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      Do You Skip Intro?

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      Elyssa Dudley and Listen and follow Still ProcessingApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherWesley worries the “skip intro” button is killing the TV theme song. When we skip, we’re denying “the possibility of having this connection with a show that becomes bigger and more meaningful than the show itself.”He takes his concern to his friend Hanif Abdurraqib, a poet, music critic and MacArthur “genius grant” winner. Together, they explore their childhood memories of “Good Times,” “The Wonder Years” and “The Jeffersons.” Then, producer Hans Buetow unearths a rendition of a theme song that blows their minds — and they vow never to hit “skip intro” on it.Can you help us identify this choir?On today’s episode, Wesley and Hanif are played this video of a choir singing the “Good Times” theme song. Now, we need your help: Can you identify the choir?We have confirmed that the singers are backstage at the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills, Calif., but who are they? We’d love to find out and get in touch with them.If you have any ideas or information about the choir, please email us at stillprocessing@nytimes.com.Theme songs as beautiful wallpaperHanif shares a story about how a photographer visiting his home was struck by the blue wallpaper in his front entryway. Before the pandemic, Hanif would travel more frequently, so coming home and crossing his entryway was “a real beautiful experience,” he says. But now, he’s so consumed by errands — setting down groceries, making sure his dog doesn’t run out — that he’d forgotten about his wallpaper.“The theme song acts as almost the wallpaper,” Hanif says. “When I do notice it, if it’s something that I can pause and notice and I enjoy it, I’m thrilled. But otherwise, it’s kind of like a border between me and something that I have to do, or something that I feel like I am driven to do. But it is nice to notice it when it comes along if it’s wonderful enough.”Hosted by: Jenna Wortham and Wesley MorrisProduced by: Elyssa Dudley and Hans BuetowEdited by: Sara Sarasohn and Sasha WeissEngineered by: Marion LozanoExecutive Producer, Shows: Wendy DorrAssistant Managing Editor: Sam Dolnick More

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      Robert Morse, Impish Tony-Winning Comedy Star, Is Dead at 90

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      He dazzled as a charming corporate schemer in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” His later triumphs included a memorable role on “Mad Men.”Robert Morse, whose impish, gaptoothed grin and expert comic timing made him a Tony-winning Broadway star as a charming corporate schemer in the 1961 musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” who later won another Tony for his eerily lifelike portrait of the writer Truman Capote in “Tru,” and who capped his long career with a triumphant return to the corporate world on the acclaimed television series “Mad Men,” has died. He was 90. His death was announced on Twitter by the writer and producer Larry Karaszewski, who worked with Mr. Morse on the television series “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.” He did not say where or when Mr. Morse died.Small in stature but larger than life as a performer, Mr. Morse was still a relative newcomer to the stage when he took Broadway by storm in “How to Succeed.” Directed (and partly written) by Abe Burrows, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, and based on a book by Shepherd Mead, the show, a broad satire of the business world, was set in the headquarters of the World Wide Wicket Company, ruled by its peevish president, J.B. Biggley (Rudy Vallee). The plot revolved around the determined efforts of an ambitious young window washer named J. Pierrepont Finch, played with sly humor by Mr. Morse, to climb to the top of the corporate ladder. Among the show’s many high points was the washroom scene in which Mr. Morse delivered a heartfelt rendition of the song “I Believe in You” while gazing rapturously into a mirror.“How to Succeed” ran for more than 1,400 performances and won seven Tony Awards, including one for Mr. Morse as best actor in a musical, as well as the Pulitzer Prize for drama. The 1967 film adaptation, with Mr. Morse and Mr. Vallee repeating their roles, was a hit as well, and the show has been revived on Broadway twice. Mr. Morse always seemed more at home on the stage than on the screen. Five years before “How to Succeed” opened, he made an uncredited and virtually unseen Hollywood debut (his face was swathed in bandages) in the World War II drama “The Proud and Profane.” With no other screen roles in the offing, he returned to New York, where he had earlier studied acting with Lee Strasberg, and where he auditioned for the director Tyrone Guthrie and was given his first Broadway role in “The Matchmaker,” Thornton Wilder’s comedy about a widowed merchant’s search for a new wife. Ruth Gordon played the title role, and Mr. Morse and Arthur Hill played clerks in the merchant’s shop. Mr. Morse would reprise his role in the 1958 film adaptation. From left, John Slattery, Mr. Morse and Nathan Lane in the 2016 Broadway revival of “The Front Page.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMr. Morse’s Broadway career continued with the comedy “Say, Darling” (1958), in which he played an eager young producer, and “Take Me Along” (1959), a musical based on Eugene O’Neill’s play “Ah, Wilderness!,” in which Mr. Morse was a doubt-ridden adolescent, Walter Pidgeon his sympathetic father and Jackie Gleason his hard-drinking uncle. Then came his star-making turn in “How to Succeed.”His success in that show led to movie offers, but not to movie stardom; he rarely had a screen vehicle that fit him comfortably. “The parts I could play,” he observed to The Sunday News of New York in 1965, “they give to Jack Lemmon.” When he co-starred with Robert Goulet in the 1964 sex farce “Honeymoon Hotel,” Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote, “It is hard to imagine good actors being given worse material with which to work.” He fared better, but only slightly, in “The Loved One” (1965), a freewheeling adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s scathing novel about America’s moneymaking funeral industry in which he was improbably cast as a British poet who finds work at an animal cemetery, and “A Guide for the Married Man” (1967), in which Mr. Morse gives a fellow husband (Walter Matthau) advice on how to cheat on his wife. Television proved more hospitable. In addition to guest appearances on various shows in the 1960s and ’70s, he co-starred with the actress E.J. Peaker in the 1968 series “That’s Life,” an unusual hybrid of sitcom and variety show that told the story of a young couple’s courtship and marriage through sketches, monologues, singing and dancing. Perhaps too ambitious for its own good — “We’re producing what amounts to a new musical each week,” Mr. Morse told an interviewer — it lasted only one season.Mr. Morse returned to Broadway in 1972 in “Sugar,” a musical based on the Billy Wilder film “Some Like It Hot” about two Chicago musicians — Tony Roberts in the part originally played by Tony Curtis and Mr. Morse, appropriately, in the Jack Lemmon role — who flee from local mobsters by dressing as women and joining an all-girl band en route to Miami. It brought Mr. Morse another Tony nomination and was a modest hit, running for more than a year.But his next show, the 1976 musical “So Long, 174th Street,” based on the play “Enter Laughing” — with Mr. Morse, still boyish-looking at just shy of 45, as an aspiring actor roughly half his age — received harsh reviews and closed in a matter of weeks. It was Mr. Morse’s last appearance on Broadway for more than a decade.He kept busy in the ensuing years, but choice roles were scarce, and he battled depression. He also had problems with drugs and alcohol, although he maintained that those problems did not interfere with his work; looking back in 1989, he told The Times, “It was the other 22 hours I had a problem with.”He starred in a number of out-of-town revivals, including a production of “How to Succeed” in Los Angeles. He was a familiar face on television in series like “Love, American Style” and “Murder, She Wrote” — and a familiar voice as well, on cartoon shows like “Pound Puppies.” But he longed to escape a casting pigeonhole that he knew he had helped create.“I’m the short, funny guy,” he said ruefully in a 1972 Times interview. “It’s very difficult to get out of that.” Eight years earlier he had told another interviewer: “I think of myself as an actor. I happen to have a comic flair, but that doesn’t mean I plan to spend my life as a comedian.”It took him a while to find the perfect dramatic showcase, but he found it in 1989 in “Tru,” Jay Presson Allen’s one-man show about Truman Capote. Almost unrecognizable in heavy makeup and utterly convincing in voice and mannerisms, he was Capote incarnate, alone in his apartment in 1975 and brooding over the friendships he had lost after the publication of excerpts from his gossipy novel in progress, “Answered Prayers.” Mr. Morse’s performance brought him his second Tony Award. A television adaptation of “Tru” for the PBS series “American Playhouse” in 1992 also won him an Emmy.Robert Alan Morse was born on May 18, 1931, in Newton, Mass. His father, Charles, managed a chain of movie theaters. His mother, May (Silver) Morse, was a pianist.In high school, Mr. Morse earned a reputation as the class clown; a sympathetic music teacher helped him transfer his energy from the classroom to the theater. He spent a summer with the Peterborough Players in New Hampshire, came to New York and, after trying and failing to get an acting job, joined the Navy in 1950. After his discharge four years later, he moved back to New York and enrolled at the American Theater Wing.Mr. Morse in an episode of “Mad Men.” “I said I’d be happy to be Bertram Cooper, chairman of the board, and sit behind a desk,” he said of being offered the role, which earned him five Emmy nominations. “It looked like the road company of ‘How to Succeed.’”Jaimie Trueblood/AMCMr. Morse’s first marriage, to Carole Ann D’Andrea, a dancer, ended in divorce. They had three daughters, Robin, Andrea and Hilary. He and his second wife, Elizabeth Roberts, an advertising executive, had a daughter, Allyn, and a son, Charles.Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Morse’s success in “Tru” guaranteed that he would no longer be thought of as, in his words, “an aging leprechaun.” A wider variety of roles followed, including, in 2016, a return to Broadway in a star-studded revival of “The Front Page.”“In the small but crucial role of a messenger from the governor’s office,” Ben Brantley wrote in The Times, “Mr. Morse, who made his Broadway debut more than 60 years ago, proves he can still steal a scene without breaking a sweat.”But for the last three decades of his life, he was mostly seen on television. He appeared in more than a dozen episodes of the 2000 CBS series “City of Angels” as the unpredictable chairman of an urban hospital. And in 2007 he came full circle when he was cast as the eccentric head of an advertising agency in the acclaimed AMC series “Mad Men,” set in the same era as “How to Succeed.” The role brought him five Emmy nominations. “I was quite elated when Matt called me and said, ‘We’d love you to do this show,’” Mr. Morse told The Times in 2014, referring to the show’s creator, Matthew Weiner. “I said I’d be happy to be Bertram Cooper, chairman of the board, and sit behind a desk. It looked like the road company of ‘How to Succeed.’”Although Bertram Cooper was a straight dramatic role, Mr. Morse got to return to his musical-comedy roots in his last episode, aired in the spring of 2014, when the character died — and then reappeared, in a fantasy song-and-dance sequence, to croon the old standard “The Best Things in Life Are Free.”“What a send-off!” Mr. Morse said. “The opportunity to shine in the spotlight that Matt Weiner gave me — it was an absolute love letter. Christmas and New Year’s, all rolled into one.”Peter Keepnews contributed reporting. More

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      ‘Bridgerton’s’ Jonathan Bailey Takes the Plunge

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      5:00a.m. 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00p.m. 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00a.m. 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00p.m. 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 Samuel R. Delany Jonathan Bailey Piet Oudolf […] More

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      Late Night Celebrates 4/20

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      “Time for all you doobie-lovin’ potheads to get up to your usual smoky high jinks: folding laundry and hoping half a gummy will help you fall asleep,” Stephen Colbert joked.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.Total Smoke ShowLate Night celebrated 4/20 on Wednesday, or what Stephen Colbert referred to as “the unofficial holiday for marijuana.”“Time for all you doobie-lovin’ potheads to get up to your usual smoky high jinks: folding laundry and hoping half a gummy will help you fall asleep,” Colbert joked in his monologue.“This year is a big one for 4/20, because new polling shows 37 percent of Americans say they use weed, while the remaining 63 percent say they were just holding it for a friend.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“According to a new poll from CBS News, a vast majority of Americans want the federal government to legalize cannabis for recreational purchases. Sixty-six percent are in favor, 34 percent no. Sixty-six percent of Americans don’t agree on anything. We can barely get 66 percent of Americans to agree that horse medicine is for horses.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“If you smoke, obviously, you want it to be legal. But even among those who say they never use marijuana, a majority favor legalization. Well, that makes sense. Marijuana is tame compared to other controlled substances — its most dangerous side effect is making hacky sack seem like a sport.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Oddly enough, tomorrow, the sale of recreational weed will begin in New Jersey, one day after 4/20. I mean, really? That’s like Chipotle offering free guac on Seis de Mayo, you know what I’m saying?” — JIMMY FALLON“That is exciting news, but it means New Yorkers will have to do the unthinkable: Drive to New Jersey on purpose.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Just be careful, people from New Jersey, because if you smoke too much weed, you might accidentally ‘fuhgeddaboud’ a bunch of important stuff you need to do.” — JAMES CORDEN“The move is overwhelmingly supported by state residents, who can now look forward to Jersey-specific strains like Jon ‘Bong’ Jovi, Bruce ‘Springstrain,’ ‘Joint’ Stewart and, of course, ‘Stoney’ Soprano’s ‘Ganjagool’.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Are You Still Watching? Edition)“Netflix just announced that for the first time in over a decade, they lost subscribers, and now their stock is crashing. Yeah, not only did their stock plummet, but it turns out that all the cash they had in the bank was just cake.” — JIMMY FALLON“Today, their stock price dropped over 35 percent after they announced they had lost 200,000 subscribers. That’s a lot. Explains why they’ve changed their pop-up message from ‘Are you still watching?’ to ‘Come back, please! I can change! Do you want DVDs again?’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Damn, Netflix is in trouble, which is so surprising because me and the 43 people I share my account with, we’re still watching it all the time.” — TREVOR NOAH“Now, now, there are many reasons why Netflix subscriptions are down, all right? Password sharing, inflation, Regé-Jean Page leaving ‘Bridgerton.’ Yeah, I’m sorry, you want us to pay 15 bucks a month without that [expletive]? I don’t think so.” — TREVOR NOAH“Right now Netflix is so desperate for money, they’re now Googling ‘Is there a real-life “Squid Game”’?” — JIMMY FALLON“Netflix is blaming their losses on fierce competition, inflation and Russia. When he heard that, President Biden was like, ‘Hey, get your own excuses.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, Netflix is losing money — you can tell it’s having an effect on all of their shows. For instance, ‘Emily in Paris’ is now ‘Emily in Pittsburgh.’ It’s still good. Also, ‘The Crown’ is now ‘The Hat.’”— JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingRonny Chieng, “The Daily Show” correspondent, gave the public the task of convincing him of Earth Day’s worth in this week’s “Prove Me Wrong.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightChloë Sevigny, star of “The Girl From Plainville” and “Russian Doll,” will sit down with Seth Meyers on Thursday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutNicolas Cage as “Nick Cage” in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” He said, “I feel closer to my muse and my instrument now than I ever have.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesNicolas Cage plays a meme-ified version of himself in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” More

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      Fashioning ‘The First Lady’

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      The new Showtime series on Michelle Obama, Betty Ford and Eleanor Roosevelt makes the connection between substance and style.It is a coincidence, but a telling one, that the day after “The First Lady,” the series that is a revisionist take on presidential wives as seen through the intertwined stories of Michelle Obama, Betty Ford and Eleanor Roosevelt, premiered on Showtime, Dr. Jill Biden hosted the White House Easter egg roll. Or rather, the Easter “Eggucation” roll.There she stood, the current first lady and the only one out of more than 50 (official and acting) to keep her pre-administration day job, like a bouquet of hyacinths in a pink dress festooned with a veritable garden of florals, a coordinating purple coat and fuchsia gloves, flanked by her besuited husband and two life-size bunnies. She exuded warmth and family values, embodying the platonic ideal of a political spouse, while also promoting her signature cause (education).Dr. Jill Biden at the annual White House Easter egg roll at the White House this week.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIf ever there was a real-life illustration of the balancing act between role-playing and real issues that is part of performing one of the strangest non-job jobs that exists, this was it.After all, what is the first lady? Unelected, but part of the package; beholden to the West Wing, but in an office, if not an Office, of her own; emblematic, somehow, of American womanhood writ large. The human face of an administration.Which is to say, said Sean Wilentz, the George Henry Davis 1886 professor of American history at Princeton, she is supposed to be “the ideal wife as helpmeet: swearing (or affirming), to the best of her ability, to preserve (cook, care), protect (as in protecting time) and defend (no matter what) the president.”Exactly how strange that position is, forms the heart of “The First Lady,” a bit of historical didacticism dressed up as pop culture entertainment that makes the case for the presidential wife as the progressive social conscience of an administration, thus aiming to change the narrative from one largely focused on image-making (clothes! holiday events! state dinners!) to one focused on substance.Gillian Anderson as Eleanor Roosevelt.Boris Martin/ShowtimeYet what the series, which flips between moments in each first lady’s life that are connected thematically, rather than chronologically, may do best is illustrate just how intertwined the roles actually are — onscreen as in life. The first reaction of viewers (at least on social media) was not to the premise of the show, which gives its first ladies credit for, among other things, championing women’s rights and desegregation (Eleanor Roosevelt, as played by Gillian Anderson); changing the conversation around breast cancer, mammograms and addiction (Betty Ford, played by Michelle Pfeiffer); and fighting for gay marriage and exposing racism (Michelle Obama, by Viola Davis). Rather, it was to the facial tics, especially the lip pursing, of Ms. Davis as Mrs. Obama.By how they look, we think we know them. “The two things are intrinsically connected,” said Cathy Schulman, the showrunner and executive producer of “The First Lady.” When it comes to first ladies, how they present in the world becomes shorthand for who they are and what they do. It’s the bridge of “relatability” (in the words of the show’s Barack Obama) from the White House to every house. Onscreen as, perhaps, on the political stage.Viola Davis as Michelle Obama.Jackson Lee Davis/ShowtimeIt’s why, even as the characters themselves chafe against the strictures of their new position — as Laura Bush warns Mrs. Obama, people are going to judge everything she does, including what she wears; as Mrs. Obama rolls her eyes at attempts to make her a “Black Martha Stewart”; as Mrs. Ford announces her belief that you can be “ladylike” and yourself at the same time — Ms. Schulman and Signe Sejlund, the costume designer for the series, were focused on getting the clothes as accurate as possible.It was, Ms. Schulman said, “crucial.” Starting in late 2020, teams of researchers began collecting historical documentation and images from the periods represented, many of which had been preserved for posterity, the better to build wardrobes that could consist of about 75 changes for each woman. These included such major public sartorial statements as their wedding dresses, inauguration outfits and the gowns they wore for their official White House portraits.Jason Wu, who designed both of Mrs. Obama’s inaugural gowns, agreed to recreate the first one — the silver-white dress that seemed to proclaim a new dawn — for Ms. Davis. (In part because the original had been donated to the Smithsonian, and he wanted one for his archive.) Ms. Sejlund scoured the RealReal for a copy of the Milly dress Mrs. Obama wore in her portrait, and found it, albeit in the wrong size, so she acquired more fabric from the designer to reinvent it.Michelle Pfeiffer as Betty Ford.Murray Close/ShowtimeSome are clones of the originals, including Mrs. Ford’s shirtdresses, often paired with the silk scarves she favored, her many polka dots and her quilted bathrobes — especially the yellow robe she wore when she left the hospital after her mastectomy, when, Ms. Schulman said, “she knew the place would be crawling with journalists.” It was a canny choice that reflected her desire to be as transparent as possible about connecting her own situation to that of other women. (How many first ladies before her had been publicly photographed in their dressing gowns?)And some are conceptually the same, like the wide belts that, along with the pearls, cardigans and sleeveless sheaths, became a signature of Mrs. Obama, but which were shrunk down to be in proportion with Ms. Davis’s smaller frame. Then there was the giant floral necklace Eleanor Roosevelt wore to her husband’s first inauguration, which, while very au fait in the early 1930s, “looked almost ridiculous when you see it with a modern eye,” Ms. Sejlund said.From left, Gillian Anderson as Eleanor Roosevelt and Lily Rabe as Lorena ‘Hick’ Hickock.Boris Martin/ShowtimeThe necklace was ultimately left in the closet, unlike the collection of jaunty hats that were a Roosevelt trademark and that played a starring role in Mrs. Roosevelt’s 1941 visit to Tuskegee Army Air Field, where she demonstrated her support for Black airmen with a flight that was so smooth, she announced to the world, she “never lost” her hat.All such accessories are on some level recognizable because they serve as wormholes to the events portrayed. We may not remember them exactly, but we’ve probably seen the picture. It exists in our shared memory book, just as the photo of Mrs. Biden in her stylized florals with the rabbits will. Acknowledging that likelihood doesn’t take away from her achievements or the connection she made between holiday décor and learning. It supports it.They are, after all, effectively costumes for real life characters playing a very specific role in a show everyone can watch. More

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      ‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6, Episode 2: Do the Hustle

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      Gus and the cartel chase Nacho, Kim and Jimmy pursue Howard — and everyone is conning someone.This recap is for Episode 2 of the back-to-back season opener; click here for the recap of Episode 1.Season 6, Episode 2: ‘Carrot and Stick’For a guy known for his punctilious approach to both business and personal grooming, Gus Fring sure has made a mess.Much of this superb and stressful episode, “Carrot and Stick,” is a study in damage control, overseen by a man who seems uncharacteristically ruffled and uncertain about what to do. Gus has always been a study in composure, but in one scene he does something that seems almost unimaginable, at least for him. He accidentally breaks a drinking glass.It’s an ideal symbol for the mayhem he has loosed with his ill-considered and disastrously executed plan to murder Lalo Salamanca. In hindsight, he must realize the whole idea was a fiasco — and would have been a failure even if Lalo had been killed. Many of the terrible outcomes that have unspooled in the season’s first two episodes are precisely what would have happened if the assassins sent by Gus had succeeded.Now he has two problems. Lalo is alive, which Gus realizes the moment Don Hector extends a hand in reconciliation during the peace summit organized by Juan Bolsa (Javier Grajeda). Either Hector can’t keep a poker face — if he really wanted Lalo’s continued existence to remain a secret, he would have feigned rage and ignored Gus — or he wants his sworn enemy to know the truth.The second problem is Nacho. He’s the one guy accessible to the cartel who knows about Gus’s plot, and the race is on to find him in his bleak and desiccated Mexican hide-out, the Motel Ocotillo. (Suggested motto: “But … we do offer room service.) Gus has to grab or kill Nacho before the cartel reaches him. The cartel wants Nacho taken alive — well, the Salamancas certainly do — so that he can be tortured into a confession.The Return of ‘Better Call Saul’The “Breaking Bad” prequel returned April 18 for its final season.Season 6 ​​Premiere: The new season began with back-to-back episodes. Read our recaps of “Wine and Roses” and “Carrot and Stick.”A Refresher: After the show’s two-year, Covid-induced hiatus, here’s where things left off.Serious Success: Bob Odenkirk was a comedian’s comedian — until “Better Call Saul” revealed him as a peerless portrayer of broken souls.Writing the Perfect Con: We asked the show’s writers to break down a pivotal scene in the ​​transformation of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman.Cast Interviews: Rhea Seehorn and Tony Dalton told us how they created the complex Kim Wexler and the murderous Lalo Salamanca.As ever, Fring Inc. has a jump on the competition. In the opening scene, we see Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) show up at Nacho’s home and switch a personal safe for an identical one, minus any evidence that Nacho had ever worked for Gus, presumably. Mike ruefully adds a brown envelope to the switched-in safe, and it’s unclear, at least to Your Faithful Recapper, whether he knows that the documents include a bank statement with the phone number to Motel Ocotillo. When Don Bolsa later opens this envelope, Nacho appears to have only a few minutes left to live.In fact, he manages to exit the motel premises with a beating heart, following an escape scene that is expertly staged by show co-creator Vince Gilligan, who directed the episode and demonstrates some serious action-movie chops. The sequence begins when Nacho realizes that a man across the courtyard has been hired by Gus’s underlings to keep an eye on him — time to flee. It ends with a shootout between Nacho and the terrifying Leonel and Marco Salamanca (Daniel and Luis Moncada), a.k.a. the Twins, who arrive in a silver SUV ready to kill whomever they have to in order to take Nacho alive.Now that he is roaming somewhere in Mexico, he might actually have some leverage with Gus, at least. At minimum, he knows that he could wreck Gus’s super lab dreams in under 10 seconds of candid chat with a cartel employee. This doesn’t mean that Gus and his minions will be eager to provide him with safe haven. But he knows that he poses a threat to Gus, and maybe there’s a way to set up a blackmail contraption that would keep a sword over Gus’s head. (For pointers, perhaps Nacho could watch the way Tom Cruise’s character keeps the mafia at bay at the end of 1993 film “The Firm.”)This complicated dynamic is no doubt why, at the end of this episode, in a scene set in an office at the Los Pollos Hermanos chicken farm, Gus appears ready to talk to Nacho when Mike hands him that mobile phone. For as long as Gus can’t kill Nacho, Nacho poses an all but existential threat to Gus.Before that call, Gus wants Nacho’s father brought to him, which he must envision as a kind of check mate that will force Nacho’s surrender. Mike, however, will not countenance that idea and says so, bluntly and firmly, in his first act of overt insubordination. This gets a gun pointed at his head by the ever stylish Tyrus Kitt (Ray Campbell), the only henchman in Gus’s crew you could imagine in line at a Manhattan nightclub.“Whatever happens next, it’s not going to go down the way you think it is,” Mike says.Precisely what that means is a mystery, at least to Your Faithful Recapper. He might be referring to the sniper set up outside of the office, with whom Mike is in radio contact. But that guy appears to be looking for signs that Lalo or his colleagues are readying an attack. It’s at least possible that the same sniper has been instructed by Mike to kill Gus and Tyrus in the event that Mike is killed. Or that Mike has an entirely different plan. Or that he’s bluffing.Speaking of bluffing, on to the Jimmy McGill and Kim Wexler frame-up show, where “Operation Ruin Howard Hamlin’s Life” is entering Phase 2. This involves revisiting the series’s answer to Bonnie and Clyde, namely Craig and Betsy Kettleman (Jeremy Shamos and Julie Ann Emery), who in the Season 1 timeline were represented by Howard in an unsuccessful attempt to defend Craig against charges that as a county treasurer he embezzled $1.6 million. Having served his sentence, Craig is a free man in highly diminished circumstances, running a bargain basement, and corrupt, tax prep company out of a roadside mobile home.Jimmy shows up with a proposition: Hire me, and I’ll get you exonerated by arguing that your lawyer was a coke head. This is a bluff. But Jimmy and Kim apparently intuit that the Kettlemans will double cross Jimmy, then head straight to the office of Clifford Main and attempt to enlist him as their attorney. They further know that Main, who saw that planted bag of fake cocaine tumble out of Howard’s locker, will toss the Kettlemans from the office, then wonder whether their story actually has some truth to it.What’s best about the latest iteration of Jimmy and Kim’s improbable little scheme is the opportunity it provides Kim to demonstrate an almost thuggish toughness. She threatens the Kettlemans with jail time, courtesy of an aborted call to an I.R.S. enforcement office, a power play of pure sang-froid. There’s a Robin Hood quality to her maneuverings — the Kettlemans were scamming their financially struggling clients — but one can envision the day when she flexes even harder against less worthy targets. Or when she’s mixing it up with the show’s true baddies.Odds and EndsWell, now we know where Jimmy got that inflatable Lady Liberty that sat atop his office in “Breaking Bad.”Why would Mike risk his life for Nacho, a man he has kept at a coolly professional distance since they met? One assumes it’s all about Mike’s relationship with his son, a Philadelphia cop who was shot by corrupt colleagues because he wouldn’t accept bribes. It’s a crime Mike feels implicated in because he was on the take when he was on the same force. (See “Five-O” in Season 1.) His defense of Nacho feels, perhaps, like a do over.Who was tailing Jimmy and Kim as they drove from the Kettlemans’ office? Your Faithful Recapper wanted to run the number on the license plates of the car, then remembered that the show is fictional. And that he doesn’t know how to “run the number” on anything. So, please, speculate in the comments section, along with any other thoughts about this stellar pair of episodes. More

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      Stephen Colbert Isn’t Shocked the New Mask Ruling Came From Florida

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      “You can’t let Florida make health decisions for the entire country!” Colbert said.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.‘Critical Face Theory’A federal judge in Florida struck down the C.D.C.’s mask mandate for public transportation on Monday.“You can’t let Florida make health decisions for the entire country!” Stephen Colbert said.“This judge claimed that the C.D.C. exceeded their legal authority by requiring masks and that their power was limited to things like cleaning property, not requiring people to take hygienic steps. Yes, you cannot force people to follow basic hygiene; you can only make them clean property, explains the new bathroom sign: ‘Before returning to work, employees must wash this sign.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Governor Ron DeSantis, of course, praised the decision. He tweeted it was ‘great to see a federal judge in Florida follow the law and reject the Biden transportation mask mandate,’ or as he calls it, ‘Critical Face Theory.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Yeah, passengers were dancing, hugging, kissing — and now they’re all in quarantine.” — JIMMY FALLON“But don’t worry, to keep everyone safe, you can now bring only up to 3.4 ounces of Covid on board.” — JIMMY FALLON“To put it another way, airlines are basically turning off the seatbelt sign for Covid and telling you to move freely about the cabin.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, if you thought Omicron was bad, wait till you meet the Spirit variant.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Covid In Flight Edition)“All the major airlines have already updated their policy on face coverings. Delta, American, United, Southwest, JetBlue, Frontier and Spirit announced they will no longer require passengers to wear a mask. Spirit Airlines actually never had an official mask requirement because they don’t have windows on the plane.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Yeah, there was a crazy scene on American Airlines. People tore off their masks and shoved them right into the ashtrays.” — JIMMY FALLON“Just as a general rule, nothing should change midflight, ever.” — TREVOR NOAH“This would be like if a roller coaster decided to rethink its safety policies when you’re already on the ride.” — TREVOR NOAH“That’s like being told halfway through a dinner party that it’s an orgy: ‘I wasn’t prepared for an orgy — I’m all filled up on dinner rolls, and I’m wearing the wrong underwear.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingPamela Adlon talked about the end of “Better Things” with Trevor Noah on Tuesday.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightNatasha Lyonne, star of “Russian Doll,” will appear on Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutThe comedian Jerrod Carmichael talks about the impact of family secrets in his HBO special “Rothaniel.”HBOThe comedian Jerrod Carmichael’s HBO special “Rothaniel” is as much a therapy session as a stand-up show. More

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      Jerrod Carmichael Wears the Truth in His HBO Comedy Special

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      The comedian’s latest HBO special, which explores family secrets and sexual orientation, is as much a therapy session as a stand-up show.Of all that’s remarkable about Jerrod Carmichael’s latest comedy hour — the storied intimacy of the venue (the Blue Note Jazz Club), the spectral aptness of the lighting (kind of blue), the titanic silences, dental work that would thrill any neat freak — two aspects of this HBO special are especially exceptional. One is a matter of carriage. Carmichael is a stand-up comedian. But all he does in this new show is sit. The opening long shot follows him in the snow, headed toward the Blue Note, where he removes his coat and hat and promptly takes a seat upon the stage before a modest, expectant, engaged gathering of what Carmichael wants to feel is a family and what I can only call community support, because winter isn’t all he braves. For one thing, his long body is on a metal folding chair.Maybe these people have assembled for what they think is a typical Carmichael show — penetrating observations about being alive. They get those. But under the direction of Bo Burnham and a promise that there’s much to discuss, Carmichael goes deeper this time. “I need you,” he says. His theme is secrets. He’s kept his birth name one, more or less. His sexual orientation, too. The show gets its title from secret No. 1: “Rothaniel.” Secret No. 2 is trickier. Carmichael does some ruminating about the men in his family and their double lives — a family of whole other families. He maintained both his father’s secret and his own from his mother. So it’s also a show about shame.The secrecy had become a way of life. As had the shame. They’d been eating at him. And now — with cool humor, a masterfully straight face, disbelief that he’s doing this, disbelief that’s he actually gay — he’s rethinking what it might have cost and, by extension, how it feels to be that much closer to free.Through all of this, Carmichael’s in complete control of his digressive mind. In the middle of recounting a scheme to prepare his mother to learn about his father’s betrayal, he throws in a bit about being disappointed anytime his hibachi restaurant dinners are performed by anybody other than a Japanese chef. He feigns wonder that no one expects a gay child: “Look at his cheeks. I bet he’s going to be a top!”For most of the show, his legs are apart. Not a detail I’d mention in something with enough close-ups of its star to qualify as portraiture. But with about 20 minutes left, I’d noticed something that struck me, at least, as profound: Carmichael’s legs had gone from spread to crossed.Bo Burnham directed “Rothaniel,” in which Carmichael performs at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York.HBOOrdinarily, one might argue that this sort of adjustment was a sign of discomfort. It hit me as discomfort’s opposite. Carmichael is funny about what a shock he finds his homosexuality to be. That myth that hard dudes from the ’hood don’t succumb to gayness — he’d subscribed to it. But by the time he’s sitting there in one of this country’s primo landmarks of improvisation, innovation and artistic introspection — of incandescence and intensity — Carmichael no longer seemed to be doing a routine. He appeared to be thinking aloud, doing a kind of jazz, playing quietly through the changes, and all of that. The mere crossing of legs felt like a deeply felt gesture of relaxation — of release. The people in that room are witnessing his masculinity shift from shield to sponge.Well, they’re more than witnessing it. These people are here to help. Carmichael had come to them with stories that are still unfolding around and within him. He’s already told his devoutly Christian mother and doesn’t know, for instance, whether she’ll ever warm to this part of him. His candor here certainly elevates the degree of that difficulty. Why, he wonders, is she so cold? And some unidentified person in the ambient dark of the Blue Note asks, why not give her a little time to absorb his revelation? He considers that. Earlier, he absorbs a different spectator’s crack timing after he tells the room that he’s not hiding anything and someone blurts out: “But your name.” “Whoa,” he says. “Now you guys are too much like my family.”I watched this show on HBO Max in the wake of the clash at the Oscars. And the intimacy here between this audience and this comedian differs from the national shock therapy from a few weeks before. This was group therapy, a session as much as a show, but also a dinner party. The evening was as much about his biological family and this live, makeshift one as it was his professional kin. I didn’t need Carmichael to make that connection. It was there in what he wore.Eddie Murphy sported a red leather suit in the 1983 concert movie “Delirious.”HBO/Everett CollectionThat was the evening’s other remarkable detail. It’s just a red, long-sleeve polo sweater that he wears with a pair of gold chains, black loafers and dark slacks that are all but tucked into a pair of creamy-looking socks. He looks simultaneously ready for bed, the office and “The Santa Clause 5.” It’s soft, this sweater, light as a T-shirt and maybe a size too big, yet it hangs on his svelte frame like it’s on sale somewhere chic. You want one. But who’s going to wear it better, or more evocatively?The sweater’s the color of outfits his forefathers donned, in 1983, doing standup at and near their zeniths. Richard Pryor spends “Here & Now” in a drab green suit whose pants karate-belt in the front. The red shirt he pairs it with has two white buttons; the shoes match. The vibe here breaks radically from Carmichael’s. Pryor has to contend with a rowdy New Orleans audience that he enjoys taming. The interruptions never stop. And Pryor expertly, hilariously, fields so many incoming two-cent interjections that he’s as much a fountain as a superstar.But what Carmichael’s red shirt really brought to mind was Eddie Murphy’s red leather suit in “Delirious.” Murphy has the jacket unzipped to his navel, inviting you to take in the chained medallion that decorates his hairless chest. A black disco belt hangs unlooped so that the metallic arrowhead tip sits down at his crotch and doubles as a penis. It’s pure ostentation, as if a Ferrari had at last gotten its wish to become Rick James. Murphy prowls the stage like a lion — and mauls like one, too. “Faggots” are his opening move. He fearfully imagines servicing a gay Mr. T and acts out what kind of lovers the best buds on “The Honeymooners” would make. There’s more. But also less, judging, at least, from the stupendous droop of my mouth.I must have watched “Delirious” a dozen times before I was 10. I knew what my deal was and that “faggot” seemed to sum up and toxify it. I remember finding the middle section, about Murphy being little, a riot. (It still is, in part because he’d located something about the moments of joy in poor, Black childhoods that felt true for lots of other children.)The umbrage taken over “Delirious,” in some sense, is settled. Murphy earnestly atoned for his homophobic arias 26 years ago and called that material “ignorant” in 2019. But a memory’s a memory. And mostly what I remember is the suit, the red of it, the fire, the warning, the alarm: Don’t be like Mr. T in Eddie Murphy’s porno. And yet, it was never lost on me that, in a sense, all Murphy’s doing in this bit is offering a literal description of the sex men can have with each other. But in 1983, at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, the alleged grossness of that intercourse — of gay people — is a rambunctious given. Murphy plugs his electric bewilderment into a packed concert hall’s socket. He presents his targets in their regular, manly personas — growling, gruff, goofy. He was 22 at the time, and what brings down the house during this spree of jokes is a panic about a virus of gayness and how it could infect someone as certifiably macho as Mr. T, a man awash in feathers, gold and vests.I DON’T KNOW how many times Carmichael has watched “Delirious.” I don’t know if he’s ever seen it, although the odds feel high that he has. (In his special, Carmichael permits us to laugh at the idea that his lips could be locked with another man’s while they whisper “no homo” to each other, in a state of prophylactic denial. The irony still blows him away.)Either way, his choosing such a passionate red for his televised coming-out sounded a different alarm for me. Murphy’s live-in-concert repulsion fantasias belie a tenderness that resides at the core of some of his work. To watch the early scenes between him and James Russo that set up the plot of “Beverly Hills Cop” is to wonder if the movie knows it’s a love story.Carmichael’s show makes the news because of the tender artistry at its core, but also because that repulsion remains pervasive enough in the culture — of comedy, of sports, of pop music, politics and movies — that the gay major-league baseball drama “Take Me Out” is somehow back on Broadway two decades after it opened, making its protagonist the country’s only openly gay professional baseball player. Again.Carmichael is 35, more than a dozen years older than Murphy in “Delirious.” He couldn’t have done this show at 22. Not with this much poise and self-fluency. Not with this much quiet. That sweater would have been wearing him. Now, it’s a garment of happiness and love, control and comfort. He is living up there in that sweater. (As remarkable: The armpits remain dry, and there’s no detectable undershirt, either. Has anyone ever left the Blue Note stage as sweatlessly?) The sweater’s also a tasteful rejoinder to Murphy’s high-voltage tastelessness, to the infernal scourge of inherited shame, a traffic sign of truth that says, “This has to stop.” More