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      Late Night Sums Up the Silicon Valley Bank Situation

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      “It’s pretty bad when the very first time you ever hear of a bank is when they’re going out of business,” Stephen Colbert said on Monday.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.Don’t Bank on ItOn Friday, federal regulars seized control of Silicon Valley Bank, which was the 16th largest bank in the United States before its collapse.“It’s pretty bad when the very first time you ever hear of a bank is when they’re going out of business,” Stephen Colbert joked on Monday.“I don’t see how a bank could lose all their money that fast. Why don’t they just attach the money to those chains they put on the pens?” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It’s never good when people who are watching CNBC are shrieking louder than the people watching ‘Scream VI.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Silicon Valley Bank knew they were in trouble when they saw themselves in the Oscars’ ‘In Memoriam.’” — JIMMY FALLON“On the bright side, it was refreshing to hear about a crash that had nothing to do with a self-driving Tesla, don’t you think?” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Safe Word Edition)“President Biden spoke this morning about Friday’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and reassured Americans the country’s financial system is safe. But remember, this is a guy whose whole financial system is definitely a coffee can on a high shelf.” — SETH MEYERS“That’s right, President Biden reassured Americans the country’s financial system is safe. OK, I think the fact that you’re talking about a bank collapse proves it isn’t. That’s like going to a funeral and giving a eulogy about how Nana’s going to be fine.” — SETH MEYERS“Biden tried to put everyone at ease. He said, ‘Don’t worry, I got through the first Great Depression. I’ll get through this one.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Hearing from Biden actually did make me feel better, because you know if it were really bad, he would have been like, ‘Kamala, you take this one.’” — JIMMY FALLON“In response, Trump said, ‘It’s times like these where we need a president with experience of multiple bankruptcies.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingPresident Joe Biden took this week’s “The Daily Show” host Kal Penn on a tour of the Oval Office.What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe stand-up comic Mae Martin will talk about their upcoming Netflix special, “Sap,” on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutSpecial Agent Allen Grove, who helps lead the F.B.I.’s art crime unit.Jake Michaels for The New York TimesThe F.B.I.’s art crime team is seeing increased interest in its work. More

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      ‘Perry Mason’ Season 2, Episode 2 Recap: Mason for the Defense

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      Perry gets back to his true calling after his nose tells him something smells funny about the Brooks McCutcheon murder. That was fast.Season 2, Episode 2: ‘Chapter Ten’You can take Perry Mason out of criminal defense lawyering, but you can’t take the criminal defense lawyer out of Perry Mason. That Perry discovers this with no evident chagrin is a testament to the truth of it. You don’t gain a sourpuss like his without a keen sense of the injustice of the world; on the evidence of last season, he has the legal know-how to do something about it, and he’s not about to forget it.His true vocation comes calling again in the form of the Gallardo brothers, Mateo (Peter Mendoza) and Rafael (Fabrizio Guido). These two young Mexican American men have been charged with the oil heir Brooks McCutcheon’s murder by D.A. Hamilton Burger, who assigns his lieutenant Thomas Milligan (Mark O’Brien) as lead prosecutor. There’s just one problem, from the look of things: The Gallardo brothers didn’t do it.At first, Perry and Della are reluctant to take the case, primarily because, well, they don’t take criminal cases anymore. But for both legal minds, the wheels of justice are in motion. Della seizes an opportunity as Burger’s beard for a charity event at the home of the oil magnate Camilla Nygaard (Hope Davis) to try to convince him to accept a plea. (He demurs.) Funny how oil money keeps coming up.Perry, meanwhile, straight-up breaks into impound to case the car in which Brooks was shot, discovering that the official line — McCutcheon was shot by one of the nervous Gallardos during a random stickup — doesn’t match the bullet’s trajectory. After a jailhouse meeting with the brothers further debunks the theory, Perry and Della agree to take the case. Pulling a fat monthly retainer out of the grocer Sunny Gryce in order to bankroll the defense is all it takes.Almost all. To get to the bottom of things, they’ll need a top-notch private investigator, and with Perry’s old partner Pete Strickland working for Burger, the ex-cop Paul Drake is the man for the job. Paul is reluctant to take on another job from Perry, especially after his recent gig with Strickland landed a relatively decent loan shark behind bars. Ironically, it’s Perry’s admission that he has no way to win back Paul’s trust that convinces him that Perry can be trusted.After some nosing around — including in an evidence box tampered with by the same shadowy, fedora’d figure who kept popping up in the pilot — Team Mason discovers that Brooks’s gambling boat was deep in debt to a variety of stiffed contractors, most of whom were retained because the ship is falling apart.Perry and Paul pay a visit to the ailing vessel, with Paul forced to take the employee taxi. In short order, Perry stumbles across Brooks’s cocktail-waitress lover, bearing bruises on her neck from the rough extracurriculars we learned about in the season premiere. Paul learns from a chef that only one produce supplier will do business with them anymore. And the two men narrowly escape the clutches of the crooked Detective Holcomb, whose voice thrums with a lethality he barely bothers to conceal as Perry makes his very public escape.But some elements of the case remain outside Perry’s sphere of perception: to wit, that shadowy figure and his paymaster, an associate of Brooks’s father named Crippen (John Prosky). After the mystery man murders Charlie Goldstein (Matthew Siegan), the boat’s last produce supplier standing, Crippen torches a grand jury subpoena for Brooks that recalls the one served to the slain carrots-and-potatoes man earlier in the episode.It has all the makings of a grand conspiracy of the Los Angeles noir subspecies, but the most impressive thing about the plot of “Perry Mason” so far this season is how dependent it is on the charisma of the characters and the performers behind them. We can start with Juliet Rylance as Della, a character who is as compelling in a red gown and white gloves at a dull charity event as she is when she’s hollering at a boxing match with her new lady friend. As Drake and Holcomb, the actors Chris Chalk and Eric Lange deliver memorable line readings: There’s a lifetime of hard-earned cynicism in Drake’s telling Perry he doesn’t know how they’ll get to a point of trust, and there’s an unmistakable promise of violence in Holcomb’s invitation to Perry to return to his boat “anytime … anytime.”The star of the show in every way remains Matthew Rhys as Mason. Although he does his best to conceal it, he’s still every bit as sexy an actor as he was as Philip Jeffries in “The Americans”; I found myself thinking that it’s a good thing that Della’s romantic inclinations are so firmly established, otherwise the chemistry between him and Rylance might go up like a torched casino boat.But Rhys’s primary talent here is looking not outraged by but disgusted with injustice. From his fury over getting played by Milligan outside the courthouse to his dogged determination to look into the Gallardos’ case, he has the air of a man made physically ill by seeing decent people get jammed up. If you’re going to play a role synonymous with the successful defense of the innocent, that’s a vibe that serves you in good stead.From the case files:Here’s where I admit I’m not a big mystery guy; I’ve got nothing against the genre, it’s just not where my bread is buttered. But I think this redounds to my benefit because I spend approximately zero time trying to figure out whodunit before Perry, Paul, and Della do. I’m not a practiced enough viewer to delude myself into thinking I have any chance.From Davis as the oil tycoon to Gretchen Mol as Perry’s ex-wife to Katherine Waterston as their son’s obviously smitten teacher, this episode drops so many impressive actors on us in such quick succession that it feels like a flex.O’Brien earned my undying admiration with his turn on “Halt and Catch Fire,” a bonafide Peak TV masterpiece. He took a potentially thankless role as the new love interest of Mackenzie Davis’s lead character, Cameron Howe, and showed you what she saw in him, a more impressive feat than it sounds.Remember when I noted that there was no graphic violence in the season premiere? I suppose it depends on your definition of “graphic,” but audibly squishing a guy’s head like a melon is violent all right!I sometimes wish the wives on this show were given more to do than worry about their husbands. Then again, I suppose they wish the same thing. More

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      ‘The Last of Us’ Finale: Who Are the Good Guys?

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      In its stunning first-season finale, “The Last of Us” became a video game — and, in the process, morally potent TV.If you watch HBO’s “The Last of Us” there’s a good chance you know it’s based on a video game, even if you’ve never held a controller in your life. (I’ve never played the game, though before I reviewed the series I watched a 10-hour play-through video on YouTube, which I can safely say was a first in my career as a TV critic.)You didn’t really need to know the series’s origins to enjoy the zombie-apocalypse drama, though, and for most of the first season, it was easy to forget them. But in the season finale’s bloody and morally harrowing climax, “The Last of Us” fully embraced its video-game roots — and by doing so, became powerful TV.The setup: After a perilous cross-country journey, Joel (Pedro Pascal) has finally delivered Ellie (Bella Ramsey) to a medical center run by a resistance group called the Fireflies. Ellie, a scrappy teen immune to the zombie fungus, may be humanity’s only hope. But Joel learns at the last moment that the operation to extract a possible cure from her will kill her.As you’d expect, he springs into action. When he overpowers his guards in a stairwell, the narrative shifts into game mode. He collects the dead soldiers’ weapons in the same way a game character resupplies inventory. As he blasts his way through the hospital, the over-the-shoulder shots mimic the point-of-view vantage of gameplay; the clank of shell casings recall the sound design of modern games. You half expect to see a health and ammo meter somewhere in the corner of the screen.We have seen Joel pull off some spectacular fights, and the history of TV and cinema tells us to expect a battle royal here. This is not that. It’s a slaughter. The ambient noise fades behind a mournful score as Joel mows down the overmatched guards, as if he’s playing on easy mode. He shoots armed opponents and unarmed ones, grimly and mechanically.Finally, he makes it to the operating room, where Ellie has just gone under anesthesia. Point-blank, he executes the surgeon — who, however unethically, is trying to salvage an effort to save the human race — then orders the terrified nurses to unhook Ellie.He saves her. He wins. Isn’t this what you wanted?When “The Last of Us” was first announced, it may have seemed like a mismatch for HBO, that citadel of mature TV drama — at least if your image of video game adaptations was formed by “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.” But a video game, even or especially a shoot-em-up, can actually have a lot in common with the antihero drama format.Inside the Dystopian World of ‘The Last of Us’The post-apocalyptic video game that inspired the TV series “The Last of Us” won over players with its photorealistic animation and a morally complex story.Game Review: “I found it hard to get past what it embraces with a depressing sameness, particularly its handling of its female characters,” our critic wrote of “The Last of Us” in 2013.‘Left Behind’: “The Last of Us: Left Behind,” a prologue designed to be played in a single sitting, was an unexpected hit in 2014.2020 Sequel: “The Last of Us Part II,” a tale of entrenched tribalism in a world undone by a pandemic, took a darker and unpredictable tone that left critics in awe.Playing the Game: Two Times reporters spent weeks playing the sequel in the run-up to its release. These were their first impressions.Many great HBO dramas, going back to “The Sopranos,” have worked by making you share the perspective of imperfect protagonists. You may find Tony Soprano repellent, but you’re along for the ride. You spend time with him, you share in his conflicts, you laugh at his jokes. The act of following someone in a narrative makes you complicit — you want Tony’s story to keep going — which challenges you to question what you want and why you want it.Nothing makes you inhabit the experience of the protagonist quite like a video game. There is a challenge, enemies, a goal. You control the point-of-view character, and you want to win. So you are on the side of Mario, not Donkey Kong; the lone gunslinger, not the cannon fodder in the hallways.There is a history of games, including “The Last of Us,” that use this dynamic to make players confront complicity much as cable dramas do with viewers. The 2012 game Spec Ops: The Line puts the player in the position of a special-forces soldier who commits atrocities in the name of completing the mission. (“You are still a good person,” a loading screen taunts the player.)The “Last of Us” finale puts the controller, figuratively, in the viewer’s hand. You share Joel’s perspective. You have the gun. You have come to know Ellie, to laugh and grieve with her, to love her. You want her to live, and you have the charge of protecting her. So everyone standing in the way needs to die. Humanity will need to find some other way to save itself.Joel (Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) have overcome many threats together but their mission was intended to be for the benefit of humanity as a whole.Liane Hentscher/HBOWhat complicates the scene is that no one is entirely the good guy here. The Fireflies didn’t give Ellie the chance to choose her fate. But the scene also doesn’t offer the easy comfort of framing Joel as the underdog beating the bad guys. There are only people making lousy choices, trying to survive.In a conventional zombie story or game, what Joel does would be the right thing, the only option. Zombie narratives like “The Walking Dead” tend toward a simple moral framework: The world has gone to hell, the survivors have reverted to beasts, and all you can do is look out for you and yours. Pursuing noble obligations to a larger community only gets you killed.As my colleague Michelle Goldberg has written, “The Last of Us” has sometimes embraced this essentially conservative outlook, celebrating the wisdom of building fences and hoarding guns. But not wholly. Yes, there are raiders and cannibals out there, but Joel and Ellie also stay over in Jackson, Wyo., now a thriving communist society that does not, contra what “The Walking Dead” has led us to expect, hide a terrible secret.More important, as the finale makes painfully clear, the series rejects the easy moral escape clause of “It’s us against the world.” As much as Joel and Ellie may be a self-sufficient unit, they are still part of the world. Their choices have ramifications beyond themselves. And here, “protecting your own” may mean millions more dead, somewhere offscreen. The consequences of your beating the final level are not, whatever you might say, above your pay grade.Which is why, as disturbing as Joel’s shooting spree is, it is not the most chilling thing he does in the episode. The finale, like the video game, saves this for the end.We rejoin Joel driving away from the Firefly compound with Ellie. When she wakes up, he lies to her about what happened. “Turns out there are a whole lot more like you,” he says. But the Firefly doctors couldn’t figure out how to reproduce the immunity effect. “They’ve actually stopped looking for a cure.”The Fireflies were going to take Ellie’s life. Joel takes her hope.When I reviewed “The Last of Us” before the season started, I could talk about his act only in general terms. The series is “an extended horror story of single parenting,” I wrote. “Joel’s struggle is a heightened version of the everyday experience of how being responsible for a vulnerable life makes you vulnerable yourself, how it can make you do unforgivable things for them — or to them — in the name of protection.”Joel, as we now know, watched his daughter die at the beginning of the outbreak. It is not lost on anyone that he sees Ellie as a surrogate child. And to this point, under the worst conditions, he has done what a parent should: He has protected her and given her the wherewithal to face the dangers of the larger world and to accept her responsibility to it.But he fails Ellie in the way that many parents fail their children: out of love and fear. Maybe he doesn’t want her to feel guilty. Maybe he doesn’t want her to hate him. Maybe he suspects that, if she had the choice, she would have agreed to save the world instead of herself. She gave us good reason to believe that earlier, when Joel offered to turn around and leave with her. “After all we’ve been through, everything I’ve done,” she said. “It can’t be for nothing.”Joel’s tender betrayal of Ellie is unbearable partly because of the narrative structure “The Last of Us” borrowed from the video game. Ellie is, in game terms, a “playable character.” In the game, you play as Ellie while Joel is laid up with his wound. In the series, you join her point of view in the last two episodes before the finale, watching her fall in love in a flashback and then defend her own life while saving Joel’s.We have already been told that Joel has done horrible things to survive the apocalypse. But the unforgivable thing he does here is to make Ellie into a non-player character again, denying her the agency to be the protagonist of her own life.The second season will likely explore the fallout from Joel’s actions.Liane Hentscher/HBOIs it permanent? Maybe not. Just before the credits, Ellie questions Joel: “Swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies is true.” He sticks to his story. She says, “OK,” but there’s a disquiet in her eyes. Is she accepting that she is no longer humanity’s hope for a cure? Or that she gave Joel a chance to tell the truth and can no longer trust him?This may be the question that hangs over the next season. With this gut-punch of a finale, “The Last of Us” has made its stakes about something bigger than simply keeping Ellie alive. All of us, it says, have the right to play our own game. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Lucky Hank’ and ‘The Hours’

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      A new comedy series starring Bob Odenkirk comes to AMC, and the Metropolitan Opera’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” premieres on PBS.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, March 13-19. Details and times are subject to change.MondayPaul Newman, left, and Robert Redford in “The Sting.”Universal PicturesTHE STING (1973) 8 p.m. on TCM. Set in Illinois in the late 1930s, this seven-time Academy Award-winning comedy follows the grifter Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) as he teams up with an experienced con artist, Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman), to take revenge on the crime boss responsible for killing their mutual friend. As their plot unfolds, however, things don’t go according to plan. “‘The Sting’ has a conventional narrative, with a conventional beginning, middle and end, but what one remembers are the set pieces of the sort that can make a slapped-together Broadway show so entertaining,” Vincent Canby wrote in his review for The New York Times.TuesdayFrom left, Tyler DiChiara, Olivia Rose Keegan, Oscar Morgan, Fallon Smythe, Navia Robinson in “Gotham Knights.”Amanda Mazonkey/CWSUPERMAN AND LOIS 8 p.m. on The CW. After defeating supervillains and monsters in season two, Clark Kent (Tyler Hoechlin) and Lois Lane (Elizabeth Tulloch) are back for a third season. Now working at The Smallville Gazette, the couple finds their peace cut short when Lois is given a dangerous undercover assignment and their sons deal with their own dilemmas. Pulled in different directions, the Kents must work to keep their family together.GOTHAM KNIGHTS 9 p.m. on The CW. Set in Gotham City, this new series follows Bruce Wayne’s adopted son, Turner Hayes (Oscar Morgan), after he is framed for Batman’s murder and forges an unlikely alliance with the children of the superhero’s enemies. With the district attorney and police chasing them, the Knights will have to save themselves and the city.WednesdayALL THE KING’S MEN (1949) 6 p.m. on TCM. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Robert Penn Warren, this three-time Academy Award winning film tells the story of Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford), an ambitious politician from the rural South who campaigns against corruption, only to become corrupt himself. Loosely based on the rise and fall of Huey Long, the governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932, the film “follows this disillusioned fellow as he gets the hang of politics and discovers the strange intoxication of his own unprincipled charm,” Bosley Crowther wrote for The Times.ThursdayTHE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN (2022) 8 p.m. on HBO Signature. This Academy Award-nominated film from the director Martin McDonagh takes place at the tail end of the Irish Civil War in 1923 on a remote island. The lifelong friendship between Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson) abruptly ends when Colm decides Pádraic is too dull for him. “McDonagh’s new film embellishes the cartography without necessarily breaking new ground. It’s a good place to start if you’re new to his work, and cozily — which is also to say horrifically — familiar if you’re already a fan,” A.O. Scott wrote in a review for The Times.FridayKathleen Kim and Renée Fleming stand singing onstage, surrounded by women in pastel house dresses holding bouquets of flowers. Kim is in a yellow sweater and red plaid skirt, and Fleming is in a white skirt suit.Evan Zimmerman/Metropolitan OperaGREAT PERFORMANCES AT THE MET: THE HOURS 9 p.m. on PBS. Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning book and Oscar-nominated film of the same name, both inspired by Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway,” this opera connects a single day in the lives of three women across time: Woolf herself, writing her book; a midcentury homemaker, Laura, reading Woolf’s book; and a 1990s editor named Clarissa who, like Clarissa Dalloway, is organizing a party. “It is rendered as only opera can be: with an interplay of divas — Renée Fleming, Kelli O’Hara and Joyce DiDonato — who are enveloped by a restless and lush orchestra, and share a dream space with an ensemble of dancers who guide and observe them,” Joshua Barone wrote for The Times.SaturdayAMERICAN MASTERS: TWYLA MOVES 10:30 p.m. on WLIW21. Through original interviews, videos of Twyla Tharp at work and archival footage of select performances from her more than 160 dances, this documentary from the Emmy-winning filmmaker Steven Cantor delves into the life, career and creative process of the legendary choreographer. What’s most revelatory about the documentary, Gia Kourlas wrote for The Times, “is the way it dashes past those overarching themes to highlight something else: her wholly original dancing body. Like the woman living inside of it, it’s both meticulous and wild. This body has guts.”SundayEmilia Schüle in “Marie Antoinette.”Caroline Dubois/Canal+LUCKY HANK 9 p.m. on AMC, IFC, BBCA and SUNDANCE. Adapted from the novel “Straight Man” by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Russo, this new series is a midlife crisis tale starring the Emmy-nominated actor Bob Odenkirk (“Better Call Saul”) and Mireille Enos (“The Killing”). Narrated in the first person, William Henry “Hank” Devereaux, Jr. (Odenkirk) is the bitter chairman of the English department at a poorly funded university in rural Pennsylvania, and Enos plays his wife, Lily, who’s also questioning her life choices.MARIE ANTOINETTE 10 p.m. on PBS. This new period drama focuses on the complex life of a teenage Marie Antoinette (Emilia Schüle) as she is sent away from Austria to marry Louis XVI, the Dauphin of France (Louis Cunningham). The series follows Marie as she learns the rules of French court, tries to obey her mother — the Empress of Austria (Tony nominee Marthe Keller) — and deals with Louis’s solitary personality, all while struggling to be true to herself. More

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      Jenna Ortega Hosts Oscars-Ready ‘Saturday Night Live’

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      Jenna Ortega hosted an episode that featured appearances by Fred Armisen and also took aim at Tucker Carlson and a Tennessee politician with questionable Instagram habits.There was a time — say, just before a certain incident near the end of last year’s Academy Awards show — when the ceremony itself was a dignified proceeding and the embarrassment was largely confined to the preshow red carpet program.That’s the spirit that “Saturday Night Live” tried to return to this weekend with an opening sketch that imagined the celebrity arrival for Sunday’s Oscars, complete with vacuous hosts and overly excited nominees.“S.N.L.,” which was hosted by Jenna Ortega and featured the musical guest the 1975, began with an “Access Hollywood” Oscars preview emceed by Marcello Hernández (as Mario Lopez) and Heidi Gardner (as “either Maria Menounos or Kit Hoover, they haven’t told me which yet,” she said).Following a plug for their sponsor, Ozempic (“I guess everyone in Hollywood has diabetes”), they welcomed Kenan Thompson, who was playing Mike Tyson, now overseeing Oscars security for the purposes of this sketch.“I am ready to handle the proceedings judiciously and expeditiously,” Thompson said. “But I should warn you, the following things will set me off: clapping, statues of gold people and shows that last more than two hours. And also hearing the phrase ‘the magic of movies.’”He added that a few changes had been made since the previous Oscars show: “This year all the nominees have been given Tasers,” Thompson said. “All the seat fillers have been given guns. And Jimmy Kimmel has been given a flame thrower.”For safety purposes Thompson said that Will Smith had been surreptitiously given an Apple AirTag to track his location. “We know exactly where he’ll be at all times,” he said. “Unless of course he changes pants and then he could be anywhere.”The hosts then welcomed Chloe Fineman, playing the Oscar nominee Jamie Lee Curtis of “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Fineman, however, wanted to sing the praises of “Tár,” which she said was “iconic, vivacious, carnivorous, queer, vague, confusing, long, partially in German, and it was hands down the funniest movie of the year.”Playing bookmakers from the online betting site DraftKings, Andrew Dismukes and Devon Walker gave odds on possible Oscars events: a young actor bringing out an old actor in a wheelchair and regretting it immediately (3-1); an actress who made $20 million last year saying the phrase “we are all Ukraine” (2-1); and someone from the in memoriam segment still being alive (10-1).They also predicted various celebrities who could make surprise appearances at the Oscars, a list that included Chris Rock, Jared from Subway, Armie Hammer, the judges that overturned Roe v. Wade and George Santos pretending to be Tom Cruise.Sure enough, the hosts were soon joined by Bowen Yang, playing Santos (but claiming to be Cruise).“No, no,” Yang insisted. “I’m definitely Thomas Q. Cruise, star of this year’s blockbuster film ‘Top Gun 2: Top Bottom.’”He added, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go be everyone, everywhere, all at once.”‘S.N.L.’ Alumnus of the WeekAfter Ortega used a portion of her monologue to shout out Fred Armisen, the former “S.N.L.” cast member who plays Uncle Fester in her Netflix series, “Wednesday,” it was a given that Armisen would later show up in a sketch on the show.But who could have foreseen it would be in this sketch, about the filming of a remake of “The Parent Trap,” where Ortega’s character is cast as a pair of reunited twin sisters and Armisen is the 56-year-old crew member who reads opposite her when her body double calls out sick for the day. We give the sketch extra credit for observing that if “The Parent Trap” were remade today, the parents in question probably would be played by Ed Helms and Leslie Mann.Filmed Segment of the WeekIt was reported earlier this week that the postproduction editors at “S.N.L.” have set a deadline of April 1 for a potential strike as they seek equitable pay, health benefits and other provisions from the show. If an agreement isn’t reached before the next live broadcast, “S.N.L.” could lose out on segments like this one: a filmed sketch that presents itself as a sendup of a teenage soap opera, where a young couple played by Ortega and Hernández are on the verge of breaking up in the parking lot of a Waffle House.Of course all the real action is taking place inside the Waffle House, just beyond the windows and slightly out of focus, where various cast members play the employees and dissolute customers feuding with each other. “S.N.L.” may be a fundamentally live show, but film — and the sight of a bare-chested Mikey Day with cornrows and pierced nipples — is crucial to the program too.Weekend Update Jokes of the WeekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on the Oscars and President Biden’s proposed budget.As his screen showed images of former President Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Jost began:This weekend, bitter rivals who have been desperately pandering for votes and trying to force their politics on America will finally face off in person. I’m of course talking about tomorrow’s Oscars. The Motion Picture Academy has rejected a request from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to make an appearance during the Oscars. But they promised that “Volodymyr Zelensky” will be how John Travolta pronounces “Viola Davis.” Organizers of the Oscars said they changed the color of the arrival carpet from red to Champagne so the mood would be more mellow. But I don’t know, switching from red to Champagne usually turns me into a full-on bitch.Che continued:President Biden proposed his budget that would help fund Medicare with a 25 percent tax on billionaires. Ha, take that, Rihanna. President Biden’s proposed budget included $400 million to counter Chinese disinformation. It will target the No. 1 source of Chinese disinformation: fortune cookies.Weekend Update Guest of the WeekAn awkward television interview with Lt. Gov. Randy McNally of Tennessee, in which he tried to explain why he’d published approving comments on racy Instagram photos posted by a 20-year-old gay man, yielded a bounty of material for Molly Kearney, who impersonated McNally in a desk-side segment on Weekend Update.While the real-life McNally (who also serves as speaker of the Tennessee senate) has backed new laws in the state designed to restrict drag performances in public spaces and ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors, Kearney said, “I believe a woman should be in the home and a man should be 143 pounds of dancing to Dua Lipa.” Told by Jost that these online interactions did not appear to be innocent, Kearney replied, “I’m just looking out for the little guy — every Tom, Dick and hairless.” More

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      6 Books About Mushrooms for Fans of ‘The Last of Us’

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      If “The Last of Us” has you unnerved by fungi, these six books can offer some new perspective. (Our spore-bearing, mysterious little neighbors aren’t completely evil — promise.)On Sunday, HBO will air the Season 1 finale of the post-apocalyptic drama “The Last of Us,” a video game adaptation that has impressed critics and viewers with its sensitive depiction of people finding reasons to survive in a broken world. And what broke that world? Well, that’s a complicated question. Human nature, for sure. Government overreach, arguably. And, oh yeah … mushrooms.The plague that devastates humanity in “The Last of Us” can be traced back to a genus of ascomycete fungi known as cordyceps, which infects people’s brains, turning them into ferocious monsters. This is just the latest in a long history of mushroom slander in pop culture. From the children’s book “Babar the Elephant” to the movie “Phantom Thread,” all too often artists see mushrooms as not just creepy to look at but downright dangerous.But not always! For some different perspectives on how we can live alongside our spore-bearing, umbrella-shaped little neighbors, check out these books.If “The Last of Us” has you nervous about fungi, these books may help put you at ease.Liane Hentscher/HBOEntangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, by Merlin SheldrakeAnyone in search of fun facts about fungi should start with this collection of historical anecdotes and scientific inquiry, written by a British biologist who knows a lot about the symbiotic relationships between mushrooms and other living creatures. Sheldrake writes about mushrooms as food, as medicine, as a building material and as an advanced communications network — as works of astonishing organic art, in other words. As our critic Jennifer Szalai wrote, “Reading it left me not just moved but altered, eager to disseminate its message of what fungi can do.”Fantastic Fungi Community Cookbook, by Eugenia BoneA James Beard Award-nominated food and science journalist, Bone has written multiple books about mushrooms, including the lively overview “Mycophilia: Revelations From the Weird World of Mushrooms.” But for those primarily interested in consuming these weird little protuberances, Bone combined her own research with input from foragers, chefs and mycologists to produce a cookbook filled with delicious recipes and enticing photography. (Bone also contributed to a documentary by Louie Schwartzberg called “Fantastic Fungi,” available on Netflix.)The Secret Life of Fungi: Discoveries from a Hidden World, by Aliya WhiteleyBest known as a science-fiction writer, not a scientist, Whiteley brings a fascination with the alien aspects of nature to this more informal survey. She takes a personal approach to the subject, describing a lifelong preoccupation with mushrooms: how they look, how they taste and how they reproduce. With a different framing, the wilder tidbits in the book — including many details about how these organisms can both destroy and create — could be terrifying. Instead, they’re presented as miniature miracles.The Way Through the Woods: On Mushrooms and Mourning, by Long Litt WoonPart memoir, part anthropological study and part celebration of life, this book tells the story of how Long responded to the death of her husband by following through on a plan they made to take a class about mushrooms. Learning more about fungi — and getting to know the habits and the obsessions of other people who are fascinated by them — changed the author’s perspective on perseverance and grief. As our critic Sarah Lyall wrote, “Seeing Long’s capacity for wonder and even contentment in the midst of her sadness feels like seeing tiny shoots of grass peeking from the ash in a landscape stripped bare by fire.”Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-GarciaToo much positivity in the books above? Try this horror-tinged mystery novel, about a 1950s debutante named Noemí, who travels from Mexico City to an imposing rural mansion to rescue her cousin Catalina from the mysterious Doyle family. Noemí’s snooping about the Doyles turns up some startling revelations, including their reliance on a special strain of mushroom that helps keep them healthy, strong and preternaturally powerful. Even here, though, the fungi are not the bad guys. Their impressive potency is just being misused by the malevolent.Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: A Pop-up Adaptation, by Lewis Carroll. Illustrated by Robert Sabuda.We can’t leave this topic behind without mentioning one of the most memorable images in all of children’s literature: the hookah-smoking caterpillar coiled atop a mushroom cap, urging the lost and confused Alice to take a bite from his perch to grow either larger or smaller. There have been many editions of Carroll’s proto-psychedelic saga since it was first published in 1865; but this pop-up book, illustrated and engineered by Robert Sabuda, is particularly amazing. Look for the caterpillar’s mushroom hidden under one of the book’s many little flaps — because as always, fungi flourish in the dark, taking root where we least expect them. More

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      A History Professor Takes On Hollywood

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      The life of a scholar used to be simpler, with success or failure whittled down to an easy dictum: “Publish or perish.”Today it’s more like publish and podcast or perish.“The definition of ‘public intellectual’ has really changed, and I’m proud to be a part of that,” Natalia Mehlman Petrzela said, moments after delivering a lecture to a class of undergraduates.Dr. Petrzela, an associate professor of history at the New School in New York, belongs to a group of scholars who are fluent in pop culture. In addition to publishing her work in peer-reviewed publications, she often presents her research through podcasts and other media outlets. And in a nod to her embrace of the new media economy, she has a side hustle: fitness instructor.But her decision to mix it up beyond the halls of academe has also landed her in the middle of a nasty social media drama and a Hollywood dispute. “This is the price of participation in a public sphere that is enormously different than academia,” she said.Estelle Freedman, a history professor at Stanford University who advised Dr. Petrzela on her Ph.D. thesis, described her as “a very serious scholar and a public intellectual who is quite unique in imagining, ‘How do we get scholarship out into the world and affect social change?’”Dr. Petrzela said she aims to be a “history communicator,” someone who’s able to reach large numbers of people with deeply researched works on the subjects that interest her. “I’ve got to meet the established standards of publishing in journals and being peer-reviewed,” she said, “but I’m also doing this other stuff and fighting for the legitimacy of topics that venture outside of politics and policy.”In her book “Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession,” Dr. Petrzela describes the cultural significance of fitness celebrities including Jack LaLanne and Richard Simmons and traces the rise of jogging, Jazzercise, yoga and Peloton. The book was published last month by the University of Chicago Press.Fitness is a topic that can easily be denigrated as an expression of trendy vanity, Dr. Petrzela said. “For that reason, I thought it was important that it was peer-reviewed and released by an esteemed press,” she said. “I don’t want to give fodder to skeptics who would say, ‘This is not serious.’”Cultural history is not a new discipline, but the academics who have ventured into that territory have tended to focus on eminent men, according to Nicole Hemmer, an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University.“Historians have studied popular culture throughout the 20th century and beyond, but the topics that have been taken seriously are those like Bob Dylan, his songs and political change,” Dr. Hemmer said. “Taking a serious look at the socioeconomic genesis and impact of Orangetheory and Peloton is pretty novel, and Natalia has put herself on the cutting edge of a realm of scholarship.”Dr. Petrzela’s wanderings from traditional paths of academia have also led her to podcasting. Along with Dr. Hemmer and another historian, Neil J. Young, she is the host of “Past Present,” a weekly show that analyzes cultural trends. In recent episodes, the three have taken a historical lens to “nepo-babies” — that is, the role of family relationships in Hollywood — and Ozempic, a diabetes medication that has gained popularity as a weight-loss drug.She has also found herself in the middle of the furious debates that are a daily part of social media.Late last year, Time magazine published an interview with Dr. Petrzela that included a mention of her research indicating that, in the early 1900s, amid an influx of immigrants into the United States, some exercise proponents encouraged white women to work out so that they could be strong enough to populate the country with white babies. Time’s headline seized on that point: “The White Supremacist Origins of Exercise, and 6 Other Surprising Facts About the History of U.S. Physical Fitness.”In a post on Instagram, Donald J. Trump Jr. reacted to the article, saying, “Remember folks if it’s not climate change it’s white supremacy.” Amid the criticism that followed, Dr. Petrzela said she received death threats. “It escalated into a Twitter storm about ‘the woke professor’ who says exercise is racist, which was not the way I dreamed of introducing my book to the public,” she said.Dr. Petrzela was raised in Newton, Mass., the child of two professors of comparative literature at Boston University. Growing up, she hated sports and earned P.E. credits by taking a step-aerobics class at a Jewish Community Center. It was love at first v-step. “I couldn’t believe how much joy I felt doing something I previously thought I hated,” she said.After graduating from Columbia University, she completed stints as an analyst at an investment bank and a public-school teacher before earning a Ph.D. in history at Stanford University. Around the time she was defending her doctoral thesis, she became a Lululemon ambassador. The thesis became the basis of her first book, “Classroom Wars: Language, Sex and the Making of Modern Political Culture,” published by Oxford University Press in 2015.While working on “Classroom Wars,” she moved back to New York, where her boyfriend (now husband) lived. They joined an Equinox gym, where she encountered Patricia Moreno, a well known instructor in the New York fitness world who had created a program called intenSati, which blends roundhouse kicks and grapevines with shouted affirmations — think Jane Fonda at a self-help tent-revival.After studying under Ms. Moreno, Dr. Petrzela became a certified intenSati instructor. “She is the only fitness instructor of mine that I can securely say has a Ph.D. from Stanford,” said Tara Abrahams, an executive at The Meteor, a feminist media company, who has been attending Dr. Petrzela’s classes for about 10 years.As she built her career at the New School, publishing papers and essays in academic journals (History of Education Quarterly, The Peabody Journal of Education, Pacific Historical Review) and mainstream publications (The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate), she continued teaching intenSati. She also began to consider the role of physical fitness in American history and cultural life.And she dug deeper into podcasting. Along with Dr. Hemmer and Dr. Young, she created a limited podcast series, “Welcome to Your Fantasy,” that told the story of Steve Banerjee, the impresario behind the male dance club Chippendales, and the murder-for-hire charge that preceded his 1994 suicide. Dr. Petrzela was the host.Billed as a Spotify Original, and co-produced by Gimlet Media and Pineapple Street Studios, “Welcome to Your Fantasy” was a seamy, steamy true-crime drama that took place against a backdrop of the sexual, feminist and fitness revolutions of the 1970s and 1980s. Upon its release in 2021, it was a hit with listeners and earned glowing reviews from The Times, The New Yorker and The Financial Times.But Dr. Petrzela was not prepared for the sharp-elbowed culture of show business.Nearly a year before the “Welcome to Your Fantasy” podcast dropped on Spotify, a producer working with Pineapple Street Studios shared early episodes with Hollywood writers and producers to gauge their interest in a screen adaptation. As part of this effort, a producer sent episodes to the actor, screenwriter and stand-up comic Kumail Nanjiani and his wife and frequent writing partner, Emily V. Gordon. Ms. Gordon wrote in an email that she and her husband were not interested in optioning “Welcome to Your Fantasy.”“Kumail and I listened to the podcast and it’s such a fun story, but unfortunately I don’t think it’s the right project for us to write,” Ms. Gordon wrote in an email that Dr. Petrzela shared with The Times. “As much as we love watching crime stories, I don’t know if that’s a strength that we have as a writing duo. It didn’t spark an immediate take in our brains.”Pineapple Street Studios, Dr. Petrzela and the other producers involved with the podcast ended up signing a production deal with Netflix.A few months after the podcast became available, there was a plot twist: Hulu announced that Mr. Nanjiani would play the lead in a dramatic series based on the story of Mr. Banerjee, the Chippendales founder.He would also serve as an executive producer, as would Ms. Gordon. According to the show’s closing credits, it was “inspired by” “Deadly Dance: The Chippendales Murders,” a 2014 book written by K. Scot Macdonald and Patrick MontesDeOca and published by Kerrera House Press, a small independent publisher in Los Angeles.Netflix canceled its plans for a series based on “Welcome to Your Fantasy.” Hulu began streaming its series, called “Welcome to Chippendales,” in November 2022. The show was created by Robert Siegel, a writer and director who headed another Hulu series, “Pam & Tommy.”Dr. Petrzela, Dr. Hemmer and Dr. Young said they were struck by the similarities between the Hulu show and their podcast. They also said that the series included details that did not become public knowledge until listeners had heard “Welcome to Your Fantasy,” which included interviews with key players in the saga.“You don’t own history, and the lines of intellectual property can be really blurry,” Dr. Hemmer said. “But it raised big questions about what we do as scholars and what happens when that work becomes part of the entertainment field.”A spokesman for Hulu declined to comment. Mr. Siegel, the show’s creator, also declined to comment. Representatives for Mr. Nanjiani and Ms. Gordon said in a statement that, though the two were executive producers for the series, they were not creatively involved in the production. They added that their involvement “was limited to casting consultation, communication with the studio/network, marketing and editing.”Eleanor Kagan, the senior producer of “Welcome to Your Fantasy,” created a spreadsheet that laid out more than a dozen similarities between the podcast and the Hulu show. She and her fellow producers said they suspected that the Hulu series made use of their original reporting and narrative focus. In addition, they said, at least two key characters in the Hulu show were based on people who were interviewed extensively for “Welcome to Your Fantasy” and not mentioned in “Deadly Dance.”One of those people was Candace Mayeron, who once worked as a producer for Chippendales. She appears to provide the basis for “Denise” in the Hulu series, a character played by Juliette Lewis. Ms. Mayeron said that she tried to contact the writers and producers of “Welcome to Chippendales” (as well as representatives of Ms. Lewis) by email and phone to offer her consulting services free of charge, but no one replied to her.“There is no doubt that they relied on the podcast,” Ms. Mayeron said of the Hulu production.Dr. Petrzela’s latest book examines the history of fitness movements in the United States.Desmond Picotte for The New York TimesHodari Sababu, the first Black Chippendales dancer, seems to be the basis of the character named Otis in the Hulu show, portrayed by Quentin Phair. Over the years Mr. Sababu has given interviews about his Chippendales experience, but said he never went in-depth, as he did when he spoke with Dr. Petrzela for “Welcome to Your Fantasy.” Mr. Sababu also does not appear by name in “Deadly Dance.”Among the stories that he shared in the podcast was one in which Mr. Banerjee called a church to warn of the godlessness of Chippendales, resulting in a protest of the club that drew media attention. That incident is portrayed in “Welcome to Chippendales” as well. “I only watched part of the TV show,” Mr. Sababu told The Times, “but I thought, ‘How do they know that?’ The only way that they could know that is if they heard that podcast interview I did.”Dr. Petrzela is now focused on the classroom. This semester, she is teaching a class based on the research that went into her book on fitness, as well as a course called historical sources and methods. But she won’t forget her scrape with Hollywood.“I found myself really flabbergasted by this whole situation,” she said. “But then again, I come from a world of footnotes and source citations.” More

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      Stephen Colbert Is Not Paying $99 for Trump’s New Book

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      “Yes, it sounds expensive, but how should he know?” the “Late Show” host said. “He’s never bought a book.”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.Dear DonaldDonald Trump has a new book coming out: “Letters to Trump,” a collection of missives he’s received from public figures over the last 40 years.The price? A mere $99. Stephen Colbert says it’s part of Trump’s “insatiable need for cash and external validation.”“Now, you may be thinking, ‘Hey, Steve, this book sounds like another one of our greedy ex-president’s shameless cash grabs,’ and you would think real good, because this book he didn’t write costs $99. Yes, it sounds expensive, but how should he know? He’s never bought a book.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Well, I mean, it’s good to know he’s finally learned his letters: [singing] A, B, C, D, E, F, G, person-woman-man, camera, TV.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Former President Trump is releasing a book called ‘Letters to Trump’ that’s made up of 150 private letters sent to him by big-name celebrities like Oprah, the Clintons, and Liza Minnelli. It’s kind of strange. Trump is bragging, like, ‘Look at all the friends I used to have. It’s all in the book.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, the first five letters are from celebrities, the rest are just fan mail from Scott Baio.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Final Notice Edition)“Former President Trump is set next month to publish a new book of private letters sent to him titled ‘Letters to Trump.’ Though, really, it’s mostly final notices from utility companies.” — SETH MEYERS“It’s actually a book of correspondence written to him, so, naturally, the cover features him writing a letter.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I would like to see the letters that Trump wrote. Like, [imitating Trump] ‘My dearest Colonel Sanders, I can’t wait to meet you.’” — JIMMY FALLON“If the book does well, the next volume will be a collection of his favorite subpoenas.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingOmar Epps, the actor, sat down with his longtime friend Marlon Wayans on Thursday’s “Daily Show.”Also, Check This OutJessica Chastain and Arian Moayed as Nora and Torvald Helmer in “A Doll’s House” at the Hudson Theater. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJessica Chastain stars as Nora Helmer in Jamie Lloyd’s modernized Broadway revival of “A Doll’s House,” now playing at the Hudson Theater. More