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      ‘Succession’ Season 4, Episode 6: Cool New Rule

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      This week, Kendall, Roman and Shiv are on a mission to impress the grown-ups watching them in what amounts to their public debut as the stewards of Logan’s legacy.Season 4, Episode 6: ‘Living+’The “Succession” world tour stops in Los Angeles this week, where the Waystar power-players are gathering at their Hollywood studio for Investor Day. The plan is to show off a line of state-of-the-art retirement communities called “Living+,” which Logan signed off on before he died. But secretly, Kendall and Roman are hoping their pitch will bump the stock price up so high before the GoJo acquisition that Lukas Matsson backs out of the deal.Less secretly, the brothers plus Shiv are on a mission to impress the grown-ups watching them, in what amounts to their public debut as the stewards of Logan’s legacy — which they each, in their own inadequate way, try to uphold.Let’s start with Shiv, and her ongoing covert communication with Matsson. Last week I speculated that the two of them may have them had conversations in Norway we were not privy to, about his negotiations with the Roy boys. This latest episode begins with a rejection of that theory, as Shiv and Matsson meet on her private jet and he surprises her with his description of how the meeting on the mountaintop went. Throughout the day she will keeps him posted on how things are going with Living+ — a Waystar initiative he plans to kill as soon as he takes over.Matsson’s words are still ringing in Shiv’s ears when she reaches Los Angeles and hears her brothers tell the Waystar executives that Matsson melted down at that last meeting — and that maybe they should think twice about recommending a deal to the board with “a person of this character.” Shiv knows they are lying to tank the deal, and that they are cutting her out of their play. Roman, genuinely sorry after she calls them out, asks her, “Can we do the huggy thing?” But she does not seem to be in a forgiving mood.As for Roman, he is struggling with the interpersonal part of being in charge. Because he has favors to bestow and firing power, he thinks everyone he deals with at Waystar should just take his money and do as he asks. But at a meeting with a studio executive, he first suffers through her offer of condolences — “Refused!” he jokes — and then groans when she complains about ATN’s far-right lean. Roman’s initial response is to troll, by making a snide comment about the “incredibly evolved, ruthlessly segregated” community of Los Angeles. Then he decides it would be easier just to terminate her.When Gerri finds out what Roman did, she tries to play the mentor again, warning that he is “a weak monarch in a dangerous interregnum” and noting, “You cannot win against the money.” He snaps back, saying she is being disrespectful and adding, “I need you to believe that I am as good as my dad.” She replies, “Say it or believe it?” So he fires her too. (“Shall we get started on the paperwork? Do you want to do it yourself or do you want me to get someone a bit sharper?”)Knowing he overstepped, Roman turns to Kendall, hoping his brother will play the Good Cop and clean up the Bad Cop’s mess. But Kendall is excited about them putting their own stamp on Waystar, and thinks these two firings may impress the markets. (“Some are saying these Young Turks might just have what it takes to turn things around,” he says, imagining what the business pundits might write.) Distraught, Roman excuses himself from the Investor Day pitch, figuring a solo Kendall will flame out and then the adults will finally step in and fix everything.It’s a reasonable assumption too, because Kendall is in full Icarus mode throughout this episode. There are few things more entertaining in “Succession” than Kendall in a boss groove, tossing out big ideas and buzzy business jargon at a rapid clip. While Shiv is the kind of boss who hates making decisions and makes fun of everyone else’s ideas, and Roman is the kind of boss who hates interacting with anybody who is not saying “yes sir,” Kendall is a hands-on boss, urging his team to be as excited as he is about taking huge swings.On this day, Kendall is trying to pump up the market potential of Living+, dubbing it a “price-rocket.” Talking rings around the Waystar accountant Pete (John Quilty), Kendall tries to get him to work some mojo with the spreadsheets, to see what would happen if they just, y’know, plugged in bigger numbers. (“Numbers aren’t just numbers, they’re numbers,” Pete sputters.) The gambit results in a prospectus promising such a high rate of return that Kendall, in a moment of clarity, chuckles, “It’s enough to make you lose your faith in capitalism.” He is then brought back down to earth by Frank, who threatens to blow the whistle if Kendall asks him to support a fraud.Frank’s complaint comes on the heels of Kendall’s dumbest setback of the day. Eager to get his Hollywood studio to make some magic on his behalf, Kendall asks for a scale replica of a Living+ house, with clouds rolling overhead. (He saw something like that in Berlin once, he explains.) In the episode’s funniest moment, Kendall arrives at the auditorium to see a slapped-together, half-finished house and “clouds” that are essentially a rapidly dissipating mist. The look of disappointment on his face is a work of actorly art from Jeremy Strong, who has a gift for playing those moments when Kendall’s over-the-top enthusiasm suddenly craters.Strong is even better in Kendall’s make-or-break speech for the investors. This is a tricky thing to perform, because the presentation has to be both corny enough to make the people who know Kendall wince in embarrassment, yet credible enough that a general audience could buy him as someone who knows what he is doing. The cringe moments are sprinkled throughout, like in the way Kendall repeats the phrase “big, big shoes” multiple times and in his tacky interaction with a video-screen showing his father, taken from a video Logan made to promote Living+. (Kendall also makes the dubious decision to have a sound effects engineer manipulate the video so that Logan says Living+ will “double the earnings” of the cruise business.)Yet at no point in the speech does Kendall lose control. He makes self-deprecating jokes. He builds a persuasive case for how personally enriching a Living+ facility could be. In touting the potential for this new business to extend its customers’ lives, he muses, “Would I take an extra year with my dad?” and says he absolutely would. (Shameless? Sure. But effective.) Even when he gets asked about a cruel tweet posted by Matsson during the presentation, Kendall is flustered for just a couple of seconds before saying, “I’m not gonna fave it.” The crowd laughs. The markets are kind. Matsson deletes the tweet. A stunned Shiv and Roman seethe.Look, this is “Succession,” so there is no reason to believe that Kendall’s triumph will be long-lived. Still, throughout the series, one of the recurring visual motifs for this character has been water: Kendall sinking morosely into a bathtub; Kendall falling face down into a pool; and so on. So it is telling that at the end of this episode, Kendall plunges into the ocean and emerges floating face up. On this day at least, he swims.Due diligencePity the poor director who had to ask Logan Roy to make his lines in a Living+ promotional video “a touch more upbeat.”So what is Living+, exactly? According to Logan’s video, it is an attempt to “bring the cruise ship experience to dry land” with exclusive Waystar content piped into a home with state-of-the-art security. Or, as Shiv describes it to Matsson, “Prison camps for grannies.”Does anyone give worse Waystar presentations than Tom? After Kendall leaves the stage, Tom steps into the spotlight and looks like a wild-eyed maniac, pointing into different parts of crowd and shouting, “You are an ATN citizen!”Because Roman bailed on the presentation, Kendall gets his sound-manipulation guy to make a video of Logan calling Roman pathetic and clueless (among other things). Roman, a masochist, plays the video over and over, forcing himself to take the same kind of punishment he used to get from his father.Shiv and Tom resume their weird flirtation/foreplay this week, which includes playing “bitey,” a game that involves biting each other on the arm until one person stops. (Shiv, after losing: “Tom Wambsgans! Finally made me feel something.”) Later they have sex, after which Tom takes accountability for betraying her by admitting he partly married her for her money. “If you think that’s shallow, why don’t you throw out all your stuff for love?” he says, with a bitter undertone and a sickeningly sweet smile. These two are made for each other. More

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      Under the Hollywood Spotlight, a Fading Welsh Town Is Reborn

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      A former industrial hub, Wrexham had long been in decline. Now, it’s reviving as the globally famous star of a reality series about its once forlorn soccer team’s rejuvenation.In the Welsh language, the virtually untranslatable word “hiraeth” (pronounced here-ayeth) describes a blend of nostalgia and longing for a time that can never be recreated.For Wrexham, a working-class town in northern Wales, it was a feeling that came to define a postindustrial malaise that descended in the 1980s as the last remaining coal mines shuttered their rickety gates and, later, the furnaces at the nearby steelworks ran cold.Only the beloved soccer club, Wrexham A.F.C., remained: the oldest team in Wales, a perennial also-ran but still an indomitable source of local pride.“We went through so much as a town,” said Terry Richards, 56, a lifelong fan of the club as he sat at home in the team’s bright scarlet jersey. “Those were difficult times.”Wales has its legends of heroes returning to save the day, but few could have predicted that an unlikely pair of Hollywood actors, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, would waltz into town just over two years ago and buy the ailing club. That set off a chain of events that catapulted the town out of the doldrums and into the international spotlight, casting the residents as the main characters in their own Hollywood reality show based around the soccer club, “Welcome to Wrexham.”Few could have predicted that the two famous actors would walk into the town in the first place. But Mr. McElhenney, an American who had binged on sports documentaries during lockdown, conducted an exhaustive search for a down-and-out soccer team with growth potential, landing on Wrexham A.F.C., and persuaded Mr. Reynolds to join him in his pet project.Players from Wrexham A.F.C. practice at the Racecourse Ground while crews from the documentary series “Welcome to Wrexham” film them.Mary Turner for The New York TimesAfter paying the bargain sum of around $2.5 million, they moved into town (the Canadian-born Mr. Reynolds even bought a house) and began overhauling the team’s operation. They revitalized the training facilities and upgraded the roster, offering comparatively enormous salaries that attracted established players from the upper levels of English soccer.Last Saturday, that Hollywood story finally got its very own Hollywood ending — the team’s promotion after its winning season into the English Football League, the next tier of England’s multilevel soccer pyramid, after a 15-year absence. As the referee blew the final whistle, generations of teary-eyed supporters leaped from the stands onto the rain flecked field in joyous celebration.In that moment, a town was reborn, and that lingering “hiraeth” was no more. More

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      Late Night Hosts Fight Over the Best Bits on the Final ‘Late Late Show’

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      Jimmy Kimmel suggested that after leaving late night, James Corden should “stick to corporate gigs, podcasts, maybe ‘The Masked Singer.’”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.Eight Years of ‘Late Late’James Corden signed off Thursday after eight years as the host of “The Late Late Show.” He followed a prime-time send-off special with one last show in his usual late-night slot, with his parents teary-eyed in the audience and with Harry Styles and Will Ferrell as guests.For one final time, it’s #SpillYourGuts with Will Ferrell and @Harry_Styles! pic.twitter.com/xb3Sokl2Dc— The Late Late Show with James Corden (@latelateshow) April 28, 2023
      “This is it, gang, this is it. It’s the final ‘Late Late Show’ in the history of CBS,” Corden said at the top of the show. “I’m telling you tonight, finally, we are determined to get it right this time.”Corden thanked viewers by name for tuning in (“Dan, Stephanie, William — that’s it, really.”) and received a special video send-off from President Biden. “That is amazing, although there was a minute in the middle when I was watching that, where in those photos I go, ‘Wait, have I died?’” Corden said.But it was a visit from his fellow late-night hosts that was the last “Late Late Show” bit worth watching.“First things first, you can’t look like you’re enjoying retirement too much.” — SETH MEYERS”You’re going to grow a beard — a huge one. One that says, ‘God spoke to me from a bush.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And don’t get any big ideas — stick to corporate gigs, podcasts, maybe ‘The Masked Singer.’” — JIMMY KIMMELThe hosts simultaneously fought for what comedy bit they wanted now that Corden was going off air and, despite chiding Corden for singing and dancing too much on his show, they answered in unison: “Carpool Karaoke.”The Punchiest Punchlines (Tucker Tok Edition)“After being fired from Fox News on Monday, Tucker Carlson posted a video last night to Twitter and said, ‘Where can you still find Americans saying true things?’ Well, hell, you’ve already tried Fox News and Twitter. I’m out of ideas. I don’t know — maybe Wall Street?” — SETH MEYERS“Nothing says, ‘I landed on my feet’ like ranting in a decommissioned sauna.” — JIMMY FALLON“Wow, good for Tucker. Even though he’s isolated in a remote cabin somewhere, he’s still getting his message out, just like the Unabomber.” — DESI LYDIC, guest host of “The Daily Show”“Although it is funny how he said, ‘When you step outside the noise, people are actually pretty nice.’ Buddy, you are the noise. Your entire show was you being mean to people — trans people, immigrants, women, lady M&Ms. Tucker complaining about people being mean is like Guy Fieri complaining about how there are no salad shows.” — DESI LYDIC“Yep, Tucker criticized the current state of debate on television, then said, ‘And that’s why I chose to be fired.’” — JIMMY FALLON“He’s been fired by Fox, CNN, MSNBC and PBS. That’s like the EGOT of cable news.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingThe actor and talk show host Drew Barrymore popped by the “Tonight Show” for “Ew!,” with Jimmy Fallon and the singer-songwriter Charlie Puth.Also, Check This OutGeorgia O’Keeffe’s “Evening Star No. III” from the new exhibition “To See Takes Time.” Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; via Museum of Modern ArtA new Georgia O’Keeffe show at the Museum of Modern Art spans more than four decades, featuring 120 works on paper and eight paintings. More

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      Jerry Springer, Host of a Raucous TV Talk Show, Is Dead at 79

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      The confrontational “Jerry Springer Show” ran for nearly three decades and became a cultural phenomenon. Mr. Springer also had a career in politics.Jerry Springer, who went from a somewhat outlandish political career to an almost indescribably outlandish broadcasting career with “The Jerry Springer Show,” which by the mid-1990s was setting a new standard for tawdriness on American television, turning the talk-show format into an arena for shocking confessions, adultery-fueled screaming matches and not infrequent fistfights, died on Thursday in suburban Chicago. He was 79.His death, after a brief illness, was confirmed in a statement by Jene Galvin, a family friend and executive producer of Mr. Springer’s podcast.Mr. Springer earned a law degree from Northwestern University in 1968 and started on a political career, winning election to the Cincinnati City Council in 1971. But he was soon embroiled in the type of personal scandal that would later fuel his talk show: He resigned in 1974 after he was found to have written a check for prostitution services at a Kentucky massage parlor.But Mr. Springer was nothing if not resilient: He was re-elected to the council in 1975. One of his comeback speeches nodded to the prostitution controversy. “A lot of you don’t know anything about me,” he said, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer, “but I’ll tell you one thing you do know: My credit is good.”Mr. Springer in 1974 during his time in politics, at a convention of restaurant operators in Cincinnati.Bettmann Collection, via GettyHe was elected mayor of Cincinnati in 1977, and in 1982 he ran for governor of Ohio, addressing the prostitution incident forthrightly in a campaign advertisement.“The next governor is going to have to take some heavy risks and face some hard truths,” he said. “I’m prepared to do that. This commercial should be proof. I’m not afraid, even of the truth, and even if it hurts.”He finished third in the Democratic primary and made a career change, joining WLWT-TV in Cincinnati, first as a news commentator; he later became an anchor and managing editor. Over the next decade he won or shared multiple Emmy Awards for local coverage.“The Jerry Springer Show,” a daytime talk show syndicated by Multimedia Entertainment, which owned WLWT, began in 1991. Originally it was an issue-oriented program; The Los Angeles Times called it “an oppressively self-important talk hour starring a Cincinnati news anchorman and former mayor.”By 1993, however, lead-ins like “Worshiping the Lord with snakes — next, Jerry Springer!” were turning up, and the shock value just kept going up. A 1995 episode featured a young man named Raymond whom Mr. Springer was helping to lose his virginity, offering him five young women, hidden by a screen, to choose from. Raymond’s friend Woody accompanied him.“Woody doesn’t know it — his 18-year-old virgin sister is one of the contestants!” a scroll told viewers.The talk-show universe had by then become something of a free-for-all, with hosts like Montel Williams and Sally Jessy Raphael also serving up salacious content. Mr. Springer, though, did it better and more outrageously than anyone else. His viewership peaked at about eight million in 1998.Security guards separate guests as they fight on the “Jerry Springer Show,” a common occurrence.Ralf-Finn Hestoft, Corbis, via Getty ImagesMr. Springer in 1998 on the set of his talk show. That year his viewership peaked at about eight million.Getty Images“Why is it so outrageous that people who aren’t famous talk about their private lives?” he once said. “It’s like, ‘It’s OK if good-looking people talk about who they slept with, but, please, if you are ugly, we don’t want to hear about it?’”“The Jerry Springer Show” ran for nearly three decades, ending in 2018 after more than 3,000 episodes. No matter what sort of drama had taken place in front of a studio audience, as well as viewers tuning in from home, Mr. Springer ended each segment with a signature sign-off: “Take care of yourself, and each other.”Gerald Norman Springer was born on Feb. 13, 1944, in London, in an underground station that was being used as a bomb shelter during World War II.“It’s not as dramatic as it sounds,” he told The Chicago Tribune in 2007. “Because of the bombing, women who were in their ninth month were told to sleep in the subway stations, which were set up as maternity wards.”His family relocated to the United States when he was 5. In a commencement speech at Northwestern in 2008, Mr. Springer evoked the moment of arrival.“In silence, all the ship’s passengers gathered on the top deck of this grand ocean liner as we passed by the Statue of Liberty,” he said. “My mom told me in later years (I was 5 at the time) that while we were shivering in the cold, I had asked her: ‘What are we looking at? What does the statue mean?’ In German she replied, ‘Ein tag, alles!’ (One day, everything!).”Mr. Springer earned a bachelor’s degree in political science at Tulane University in 1965. He worked at WTUL, the campus station, and over the years he would check in from time to time.“It was my first job in broadcasting,” he said in a message to the station in 2009 to mark its 50th anniversary, “and it’s been downhill ever since.”After Tulane he went on to Northwestern and law school. In 1967, he took a job as a summer clerk at a law firm in Cincinnati; it was his first exposure to the city that would play an important role in his life. The next year he took time off from his law studies to work on Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, but he completed his degree after Mr. Kennedy was assassinated.Mr. Springer returned to his family home in New York without any particular plans. When the Cincinnati firm where he had spent a summer called with an offer for a full-time job, he took it.Mr. Springer in his dressing room before a taping of “The Jerry Springer Show.”Steve Kagan/Getty Images“I had to do something to get my life moving again,” he told The Cincinnati Post in 1977.He quickly became involved in local politics, impressing the city’s Democratic leaders. In 1970, he ran for Congress, losing but drawing 44 percent of the vote, much better than expected. A year later, he was on the City Council.Mr. Springer’s talk show brought him enough fame that he had a side gig as an actor, turning up in episodes of “Married … With Children,” “Roseanne,” “The X-Files” and other shows, generally playing a version of himself.He was also a contestant on “Dancing With the Stars” and “The Masked Singer,” and for a time was host of “America’s Got Talent.” In 2005, he began “Springer on the Radio,” a serious, left-leaning political show, on Air America; it lasted about two years.Information on his survivors was not immediately available.In 2008, some students objected when Mr. Springer was invited to give the commencement address at Northwestern.“To the students who invited me — thank you,” he said. “I am honored. To the students who object to my presence — well, you’ve got a point. I, too, would’ve chosen someone else.”“I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy a comfortable measure of success in my various careers,” he added, “but let’s be honest, I’ve been virtually everything you can’t respect: a lawyer, a mayor, a major-market news anchor and a talk-show host. Pray for me. If I get to heaven, we’re all going.”Remy Tumin contributed reporting. More

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      ‘Somebody Somewhere’ Celebrates a Life With Tears and Jokes

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      When the sudden death of Mike Hagerty, one of the show’s stars, forced the creators to retool the new season, they sprinkled tributes to him throughout the episodes.In the first episode of the new season of “Somebody Somewhere,” the poignant Kansas-set comedy that returned to HBO this week, Sam (Bridget Everett) receives a letter from her father, Ed. The letter informs her that he has gone to join his brother in Corpus Christi, Texas. Ed, a farmer, has charged Sam with feeding the chickens, mowing the lawn and cleaning out the barn. Sam begins her chores, but when she finds Ed’s baseball cap, she begins to tear up.“It just feels really weird to be here with all his stuff,” Sam says. “I know he couldn’t have cleaned out this barn — it would have broken his heart. I didn’t know it would break mine.”Heartbreak might seem like a strong reaction to some rusted farm equipment. But Mike Hagerty, the actor who played Ed, had died unexpectedly in May 2022, at the age of 67, about a month before filming began for the Season 2. Ed lives on, sailing across the Gulf of Mexico; his absence and Hagerty’s absence inform most of the season. In its quiet, fine-grained way, these episodes of “Somebody Somewhere” provide a eulogy in comedy form, with grief triangulated and transformed.“We knew we wanted to dedicate the season to him,” Hannah Bos, a “Somebody Somewhere” creator, said in a recent video call. “We wanted to celebrate him.”Hagerty, a Chicago native and an alum of the Second City comedy troupe, best known for a five-episode run as the building superintendent on “Friends,” joined the series for the pilot in 2019. Carolyn Strauss, an executive producer, had worked with him before, on the short-lived series “Lucky Louie.” She bet that Hagerty — bushy haired, jowly, with a heart as big as a prairie — would bring warmth and solidity to the taciturn Ed. She won that bet.When Everett, a Kansas-born actress and cabaret star, met him for a chemistry read, she started crying before he had even said a word. “I felt immediately really safe,” she said on that same video call. Strauss and Paul Thureen, the show’s other creator, were also on the line.“It just felt like the right match and the right person and also like I’d met a friend,” Everett said. “I’m not trying to be corny; it’s just really how I felt.”Bos and Thureen enjoyed writing for Hagerty, knowing that he could make any line sound grounded and sincere, that he could endow even simple dialogue with depth. And Everett felt that she grew as an actor every time she was opposite him. He felt to her, she said, like a surrogate father.“Often I get really nervous on sets,” she said. “His affable, calm, steady hand, it set me at ease.”Bridget Everett, left, said that when she met Hagerty, “I immediately felt really safe.” (With Mary Catherine Garrison, bottom left, and Kailey Albus.)Elizabeth Sisson/HBOHagerty seemed to enjoy himself, too. In February 2022, in Los Angeles, HBO hosted a special screening for the Season 1 finale. Strauss chatted with him there, and she recalled him cracking that the show had taught him two words he’d never heard before in his long career: “Season 2.” To celebrate, he bought himself a Toyota RAV4.That spring, ‌Hagerty entered Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, feeling unwell. The Season 2 scripts had already been written, and he planned to participate in a table read from his hospital bed. But he was ultimately too ill to join. On May 5, following an adverse reaction to an antibiotic, he died.The initial response from the producers and his co-stars was a mix of shock and grief. There was a group Zoom call, with cast and creators crying in their separate windows, sharing memories of Hagerty.“He really did feel like a North Star in terms of what we were creating and what we had done,” Strauss said. “So it was hard to believe; it felt very unreal.”Twining with the grief was an understandable amount of panic. The shoot was set to begin in two weeks, and Hagerty was meant to be in almost every episode. Amy Gravitt, HBO’s executive vice president of comedy, made many individual calls, telling the showrunners and producers to take all the time that they needed to mourn — to put off worrying about the show. But Bos and Thureen knew that to put it off for too long would risk losing actors and crew members. A frantic rewrite began.At first, no one knew what to do about Ed, but Strauss, Bos and Thureen felt that they shouldn’t have him die. Season 1 had begun shortly after the death of Sam’s sister Holly — as the show follows Sam’s halting steps toward self-acceptance and a full adult life, the thinking went, another death and an explicit focus on grief would set her back too far.Everett wasn’t so sure. Her own sister and father had died a year apart, and she figured the show, which operates with an unusual degree of realism, might as well mirror that. But after sleeping on it, she agreed.Production was pushed back two weeks. Strauss worried that wouldn’t be enough time for a full rewrite, but she didn’t share that worry with the others. As originally written, the season had focused partly on Ed growing too old for hands-on farming and on his relationship with his wife, an alcoholic. He also played a role in a season-ending wedding. All of that had to be retooled. So Bos, Thureen and Everett got to work on Zoom. Thureen said these sessions, however fraught, brought relief.“It helped in a weird way to have something to focus on,” he said. “It turned into a creative problem-solving thing.”With Strauss’s help, they all worked to find a metaphor that would account for Hagerty’s absence and honor his life. Together they came up with the idea of the brother’s boat and sending Ed across the water, finally free. They also made him a presence throughout several episodes, via occasional letters and phone calls.Jeff Hiller and Everett in the new season of “Somebody Somewhere,” which includes several subtle tributes to Hagerty.Sandy Morris/HBOWhen it came time to do the scene in the barn, Everett was anxious about how it would feel to act without Hagerty. “That was going to be an emotional house of cards for me,” she said. “We all kind of felt it. Just being there without him was devastating.” She had learned the monologue about cleaning out the barn by heart, but when it came time to speak it, the loss of Hagerty overtook her. The tears she cries in the scene are very real.“We only did it two times or three times because it was just a little much,” she said. “I just wanted to say it and then let it go.”Later in the season, there is a funeral for a different character. This became an oblique tribute to Hagerty, with his memory shadowing several of the eulogies. “A poetic honoring,” Thureen called it. And in the final episode, a wedding reception pauses to honor Ed.“Raise your glasses everybody, raise them high — this is to Ed,” a character says. It was a way of making sure that Ed was still there, still a part of this family and this community.If “Somebody Somewhere” is renewed for further seasons, Ed, however far away, will remain a part of them. The creative team is already kicking around Ed-centered ideas for Season 3. Hagerty, in his own way, remains with the show, too.“His impact endures,” Strauss said. “He’s left everybody with a gift: that gravity and humor and forthrightness that characterize him, we all carry it.” More

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      Seth Meyers Speculates About Why Fox Dumped Tucker Carlson

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      Meyers joked that “firing Tucker for racism now after tolerating it for so long would be like canceling ‘Sesame Street’ because you just found out they were puppets.”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.Cutting TiesFox News has not said why it ousted Tucker Carlson.Late-night hosts speculated he was let go because of the text messages he sent deriding former President Donald Trump and Fox executives.“Fox couldn’t have cared less when Tucker was saying vulgar, offensive stuff on television about other people, but when he said it in private about Fox News executives, they were suddenly outraged,” Seth Meyers said.“I have no idea why he got fired. Fox had no problem with his cruelty, racism and paranoid conspiracy theories, so I doubt he got fired for that. I mean, firing Tucker for racism now — after tolerating it for so long — would be like canceling ‘Sesame Street’ because you just found out they were puppets.” — SETH MEYERS“Whenever something really big happens that involves Fox News, the last people to hear about it are usually the people who watch Fox News. The network tends to hide news about itself from its own viewers. Last night there were probably a bunch of 80-year-olds watching substitute host Brian Kilmeade, saying, ‘Tucker looks different now. ’” — SETH MEYERS“Man, when Fox cuts ties with someone, they cut ties. That’s the Fox News version of rolling up someone in a carpet and throwing them in the East River.” — SETH MEYERS“Yeah, Tucker has a huge following among racist lunatics and people who also want to [expletive] the green M&M.” — SETH MEYERS“It would also be weird if he got fired for being obsessed with incredibly weird [expletive] because that’s also been his thing forever, whether it was sexy candy, or eating bugs, or — this is real — testicle tanning.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Dossier of Dirt Edition)“In honor of Lesbian Visibility Week, the cast of ‘The L Word: Generation Q’ yesterday visited the White House, said Tucker Carlson to a houseplant.” — SETH MEYERS“No one’s heard from Tucker since his surprise firing on Monday, except the pillow he’s been screaming into.” — DESI LYDIC, guest host of “The Daily Show”“Fox News executives reportedly have a dossier of dirt on him. Yeah, to keep him from attacking the network. That’s right, they apparently have him saying the most vile things you can imagine, and the way they compiled it — and this is genius — is by turning on his television show and pressing record.” — DESI LYDIC“One secret weapon Fox News has that they could use to embarrass him is every episode of his show. That’s for starters.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But what could they have on Tucker Carlson that would embarrass him? Did he once try to buy a fuel-efficient car? I mean, does he have a collection of paintings that weren’t by Hitler?” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingBlack Thought and El Michels Affair brought the soul singer Kirby onto “The Tonight Show” for a performance of “Glorious Game” on Wednesday.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightJames Corden will be joined by Harry Styles and Will Ferrell for his “Late Late Show” finale on Thursday.Also, Check This OutWynonna Judd in a scene from the new documentary about her. Paramount+“Wynonna Judd: Between Hell and Hallelujah” follows the singer on a tour she was supposed to share with her mother, the late Naomi Judd. More

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      ‘Fatal Attraction’ Review: Here’s Why She Did It

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      A somber, psychology-heavy series tries to take the “erotic thriller” out of the erotic thriller.When is a rabbit an Easter egg? When it hops onscreen in “Fatal Attraction,” the oddly tranquil new series inspired by the infamous, bunny-boiling 1987 film of the same title.It’s not a major spoiler to report that this little white cutie avoids the stockpot. Gentle homage to the tawdry, garishly effective original — one of the primary reasons no one calls their productions “erotic thrillers” anymore — is the rule. No one is drowned in a bathtub, but there is a joking reference to the inadvisability of having a tub in the house.Nearly everything about this new “Fatal Attraction,” whose eight-episode season premieres Sunday on Paramount+, has been toned down, often to the point of torpor. The only thing that retains the original’s raciness is the new version of the echt-’80s title font — the “Fatal” still looks like a signature scrawled on a bar tab between bumps of cocaine.Major surgery was inevitable for source material that turned a single, sexually active woman into a horror-movie monster who threatened the sanctity of a suburban family. If that weren’t sufficiently toxic by 2020s standards, the film also cleverly framed the woman’s psychosis as feminism run amok, generating sympathy for the poor upper-middle-class, white male sap who stumbled into an affair with her.So Alexandra Cunningham (“Dirty John,” “Desperate Housewives”) and Kevin J. Hynes (“Perry Mason”), working with the film’s writer, James Dearden, have reimagined “Fatal Attraction” in myriad ways, none of which are erotic and few of which are thrilling. From the moment Dan Gallagher — played by a disheveled, halting Joshua Jackson, subbing in for the sleek Michael Douglas of the film — kicks off the series by shuffling into a parole hearing, the show feels as if it’s shouldering a responsibility, weighed down by the need to apologize for Hollywood’s past misconduct.Dan is up for parole because in this new universe, he has served 15 years for the murder of his stalker, Alex Forrest (Lizzy Caplan). Responding not just to shifting mores but also to the demands of serial storytelling — the show runs close to a full eight hours — Cunningham and Hynes have turned “Fatal Attraction” into a murder mystery, as Dan, a former Los Angeles prosecutor, tries to figure out who really killed Alex while awkwardly reconciling with his ex-wife, Beth (Amanda Peet), and daughter, Ellen (Alyssa Jirrels).The mystery plays out in leisurely L.A.-noir style, introducing clouds of suspects as the show jumps back and forth in time and stretches out its thin narrative by replaying entire episodes from different points of view. The temporal shifts also serve to educate both Dan and the audience about the noxious privilege and entitlement that precipitated his downfall. (This portion of the show benefits greatly from the presence of Toby Huss as Mike, Dan’s best friend and a former cop who was collateral damage in Dan’s debacle.)But apparently converting “Fatal Attraction” into a reasonably diverting crime drama wasn’t enough to remove the stain of the original. So the series also offers an elaborate psychodramatic narrative embellishment — a sort of study guide — expressed in frequent discussions of the work of Carl Jung and his collaborator Toni Wolff. Ellen, in the present, is a psychology student, and we also hear recitations of the fairy tales she delights in as a child. The allegorical, slightly metafictional notions are rammed home: a character who gives Ellen a book of tales is called “an actual fairy godmother”; a pet dog is named Ziggy, short for Sigmund.Ellen’s research leads her to reassess the behavior of her father’s murdered nemesis, and the greatest labor this “Fatal Attraction” takes on is its effort to turn Alex into an understandable, even sympathetic, character. Dan is a chastened version of the narcissistic jerk Douglas played in the film, but the vivid hysteria of Glenn Close’s Oscar-nominated performance as Alex is mostly replaced in Caplan’s version by a jumpy vulnerability, and Alex now gets a back story to explain her sociopathic obsessiveness.This virtue-signaling therapy noir manages, in its peculiarly studious way, to meld the racy ’80s and the censorious ’20s, and it’s not exactly hard to watch. It is competently made and nice to look at, it has a knockoff version of a languorous Southern California vibe, and Caplan and Jackson are both engaging. (Jackson gets extra credit — he has to compensate for hideous haircuts in both the past and present time lines.) They get good support from a large cast that includes Huss, Toks Olagundoye as one of Dan’s former co-workers, Vivien Lyra Blair as the young Ellen and the scream queen Dee Wallace as the owner of the rabbit.What’s missing is the metabolism, the transgressive energy and — at least in the context of its time — the glossy sexiness that the director Adrian Lyne brought to the film. The thing you wonder as you watch the series isn’t why they made the changes they did, but why they bothered making the show at all. Wasn’t there other intellectual property in the Paramount vaults that would have made the jump more easily? (It worked for “Top Gun,” after all.)And what’s noticeable is that despite all the modifications, Cunningham and Hynes didn’t change the basic emotional and psychological architecture: The crucial moments are still Alex’s bursts of antisocial behavior and Dan’s violent reaction to them, and the story is still strung on those slasher-film tentpoles. (If you’ve seen the original, you’ll know exactly when a particular pair of eyes is going to pop open, even though the moment is campy and completely out of character with the rest of the series.) They did their best to scrub the misogyny out of “Fatal Attraction,” but at the end of the day it’s still about the fear of a crazy lady. More

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      ‘Ted Lasso’ Season 3, Episode 7 Recap: Restaurant Week

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      Nate pursues a crush, Sam endures a lesson in politics, and the team discovers the cost of “Total Football.”Season 3, Episode 7: ‘The Strings That Bind Us’The episode opens upon a sunny London morning, with stores opening to the lovely song “Dreams” by the Cranberries. And not just any stores: a bakery featuring a rainbow of macaroons in the window; a florist shop whose fragrant, colorful wares are being laid out for the day.An ever-training Jamie is pulling Roy on (of course!) a bicycle, while the latter growls “Mush!” And Nate, whom we didn’t see at all in last week’s Amsterdam episode, pauses as he passes his favorite restaurant, A Taste of Athens. He waves to Jade, the once-hostile hostess with whom he shared some conciliatory baklava and wine two episodes ago, after his model-date ditched him. Jade is surprised at the attention but waves back, and Nate smiles more happily than we’ve seen him since, a season ago? Longer? Oh, the heck with it, let’s go on directly from here.NateI won’t lie. It’s nice to see Nate smile again, and not just any smile: the smile of innocence and insecurity that all but defined his character in Season 1. Jade’s abrupt transformation over baklava may have strained credulity, but it was nonetheless the kind of understated feel-good moment that has long been a “Ted Lasso” specialty. My ongoing prediction that Good Nate would ultimately overcome Bad Nate is looking more and more likely. (A bit more on this — and on what was arguably missing from this episode — in a moment.)Later, Nate’s mother texts to urge him not to forget his sister’s birthday, and he recommends A Taste of Athens, his treat. Now, he would almost certainly have done this under any circumstances: He has made abundantly clear that the restaurant is his family’s default for celebrations of any kind. But now it’s also clear that he has another motive in addition.No such luck, however. Mom has decided to cook at home. “Please don’t be late. You know how your father gets,” she texts, in a brief reminder that Nate’s dad is one of the show’s many problematic fathers.So Nate distracts himself like any lovestruck fool in the age of smartphones, asking Siri, “How can you tell if a girl likes you or is just being kind to you?” The succinct answer supplied by Apple’s engineers: “You can’t.”This is not, of course, how Siri responds to this particular query in real life — I asked my own iPhone the same question and was presented with multiple websites on the topic. And yes, I now fear that some distant corporate subroutine will begin inundating me with ads for dating sites.But back to Nate, who asks his mother and sister the same question at dinner and receives precisely the same response. But after his father, niece and brother-in-law have left, Nate’s sister cajoles his mother into sharing with him the “map” his father had made for her before their first date, showing how they had been growing closer — in geographic terms, to be clear — for years. It’s settled. Nate will ask Jade out.His first effort, however, is abortive. “There’s something I’d like to ask you,” he stammers, “umm … would you … excuse me one moment?” He takes a quick trip to the bathroom — I can’t be the only one who was pleading “Please don’t spit on the mirror!” — where he has an epiphany. Like his father, he will construct a grand gesture-cum-visual-aid to woo Jade.So he puts the decorative-shoebox skills he has honed with his niece to work. And though the box is crushed in the street, Jade says yes to dinner and, despite Nate’s fears, does not stand him up.So, what, as I suggested above, did I think was missing? We only saw half of Nate’s ongoing evolution. He is apparently reverting back toward Good Nate but what does that look like at work, particularly in relation to his boss, the Mephistophelean sleazeball Rupert? We don’t know. Glimpses of what remains of Bad Nate will have to wait for another episode.SamWe first see Sam visiting his own restaurant, Ola, where he asks his chef, Simi (Precious Mustapha), whether there’s an open table on Friday. After a rowdy laugh, she replies that the place is “booked for months. The ‘waiting list’ is a lie we tell people.” But when told that Sam’s “very special guest” is his father, traveling all the way from Nigeria, she agrees to work something out. Yes! Sam’s dad, whom we’ve only heard over the phone to date! The best father — with the possible exception of Higgins, whose parenting of five boys we rarely witness — on a show full of lousy ones!Juno Temple, left, and Hannah Waddingham in “Ted Lasso.”Apple TV+Simi, meanwhile, is furious that the (fictional) U.K. Home Secretary, Brinda Barot, is turning away a boatload of Nigerian refugees from English shores. So Sam being Sam, he sends a mild tweet intended to appeal to her “better angels.” Barot’s Twitter reply, however, falls decidedly short of angelic: “Footballers should leave the politics to us and just shut up and dribble.” For those who may not recall, the show is directly channeling a 2018 quote from the Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who said the NBA stars LeBron James and Kevin Durant should leave politics alone and “shut up and dribble.”The tweets escalate on both sides, until Sam, on the day of his father’s arrival, goes by the restaurant to find it in ruins: the door smashed in, mirrors shattered, tables and chairs broken into kindling. But Sam’s father (played by Nonso Anozie, whom I remember best as the actor saddled with the line “I invoke Sumai” in Season 2 of “Game of Thrones”) preaches patience and forgiveness. “Don’t fight back, fight forward,” he counsels.At the end of the episode, Sam takes his father to see the fractured restaurant, only to find his teammates hard at work repairing it. Now, I confess I’d spent much of the episode trying to remember why Sam had named the restaurant “Ola”; I was planning to recheck Episode 3 and even last season for clues. But no need. When Simi introduces herself to “Mr. Obisanya,” he is having none of it. “Call me ‘Ola,’” he tells her. The look on his face when Bumbercatch re-illuminates the restaurant’s sign is utterly endearing, but still less endearing than the groove he gets into with Sam in the kitchen just before the credits roll.Keeley and JackPresumably having Aurora-Borealised to their hearts’ content last episode, Keeley and Jack mostly limit themselves to coffee this time around, even if those coffees involve signed Jane Austen first editions and jewelry-filled pastry. In between, Keeley — who’d confided to Jack her love of daisies — returns to an office overflowing with them. She is being “love-bombed,” as Rebecca explains, overwhelmed with grand, expensive gestures.A brief aside: When Rebecca compares this love-bombing by Jack to her own wooing by Rupert so many years ago, it is surely a bad sign, no matter how quickly it is waved away. But it also paints Rebecca, deliberately or not, in a somewhat less than appealing light. She accepted a Jaguar from Rupert on their second date? And upon learning that Jack is paying for her and Keeley’s dinner, Rebecca — who is, of course, herself fabulously rich — puts two bottles of 1934 Chateau Cheval Blanc St. Emilion Premier Grand Cru on the tab to go? They sell online for about $2,000 a pop! (Also, is it just me or is it a tad stalker-y for Jack to secretly pay for Keeley and Rebecca’s dinner?)Earlier, in Keeley’s office — the on-again, off-again gag about the opacity of Keeley’s window was a bit much — she wondered about the nature of having a relationship with her boss. (This was the scene for which I waited in vain during last season’s Rebecca-Sam relationship; more on that later.) Jack replies, “We can’t get in trouble because we’re two consenting adults” — this is quite untrue — “and because I’m get-away-with-murder rich.” Which is probably true, but not terribly becoming. And when Keeley presses and Jack compares herself to “everyone connected with Epstein” — well, that’s not the comparison I would be looking for in a romantic partner.Is it just me, or do Rebecca’s Jaguar and Keeley’s Jane Austen, flowers and diamond ring (however quickly returned) stand in stark and probably deliberate contrast to Nate’s grand gesture of a shoe box with glued-on glitter and stars? I see red flags aplenty here — I hadn’t even mentioned Rebecca’s “Sometimes shiny things can tarnish” line — and I’m not sure that any level of love-blindness will ultimately turn them green.The TeamThis was the episode’s weakest link. Following Ted’s hallucinatory reinvention of the Dutch star Johan Cruyff’s 1970s strategy “Total Football” last episode, the coaching staff begins drilling the team in its principles in preparation for their very next match.The first practice, on “conditioning,” is fine. Ditto the second one, on “versatility,” although no matter how “total” Total Football may be, it does not involve swapping out your goalkeeper, especially not in favor of the team’s shortest player. (The Beard-Will swap was modestly amusing, though, and kept to the requisite small dose.)But the “awareness” practice in which the players used red string to tie themselves to one another’s man parts? Count me out. Humor this broad — see also Isaac’s corner kick into Higgin’s office window — has never been a strong suit for “Ted Lasso.” (Given that the show based its episode title on this gag, the writers evidently disagree.)Total Football proves to be a disaster during the first half of the team’s match against Arsenal, with Richmond players colliding all over the field. But at halftime, Good Jamie — who’s beginning to prompt the question “How good can he get?” — suggests he become a facilitator rather than a scorer. And though the team still loses, this plan unleashes a “symphony,” in the words of the match commentators, “with Tartt in the role of conductor.”That said, my favorite part of this story line was Ted’s response when an incredulous Trent asked him if he really intended to swap strategies midseason: “It’s kind of like going on a hike with Robert Frost. It could go either way.”From left, Cristo Fernández, Toheeb Jimoh, Phil Dunster and Moe Hashim in “Ted Lasso.”Apple TV+Odds & endsSee? I’m not alone in doubting the propriety of last season’s Sam-Rebecca relationship. Sam’s father clearly agrees, and I’ll happily be on Team Ola any day of the week.Speaking of Rebecca: She confirms that she and last episode’s mysterious Dutchman did not have sex but shared something that “transcended sex.” It was “Gezelligheid.” Alas, that’s all we get this episode. I, for one, still hope for more.For all of Nate’s positive evolution this episode, it’s still a little disturbing to discover that he’s programmed Siri to address him as “Wunderkind.” He still has a ways to go.I’m sorry, but going back to the early-ish scene of Beard and Ted in the pub: There is no way Ted Lasso knows what “pegging” is. If you don’t know either, feel free to look it up, with caution.In response to Ted’s suggestion that if he’d kept an early beard, he and Coach Beard would look like a ZZ Top cover band, Roy dubs them “Sharp Dressed Men,” before catching himself: “God, I hate what you’ve done to me.” His Sasquatch-themed pun is even better, if unrepeatable here.I mentioned the Cranberries’ “Dreams”.” This was a particularly musical episode, also featuring (among others) the Monkees’ relatively obscure “Sometime in the Morning,” Ray Charles’s “What Would I Do Without You,” Smokey Robinson’s “You Really Got a Hold on Me,” John Fogerty’s “Centerfield,” Primal Scream’s “Rocks,” Supergrass’s “Alright,” and Snoh Aalegra’s “Find Someone Like You.” More