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      Trevor Noah Weighs In on Biden’s Hot Mic Drop

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      “You see? This is what happens when you have been on Zoom calls for two years — you forget that real life doesn’t have a mute button,” Noah said of the president’s comments about a Fox News reporter.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.Tell Me How You Really FeelAt the White House on Monday, President Biden referred to Peter Doocy, a Fox News reporter, as a “stupid son of a bitch” in a hot-mic moment.“Like most presidents, Biden has a complicated relationship with the media, which I get it, you know?” Trevor Noah said on Tuesday. “They nitpick everything he says, they challenge all of his decisions and they even get their own room in his house, which is insane. Nobody else has to set aside a guest room for their haters.”Biden’s comment was in reference to Doocy’s asking if he believed inflation would be a political liability in the midterm elections.“I mean if you get to ask the president a question, you should ask him real questions, like ‘Why can’t the C.D.C. get its messaging straight on Covid?’ or ‘Can you ask your dog to stop chewing my arm?’” — TREVOR NOAH“You see? This is what happens when you have been on Zoom calls for two years — you forget that real life doesn’t have a mute button.” — TREVOR NOAH“A lot of people online are dunking on the reporter, saying he deserved this because he’s just some Fox News guy asking a dumb question, and they’re right. You know, ‘Do you think inflation is a political liability’ is a very stupid question. I mean, what’s Biden supposed to say? ‘No, I think people like spending more money to buy the same [expletive].’”— TREVOR NOAH“Biden dropped one off-handed diss on a reporter — he’s no legend. Attacking the press was Donald Trump’s whole thing.” — TREVOR NOAH“First of all, he wouldn’t mumble that into a hot mic — no, he would scream that [expletive] in your face, he would be like [imitating Trump] ‘Get that son of a bitch out of here. So rude. So rude. My crimes are my business.’” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Hot Mic Edition)“When your age is almost 80 and your approval rating’s almost 30, you can pretty much say whatever you want, I think.” — JIMMY FALLON“Said Biden, ‘I’m so sorry. That was supposed to be into the main mic.’” — SETH MEYERS“You can tell that felt good for Biden, because today he was fielding questions like, ‘Yeah, the moron in the back. How about Dopey in the corner, you got something to say?’” — JIMMY FALLON“Hey, listen, if Biden’s next three years are going to be grandpa at Thanksgiving, sign me up.” — JIMMY FALLON“[imitating Biden] That’s right, Old Joey’s back. I’ve reached peak old man, givin’ zero malarkeys.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Later that night, Biden did something I forgot presidents could do — he apologized.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingSeth Meyers skewered his writers for some of their worst monologue jokes.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightSydney Sweeney, the star of “Euphoria,” will appear on Wednesday’s “Late Late Show.”Also, Check This OutHilary Duff, second from left, with Tom Ainsley and Francia Raisa, in “How I Met Your Father.”Patrick Wymore/HuluHilary Duff, the star of “How I Met Your Father,” is already tired of people asking who the father is. More

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      Mahershala Ali Finally Gets the Leading Role He Deserves

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      In a more just world, Mahershala Ali, one of America’s most gifted actors, would have played the lead in at least a dozen films by now.He’s certainly paid his dues and then some. Over the past two decades, the 47-year-old actor has starred or played key roles in prestige series (HBO’s “True Detective”), sci-fi franchises (“The Hunger Games”) and network-defining political thrillers (Netflix’s “House of Cards”). In 2017, he won his first Academy Award for his performance in “Moonlight,” a master class in what you can do with just 20 minutes or so of screen time, and a second Oscar two years later, for his performance in “Green Book.”So it may come as a shock to learn that Ali has never played the lead role in a feature film before, not until his star turn in the sci-fi drama “Swan Song,” now streaming on Apple TV+.“I always felt like a bit of a late bloomer,” Ali said.On a recent morning, in a wide-ranging video interview from his home in the San Francisco Bay Area, Ali, dressed in a black jacket over a crisp white Team Ikuzawa T-shirt, talked about “Swan Song,” the debut feature from the Irish director Benjamin Cleary.In “Swan Song,” Ali plays both a dying man and his clone.Apple TV+As if to make up for lost time, Ali plays not just one main character in the sci-fi drama, but two: Cameron, a terminally ill husband and father of a 5-year-old son; and Jack, the perfect clone of himself — complete with every one of his memories — who, unbeknown to Cameron’s wife and child, will soon replace him in order to spare them the grief and pain of having to watch him die. In several scenes, Ali shares the stage with Ali, with only himself to play against. “It was fun after it was hard,” he said with a laugh. “Fun after you move through the hard.”It was a winding life journey that took him to “Swan Song,” with stops and starts and moments of doubt along the way. Like the time he was in his second year of New York University’s prestigious graduate acting program and considered ditching it all to go back to working as a deckhand in San Francisco. “I was still in the union,” he said, “and it’s good money.”Or another time, in the middle of his acting career, when he took off a year and a half to care for his ailing grandfather. “He had a stroke in 2010, and I kind of dropped everything,” he said. “I was living in Las Vegas and taking care of him, just me and my grandma.”And there were other reasons that the actor is only now playing his first film lead. The industry was a lot different back when he was coming up, he explained — more stratified between movies and series, which made feature film roles, let alone feature film leads, tougher for TV actors like himself to come by. Those who started in TV were seen as TV actors only, and so his aim was just to be the best TV actor he could be. He was well into the third season of his third series, “The 4400,” before he was finally called on to “step on Brad Pitt’s character” (a monstrous child whom Ali’s character literally stumbles upon at a nursing home) in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”Ali is “a really powerful actor, but he also has a really calming energy as a scene partner,” said Awkwafina, his “Swan Song” co-star. “It was probably one of the best experiences I’ve had on a set.”Chanell Stone for The New York TimesOther film roles followed — in “The Place Beyond the Pines,” “The Hunger Games” and, in 2016, “Moonlight” — but no leads.Around the time “Moonlight” was released, a writer for The New York Times conceded that Ali’s rise, unlike those of some of his peers, “has not been meteoric.”“When I look at my trajectory, my start was a little slow, if you think about where I am at the moment,” Ali said.Even so, many of the supporting roles he was getting were ones any actor would kill for, like Juan in “Moonlight,” a hard-on-the-surface dope dealer bursting with love for his young charge. “I hadn’t seen that character,” he said. Or Don Shirley, the African American pianist in the biopic “Green Book” who hired an Italian American bouncer, played by Viggo Mortensen, to serve as his valet in the Deep South. “He was the most gracious type of rebellious you could be,” Ali said of the musician. “Somebody who was so smart and cunning and found a way to buck the system by hiring a white guy to carry his bags in and out of a hotel, and be his bodyguard, in 1962? I thought that was genius.”Ali won his first Oscar for his supporting turn in “Moonlight” (2016),  opposite Alex Hibbert.David Bornfriend/A24Two years later, he won best supporting actor again, this time for “Green Book,” alongside Viggo Mortensen.Patti Perret/Universal Pictures“Swan Song” came to Ali in 2019, after he read the script and asked to meet with Cleary, its writer. Cleary had won an Oscar for his 2015 short film, “Stutterer,” but had never directed a feature film before. After a single “really great conversation” between the two, Ali said yes to the project. “It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life,” Cleary recalled.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      Trevor Noah Blasts Robert Kennedy Jr. for Invoking Anne Frank

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      Noah said anti-vaxxers gathering to hear from Kennedy might have found him leaning too liberal for believing in the Holocaust.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.To Be FrankThousands of Americans attended a Sunday rally protesting vaccine mandates in Washington, D.C. On Monday’s “Daily Show,” Trevor Noah joked they were gathering to “hear why vaccine mandates are worse than Hitler,” after the keynote speaker, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., argued that Anne Frank was better off hiding in an attic during the Holocaust than being alive today.“Yeah, the man is right — who could argue? No one ever talks about how good Anne Frank had it: free room and board, all the time in the world to write — pretty sweet deal if you ask me.” — TREVOR NOAH“I will say, though, crazy is relative because R.F.K. may be saying wild [expletive] about the Holocaust, but half the people he’s talking to don’t even believe the Holocaust happened. Yeah, they’re just standing there like, ‘Anne Frank? Didn’t realize this guy was such a liberal.’” — TREVOR NOAH“Robert obviously never actually finished the book.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It must have been so disappointing. Some of these whack jobs — you know, they’ve been expecting J.F.K. Jr. to come back to life. Instead, they got R.F.K. Jr. It’s like going see the Jackson Five and only Tito shows up.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Robert Kennedy is a notorious longtime anti-vaxxer. Interesting to note, though: He did have a Christmas party at his house last month, and in order to come in you had to show proof of vaccination, in his house, but he blamed that on his wife, so it’s OK.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Good Games Edition)“Well, guys, this weekend was the divisional round of the N.F.L. playoffs, and after all four games were decided on the final play, people are calling it the greatest playoff weekend of all time. Well, everyone from Buffalo, Green Bay, Tennessee, and Tampa are like not, ‘Eh, not so much.’” — JIMMY FALLON“That’s right, Tom Brady and the defending champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers were knocked out of the playoffs. Brady is really not used to losing — he normally commutes home via parade.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, it was a weekend of upsets on Saturday, Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers hosted the San Francisco 49ers and lost in Green Bay. In other words, Aaron Rodgers failed his at-home test.” — JIMMY FALLON“It was crazy to see Tom Brady — it was like the Coyote finally caught the Road Runner and ate him right there on TV.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Aaron Rogers, you may recall, was caught in a series of lies about his vaccination status earlier in the season. Before the game, he lashed out at President Biden, said we have a fake White House, a bunch of other stuff befitting a man who has been hit in the head a lot of times.”— JIMMY KIMMEL“Also great to hear someone say ‘He caught it,’ and it’s not about Omicron.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingThe “Late Show” guest Kristen Stewart revealed that she was originally supposed to work opposite Nicole Kidman in “Panic Room.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightJeremy O. Harris, who wrote “Slave Play,” will appear on Tuesday’s “Late Late Show.”Also, Check This OutLouie Anderson based his performance as a matriarch in “Baskets” on his own mother.Prashant Gupta/FXThe late Louie Anderson is remembered for, among other things, playing one of the greatest television characters on the FX comedy “Baskets.” More

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      Amy Schneider Beats Matt Amodio’s Streak on ‘Jeopardy!’

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      The category is: game-show legends.The current “Jeopardy!” phenom, Amy Schneider, surpassed Matt Amodio’s 38-game streak on Monday’s episode, making her the contestant with the second-highest number of consecutive wins in the show’s history.Schneider, an engineering manager from Oakland, Calif., often seems unbeatable with buzzer in hand. According to statistics published by the show, of the clues that she has answered, she has given the correct response 95 percent of the time, and she has answered Daily Double clues correctly 86 percent of the time. She became the first woman to surpass $1 million in winnings on the show, and in the 39 games she has won so far, Schneider has amassed $1.3 million.Her next goal post is far away: beating Ken Jennings’s 74-game streak from 2004, which remains the longest in history. Her new target would be particularly poignant if she meets it when Jennings is the host. (The former champion is currently trading off duties with the sitcom actress Mayim Bialik.)Schneider’s success has spurred discussion among fans and internally among the show’s producers and writers about the recent pattern of streaks. Since 2003, when “Jeopardy!” got rid of a rule that had limited contestants to no more than five wins in a row, only a dozen contestants have managed to win 10 or more consecutive games. Schneider is the third contestant this season to do so.Possible explanations for the unusual number of streaks abound. They include a wealth of online resources that contestants such as Schneider have used to study with, and a new entrance test that hopeful contestants can take anytime. Because of pandemic-related delays in taping the show, some contestants, including Schneider and Amodio, also had an unusual amount of time to study in between when they were initially told that they would be on the show and when they walked into the studio.As a sudden game-show celebrity who is also a transgender woman, Schneider has had a whirlwind of a month, fielding a barrage of questions about her life and her preparation for this moment while also countering anti-trans attacks online. In an interview with the L.G.B.T. advocacy organization Glaad last year, Schneider said she had been unsure of how to discuss her identity on the show initially because she wanted her skill at the game to be the primary focus, but that she then decided to address it by wearing a trans flag pin.“I didn’t want it to seem like something that was secret or that was shameful or anything, or that I was unaware of the significance of it,” Schneider said in the interview, “because I knew that trans people — trans ‘Jeopardy!’ fans — were watching my episodes extra carefully, just as I did with the previous trans contestants.” More

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      On ‘S.N.L.,’ Donald Trump Tries His Hand at Wordle

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      Colin Jost and Pete Davidson provided an update on their purchase of a retired Staten Island Ferry boat, in this episode hosted by Will Forte.It’s the viral phenomenon that gets picked apart on social media, where you throw out random words and see what gets a response — but first, the “Saturday Night Live” opening sketch.This weekend’s broadcast, hosted by the “S.N.L.” alumnus Will Forte and featuring the musical guest Måneskin, began with a parody of the Fox News program “The Ingraham Angle,” with Kate McKinnon as its host, Laura Ingraham.She lamented the first year of the Biden administration, which she said had been a disaster, citing rising inflation, high gas prices and the green M&M’s getting canceled. She added that the nation “is still mourning from the sudden loss of America’s dad, Robert Durst.”McKinnon introduced her first guest, Senator Ted Cruz, played by Aidy Bryant. Bryant explained that her beard was “like Jan. 6: shocking at first, but sadly it’s been normalized.”Bryant’s Cruz went on to deliver a warning to her constituents in Texas: “February’s going to be a cold one, so you might want to book your vacay to Cancún now,” she said. “Live más, everybody.”After offering shout-outs to her remaining sponsors (including Covid Negs, “the Covid test that’s guaranteed to be negative, even if you have it”), McKinnon brought out Pete Davidson as Novak Djokovic, the unvaccinated tennis star who was recently deported from Australia.“People love to tear you off your pedestal, just because you’re really rich or you’re the best at tennis or you go to a charity event with 200 kids even though you’re dripping with Covid,” Davidson said.Ego Nwodim appeared as the conservative commentator Candace Owens (“It’s my greatest honor to continue to fight for African Americans,” she said, “no matter how many times they ask me to stop”), followed by James Austin Johnson in his recurring role as former president Donald J. Trump.“I’m back just like ‘Tiger King 2,’” Johnson said. “You had fun the first time, but now you’re like, how are more people from this not in jail yet?”This time, his Trump-style free associations were accompanied by a round of Wordle, the popular online word game (as well as a boast that he would beat Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida if he opposed him for the presidential nomination). After rambling about the booster shot, John Mayer, Hilary Duff and Jason Momoa, Johnson landed at the correct Wordle answer which turned out to be — what else? — Trump.Opening monologue of the weekForte, who was a “Saturday Night Live” cast member from 2002 to 2010, made his first appearance as a host this weekend. And to hear him tell it, he was not at all bitter that he finally got to do it after hosting duties had previously been handled by his fellow alums Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Andy Samberg and Fred Armisen. (Then Wiig again, then Hader again, as well as Jason Sudeikis, Seth Meyers and John Mulaney four times.)But Forte didn’t exactly welcome an onstage appearance from Wiig. (“I flew in for this,” she explained as he shooed her away. “Oh, great, so you know where the airport is,” he replied.) Nor was he pleased to see next week’s host, Willem Dafoe, in the house when the “S.N.L.” boss Lorne Michaels claimed that Forte’s booking had been a mistake: “I texted Willem and, you know, autocorrect,” Michaels said.MacGruber of the weekC’mon, you didn’t think you would get a Forte-hosted episode without a return appearance (or three) from MacGruber, the hapless MacGyver wannabe he originated on “S.N.L.”?It’s been more than a decade since Forte last played MacGruber in an “S.N.L.” sketch (though the character went on to have his own movie and a streaming TV series). But rest assured that MacGruber is still an overconfident blowhard who finds himself trapped in rooms with ticking time bombs that spell his imminent demise.Oh, and now he’s an unrepentant conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer. Did we mention he was joined by Wiig and Ryan Phillippe, and he also believes in QAnon?Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on President Biden’s recent news conference and the Senate’s defeat of a voting-rights bill.Jost began:President Biden marked the end of his first year in office with a two-hour press conference. Because that’s how long it took to list everything that’s gone wrong. It was actually the longest presidential press conference in history. But as I’ve been told many times before, just because you went for a long time doesn’t mean you did a good job.Che continued:Senate Republicans lined up to shake Kyrsten Sinema’s hand after she voted against changing the filibuster to pass voting rights. Ah, the U.S. Senate. Keeping Black folks down with a quiet handshake since 1787. Senator Bernie Sanders suggested that he supports replacing fellow Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Damn, Bernie, stab your own co-workers in the back? That’s unforgivable. I would never suggest Colin should be fired, no matter how much better I think Bowen would be. [The screen shows an image of Che anchoring Weekend Update with his “S.N.L.” co-star Bowen Yang]Most important news development of the weekWhat started as a not-so-innocent visit to the Weekend Update desk by Alex Moffat as his recurring character Guy Who Just Bought a Boat turned into a timely opportunity to roast Jost about this week’s news that he and Davidson were among the investors who won an auction for a decommissioned Staten Island Ferry boat.Joining Jost and Moffat at the desk, Davidson declared in a deeply chagrined tone, “We bought a ferry — the windowless van of the sea.”Jost replied: “Yes, it’s very exciting. We thought the whole thing through.”To which Davidson added, in disbelief: “Even the mayor tweeted about it. Which is how I found out we have a new mayor? What happened to Bloomberg?” More

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      Louie Anderson, Genial Stand-Up Comic and Actor, Dies at 68

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      He won an Emmy Award for his work on the series “Baskets” and two Daytime Emmys for his animated children’s show, “Life With Louie.”Louie Anderson, the genial stand-up comedian, actor and television host who won an Emmy Award for his work on the series “Baskets” and two Daytime Emmys for his animated children’s show, “Life With Louie,” died on Friday in Las Vegas. He was 68.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his longtime publicist, Glenn Schwartz, who said the cause was complications of diffuse large B cell lymphoma, a form of blood cancer.In an entertainment career that spanned more than four decades, Mr. Anderson had a self-deprecating style that won him legions of fans, among them Henny Youngman and Johnny Carson, whose early support catapulted him to stardom.In 1981, Mr. Anderson was among the top finishers in a comedy competition hosted by Mr. Youngman, who subsequently hired him as a writer.Mr. Anderson made his national television debut in 1984 on “The Tonight Show.” After his set, Johnny Carson brought him out for a second bow, a rarity for comics and especially for ones making their debut.Joseph Del Valle/NBCUniversal via Getty ImagesMr. Anderson made his national television debut on “The Tonight Show” with Mr. Carson in 1984, and, as comedians say, he killed. The routine was heavy on jokes about his own weight (which topped 300 pounds at times), and he had the audience roaring from his opening deadpan line: “I can’t stay long. I’m in between meals.”Afterward, Mr. Carson brought him out for a second bow, a rarity for comics and especially for ones making his debut. As Mr. Anderson told it, Mr. Carson later paid him another high compliment.“He came by my dressing room on the way to his, stuck his head in and said, ‘Great shot, Louie,’” he told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2002. “Because comics call that a ‘shot’ on ‘The Tonight Show.’ And that was huge for me.”Mr. Anderson went from earning $500 a week for his stand-up work to making twice that in one night, he said. And film and television work started coming his way, including small roles in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (1986) and “Coming to America” (1988). In 1987, Showtime broadcast a comedy special that captured him in performance at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.Reviewing the show for The New York Times, John J. O’Connor wrote, “In an age when comedians rely on desperation measures to establish a performing identity — think of Howie Mandel indulging in infantile screaming or Sam Kinison feigning a nervous breakdown — Mr. Anderson has developed a low-keyed act that could fit comfortably into the category of family entertainment.”He added, “At a time when stand-up comedy is trafficking heavily in insult, hysteria and sexual obsessions, Mr. Anderson seems to have come up with something truly different — old-fashioned, heartwarming humor.”That would be his bread and butter for his whole career, although he took it in interesting directions. “Life With Louie,” which ran from 1994 to 1998 and won him Daytime Emmys in 1997 and 1998 as outstanding performer in an animated program, was a savvy children’s show that also had an adult following; its title character, a child, dealt with an assortment of problems at home and on the playground.Mr. Anderson won an Emmy for his performance as Zach Galifianakis’s mother on the comic drama “Baskets.”Colleen Hayes/FXOn “Baskets,” an acclaimed comic drama that ran from 2016 to 2019 and starred Zach Galifianakis, Mr. Anderson, in drag, played the mother of twin brothers played by Mr. Galifianakis. Mr. Anderson was nominated for the supporting actor Emmy for the role three times, winning in 2016.In a 1996 interview with The Orlando Sentinel, he reflected on his appeal.“People are comfortable with me onstage,” he said. “There’s nothing hateful about my comedy. I look at it from the humanity standpoint. I’m just kind of like ‘Hey, we’re all in this together,’ and so they feel comfortable inviting me into their living rooms.”Louis Perry Anderson was born on March 24, 1953, in St. Paul, Minn. His mother, Zella, was a homemaker, and his father, Louis, was a jazz musician.He graduated from high school in St. Paul and had a job counseling troubled youths when his career path changed as a result of a dare.“I went out one night with some guys from work and we saw a couple of comedians,” he recounted in a 1987 interview with The Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y. “I remarked that neither one of them was very funny, and everybody began telling me to get up there myself if I thought I could do it better.“The joke kind of escalated over time,” he continued, “and finally one night, I did get up onstage. Once I did, I discovered that I liked it a lot. I have been doing it ever since.”He began working comedy clubs in Minnesota, then branched out to Chicago and other mid-American cities. At the 1981 Midwest Comedy Competition in St. Louis he did well enough to impress the show’s host, Mr. Youngman, who hired him as a writer and boosted his confidence.“He helped me learn to write really good material, and he encouraged me to stay in comedy,” Mr. Anderson said of Mr. Youngman. “I was at that point where I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next.”The Carson appearance in 1984 helped make him a headliner, and he worked regularly in Las Vegas and other top comedy cities, touring for a time with Roseanne Barr. A 1996 sitcom, “The Louie Show,” on which he played a psychotherapist. lasted only six episodes despite a supporting cast that included Bryan Cranston, but Mr. Anderson frequently played guest roles on other series and was a fixture on late-night talk shows. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he was host of the game show “Family Feud.”He was also an author. His stand-up comedy drew heavily on his family in lighthearted ways, but his books had a more serious element. “Dear Dad: Letters From an Adult Child” (1989) was a series of letters addressed to his father that dealt with, among other things, his father’s alcoholism.“I can remember coming home from school and knowing when I walked in the door whether or not you had been drinking — without even seeing anyone,” he wrote. “That’s how sensitive I think I became.”As his stand-up career progressed, Mr. Anderson dialed back on the jokes about his weight, and his book “Goodbye Jumbo … Hello Cruel World,” published in 1993, was an honest look at his food addiction. “The F Word: How to Survive Your Family” (2002) and “Hey Mom: Stories for My Mother, but You Can Read Them Too” (2018) also had serious intent.Mr. Anderson was one of 11 children. His survivors include his sisters Lisa and Shanna Anderson, Mr. Schwartz said. Mr. Anderson said he based parts of his “Baskets” character on his mother. In “Hey Mom,” he addressed her directly.“I guess I must believe in the afterlife if I’m writing to you and I talk to you and my face is always turned up to the sky,” he wrote. “If there is an afterlife, I hope there’s a big comfortable chair, because I know you like that, and good creamer for your coffee, and a TV showing old reruns.”Neil Vigdor contributed reporting. More

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      Another Peloton Heart Attack on TV? ‘Billions’ Says It’s a Coincidence.

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      Peloton’s stock dropped last month after the premiere of the “Sex and the City” reboot, which ended with Mr. Big dying after riding one of the company’s bikes.This article includes mild spoilers for the Season 6 premiere of “Billions.”Mr. Big wasn’t the only one.In an early scene of the Season 6 premiere of the Showtime white-collar crime drama “Billions,” a main character on the show, Mike Wagner (played by David Costabile), has a heart attack while riding a Peloton, the high-end stationary bike.Television viewers may well experience déjà vu after seeing the character dismount his Peloton and react to a wave of chest pain amid luxury furnishings. In the premiere episode last month of HBO Max’s “Sex and the City” revival, “And Just Like That …,” Carrie’s husband, known as Mr. Big (Chris Noth), dies of a heart attack after finishing his 1,000th Peloton ride.One difference in the bizarrely similar plot points is that Costabile’s character, an executive at the hedge fund at the center of the show, survives. And when he returns to the office after his heart attack, the show took a chance to address the plot parallel head on.“I’m not going out like Mr. Big,” Wagner, better known as Wags, says triumphantly to his employees.Peloton said in a statement that the company had not agreed to the use of its brand or intellectual property on the show, and that it had not provided equipment for the episode.“As referenced by the show itself,” the statement said, “there are strong benefits of cardiovascular exercise to help people lead long, happy lives.”The Season 6 premiere was given a surprise early release on Friday morning ahead of its scheduled on-air premiere Sunday night. The episode will be available free until April 10 across multiple streaming platforms, including on Showtime’s own website, Showtime.com, and on YouTube.In a statement, the show’s executive producers said the scene was written and shot last spring, months before Mr. Big’s onscreen demise. The line of dialogue about Mr. Big was overdubbed only recently in postproduction.“We added the line because it was what Wags would say,” they said in the statement. Showtime did not immediately respond to a question about whether Peloton was aware of the cameo before the episode debuted.The ill-fated “Sex and the City” cameo became a problem for Peloton: After the episode debuted, the company’s stock dropped.The company tried to turn the unflattering cameo around by quickly filming an online ad featuring Noth, who lounges cozily with his Peloton instructor by the fire. But that move backfired when, later that week, The Hollywood Reporter published an article in which two women accused him of sexual assault. Peloton deleted the ad from its social media accounts. (Noth called the accusations “categorically false” and has since been accused of and denied sexual misconduct by multiple others.)The company has already been facing challenges this week. After CNBC reported that the company planned to pause the production of its bikes, Peloton’s chief executive released a statement denying the report but saying that the company is considering laying off some workers. Peloton’s stock dropped 24 percent on Thursday.The scenes were devised as restrictions kept people exercising at home during the pandemic, but demand for Peloton’s equipment has been waning as the country returns to old routines. More

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      ‘Billions’ Season 6 Premiere Recap: Fire in the Hole

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      Chuck goes to war with a billionaire, but probably not the one audiences expected. Prince tries his best to be different from his predecessor.The Season 6 premiere of “Billions” was given a surprise early release on Friday morning, available free across multiple streaming platforms, including Showtime.com and YouTube. Future recaps will publish after episodes air on Sunday nights.Season 6, Episode 1: ‘Cannonade’A new season of “Billions” is upon us, and with it comes a new billionaire on Chuck Rhoades’s to-do list. It just isn’t the man you think it is — at least, not yet.Oh, sure, Mike Prince has conquered the business empire of his and Chuck’s one-time rival Bobby Axelrod, who has fled the country one step ahead of the law. (Damian Lewis, who played Axe, left the show at the end of Season 5, with the actor Corey Stoll taking over as Paul Giamatti’s co-protagonist.)But Prince and Chuck are currently in a sort of détente phase at the moment. Chuck has temporarily stepped away from his duties as New York Attorney General, vowing to return only if and when he can line up a big victory to offset his failure to collar Axelrod; by the end of this week’s episode, it’s not clear if he’ll return to the job at all. Prince, meanwhile, literally offers to become Chuck’s ally; the offer is rebuffed, but the fact that it was made says something about the man’s temperament.No, the filthy rich creep currently in Chuck’s cross hairs is Melville Revere, a descendant of a Revolutionary War hero played with magnificent snootiness by Michael McKean. (Anyone who witnessed McKean’s turn as Chuck McGill on “Better Call Saul” knows nobody in the biz does self-righteousness better.) Revere’s ancestral property — brought back into the family by the money Melville made as a security contractor, selling pepper spray and rubber bullets — is adjacent to the upstate farm to which Chuck has semiretired.The two blue-bloods might have gotten along just fine if it weren’t for the twice daily fusillade from Revere’s collection of antique cannons every morning and evening, disturbing Chuck’s peace. Unfortunately for Chuck, who has handed the reins of the attorney general’s office to his protégé Kate Sacker (Condola Rashad), he has nothing to do but perseverate on the irritating explosions, day in and day out.Chuck tries a variety of methods to shut the cannons down. Direct diplomacy with Revere fails, as does Chuck’s initial attempt to rally the townspeople to his side; many of them are just as irritated by the noise as he is, but they feel helpless because Revere’s largess has benefited everyone from the fire department to the local Boy Scout troop. So he gets creative and opens up a sluice on the creek that runs through both of their properties, flooding out Revere’s supply of gunpowder.In a fortuitous coincidence (or a storytelling sleight-of-hand, take your pick), Revere is an investor in the firm formerly known as Axe Cap, now Michael Prince Capital. Knowing that Chuck’s ex-wife, Wendy, is a macher in the company, he reaches out to see if she can somehow call off the dogs. This sets Mike Prince’s mind to work about what it means to keep his investors happy, though a sit-down with Chuck over glasses of Glenlivet — set to “Jurassic Park” — style shaking by the cannonade — fails to yield the alliance Prince was hoping for.In the end, Chuck’s path to victory is an easy one. After learning from an environmentalist that the creek into which Revere’s cannonballs land is an ideal habitat for endangered bog turtles, though none actually live there, he orchestrates the transfer of several of the reptiles to the site. This provides him with the legal basis he needs to shut down the cannons, though he makes a grand show of the thing by enlisting a mob of townspeople literally armed with pitchforks and torches. (Well, lanterns, anyway.)It’s then that Chuck makes a statement that could have huge ramifications for the future of his character, and the show. Speechifying to the assembled crowd and members of the press, he effectively writes off the law as toothless when it comes to reining in the lawless excess of the billionaire class. Does this mean he’ll relinquish his attorney generalship permanently, in favor of a more grass-roots approach to taking down Revere, Prince and their ilk? Stay tuned!And what of Prince? His name is now on the wall of what used to be Axe Cap’s hallowed halls, but his comparatively mellow, even vaguely do-gooding approach is a hard sell to Axelrod’s hard-charging staff. True, he saves the life of Axe’s former right-hand-man, Mike Wagner (David Costabile), by calling 911 when Wags’s high-tech heart-monitoring ring reveals that Wags is having a heart attack while using his Peloton.Wags is grateful for the save; “I’m not going out like Mr. Big,” he declares, in reference to another major TV character’s heart attack on a Peloton last month — and in what appears to be a brilliant bit of last-minute sound editing. But Wags is understandably resentful that he was being spied on through the ring, a gift from Prince to everyone in Axe Cap and Mase Cap. The incident only worsens relations between Prince and his new employees.Prince’s dilemma is twofold. Not only must he either win over the existing employees or fire them en masse and start anew, he also has to persuade the Securities and Exchange Commission that he, unlike his predecessor, is on the up-and-up. He contemplates firing Wags until the fiendishly clever reveals his indispensable in-depth knowledge of the firm’s traders. He turns to the unctuous compliance officer Ari Spyros (Stephen Kunken) for guidance in identifying borderline-illegal maneuvers from the company’s past that he can give up to the S.E.C. to prove his good faith. Spyros points to a wall of file boxes: Turns out the vast majority of Axe Cap’s wheelings and dealings fall under this umbrella.So, acting partially on the advice of Wendy Rhoades (Maggie Siff), he does what would have been unthinkable to Bobby Axelrod. He gathers all his employees and investors, including Revere and Charles Rhoades Sr. (Jeffrey DeMunn), and announces that he’s firing … the investors! From now on, he says, investors will have to prove themselves to the firm, not the other way around. Only the most pristine clients need apply to what he calls “The Prince List.” This is obviously a financial and reputational bloodletting in the short term, but Prince expects it to pay dividends in the end, both with the investor class and with his most recalcitrant, and most talented, employee, Taylor Mason (Asia Kate Dillon).Which brings us to the big question asked by the episode, and perhaps by the entire show: Is there such a thing as an ethical billionaire? “Billionaires break the laws of decency, even while obeying the letter,” says Chuck. “By definition, having that much is criminal.” Prince disagrees; he’s a billionaire himself, so what did you expect?But as a character, he represents a unique challenge to Chuck Rhoades’s entire raison d’être: He believes that, even as a billionaire, he can effectively police himself and his peers on the Prince List in the bargain. Somehow I doubt that the newly minted torches-and-pitchforks Chuck will agree.Loose change:The episode starts with Buffalo Springfield’s epochal protest anthem “For What It’s Worth” and ends with Public Enemy’s late-90s interpolation of that song, “He Got Game,” from the Spike Lee film of the same name. “Billions” never shies from big needle drops; this is a clever way of incorporating one of the most recognizable classic rock songs in the catalog.Also on the music tip: One of the episode’s funniest moments comes during a scene in which Wags and Prince haggle over what it will cost for Wags to quit the firm. Instead of making a deal, Wags simply says “Nope!,” and at that moment the composer Brendan Angelides’s score cuts out entirely. All it’s missing is a needle-scratch sound effect.It felt great to see the usual Axe Cap suspects throughout the show, but much missed were Kelly AuCoin as Dollar Bill and Dan Soder as Mafee. Will they resurface to make trouble for Prince?As interesting as Prince’s decision to sack his investors was, it’s hard to believe that all of them — except Melville Revere, who gets in high dudgeon about it — would simply take it on the chin and leave the office without saying anything in protest. For that matter, it’s hard to believe that all of them would come when summoned.The episode ends with Chuck firing one of Revere’s cannons himself as a sort of kiss-off. To me, this says a lot about Chuck: The rules are meant to be followed, unless it makes him feel good to break one. More