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      Best of Late Night 2022

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      After a year of significant change, as hosts like Trevor Noah and Samantha Bee signed off, the future of late-night TV has never seemed more uncertain.The landscape of late night has changed significantly since the beginning of 2022, with the departures of several hosts and the end of two weekly shows.With audiences and advertising revenue dwindling, networks are in a precarious place. By the end of the year, the diversity of a format long known as a white-guy haven had dwindled even further, and the future of late night was ever more uncertain amid the growing dominance of on-demand streaming, where topical monologue fodder has little value and talk-show experiments have repeatedly failed.Trevor Noah, for one, was ready to try something else. In November, heshocked viewers and colleagues by saying he would step away from “The Daily Show” after seven years as host. He said that he wanted to devote more time to stand-up, and debuted a new Netflix special and a tour during his last few weeks on air.Noah signed off on Dec. 8 with a tearful exit thanking supporters as well as the Black women who raised him, giving them credit for his success.“I’ve often been credited with, you know, having these grand ideas. People will be like, ‘Oh, Trevor, you are so smart.’ And I’m like, who do you think teaches me? You know? Who do you think has shaped me, nourished me and formed me? From my mom, my gran, my aunts, all these Black women in my life, but then in America as well. I always tell people, if you truly want to learn about America, talk to Black women. Yeah, because unlike everybody else, Black women can’t afford to [expletive] around and find out.” — TREVOR NOAHComedy Central announced that an array of famous funny people will fill in until a permanent replacement for Noah can be found. The guest host lineup includes Wanda Sykes, Chelsea Handler, Kal Penn, Al Franken, Sarah Silverman, D. L. Hughley, John Leguizamo, Hasan Minhaj, Marlon Wayans and Leslie Jones.Noah wasn’t the only host who decided to leave: In April, James Corden announced that he would depart “The Late Late Show” sometime in 2023.CBS hasn’t announced plans for a replacement for Corden, who this fall seemed to be preparing for life after late night by returning to his acting roots. He starred in the Amazon dramedy “Mammals,” which premiered in November.Unfortunately for him, the show’s debut was overshadowed by a slightly ridiculous mini-controversy involving accusations of rude behavior at a restaurant, which Corden eventually was forced to address on air.“I have been walking around thinking that I hadn’t done anything wrong, right? But the truth is, like, I have — I made a rude comment and it was wrong, and it was an unnecessary comment. It was ungracious to the server.” — JAMES CORDENThis year also saw the end of Showtime’s Bronx buddy comedy, “Desus & Mero.” The show shifted its format and time slot several times over four seasons before signing off in July after an apparent falling out between the two co-hosts.Another well-regarded late-night show came to an end in July, albeit involuntarily. TBS canceled “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee,” which won its second Emmy two months later, in the short-form category.Trevor Noah’s 7 Years on “The Daily Show”The host, who took the reins of the show from Jon Stewart in 2015, exposed America’s many blind spots through witty and passionate commentary.Time to Depart: Trevor Noah announced that he would be stepping down in September, citing a desire for a better work-life balance.Saying Goodbye: In his final episode of “The Daily Show,” Mr. Noah told viewers not to be sad and called the night “a celebration.”An Outsider: The talk-show host, who grew up in South Africa and represented a part of the world often neglected by American news, helped his audience see through his eyes.His Best Moments: Noah’s comic perspective set him apart from other late-night hosts. Here are the highlights.At the Creative Arts Emmy ceremony, where that award was announced, the staff expressed hope that the show would be picked up elsewhere. So far there have been no takers, and Bee’s departure leaves Amber Ruffin as late night’s sole female host, with her “Amber Ruffin Show” maintaining its Friday night spot on Peacock.Which leaves the broadcast big guns, the white guys, most of whom will be under contract for several more years. Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers are all staying put for now, and will likely spend 2023 desperately trying (and often failing) to make jokes about anything other than the former president.Insurrection reflectionThe fallout from the Capitol riot has been a late-night focus all year, with Colbert going live after the first night of televised hearings held by the Jan. 6 committee. Colbert presupposed the hearings would be “this summer’s most compelling drama,” but the hosts decided the proceedings just weren’t hot enough for prime time.“What they need to do, you want people to watch in America, is you have to spice things up. You know, have a kiss cam going for the witnesses. Yeah, get Shakira to do a halftime show.” — TREVOR NOAH“The hearing is being produced by a former ABC executive, which is why it’s being marketed as, ‘Extreme Takeover: Capitol Building Edition.’” — JAMES CORDENNot long after the hearings began in June, some “Late Show” staff members were arrested at the Capitol complex while filming a segment featuring Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and the comedian Robert Smigel, who voices the puppet, but the charges were dropped in July.“The Capitol Police are much more cautious than they were, say, 18 months ago, and for a very good reason. If you don’t know what that reason is, I know what news network you watch.” — STEPHEN COLBERTTrump TVTrump may have left office in 2021, but he continued to be a part of the news cycle even beyond his involvement with Jan. 6. Topics like his continued denial of the election results and his company’s fraudulent tax schemes frequently dominated late-night monologues, the hosts unable to resist low-hanging fruit like the news, in February, that he had been dropped by his longtime accounting firm.“Now he’s going to need someone else to do his taxes. I suggest H&R Cellblock.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I’d say he needs a good lawyer, but that’s been true for a while now.” — SETH MEYERSHosts also kept on top of news out of Mar-a-Lago, particularly the revelation, in August, that Trump had taken classified documents from the White House and kept them for himself. (He claimed he had “declassified” them.)“Let me just break down Trump’s defense: He says the F.B.I. planted fake evidence to frame him, and now he wants them to return the fake evidence. Even O.J. is like, ‘Yo, bro, you wildin.’” — DESUS NICE, guest hosting “Jimmy Kimmel Live”“How do you explain this to our allies? ‘Don’t worry, Prime Minister, your country’s nuclear secrets are perfectly, safely stored at the Mar-a-Lago waffle bar between the syrup and the Nutella bucket.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Imagine being a guest at Mar-a-Lago and using the bathroom, and out of the corner of your eye you just notice something and are you like, ‘Hang on, is that — is that Norway’s nuclear codes?’” — JAMES CORDEN“Trump’s argument is that you can just declassify things in your mind. It’s officially declassified as long as you believe it’s declassified. That’s according to Trump’s new legal adviser, Tinkerbell.” — SETH MEYERSTrump’s 2024 campaign announcement was both expected and lackluster, something Kimmel called “the moment none of us have been waiting for.” It was quickly followed by his widely covered dinner with Kanye West and the white nationalist Nick Fuentes.“Now, just in case ‘Holocaust denier’ doesn’t get the point across, Fuentes is not a good guy. He has spread antisemitic conspiracies, he is considered a white supremacist by the Anti-Defamation League, attended the Unite the Right in Charlottesville in 2017 and the Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6. That is the alt-right EGOT, as in, EGOT zero hugs as a child.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“You know it’s a bad sign when Kanye West is only the third most controversial person at your dinner table.” — JIMMY KIMMELBrace for impactWith Georgia a key state in the midterms, Noah took “The Daily Show” to Atlanta for a week of shows, with guests like Stacey Abrams, the ultimately unsuccessful Democratic candidate for governor. Noah’s monologues were more like his stand-up than his usual desk fare, suggesting the stage is where he truly shines.While some midterm candidates attempted to distance themselves from Trump, others embraced the association, which didn’t always work out. Late-night hosts homed in on two such candidates in particular: Dr. Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker.“On the bright side, Dr. Oz now can go back to doing what he does best, which is analyzing the shape and color of our stool.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“A former girlfriend of Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker claimed in a new interview that Walker paid for her to get an abortion in 2009. And the only way that will hurt him with Republicans is if some of that money went to pay down her student loans.” — SETH MEYERSA ‘devastating’ decisionReproductive rights were a hot late-night topic in 2022, spurred by the leak of a Supreme Court decision challenging Roe v. Wade and then the eventual ruling, in June, overturning it. Chelsea Handler, guest hosting “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” discussed her abortions during her monologue, while Meyers brought on Alexis McGill Johnson, the CEO of Planned Parenthood, to discuss the decision’s implications and potential solutions with three of the show’s female writers.Samantha Bee delayed a summer hiatus and went on air while she had Covid to address the “devastating” decision.“It’s not just about voting in November. It’s about doing everything in our power to help vulnerable people access abortion across state lines. And we have to raise hell in our cities, in Washington, in every restaurant Justice Alito eats in for the rest of his life. Because if Republicans have made our lives hell, it’s time to return the favor.” — SAMANTHA BEEReclaiming her timeKimmel has been a champion of Quinta Brunson, reuniting the “Abbott Elementary” creator and star with her inspirational sixth-grade teacher in an early 2022 episode. But when Kimmel appeared at the Emmys, many viewers were less than thrilled with his refusal to leave the stage during a bit that took time and space away from Brunson’s big win for outstanding writing for a comedy series.Kimmel then apologized to Brunson on his show, offering her the chance to interrupt his monologue and continue delivering her thank-yous.Alternative viewsNoah scored a coup near the end of his run on “The Daily Show,” landing the first sit-down interview in which Will Smith substantively discussed his Oscars slap of Chris Rock. But it was Noah’s frank discussion of the late Queen Elizabeth II that illustrated just how different a perspective he brought to late night. While hosts like Corden, a Brit, gave sad remembrances of the matriarch upon her death, Noah addressed how the British Empire’s colonialism affected people in Africa and India and shaped their perceptions of her reign. “You can’t expect the oppressed to mourn the oppressor,” he said.“And I know some people would say ‘Look, Trevor, the queen wasn’t really in charge. She’s just a figurehead. You can’t blame her for the atrocities the British Empire committed.’ Yeah, fair enough, but you also understand in her entire reign, she never repented, she never once made amends, right? There wasn’t even one, like, Notes app apology on her Twitter — nothing!” — TREVOR NOAHBest of the restThe Jimmys played a joke on their audiences, switching shows for April Fools’ Day and pranking fans.“Hi, I’m Jimmy. Please, please settle down, you’re going to offend the other Jimmy.” — JIMMY FALLON, hosting “Jimmy Kimmel Live”“We swapped everything — we swapped shows, bands, even wives. Bad news, Nancy, Fat Jimmy’s coming home.” — JIMMY KIMMEL, hosting “The Tonight Show”Corden took “The Late Late Show” to London, where he invited Lizzo for a spin on “Carpool Karaoke.” It was a memorable installment of the segment viewers will surely miss most when Corden leaves next year.Finally, Jon Batiste, a five-time Grammy winner, sat down for the Colbert Questionnaire before taking what was described at the time as a hiatus from his post as the “Late Show” bandleader.Batiste ultimately decided not to return to the show, his TV home for seven seasons. It was one more late-night departure in a year largely defined by them. More

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      Drew Griffin, CNN Investigative Journalist, Dies at 60

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      His reporting on delayed care for military veterans at Veterans Affairs hospitals led to the resignation of the secretary of the department.Drew Griffin, an investigative journalist whose reporting for CNN on delayed care at Veterans Affairs hospitals prompted the resignation of the secretary of the department, died on Saturday at his home in the Atlanta area. He was 60.Chris Licht, CNN’s chief executive, announced the death in an email to staff members on Monday. The cause was not immediately made public, but Mr. Griffin had cancer.“Drew’s death is a devastating loss to CNN and our entire profession,” Mr. Licht said. “Drew’s work had incredible impact and embodied the mission of this organization in every way. He cared about seeking the truth and holding the powerful to account.”Mr. Griffin joined CNN in May 2004. During his time with the network, he covered a range of issues, including sexual assault allegations against Uber drivers, fraud claims against Trump University during Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol. His work on the Capitol attack was cited in court filings by the U.S. Department of Justice, according to CNN.Mr. Licht noted that Mr. Griffin “was even working on an investigation until the day he passed away.”In January 2014, Mr. Griffin led a team that investigated the deaths of at least 19 military veterans after their appointments at Veterans Affairs hospitals had been delayed. Thousands of other veterans were experiencing similar delays for treatment.After CNN’s report, Eric Shinseki resigned under pressure as secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other department officials were later fired.“We don’t have time for distractions,” President Barack Obama said at the time. “We need to fix the problem.”CNN’s report earned a Peabody Award, one of the most prestigious recognitions in television and radio, in 2014. The reporting also earned an Edward R. Murrow Award.“Our goal in this reporting wasn’t just to shed light on this problem,” Mr. Griffin said when accepting the Peabody Award. “We wanted to effect change, to hold these politicians and bureaucrats responsible.”Mr. Griffin also earned a National Press Foundation Award in 2007, and Emmy Awards in 2005, 2006 and 2007, according to CNN.Though Mr. Griffin’s work centered on investigations, he also volunteered to cover breaking news stories, CNN said.In 2017, Mr. Griffin was about to do a live report on Hurricane Harvey from Beaumont, Texas, when a man nearby drove a truck into floodwater. Mr. Griffin and a photojournalist ran to rescue the man from the truck as it began to sink, a moment that was aired live.Andrew Charles Griffin was born on Oct. 21, 1962. His father, Michael James Griffin, served in the Army and later worked as a civil engineer with the Cook County, Ill., Highway Department. His mother, Judith Anne Griffin, was a lawyer.Mr. Griffin earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and began his career in journalism as a reporter and cameraman for WICD-TV in Champaign, Ill. He went on to work in Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Washington, according to CNN.In January 1994, Mr. Griffin joined CBS 2 News in Los Angeles, where he was a reporter and anchor, and helped create an investigative reporting team. While working for that organization, Mr. Griffin reported from New York City to cover the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and he earned a number of local awards for his investigative reporting.Mr. Griffin is survived by his wife, Margot; his children, Ele, Louis and Miles; his brothers Peter and Michael; and two grandchildren.Sheelagh McNeill More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ and Mariah Carey

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      Martin McDonagh’s latest dark comedy airs on HBO. And Mariah Carey performs in a Christmas special on CBS.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, Dec. 19-26. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN (2022) 7 p.m. on HBO. Heated language and cold fingers fly in this dark comedy from Martin McDonagh, about two old buddies, Padraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson), whose friendship meets a sudden end. Set on a fictional Irish island in 1923, the movie kicks into action when Colm announces, seemingly out of foggy air, that he’s had enough of Padraic. What follows is surreal and downbeat, with ambitious performances from Farrell, Gleeson and a supporting cast that includes Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan. “It’s not necessary to believe what you see — it may, indeed, not be possible,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The New York Times, “but you can nonetheless find yourself beguiled by the wayward sincerity of the characters and touched by the sparks of humanity their struggles cast off.” The movie is positioned to be part of the awards conversation in the lead-up to the Oscars in March.DEAD FOR A DOLLAR (2022) 8:10 p.m. on Showtime 2. This throwback, low-budget western from Walter Hill (“The Warriors,” “48 Hours”) centers on a bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) searching for a businessman’s wife (Rachel Brosnahan), whose reasons for having gone missing are not what they seem. It is “solidly and proudly a B picture,” Scott wrote in his review for The Times. But, he added, “in an age of blockbuster bloat and streaming cynicism, a solid B movie — efficiently shot (by Lloyd Ahern II) and effectively acted (by everyone) is something of a miracle.” The cast also includes Willem Dafoe, Hamish Linklater and Benjamin Bratt.THE WHEEL 10 p.m. on NBC. The British comic Michael McIntyre has hosted a few seasons of this quiz show overseas for the BBC; it makes its stateside debut on Monday night. The show — whose set looks something like a gigantic roulette wheel — pairs contestants with celebrity guests who are sometimes experts on the trivia subjects, and sometimes very much not. Guests on Monday’s episode include the actress Christina Ricci, the comic Amber Ruffin and the television journalist Steve Kornacki.TuesdayMariah Carey, center, in “Mariah Carey: Merry Christmas To All!”James Devaney/CBSMARIAH CAREY: MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL! 8 p.m. on CBS. For the fourth consecutive year, Mariah Carey’s 1994 single “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has recently topped Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, despite its age. That feat should add extra flair to Carey’s performance of the song during this two-hour special, which was filmed in Manhattan at a bedazzled Madison Square Garden.WednesdayHOMEWARD BOUND: A GRAMMY SALUTE TO THE SONGS OF PAUL SIMON 9 p.m. on CBS. The first Grammy Award that the singer-songwriter Paul Simon ever won was for “Mrs. Robinson,” the 1968 Simon & Garfunkel hit he wrote for the Hollywood classic “The Graduate.” So perhaps it makes sense that this Grammy-hosted tribute to Simon took place in Los Angeles, despite Simon’s associations with New York. Filmed in April at the Hollywood Pantages Theater, the concert includes performances of Simon’s songs by a multigenerational (and multigenre) group of artists, among them Brandi Carlile, Rhiannon Giddens, Angélique Kidjo, Dave Matthews and Irma Thomas.ThursdayTHE LION IN WINTER (1968) 5:30 p.m. on TCM. Ahh, Christmas 1183 at King Henry II’s chateau, where holiday cheer is overtaken by familial scheming. (If this sounds like your own end-of-year gathering, consider that this one includes actual jousting.) At issue is who will take over the throne of the aging king (Peter O’Toole). Will it be Prince John (Nigel Terry)? Prince Richard (Anthony Hopkins)? In the end, the real winner is surely Katharine Hepburn, who won an Oscar for her performance as Eleanor of Aquitaine, the king’s wife.FridayTHE 24TH ANNUAL A HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS AT THE GROVE 8 p.m. on CBS. Gloria Estefan is the host of this benefit program, which tells positive stories of adoption from foster care. It also brings out musical performances, with this year’s lineup including Andy Grammer, Mickey Guyton, David Foster and Kat McPhee, and Little Big Town.SaturdayJohn Cho, left, and Kal Penn in “A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas.”Darren Michaels/Warner Brothers PicturesCHRISTMAS EVE PROGRAMMING on various networks. Even among those who celebrate, Christmas of course means different things to different people. And nowhere is this more apparent than on TV this Saturday, when you can catch the stoner comedy A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR CHRISTMAS (2011), at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. on IFC; then flip over to see Pope Francis lead CHRISTMAS EVE MASS from the Vatican, which begins at 11:29 p.m. on NBC.Also on offer are several adaptations of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” including FX’S A CHRISTMAS CAROL, a dark 2019 rethink with Guy Pearce that will air at 9:40 p.m. on FXM, and A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1938), a classic black-and-white adaptation that stars Reginald Owen and will air at 10 p.m. on TCM. See also: A CHRISTMAS STORY (1983) at 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. on TNT; LOVE ACTUALLY (2003) at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. on BBC America; and THE GRINCH (2018) at 8 p.m. on FX.SundayZiwe Fumudoh in “Ziwe.”Gwen Capistran/ShowtimeZIWE 11 p.m. on Showtime. Ziwe Fumudoh will wrap up the second season of her sharp variety show on Sunday by bringing on Wayne Brady, with whom she discusses the commercialization of Juneteenth, and several other guests, including the actress Laura Benanti and the comic Larry Owens. More

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      Austin Butler Sings ‘Blue Christmas’ With Cecily Strong in Her Last ‘SNL’

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      After a surprise announcement hours before the broadcast, Strong, an 11-season veteran of the show, bid a tearful goodbye.“Saturday Night Live” was lucky to have had Cecily Strong for as long as it did. Since joining the show in 2012, she has contributed memorable recurring characters, like The Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation With at a Party, and an array of celebrity and political impersonations, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kyrsten Sinema and Jeanine Pirro. She performed at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner and was a co-anchor of the Weekend Update desk.There was a moment, at the end of the 2020-21 season, when Strong appeared to be saying goodbye to “S.N.L.” — singing “My Way” as she doused herself in a tank that was supposed to be filled with wine — but she nonetheless returned the following year.And while she was not part of the exodus of cast members that preceded the start of its current 48th season, she did not appear in the first three live episodes — instead, she was performing a one-woman show, “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,” in Los Angeles. And now her time on “S.N.L.” has indeed come to an end.The announcement of Strong’s departure was made online just a couple of hours before the start of this weekend’s broadcast, hosted by Austin Butler and featuring Lizzo as its musical guest.Strong herself got to bid farewell to “S.N.L.” in a Weekend Update segment in which she played her recurring character Cathy Anne, a disheveled woman who is always yelling outside Michael Che’s window.In her Cathy Anne guise, Strong said that she was wearing a Santa hat because “it’s covering up a giant open wound — I got a little bit scalped.” (She explained further that this had happened because she “fell asleep on the escalator.”)Strong went onto say that she was “a little emo tonight, because, truth is, I’m here to say goodbye.” She explained that she was going to prison because all of the crimes she had confessed in her various appearances had finally caught up with her: “You know, drug use, trespassing, destruction of property, crack, impersonating a police horse, meth and crack.”But, she said, she hoped prison would give her “much needed stability, and I’m not too scared ’cause I got friends on the inside — they seem to be doing OK.” (Here, the screen showed a graphic of the “S.N.L.” alumnae Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant, wearing orange jumpsuits and prison tattoos.)Strong gradually slipped out of character as she addressed the audience, saying: “Everybody has to go to jail at some point, right? It’s just my time now. But I had a lot of fun here. And I feel really lucky that I got to have so many of the best moments of my life in this place with these people that I love so much.”The tears came later, at the end of the episode, when Butler, who played Elvis Presley in the recent film “Elvis,” joined Strong, Kenan Thompson and several other “S.N.L.” cast members to sing a sentimental cover of “Blue Christmas.”But at the end of her Weekend Update segment, Strong told everyone not to be sad because, as she sang once again to the tune of “My Way”: “I did it high, Che.”Cold open of the weekFormer President Donald Trump pretty much handed “S.N.L.” a script for its opening sketch when he announced on Thursday that he would begin selling a set of digital trading cards depicting him as various fantastical characters.James Austin Johnson brought his studied nonchalance to his recurring role as Trump, pitching the $99 offer — “seems like a lot, seems like a scam, and in many ways it is,” he said — while also mocking the larger concept of NFTs: “You can also get them for free by just going online and just looking at them, maybe, I don’t know, maybe taking a screenshot.”“But we’d really prefer it,” he added, “if you sent the $99.”Celebrity impersonation of the weekIt has been less than a week since HBO aired the season finale of “The White Lotus.” But if you already find yourself missing its star and muse Jennifer Coolidge, then Chloe Fineman has you covered in this holiday-theme segment where she captures Coolidge’s breathless amazement at everyday occurrences.In “Jennifer Coolidge Is Impressed by Christmas Stuff,” Fineman oohs and ahhs about Christmas lights. (“One year I got the blinking ones,” she explains; “I left my Christmas tree on all night and learned my cat was epileptic.”) And she blithely asks a pianist, played by Michael Longfellow, if he was the composer of the tune he just played — that tune being “Jingle Bells.”(Fun fact: the real Coolidge auditioned for “S.N.L.” in the 1990s, along with the future cast members Will Ferrell, Chris Kattan and Cheri Oteri, but she didn’t get the gig. She has yet to host the show, wink wink!)Questionable holiday treat of the weekPerhaps on some Christmas past, you had the misfortune of being served some dry, brittle candy made out of marzipan and formed into some improbable shape like a cash register or a bunch of bananas. (And if not, consider yourself lucky.)But clearly someone in the “S.N.L.” writing staff had a score to settle with marzipan and channeled it into this exceptionally silly sketch in which Thompson and a group of excitable British children (played by Butler and the cast) fail to make it sound appealing, even when they try to sing marzipan’s praises.As Thompson explains, “Just remember, don’t eat it within 12 hours of going to sleep, or after 12 hours of waking up.”Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on Trump’s entry into the NFT market and the arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX:Jost began:Insiders are saying that the House Jan. 6 committee will refer at least three criminal charges against Donald Trump, but after this week, I think he’s pretty much locked down that insanity plea. [His screen shows a trading-card image depicting Trump as a comic-book hero with lasers coming from his eyes.] Semiretired maniac Donald Trump has launched a collection of digital NFT trading cards depicting him in various costumes, including cowboy, superhero and, most unbelievable of all, guy who didn’t dodge the draft.As the screen beside him showed an image of Trump wearing a fighter pilot suit, Jost continued:I’m honestly just relieved that he’s wearing an American military uniform. It’s such a funny move to get into NFTs after the whole market just crashed. It’s like getting into Kanye now. Which Trump also kind of did.Che picked up the thread:Sam Bankman-Fried, the former C.E.O. of the cryptocurrency company FTX, was arrested on fraud charges in the Bahamas — I’m going to guess while swimming in a T-shirt. Prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried took funds from FTX customers to make large political donations. That money will now be used to make sure the cameras outside his jail cell aren’t working. More

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      The Best of Late Night This Year

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      Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesThe hosts had plenty of news to riff on this week, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s joke about the Jan. 6 riot; a report that dozens of G.O.P. lawmakers had texted the former chief of staff Mark Meadows about overturning the 2020 election; and President Donald Trump releasing NFT trading cards of himself as a superhero.Here’s what the hosts had to say → More

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      A New ‘Best Man’ Gives Equal Time to the Women

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      “The Best Man: The Final Chapters,” a new series sequel to the popular films, deepens the franchise’s female characters, introduces new faces and tackles a wider range of issues.The broom-jumping romantic comedy “The Best Man” debuted in theaters in 1999, delivering a bougie Black bonanza that would prove to have true staying power.For his film directing debut, Malcolm D. Lee assembled for “The Best Man” a cast of young Black actors, anchored by Morris Chestnut, Taye Diggs and Nia Long, to play successful late-20s college buddies navigating the messier aspects of love and friendship as one couple prepares to wed.There was no encroaching systemic racism for them to overcome and there were no societal ills looming large (unless you count the male characters’ misogynistic views). It was just two hours of beautiful people representing every shade of brown, sporting their best Y2K wear, thriving professionally and being decadently self-involved to the beat of a neo-soul soundtrack.“It was such an important film during that time for the culture,” Long said. “We, as Black people, were seeing ourselves in a different way for the first time, and were thirsty for that.”Lee, who also wrote the film, said he wanted Black filmgoers to “feel seen, and to normalize what I know as being Black in America.”The film grossed an estimated $34.5 million (on a budget of $9 million), helped start the careers of Regina Hall and Sanaa Lathan, and became a Black rom-com classic, joining the ranks of Diggs’s 1998 star-making vehicle “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” and the Long-led 1997 drama “Love Jones.” The 2013 follow-up, “The Best Man Holiday,” doubled its predecessor’s box office numbers with a Christmas-themed tear-jerker that reunited the age-defying actors.Released in 1999, “The Best Man” starred emerging young actors like, from left, Monica Calhoun, Morris Chestnut and Diggs.Michael Ginsberg/Universal PicturesNow, more than two decades since they danced the Electric Slide to Cameo’s “Candy” during the first film’s climactic reception scene, the ensemble is back together for another installment. “The Best Man: The Final Chapters,” a limited series premiering on Peacock on Dec. 22, picks up where the sequel left off, in the aftermath of one character’s tragic loss and amid the shock of yet another wedding announcement. (And still, the actors seemingly have not aged a lick.)“It’s kind of amazing that we’re all alive and healthy, and that we’re all thriving in this business,” Lathan said. “When we came up, there were literally a handful of us working and fighting for the same jobs.”With eight hourlong episodes to work with (all dropping at once), Lee and the other writers expanded the story to give equal time to the women, introduce some new faces and tackle a more robust range of issues.The two films offered a glimpse of the interior lives of four Black men who’ve been through it all together. There’s the ambitious novelist Harper (played by Diggs); his N.F.L.-star best friend, Lance (Morris Chestnut); Quentin (Terrence Howard), the resident Lothario and pot-stirrer; and Julian, or “Murch” (Harold Perrineau), the peaceable doormat. They grew older together on the big screen, but the series finds them finally growing up.As “The Final Chapters” opens, Harper has achieved many of his career goals but is still as unmoored as ever. Lance remains a grief-stricken widower who is now floundering as a single parent. (His wife Mia, played by Monica Calhoun, died in the film sequel.) Quentin is still a showboating provocateur, but he is slowly learning how to show his vulnerable side. By contrast, Murch, the people-pleasing family man, has picked up a little of the edge that his cocky friend sloughed off.“We’ve come a long way,” Diggs said. “We’ve all, as actors, lived our lives and had intense situations that lend themselves to our acting work, and you can see it in this series. It all comes through.”The series finds the core friend group, played by, from left, Terrence Howard, Diggs, Perrineau and Chestnut, older and wiser but still negotiating life and love.PeacockLee said he had been brewing up next-phase ideas for the gang ever since “Holiday” proved to be a hit, and he even wrote a draft of a script. But a third movie never happened, Lee said, because of the actors’ conflicting schedules and his stalled budget negotiations with Universal Pictures, which distributed the first two films.After Lee signed a development deal in 2018 with the production studio Universal Television — the studio is, like Peacock, part of NBCUniversal — he began to rework the sequel concept as a limited series.Lee, who also directed, among other films, the hit 2017 comedy “Girls Trip” and the 2021 “Space Jam” sequel, “A New Legacy,” sought out a seasoned TV pro to help him make the transition to the small screen. Enter Dayna Lynne North, who was fresh off a stint as a writer and executive producer for HBO’s “Insecure.” She had been a “Best Man” fan since attending the 1999 premiere screening of the first movie with her USC film school squad. Signing on to write and share showrunning duties on the series with Lee was a full-circle moment for her.“It’s basically like watching LeBron play and having him come over and be like, ‘Hey, you want to come down here and see if you can make this shot?’” North said, referring to the Lakers star LeBron James. “It felt like home to me — I get where these characters are, and I know the world of television.”“I came in knowing that I wanted to dive deeper into the women’s lives,” she continued. “We hadn’t gotten the same window into the women of ‘The Best Man.’”“I think we’ve done a great job of showing growth,” said Long, right, with Lathan in the new series.Matt Infante/PeacockIndeed, male egos rampaged through the films, in the form of grandstanding, trash-talking, territory-claiming and brawling, while the women’s roles mostly took a back seat. The series brings the ladies to the fore.“I think we’ve done a great job of showing growth, maturing and being true to how life works, because it is complicated,” Long said.Her character, Jordan, once primarily an embodiment of the “one that got away” type, ascends ever higher in her TV executive career while grasping for work-life balance. Hall’s Candace, who arrived to the franchise as a bachelor-party stripper and won Murch’s affections with her love of literature, adds graduate school to her already packed schedule as a mother and school administrator. And Lathan’s Robyn, Harper’s grounded, patient wife, gradually begins to emerge from his long shadow.“It has been really synergistic in a weird way,” Lathan said of returning to the role. “The evolution of her growing her self-worth has been parallel to what’s been happening to me. She’s stepping into her power, and how that manifests is not necessarily expected.”And then, there’s Shelby, the clear front-runner in the “Most Improved” category. Played by Melissa De Sousa, the character began as a snarky shrew who dominated the submissive Murch until she lost him to Candy near the end of the first film. She returned in the sequel as a scorned reality-TV drama queen, hellbent on stoking fires. The new Shelby is still brash, but she has more to offer than audacious one-liners.“I had to fight for more because I was the least developed out of all of them,” De Sousa said. “People liked her, but they liked to hate her.”She said she had asked Lee to flesh out the role for the series. “I said, ‘It’s really important that you show Shelby as a fully developed woman,’” she recalled telling him. “‘You have to show her heart.’” (Lee said he had already intended to do so.)Malcolm D. Lee, center, had been thinking about another “Best Man” sequel since the second film came out in 2013.Clifton Prescod/PeacockBeyond presenting the women with more depth, the series also travels outside the friendship bubble, giving its characters more to chew on than just who-slept-with-or-kept-secrets-from-whom melodrama.The story bounces between the 2010s and the present (with episode titles cleverly referencing Black literature, including Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” and “An American Marriage” by Tayari Jones). The plot is studded with Covid-related business busts, a racial microaggression that snowballs into a run-in with the New York Police Department, gentrification woes, a #MeToo moment and a Black Lives Matter protest.“It made it easier,” Diggs said of the more topical scenes. “It wasn’t like we had to go and do research to find out how we thought this character would feel, because it’s all very fresh.”As the characters left their comfort zones, so too did Lee, who opted to share directing duties for a change. He directed four episodes, and Stacey Muhammad (“Queen Sugar”) and Charles Stone III (“black-ish”) took one each. The revered film and TV polymath Robert Townsend (“Hollywood Shuffle”) directed the two remaining episodes, bringing out the cast’s and crew’s inner fans. (“I’ve been in this business for a minute, so it’s great to be able to still feel star-struck,” Diggs said.)While it all amounts to plenty of change for a beloved franchise, both onscreen and behind the scenes, Lee’s original vision remains intact. The goal has always been to depict the kind of people Lee knows in his own life — “upwardly-mobile, aspirational people who wanted to ‘make it.’” he said.“But when you make it, guess what? Life is still there,” he continued. “When we get older, reality sneaks in — not just the big events like weddings and funerals but also those in-between things with career, family, your parents and kids.“We wanted to deal with all of those things, but also have the eye candy and the nostalgia.” More

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      A Comedian’s Stunt Is a Sly Protest of Qatar’s LGBTQ Laws

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      Joe Lycett appeared to shred cash after demanding that David Beckham end his relationship with the World Cup. It was his latest performance with a point.LONDON — Hours before the opening ceremony of Qatar’s World Cup, the comedian Joe Lycett dropped great wads of cash into a shredder.Days earlier, he had posted a video in which he addressed the footballer David Beckham. Lycett called him a “gay icon” for appearing on the cover of a British gay lifestyle magazine. But he also gave him a week to stop being a World Cup ambassador for Qatar, which outlaws homosexuality and was reportedly paying Beckham 10 million pounds (more than $12 million) to promote the tournament.After hearing nothing from Beckham, the British comedian, wearing a pair of safety goggles and a frilly rainbow shirt, live-streamed himself feeding £10,000 of his own money into a wood chipper. He was subsequently criticized in British newspapers and on social media for shredding money at a time when many in the country are struggling financially.Except, in a follow-up video, Lycett revealed that he hadn’t really destroyed the cash, and instead had donated a total of £10,000 to two L.G.B.T.Q. charities. “To threaten to destroy money in a cost-of-living crisis? It’s a horrific thing to do,” he said, referring to Britain’s surging inflation rates.It was Lycett’s latest act of public performance as protest, an approach he had previously used to take on the British Conservative Party and Shell, the energy company. In a recent interview in a London pub, Lycett, 34, said he thought of these efforts as stunts: “War-gamed, and plotted.”Lycett, a popular stand-up comedian and TV personality in Britain who identifies as pansexual and so is attracted to people regardless of their gender identity, remembered visiting Qatar in 2015 as part of a comedy tour. “I didn’t feel safe there,” he said, adding that he was advised by the organizers not to leave his hotel. In Qatar, same-sex relations are punishable by up to seven years in prison, according to Human Rights Watch.Lycett onstage at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2015. Earlier in his comedy career, Lycett said he preferred to make “gentle and nonabrasive” jokes “about cheese and being middle-class.”Richard Dyson/AlamySoccer fans around the world have expressed concern about Qatar’s human rights record, and when he heard that the World Cup was taking place in the Arab nation, Lycett was appalled. He hoped putting pressure on Beckham “to say or do something” would have “a much larger knock-on effect” in actively improving L.G.B.T.Q. rights in Qatar, he said.Beckham declined to comment for this article, but in a TV special made by Lycett that aired Thursday in Britain, Beckham’s team made a statement that read, in part: “We understand that there are different and strongly held views about engagement in the Middle East but see it as positive that debate about the key issues has been stimulated directly by the first World Cup being held in the region.”In an email after the show’s broadcast, Lycett said he was shocked by the statement’s “absence of even mentioning L.G.B.T.Q.+ people,” and its use of the word “debate.” “Essentially Beckham (or more likely his team) are saying human rights are up for debate,” Lycett said.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Can Daniel Kitson Redefine the Relationship Between Comic and Audience?

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      The elusive stand-up seems to believe in making his listeners work. But it’s not out of contempt. Instead, he’s trying to forge an intimate human bond.STILLINGTON, England — Under a tent by a mill on an August night, the stand-up comic Daniel Kitson found the most apt rustic setting to poke fun at comics leaning on modern technology. He described performers’ postshow tweets of gratitude to ticket-buyers as another way to say: “Give me your compliments.”He groused about podcasts, singling out the worst of the genre as “great guys chatting,” shows he termed “for wankers by wankers.” Offering the opposing viewpoint, he said they are easy to listen to before rebutting himself: “Should be hard.”Daniel Kitson — whose last two decades of stand-up performances and ambitious theater works put him in contention for greatest comedian working today — believes in making the audience work. Not just because his rapid-fire monologues can be dense and elusive. Just finding him can be a challenge, since he’s not on social media and doesn’t do interviews, talk shows or podcasts. Most of all: Despite being prolific, his new work is not on any streaming service and only a few recorded shows can be bought on his site. This has made him an unknown quantity to vast swaths of comedy fans, but also a figure of some mystique inspiring committed admirers who will go to great lengths to see him. Which is how I found myself in the British countryside over the summer.His stand-up focused on the pandemic and the fear it inspired. His jokes quickly veered from aggressive to ruminative, dirty to philosophical, but he punctuated them with ideas that stuck in the brain, like the one that suggested people who add a yell to their sneeze are, on some level, “letting a little terror out.” He found the early pandemic oddly unifying: Everyone in the world was stuck at home at the same time. Kitson stopped taking trips to the United States and Edinburgh (he has die-hard followings Off Broadway and at the Fringe Festival in Scotland), but in some ways the pandemic made him a more accessible artist.I was grateful that in the most fearful moments of 2020, he started a radio show from his home that I listened to every day, providing some quiet charm to interrupt the steady bass line of sirens outside my Brooklyn window. More significantly, he taped a new show, an audio play named “Shenanigan” that he sold on his site. But, consistent with his ethos, he kept distribution small, just 2,000 copies, available only in record, CD or cassette tape formats. (None are currently for sale.)An intricate, layered narrative told with literary precision and propulsive sound effects, “Shenanigan” feels less like his stand-up or solo shows than something entirely new. Its premise, reminiscent of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” turns the romantic comedy inside out. Darting back and forth in time to chronicle the dissolution of the relationship between a couple, Bob and Poppy, Kitson introduces each section he narrates by the number of weeks, days or hours before the breakup.This structure creates suspense but also draws attention to its own artifice, as does the science-fiction conceit at its center: A dystopian company called A Better Beginning erases memories of couples’ first meetings and implants a more romantic version. It was founded by a heartbroken man who believes art has ruined relationships by setting up unrealistic expectations for love.Kitson periodically interrupts the narrative to give us scenes of him making the show, a spoof of himself as pretentious and obsessive but also a running commentary on the themes he’s exploring, especially in conversations with a female friend. She wants to know if the show is really about his own aversion to long-term relationships. Kitson balks, not just offering the dodge that it’s all made up, but going further, adding that there is no such thing as a true story. “It’s like a wood fire,” he says. “The story-ness affects the truthiness.”He’s right, in a way, and in focusing on the origin story of a relationship, he found a resonant metaphor to illustrate and expand his point. For many people, telling this tale is as close as they will get to understanding how a comedian’s set, refined through repetition, can’t help but blur the line between truth and fiction. To take one example, after so much retelling, the memory of the story of how your parents met tends to crowd out the actual events in their minds.Kitson displays a skepticism about romantic love but a more subtle and fascinating kind about stories. Our cultural faith in stories has never been greater and more unquestioned, what a recent book by the literary theorist Peter Brooks described as “our mindless valorization of storytelling.” Kitson did not write a didactic show, but he seems to be suggesting that the power of stories is more limited than we think. A good story can evoke real emotions, but it can’t replace them.Seeming to spoof himself, Kitson sounds self-important notes, telling his friend that his goal as an artist is to show, not tell, leaving it up to the audience to put it together. One of the nice things about the audio play is that its narrative is so fractured that it benefits from multiple listens. I have occasionally felt this with his plays, that the ephemerality of theater doesn’t always suit them. Ultimately, Kitson is a comic who likes the sound of laughter. He isn’t trying to be esoteric for its own sake. His insistence on producing his work his own way is not a rejection of the crowd, but it does reflect an interest in reinventing his relationship with them.His goal appears to be to forge a more intimate, human bond, a point he made implicitly in the live show I saw in Yorkshire. At various points he singled out audience members, gently explaining a joke to one who didn’t get it; urging another who looked sleepy and struggling to stay awake, not to feel bad, to close their eyes and rest; and telling a person in the front row that if he wanted to put his foot onstage, he should go ahead.This appeared to me to be a demonstration that he was paying as much attention to us as we were to him, modeling a relationship between performer and patron as peers, each deserving attention and care. But maybe that’s just a story I am straining to tell to make sense of disparate comments. That’s the tricky thing about art. Once you put it in the world, it’s out of your hands. Maybe forgotten or reshaped by memory. This can happen in life, too, even the most major events.Kitson himself said that he hadn’t processed the events of the pandemic, before pausing to speculate that maybe we never process anything. “Maybe we just forget stuff and the rest becomes the narrative.” More