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      'The Search for Snoopy,' a 'Peanuts' Experience, Is in the Works

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      An adventure awaits visitors in Honolulu in “The Search for Snoopy,” starting in March.“Peanuts” fans who have dreamed of visiting Snoopy’s red doghouse, Lucy’s therapy booth (only 5 cents!) or Charlie Brown’s classroom will have their chance next year, with an interactive experience in Honolulu called “The Search for Snoopy: A Peanuts Adventure.”The event will take visitors through the familiar scenery of Charles M. Schulz’s newspaper strips and cartoons, and will be presented at Ala Moana Center, an open-air mall, starting in March.“The beauty of ‘Peanuts’ is that there are 17,500-and-some-odd strips that Sparky — Charles Schulz — created over the 50 years of ‘Peanuts’ in syndication,” which provided many stories, themes and locations to mine, Craig Herman, a Peanuts Worldwide vice president, said in a conference call with the show’s producer. (Original “Peanuts” strips were published from Oct. 2, 1950, through Feb. 13, 2000. The last original installment came out the day after Schulz’s death.)For the Hawaii experience, Peanuts Worldwide partnered with Kilburn Live, the company that produced an interactive Dr. Seuss Experience, in a collaboration that began three years ago. “It takes a long time to get it right,” Mark Manuel, the chief executive of Kilburn, said in the interview.Other set pieces in “The Search for Snoopy” include Charlie Brown’s bedroom, where visitors can release a Charlie Brown-like “Aaugh!” that will be measured and ranked, and Charlie Brown’s classroom, where participants can hear themselves in the indecipherable garble of the adults as they were heard in “Peanuts” on TV. A national tour of the show is planned following its run in Honolulu. More

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      John Cameron Mitchell Finds Joy in Mavis Staples and ‘Veneno’

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      On the eve of concerts celebrating “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” the writer and performer also shares why “The Gnostic Gospels” feeds his soul.“I haven’t had such a good role since Hedwig,” John Cameron Mitchell said.He was talking about Joe Exotic of “Tiger King” fame — and comparing the chance to play him with “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” his 1998 rock musical and 2001 movie about a genderqueer East German singer stranded in Kansas after a botched sex-change operation.That tale, rapturous and raunchy, still reverberates, with people outside a West Village cafe slowing to gawk or offer up praise as Mitchell elaborated on his cultural essentials recently.At the end of the month, he and his “Hedwig” co-creator, Stephen Trask, will reunite for two nights in “Return to the Origin of Love” at the Town Hall in Manhattan. Billed as a New Year’s catharsis with a heaping serving of debauchery, the show melds songs and stories about the making of “Hedwig” with newer material like “Nation of One,” the duo’s first song in 20 years and part of Mitchell’s lockdown album “New American Dream.”It also includes “Call Me Joe,” an ode to Joe Exotic, the gay, polygamist, now-imprisoned zoo owner immortalized in Netflix’s “Tiger King,” a character so delicious that it inspired him to audition for the first time in 27 years.A mulleted Mitchell will star in “Joe Exotic,” a fictional series coming out on Peacock in 2022. He intends it to be a fully rounded portrayal, with fewer of the “eye-catching hooks” that reduced him to “that crazy guy over there.”“I almost feel like I was playing Richard III — an antihero who’s clearly out of his mind, but strangely admirable,” Mitchell said.Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “Veneno”Television has rocked lately. I was most moved by the Spanish series “Veneno” on HBO Max. “Veneno” means “poison,” and it’s brilliant, just brilliant, about the legendary trans celebrity Cristina La Veneno, whose life was equally inspirational and cautionary. Simply the best series in 15 years and criminally unsung. I’ve become friends with Los Javis [the duo Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo], who are making it, and they’re going to present our Origin of Love Tour in Spain.2. Silvio RodríguezI’ve been marinating in the songs of the great Cuban trovador Silvio Rodríguez. I was looking for a song in Spanish to sing in Mexico City, and my Mexican singer friend said, “Listen to this song called ‘Ojalá’” — which was stunning. And I was like, “Who is this guy?” He really is in the Latin American world as important as Dylan. He’s connected to Castro’s revolution, but the purview is larger and is very much about the heart. I cover his song “Casiopea,” about an extraterrestrial stranded on Earth, on “New American Dream.”3. “The Gnostic Gospels” by Elaine PagelsIt’s a formative text for me, about the Christian texts which never made it into the Bible. [Her scholarship] spoke to me as a lapsed queer Catholic. I saw a much less misogynistic church, the idea of androgyny being the highest level of humanity and finding the divinity within. And along with Plato’s “Symposium,” it inspired “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”4. My House in New OrleansCovid made me question my monogamous relationship with New York, and I traveled widely. New Orleans kept drawing me back. That city groans under climate change, poverty and drugs but also shimmers with music, art, a neighborly walk-around culture and crawfish. I bought a house there from a chapter of the Order of the Oriental Templars once run by Aleister Crowley, who had his own take on Gnosticism. The energy in the house is powerful, and we’re adding our queer arty vibes to create a destination for community creativity.5. Sci-Fi FantasyI acted up a storm in the last year, but in my downtime, I reverted to my youth and devoured dozens of sci-fi fantasy books. My favorite authors have always been women. They’re less into the hardware and more focused on emotion and theme. When I was very young, Andre Norton was my favorite. She took on a male name because boys wouldn’t read a book by a woman. I’d always heard of Octavia Butler but only started reading her in the last couple of years. She’s very much about creating community in adversity, being Black and a little gender-nonconforming herself.6. Douglas Stuart’s NovelsI’m deep into the galleys of Stuart’s upcoming “Young Mungo,” the follow-up to his gorgeous Booker Prize-winner, “Shuggie Bain.” “Mungo” follows a Glaswegian 15-year-old in a similar poverty-stricken setting as “Shuggie.” Stuart’s aching empathy and sublime images really got their hooks in me like an ancestral tug. My wonderful and difficult mum, Joan Cameron, grew up in Glasgow. Both she and her sister, sweet Aunt Mary, passed recently, and reading Stuart inspired me to create a song with Ted Nash called “You Can Go Now,” featuring Wynton Marsalis and Catherine Russell as my mum.7. Mavis StaplesI was floored by Questlove’s doc, “Summer of Soul.” When Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples tear into “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” I was transported to heaven — not the airy-fairy buffet staffed by winged cater-waiters, but to the mountaintop accessed by a steep and bloody path. I’m presently commissioning a stained-glass portrait of Ms. Staples by the great Hadyn Butler. I worship the ground that she walks on.8. Modern Fairy TalesMy own nonbinariness — such a clinical word for a natural state — was recently stirred and shaken by two brilliant books: “Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl” by Andrea Lawlor and “Venus as a Boy” by Luke Sutherland. The former is a punk fable about a femboy who finds he can alter his body and gender at will. The protagonist of “Venus,” however, alters his body and gender at someone else’s will. Both are lonely — and heroic.9. Films by Stephen WinterMy buddy Stephen was finally acknowledged as one of our most courageous filmmakers by the inclusion of two of his films on the Criterion Channel. He produced Jonathan Caouette’s surreal auto-doc “Tarnation.” But more important, he created two seminal queer Black features: “Chocolate Babies” (1996), about a gang of H.I.V. positive “terrorists” fighting AIDS by any means necessary; and “Jason and Shirley” (2015) about the dark symbiotic relationship between the Jewish filmmaker Shirley Clarke and her gay Black cabaret artist muse, Jason Holliday.10. Lockdown PodcastsWhile luxuriating in “Dolly Parton’s America,” I rereleased Bryan Weller’s and my musical “Anthem: Homunculus,” starring Cynthia Erivo, Glenn Close and Patti LuPone, as a free podcast. I play a guy crowdfunding his cancer care who finds that his brain tumor is sentient — voiced by Laurie Anderson, naturally. I also provided voices for my brother Colin MacKenzie Mitchell’s [upcoming] “The Laundronauts,” starring the late great Ed Asner, about a boy who is stuffed into a washer by a bully and disappears. His friends, the Laundronauts, must go in and rescue him. I play the Spirit of Absentia, the land beyond the washer where all the lost things go: socks, coins and boys. Along with their hopes, fears and dreams. Lockdown metaphors abound. More

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      ‘Insecure’ Recap, Season 5, Episode 8: Fears and Desires

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      This week, Issa is thriving personally and professionally, but a series of dreams (or nightmares) injects uncertainty into her situation.Season 5, Episode 8, ‘Choices, Okay!?’Let’s talk about dreams, a popular subject of poems, songs, books and plays. In life, they can give us something to strive for; in drama, they’re a useful way to illustrate a character’s hopes and fears.In this episode, Issa has a series of dreams — or possibly nightmares — and they all come up Lawrence. “Choices, Okay!?” is more about the dreams that Issa has not chased down and brought to life than about the ones that she has managed to reach.This episode starts with Issa and Nathan splayed around Issa’s loved-in bedroom. Issa is thinking about squirrels until she remembers that her friend Tiffany might be moving away. She does a lot of daydreaming in this episode. After a quip or two, Nathan gets up and heads to the bathroom to take what appears to be medication, a welcome sign that he is staying dedicated to his health and well-being.The couple is clearly getting along — it seems Nathan was able to show up for Issa in the way she wanted. She’s wearing his T-shirt around her house and he says he loves making her coffee, and then he asks Issa if they should move in together.“Wow, do you think we’re ready for that?” she replies, looking somewhat stunned.“I don’t know, maybe,” he responds with a shrug. “It will save us some money.”Then they put a pin in the conversation and move on.Initially, Issa’s professional life appears to be blossoming along with her romantic one. In a dreamlike sequence, she is offered what seems like a high number to partner with MBW. She puts on a show at the Miracle Theater in Los Angeles and expertly walks her sponsors through the process — she is in charge, she knows her talking points and has her bases covered and then some. Then it appears we move forward in the timeline and she is on a panel being interviewed by Elaine Welteroth; it looks like our girl has professionally leveled up.Suddenly, she’s wearing a fly suit in first-class, sitting next to Ty Dollar $ign, who is on his way to Los Angeles to work with Crenshawn. Then Issa arrives at home. Nathan is at the house and the house is beautiful, that’s when I knew she was daydreaming. It might be when she figured it out, too — she kind of snaps out of it and asks Nathan when they moved to that apartment.At this point, the episode dedicated some time to Kelli, who was helping Molly’s parents with their estate planning, so I want to do the same. What would “Insecure” be without her? She is always on time, unabashed, constantly pushing the girls to take better care of themselves. She will DM Daniel Kaluuya and then say he DM’d her first, because why not? She is like a human confetti popper of joy and hilarious rage. (This week she told Issa’s brother, Ahmal, that she was going to write a TV show about him just so she could kill him off.) When she is helping Molly’s parents, she eases the tension with her on-point witticism and jokes. We all need a Kelli.Issa’s second daydream of the episode was both more aspirational and more fraught. In this one, she partners up with Crenshawn, who apologizes for his behavior on social media, and opens up two locations with him. She is known and loved in the community and plays spades with the ice cream man on Sundays. (Glad to hear that she finally learned how.) Ty Dollar $ign partners up with MBW instead, and promotes water on bus ads.Issa, on the other hand, receives the key to Inglewood from Tyra Banks — we all want to receive something from Tyra after watching her pass out headshots on “America’s Next Top Model” for years, I get it — and has a day named after her. At the end of this dream, she goes home and Nathan walks out to greet her. But then when he walks into a different room, Lawrence is who comes back out.“I’m proud of you,” he says to her. “You had a lot of options but you made a choice that made you happy, and now you’re being rewarded for it.”He goes in for a kiss and Issa screams.Issa has it bad — even when she’s daydreaming about what her life could become, Lawrence is still in play. Toward the end of the episode, she’s having dinner with Nathan at her place and he goes in the next room. When he says that he wants her to be happy, Issa hears Lawrence’s voice and braces herself for him to walk out of the room, but Nathan walks out instead. Did she look a little disappointed?In Issa’s real life, Nathan is her boyfriend and that’s who is in her house. Her dreams are turning into nightmares; is that what happens to dreams deferred? Will Issa try to turn her dream — ending up with Lawrence, it seems — into reality, no matter how misguided that move might be? Or will her actual reality be enough for her? More

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      Stephen Colbert Comments on the ‘Slides of Sedition’

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      Colbert couldn’t believe Congress is currently investigating a 38-page PowerPoint document detailing plans to overturn the 2020 election.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.‘Slides of Sedition’The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is looking into a 38-page PowerPoint document sent to President Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, that included plans to overturn the 2020 election.“PowerPoint? They weren’t just trying to overturn democracy, they were trying to bore it to death,” Stephen Colbert said on Monday night.“So what was in these slides of sedition? We’re not exactly sure yet, but there is one deck that’s been circulating, that may be the deck in question, and one of the slides on that was a list of recommendations, including a plan to ‘declare a national security emergency.’ I’m sure exactly how you do that. I assume by breaking into every broadcast using the emergency [expletive] system.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“They were also planning to declare electronic voting in all states invalid. Instead, they wanted to rely on ‘legal and genuine paper ballot counts.’ OK, so if you can’t trust computers, how are you giving your presentation, via PowerPoint pigeon? They’re staging a coup-coup!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“That’s right, they wrote down their plans for a coup in a PowerPoint. You know what that means — Congress is going to have to subpoena Clippy. That’s from our new segment, ‘Jokes from 1995.’” — SETH MEYERS“Even the Mafia knows to use code words. If the Mafia ever made a PowerPoint presentation, it would say something vague like, ‘Plan for the guys at the place to do the thing.’ ‘OK, boss, what’s the next slide?’ ‘There’s no more slides. There’s just the one slide.’” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Elon Musk Edition)“Time magazine today unveiled their annual person of the year, and that person is Elon Musk or as I call him, Old Sheldon.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Person of the year is believed to be the highest honor ever awarded to a person who cuts his own hair.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“In response to this, Jeff Bezos just bought Time magazine.” — JAMES CORDEN“He was going to go out and buy a copy, but then he realized he’d have to pay taxes on it, so it was, you know, not worth it.” — SETH MEYERS“It’s important to note this is not necessarily a compliment. Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump were also named person of the year. Time — for real — Time is basically your dad watching a bad Super Bowl commercial, and going, ‘Hey, love him or hate him, we’re all talking about him, right?’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Man, I’m so happy for him. Like the guy could really use an ego boost, you know?” — TREVOR NOAH“And honestly you can’t argue with this. I mean, richest man in the world, who also control space, crypto and electric cars? Who would even be second place, like maybe Pete Davidson, maybe?” — TREVOR NOAH“Yeah, Musk received the honor for his work in space exploration and after he bought 10 million subscriptions to Time magazine.” — JIMMY FALLON“I’m kidding, although it was a little strange that everyone at Time drove into work today in a brand-new Tesla.” — JIMMY FALLON“Being named person of the year is a big deal. It’s basically ‘sexiest man alive,’ but you’re competing against the Dalai Lama and the pope.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingTom Holland, Regina King and Ted Danson are just a few of the celebrities reading mean tweets about themselves in a new edition of the popular recurring segment of “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightChelsea Handler will stop by Tuesday’s “Daily Show.”Also, Check This OutJim Henson with Big Bird, as seen in “Street Gang: How We Got Sesame Street.” The HBO documentary uses file footage and new interviews to detail the early years of the influential show.Sesame Workshop/HBOA new documentary about “Sesame Street” details how social purpose has always been a part of the long-running children’s show. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘American Auto’ and ‘MTV Unplugged’

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      NBC debuts a sitcom about bumbling auto executives. And Tony Bennett sings with Lady Gaga on “MTV Unplugged.”Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Dec. 13-19. Details and times are subject to change.MondayAMERICAN AUTO 10 p.m. on NBC. In “Superstore,” the TV producer and creator Justin Spitzer lampooned a distinctly American workplace — a Costco-like big-box store — threatened by industry innovation. His new sitcom, “American Auto,” does the same for the automotive industry. It follows a group of bumbling executives at a fictional Detroit auto manufacturer as they try to keep up with an industry being transformed by self-driving cars and electric engines.SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (2017) 5 p.m. on FX. Tom Holland leaps back into theaters this week in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” his latest outing as that superhero, and the newest in a long line of attempts to capture the energy of comic book panels inside of film frames. This 2017 entry was the first time that Holland had a Spider-Man movie to himself. In her review for The New York Times Manohla Dargis called it a “likable, amusing” reboot. “What makes Spider-Man different and, ideally, work as a character, giving him an off-kilter charm, is he retains the uncertainties and vulnerabilities of adolescence,” Dargis wrote. “The team behind ‘Homecoming’ certainly gets that Spider-Man is a kid,” she said, “even if the movie plays the naïf angle too hard at times.”TuesdayAlan Cumming in “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.”Andrew YoungTHE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The actor Alan Cumming teams up with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for this new take on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story of the same name. Conceived by the producer and conductor John Mauceri, who leads the performers here, this version combines live narration with music.ERNST LUBITSCH MOVIES 8 p.m. on TCM. On Tuesday night, TCM will show a string of early movies by the formative filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch. First up: THE DOLL (1919), a comedic fantasy about a young man who decides to marry a life-size doll. (The story was adapted from “La poupée,” an operetta by Edmond Audran, itself an adaptation of the E.T.A. Hoffmann story “Der Sandmann.”) Next: THE OYSTER PRINCESS (1919) at 9:15 p.m. and THREE WOMEN (1924) at 10:30 p.m., both also about relationship shenanigans. The Lubitsch continues into the early-morning hours for the hardiest among us.WednesdayTHE IHEARTRADIO JINGLE BALL 2021 8 p.m. on the CW. Lil Nas X, Ed Sheeran, the Jonas Brothers and Saweetie are among the headliners of this year’s iHeartRadio holiday tour. This special will compile highlights from that tour, which included a stop at Madison Square Garden last week.ThursdayTony Bennett and Lady Gaga in “MTV Unplugged: Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga.”Kevin Mazur/MTVMTV UNPLUGGED: TONY BENNETT & LADY GAGA 9 p.m. on MTV. Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga perform songs from “Love for Sale,” their album of duets, in this special. The album was released in September, months after Bennett announced that he has been living with Alzheimer’s disease. It has been promoted as Bennett’s final record. That gives this old-school-jazz-club set a bittersweet flavor, but the sweetness prevails; the tone here is warm and celebratory.FridayLIVE FROM BRADLEY SYMPHONY CENTER: MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The conductor Ken-David Masur leads the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in classic works by Ellington, Gershwin and Stravinsky and a new piece by Eric Nathan in this concert, which celebrates the opening of the orchestra’s restored concert hall. The pianist Aaron Diehl joins as a guest.THE REAL CHARLIE CHAPLIN (2021) 10 p.m. on Showtime. The filmmakers Peter Middleton and James Spinney use reams of archival footage; narration from the actress Pearl Mackie; and, perhaps most interestingly, dramatizations of audio interviews by lip-syncing actors to revisit the life and career of Charlie Chaplin in this documentary. It’s a rags-to-riches tale: The film follows Chaplin’s journey to Hollywood heights from a difficult childhood in Victorian London. The filmmakers “mostly run through the well-trodden timeline of Charlie Chaplin’s life and fame — from poverty to ubiquity to exile in Switzerland,” Nicolas Rapold wrote in his review for The Times, “but they keep up a wondering, questing approach.”SaturdayA scene from “Ron’s Gone Wrong.”Locksmith Animation/20th Century StudiosRON’S GONE WRONG (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. A kind of “Black Mirror” for the whole family, this computer-animated movie casts Zach Galifianakis as the voice of Bubble, a cute little robot who becomes the companion of boy named Ben (Jack Dylan Grazer). Bubble is the product of big tech company. Ben’s copy is defective, which may or may not be the reason this human-robot relationship is destined to be a bumpy one. Released after recent revelations from a Facebook whistle-blower have made the role of tech giants in the real-world more concerning than ever before, “Ron’s Gone Wrong” immerses viewers in “a world that suddenly looks more dystopian than it did before,” Ben Kenigsberg wrote in his review for The Times. But “as family entertainment,” he wrote, “it’s fine.”Sunday1883 9 p.m. on Paramount Network. Paramount has had a big hit with “Yellowstone,” its modern-day Western series that stars Kevin Costner as a headstrong rancher. As its title suggests, this new prequel spinoff series brings the action to the 19th century. It follows Costner’s ancestors on a journey through the Great Plains. Sam Elliott, the actor and veteran of westerns, stars alongside the singers Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. More

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      Kate McKinnon Returns to ‘S.N.L.’ as Dr. Anthony Fauci

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      McKinnon wasted no time playing numerous roles in a “Saturday Night Live” episode in which Billie Eilish was both host and musical guest.For the first seven episodes of its current season, “Saturday Night Live” was without the services of Kate McKinnon while she worked on other projects. This had temporarily deprived the show of one of its most prolific impressionists, and though other cast members helped to fill the void, “S.N.L.” wasted no time in putting McKinnon back to work upon her return.This weekend’s episode, for which the pop star Billie Eilish was both the host and the musical guest, began with McKinnon returning to the role of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, in a speech where she addressed concerns about the rise of the Omicron coronavirus variant.But first, McKinnon asked, “Do people still think I’m sexy or are we done with that? When people see me on TV, they think, this can’t be good. And their children think, wow, that Elf on the Shelf got old.”She then introduced a series of short scenes meant to dramatize real-life scenarios that people might find themselves in this holiday season.In the first, Mikey Day played a prospective customer at a restaurant who had lost his vaccination card. “Then you are banished from society,” its hostess, Heidi Gardner, told him. “Have fun living in the woods.” (As Fauci, McKinnon helpfully commented on their interaction, “You can get a replacement card. I think.”)In other scenes, Bowen Yang and Ego Nwodim played an airline passenger and a flight attendant, and Kyle Mooney and Melissa Villaseñor played a mall Santa Claus and a child hoping to sit on his lap.Another scene that McKinnon said was about “two unemployed brothers on Christmas Day” turned out to depict ex-New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo (Pete Davidson) and the recently fired CNN host Chris Cuomo (Andrew Dismukes).“We both lost our jobs,” Davidson said, pausing to add, “because of Covid.”Cecily Strong and Chloe Fineman appeared as Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, both wielding assault rifles, and Aidy Bryant played Senator Ted Cruz, describing herself as “the weirdo with a beard-o.”At the sketch’s conclusion, McKinnon tried to find some common ground. “Clearly this country is divided,” she said. “But I think we all agree on at least a few things. We all want to spend time together with our families.”Bryant interjected, “Or run it back solo to Cancun.”Davidson observed, “Family is all we have.”“Yeah,” added Dismukes. “As of two weeks ago.”Dose of the Holiday Spirit of the WeekIf the various decorations and poinsettias around Studio 8H didn’t already remind you that this was a Yuletide episode of “S.N.L.,” the holiday mood was quickly established by this sketch in which Villaseñor and Alex Moffat played a couple watching the Christmas cards on their refrigerator come to life.The well-wishers included Fineman and Day as the parents in a particularly fertile Christian family; Yang and Kenan Thompson as a middle-aged gay couple with a long-lived dog; and Punkie Johnson, who strong-armed Miley Cyrus (playing herself) into posing with her for a photo.Social Media Parody of the WeekWhat’s the shortest duration of time in which an “S.N.L.” character can exist? A sketch? A Weekend Update deskside bit? How about just one joke?It’s a mathematical riddle that gets put to the test in this segment that sends up the viral video site TikTok and features a seemingly endless stream of single-serving characters. Watch for Fineman as a conspiracy theorist obsessed with Blake Lively’s attire; Eilish as a dancing nurse oblivious to her own patients; Aristotle Athari as a stand-up comic who doesn’t handle heckling very well; James Austin Johnson (we think?) as something called Homer Simpson A.S.M.R.; and possibly 20 or 30 other bits we may have missed.Weekend Update Jokes of the WeekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on headlines from the week, including the guilty verdict in the Jussie Smollett trial and criticism of Vice President Kamala Harris.Jost began:On Thursday, a Chicago jury declared Jussie Smollett really bad at acting. Smollett was found guilty of charges related to staging a hate crime. It’s the worst staged hate crime since my all-Christian production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” And in legal news where someone definitely won’t get convicted, Donald Trump is being investigated for fraud by New York’s attorney general, who wants to depose Trump under oath on Jan 7. But come on, Jan. 7? That’s the day after his big anniversary. [A picture of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is shown onscreen.]Che continued:According to a new report, a former staff member for Vice President Kamala Harris says that she often fails to read briefing material and is unprepared for meetings. It feels really amazing to finally see someone in the White House who’s just like me. After the tree outside Fox News headquarters was sent on fire by a homeless man, “Fox & Friends” host Ainsley Earhardt said, “This Scrooge is not going to get away with it.” And nothing has ever explained Fox News better than a rich white lady calling a homeless man Scrooge.Five Minutes ’Til Closing Credits Sketch of the WeekYour reward for making it to the end of the show was this loopy segment featuring McKinnon and Eilish in a promotional video for an utterly generic — and yet thoroughly objectionable — hotel chain called the Inn & Suites & Hotel Room Inn.Eilish’s brother, Finneas, turns up as a chaotic valet (who performs a few extra duties on the side) and Eilish declares in her best deadpan, “See why Trip Advisor called us a stock photo you can sleep in,” as she and McKinnon try and fail to prevent themselves from cracking up. More

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      Can Peloton Sue Over Its ‘And Just Like That’ Appearance?

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      A Peloton stationary bike played a pivotal role on the new HBO Max “Sex and the City” revival, whose premiere preceded a drop in the company’s stock price on Friday.This article contains spoilers for the premiere of “And Just Like That” on HBO Max.Peloton, a maker of high-end exercise equipment, was just as surprised as you were by its appearance on “And Just Like That,” the new HBO Max limited series that picks up the story of “Sex and the City.”At the end of the first episode, Mr. Big (Chris Noth), the on-again-off-again love interest of Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), clips into his Peloton stationary bike for his 1,000th ride. Shortly after he hops off the bike, he has a heart attack and dies.After the shocking ending, we couldn’t help but wonder: Are companies usually in the dark about how their products will be used in a movie or TV show, as Peloton reportedly was? What does the typical product-placement agreement look like? And if a company is particularly upset with how its product is portrayed, does it have any legal recourse?So, can Peloton sue?According to Nancy C. Prager, an intellectual property and entertainment lawyer, there are two types of product-placement agreements: one in which a company pays to be featured in show or movie, and another in which a production company procures a trademarked product to be used onscreen.Peloton declined to state on the record whether it was involved in any formal product-placement agreement, but if a production company wants to use a trademarked product, Ms. Prager said, it must get a special license to show the product and brand logos. (In the episode, the Peloton logo is clearly visible on Mr. Big’s bike, and the instructor video closely resembled a real Peloton course.)Ms. Prager explained that under trademark law, a principle known as nominative fair use allows production companies to use a trademark as long as the product is shown being used in a way consistent with the original trademark.“Nominative fair use does not to apply, though, when you use the protected mark in a way that disparages the mark or the brand,” Ms. Prager said. HBO “tarnished Peloton’s good will to consumers,” she added, noting that Peloton products purport to make their customers stronger and healthier.The ‘Sex and the City’ UniverseThe sprawling franchise revolutionized how women were portrayed on the screen. And the show isn’t over yet. A New Series: Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte return for another strut down the premium cable runway in “And Just Like That,” streaming on HBO. Off Broadway: Candace Bushnell, whose writing gave birth to the “Sex and the City” universe, stars in her one-woman show based on her life. In Carrie’s Footsteps: “Sex and the City” painted a seductive vision of Manhattan, inspiring many young women to move to the city. The Origins: For the show’s 20th anniversary in 2018, Bushnell shared how a collection of essays turned into a pathbreaking series.“The tarnish can be evidenced by the stock price plummeting,” she added, referring to the 11 percent drop in Peloton stock overnight after the episode aired. The stock’s value continued to fall on Friday.In Ms. Prager’s view, that means Peloton could reasonably consider litigation, especially if HBO did not disclose the story line involving the product.“It was a misstep that Peloton wasn’t fully aware of the script,” said Stacy Jones, the chief executive and founder of Hollywood Branded, a marketing and branding agency in Los Angeles.Peloton did not know how the bike or its instructor Jess King would be featured in the show, according to a report in BuzzFeed News. Ms. Prager and Ms. Jones agree that withholding those details leaves HBO in murky legal territory.“The production forgot that product placement is supposed to be mutually beneficial, and they did not put their thinking cap on about the damage that this would cause the brand,” Ms. Jones said.This seems like a lot of trouble. Why bother with product placement?“Think of product placement as an alternative form of advertising,” David Schweidel, a professor of marketing at Emory University Goizueta Business School, said on Friday.In recent years, companies have been seeking out product-placement agreements more than ever, he said. The increased use of streaming platforms means viewers are seeing fewer commercials, driving companies to make greater use of product-placement deals to promote themselves.“If I can’t reach my customer base with a traditional television commercial anymore, I take the product in the program itself,” Professor Schweidel said. “Then, they can’t avoid it.”He estimated that product-placement advertising was worth well over $20 billion in 2021.For production companies, the arrangements can be mutually beneficial, since featuring recognizable brands can make a show more realistic, Ms. Jones said.In this particular case, the inclusion of Peloton was integral to advancing a story line. “Peloton provided a solution to their problem,” she said.Can HBO protect itself?Usually when a company is so unhappy with how its product has been portrayed that the idea of litigation is floated, “TV shows claim that it’s a parody, that viewers obviously knew that this was fictional,” Beth L. Fossen, an assistant professor of marketing at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, said on Friday.That approach usually works for shows like “Saturday Night Live,” she said.But given that Peloton was the subject of unfavorable headlines this year about a child dying in an accident involving one of its treadmills, the story line may have “hit a little too close to home” for that argument to work, Professor Schweidel said.At least for the time being, it seems that Peloton is uninterested in pursuing litigation. In a statement on Saturday, Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, a cardiologist on Peloton’s health and wellness advisory council, noted that “Mr. Big lived what many would call an extravagant lifestyle — including cocktails, cigars and big steaks — and was at serious risk as he had a previous cardiac event in Season 6.”Dr. Steinbaum said that Mr. Big’s lifestyle choices, perhaps in conjunction with a family history of heart disease, were most likely the cause of his death.In fact, she speculated, “riding his Peloton bike may have even helped delay his cardiac event.” More

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      Jussie Smollett Found Guilty: What Comes Next?

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      The actor who was found guilty of falsely telling the police he was the victim of a hate crime faces a possible sentence of up to three years, but experts disagree on whether the judge is likely to incarcerate him.The discussion in the case of Jussie Smollett, the actor convicted on Thursday of falsely reporting he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack, has turned to whether the actor will receive prison time when he is sentenced in several weeks.Daniel K. Webb, the special prosecutor who handled the case, said on Friday that he had not yet decided on what recommendation he would make to the judge but again emphasized how serious he thought the case was. Mr. Webb has pointed in several settings to the social damage caused by faking a hate crime, about the waste of police resources spent on the case and about the consequences of lying to a jury, which found Mr. Smollett guilty after he spent seven hours on the witness stand standing by his account.“It’s fair to say Mr. Smollett is not repentant at all,” Mr. Webb said. “And he doubled down during our trial. I will emphasize those matters as I should.”But some experts said they would find it surprising if Mr. Smollett were to be imprisoned because he was convicted of the lowest level felony offense and has no prior felony convictions.Mr. Smollett’s lead lawyer, Nenye Uche, a former prosecutor who said his client planned to appeal the verdict, echoed that sentiment on Thursday.“I’ve never seen a case like this where the person got jail time,” he said. “And he shouldn’t because he’s innocent.”Mr. Smollett’s lead lawyer, Nenye Uche, speaking to reporters after the verdict on Thursday, surrounded by other members of his defense team.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressMr. Smollett was convicted of five counts of disorderly conduct, which carry a maximum sentence of three years in prison. Even Mr. Webb has acknowledged that those charges don’t typically lead judges to incarcerate people.But he said: “There’s never been a case like this. I don’t know any case in Illinois that involves this criminal misconduct and deceiving police for weeks on end about a hate crime and then compounding it by lying to a jury.”Judge James B. Linn, who is presiding on the case, has the option of sentencing the defendant to just probation or a shorter period of prison time. He agreed on Thursday to release Mr. Smollett while he awaits sentencing.“What I could see happening is probation with a ton of community service hours,” said Michael O’Meara, a criminal defense lawyer who has also worked as a prosecutor, “and just to sting him a bit, maybe some jail time.”The judge will certainly consider Mr. Smollett’s prior criminal infraction, though it was 14 years ago and relatively minor. He was convicted in California of misdemeanor driving under the influence, making false statements to the police and driving without a license. (Mr. Smollett pleaded no contest.)In this instance, it was Mr. Smollett who reported a crime, an attack by two assailants who he said beat him up, yelled racist and homophobic slurs at him, placed a rope around his neck and poured bleach on his clothing in an early morning assault on a frigid day in 2019. But two brothers told the police that Mr. Smollett had directed them to carry out the attack, and he was ultimately charged by a grand jury with lying to the police, a hoax that prosecutors argued had been orchestrated for publicity.Understand the Jussie Smollett TrialCard 1 of 5A staged hate crime? More