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    ‘The Pitt’ Captures the Real Overcrowding Crisis in Emergency Rooms

    From the “chairs” to the hallway medicine, the show’s depiction of an emergency medicine system that is beyond capacity rings true for medical experts.The emergency department waiting room was jammed, as it always is, with patients sitting for hours, closely packed on hard metal chairs. Only those with conditions so dire they needed immediate care — like a heart attack — got seen immediately.One man had had enough. He pounded on the glass window in front of the receptionist before storming out. As he left, he assaulted a nurse taking a smoking break. “Hard at work?” he called, as he strode off.No, the event was not real, but it was art resembling life on “The Pitt,” the Max series that will stream its season finale on Thursday. The show takes place in a fictional Pittsburgh hospital’s emergency room. But the underlying theme — appalling overcrowding — is universal in this country. And it is not easy to fix.“EDs are gridlocked and overwhelmed,” the American College of Emergency Physicians reported in 2023, referring to emergency departments.“The system is at the breaking point,” said Dr. Benjamin S. Abella, chair of the department of emergency medicine at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine in New York.“The Pitt” follows emergency room doctors, nurses, medical students, janitors and staff hour by hour over a single day as they deal with all manner of medical issues, ranging from a child who drowned helping her little sister get out of a swimming pool to a patient with a spider in her ear. There were heart attacks and strokes, overdoses, a patient with severe burns, an influencer poisoned by heavy metals in a skin cream.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    What to Expect From Bravo’s Nepo Baby Reality Show, ‘Next Gen NYC’

    “Next Gen NYC” is a big bet on the Gen Z offspring of the cable network’s “Real Housewives” franchise.Bravo is making a big bet on the Gen Z offspring of some of the most famous stars from its “Real Housewives” franchise. The network released a trailer this week for “Next Gen NYC,” a show that will follow the lives of four young reality scions and their influencer peers as they navigate work, life and love in Manhattan.For the reality connoisseurs among us, try to imagine “Rich Kids of Beverly Hills” meets “NYC Prep.”For everyone else, here’s a primer.Who’s on the show?The cast features the offspring of four “Real Housewives”: Ariana Biermann and Riley Burruss, the daughters of the former “Real Housewives of Atlanta” stars Kim Zolciak-Biermann and Kandi Burruss; Brooks Marks, the son of the “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” favorite Meredith Marks; and Gia Giudice, the daughter of the “Real Housewives of New Jersey” legend Teresa Giudice.The rest of the cast is made up of a handful of influencers and so-called nepo babies, including Ava Dash, a daughter of the record executive Damon Dash and the fashion designer Rachel Roy; Emira D’Spain, a model and influencer who will be Bravo’s first full-time trans cast member; Georgia McCann, a creative strategist Bravo describes as “New York’s ultimate Gen Z It girl”; Charlie Zakkour, a crypto trader and club kid; Hudson McLeroy, Ms. Biermann’s on-again, off-again boyfriend and the heir to the fast-food chain Zaxby’s; and Shai Fruchter, an assistant at the Wall Group.What kind of drama can be expected?“Next Gen NYC” looks relatively restrained compared with the high-stakes drama on some of the editions of “Real Housewives.” (Legal battles! Shocking divorces! Physical altercations!) But the show has teased Ms. Dash and Ms. Biermann feuding over fashion, and Ms. Biermann cursing out Mr. Marks as Ms. Giudice deadpans, “This is so stupid.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Jon Hamm Finds His Way Back to the Hilltop

    As we ascended the trail into Griffith Park, Jon Hamm gazed up at the scrubby ridge to our left. From our perspective, the ridgeline traced a clean horizon, uninterrupted by cell towers or midcentury modern palaces. He nodded toward a man sitting up there alone.“See that dude sitting on the point there?” he asked. I looked: The dude could have been meditating or having a Don Draper moment, dreaming up the next big Coca-Cola campaign.For Hamm, the image of the man brought him back to 2017, when he first moved to the Hollywood Hills. His career-making, Emmy-winning role as Draper in the AMC drama “Mad Men” had ended two years before, as had a romantic partnership of 18 years. It had been by most accounts, including his, a tough period of transition.“I was newly single — I was like, I just need to concentrate on myself again,” he recalled with some apparent wistfulness. “And I would just take this walk, every day,” to the top of that ridge, and then back toward his house, memorizing lines along the way.Eventually he began to settle into his new home, his new neighborhood, his new rhythm. He turned a corner, pushed ahead.Jon Hamm has appeared in multiple series in the past two years, including “Fargo” and “The Morning Show.” Next up is the Apple TV+ drama “Your Friends & Neighbors,” his first lead TV role since “Mad Men.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Why Wasn’t Anyone Traumatized in the ‘White Lotus’ Finale?

    After a violent climax to the third season of the hit HBO show, everyone seems A-OK. Was it a Hollywood ending, or a natural trauma response?This article contains spoilers for the finale of the third season of “The White Lotus.” Unless you’re an employee or a guest at a White Lotus resort, in which case it appears that it is impossible for your day to be truly spoiled.“The White Lotus” is a show about vacation. It deals with the dos and don’ts of vacationing: Do go out to party! (Do not engage in incestuous relations while partying.) Do sample the local cuisine! (Unless the fruit is poisonous, in which case please do not give it to your family.)And it is a show about murders.And apparently, based on Sunday’s season finale, no one is traumatized by them. Hours after a mass shooting takes place at the pristine White Lotus resort in Thailand, characters who have just witnessed intense tragedy hop on a boat and seem to sail happily into the sunset, or simply show up for work as if nothing happened.“Only in Hollywood,” Tracey Musarra Marchese, a professor at Syracuse University who specializes in trauma, said with a chuckle.But some of the characters’ reactions, which raised questions about their plausibility and prompted admiration for one character’s athletic sprint, might be completely normal in the face of trauma, experts say.“Sometimes what happens is in the moment because your system — physically, mentally, emotionally — you’ve been so overwhelmed that you might dissociate,” Marchese said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    UK Version of ‘Saturday Night Live’ Will Start in 2026

    A British version of the television sketch comedy program “Saturday Night Live” is set to debut in 2026.“Saturday Night Live” is coming to Britain.A British version of NBC’s late-night comedy sketch show is set to premiere next year on Sky, the broadcaster announced on Thursday. The new edition of the program will have Lorne Michaels, the show’s creator, as executive producer and will feature “a star-studded lineup of hosts.”The familiar catchphrase used to kick off the weekly show will be slightly modified: “Live from London, it’s Saturday night!”Sky said the show would follow a similar format to the American version, which just celebrated its 50th anniversary. It will star a yet-to-be-announced cast of British comedians who will perform sketches, alongside rotating hosts and featured musical acts.“For over 50 years, Saturday Night Live has held a unique position in TV and in our collective culture,” Cécile Frot-Coutaz, the chief executive of Sky Studios, said in the announcement.“The show has discovered and nurtured countless comedy and musical talents over the years, and we are thrilled to be partnering with Lorne and the ‘S.N.L.’ team to bring an all-British version of the show to U.K. audiences.”The remake comes after years of speculation that a British version of the comedy show was in the works. Versions of the program have already been produced around the world, including in Germany, Spain, Italy, China, Japan, South Korea and Egypt. More

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    New Season of ‘Black Mirror’ on Netflix Satirizes Streaming Services

    The new season, premiering Thursday on Netflix, includes the show’s most blatant satire of streaming services yet.The deal is too good to be true: The setup is free, the monthly fee low. Streaming is unlimited with further benefits still to come. But hidden costs emerge. Intrusive ads pop up. The app’s time in sleep mode becomes longer and longer. Those perks? You’ll have to pay more for them — much, much more.This story arc should be familiar to anyone who has ever downloaded a free app or subscribed to a streaming service, which at this point is pretty much all of us. And it is at the very dark heart of “Common People,” the first episode of Season 7 of “Black Mirror,” the anthology sci-fi series that helped to give Netflix, which has distributed it since its 2011 debut, artistic cred. All of this season’s six episodes arrive on Thursday.Is mocking streaming services biting the hand that keeps renewing you? Charlie Brooker, the creator of “Black Mirror,” was more equivocal. “To be honest, I’m probably more nibbling the hand that feeds us,” he said on a recent video call.In its past seasons, “Black Mirror” has promoted a skeptical view, perhaps an utterly nihilistic one, regarding the ways in which entertainment is created and enjoyed. In the near future, we are all amusing ourselves to death, or worse. But with the exception of last season’s episode “Joan Is Awful,” written by Brooker and directed by Ally Pankiw, in which a Netflix stand-in creates humiliating shows adapted from its subscribers’ lives, Brooker has never come for streamers so baldly.Brooker first conceived of “Common People” while listening to true-crime podcasts. He was struck by the disjunction of hearing a host describe a mutilated corpse in one moment and advertise a meal prep service the next. What, he wondered, would make a human integrate sponsorship into their ordinary speech?At that point, he thought that the show would be, like “Joan Is Awful,” a dark comedy, a funny story. “He kind of tricked me,” Pankiw, who also directed “Common People,” said of Brooker’s pitch. “I was like, OK great. Then I read the script and I was like, Oh, it’s actually incredibly devastating.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Late Night Finds Trump to Be His Own Worst Enemy

    “Yeah, Trump was, like, ‘I just saved the economy from me. You’re welcome,’” Jimmy Fallon said on “The Tonight Show.”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.Marked Safe From SelfJust hours after instituting new global tariffs on Wednesday, President Donald Trump reversed course and announced a 90-day pause for some countries.Late night hosts were united in believing that Trump needed to act swiftly to safeguard the economy from his own actions.“Yeah, Trump was, like, ‘I just saved the economy from me. You’re welcome,’” Jimmy Fallon said on “The Tonight Show.”“Thank God he is there, to stop him from doing the things he does there.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Ah, yes, ‘The Art of the Deal’: create a global crisis and then dig yourself halfway out. It’s truly masterful, Donald.” — DESI LYDIC“You don’t get credit for releasing someone you trapped in your basement. That’s not how it works.” — TAYLOR TOMLINSON“It’s been fun watching this lunatic gamble our life savings this week. It’s like — it’s like handing your Social Security check to your dog and sending it to Caesar’s Palace: ‘If the dealer has 16, stay, OK? Stay.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“President Trump today announced a 90-day pause on tariffs for some countries and increased the duty on Chinese imports to 125 percent. Where did he learn his trade policies, from a kid in an elevator — just pushing random buttons to see what happens?” — SETH MEYERS“Come on, Trump, just admit that you started a game of chicken and you got too scared to finish it.” — DESI LYDIC“With the tariffs paused, the U.S. now has three months to work out all its relationships with all these countries. Basically, our economy now mimics the exact plot of ‘90 Day Fiance.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Yippy and Queasy Edition)“Trump said that he paused tariffs because people were getting ‘yippy’ and ‘queasy.’ Then Trump tried naming the other seven dwarves.” — JIMMY FALLON“Sorry, I tend to get a little yippy when my retirement plan starts to look like the elevator from ‘The Shining.’” — DESI LYDICWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Farmer Wants a Wife’ Has Its Title Backward

    This dating show isn’t about farmers looking for women. It’s about the agrarian fantasy that has women dreaming of farms. Almost 80 years ago, Universal Pictures released a film called “The Egg and I.” It starred Fred MacMurray as Bob MacDonald, a newly decommissioned soldier back in his civilian duds. He tells his new bride, Betty, played by Claudette Colbert, that he engaged in some self-reflection down in his foxhole. War made him think about what’s really important: “the basic things” like “love and food and babies and things growing out of the ground.” So he has decided to quit his job and buy a chicken farm.When “The Egg and I” came out, in 1947, a carton of eggs cost 55 cents, which is about $8 in today’s money. In the intervening decades, the agrarian dream has held steady, both as a premise for comedies and a very real thread in the American psyche. As of 2025, you can indulge that dream simply by opening your phone: Social media is packed with down-home fantasies featuring agricultural influencers, rural “tradwives” or the swineherds on TikTok. As you sit scrolling in a grimy D.M.V. waiting room, what could make you swoon like an expansive wheat field and miles of open sky?And on television, you need only tune into Fox’s “Farmer Wants a Wife,” which recently began its third season, to get a fantastically rosy picture of what Bob and Betty MacDonald’s life might look like today. The series follows the contours of a standard reality-TV dating show, but it clearly aims to offer some folksy respite from the California-scented mating rituals that normally populate the genre. It imagines a dreamy alternative to the headaches of urban dating: No apps, no open relationships, no semiprofessional D.J.s. Just a farmer and his spouse. The simple life.American agriculture is, by all accounts, really hard.And the premise is simple: Over the course of some three months, four eligible yeoman hunks select potential life partners from among a group of women. The women hail from across the United States, though the major metropolitan areas of Texas seem especially well represented. They are identified by their professions too: This season brings a bounty of nurses and nannies, but also a “chief of staff” (for whom? of what?) and one woman whose job is listed only as “pharmaceuticals.” These contestants move into the men’s homes, on or near one of four farms. There are dates, many of which bear an unusual-for-TV resemblance to normal American courtship. Instead of the helicopter rides and therapy circles of the “Bachelor” franchise, the farmers and their could-be wives picnic in pickup trucks, take in college football games and spend afternoons fishing. They drink beer!But there is a catch for these women: They have to prove themselves at chorin’. “Farmer Wants a Wife” delights in the spectacle of women with fresh blowouts being goaded into shoveling dung, trying and failing to compete with Eva Gabor’s elegant detachment in old episodes of “Green Acres.” Layered atop the near-constant pop-country music is a secondary soundtrack of squeals and screams as contestants touch a grub for the first time or struggle to mount a horse. According to recaps, when the show first ran, briefly, in the early 2000s, one woman learned of her elimination after a task that involved reaching inside a cow’s rectum.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More