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      Jay Sandrich, Emmy-Winning Sitcom Director, Is Dead at 89

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      Acclaimed for his work on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “The Cosby Show,” he also made a crucial casting decision about “The Golden Girls.”Jay Sandrich, a prolific sitcom director who won Emmy Awards for the two series he worked on most often, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “The Cosby Show,” died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 89.The cause was dementia, his wife, Linda Sandrich, said.Mr. Sandrich did not think of himself as funny, but he knew how to guide a cast of comic actors through half-hour episodes. He understood the mechanics of directing (move the cameras, not the actors) and knew how to make scenes work.“Sitcom directors have a reputation as traffic cops because it’s a writers’ medium,” James Burrows, whose directing credits include “Cheers,” “Frasier” and “Will & Grace,” and who considered Mr. Sandrich a mentor, said by phone. “But Jay taught me to speak up and say what I thought so that you’re contributing to the show, not just parroting what everybody wants.”By 1970, Mr. Sandrich was a sitcom veteran, but he did not believe he had done “anything great”; his credits at that point included “He & She,” “That Girl,” “The Ghost & Mrs. Muir” and, perhaps most notably, “Get Smart.” Then, after another director dropped out, he was asked to direct the pilot episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”When the cast gathered for a run-through in front of an audience, nothing worked.“It was a disaster,” he told the Television Academy in an interview in 2001. “I don’t think we got six laughs.”Afterward, he told the cast to trust the material and keep rehearsing. By the time the episode was taped, the performances had sharpened and the laughs had been found.The cast of “The Golden Girls,” from left: Rue McClanahan, Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty and Betty White. It was Mr. Sandrich who suggested that Ms. McClanahan play the role originally intended for Ms. White, and vice versa.Walt Disney Television, via Getty ImagesReferring to a moment in the scene where Mary Richards, played by Ms. Moore, is interviewing for a television news job with Lou Grant, played by Ed Asner (who died last month), he said, “Ed, I remember, when he said, ‘You’ve got spunk — I hate spunk,’ he did it so loud” that the audience gasped. “He had found the perfect level.”Over the next seven years, Mr. Sandrich directed 118 more episodes of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” including the series finale, and won two Emmys for his work on the show. He also directed other series under the banner of Ms. Moore’s company, MTM Enterprises, including “Rhoda,” “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Phyllis” and “Lou Grant.”In the late 1970s, he directed 53 episodes of “Soap,” Susan Harris’s parody of soap operas. In 1980 he directed the movie “Seems Like Old Times,” written by Neil Simon and starring Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase. It was a hit, grossing $44 million — about $139 million in today’s dollars — but he never made another feature film.Jay Henry Sandrich was born on Feb. 24, 1932, in Los Angeles. His father, Mark, was a director whose films included the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical “Top Hat.” His mother, Freda (Wirtschalter) Sandrich, was a homemaker.As a child, Jay saw snow falling for the first time — on the set of “Holiday Inn” (1942), with Astaire and Bing Crosby, which his father was directing. It was an exciting sight, even if the snow was plastic.Goldie Hawn in “Seems Like Old Times” (1980), the only feature film Mr. Sandrich directed.Columbia Pictures, via Getty ImagesAfter graduating in 1953 from U.C.L.A., where he studied theater arts and film, he joined the Army and shot training films for the Signal Corps.Following his discharge, he wrote to W. Argyle Nelson, the head of production at Desilu Productions — Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s production company — and he was hired as a second assistant director, working on “I Love Lucy,” “Our Miss Brooks” and “December Bride.” He later discovered that he had gotten the job because Mr. Nelson had been an assistant to his father on a film years earlier. Mr. Sandrich went on to become an assistant director on “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour,” the successor to “I Love Lucy,” from 1957 to 1959.He had similar positions on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and on “Make Room for Daddy,” starring Danny Thomas, where he started his directingcareer.“I remember waking up in the middle of the night,” fearful before directing his first episodes of “Daddy,” he told the Television Academy. “I was so scared. Nobody was going to listen to me.”People listened to him for the next 40 years.In the 1980s, he directed 100 episodes of “The Cosby Show,” for which he won two Emmys. In 1985, he directed the pilot for “The Golden Girls,” and he played a critical role in casting Betty White as Rose, the naïve character, and Rue McClanahan as the libidinous Blanche, the opposite of what had been originally planned — in part because Ms. White had already played a similar role, Sue Ann Nivens, on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”“Jay Sandrich, in his genius, said if Betty plays another man-hungry, they’ll think it’s Sue Ann revisited. So let’s make her Rose,” Ms. White said at a 2006 “Golden Girls” reunion in Los Angeles staged by the Paley Center. She added, gesturing to Ms. McClanahan, “They got a real neighborhood nymphomaniac to play Blanche.”Mr. Sandrich at an Academy of Television Arts and Sciences panel discussion in Los Angeles in 2013. His TV career began in the 1950s and continued into the 21st century. Frank Micelotta/Invision for Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, via Associated PressMr. Sandrich continued to work into the 21st century. His last assignment was an episode of “Two and a Half Men” in 2003.He married Linda Silverstein in 1984. In addition to her, he is survived by his daughter, Wendy Steiner; his sons, Eric and Tony; and four grandchildren. His marriage to Nina Kramer ended in divorce.Mr. Sandrich’s association with “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” ended when the series itself did, in 1977. He later recalled that as the cast rehearsed the last episode, Mr. Asner’s emotional line, “I treasure you people,” caused tears to stream from Mr. Asner’s eyes.And when Ms. Moore talked about how much her co-workers meant to her, Mr. Sandrich said, “My only direction to her was to hold off crying as long as you can.”“If you see the show,” he added, “you see the tears well up and I started crying and the audience started crying.” More

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      Cliff Freeman, Adman Who Asked, ‘Where’s the Beef?,’ Dies at 80

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      His humorous touch was evident in commercials for Wendy’s, Little Caesars, Fox Sports and many other clients. “We have to win with wit,” he once said.Cliff Freeman, the award-winning copywriter and creative director behind many witty television commercials, most memorably the one for Wendy’s in which a gravelly-voiced old woman shouts, “Where’s the beef?,” at the sight of a puny hamburger patty in an oversized bun, died on Sept. 5 at his home in Manhattan. He was 80.The cause was pneumonia, his wife, Susan (Kellner) Freeman, said.In a career of nearly 40 years, Mr. Freeman’s antic sense of humor made brands stand out — first at the advertising agency Dancer Fitzgerald Sample and then, starting in 1987, at his own small agency, Cliff Freeman & Partners.“Cliff has consistently done some of the funniest, smartest ads on TV,” Jim Patterson, the chairman of J. Walter Thompson’s North American operations, told The Tampa Bay Times in 2005. Mr. Freeman’s work, he added, “is always fresh and original.”For the candy bars Almond Joy and Mounds, Mr. Freeman coined the song lyrics “Sometimes you feel like a nut/Sometimes you don’t.” For Little Caesars, he scripted (and voiced) the toga-clad Roman gnome who declares, “Pizza! Pizza!” and “Cheeser! Cheeser!”For Philips, Mr. Freeman’s “Time to change your light bulb” campaign featured a commercial in which a man inadvertently flirts with a burly workman in an elevator, instead of the beautiful woman he thought was beside him before the lights went out.And for Outpost.com, an online computer retailer looking to raise its profile, gerbils (not real ones) were fired from a cannon, aimed at the second “o” in an Outpost sign.“Almost all our clients are Davids up against Goliaths,” Mr. Freeman told New York magazine in 1993. “We have to win with wit.”From left, Elizabeth Shaw, Mildred Lane and Clara Peller in what was probably Mr. Freeman’s best-known commercial: the 1989 spot for Wendy’s in which Ms. Peller asks, “Where’s the beef?”Cliff Freeman and CompanyIn 1984, Wendy’s was looking to differentiate its burger, the modestly named Single, from McDonald’s Big Mac and Burger King’s Whopper. Research found that the Wendy’s Single patty was larger than the patties of the Big Mac and Whopper.Working with the director Joe Sedelmaier, Mr. Freeman created separate commercials, one with three old women and one with three old men, scrutinizing the fluffy hamburger bun before seeing the tiny patty inside. The breakout version was the one with the women, specifically the squawky octogenarian Clara Peller, who demands to know where the beef is.“It went viral globally before the term was coined,” Dan Dahlen, the former director of national advertising for Wendy’s International, said in a phone interview. “And as we got into the election, Walter Mondale turned to Gary Hart” — during a debate among candidates for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination — “and asked, ‘Where’s the beef?’”Mr. Freeman was still at Dancer Fitzgerald a year later when he wrote another popular Wendy’s commercial, which promoted the chain’s breadth of food choices by parodying the lack of choices in Soviet society. In a faux Russian fashion show, a heavyset woman struts on a runway, modeling the same shapeless dress for day wear, evening wear (accessorized with a flashlight) and swimwear (with a beach ball).Mr. Freeman said it was his favorite ad, in part because of the response.“The entire Russian government protested it,” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2003. “How much more reaction can you get than that?”In 1985, Mr. Freeman wrote another popular Wendy’s commercial, which promoted the chain’s breadth of choices by parodying the lack of them in a faux Soviet fashion show. “The entire Russian government protested it,” he said proudly.Freeman and CompanyClifford Lee Freeman was born on Feb. 14, 1941, in Vicksburg, Miss., outside Jackson, and moved with his family to St. Petersburg, Fla., when he was 6. His father, James, and his mother, Lillian (Pennebaker) Freeman, owned a dairy business and motels.After graduating from Florida State University in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in advertising, Mr. Freeman joined Liller Neal Battle & Lindsey, an Atlanta agency. He moved to McCann Erickson in 1968 and, two years later, to Dancer Fitzgerald, where he worked for 17 years.The Little Caesars pizza chain was one of the first accounts Mr. Freeman won after starting his own agency, and it remained a signature client for 11 years as it fought for market share against competitors like Pizza Hut and Domino’s.“Well, you know, pizza is a fun product,” Mr. Freeman told Luerzer’s Archive, an industry magazine, in a 1998 interview. “Everyone sits around and eats pizza together, so you’ve got to have fun when you advertise it. You certainly can’t treat it seriously.”One ad Mr. Freeman devised emphasized the stretchiness of pizza cheese, to slapstick effect (a baby goes on a wild ride in her high chair throughout the house while holding onto a slice). In another, a goofy worker for an unnamed rival chain tries to impress a customer by contorting a pizza box, origami-style, into the shape of a pterodactyl (underscoring its offering of just a pizza and a box, compared with Little Caesars’s two pizzas for one low price).Those commercials helped lift sales of Little Caesars 138 percent from 1988 to 1993. Nonetheless, after sales flattened and Little Caesars considered changing ad agencies, Mr. Freeman ended his firm’s association with the chain in 1998.Over the years, Mr. Freeman’s agency won many Clio Awards for advertising excellence. It won for commercials created for clients like Little Caesars, Philips and Outpost.com, and for a series of ads for Fox Sports’ National Hockey League coverage that demonstrated how basketball, bowling, billiards and golf would be better if they were played more physically, like hockey.Neal Tiles, a marketing executive for Fox Sports, told The New York Times in 1998 that it had chosen Mr. Freeman’s agency because it took “creative risks in a strategic way” on so many campaigns.But Cliff Freeman & Partners lasted only 11 more years. Amid a recession, executive turmoil and client departures, it shut down in 2009.In addition to his wife, Mr. Freeman is survived by his son, Scott; his sister, Chase McEwen; and his brother, Hunter. His marriage to Ann Angell ended in divorce.Mr. Freeman was well aware that markets like fast food were hypercompetitive, but he tried not to take his work too seriously; success, he maintained, often required a humorous touch.“I think when you’re slamming the competition, people find it kind of hard to take unless you do it in a way that is really fun,” he told Luerzer’s Archive. “Then they are able to accept it.” More

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      Matt Amodio, the Latest ‘Jeopardy!’ Star, Breaks $1 Million

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      The Ph.D. student in computer science at Yale is only the third contestant to reach that level of winnings.“Jeopardy!” has another seemingly unstoppable sensation.On Friday, Matt Amodio, a Ph.D. student in computer science at Yale, won his 28th game, amassing over $1 million in winnings. He is only the third contestant to do so in regular-season gameplay, after Ken Jennings, the contestant-turned-producer for the show, and James Holzhauer, the phenom who captured audiences with his winning streak in 2019.Amodio’s success is no doubt a welcome distraction for the game show, which has been struggling to permanently fill the role of host after Alex Trebek died last year. Some of the shows during Amodio’s streak were hosted by Mike Richards, who was then the show’s executive producer. (Richards was named host of the show — but then stepped down after The Ringer reported that he had made offensive comments on a podcast taped years ago.) The actress Mayim Bialik, who had already been chosen to host the show’s prime-time specials, took over in his place. (She and Jennings will host the show until the end of the year.)Amodio — whose winnings currently stand at $1,004,001 — researches artificial intelligence at Yale and has said that he has been watching “Jeopardy!” since before he was “even able to understand the words.”He is a reliably dominant player. According to the website The Jeopardy! Fan, he gets more than 90 percent of clues that he answers correct and is first to the buzzer more than half of the time. In betting, he tends not to take as many risks as Holzhauer, who surpassed $1 million in half the time as Amodio.But there is another way Amodio can surpass his record-breaking rivals. If he wins five more games, he will surpass Holzhauer’s 32-game streak; he has much longer to go on Jennings, who won 74 games. Because the game show is taped ahead of time (Friday’s episode was taped a month ago), it is possible that Amodio’s fate has already been sealed, but audiences will not know until next week’s episodes air.It is obvious that Holzhauer — a sports bettor whose “Jeopardy!” stardom propelled him to a role on the ABC game show “The Chase,” alongside Jennings and Brad Rutter, another “Jeopardy!” champion — knows that Amodio is on his heels. He ribbed Amodio on Twitter earlier this week, pointing out that Amodio had made much less money than him during the same number of games.Amodio playfully sniped back, tweeting, “Must be nice having time to throw shade on Twitter. Us ‘Jeopardy!’ champions with zero career losses have actual work to do.” More

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      Comedians Turn Their Attention to Abortion

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      Alison Leiby has an hourlong set looking at the experience of an unwanted pregnancy. She’s among a spate of female artists finding humor in the issue.A stand-up show about abortion sounds like a bad idea. The comic Alison Leiby knows that. Just look at her title: “Oh God, an Hour About Abortion.”Leiby doesn’t just anticipate your expectations. She subverts them. As states like Texas pass laws dramatically restricting abortion rights, and the Supreme Court prepares to hear a case in December that could overturn Roe v. Wade, her deftly funny, jarringly understated show doesn’t respond to the news so much as clarify it.Abortion is not new territory in comedy, and there’s a long history of male comics doing against-the-grain bits staking out an abortion-rights position while also poking fun at the idea that a fetus isn’t a person. I saw this done decades ago by George Carlin, and again this month by Bill Burr. Neal Brennan also has a quick joke in his current show, “Unacceptable,” about how liberals show empathy for everyone — but fetuses. Leiby is part of a recent spate of female artists making comedy about reproductive rights that digs into the realities of abortion today more than abstract arguments about it.Leiby, who has been performing her show around New York City (next up: Caveat on Tuesday), employs none of the debating-society smirk of those jokes about the life of the fetus. Without a trace of didacticism, she finds humor in the messy, confusing, sometimes banal experience of an unwanted pregnancy and an abortion. This is comedy about the heartbeat of the mother — and to the extent it engages with the abstract question of life, it’s when Leiby mentions her friends’ first Instagram post of their newborn, which, she says, “I think we can all agree is when life really begins.”Her offhandedness is part of her charm, but it has a purpose. Leiby wants to give us a portrait of abortion not as a crisis or a moral question, but as a common and confusing medical procedure. The broader context of this show, as she reminds the audience, is a culture of silence surrounding women. From sex education to birth control, she explains how much is unspoken, rushed through or hidden from view. Leiby even shocked herself when she called Planned Parenthood, she says, and in asking about an abortion, whispered the word. She mocks the vague ads for birth control and imagines an honest one in which a 37-year-old woman wakes up in a cold sweat screaming next to a mediocre white man, which leads to a scene of him eating Cheetos in a hospital room as she gives birth.Leiby doesn’t move much onstage, and her gestures are limited. Her comedy leans on her nimble writing, which displays a range and density of spiky jokes — puns, metaphors, misdirection. She knows how to set a scene and is alert to the details of nightmares. She is terrified of scary movies and has a ticklishly amusing podcast, “Ruined,” in which a friend, Halle Kiefer, explains the plots of horror films to her. It’s like listening to a play-by-play announcer and color commentator of a game on the radio, except instead of balls or strikes, it’s about beheadings and exorcisms.What comes across on the podcast and in this show is a sensitivity to anxiety and fear mitigated by curiosity. Leiby understands that whether to have a child is a subject fraught with confusion for many, and she acknowledges it, but that’s not her issue. She presents herself as a wry if bumbling protagonist of her own story, describing her attitude toward the prospect of children like this: “I acted like my eggs were Fabergé: feminine but decorative.”In 2004, The New York Times published an article about culture and abortion titled “Television’s Most Persistent Taboo.” That has changed. In a short set on “The Comedy Lineup,” on Netflix, the comic Kate Willett has a sharp joke about how men looking to hook up should care about abortion rights. “I don’t even know if the men that I know understand that sex can make a kid,” she said. “They are super worried that sex can make someone your girlfriend.”In the past year, streaming services have put out two comedies, “Plan B” (directed by Natalie Morales) and “Unpregnant” (directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg), about girls who go on the road with a friend to get reproductive help. These knockabout buddy films aren’t explicitly about the recent state-level pushes for anti-abortion legislation, but they certainly haunt the action, with closed clinics and ideologues providing key plot points.Like Leiby’s show, these movies present getting an abortion or taking the morning-after pill, often called Plan B, as ordinary decisions made relatively easily, but because of the dictates of a commercial comedy, their plots are full of incident and action, romantic and villainous turns. They make the process of getting an abortion into a high-stakes adventure.Haley Lu Richardson, left, and Barbie Ferreira in “Unpregnant.”Ursula Coyote/HBO MaxVictoria Moroles, left, and Kuhoo Verma in “Plan B.”Brett Roedel/HuluIn observational comedy, Leiby has found a form better suited to what she wants to say. “Oh God” is about details, and by zeroing in on them, it navigates the difficult terrain of making a funny hour about a difficult, polarizing subject. Even so, this isn’t one of those comedy shows interrupted by grave talk or political speeches. It’s one where the response to the person at the clinic asking if she wants “pills or procedure” is: “That’s a real fries or salad.”There’s a power in the relatable details of storytelling. Before Leiby gets the procedure, she’s asked a series of questions: Does she want to know if there’s a heartbeat? Does she want to know if it’s twins? In her telling, these are poignant, even painful moments leavened by quips. To the question about twins, she wonders: “Does it cost more?”Leiby proves that light comedy can be as pointed and meaningful as that which advertises its own weightiness. For while she tells a story about a safe, legal and quick abortion, she doesn’t ignore other more fraught situations, either today or in a potential post-Roe future. She explores this indirectly through her relationship with her mother, which gives her an opportunity to dig into the issue before abortion was legal. Through this historical perspective, she frames the stakes of the next year, when abortion could grow even more prominent in the American discourse.Political stand-up typically lends itself to argumentative point-making, but it can use other tools. In repositioning abortion not as a political battle of ideas but as the real-world choices in the lives of flawed human beings, she brings this charged issue down to earth. More

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      ‘Ted Lasso’ Recap, Season 2, Episode 10: The Naked and the Dead

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      This week brings Ted’s origin story, and other tales of the damage fathers can do.Season 2, Episode 10: ‘No Weddings and a Funeral’We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.Last week, “Ted Lasso” gave us a moderately interesting but extremely bizarre bottle episode that temporarily abandoned all of the existing story lines in favor of an “After Hours”-themed night out with Coach Beard.This week, the sun rises on a new day of narrative momentum.“No Weddings and a Funeral” — I won’t lie, I think my headline is a better title — is, at 46 minutes, another lengthy episode. (The last three episodes have been the longest three of the entire series.) It is also the most intense and emotionally revealing episode to date, and perhaps the best of the season.Tonally, it’s all over the map, alternating between hilarity and grief and fury. But the writing is superb and the acting even better. In particular, Jason Sudeikis (as Ted) and Hannah Waddingham (as Rebecca) are both asked to go places they haven’t gone before on the show, and both rise to the occasion more powerfully than one could have hoped.A quick aside: Unlike the “Love Actually” episode, the rom-com episode, and the “After Hours” episode, this one has no interest in toying with its source material. There are few if any clear references to “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”I watched the 1994 film again to check, and I felt about it more or less how I did when I last saw it 20-plus years ago: It’s remarkable the degree to which a bit of Richard Curtis treacle, a Pottery Barn soundtrack, and Hugh Grant’s sheepish grin can convince viewers that anything is a “romantic comedy.”Because by any reasonable interpretation, “Four Weddings and a Funeral” is a film about two amoral sexual predators circling one another while casually leaving chaos and heartbreak in their wakes. They’re like Tom and Daisy Buchanan, but substantially more promiscuous.In any case, back to the main event. There’s a lot of ground to cover here, so I’m going to try something a little different and break it down by story line.Ted and SharonCoach Lasso’s scene with Sharon is the one we’ve essentially been waiting for all season. We watched the panic attacks and increasingly manic behavior for a while. And then two episodes ago we had the big reveal: Ted’s father killed himself when Ted was 16. That was the headline. This week, we get the story.Ted, dressing to go to the funeral of Rebecca’s father, gets the shakes and is paralyzed with anxiety. (There are some who might say this is the appropriate response to his choice of getting-dressed music, “Easy Lover” by Philip Bailey and Phil Collins.) So Ted calls Sharon, who immediately comes over.Ted tells her what is essentially his origin story, the reason he always tries to have a kind word for everyone around him: On Friday the 13th of September 1991, teenage Ted came home from school to get ready for a Jason Voorhees marathon with friends. He arrived in time to hear the gunshot. He was the one who called 911, then called his mother to tell her she had to come home from work.Ted’s father had been a good dad. (The Johnny Tremain story is lovely.) But he was focused on other things — work, friends — and Ted fears he didn’t really know he was a good dad. And of course Ted thinks it’s because he didn’t tell him often enough. Perhaps if he had, things would have turned out differently.It’s an admission that subtly but meaningfully alters almost every word we’ve ever heard from Ted Lasso’s mouth. Amid all his goofy banter, the closest thing Ted has ever had to a catchphrase is “I appreciate you.” And now we know why. On some level, Ted believes that if he’d said it more often as a child, his father might still be alive.Sudeikis’s work here is among the best I’ve seen from him on the show or anywhere else: raw and heartbreaking, the precise opposite of his customary chirpy persona. This is the real “Led Tasso,” not that ridiculously contrived on-field bully. (Sarah Niles, who plays Sharon, is excellent, too. But it’s Sudeikis’s scene.)The scene ends, as it should, with a hug between Ted and Sharon. I’d grade it the third-most-significant hug of the series so far, behind Ted and Rebecca’s after her confession last season and Roy and Jamie’s back in Episode 8.Hannah Waddingham and Harriet Walter in “Ted Lasso.”Apple TV+Rebecca and DeborahLike Sudeikis, Waddingham gives her most impressive performance of the series. In the first season, she mostly played an icy schemer. This season, to my disappointment, she’s spent most of her time checking her phone, looking for love. In this episode, all the masks come off.Attending her father’s funeral, Rebecca confronts her mother, Deborah. As a teenager Rebecca, like Ted, stumbled upon something she was not meant to stumble upon. In this case, however, it was not her father’s suicide but his extramarital coupling. (And, unlike Ted’s experience with his father, Rebecca was cursed with being an eyewitness.) The next day, he acted as if nothing had happened. She has despised him, and to some degree her mother, ever since.I confess that back in Episode 6, when Harriet Walter showed up to play Deborah for a fairly halfhearted subplot, I wondered why the show had cast such a gifted actress in the role. This episode is why. Although less well known than many of her British contemporaries, Walter (that’s Dame Harriet Walter to you and me) has been a titan of stage and screen for decades.It is of course Waddingham’s scene. But Walter plays off her magnificently, giving her all the space she needs while never receding as a presence. Walter excels at this kind of quiet intensity, and was a brilliant casting choice.It’s an extraordinary scene — in some ways, more memorable than Ted’s — but I did have a couple of small questions/quibbles. In Episode 6, when Deborah “left” her husband for the umpteenth time, I simply assumed infidelity was involved. If Rebecca didn’t think that was it, what form did she believe her father’s mistreatment of her mother was taking? As “revelations” go, it seemed as though this one was already something everyone already knew or strongly suspected.Another quibble applies to the highly choreographed stretch in which the show cuts back and forth, aggressively and often midsentence, between Ted and Rebecca’s stories. As moving as those stories were, the crosscutting felt too clever by half. If anything, it blunted (if only at the margins) the power of both Sudeikis and Waddingham’s performances. But perhaps that was the point? When “Ted Lasso” pours out naked grief and fury, it prefers to do so only a few words at a time?And is there any sensible reason to imply (as the scene does) that Ted and Rebecca discovered their fathers’ actions on precisely the same day in 1991? It’s a strange and unnecessary flourish that does little but throw the viewer out of the moment — both moments, in fact.Thankfully, it would take a lot more than this to ruin two of the best scenes the show has ever had. But it still feels like a failure of nerve, a worry that the show might get too dark or emotional or heartbreaking.NateAFC Richmond’s most insecure coach has had something of a break from his story line for a few episodes now. It was way back in Episode 7 that he threatened to make kit manager Will’s life a misery.But for anyone who thinks Nate is back on track, I recommend this interview with Nick Mohammed (who plays Nate). Things will almost certainly get worse, even if there are only two episodes(!) left in the season for them to do so.And while this episode did not engage directly with Nate’s narrative path — there are, after all, only so many things you can do in 46 minutes — it did nod at it a couple of times.The first was in a discussion of the afterlife. Higgins envisions an exceptionally Higgins-y heaven in which he role-reverses with his dead cat Cindy Clawford (she passed away in Season 1), and curls up at her feet in front of a fire.Nate, perhaps inspired by the feline theme, announces that he’d like to be reincarnated as a tiger so that he could “ravage anyone who looked at me wrong.” Yes, Nate still has trouble reading the room. More important, he again conveys that he is disturbingly close to becoming Travis Bickle.The other nod to Nate is more subtle. As Ted is dressing, right before his panic attack, we see two pictures on his dresser. One is of his son, Henry, whom he misses terribly and about whom he feels enormous guilt. (Remember that he said he “hated” his own father for “quitting.”)The other photograph is one of Nate leaping into Ted’s arms after being named a coach, with the handwritten note, “Ted, Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.” It’s the reminder of a Nate we haven’t seen in a long while.Side note: On his way out of the church, Rupert stops to whisper something to Nate. I have my guesses about what this means — is Rupert buying a new football club? — but surely it means something.Rebecca and SamAnyone who read my Episode 8 recap will recall that I was not a huge fan of its closing implication that Rebecca and Sam would be jumping into bed together. Well, the very opening of this episode confirms that they did indeed jump, and have continued jumping for at least a couple of weeks.My principal concern with this story line is that it is in some ways a replay of the Dubai Air plot from Episode 3: A decision is presented as bold and daring in part because the consequences could be disastrous; and then the show completely ignores any possibility of consequences.Right or wrong, the owner of a sports franchise having a relationship with a 21-year-old player for the team would be a big scandal. Yet the show conspicuously avoids even acknowledging this.Rebecca’s stated reason for not going public is “I’m enjoying the secrecy.” But here are a couple of other things she could have said (and in real life, almost certainly would have said): “I don’t want to be dragged through the mud by the tabloids again” or “I don’t want to create huge organizational — and quite possibly legal — issues for AFC Richmond.”Likewise, none of the women to whom the relationship is revealed (Deborah, Keeley, Sassy, Nora) seem to have even a moment of “Are you sure this is a good idea?” when they learn the news.Are Rebecca and Sam charming together? Of course they are. But there seems to be more than a whiff of fan service in hooking them up without paying any heed at all to the risks involved.That said, Sam’s closing line in the closet almost makes it all worth it: “Rebecca, there’s something I should warn you of: I’m only going to get more wonderful.” Is that even possible?Keeley and Roy (and Jamie?!)Keeley and Roy’s banter before the funeral is some of the best writing in an episode brimming with good writing. The bit about her wanting to nourish a tree with her corpse and his being modestly disgusted at the thought of eating fruit from that tree is excellent dialogue, perfectly delivered.But nothing’s going to beat Roy’s response when Keeley asks him whether, if he were run over by a bus, he would prefer her to have him buried or cremated: “Go after the bus driver and make him pay for what he did to me! Avenge me, Keeley. Avenge me!” And her subsequent response about the (theoretical) bus driver swerving to avoid a child? And his response to that response about not knowing of the existence of the (theoretical) child? Shoot it straight into my veins.Unexpectedly, Keeley is rather angry at Roy for the tree-fruit jokes. But the real potential complication is unrelated.Jamie has been pretty much in the background this season. But his evolution has been quite clear. Of late, he’s been consistently kind and supportive to teammates. But the question of why has lingered.Now we know, and the show couldn’t possibly have offered a more persuasive explanation. At the funeral, Jamie confesses to Keeley that he came back to AFC Richmond in large part because he loves her. And he tells her this, like the better man he is trying to become — and whom he thanks her for recognizing he might one day become — with the appropriate good-guy apologies: I know you’re with Roy. I know you’re happy. I don’t want to complicate things. I just felt I needed to say this out loud.This was a potent scene, maybe — I know I keep saying this about various cast members — the best work Phil Dunster (who plays Jamie) has done on the show so far. I’m pleased that they haven’t overplayed his evolution. I wish Jamie well, and I hope he finds true love.But I am confident I speak for millions when I say: If Jamie breaks up Roy and Keeley, I will spend every waking moment rooting for Nate to turn into that tiger so that he can slowly tear Jamie apart, tendon by tendon. I couldn’t take a Keeley-Roy split. The world couldn’t take it. Don’t undo all the good you’ve done for the global psyche, “Ted Lasso.”The EulogyIs it cute when Deborah tells Rebecca that she plays Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” throughout the house every morning? Sure.And the bit at the end, when Deborah discovers 30-odd years late that Astley is a dorky white guy (“That’s Rick Astley?”), is fairly delightful.But to Rickroll Rebecca’s eulogy in between? Even if you leave aside the (rather obvious) fact that people at funerals — even daughters! — are not called up without warning to provide eulogies they never volunteered, everything about this scene is cringe-inducing.It’s as if the writers challenged themselves to outdo the most saccharine-yet-vaguely-creepy moments in “Love Actually.” (“The Beatles at a wedding? The Bay City Rollers at a funeral? We’ll see your bet and raise you a Rick Astley…”)Needless to say, I hated this scene. Thank goodness the rest of the episode was as great as it was.There’s a lot more to say, but I feel a recap shouldn’t take longer to read than the episode itself took to watch — especially when it was such a long episode. So let’s close things out.Odds and EndsSassy is always great, but this episode may represent her peak to date. The over-the-balcony entrance? Terrific. And who could fail to love her manic new friendship with Keeley? (I want to join that pod.) But Sassy’s best moment this week comes when she tells Rupert something that needed to be said: “I think of your death every single day. Ooh, I can’t wait.”Coach Beard’s invocation of “21 Grams” (the theoretical weight of the soul) was excellent. But Roy’s reply was better: “Whoever figured that out clearly weighed someone, murdered them, then weighed them again.”Once again Jan Maas demonstrates his complete lack of filter, telling Nate, “Another man buying you clothes is infantilizing, yes?” I would say that there is a 100 percent chance he would not have said this if Nate were a bloodthirsty tiger. But it’s Jan Maas, so … 70 percent?One more great line, referencing Sir Mix-a-Lot: “I hate big ‘buts’ and I can’t lie.” Brilliant. But to have it come out of Sam’s mouth? Absurd. There is only one person on the show — and on the Earth — who would make that pun, and his name is Ted Lasso.In addition to the many already noted, this episode contained references to Tracy Anderson workouts, Obi-Wan Kenobi and “Singin’ in the Rain.” And I think Ted’s “I wish you doctor would” reply when Sharon asks if she can sit down is a reference to Robert Wood, a physicist and pioneer in optics.Let me know what others I missed. And thanks to those who pointed out painful omissions from last week from “A Clockwork Orange,” “Fight Club” and Elvis Costello. More

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      Seth Meyers Scorns Trump for Suing His Own Niece

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      “Fortunately, his lawyer has experience suing family members, since Rudy sued his cousin for divorce,” 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.All in the FamilyOn Thursday’s “Late Night,” Seth Meyers talked about how nice it had been not having to think or care about Donald Trump lately.“It’s like when you finally get a cast removed and you get to shower without taping a plastic bag to your arm,” he said.But Trump has been back in the news for a number of reasons, including his lawsuit against The New York Times and Mary Trump, his niece, over his leaked tax records.“Imagine suing your own niece. I mean, fortunately, his lawyer has experience suing family members, since Rudy sued his cousin for divorce.” — SETH MEYERS“His lawsuit claims Mary Trump was motivated by ‘a personal vendetta and the desire to gain fame, notoriety, acclaim and a financial windfall,’ which are the same reasons he ran for president.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The real victim is the guy who lost a billion dollars while pretending to be a self-made tycoon in Pizza Hut commercials.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Trump has so many legal problems, CNN doesn’t have even time to go through them all. CNN! They’re a 24-hour news network — all they do is the news. It’s not like they hand it off at 4 p.m. to their baking show ‘The Knead With Jake Tapper,’ or their 5 p.m. dating show ‘On the Prowl With the Wolf.’” — SETH MEYERS“Kind of feels like we are in ‘The Purge’ and Donald Trump is the only one who’s allowed to break laws. Like, he can just walk around and do whatever he wants and the feds for some reason can’t touch him. At this point, Trump could park his car in front of a fire hydrant and instead of towing him, they’d just let the building burn down.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Booster Edition)“Earlier today, the C.D.C. granted emergency authorization to Pfizer for Covid booster shots, but only for high-risk individuals and people age 65 or over. After the last 18 months, we’ve all had — we all, I think, feel 65 or older, don’t we?” — JAMES CORDEN“And to make sure only seniors get the shot, the vaccination site is a Denny’s between the hours of 3:00 and 4:15. The password is ‘I miss pay phones.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“A booster shot for older people. Now you are going to have people in Hollywood lying about their age in the opposite direction. They’ll be like, ‘I’m 29, but I can play 72!’” — JAMES CORDEN“So, yeah, I guess Covid shots are like iPhones now. You think are you all upgraded to the latest and greatest, and a few months later they have a new vaccine with an extra camera.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingMichael Strahan and Jimmy Fallon posed as wax versions of themselves to surprise fans at Madame Tussauds on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutElisha Williams in “The Wonder Years.” A new version of the nostalgic sitcom follows a Black family in Montgomery, Ala., in 1968.Erika Doss/ABCA reboot of “The Wonder Years” puts a twist on TV’s usual take on nostalgia by following a Black family in 1968. More

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      Review: The Math of ‘Foundation’ Doesn’t Add Up

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      An ambitious reimagining of the Isaac Asimov epic suffers from by-the-numbers sci-fi plotting.The science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke once decreed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. At the core of “Foundation,” the Apple TV+ series based on the novels of Isaac Asimov, is a similar idea: that any sufficiently advanced math is indistinguishable from prophecy.But in this ambitious, overstuffed epic, that intriguing idea often gets lost in space. Like Trantor, the imperial capital in “Foundation” whose surface is buried beneath man-made layers, the story’s core ends up enveloped in levels upon levels of machinery.The instigating figure remains the same as in the saga that Asimov began spinning in the 1940s: Hari Seldon (Jared Harris), a “psychohistorian” who purports to be able to predict the future by number-crunching the data on mass populations. (He’s the Nate Silver of space.) When his calculations determine that the ruling empire will collapse, the bearer of bad news and his followers are exiled to a planet in the dusty cheap seats of the galaxy, where they work on a grand plan to shape mankind’s fate and shorten the coming era of chaos.At a time when “follow the science” has become a political statement, “Foundation” can play like a none-too-subtle commentary. Hari’s protégé, Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell), comes from a world whose leaders condemn scientists as heretics and refuse to acknowledge the rising of the oceans. And Harris plays the visionary with a doomed-prophet rectitude that recalls his turn as a Soviet scientist in “Chernobyl.”This echoes the Asimov books’ atom-age belief in the power of reason over superstition. But the “Foundation” showrunner David S. Goyer is also willing to depart from the source material. Asimov’s galaxy was largely a boys’ club, for instance, so “Foundation” recasts key roles with women, including Gaal — as close to a central figure as the series has, though she’s sidelined in the middle of the season — and Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey), a leader of the Foundation’s remote colony.Elsewhere, the series adds or shuffles story elements to create the kind of baroque intrigues viewers are used to from the likes of “Game of Thrones.” The role of the emperor is expanded — to be precise, it’s tripled. In the empire’s “genetic dynasty,” Emperor Cleon (conveniently an anagram for “clone”) has been replicated for centuries in three persons: the young Brother Dawn, the middle-aged Brother Day and the elderly Brother Dusk.Every generation, the eldest member of this living Sphinx riddle is ceremonially (and lethally) retired, a fresh baby emperor is uncorked from the cloning vat, Dawn is promoted to Day and Day to Dusk. (I told you there would be math.)Jared Harris plays a “psychohistorian” who claims to be able to predict the future with complex mathematics.Helen Sloan/Apple TV+, via Associated PressLee Pace, sheathed in electric-blue gladiator armor, plays a succession of Brother Days. His matinee-villain hauteur risks ridiculousness — say, when having an underling exploded like Mr. Creosote in “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life” — but he energizes an often stilted production.In a way, the genetic dynasty and the Foundation are two solutions to the same dilemma: How do you achieve ambitions that take longer to realize than a human life span? For Cleon, the answer is to live serially. For Hari, it’s to craft a plan that will outlive him, in part by creating a quasi-messianic myth around himself. (Dealing with mortality is also the project of religion, yet another story thread in the series.)But this is also the challenge of “Foundation” itself. Its premise and Asimov’s blueprint suggest a story that needs to unfold over centuries, shuffling cast members in and out, focusing more on larger systems of society than on individuals. Serial TV, on the other hand, relies on audiences connecting to specific characters over the long haul.The cloning device is one way to keep characters around over the ages; there are more spoilery contrivances, too. Other changes Goyer makes serve to translate Asimov’s talky novels of ideas into a pageant of explosions and special effects.For instance, much of the 10-episode first season gets bogged down in an extended terrorism and revenge story that makes Salvor into an action hero. The thriller sequences — involving an enemy straight out of the Klingon-Dothraki warrior-society school — most resemble what viewers expect from a sci-fi epic. And I found myself increasingly tuning them out the longer “Foundation” went on.The images are certainly arresting. There are spacecraft with interiors like art installations; alien worlds with beringed and bemooned skyscapes; and some sort of mysterious giant lozenge that floats near the Foundation camp like a portentous piñata, promising to burst open and spill forth plot twists and dei ex machina.But there are things you can’t digitize: a surprise, a genuine laugh, the breath of creative life. Beneath the gunplay and C.G.I., there’s a much weirder show struggling to get out, about statistics and space popes, decadent clone emperors and millennia-old robots.OK, there’s only one robot, but “Foundation” makes her count. As the undying aide to a long line of emperors, Demerzel (the name will ring a bell for hard-core Asimov fans), the Finnish actress Laura Birn gives an eccentric performance that is both disconcertingly mechanical and the most vulnerably human of the series.This and some of the odder inventions of “Foundation” reminded me stylistically of last year’s “Raised by Wolves,” the HBO Max drama of obsessive android maternal love. It was hardly the best show of 2020, but it was so committed to its passion, so willing to cut open a vein and bleed weird robot milk, that I was held rapt even by its worst moments.“Foundation” is more consistent than “Wolves,” but less magnetic because of its concessions to sci-fi expectations. It could have been better, if only, like Hari Seldon’s disciples, it had faith in the plan. More

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      How Leslie Odom Jr. and Audra McDonald Will Host the Tony Awards

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      The two discussed the ceremony’s recognition of Broadway’s reopening, but also its pandemic losses.The Tony Awards are going to be a bit different this year.Delayed by the continuing pandemic, Sunday’s in-person ceremony will recognize shows that opened — and, in many cases, closed — long ago. The official after-party is canceled. And most of the prizes will be presented on a streaming service, so the televised portion of the evening can focus on marketing Broadway.But there is a solace for theater-lovers. Two familiar faces will be at the helm of the four-hour event at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theater: Audra McDonald, who has won more competitive Tonys than any other performer, and Leslie Odom Jr., who vaulted from “Hamilton” (for which he won a Tony) to Hollywood.They have their work cut out for them. Award shows have generally fared poorly during the pandemic, and the theater community is on edge as the industry seeks to recover from a devastating shutdown.In separate interviews, McDonald and Odom said they saw their roles as helping Broadway recover — reminding America that theaters are reopening, while celebrating artists and mourning those lost during the pandemic.“I want to be a part of whatever we can do to get the word out that Broadway is back,” said McDonald, who is hosting the first two hours, starting at 7 p.m. Eastern time and streaming on Paramount Plus. During that portion, most of the awards will be bestowed.Odom outlined a similar goal for his part of the evening, a two-hour show starting at 9 p.m. Eastern that will be broadcast on CBS. Primarily, it will be a concert, but it will also feature the awards for best musical, best play and best play revival. “I hope that we can remind people of the power of live performance,” Odom said, “which is a challenging thing to do on a television, but it’s what we’re tasked to do, and it’s our best hope in this moment.”McDonald with Michael Shannon in “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” for which she is currently nominated for a Tony.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe two hosts are at different stages of their careers. McDonald, 51, is a six-time Tony winner who has been described as the queen of Broadway; she is the only performer to have won an award in every acting category. She is again a nominee this year, for the play “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.” Odom, 40, wowed audiences as a charismatically ambitious Aaron Burr in “Hamilton,” then pivoted to screen work in Los Angeles and scored two Oscar nominations for “One Night in Miami.”McDonald brought up another aspect of their selection. They are both Black, which is noteworthy given that the last 11 Tony ceremonies have been hosted by white people. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had hosts of color up there,” McDonald said. “It models something, seeing two hosts of color representing theater and the Tonys.”Neither revealed any details about the evening. Will McDonald sing? “It’s post-2020,” she said. “Expect anything at all times.” And Odom? “My first words were use me up,” he said. “However I can help — if it’s a pie to the face, or singing a ‘Hamilton’ tune, whatever is of use, ask and allow me.”They pledged to honor the work done on shows staged during the truncated 2019-20 season, even as they remind viewers that Broadway has reopened. “It’s been so long that these nominees have waited, and to let them have their prom night is what I want to do,” McDonald said. “I want to make it about them and their accomplishments.”Broadway, Odom said, is “going to be OK, in time, but I don’t know how much time,” adding: “This is a tough spot we’re in, and I don’t want to be cavalier about what we’re facing. But in the end, there are young writers and performers all over the world trying to write with an urgency and a relevancy and a potency that gives theater new life and reminds us of its necessity.”Both said that they believed the traditional “in memoriam” segment of this year’s awards ceremony — the first Tonys night since June 2019 — would be especially important, with over 680,000 deaths from the pandemic so far in the United States alone.“Beyond making sure that we put on a great show for America, I also want to make sure that we get that ‘in memoriam’ section right, because we’ve lost so many, and we’ve been away for so long,” Odom said. “That’s a cloud hanging over the evening. There’s so many that we’ve lost from the theater, and we’ve lost a great deal of our audience as well.”For McDonald, those losses are personal. Among those who died of coronavirus complications was the playwright Terrence McNally, a longtime mentor, collaborator and friend. (He was a writer of three shows in which she starred: “Master Class,” “Ragtime” and “Frankie and Johnny.”) She said she is also mourning the deaths, since the last Tonys ceremony, of the actor Nick Cordero, who died after a long battle with Covid, as well as the actresses Zoe Caldwell, who died of Parkinson’s disease, and Rebecca Luker, who had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.“Among the difficult things is that we haven’t been able to mourn them properly, because we haven’t been able to have gatherings,” she said. “That’s something else the pandemic has taken away. I think it will be an emotional moment in the show to recognize the great loss we’ve all suffered.”Odom, center, in “Hamilton,” for which he earned a Tony for leading actor in a musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMcDonald and Odom have been concerned about racial justice in America, and said that the issue would be on their minds during the Tonys.“I’m excited about the fact that there’s so much Black work being represented on Broadway this season, and I’m hopeful that there will be more awareness and more action toward making things more diverse and equitable, and making it more of an anti-racist space,” said McDonald. Last year, she co-founded Black Theater United, which recently negotiated an agreement with industry leaders that included a pledge to end the practice of hiring all-white creative teams.“We need to make sure the Broadway we left is not the Broadway we return to,” McDonald said, “but that it is a better place.”Odom said that a team of writers has been working on how to balance the show’s tone. “We have music and dance and great writers and a slew of talent, and we want first and foremost to entertain folks,” he said. “But beyond that, the show needs to come out of the truth of where we are. We need to honor this moment that we’re in, and deal with it honestly.”Neither McDonald nor Odom saw many of the nominated shows, but they did both see “Slave Play,” Jeremy O. Harris’s daring exploration of slavery’s lingering legacy, which, with 12 Tony nominations, has the most nominations of any play in the awards’ history. McDonald said that the play “rocked me to my core.” Odom called it “a hard watch” and said, “there were parts I didn’t recognize, but the big lesson for me is when a younger person is speaking, and there is something you don’t recognize, that means it’s something for you to investigate.”Now that Broadway is reopening, Odom said, he wants to see “Pass Over,” Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s existential drama about two Black men trapped on a street corner. He’d also like to visit “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical” (to catch Adrienne Warren’s Tony-nominated performance); “Hamilton” (to see the new cast); and “The Lion King.”McDonald, who saw “Tina” before the pandemic hit, said that she plans to wait a few months before joining audiences on Broadway because her 4-year-old daughter is not yet eligible for a vaccine. “I’m being super-careful about where I go and what I do right now,” McDonald said. “But as soon as she is vaccinated, I will get back out there as an audience member.”As for when they will return to Broadway as performers, Odom said, “I’m on the hunt.”“I’m looking for old great plays and musicals that haven’t been revived, and I’m meeting new fantastic writers and exciting young composers when I can,” he said. “I do expect it to happen.”McDonald already has her next role lined up, although she wasn’t ready to discuss details. “I won’t get on the stage this season,” she said, “but I look forward to getting onstage next season.” More