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      Seth Meyers: Trump ‘Can’t Be Bothered’ to Endorse Republicans Correctly

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      “You have to grovel and debase yourself to earn the endorsement of a guy who can’t even remember your name,” Meyers 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.Ringing EndorsementFormer President Donald Trump mistakenly endorsed “J.D. Mandel” for Senate in Ohio at a rally on Sunday, conflating his intended Republican choice, J.D. Vance, with Vance’s opponent, Josh Mandel.“This guy can’t even be bothered to remember the names of the people he’s endorsing. He went from ‘J.P.’ to ‘J.D. Mandel.’ If he kept talking, he would have endorsed J.K. Rowling,” Seth Meyers said.“This is how much you have to forfeit your dignity to succeed in today’s Republican Party. You have to grovel and debase yourself to earn the endorsement of a guy who can’t even remember your name.” — SETH MEYERS“That’s bad enough, but then he said, ‘J.D. Mandel will win or my name isn’t Donald Vance.’” — SETH MEYERS“[Imitating Donald Trump] ‘Great guy. J.P. Morgan is great. Can’t say enough about J.C. Penney — I don’t think you can. We love you, J. Lo, we love you.’” — JIMMY FALLON“I’m not sure if it’s a ringing endorsement when you’re like, ‘I fully support what’s his face — he’s the best.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump said even the best leaders make mistakes sometimes, like our great President Abra-george Lincoln-ton.” — JIMMY FALLON“You could see even the crowd was looking like, ‘Ah, man!’ They look like parents watching their kid bombing in a spelling bee.” — TREVOR NOAH“I feel bad for J.D. Vance because now he’s gonna have to change his name to J.P.J.D. Mandel. Yeah, ’cuz if you’re a Republican, Trump is never wrong. At the G.O.P. Starbucks, whatever name Trump calls, that’s you: ‘J.J.J. — J.D.J.P Mandel? Yeah, that’s me. I’ll take it.’” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Things Are Looking Slightly Up Edition)“According to a new poll, President Biden’s approval rating has increased slightly over the last two months, and now the White House is scrambling like hell to figure out what he did: [Imitating White House staffer] ‘Did he change his hair? Different mask? What tie was he wearing?’” — SETH MEYERS“That’s right, President Biden’s approval rating has increased to 42 percent. He now ranks slightly above leaf blowers.” — SETH MEYERS“Biden was like, ‘Thank God, inflation finally got to me.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Even Biden was surprised by the results. He triple-checked it like an at-home Covid test. He was like: ‘This can’t be right. This can’t be right. Honey, look at this — is this right?’” — JIMMY FALLON“I’m not even sure what caused the spike, really. Apparently a lot of Americans thought, ‘I like how he handled Easter.’” — JIMMY FALLON“It’s great news for Biden, although it’s hard to celebrate when your approval rating skyrockets and it’s still only 42 percent.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThe creator and star of Showtime’s “Ziwe,” the mononymic Ziwe, sat down with Trevor Noah on Monday’s “Daily Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe “Euphoria” breakout Sydney Sweeney will appear on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutOscar Isaac has split his career between intimate dramas and mega-franchises. His latest, Marvel’s “Moon Knight,” wraps up on Wednesday.Erik Tanner for The New York TimesOscar Isaac has found satisfaction playing an unconventional Marvel superhero in “Moon Knight.” More

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      ‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6, Episode 4 Recap: The Wicked Flee

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      Gus sweats life in red-alert mode while Jimmy goes on a joyride.Season 6, Episode 4: ‘Hit and Run’Gus Fring is getting nervous.We get a de facto tour of his psyche in this week’s episode, by way of the elaborate surveillance system designed to spot Lalo Salamanca, the man Gus tried to kill, before Lalo can kill him. It’s a no-expense-spared operation. Seven cameras are pointed at Gus’s house; someone keeps an eye on nearby cars when he drives; a hired gun is working the fryolator at the Los Pollos Hermanos where Gus has an office; and two guys are trailing Kim, in case Lalo goes looking for her first.Also, he’s wearing a bullet proof vest and has a firearm strapped to his ankle. This guy is expecting the worst.“Two weeks and we haven’t had a tickle,” says Mike, toward the episode’s end.Nonsense, says Gus, in so many words. He’s in a game where your instincts get to fail you only once, and he will not be swayed from his conviction that Lalo is alive. As viewers, we know that he’s right, but we’re in the dark about everything else Lalo-related. He hasn’t been seen for the last two episodes, and spotting Tony Dalton’s name in the opening credits doesn’t count. The effect is to put the audience in the same mind space as Gus. We, too, know that Lao is on his way. Exactly when is a total mystery.If he arrives. When last seen, the suavest member of the Salamanca clan — not a competitive category, true — was on the hunt for proof that Gus was behind the failed, very bloody home invasion of Casa Lalo. He isn’t going to show that proof to Gus, of course. He’s going to show it to the cartel. Which may mean Gus will face a whole organization with many reasonably capable assailants in its employ.Thing is, we know that Gus is going to live, and that frames a conundrum for “Better Call Saul” writers this season. Given that Gus is a lead character in “Breaking Bad” and Lalo is not — OK, he’s mentioned once by Saul in that series, which does leave some narrative wiggle room — Gus’s survival, at least through the end of this series, is assured. Which is to say that the degree of difficulty faced by Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould and every other writer on this show is very high. They are betting that when a tale is told well enough, it is suspenseful even if the ultimate outcome appears to be known.The Return of ‘Better Call Saul’The “Breaking Bad” prequel returned April 18 for its final season.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.The success of this season thus resides not so much in what is going to happen, but how. And already there is plenty of intrigue. Your Faithful Recapper is riveted by Mr. and Mrs. Ryman, as they are identified in the credits, Gus’s bicycle-happy, hand-signal proficient next-door neighbors, played by real-life couple Kirk and Joni Bovill. There is a hidden tunnel between their homes, and the Ryman’s kitchen and living rooms are occupied by Gus’s underlings, some armed, others manning a video-screen installation. The Rymans appear to live in their basement, where they do jigsaw puzzles when not getting out for a ride.Who are these people? Until now, the number of noncombatants aware of Gus’s double life is, let’s see … uh, zero? At least at this point in the story. So, we have to assume the Rymans are on the payroll. But one of Gus’s video watchers refers to Mrs. Ryman as “ma’am” when he asks for some iced tea, suggesting he doesn’t know her well. And the Rymans seem intimately familiar with the local homeowners association, implying that they are longtime and authentic members of the community.What’s certain is that when Gus moved into 1213 Jefferson St., he purchased the house beside him, presumably a just-in-case measure that is now coming in handy.While Gus frets, Jimmy and Kim continue Operation Cockamamie, which in this episode involves briefly absconding with Howard’s Jaguar while he’s seeing his shrink. (The man has marital problems, we learn.) The plan involves a pantomime with the ever-amenable Wendy S. (Julia Minesci), whom “Breaking Bad” fans will remember as the meth head and prostitute who helped Jesse with a nutty scheme of his own. (She was supposed to deliver poisoned burgers to some especially wicked street-level dealers Jesse wanted dead in Season 3.)This time, Wendy pretends to get bounced out of Howard’s car, making it appear to a slack-jawed Clifford Main, who is the sole audience for this spectacle, that Howard is consorting with, and mistreating, a hooker.Like previous parts of this campaign to frame Howard, this one works without flaw, thus clearly foreshadowing that the entire plan will ultimately fail. There’s a jarring tonal shift in these scenes, as though “Better Call Saul” decided it can’t all be tense violins and deadly tangos and must switch occasionally to tubas and the cancan. This is certainly lighter fare than the anxieties of a man who fears imminent demise. But when Jimmy gets a spray tan, whitened teeth and a wig to pull off his Howard impersonation, the show seems a little goofy.In the courthouse, Jimmy is a pariah because of his success in springing Lalo. As reviled as he has become by security guards, clerks and prosecutors is exactly how sought after has become by criminals. So, welcome back Spooge! (David Ury) Looking far healthier and more lucid than he will be as a meth addict and stickup man in episodes of “Breaking Bad,” Spooge is blissfully unaware that in the not-too-distant future his drug-addled partner is going to crush his head with an A.T.M. For now, he has legal problems with an unidentified buddy, and Jimmy has become so popular that he is soon thrown out of his office at the nail salon.This leads to the episode’s last scene, in which Jimmy shows his new work space to Kim. It has a toilet in the middle of the room and not much else. As viewers know, this modest, odorous corner of an unpopular strip mall is about to get a spectacularly garish, patriotically themed renovation.Odds and EndsFor Your Faithful Recapper, the scene between Mike and Kim was the highlight of this episode, which was directed very deftly by Rhea Seehorn, her first time directing an episode. Mike is surely flattering Kim with his “made of sterner stuff” line. More likely, he is speaking to her instead of Jimmy because Kim noticed that she is being tailed and had the nerve to confront her tailers. It’s entirely possible — actually, it seems pretty likely — that Jimmy is being followed, too, and simply hasn’t noticed. Perhaps Mike decided to have a quiet word with Kim so that he could continue to keep two men hovering close by.Vintage Gus Fring perfectionism: He wants the bodyguard assigned to the kitchen at Los Pollos Hermanos fired because he is “not up to Pollos standards.”The opening song, “Best Things in Life” by the Dreamliners, is the perfect background music for that bike ride.And some questions for the hive mind, to be answered in the comments section:What’s with the tomato-red house? It seems unlikely that we linger on that peculiar building for no reason.Jimmy seems positively eager to admit to new clients that he helped Lalo, who in court went by the name Jorge de Guzman, something Jimmy refused to acknowledge to prosecutors. In this episode, when Deputy District Attorney Bill Oakley (Peter Diseth) accuses Jimmy of moral turpitude — “You scammed the judge. And for what? To get a murdering cartel psychopath back out on the street” — Saul says simply, “Prove it.” Well, isn’t proof unnecessary once you confess to half the criminals in Albuquerque?Oh, and one more: Who. Moves. Cones? More

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      David Birney, Who Starred in TV’s ‘Bridget Loves Bernie,’ Dies at 83

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      The sitcom, about an interfaith marriage, drew criticism from Jewish groups and was canceled after one season. He fared better onstage than in television.David Birney, a classically trained theater actor who found success on the stage, including on Broadway, but who was best known for his role in “Bridget Loves Bernie” — a short-lived sitcom about an interfaith marriage in which he starred opposite his future wife, Meredith Baxter — died on Friday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 83.The cause was Alzheimer’s disease, said Michele Roberge, who said she was his life partner.Mr. Birney had been in a handful of television series and movies when he was cast in 1972 as Bernie Steinberg, a Jewish taxicab driver and struggling writer. Ms. Baxter played Bridget Fitzgerald, a schoolteacher from a wealthy Roman Catholic family.“This is not a message show,” Mr. Birney, who was Irish American, said during an interview with The Kansas City Star before the series’s debut. “It’s not even an idea show.”CBS gave it a plum time slot between “All in the Family” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” on Saturday night; it consistently finished among the top 10 programs in prime time and was the highest rated new series of the 1972-73 season.But it attracted criticism from a broad spectrum of Jewish groups, which objected chiefly to its treatment of intermarriage between Jews and Christians as a positive outcome and complained that it used Jewish stereotypes. CBS publicly played down the criticism but, without an explanation, canceled “Bridget Loves Bernie” after 24 episodes.“One segment of the protesters is truly concerned about the dilution of their faith,” Mr. Birney told The Daily News several months after the cancellation. “But intermarriage is on the rise, nevertheless. The threat doesn’t come from a harmless show such as ours, but from within.”Mr. Birney and Ms. Baxter married in 1974.In 1976, Mr. Birney received acclaim for playing John Quincy Adams in the public television production of “The Adams Chronicles.” Later that year, he was hired to play Frank Serpico, the corruption-fighting New York City detective, in an NBC series adapted from the Sidney Lumet movie “Serpico” (1973), which had earned Al Pacino an Oscar nomination for best actor.Mr. Birney was cast in the role on the strength of his work playing an officer in two episodes of “Police Story,” another NBC series. But “Serpico” was canceled after less than a full season. Mr. Birney and Meredith Baxter in an episode of “Bridget Loves Bernie,” a short-lived CBS sitcom about an interfaith marriage. Jewish groups were critical of it. CBS via Getty ImagesDavid Edwin Birney was born on April 23, 1939, in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Cleveland. His father, Edwin, was an F.B.I. agent, and his mother, Jeanne (McGee) Birney, was a homemaker and later a real estate agent.After earning a bachelor’s degree in English from Dartmouth College in 1961, Mr. Birney turned down a scholarship from Stanford Law School and instead chose to study theater arts at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received a master’s degree a year later. In the Army, he was part of a program called the Showmobile, which entertained at military bases in the United States.Mr. Birney’s theater career began in earnest in 1965, when he won the Barter Theater Award, enabling him to spend a season acting in shows at the prestigious Barter Theater in Abingdon, Va. He moved on to the Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut, and in 1967 he played Antipholus of Syracuse in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of “A Comedy of Errors.”Mr. Birney made his Broadway debut two years later in Molière’s “The Miser.” And in 1971 he starred in a Broadway production of J.M. Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World” at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. Mr. Birney played Christy Mahon, who enters an Irish pub in the early 1900s telling a story about killing his father.“Mr. Birney had a cock sparrow arrogance,” Clive Barnes wrote in his review in The New York Times, “that mixture of both confidence and certainty that seemed perfectly right.”At the opening of “Playboy,” the Clancy Boys, a popular Irish singing group that Mr. Birney had befriended at a Manhattan bar, sat in the front row.“They had their Irish sweaters on,” Ms. Roberge said in a phone interview, “and their arms crossed as if to say, Come on, show us what you’ve got.”Over the rest of his theatrical career, Mr. Birney played a wide variety of roles, including Antonio Salieri, as a replacement, in Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” on Broadway; Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing” at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J.; Hamlet at the PCPA Theaterfest in Santa Maria, Calif.; and James Tyrone Jr. in Eugene O’Neill’s “A Moon for the Misbegotten” at the Miniature Theater of Chester, Mass.He also adapted some of Mark Twain’s short stories into a play, “The Diaries of Adam and Eve,” which he often performed and directed. In 1989, he starred in one of the productions, with Ms. Baxter, for American Playhouse on PBS.The couple divorced that year. In 2011, she wrote in her book, “Untied: A Memoir of Family, Fame and Floundering,” that Mr. Birney had been abusive during their marriage. He denied her accusation, calling it an “appalling abuse of the truth.”One of Mr. Birney’s biggest successes on television was a starring role as a doctor in the first season of the medical dramedy “St. Elsewhere.” But as the second season approached, he left the series because of his commitment on Broadway to “Amadeus.”He continued to work in television through 2007, when he was a guest on the police procedural “Without a Trace.”In addition to Ms. Roberge, Mr. Birney is survived by his children with Ms. Baxter, his daughters Kate and Mollie Birney and a son, Peter Baxter; a stepdaughter, Eva Bush, and a stepson, Ted Bush, Ms. Baxter’s children from a previous marriage; two grandchildren; and his brothers, Glenn and Gregory. Another marriage, to Mary Concannon, also ended in divorce. More

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      In ‘I Love That for You,’ Vanessa Bayer Sells Out

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      The “Saturday Night Live” veteran’s new sitcom draws on her experience of childhood cancer and her obsession with home shopping TV.Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.According to Vanessa Bayer, being diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia as a 15-year-old wasn’t all bad.It got her out of gym class. The attendance lady at her high school never marked her as tardy. She told a boy she didn’t like that she couldn’t be his date for the homecoming dance because she had chemo that weekend. (She didn’t). Her father talked his way out of a speeding ticket by using her illness as an excuse, a tactic he referred to as “dropping the L-bomb.”Bayer survived the L-bomb. The experience didn’t change her, she said, but it did intensify characteristics that were already inherent — determination, resilience, a borderline delusional sense of optimism. Who receives a diagnosis of cancer and accentuates the positive? Bayer does.“I was always a person who loved attention,” Bayer said chirpily. “This allowed me to get so much attention.”Bayer is getting attention now. On Sunday, Showtime will premiere the first episode of “I Love That for You” (the Showtime app will have it on Friday), a sitcom that draws on Bayer’s pediatric cancer and her longtime obsession with home shopping shows. She stars as Joanna Gold, a sheltered young woman and leukemia survivor who auditions to become the newest host on the Special Value Network. Nearly fired after her disastrous first hour on camera, she saves her job by telling her colleagues that her cancer has returned. (It hasn’t.)Bayer’s character pretends to have cancer in order to keep her job at a home shopping network.Tony Rivetti Jr./ShowtimePlaying Joanna isn’t cathartic for Bayer — she doesn’t seem to need catharsis — but it does offer her a chance to work through her past, this time with even more jokes. “It’s really nice to be able to have some distance from that time and to be able to laugh at it even more,” she said.Bayer grew up in a Reform Jewish family in the suburbs of Cleveland. A star student and a cross-country runner, she decided that she wouldn’t let her illness mess with her G.P.A., even when teachers told her she could coast.“It lit this fire under me,” she said. “It was important to me that everybody saw me as someone who wasn’t weak.”Diagnosed in the spring of her freshman year, she spent time in the hospital, then in outpatient treatment, completing chemotherapy just before her senior year. She graduated on time. As prom queen.She first performed comedy as a member of Bloomers, an all-female troupe at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduation, she moved to Chicago and studied and performed at various improv theaters, which eventually led to a spot on “Saturday Night Live” in 2010. There she created characters such as Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy and Dawn Lazarus, an anxious meteorologist. But long before she got paid for it, Bayer had relied on jokes as a coping mechanism.“I had to use humor to make everyone, including myself, feel OK,” she said, speaking of her time in treatment. Here comes that optimism again: “I also think it made me funnier.”She was speaking, from a bench on the fringes of Central Park, on a recent Friday afternoon. The temperature had climbed to nearly 70 degrees, but Bayer, who had just flown in on a red-eye from Los Angeles, was bundled against the spring in a belted coat, a knit beanie and Rag & Bone fleece sneakers. She had a green juice in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. A medical-grade mask had left a red mark high on each cheek.Even sleep-deprived and apparently very cold, Bayer radiated positivity. She smiled approvingly at the gamboling dogs, the sweating men, the woman who had arrived for a constitutional in high heels and full makeup. “Nothing like New York birds!” she said, when a flock of pigeons flew over, Hitchcock close. In high school she was voted Most Likely to Succeed. Most Likely to Bake a Mean Casserole would have tracked, too — even sitting in the middle of Manhattan, she emanated Midwestern normalcy and niceness.Over seven years on “Saturday Night Live,” Bayer (with Michael Che) was a dependable utility player with many memorable appearances on Weekend Update.Dana Edelson/NBC“She almost doesn’t seem like an actress,” said Molly Shannon, an “S.N.L.” veteran who now co-stars opposite Bayer as SVN’s superstar host. “She’s very steady and calm and grounded.”The comedian Aidy Bryant, who worked with Bayer in Chicago before they both found their way to “S.N.L.,” noted that Bayer has a way of turning that mildness into a strike force. When it comes to comedy, Bryant said, “She is a quiet, smiling assassin.”“Vanessa has a real reserved, polite, wonderfully Midwestern energy,” she added. “Then she hits with a punchline or a funny reaction or her truly incredible smile, which she can weaponize as a force of pain.”On “S.N.L.,” Bayer became a dependable utility player, often infusing characters (football widow, early career Jennifer Aniston) with a manic intensity — eyes overbright, speech a tick too fast. Taran Killam, another “S.N.L.” co-star, noted how calm the offscreen Bayer seemed, a composure he attributed to her history.“It must have given her incredible perspective,” he said. “‘S.N.L.’ is a very passionate job, a dream job. It feels like it matters more than anything in the world. She would always be the first one to say: ‘Who cares? No big deal. So they didn’t like the sketch? Move on.’”“S.N.L.” has a famously punishing schedule. But Jeremy Beiler, a former “S.N.L.” writer who joined around the same time Bayer did, noted how she met the stresses of the job with buoyancy.“She only looks in one direction,” he said. “It’s only forward.”In 2017, after seven seasons on “S.N.L.,” Bayer moved on. Another comedian might have worried about what would come next. Unsurprisingly, Bayer stayed positive. “My attitude is just that stuff kind of works out,” she said. And it did work out, more or less, with guest spots, voice work, supporting roles in a few movies.“I had to use humor to make everyone, including myself, feel OK,” Bayer said, speaking of her time in cancer treatment as a teen. “I also think it made me funnier.”Sabrina Santiago for The New York TimesAs she was leaving “S.N.L.,” her management team asked her about dream projects, and her mind somehow flashed on home shopping TV. She had watched the channels often as a child: The peek into adult life fascinated her, and she loved the elegance of the hosts and the ways in which they would spin seemingly extemporaneous stories in their attempts to entice buyers.She described the hosts’ particular rhythms and vocabulary as “the first foreign language I ever learned,” and the network most likely provided her first taste of improv, too. (In college, when it came time to write her first sketch, she wrote one set in the world of home shopping, in which the host was selling cardboard with a hole in it. It killed.)A few months later, over brunch, Beiler mentioned that he had, by coincidence, begun a series pilot set in the world of home shopping. They began to collaborate, even arranging a field trip to QVC’s headquarters in West Chester, Pa., where they met with two hosts, Jane Treacy and Mary Beth Roe, whom Bayer had idolized as a child, and also managed to score some free soft pretzels. (Everyone I spoke to mentioned Bayer’s enthusiasm for snacks, and most of them mentioned her gift for scamming her way into free ones.) In the gift shop, they bought matching QVC mugs.Back at work, with Jessi Klein as showrunner, they began to build out a back story for Bayer’s character, Joanna, that would give her stakes and drive. They decided to borrow from Bayer’s own story, particularly her diagnosis and treatment and the way that those years of chemo and radiation stunted her emotional growth for a while.“I didn’t understand dating at all,” she said. “It was just playing catch up. Even out of college and into my 20s, I always was trying to fake being an adult.” In an hour’s conversation, this was the closest she ever came to acknowledging that pediatric cancer hadn’t been entirely a walk in the park.Bayer didn’t mind lending Joanna her medical chart — she has never been shy about her diagnosis. As a teen she used it to win her family a trip to Hawaii courtesy of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. (She had thought about asking to meet Jared Leto, but she eventually decided she would prefer to meet him as a peer. Years later, she did.) Colleagues at “S.N.L.” have heard her introduce leukemia into the conversation just to get free ice cream, which jibes with advice she offered during our interview: If you are sick, use it to get whatever you can.Bryant said, “She always takes the things that are hard and makes them something that she can use to empower herself or use to her advantage.”Gradually, Joanna took shape, a woman more guarded than Bayer and more stunted, with her same love of snacks and her same gift for antic improvisation but none of her obvious success. A woman who lies about having cancer shouldn’t be a woman you root for, but Bayer has a way of communicating a kind of desperate brightness that makes terrible things seem less terrible, just because she does them with such enthusiasm.What the camera recognizes is what Shannon, who also survived a major childhood trauma (her mother, youngest sister and a cousin were killed in a car accident), identified as a shared joy and determination to wring the utmost out of life.“We don’t take it for granted,” Shannon said. “We feel so lucky that we’re alive. For real.”There are many stories about illness. (Admittedly, there are fewer of them set in the world of home shopping.) But this is one — with its snacks and its sunniness and its heroine’s determination to exploit her fake diagnosis for all she can — that seemingly only Bayer can tell.“I always wanted to do something about when I was sick,” she said contentedly, as the gentle chaos of Central Park swirled around her. “Specifically, the fun I had.”Audio produced by More

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      ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Recap: A Chateau of Convenience

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      In the penultimate episode of this season, anything the crew needs from the plot to move forward, it gets.Season 2, Episode 9: ‘Hide and Seek’The most interesting revelation in this week’s “Picard” comes in a throwaway line from Seven, in which she tells Raffi that she tried to join Starfleet after Voyager returned from the Delta Quadrant. That Captain Janeway — or possibly Admiral, depending on the timing of her promotion that we saw in “Star Trek: Nemesis” — went to bat for her. Starfleet said no, because of her Borg background.This is the first concrete hint about Seven’s immediate post-Voyager ambitions. It was a remarkable decision by Starfleet, given that Seven accomplished more on Voyager than many Starfleet officers ever did. She saved lives — Starfleet lives, but it wasn’t good enough to be seen as anything more than a former Borg drone. It shows that bigotry is still alive and well within the Federation. It also established why Seven became a Fenris Ranger. (Compare this to Picard and the crew’s handling of Hugh, the former Borg drone, whom we are reintroduced to in last season of “Picard.”)It also ran counter to previous Starfleet policy: Remember that Picard himself was once a Borg drone. The Enterprise crew rescued him and Picard got his command back, like, the next day. (And why was Icheb — who was also part of the Voyager crew — allowed to join Starfleet then?)Aside from that, this episode was — to put it charitably — disjointed.If there’s been a consistent trend in how the “Trek” universe has handled the Borg, it’s that their pursuit of perfection is consistently undermined by their rank incompetence — something Jurati brings up in the episode’s bizarre climax. The episode starts with an army of Borg drones, led by the Borg Queen, trying to take over La Sirena. Should be easy: After all, the Borg Queen alone can take over an entire computer system.But it’s not easy, because it appears that the Queen assimilated stormtroopers who can’t shoot straight rather than professional mercenaries. And The Watcher procures very futuristic weapons to aid the crew in their fight.With every deus ex machina, an angel grows its wings — and there are many wings coming out of “Picard.” How did The Watcher get those weapons? From where? Why have they never come up before? Also, wasn’t her whole thing to stay out of events? Suddenly, the Watcher can beam Rios away after being shot? And then later, Rios is able to beam back because he has a screwdriver? And then when Soong tries to use Rios’s gun, it has a DNA lock on it? And it explodes if it’s being held too long?Probably best not to ponder any of the above too deeply and just keep moving.So when the Borg Queen is finally close to taking over the ship’s computer — something that shouldn’t have been difficult for her to do — Jurati tries to moralize her.“Why haven’t you killed me?” Jurati asks the Queen, asking a question that every audience member has asked by now. In the meantime, Jurati puts something called a “fractal lock” on the computer. How? When? Without the Queen noticing? Ah, nevermind. And wait, Jurati didn’t remember the key? And she left it with a holographic Elnor?Like the Queen, we’re all confused by what is going on. (I did enjoy several of the Queen’s drones trying to shoot a gun at a hologram, because IT’S A HOLOGRAM.) Later, when Raffi reunites with Hologram Elnor, he says that he shared Real Elnor’s last thoughts.“I share the recollection of Elnor’s final breath — enough to know that his last thoughts of you were not of blame but of love,” the hologram says. Why would Hologram Elnor know that? He was presumably created before Real Elnor died.Seven’s comes up with the brilliant plan of beaming the drones off board and into a wall in Chateau Picard. Given The Watcher’s beaming capability, how was this not the first thing they thought of? I feel like I’m asking a lot of questions.The peak of the episode comes when the Queen stabs Seven, and then her life is saved because Jurati trash-talks the Queen by saying the Borg consistently stink at achieving their aims across several timelines. Good point. In one of the most baffling plot points in “Trek” history — and I’m pretty sure I’ve written this about previous “Picard” plot lines — Jurati says the better way for them to do things is by asking species’ permissions to be assimilated.“What if we take this ship and build a better Borg? A real collective based not on assimilation but on salvation?” Jurati says to the Queen.Is salvation different than assimilation? And there is no reason for the Queen to accept this proposal. She has all the leverage! The Borg’s brand is that resistance is futile. and they can’t be negotiated with. Now they change everything they are because of one conversation with Jurati?Odds and EndsRios decides to show Teresa and Ricardo a glimpse of the future — when he didn’t have to — and then leaves them behind in the 21st century. Surely it will have some future effect on the timeline for the two of them to have this much knowledge about futuristic technology.The action sequences were a lot of fun in this episode. They were made less effective by the distracting plotting.The revelation about Picard’s mother was notable, but felt cheapened because it was used mostly as a device to help Picard and The Watcher escape a homicidal Soong. More

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      Olive Gray, an Actor Since the Age of 10, Stars in ‘Halo’

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      The nonbinary actor grew up around a lot of famous people, including the Spice Girls, who would hang out in the living room.Name: Olive GrayAge: 27Hometown: Cambridge, EnglandNow lives: In a three-story loft in the Southgate neighborhood of London with their parents, three siblings and two cockapoos.Claim to fame: Mx. Gray is a musician and actor who stars in “Halo,” a Paramount+ adaptation of the hugely popular video game franchise. “We filmed in front of the biggest blue screen in Europe, so the whole time I was completely awe struck and mesmerized by working in this big expanse of space,” Mx. Gray said. “I remember thinking, ‘This must be how an ant feels every day.’” Mx. Gray is also known for roles in various British productions, including the BAFTA-winning TV thriller “Save Me” and the bawdy comedy “Sex Education.”Big break: Mx. Gray’s father, David Grant, was one half of the 1980s funk-pop duo Linx, and Mx. Gray’s mother, Carrie Grant, represented Britain at the 1983 Eurovision contest as part of the pop group Sweet Dreams. “I grew up around a lot of people that I was also a fan of, which is kind of weird looking back on it,” they said. “I would run around the house and scream Spice Girls songs at the top of my lungs, and then sit with actual members of the Spice Girls in my living room.”At the age of 10, Mx. Gray landed a recurring role on “The Story of Tracy Beaker,” a TV show about a girl in foster care. “As a kid, ‘fame’ was never really that big of a deal,” Mx. Gray said. “I know that sounds like not a terribly normal thing to say.”Paramount+Latest project: Mx. Gray will release a five-track EP this year, which they described as “jazz and indie rock” with a little bit of pop. “You have to be very technical as a session singer when it comes to things like breathing and tone,” Mx. Gray said. “So even when I’m recording my own music, I still tend to hyper-analyze the quality of the sound like it’s a different person’s voice.”Next thing: “Halo,” in which Mx. Gray plays Commander Miranda Keyes, has been renewed for a second season. “There is nothing quite like the scale of a big American sci-fi, is there? Everything just happens so quickly.”Bad reviews: Mx. Gray grew up “obsessed” with obscure French cinema, often downloaded from the internet. “I only watched French independent films, even though a lot of them were really bad,” they said. “There was one about this party where every guest was from a different time period. It was very strange — probably one of the worst films I’ve ever seen.” More

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      James Corden Announces He’s Leaving Late Night

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      Corden made an emotional address on Thursday night, saying he never wanted to overstay his welcome.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.One More YearJames Corden announced on Thursday that he would be leaving “The Late Late Show” in 2023 after eight years.“When I started this journey, it was always going to be just that — it was going to be a journey, an adventure. I never saw it as my final destination, you know?” Corden said. “And I never want this show to overstay its welcome in any way. I always want to love making it, and I really think in a year from now, that will be a good time to move on and see what else might be out there.”“We still have a year to go, and we are all determined to make this the best year we have ever had making this show. We are going to go out with a bang; there is going to be ‘Carpools’ and ‘Crosswalks’ and sketches and other surprises.” — JAMES CORDEN“And there will be tears; there will be so many tears. Because this has been the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. It really has. I’ve never taken this job for granted, ever, not once. And if you — the fact that you watch us at home or you watch us online, wherever you are, all over the world, the fact that we get to try to entertain you and spend time with you is an absolute privilege for me and every single person who makes this show. Here’s to the next 12 months, and it’s going to be a blast, I promise you that.” — JAMES CORDENThe Punchiest Punchlines (Rotten Tomatoes Edition)“In newly released excerpts from a deposition taken last year, former President Trump said that he was worried that protesters might throw fruits and vegetables at him. This is just more proof that Trump only thinks in cartoons.” — SETH MEYERS“It’s like the homeland security threat level: red’s tomato, yellow’s for banana, and green is for avocado. And you know what they say if you get hit with an avocado: You’re toast.” — SETH MEYERS“I will say this — he’s not wrong about being hit with a pineapple being dangerous, you know? I mean that’s got spikes built in. And the banana, too. It might not seem dangerous, but remember, someone throws a banana, it comes right back at them.” — TREVOR NOAH“You know what I think is the worst fruit to get hit with? A honeydew. Yeah, no, not because it’s hard; just because you can get some of it in your mouth, and that [expletive] is disgusting. I hope it hits me in the head and kills me so I don’t have to taste it.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingOn Thursday’s “Tonight Show,” Christina Ricci responded to fan theories about her Showtime hit, “Yellowjackets.”Also, Check This OutA scene from “Sheryl,” which arrives on Showtime on May 6.ShowtimeSheryl Crow tells her story of battling sexism in the music industry and personal darkness in the new Showtime documentary “Sheryl.” More

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      James Corden Says He’ll Leave His CBS Show Next Year

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      The British-born host, who was a successful actor and comedian before joining the network’s late-night lineup, has been signaling for some time that he was considering leaving.James Corden, the British theater actor and comedian turned late-night TV host in the United States, said on Thursday that he would leave his 12:30 a.m. nightly show on CBS next year. Mr. Corden made the announcement during a taping of his talk show in Los Angeles.Mr. Corden, the host of “The Late Late Show” since 2015, has been signaling for some time that he was strongly considering leaving the show.Five months ago, Mr. Corden told Variety that he never saw his late-night perch as “a final destination.” In a previous interview with The Sun, Mr. Corden said he and his family were “homesick.”Mr. Corden’s contract was set to expire in August, but he signed an extension that will keep him on CBS through next spring.“We wish he could stay longer, but we are very proud he made CBS his American home and that this partnership will extend one more season on ‘The Late Late Show,’” George Cheeks, the president of CBS, said in a statement.James Corden’s Run on ‘The Late Late Show’The British actor and comedian turned late-night TV host, announced he would leave his CBS show in 2023.His Debut: James Corden was “amiable and cheerfully self-assured, but not particularly special,” our critic wrote of the comedian’s first night as host in 2015.A Bit of Controversy: In a recurring gag on the show, Corden portrayed foods from cultures around the world as disgusting. The segment drew the ires of some viewers. On Stage: Corden started out as an aspiring stage performer. Here is what he said about his long love affair with theater.Mr. Corden’s impending departure is one of the most significant changes for the late-night comedy lineup since 2014 and 2015, when veteran hosts like David Letterman, Jay Leno and Jon Stewart left their shows, and a new generation of stars, including Mr. Corden, Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah and HBO’s John Oliver, went on the air.There is a feeling of uncertainty in late night beyond Mr. Corden’s departure. Jimmy Kimmel, the longtime ABC host, has a contract that will end soon and has said publicly that he was unsure if he would renew. Stephen Colbert, whose show precedes Mr. Corden’s on CBS, also has a contract that expires next year. Chris Licht, the longtime executive producer of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” left last month to become the chairman of CNN. And Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show” recently went through yet another showrunner change, the fourth in four years.There are questions throughout the entertainment industry over the longtime viability of the late-night talk show genre. Over the last few years, as viewing habits have rapidly changed, ratings for the shows have nose-dived. Five years ago, roughly 2.8 million people were tuning into Mr. Corden’s show as well as NBC’s 12:30 a.m. show, “Late Night With Seth Meyers.” By 2022, that figure had dropped to about 1.9 million, according to Nielsen’s delayed viewing data.Talk shows — which depend on topical relevance and audiences who make it a daily habit to tune in — have also not fared well on streaming services like Netflix and Hulu.Mr. Corden entered the late-night fray in a big way when his show debuted in 2015. Mr. Corden, who had a successful theater career but was still relatively unknown in the United States, became an overnight star. “Carpool Karaoke,” a signature of his show, featured him singing along with stars like Lady Gaga, Michelle Obama and Adele, and clips routinely went viral.“Seven years ago, James Corden came to the U.S. and took television by storm, with huge creative and comedic swings that resonated in a big way with viewers on-air and online,” Mr. Cheeks said.But Mr. Corden’s brand of comedy — focused on games and musical sketches — soon found itself out of step with the zeitgeist.The landscape changed considerably after Donald J. Trump entered the White House. Late-night audiences began devouring biting political humor. Within weeks of Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Mr. Fallon’s fun-and-games approach at “The Tonight Show” fell steeply in the ratings, and Mr. Colbert became the No. 1 late-night host, thanks to his more topical approach. He has held that lead for more than five years. Like Mr. Fallon, Mr. Corden favored a lighter show.Mr. Corden parlayed his late-night perch into other high-profile ventures, including hosting the Tony Awards and Grammy Awards. He has also appeared in several movies, including the critically gnawed-on “Cinderella” and “Cats.”Seated behind his “Late Late Show” desk, Mr. Corden called his decision to leave the hardest “he ever had to make.”“I never want this show to overstay its welcome in any way,” he said. “I always want to love making it. And I really think in a year from now that will be a good time to move on and see what else might be out there.” More