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      Laverne Cox on a Year as the Red Carpet Host of ‘Live From E!’

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      LOS ANGELES — Don’t get her wrong. Laverne Cox loves Joan Rivers.“Joan is for me the originator of everything,” Ms. Cox said. The comedian, who died in 2014, was the first host of “Live From the Red Carpet,” now called “Live From E!,” and perhaps the best-known red carpet commentator in history.Ms. Rivers could bite with the strength of a diamond-collared toy poodle, drawing blood that only sometimes splashed back on her. She’d scream and curse and fire off jokes about celebrities’ bodies and outfits. There was scorched earth all over the trails she blazed.“But I’m not Joan, there’s only one Joan, and the times are very different, too,” said Ms. Cox, 50, wrestling with whether she wanted to use the phrase “political correctness,” or if that was too dated. “It would be a tricky time for Joan.”Ms. Cox, the current star of E!’s red carpet show, doesn’t bite like that. She considers herself a nerd, particularly when it comes to the craft of acting — casually citing Chekhov in conversation, and once reciting a Macbeth monologue on air, egged on by Denzel Washington, while producers urged her to wrap it up.She skews more “fan girl” (her words) than “Fashion Police,” the former E! talk show with segments including “starlet or streetwalker.” Ms. Cox did make appearances as both a “Fashion Police” guest and subject. Giuliana Rancic, who preceded Ms. Cox as the network’s red carpet host, once praised her during a Screen Actors Guild Awards recap. “I love Laverne Cox,” she said, “and I don’t want to say anything bad.” Then she called her dress “hideous.”Generally, the red carpet no longer nurtures this kind of discourse. There has been a shift, over the last decade, from seeing famous people as wealthy elites deserving of mockery to just-like-us humans deserving of compassion. E! hiring Ms. Cox, whose first show as host was in December 2021, seems to be part of this shift.Laverne Cox at a “Live From E!” rehearsal on the champagne carpet, before Sunday’s Academy Awards. Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times“We were looking for a fresh voice and fresh perspective, particularly somebody who could be both a Hollywood insider and a fan,” said Cassandra Tryon, the senior vice president for live events for NBCUniversal television and streaming (NBCUniversal owns E!). “It’s like moving from a journalistic interview to a host of a party, and everybody wants to talk to the host.”The strategy, according to the network, has been working. While awards shows have struggled with viewership, the Grammy Awards’ live carpet telecast in February drew about 1.1 million viewers — the most for any E! program since 2020 (surpassing a season premiere episode of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians”).“It is a craft too, by the way, to be a host,” Ms. Tryon said, sitting in a room at the Hollywood Roosevelt, where the courtyard becomes an E! set during the Oscars. It was the eve of what she called the network’s Super Bowl.Oh, the humanity.“I feel nervous,” Ms. Cox said toward the end of rehearsals late Saturday afternoon. Outside of the Dolby Theatre, plastic still covered the champagne-colored carpet and mummified a jumbo Oscars statue facing the E! cameras.She had spent five hours on Friday reviewing and reworking questions for the nominees and presenters. There was a thick stack of cue cards for every name — some confirmed to stop and speak to Ms. Cox on the carpet, others more wishful. (“We always prep Cate” — Blanchett, that is — “and she never stops,” Ms. Cox bemoaned to her producers.) A card could have four questions, but once cameras start rolling, only one or two may make it to air.During rehearsal, she not only read her scripted lines, but she also practiced asking questions to stand-in actors playing Colin Farrell, Lady Gaga and more. Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesThe Oscars carpet is a particularly overstuffed carpet; E! doesn’t get a platform here, unlike at some other ceremonies. Which means there is a steady torrent of people — attendees, staff, photographers, publicists, assistants — jostling behind Ms. Cox as she works.Her interviews must be quick, to maximize the number of high-profile guests featured during E!’s three-hour broadcast, which jumps between Ms. Cox’s carpet interviews and a group of commentators at the Hollywood Roosevelt, or stationed on a nearby rooftop.Ms. Cox has an earpiece and at least two people cuing her on-site: a stage manager and a supervising producer named Sam Bellikoff, the creator of the cue cards and master of pronunciations (“Ana de Armas,” “Banshees of Inisherin”), who sometimes sits at Ms. Cox’s feet, tapping her leg. (One piece of E! interviewing wisdom imparted by Ms. Tryon: Skip asking people how they’re feeling, since everyone asks that, and the answers are often generic.)In explaining what she’s trying to accomplish as a host, Ms. Cox pointed to a Grammys interview with Machine Gun Kelly, in which he admitted to lacking “self-love,” in the context of losing awards. Ms. Cox told him: “Ultimately, there’s nothing outside of us that can make us love ourselves more. It has to come from inside.”That moment epitomized her desire to “create space for people to come and be themselves,” she said. “It can be frivolous. It can be silly.” She has no problem screaming as if she’s about to faint, casually asking her co-hosts for “tea” or referring to her interview subjects as just “girl.”“But it can also be deep,” she said. “What does it mean to be human?”“Thank you for sharing that,” Ms. Cox told Machine Gun Kelly at the Grammys in February, after he spoke about his need for validation.E!She interviewed Questlove, who won best documentary feature in 2022, at the Academy Awards on Sunday. E!Speaking to Questlove on Sunday about his next documentary — about Sly and the Family Stone and mental health in the Black community — Ms. Cox cited the phrase “post-traumatic slave syndrome,” coined by Joy DeGruy. “Where was the mental health after emancipation?” Ms. Cox said. Later in the show, she asked the director Sarah Polley about Rooney Mara’s use of a fart machine on the set of “Women Talking.” She whips between nuance and nuttiness.“In doing this job, I feel like the public has gotten to see a different side of me,” said Ms. Cox, who is best known for her role on “Orange Is the New Black,” which was on Netflix from 2013 to 2019, and earned her four Emmy nominations and two SAG ensemble acting awards. “It’s been a different way for me, hopefully, to highlight people’s humanity. As an artist, we’re arbiters of empathy and humanity. And I think it’s possible as a red-carpet host to also do that.”Yet it’s harder to do that in 60-second increments, in the heat of a celebrity battle zone, dodging Molotov cocktails of opulence and Ozempic.Speaking by phone on Monday, Ms. Cox said she felt “off” during the previous night’s broadcast, during which she completed 31 interviews (according to E!). She had some trouble breathing comfortably after choosing a particularly tight corset to wear with her Vera Wang gown (“ethereal Blade Runner,” she called the sea-foam-and-black look), and she noticed the Oscars guests seemed more weary, compared with their excitement at the start of the awards season.Ms. Cox between interviews (she did 31 of them) on Sunday.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesMs. Cox is handed cue cards with questions printed on them from a large alphabetized stack.Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times“I think I was frustrated with wanting to have deeper interactions and having so little time,” she said. “I’m always looking for connection. I’m always looking for something that feels authentic and unexpected.“There’s never enough time.”‘What story are you telling us with this look tonight?’If there’s one thing alone that will define Ms. Cox’s tenure as a red carpet host, it’s the way she has retooled the question “Who are you wearing tonight?”Backlash to that question began to swell in 2015, when celebrities including Reese Witherspoon drew attention to a campaign called #AskHerMore. After the #MeToo movement took off in late 2017, there was a call for interviewers, including Ms. Rancic and Ryan Seacrest on E!, to ask more substantive questions too.Yet Ms. Cox, a fashion enthusiast — she wore a vintage Mugler suit to her rehearsal Saturday — had no intention of eliminating the discussion of fashion. After she took over the hosting job, she asked attendees: “What story are you trying to tell with your look tonight?”The quality of answers vary. Sometimes they’re funny or thoughtful, and sometimes, as Austin Butler said of his Saint Laurent suit on Sunday night: “I don’t know what story I’m telling you. I just thought it was a beautiful tuxedo.” That’s fine with Ms. Cox, too. “The question for me is just an invitation to think differently about what we put on our backs,” she said.It is a question that has been applauded by the Representation Project, the organization behind the #AskHerMore campaign: “The way that she is approaching questions about fashion is a layer I’ve never seen on the red carpet,” said Caroline Heldman, the executive director. Ms. Heldman added that there is still work to be done. The Representation Project tracked four hours of red carpet coverage on Sunday night — two on ABC and two on E! — and found that women were still twice as likely as men to be asked about what they were wearing.A hair and makeup touch-up on the red carpet. Ms. Cox had “never worn anything like this Vera Wang dress before,” she said. “It’s good to take risks.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesBut the question is also rooted in Ms. Cox’s experience as a transgender woman. “My own relationship to fashion has always been an attempt to communicate to the world who I am,” she said. “Pre-transition, there was someone inside that was not reflected on the outside.”Generally, though, Ms. Cox said she appreciates that her identity and activism aren’t at the forefront of her hosting role: “What I do love about my job at E! is that, particularly as a host, I’m openly trans, but it’s not about me being trans.”Last month, at the Grammys, Ms. Cox was approached by Dylan Mulvaney, a TikTok creator who has been documenting her own transition, and who wanted to make a video with Ms. Cox. In the clip, Ms. Cox cautioned Ms. Mulvaney to “make sure you keep things to yourself — everything cannot be the public.”It was classic advice from Ms. Cox, who considers herself a private person. She referred to “having a cry” recently over not spending much time with her boyfriend, though when she was pressed for more details, she said she was “trying to keep him off the radar.”Ms. Tryon said E! considers Ms. Cox’s activism “as a plus” that gives her “a unique connection to celebrities.” That connection is the priority, Ms. Tryon said, along with “how to make it fun and light and safe for Laverne’s guests.”Ms. Cox said the only hesitation she had before taking the hosting job was whether it would make people in the industry, and in the public more widely, “forget that I’m also an actor,” she said. She is less worried about that now. Next week, she’ll travel to Georgia to begin work on a sitcom produced by Norman Lear. Her contract with E! runs through the end of 2023.But her appreciation for acting is not something that many in her E! audience — those watching the long hours of rapid interviews — are likely to forget. Often her questions and comments touch on the preparation and physicality and history of acting. She once got a note from her producers that said the audience didn’t like these craft questions, she said. It didn’t stop her.“I’m an actress,” she said. “I’m obsessed with craft.” More

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      Ann Napolitano’s New Novel, “Hello Beautiful,” Is the 100th Pick of Oprah’s Book Club

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      Ann Napolitano toiled in obscurity for years. Novels went unpublished; agents turned her down. She found recognition with “Dear Edward.” Then came the call: “Hello Beautiful” was the 100th pick for what is arguably the most influential book club in the world.Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.Maybe it was fate, maybe it was the meddling of a higher power with a wicked sense of humor. Either way, Ann Napolitano was taking out the garbage when Oprah Winfrey called to tell her that her novel, “Hello Beautiful,” is the 100th selection for what is arguably the most influential book club in the world.Napolitano was so afraid of losing the connection that she stood stock-still in the tiny vestibule of her Park Slope apartment building, clutching her bag of trash, for the duration of the 27-minute call.To be clear, we’re talking about Oprah’s Book Club — the O.G. reading group, trusty launching pad to the best-seller list and sourdough starter for dozens of iterations, celebrity sponsored and otherwise. Yes, Booktok is nipping at Winfrey’s heels, especially where young readers are concerned, but her endorsement is still a golden ticket.In the 26 years since Oprah’s Book Club announced “The Deep End of the Ocean” as its inaugural pick, the literary world has adjusted to the internet, electronic readers, smartphones and social media. Imprints closed, publishing houses consolidated, bookstores sprouted coffee shops and stopped selling CDs — and, through it all, the club established itself as a force, burnishing the careers of Wally Lamb, Cheryl Strayed, Lalita Tademy, Uwen Akpam, Isabel Wilkerson and Ta-Nehisi Coates, to name a few.Its machinations are still shrouded in mystery. Boxes of anointed books arrive at stores the day before a title’s publication date, to reduce the risk that customers will catch a glimpse of the club’s signature seal on a cover. Authors, agents and publishers are asked to sign nondisclosure agreements.“Hello Beautiful,” Napolitano’s fourth novel, came out Tuesday from The Dial Press and Winfrey announced it as her 100th book club selection on “CBS Mornings.” Only now, almost five months after Napolitano’s conversation with Winfrey, can the author share the news with her sons, who are 13 and 15.So how did “Hello Beautiful” land on Winfrey’s radar? And what was it like for Napolitano to get the nod? The short answers are simple and obvious (It’s a great book! She was thrilled!), but the expanded versions prove the equalizing power of a good story.Sitting in front of a lush Hawaii hillside that looked like a fake Zoom background but definitely wasn’t, Winfrey talked about the challenge of finding her 100th pick. The symbolic weight of it was on her mind. She wanted to find a book that would engage “every different sector of the population,” one she could recommend from an “authentically enthusiastic space.”“I went through many, many, many books, reading two and three at a time,” Winfrey said, projecting her familiar voice over the sound of rowdy bird song.“We’re separated from the world by our own edges,” Charlie Padavano says to one of his daughters in “Hello Beautiful.” He continues, “We’re all interconnected, and when you see that, you see how beautiful life is.”“I continue to choose what I love,” said Winfrey, pictured here with Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of “The Water Dancer,” her 81st pick. “I continue to be motivated by what touches my own spirit, what I think is going to allow people to sense a vulnerability in the characters, in whatever the narrative is, that opens the aperture for greater possibility for people.”Michele Crowe/CBS via Getty ImagesNone of the candidates had the universal appeal Winfrey was looking for.The vast majority of prospective titles go through a vetting process after publishers and agents present them to the book club, but “Hello Beautiful” took an unusual path. Winfrey’s friend, Richard Lovett, co-chairman of Creative Artists Agency, mentioned that Michelle Weiner, the co-head of CAA’s books department, had a novel she thought Winfrey would be interested in.“Every time somebody suggests that, it’s never true. It’s never something I actually want to read,” Winfrey said. “I was like, OK, send it to me.”She devoured “Hello Beautiful” on a rainy day in front of her fireplace, curled up with a blanket and her dog. She said, “I was like 30 pages in and said, OK, this is the book. You cannot read it without being opened. It just opens you in ways you didn’t know were closed.”The novel follows four sisters — Julia, Sylvie, Cecilia and Emeline Padavano — through decades of love, loss and (major) secret keeping. One falls in love with another’s ex-husband and the fallout is as complicated as you’d expect; somehow Napolitano persuades you to leave judgment at the door. The prevailing message is about the indomitability of family.“Not since Jo and Meg and Amy and Beth have we seen sisters like this, with this kind of connection, and written so vividly that you feel like you’re in that home,” Winfrey said. “You’re experiencing life with them. I am telling you, the ending? I mourned. What an extraordinary writer Ann is.”“It financially changed our lives,” Napolitano said of the sale of “Dear Edward” in a heated auction. “We bought a bed. That was the only thing we bought. My husband and I needed a new bed; my bed was from my parents’ house. I was 46 years old.”Elinor Carucci for The New York TimesThe iconic talk show host isn’t your average bookworm, but when she starts talking about what it’s like to fall in love with a novel —“Something starts whispering to me,” Winfrey said, “and I want to know more and I want to know more and I want to know more.” — it’s hard to tell the difference.“What I’m always trying to do is allow people to be lifted by the story somehow, and to see themselves — the people they know, their life — and come away feeling more connected,” Winfrey said. “Ann is one of those authors who’s able to do that without wearing it on her sleeve, without putting it out there in such a way that you feel preached to.”Napolitano’s third book, “Dear Edward,” was a best seller, a Read With Jenna pick and the basis for an 10-episode Apple TV + series starring Connie Britton. The book has sold nearly 400,000 copies.But until “Dear Edward” sold in a 10-imprint auction in 2018, Napolitano’s career was rife with rejection and disappointment. She wrote two novels that never sold. Her father was so concerned about her prospects that he paid for a full-day career test that flagged her potential as a park ranger.Napolitano struggled with depression. After being turned down by 80 agents, she signed with one who, sadly, died a few years later. She juggled a series of jobs — teaching, editing, corporate and educational writing, working as a personal assistant for Sting and Trudie Styler — while carving out short windows of time for her novel in progress. She couldn’t afford child care. At one point, Napolitano and her husband, Dan Wilde, had no health insurance. Her second published book, “A Good Hard Look,” (2011) took seven years to write, and “Dear Edward” (2020) took eight.“I’ve always had low expectations,” Napolitano said during an interview in a conference room at Random House. “Everything went so slowly or badly that all I wanted was a chance to do it again. I have to keep writing. I wasn’t ever counting on success.”Getting the call from Winfrey was, she said, “one of the most exciting things that’s ever happened to me in my life. I felt like I went into full menopause because my whole body system was just adrenalized and it was so crazy.”Napolitano was both tickled and horrified that, while she was reeling from the news, Winfrey launched into a series of questions about her writing process: “In that moment I was like, This is mean! That Oprah Winfrey thinks she can call you and expect you to have an intelligent conversation with her with no warning!”Napolitano started working on “Hello Beautiful” during the early days of the pandemic lockdown. “I was trying to find connection and love, and I needed that house with those loud sisters,” she said. “It really did feel like I needed this book.”Elinor Carucci for The New York TimesShe remembered how, at the end of their phone call, Winfrey said, “Writers are my rock stars and you’re a rock star.” Still shaky with disbelief, Napolitano unloaded her trash and walked a block to feed the meter in a two-hour parking lot. It was Oct. 20, 2022, the eve of her 51st birthday, the kind of crisp afternoon that lights Brooklyn like a movie set.Napolitano’s agent, Julie Barer, and her editor, Whitney Frick, had already heard from Winfrey’s team and were waiting for Napolitano to get the news. “I was running to my kids’ school and Julie texted me and said, ‘She called Ann!’ And I knew exactly what that meant,” said Frick, who is vice president, editor in chief at The Dial Press. “It’s really fun when good things happen for good people.”Barer, who is a partner at The Book Group, said,“Ann is extremely humble and hardworking. She’s no drama. She has an enormous heart and a tremendous capacity for compassion, and I think she brings that to her writing — about the messiness of relationships, and about forgiveness and empathy. It’s not like she’s Pollyanna; she’s not saying it’s all going to be great. Just that it’s going to be OK, and we’re in it together.”The three of them celebrated with a three-way chat. Then Napolitano finally went home and told her husband — who never second-guessed her writing career, even during lean times — why it had taken her so long to dispose of the garbage.“Ann walked in wearing a coat and said, ‘Oprah Winfrey just called me on my phone,’” Wilde recalled in an email. “Her eyes were wide with adrenaline, a contrast from her default steadiness. The first thought that came to mind was ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’”He’d seen how “Hello Beautiful” had overtaken Napolitano. Writing “Dear Edward,” she’d said, had been like entering a separate world, happily, then leaving when she felt like it. The Padavano sisters took a different approach: they occupied Napolitano, demanding attention, bringing their saints, their coffee and their chaos.“It was a very intense experience,” Napolitano said. “The story raced out of me. It was like holding onto the fender of a car, being banged across town.”Napolitano started “Hello Beautiful” in April 2020, the loneliest chapter of the pandemic, a time of fear and isolation. It was also the month her father died.“We weren’t able to see him when he was dying and we weren’t able to gather, like so many people,” Napolitano said. “I was trying to find connection and love, and I needed that house with those loud sisters. It really did feel like I needed this book.”Winfrey echoed a version of the same sentiment. “I felt less alone because of books during that period of being isolated,” she said, describing how, “as a girl growing up in Mississippi and Milwaukee, all the times I felt so removed and not valued, it was books — “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” in particular — that made me feel that I was connected to the world.”She went on, “And so, in the beginning was the word. The power of the word to help transform our own emotions and our own belief in what’s possible for us? I don’t think anything transcends that.”Audio produced by More

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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