman), Miranda’s professor friend, still has unresolved issues with her musician husband, Andre Rashad (LeRoy McClain), regarding parenthood. Seema (Sarita Choudhury), last seen having a steamy fling with a club owner, might not yet be ready to book a table at “Relationship Place” (a term coined on Carrie’s podcast). But she is ready to become a bigger part of the show’s ensemble, if the writers and producers will only give her better material.Finally, Stanford Blatch (the late Willie Garson) is presumably still in Japan. And Samantha is still in London — although because she and Carrie met for offscreen drinks last season, the door is open for her cameo comeback. Whatever happens, it is sure to be fabulous. More

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      Producer Ryan Murphy Is Expected to Move to Disney

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      Mr. Murphy, the force behind hits like “American Horror Story” and “The Watcher,” is coming to the end of his $300 million Netflix deal.Ryan Murphy, the television megaproducer behind hits like “American Horror Story” and “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” is poised to move his operation to the Walt Disney Company, five years after he stunned Hollywood by decamping to Netflix for a $300 million deal.The contract talks with Disney are not finished, according to three people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations. No deal is expected to be completed until after the screenwriters’ strike in Hollywood is resolved, one of the people said. (Unionized film and television writers have been on strike since May 1.)But the talks between Mr. Murphy and Disney are advanced, the people said. Mr. Murphy’s contract with Netflix expires at the end of the month. Renewal talks with Netflix never got off the ground.Representatives for Mr. Murphy, Disney and Netflix either declined to comment or did not return calls. Bloomberg reported Mr. Murphy’s likely move to Disney earlier on Tuesday.A deal with Disney would formally reunite Mr. Murphy with executives he worked closely with for more than a decade. Disney owns the FX cable channel, which is home to his “American Horror Story” franchise, which started in 2011. (The series also runs on Hulu, which Disney controls.) ABC, the Disney-owned broadcast network, recently bought the rights to “9-1-1,” a drama that Mr. Murphy created for Fox in 2018.When Mr. Murphy signed his Netflix deal, in February 2018, it was just six months after another star producer, Shonda Rhimes, had signed her own nine-figure contract with the streaming company. The back-to-back signings were an emphatic statement by Netflix that it was in the business of paying any price for big-name writers. In the process, it set off a Hollywood arms race (which, amid broader concerns about the streaming business and the writers’ strike, has mostly cooled off).Mr. Murphy’s tenure at Netflix got off to a bumpy start. Misfires included “The Politician” and “Hollywood.” It was not until last September that Mr. Murphy served up bona fide hits in “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” and “The Watcher.” Both series are among the 10 most-watched Netflix originals ever, according to the streaming service.Mr. Murphy, who continued making shows for Disney even though he was under contract with Netflix — new seasons of “9-1-1” and “American Crime Story” continued apace — would likewise continue to make shows for Netflix after a move to Disney. The next edition of “Monster” will focus on Erik and Lyle Menéndez, the brothers serving life sentences for killing their wealthy parents in 1989, and “The Watcher” has been renewed for another season. More

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      John Corbett on His Arrival in ‘And Just Like That …’

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      He was defined by his role in “Sex and the City,” not always comfortably. He’s reprising it in “And Just Like That …” because “I’ve made friends with the idea of, this is just what I do.”John Corbett at his ranch in California. He returns to his old TV Manhattan stamping grounds in the new season of “And Just Like That …”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesOver the years, people have cornered John Corbett on the street, at the grocery store, in coffee shops, to swear fealty. “Every [expletive] person I meet is just, ‘I was Team Aidan!’” he said. He assumes that those people are lying.“People don’t want to hurt my feelings,” he said. “They’re really careful with me.”In two seasons of “Sex and the City” and in brief cameos later, including in the improvident Arabian fantasia “Sex and the City 2,” Corbett, 62, played Aidan Shaw, a hunky furniture maker and the on-again, off-again, engaged to, off-again, still mostly off-again love interest of Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw.“He was warm, masculine and classic American, just like his furniture,” Carrie says of Aidan in voice-over.Aidan, a character designed to contrast Chris Noth’s withholding Mr. Big and originally scheduled for just three episodes, was also, like much classic American furniture, stolid and unyielding. He wouldn’t let Carrie smoke. He demeaned her interests. When she cheated on him, he punished her. Controlling, judgmental, manipulative — who wants a bedroom set like that?Carrie, apparently. Because as trailers have revealed, Corbett’s Aidan will return to the second season of the well-heeled “Sex and the City” revival, “And Just Like That …,” which premieres on Max on Thursday. And this time around, when people chase him down to declare loyalty to Aidan, Corbett thinks that they just might mean it.“Those fans that didn’t like Aidan — and I know exactly why they didn’t, he was wrong for her — there’s going to be no [expletive] help for those people,” he said.Corbett was speaking late last month, by telephone, from his home in a sleepy town about three hours north of Los Angeles. Actually it was “the wife’s” phone, the wife being the actress and model Bo Derek, as Corbett’s wasn’t working. A request for a video interview had been denied.“I can’t be myself because I’m performing,” he said. “An hour plus is a long time to suck your gut back.”This suggests that Corbett, who came to acting late and more or less by accident, has complicated feelings about performance even as he maintains, he said, a hands-off attitude to his career. To talk to him is to feel not only his shirttails-out, expletive-heavy intimacy, but also his deep ambivalence about his calling, his craft and the show that made him famous.Corbett didn’t always appreciate the way he was typecast by playing Aidan in “Sex and the City,” but he was happy to play the character again.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesCorbett grew up in Wheeling, W.Va., with his mother. After high school, he moved to Southern California to be near his father, a welder, taking a job at a steel plant. Sidelined at 22 by an injury, he enrolled in community college, which mostly bored him. But about a month in, he met some guys in the cafeteria who invited him to their improv class.“I’ve always been a guy that made my friends laugh, a class clown,” he said. “I saw 30 other people just like me in there.” That same day, he dropped his other classes and re-enrolled as an acting student. He took sword fighting; he took ballet. He has never felt that same excitement or that same freedom again.“It’s kind of like drugs,” he said. “You’re chasing that first high.”His transition into professional acting was wobblier. He posed for cheap headshots, whipped up a résumé full of fake credits and supported himself as a hairdresser while he botched almost every audition that came his way, hands shaking, scripts shaking. He had two goals: He wanted to be on television and he wanted to be famous.In 1990, he was cast as the serene, groovy Alaskan radio D.J. in the CBS comedy “Northern Exposure.” “Northern Exposure” ran for five seasons and 110 episodes. It didn’t pay much. But it gave him his first bittersweet taste of celebrity, and it taught him that while fans loved him, they loved him not for any histrionic skill but rather for his rumbling voice, sleepy smile and 6-foot-5-inch frame.“I was the hunky guy and women would gush,” he said. “I don’t think one person has ever come up to me and said, ‘Hey, I think you’re a good actor.’”He had a type, he discovered — handsome, sensitive, not quite a himbo. And in the years after “Northern Exposure,” he didn’t fight it. “You’ve got to go where the money is, right?” he said. The money back then came mostly from TV movies he described as “not great.”He had some standards, though. And in 2000, when he was first offered a role in the third season of “Sex and the City,” he turned it down. He saw himself as more than a guest star. But the showrunner Michael Patrick King, now the creator of “And Just Like That …,” tried to convince him otherwise, intuiting that Corbett could supply the affection and warmth so lacking in Noth’s Big.As one of the main love interests of Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie, Aidan was a nice guy with a manipulative side.Craig Blankenhorn/HBOCorbett and Parker insist the characters’ revived relationship will be healthier. “He’s really, really listening to her now,” he said.Craig Blankenhorn/Max“There’s so few actors that have a relaxed, strong sex appeal,” King said in an interview. “He also has that thing that some of the great male movie stars have, a really low vibration of confidence.”Since Corbett didn’t have HBO, he was sent episodes on VHS. He watched them, and he was still a no. (For one thing, the script required nudity, “and my sweet little mom watched everything I did.”) Eventually he agreed to a meeting with Parker and King, mostly for the free trip to New York. They met at King’s West Village apartment.“I fell in love with both of those cats,” Corbett recalled. “After that hour, I wanted to be around them some more.”Parker also remembered an immediate bond. “I opened the door for him,” she said in a recent phone interview. “He did some sort of gallant, old-fashioned bow. I don’t remember the conversation, except that it was really pleasant and happy.”Once he was on set, she realized that the camera only magnified that charm. “It’s like he wrapped his arms around the camera and merged it into his body,” she said. “He absorbed it.”Three episodes became four. Then five. Then more. When Carrie and Aidan broke up at the end of Season 3, fans sent HBO Popsicle-stick furniture demanding that Corbett be brought back, and he was.He had what he wanted: He was on TV. He was famous. But the fame, more intense than what he’d experienced in “Northern Exposure,” changed his life, and “not in the way that I wanted it to, work wise,” he said.Corbett initially declined “Sex and the City” but changed his mind after meeting with Parker and Michael Patrick King. “I fell in love with both of those cats,” he said.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesThere were such strong associations between Corbett and the role that he struggled to be seen in any other way. He recalled being turned down for other roles he wanted, told that he would be too distracting. His work on “Sex and the City” and in the “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” movies, the first of which was released in 2002, affirmed and limited his type: the nice boyfriend. Then he became the nice husband. Lately, in projects like the “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” movies and their recent spinoff series, “XO, Kitty,” he has charmed a new generation of viewers as the nice dad.“I’ve made friends with the idea of, this is just what I do,” he said. “When the phone rings and it feels like the money’s right and the place is right and the time is right, I’ll go be this guy that these people want.”Colleagues who speak about Corbett tend to overlap him and his characters. “He is a very fun rapscallion who likes to have a good time,” said Nia Vardalos, the writer and star of the “Greek Wedding” films, which seemed to refer equally to actor and role.“He’s a big puppy — how can you not adore a puppy?” said Toni Collette, his co-star in the Showtime series “The United States of Tara.”For Corbett, the boundaries are equally fuzzy, particularly when it comes to Aidan. “The line gets blurry because when they clap the action board, there’s not a change,” he said. “I’m still living the same life.”In “Sex and the City,” that life, for all of Corbett’s warmth, had its darkness. If fans saw Aidan as comfortable and loving, the character was also judgmental and angry. (For Corbett, the line gets blurry here, too: “I get upset. I want to send a [expletive] chair through plate glass windows a couple times a day.”)So why bring him back? Initially, King didn’t. Because he planned to kill off Big in the first season of “And Just Like That …,” he felt he couldn’t immediately summon Carrie’s other major love interest. In 2021, Corbett told a reporter that he would be a part of it, but that was just a prank. (“John’s antic,” King explained.)“I’ve made friends with the idea of, this is just what I do,” Corbett said of the decent, hunky characters he is asked to play.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesBut Corbett did want to come back. “Especially when some of the photos would pop up of them shooting in the streets,” he said. “I would get a little jealous that I wasn’t asked to come back and do a cameo.”By Season 2, enough time had elapsed. King called Corbett and soon he found himself back at Silvercup Studios, where the original “Sex and the City” had filmed. He even brought some of the same clothes.But there were differences, allegedly. Max shared only a few minutes of Aidan screen time, but Corbett and Parker said that Aidan and Carrie’s relationship has mellowed and deepened. Aidan no longer argues with Carrie in the same way, Corbett insisted. He no longer controls her.“He’s really, really listening to her now,” he said.Parker, in her separate call, agreed. “It’s not fevered; it’s not demanding,” she said of the characters’ romance. “There’s so much heat between them, but there isn’t that urgency from him.”So could there be justification for Team Aidan this time? King put it this way: “I didn’t bring Aidan back to fail.”Corbett seemed to want a win for Aidan, though not in any passionate way. Aidan gave him the career he has, even if it has been more narrowly defined than the career he once imagined. But he has made his peace with it. He will likely never be seen as a serious actor, but there are worse things than being a classic American dreamboat.“It’s given me such a wonderful life, and asked so very little in exchange for that big sack of money that I got,” he said of his career. And then, though it wasn’t entirely true, he added, “I’ve gotten everything out of this life that I wanted.”“When the phone rings and it feels like the money’s right and the place is right and the time is right, I’ll go be this guy that these people want,” Corbett said.Chantal Anderson for The New York Times More

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      ‘The Idol’ Season 1, Episode 3 Recap: Tedros Has Notes

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      Turns out that cult-leader types have a lot of opinions about how the women in their lives should look and behave.Season 1, Episode 3: ‘Daybreak’In her 2022 memoir, “I’m Glad My Mom Died,” the actress Jennette McCurdy wrote candidly about her troubled relationship with her nightmare of a stage mother, who wielded power over every aspect of her life and career. Talking to The New York Times, McCurdy explained the somewhat shocking title she chose for her book, saying, “I feel like I’ve done the processing and put in the work to earn a title or a thought that feels provocative.”“The Idol” may not have taken inspiration directly from McCurdy’s story, but the parallels are evident as we are offered more details about Jocelyn’s past in the most recent installment. Like McCurdy, Jocelyn was a child star whose mother abused her. Like McCurdy, Jocelyn also lost that mom to cancer.But instead of offering a nuanced look at an upsetting and complicated parental relationship, where love intermingled with pain, this week’s episode of “The Idol” uses the revelation of what happened to Jocelyn in her childhood to push her deeper into a new abusive relationship: The one she is entangled in with Tedros. It goes for provocation, yes, but it hasn’t done the work to earn it.Tedros has now fully taken hold of Jocelyn. He has moved in and is micromanaging every aspect of her life. He wakes her up and demands they go shopping, telling her she doesn’t have any taste as they try on clothes in a Beverly Hills Valentino store. He threatens to “curb stomp” an employee there whom he perceives to be looking at Jocelyn. Back at home, Tedros makes Jocelyn fire her personal chef, who flirts with her after asking how her probiotic diet is working.His entire entourage has also taken up residence in Jocelyn’s mansion. So it’s not only Tedros who is pushing his ideology onto Jocelyn but also his followers, who preach his ideas that good art comes out of pain. They espouse the idea that one is not allowed to say “no” to anything because every experience, even a bad one, could yield a great song. This results in an insipid discussion in which Chloe and Izaak argue that the death of Robert Plant’s son was necessary because it led him to write Led Zeppelin’s “All My Love.”No one can deny that wonderful art has come out of terrible events, but Tedros’s group believes in an extreme version of that where the art is worth any suffering. They argue that the death of one person may have saved the lives of many more because of the beauty of the song that came from it. The exploitation they are engaging in is obvious. Even the sweet-seeming Chloe pushes Jocelyn to evoke her mother in her music — and this is before Chloe learns the full extent of what Jocelyn’s mom did.Those details emerge during a dinner party, which opens with Jocelyn sweetly thanking those gathered for being there, but devolves into an awkward scene in which Tedros, whom she thanks for teaching her “how to have fun again,” pressures her into divulging her secrets. And that’s after he pushes Xander to share his idea for using the semen-face selfie as an album cover — an image that prompted internet discussions she found humiliating, as she ultimately admits.After berating her that “you make superficial music because you think about superficial things,” Tedros pushes Jocelyn to tell everyone just how her mother hurt her. Jocelyn solemnly describes how her mom used to beat her with a hairbrush, careful to hit her only in places where the camera wouldn’t see. It was a tool of motivation — Jocelyn’s mother used the hairbrush to keep her awake, or to make her learn her lines or dance moves. It was also a tool for control, emerging when Jocelyn was caught smiling to herself. Her mother sometimes hit her hard enough to break skin.Tedros feigns sympathy but also immediately identifies another way to control Jocelyn. He asks her if she misses the “motivation” being hit gave her. She replies, “Sometimes.” He has a retort at the ready: “If you loved the music you were making, would you have felt like it was worth it?” With tears streaming down her face she says, “yes.” He commands her to go get the hair brush.The episode ends with Jocelyn, on all fours, being beaten by Tedros as his followers watch. The shots of her face as he brutally hits her with the hairbrush are interspersed with images of him bathing her. During what appears to be a scene set the next morning, she looks up at him and says, “Thank you for taking care of me.” Then the credits roll.What we are witnessing is obviously the start of an abusive relationship, and yet this show can’t resist titillation. In this finale sequence, Jocelyn is clothed in a see-through lace dress where her thong is visible. The bits in the bathtub are peppered with the nudity that is de rigueur by now. “The Idol” is itself a little bit like Tedros. It is sympathetic to Jocelyn up until a point.Mostly, however, it just wants to use whatever pathos it occasionally generates in service of what it considers entertainment. Jocelyn’s lingering need for her mom, despite the long history of abuse, is worth exploring. It’s not explored here. Instead, Tedros takes over and uses it for his benefit.Liner notes:It’s so distracting to have The Weeknd singing over various scenes. I get that Tesfaye wants to make music for the show, but it is odd to hear his voice in that context when he’s also playing Tedros.Is there some kind of award we can give Rachel Sennott for Leia’s disgusted face?We see a glimpse of Jennie as Dyanne performing in the music video that was supposed to be Jocelyn’s. Is “World Class Sinner” her song now?I feel like there is a real misread of present day pop music dynamics going on here. The genre is more confessional than ever, and the reigning queens of the industry, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, have both used personal experiences in their music to great effect. It’s hard to imagine that record execs would be opposed to letting Jocelyn mine her sadness for her songs, or that Jocelyn would assume that fans wouldn’t find anything relatable about her life.If you want a show that (hilariously) addresses how the pop industry actually sees a star’s mental health crisis as a marketing tool, may I recommend “The Other Two” on Max? More

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      The Outsize Genius of ‘I’m a Virgo’

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      The giant teenager in Boots Riley’s new Amazon Prime series is among television’s boldest moves in a while.Brobdingnag is somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. On the map included in Volume II of his 1726 satire “Gulliver’s Travels,” Jonathan Swift depicts it as an enormous peninsula somewhere north of California. Brobdingnag is the land of the giants: When Gulliver is shipwrecked there, he finds a race of people nearly 60 feet tall, wise and moral, repulsed by his descriptions of a venal and warlike British society. The West Coast no longer teems with such gentle giants, but according to the writer, director and musician Boots Riley, there remains one well south of Brobdingnag, near the spot Swift designates P. Monterey — there’s a giant living in Oakland, Calif.Riley’s new Amazon Prime series, “I’m a Virgo,” is a Swiftian fable by way of Charles Dickens, Ralph Ellison, Alan Moore and Spike Lee. It is, centrally, the tale of Cootie, a once-in-a-generation giant who becomes both a folk hero and a public enemy. As someone tells him in an early episode, “People are always afraid, and you’re a 13-foot-tall Black man.” Cootie’s adoptive parents keep him as sheltered as they can; he grows up watching the action on his block via a periscope. He’s a learned giant — his father requires him to read 10 hours a day — but he’s also electrified by screens, parroting lines from his favorite reality-TV shows. (His mantra — “from that day forward, I knew nothing would stop me from achieving greatness” — is a quote from a “Bachelorette”-style program.) His parents, trying to persuade him to stay in the safety of the two-story apartment they’ve built, show him a scrapbook of giants throughout history, many Black, enslaved or lynched for their gigantism; he will, they clearly fear, be a too-visible man, a projection screen for the fears and desires of others. (This is not a fate reserved for giants alone.) But when Cootie finally leaves the house as a teenager, he falls in love with this world, in all its sublimity and stupidity. Hearing bass for the first time, thumping from a new friend’s trunk, he becomes an angry poet: “It moves through your body like waves,” he tells his parents. “And it sings to your bones.”Riley’s Oakland, like Swift’s own West Coast, is rendered surreal by allegory. It has a housing crisis, police violence and rolling blackouts, but it also has a community of people who shrink to Lilliputian pocket size (they wear receipts for clothes) and a fast-food worker named Flora who can work at a Flash-like hyperspeed. There’s also a rogue white comics artist called the Hero who exacts vigilante justice on his largely Black neighbors — but even the idea of the fascistic law-and-order superhero seems pedestrian here. This show is not subtle about its vision or its allegories. “As a young Black man,” Cootie says, repeating his parents’ warnings, “if you walk down the street, and the police see that you don’t have a job, they send you directly to jail.” His new friends all laugh at his credulousness until one replies, “Metaphorically, that’s how it goes.”One of Cootie’s first rebellions is his insistence on trying a Bing Bang Burger, whose comically unappealing commercials he sees constantly on TV. We’re shown slack-jawed observers making videos before we see Cootie himself, standing in line, hunched over, his back pressed against the fluorescent lights of the burger joint. The actor Jharrel Jerome shows us Cootie’s trepidation by always playing him small, tilting his head against his shoulder, collapsing his frame inward, his lips in an expectant pucker. But when he sees Flora, assembling burgers with blurry speed, there’s a moment of connection. Cootie expands as she hands him his order and calls him “big man.” He bumps into the exit sign on the way out.It is fastidiously, hilariously committed to the bit, constantly doubling down on the logistics of Cootie’s bigness.“I’m a Virgo” comes on the heels of a few ingenious experiments in TV surrealism, from “Atlanta” to “Undone” to the recent farce “Mrs. Davis.” Perhaps Amazon and Riley were emboldened by these examples or energized by the idea of transcending them, because this series has the courage of its confabulations. Its fantastical concept works in metaphor just the same way it works in fact, as it reminds us with proud bluntness. Drunk in the club, Cootie waxes poetic to his friend Felix: “Friends,” he says, “can help you feel the inside of yourself and the rest of the world at the same time.” Felix takes a minute to soak that in before he nods his head and responds, more or less, “Hey, bruh, that’s real.”Premium cable networks and streamers have long built their brands around boundary-pushing and risk, even as their prestige series often settle into safe, predictable formulas. Then there are properties like the ever-expanding Marvel Universe, which might once have used superheroes to dramatize truths about our own world but has now disappeared into its own multiverses, swallowed up by digital battles and green-screen vistas. “I’m a Virgo” is a visual and ideological counterpoint to all this. It uses the conceit of a 13-foot-tall Black man to reach for insights about race, class and injustice, and it is fastidiously, hilariously committed to the bit, constantly doubling down on the logistics of Cootie’s bigness. Plenty of series mess around with television’s narrative structures or genre conventions, but this show is willing to break the most basic visual conventions of how you put humans together onscreen.Its fantastical concept works in metaphor just the same way it works in fact.And so Cootie has to be as real as television can make him. Most of his scenes are filmed using elaborate forced-perspective shots and scale models, not green screens or CGI. You can feel the difference. Cootie tends to look as if the walls are closing in, because they are. The show’s ramshackle, claustrophobic genius can be thrilling. I remember being stunned watching Christopher Nolan depict the depths of a wormhole using only practical effects; my awe was not dissimilar watching Boots Riley figure out how to shoot a slapstick, ultimately pretty sexy love scene between a normal-size woman and a 13-foot-tall man without leaning on digital effects for every frame. We see Flora and Cootie largely in close-ups, Flora centered neatly in her frame while Cootie fills his to the edges. There are occasional two-shots that use dolls as stand-ins, but mostly the scene uses sound to keep the actors in contact. The scene occupies nearly half its episode, as they work to figure out how their act of love can even be consummated, and Riley figures how to show it to us, and we learn how to see it — but it’s sweet, not leering. Usually, in Riley’s frame, the giant man is the real thing, and the world around him is either distorted or built anew. With Flora, whose own strangeness the show also honors and protects, the world reimagines itself in relation to the giant.The visual gags exist alongside other spectacular fantasies. One of Cootie’s friends organizes a general strike to protest the inequities of the health care system. There’s a guerrilla attack on a power plant. A vigilante cop is converted to communism. (What’s a wilder pitch: that the power of argument persuades a law-and-order ideologue to abandon carceral capitalism or that one kid in Oakland turns out to be really, really tall?) Riley, himself an avowed communist, has always been an unabashedly political artist, but what’s radical here isn’t the politics alone; it’s what the politics free the show to do. “I’m a Virgo” makes the idea of tearing up systems of power feel less destructive than boundless, and it does this by tethering its political vision to a revolution in the way we see human bodies onscreen. Its narrative feels almost spontaneous, teeming with strange and unexpected life. Riley has made his radicalism feel verdant, generative, self-sustaining. In the land of the only living giant, that’s real.Opening illustration: Source photographs from Prime VideoPhillip Maciak is The New Republic’s TV critic and the author of the book “Avidly Reads Screen Time.” He teaches at Washington University in St. Louis. More