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      What to Know About the Danny Masterson Rape Trial

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      The “That ’70s Show” actor has been charged with raping three women in the early 2000s. Two of the women have said the Church of Scientology discouraged them from reporting the assaults to the police.The actor Danny Masterson, known for his roles in the sitcom “That ’70s Show” and the Netflix comedy “The Ranch,” before he was fired in 2017 amid sexual assault allegations, has been on trial in Los Angeles on charges that he raped three women at his home in the Hollywood Hills in the early 2000s.Masterson, 46, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of forcible rape. Opening arguments began on Oct. 18, and the trial is expected to last four weeks. Masterson could face 45 years to life in prison if convicted.What are the allegations?According to a trial brief filed by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, Masterson raped a woman, identified only as Jen B., in April 2003 after she went to his house to pick up keys and he gave her a red vodka drink. About 20 or 30 minutes later, she felt “very disoriented,” the brief states.According to the brief, Masterson raped her after she regained consciousness on his bed. She reached for his hair to try to pull him off and tried to push a pillow into his face, it states. When Masterson heard a man yelling in the house, he pulled a gun from his night stand and told her not to move or “say anything,” adding expletives, the document states.The trial brief says that Masterson raped a second woman, identified only as Christina B., who had been in a relationship with him and had lived with him for six years.In November 2001, the document says, she awoke to Masterson “having sex with her” and told him to stop. “I fought back,” she said, according to the document. “I tried pushing him off me and saying, ‘No, I don’t want to have sex with you.’” She also pulled his hair, and he hit her, the document states.In December 2001, she had one or two glasses of wine at a restaurant with Masterson and woke up naked in her bed the next morning, feeling that it hurt to sit down or go to the bathroom, the brief states. She said she went downstairs and confronted Masterson, and he acknowledged having sex with her while she was unconscious, the document states.The brief says that Masterson raped a third woman, identified only as N. Trout, who occasionally saw him at parties and gatherings and, like him, was in the Celebrity Centre branch of Scientology.Sometime between October and December of 2003, she went to his house, where he handed her a glass of wine and told her to take off her clothes and get in his hot tub, where “everything started becoming blank,” the brief states. He assaulted her in the shower and on a bed, the document states. She told him, “No, I don’t want to do this,” according to the document.How is the Church of Scientology involved?The trial has involved accusations by two of the women that the Church of Scientology, to which they and Masterson belonged, discouraged them from reporting the rapes to law enforcement.After seeking the church’s permission, verbally and in writing, to report the rape, Jen B. received a written response from the church’s international chief justice that cited a 1965 policy letter regarding “suppressive acts,” the brief states.To her, the response signaled that if she were to report a fellow Scientologist to the police, “I would be declared a suppressive person, and I would be out of my family and friends and everything I have,” the brief states. Still, she reported the rape to law enforcement in June 2004, the document states.The woman identified as Christina B. said that when she reported the rape to the church’s “ethics officer” or “master at arms,” the officer told her, “You can’t rape someone that you’re in a relationship with” and “Don’t say that word again,” the document states.The officer showed her “policies and things in the Ethics Book about high crimes in Scientology.” One of them was “reporting another Scientologist to law enforcement,” she said, according to the brief.She understood that, if she went to the police, “the church would have ultimately destroyed” her and declared her a “suppressive person,” the document states.The woman identified as N. Trout told her mother and best friend about the rape, but not the church, the brief states.“If you have a legal situation with another member of the church, you may not handle it externally from the church, and it’s very explicit,” she said, according to the brief. She added that she “felt sufficiently intimidated by the repercussions.”What does the church say?The church has strongly denied that it pressures victims. It has accused prosecutors of injecting Scientology into the trial and misrepresenting its doctrines and beliefs “to stir up passion and prejudice in the uninformed,” it said in an emailed statement on Oct. 21.“The church does not discourage anyone from reporting any alleged crime nor tell anyone not to report any alleged criminal conduct,” it said in the statement. “The church has no policy prohibiting or discouraging members from reporting criminal conduct of Scientologists, or of anyone, to law enforcement. Quite the opposite. Church policy explicitly demands Scientologists abide by all laws of the land.” What does Masterson say?A lawyer representing Masterson said in a statement in 2020 that the actor was innocent and that Masterson and his wife were in “complete shock” that the “nearly 20-year-old allegations” had resulted in charges. “The people who know Mr. Masterson know his character and know the allegations to be false,” the lawyer, Tom Mesereau, said.Philip Cohen, who is representing Masterson in the trial, has sought to limit discussion of Scientology in court, telling the judge last month that it would unfairly bias the jury and force the defense to fight a “war on two fronts,” The Los Angeles Times reported.But the judge, Charlaine F. Olmedo of California Superior Court in Los Angeles County, found that Scientology was relevant to the case, and that the women could testify about their belief that church policy discouraged them from reporting the accusations to law enforcement, The Times reported. 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      How Well Do You Know Sherlock Holmes’s London?

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      Late Night Takes Up Herschel Walker’s Résumé Challenge

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      The football star and Senate candidate said he’d put his accomplishments up against Barack Obama’s any time. “Bold!” said Stephen Colbert.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.Best Man for the JobHerschel Walker fired back at Barack Obama this week after the former president said that having been a good football player didn’t qualify Walker for the Senate. Walker said he’d put his résumé up against Obama’s any time.“Bold!” said Stephen Colbert, who presented his lists of the two men’s accomplishments.“Barack Obama was the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review, a U.S. senator, president of the United States, won the Nobel Peace Prize, has an Emmy, two Grammys, three number-one best-selling books, was voted Time’s person of the year twice, has a multimillion-dollar Netflix deal and killed Osama bin Laden. Not bad. That’s not too shabby. Meanwhile, Herschel Walker’s résumé says, ‘Good at football, holds Georgia’s single-season pregnancy record, and brain broke.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The only thing your résumé has that his doesn’t is typos.” — SETH MEYERS“First of all, it wouldn’t even matter if Walker’s résumé was more impressive than Obama’s, because Obama’s has a line in his résumé that says ‘not crazy.’ That carries a lot of weight in a job interview.” — TREVOR NOAH“But also, Obama was president, people! He was president for two terms. Herschel Walker can’t even carry any of his pregnancies to two terms.” — TREVOR NOAH“I’m kidding, his résumé is impressive. I mean, any résumé is impressive when you can just make it up, right? [imitating Walker] ‘I was a cop, I was an F.B.I. agent, a ballerina, I discovered nitrogen, I also am nitrogen. The list goes on and on.’” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Bone Deep Edition)“President Biden last night gave a speech on ‘the state of democracy’ and it turns out, it’s not great.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He said, ‘In our bones, we know democracy …’ That means we are screwed. Yeah, whenever an old person feels something in their bones, it means a storm’s a-coming. [imitating an elderly person] ‘I feel it in my bones. It’s either that or osteoporosis, but I think it’s a storm.’” — TREVOR NOAH“Biden’s clearly at that age where he receives all his information via bones: [imitating Biden] ‘There goes the elbow. There goes the elbow. It’s going to rain. Knee’s acting up again. Low voter turnout in Broward County.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingJimmy Fallon joined the “Sherman’s Showcase” stars Bashir Salahuddin and Diallo Riddle for a musical medley on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutIn “Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me,” the singer is in the trustworthy hands of the veteran director Alek Keshishian.Apple TV+The new documentary “Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me” captures the pop star’s challenges with mental illness, lupus and fame. More

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      Late Night Looks at Election Deniers Running for Office

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      Stephen Colbert pointed out that 12 Republicans running for secretary of state have publicly voiced concerns about the validity of the 2020 presidential election.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.Not Just a River in EgyptSeveral Republicans up for election in the midterms have voiced distrust in the validity of the 2020 presidential election. On Wednesday, Stephen Colbert said he was especially frightened by the 12 running for secretary of state across the country, saying that their wins could mean “the election deniers might be running the next election.”“That doesn’t seem right. That’s like saying, ‘Hey, we need a babysitter — how about Cassandra the Dark, denier of children? I know, I know, but she really wants the job — or don’t you enjoy date night?’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Anything can happen, and as a reminder of that, today is the 74th anniversary of one of the greatest election upsets ever. In 1948, Harry Truman beat Thomas Dewey. No one expected Truman to get re-elected, particularly not the Chicago Tribune, which led to one of the most iconic photos in U.S. history: a victorious President Truman holding up the early edition of the paper that incorrectly declared ‘Dewey Defeats Truman.’ It’s very famous. And that blunder led to another iconic photo the next day: ‘Dewey Says Election was Rigged,’ followed by, ‘Frankly, Dewey Did Win This Election’ and ‘Dewey Supporters Raid Capitol, Poop on Floor.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“At a campaign stop in Wisconsin, Republican Senator Ron Johnson said that he is not sure if he will accept the results of next week’s midterm elections and added, ‘Do Democrats have something up their sleeves?’ Have you met the Democrats? They famously have nothing up their sleeve. The best they can manage is a quarter behind the ear.” — SETH MEYERS“Then, over in Nevada, you got former state representative and news anchor from the future telling us about life before the event, Jim Marchant. Marchant ‘falsely claims the former president defeated Joe Biden in Nevada and has said he wouldn’t have certified the results there in 2020,’ and has pushed the ‘false claim that Pelosi, Schumer, and Schiff weren’t legitimately elected.’ Oh, so he’s just denying every election: ‘Schumer lost! Schiff cheated! Justin Guarini beat Kelly Clarkson! I won the J.D. Power and Associates initial customer satisfaction for midsize family van!” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (In the Swing Edition)“Tonight, Biden delivered a prime-time speech from Capitol Hill about the midterm elections and said it could take several days for all of the votes to be counted in some swing states. Unfortunately, after these past two years, every state is a swing state.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, a lot of experts are predicting a red wave on Election Day. You can tell Biden is nervous because he already hired Rudy Giuliani to challenge the results.” — JIMMY FALLON“President Biden also said that next week’s midterms are the ‘most important election of our lifetime.’ And that’s saying something coming from a guy who maybe voted for Lincoln?” — SETH MEYERS“President Biden warned yesterday that Republican Senator Rick Scott wants to cut Social Security and Medicare and added, quote, ‘Hot damn, boy.’ By the way, using the phrase ‘Hot damn, boy’ instantly qualifies you for Medicare.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingAfter a two-year hiatus, “Jimmy Kimmel Live” brought back its annual YouTube Challenge, which asked parents to record their children after being told their parents ate all their Halloween candy.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightParamore, the pop punk band, will perform on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutIn “Causeway,” Jennifer Lawrence plays a military engineer who returns home from Afghanistan after a traumatic brain injury.AppleAfter a brief acting hiatus, Jennifer Lawrence returns to the screen in “Causeway,” an AppleTV+ drama in which she plays an injured military engineer who comes home to New Orleans for an uneasy convalescence. More

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      People Love to Hate-Watch Tech Villains. That Won’t Hurt Spotify.

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      “The Playlist” resembles other TV dramas that follow founders to their eventual comeuppance — except Spotify isn’t facing any messy implosion.Daniel Ek, a founder of Spotify and its current chief executive, sits in front of a U.S. Senate committee hearing. Or rather: A Swedish actor playing Ek sits in front of a Senate hearing, as imagined by a Swedish production designer. A fictitious senator named Landy is grilling him, hard. “Your business model just doesn’t work for musicians, does it?” she asks. Her tone makes it obvious that she already knows the answer Ek would give if he were willing to tell the truth. As she peppers him with facts and figures about Spotify’s market share and artists’ measly cut of its revenue, Ek tries to fight back, insisting that his streaming service, whatever its shortcomings, is still the best path forward for musicians hoping to make a living from their art. But the more Landy presses, the more shaken Ek looks, as though he didn’t expect the questioning to be so tough. There is a moment in which it seems he might be considering the possibility that her criticisms have merit: Maybe, despite all of his company’s rhetoric about freedom for artists, he really is just a new breed of music-industry monopolist.After Ek, the committee calls Bobbi T, a fictional musician and, coincidentally, a childhood friend of Ek’s. She is appearing as a representative of Scratch the Record, a musicians’ advocacy group calling on Spotify to distribute more of its revenue to the artists whose work constitutes the core of its platform. Her own songs are streamed 200,000 times each month, yet she struggles to get by. She understands, she says, that “in every generation there are winners and losers.” But lawmakers, she insists, should be able to tell “the difference between change and exploitation.” Ek, sitting in the audience, looks as if he would rather be somewhere, anywhere, else.These scenes appear in the sixth and final episode of “The Playlist,” a new Netflix series that chronicles Spotify’s journey from Ek’s brainstorm in Stockholm to a worldwide streaming behemoth. The first five episodes, inspired by a book by two Swedish journalists, have the same narrative shape as basically every show or movie that fictionalizes the real story of a tech start-up. Socially alienated coders with a bold vision? Check. An open-plan office with a foosball table? Check. Stodgy industry executives who just don’t understand the coming sea change (until they’re forced to)? Fund-raising woes? Just-in-time software breakthroughs? Check, check, check.This final episode, though, abandons the source material completely, zooming forward into a fictional near-future: Ek’s big Senate hearing takes place in the year 2025. This future may look a lot like the present, but it is in many ways as fanciful as anything on “Star Trek” or “The Jetsons.” This is a world in which people are moved by the opinions of musicians who aren’t megastars, and there’s some threat of legislative action that could plausibly help bands replace the lost revenue stream of physical albums. It’s a future in which Spotify is bigger than ever — but battle lines are being drawn, and they’re making Daniel Ek sweat.We love stories about underdogs who, armed only with the strength of their vision and perseverance, hit it big and change society. The world of business used to be a little too slow-moving, complex and impersonal for that kind of narrative. But tech start-ups — with their meteoric overnight successes, unconventional young founders and industry-upending products — changed that, creating a new well of David-beats-Goliath stories.Of course, we now know that many of tech’s Davids ended up becoming Goliaths of their own, creating at least as many problems as they ever fixed. Others, we’ve learned, were merely hucksters, plying their trade at the intersection of fad-oriented venture capital and loose regulatory structures. None of this has dimmed our appetite for tech-underdog tales. We still want the fun of seeing David outwit slow, out-of-touch Goliath; it’s just that we also want to congratulate ourselves, along the way, for seeing through David’s every move. So we get stories like “The Dropout,” which shows us Elizabeth Holmes turning an undergraduate hunch into the company Theranos (before being exposed as a fraud), or “WeCrashed,” which lets us tag along as Adam Neumann makes WeWork into an international office-space empire (then gets pushed out as the company becomes a financial mess), or “Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber,” which traces the company’s dramatic transformation of urban transit (while stressing, at every turn, the amoral ruthlessness of one of its founders, Travis Kalanick). We watch these companies dupe and manipulate the world while, sitting at home on our couches, we enjoy the experience of knowing better.More people than ever, I suspect, harbor a vague sense that what Spotify offers must, in the end, be screwing someone over. But the company hasn’t had anything close to a significant moment of public reckoning, let alone been revealed as some scam or house of cards. (If anything, the industry has reveled in the money Spotify brought pouring back to major record labels; it’s musicians who often end up empty-handed.) This is why “The Playlist,” notionally a behind-the-scenes imagining of the past, is forced to lurch into a wholly fictional future. Only there can it give Spotify the comeuppance that the genre has conditioned us to expect, but reality has completely failed to deliver.It’s striking that even after loosing itself from the shackles of the present, the show can’t find its way to giving Spotify more than a slap on the wrist. Bobbi T, the struggling musician, pleads for Congress to pass a law guaranteeing a fixed payment to artists every time one of their songs is streamed. “The Playlist” gives no sign, though, that this will happen, and it has no particular vision of how artists could accumulate the leverage to force the issue. Nor does it suggest that normal people will start paying for albums again. It doesn’t depict the live-music industry reversing the trends making it less and less viable as an income stream, and it certainly doesn’t show masses of people quitting Spotify or other streaming platforms (like, um, Netflix) in protest. All it gives us is the pageantry of a Senate hearing and a few pointed questions, something executives endure all the time without much changing. The show seems to know this: In the end, the fictional future Ek cares what Bobbi T has to say mostly because they went to high school together.Unlike, say, Theranos, Spotify’s product works — just not for most musicians. That’s one reason it hasn’t imploded. Another is the service’s successful colonization of our imaginations. More than once in “The Playlist,” die-hard skeptics are won over by opening Spotify and experiencing the thrill of a seeming infinity of options, all at their fingertips. The app itself tells a visceral story about what’s possible — inevitable, even. Users have largely accepted this story. Anyone looking to challenge it will have to tell a story of their own, and it won’t be enough for this story to be obviously correct or morally right. It will have to somehow feel as powerful and exciting as Spotify itself: the type of thing you could imagine making a whole TV series about.Above: Jonas Alarik/Netflix.Peter C. Baker is a freelance writer in Evanston, Ill., and the author of the novel “Planes,” published by Knopf this year. More

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      Stephen Colbert Isn’t Amused by Elon Musk’s Plan to Monetize Twitter

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      Colbert said that Musk’s idea to charge users for verification would lead to “chaos” on Twitter. “I rely on that blue check mark to know which of my butters I can’t not believe!”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.Check, Please!According to a leaked business plan, Elon Musk is trying to figure out ways to monetize Twitter and is considering charging Twitter users monthly for verified blue check marks on their profiles.“But that would be chaos,” Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday. “I rely on that blue check mark to know which of my butters I can’t not believe!”“Yeah, $8 a month for the blue check mark, because I guess he’s hoping that everyone else on Twitter will also make terrible financial decisions like he did.” — TREVOR NOAH“With $8 a month, you can subscribe — you can get like, Netflix, you can get Paramount+, you can get Hulu, or you can pay so that people verify that they’re actually [expletive] on you: [imitating tweeter] ‘Oh, this is the real Trevor Noah? I hate this guy, yeah!’” — TREVOR NOAH“Why are you charging the people? Give it to everyone for free, or give it to no one. Give it to no one, right? But it doesn’t make sense to offer it as ‘equality’ and then put a price on it, do you get what I’m saying? Can you imagine if M.L.K. was out there like, ‘I have a dream. I have a dream, and I’ll tell you all about it for $8.99 a month.’” — TREVOR NOAH“And are you telling me that paragons of authenticity like Papa Johns and Papa Johns U.K. will risk falling to the same level as unverified frauds like Papa Johns Houston? You know it’s bad when Papa Johns says, ‘We cannot in good conscience verify that that is pizza.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (One Week From Midterms Edition)“The midterm elections are just one week away. That’s right, in one week, we’ll know who gets the House, the Senate and the upper hand at Thanksgiving.” — JIMMY FALLON“The midterms are only seven days and four secret Herschel Walker abortions away.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“You can tell the midterms are close when the fund-raising emails are in all caps: ‘JIMMY, I NEED $10 NOW!’” — JIMMY FALLON“And the big question for Republicans is when to start claiming fraud. You don’t want to go too early, because what if you win? You don’t want to pull a stop the steal on yourself. It’s tricky, you know?” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingJeff Wright, a “Late Night with Seth Meyers” writer, hosted a support group for some undecided voters on Tuesday’s show.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightYvonne Strahovski will chat about the final season of “The Handmaid’s Tale” on Wednesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutChristina Applegate in the final season of “Dead to Me,” premiering Nov. 17 on Netflix. “This is the first time anyone’s going to see me the way I am,” she said.Saeed Adyani/NetflixThe “Dead to Me” star Christina Applegate was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis during filming of the final season, but she was determined to finish strong. More

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      Trevor Noah Brings ‘The Daily Show’ to Georgia

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      Noah kicked off a week of taping in Atlanta on Monday ahead of next week’s big elections.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.Georgia on My MindTrevor Noah kicked off a week of taping “The Daily Show” in Atlanta on Monday night.“Georgia is the epicenter of America’s elections right now,” Noah said. “It decides everything.” One such race, he said, was the contest between the Democratic senator Raphael Warnock and his Republican opponent Herschel Walker, who he was shocked to report are currently “neck and neck.”“I know Walker is all neck, but what is happening?” Noah said.“Every second thing the man says turns out to be a lie. He walks around with a fake police badge, yeah? He pretended he was an F.B.I. agent, all right? He claimed he was anti-abortion, even though he apparently paid for one. He claimed he had only one kid even though he has, like, 1,000. Oh, and he told people he graduated in the top 1 percent of his class at the University of Georgia, and it turned out he never graduated at all. At all. Like, at this point, I want to meet the Herschel Walker that Herschel Walker thinks he is, right? Because at this point, at this point, everything — like, he treats real life the way we treat dating apps.” — TREVOR NOAHNoah noted the Democrats are bringing out “the big guns” ahead of next week’s election, including “Netflix’s very own Barack Obama.”“This race is so important, it even got Obama off the beach.” — TREVOR NOAHObama spoke in support of Warnock at a rally where he said he wouldn’t trust Walker to pilot a plane.“Wow, really? Really, President Obama, really? You are going to say that about a man who graduated in the top 1 percent of pilot school? How dare you! [imitating Herschel Walker] ‘A lot of people don’t know this about me, Herschel, but I was in “Top Gun.” That movie was about me. My name in the ’80s was Pete Maverick.’” — TREVOR NOAH“I love how Obama roasts you with, like, that signature swag. He makes it sound so polite, but he’s roasting the [expletive] out of you.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (The Biggest Troll of All Edition)“In other lunatic billionaire news, Elon Musk is the new owner of Twitter, and in the first 12 hours after he took over, promising free, unadulterated speech, use of the ‘n’ word went up almost 500 percent. So, mission accomplished, Elon.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The company blamed it on trolls, but of all the trolls on Twitter, none are trollier than the troll who just bought it.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Elon Musk tweeted something that was considered misinformation and then deleted it later because it was a false conspiracy theory, which is awkward when you’re the owner of Twitter.” — JIMMY FALLON“Here was the email Musk received. It said, ‘Dear me — I regret to inform me that my tweet violated my terms of service, so I will have to ask me to delete my tweet as soon as me can. If I do not delete my tweet, I will be forced to do it for me. If I-you-me have any questions, you-me should contact me at our-us’s earliest convenience. Yours truly, you.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Today, he fired the entire board, and he’s now floating the idea that verified users may have to pay $20 a month to retain their blue check marks. Not his worst idea. His worst idea would be buying Twitter.” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth WatchingJimmy Fallon announced his new holiday duet with Dolly Parton, “Almost Too Early for Christmas,” on Monday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe Broadway cast of “Almost Famous” will perform on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutThe last record to sell one million copies in a week was Taylor Swift’s “Reputation,” in 2017. Mario Anzuoni/ReutersTaylor Swift’s new album “Midnights” debuted with the biggest weekly total sales for any LP since Adele’s “25” in 2015. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ and ‘Below Deck Adventure’

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      A new series based on the classic French novel premieres on Starz. And a spinoff of the popular series begins on Bravo.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, Oct. 31 — Nov. 6. Details and times are subject to change.MondayHOCUS POCUS (1993) 9 p.m. on Freeform. This film’s original theatrical release can only be described as a flop (it only made $39 million domestically after a $28 million budget). But after years of airing on the Disney Channel and ABC Family, it has become a Halloween favorite. It stars Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy as the Sanderson sisters — three witches who are accidentally conjured back to life by two teenagers. There’s also a talking cat, a zombie and lots of soul sucking. The long awaited sequel was released last month.TuesdayBELOW DECK ADVENTURE 9 p.m. on Bravo. Overbearing guests, boatmances and explosive fights, all while crammed into a couple rooms underwater, are part and parcel of the “Below Deck” franchise. This edition raises the stakes by taking all the glamour of yachting and mixing it with extreme activities — including paragliding, exploring caves and helicopter rides. This season features a whole new roster of yachties — you can be guaranteed to see a “Real Housewives” star onboard.THE DAILY SHOW WITH TREVOR NOAH PRESENTS: JORDAN KLEPPER FINGERS THE MIDTERMS 11:30 p.m. on Comedy Central. With the midterm elections next week, reports of election denial or misinformation are still running rampant. Though there is no evidence of tampering with the 2020 election, 28 percent of voters said they had little to no faith in the accuracy of this year’s midterm election results. In this 30-minute special, Jordan Klepper, doing what he does best, talks to the voters at the heart of these issues along the campaign trail.WednesdayFrom left, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in “Baby Mama.”K.C. Bailey/Universal StudiosBABY MAMA (2008) 6:30 p.m. on Starz. What happens when Kate (Tina Fey), a 37-year-old, single executive, decides she wants a baby? She hires Angie (Amy Poehler), a less-than-responsible woman who is happy to trade the use of her womb for some extra cash. The duo end up living together after Angie has a fight with her common-law husband, Carl (Dax Shepard). From there comes lots of shenanigans, mishaps but also some moments that tug on your heartstrings.ThursdayTHE SEVENTH VEIL (1945) 8 p.m. on TCM. Ann Todd plays Francesca, a piano player who has a psychiatric disorder that makes it impossible for her to play. Herbert Lom is Dr. Larsen, a psychiatrist specializing in hypnosis, who works with Francesca to unveil her fears one by one — by the end she is able to play piano again and has clarity on whom she loves. “The lifting of the last veil from the burdened brain of the film’s heroine, a concert pianist tortured by complexes, makes for subtle and often exciting drama,” Bosley Crowther wrote in his review for The New York Times.FridayLOPEZ VS LOPEZ 8 p.m. on NBC. In this new sitcom, the comedian George Lopez and his daughter, Mayan Lopez, play characters of their same names with inspiration drawn from their real lives — they aren’t the first ones to do it (see: Miley Cyrus and Billy-Ray Cyrus in “Hannah Montana”). Selenis Leyva and Matt Shively round out the cast as Mayan’s mother and her boyfriend.GREAT PERFORMANCES 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). After a $550 million renovation, David Geffen Hall in Manhattan reopened in early October. To celebrate returning home, the New York Philharmonic will perform Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with its music director, Jaap van Zweden.SaturdayKate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey in “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.”Michael Gibson/Paramount PicturesHOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS (2003) 6:30 p.m. on Pop. Why are the leads from this era of rom-coms always journalists? Here Kate Hudson stars as an advice columnist, Andie, who sets out to write an article about how to make a man leave in you 10 days. Matthew McConaughey plays Ben who, simultaneously, makes a bet that he can get a woman to fall in love with him in 10 days. As fate would have it, they set their respective targets on each other, and both of their plans start to backfire.SundayDANGEROUS LIAISONS 8 p.m. on Starz. Inspired by the classic novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos of the same name, this show tells the origin story of how Marquise de Merteuil (Alice Englert) and the Vicomte de Valmont (Nicholas Denton) met. Taking place in Paris, they use their mutual connections and cunning skills to scale their way up the ranks of society.FAMILY KARMA 9 p.m. on Bravo. Love is in the air on the third season of this reality show, which follows a group of seven Indian Americans as they navigate their careers, family and relationships. This season we see Vishal Parvani and Richa Sadana’s wedding, as well as the lead-up to Amrit Kapai and Nicholas Kouchoukos’s nuptials. With everyone at different stages of life and relationships, there is plenty of tension and celebration.SPECTOR 9 p.m. on Showtime. This four-part docu-series revolves around the night of Feb. 3, 2003, when the actress Lana Clarkson was shot and killed in the music producer Phil Spector’s home. After a night out in Los Angeles, the two went back to his mansion, and then hours later Clarkson was found with a single bullet through her head. Through the lengthy trial, the defense tried to argue that Clarkson had shot herself, but the jury found Spector guilty, sentencing him to 19 years to life in prison, where he died last year of Covid-19 complications. The series shares stories about both Clarkson and Spector, with his conviction as the backdrop. More