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      Late Night Anticipates the Third Shot

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      “Yep, Biden will be making the booster shot announcement as part of his Operation: Change the Subject,” Jimmy Fallon 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.Third Time’s the CharmThe White House is expected to announce coronavirus booster shots, recommending that Americans receive them eight months after their initial round of inoculation.“And to sell Americans on the idea, the White House is hiring a movie trailer narrator to be like, ‘This fall, Pfizer completes their epic trilogy,’” Jimmy Fallon joked on Tuesday night.“Yep, Biden will be making the booster shot announcement as part of his Operation: Change the Subject.” — JIMMY FALLON“The first people to get boosters will likely be nursing home residents and health care workers, who could get the jab as early as mid-September. So these are autumn shots. The options will be Moderna, Pfizer or pumpkin spice.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“So, vaccine sites are about to ramp up again. You hear that, millions of Americans who are still on the fence about the first dose? Because the rest of us are about to go back for thirds. We’re offering you that last slice of pizza before we take it, and in this case, the pepperoni doesn’t kill you.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (One More Shot Edition)“We’re going to get a third shot, OK? So, somehow, they’re going to have to make the vaccination card even bigger. It fits in most midsize sedans.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Honestly, they should just send booster shots to your house like a cheese of the month club like, ‘Oh, honey, look — this month it is AstraZeneca. How exotic!’” — JIMMY FALLON“America can’t even agree on the first shots. We’re like a giant family dinner where half the table wants pizza and the other half wants to die of Covid.” — JULIE BOWEN, guest host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live”The Bits Worth WatchingOn Tuesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” guest host Julie Bowen explained how she and her family recently helped an injured hiker in a national park.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightMichael Keaton will catch up with Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutJohn Shearer/WireImage for MTV.com (Conrad, Montag) ; Glenn Francis/PacificProDigital.com (Pratt)Memes about Delta are harmless fun except for those cast as the variant itself. More

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      Colbert on Afghanistan: ‘It’s Heartbreaking’

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      “Why should our soldiers be fighting radicals in a civil war in Afghanistan? We’ve got our own on Capitol Hill,” Stephen Colbert 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.‘The Right Thing Feels So Wrong’Late-night hosts addressed the news out of Afghanistan this week, with the Taliban taking swift control after President Biden’s decision to pull out American troops.“We have had troops there for 20 years — they fought, they sacrificed, their families sacrificed so that we wouldn’t have a terrorist attack in America planned in a foreign country,” Stephen Colbert said on Monday. “Why should our soldiers be fighting radicals in a civil war in Afghanistan? We’ve got our own on Capitol Hill.”“The Taliban yesterday entered the city of Kabul and took control of Afghanistan’s presidential palace. Most Americans watched in horror, while some Americans watched for tips.” — SETH MEYERS“As recently as last month, an overwhelming majority of Americans, 70 percent or more, supported Biden’s withdrawal. Seventy percent. You know how few things 70 percent of Americans agree on? I think it’s this and extra cheese, which also often ends badly and faster than you planned.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The U.S. foreign-policy apparatus should not approach Afghanistan the same way I approach trying to install a wireless router: ‘“Connect the router to a broadband gateway from your I.S.P. by inserting the Ethernet cable to the port located on the back of the TP-link extender”? I don’t have the foggiest notion of what I’m undertaking! Do you know how this works?’” — SETH MEYERS“So in the end, you can make us accept that there was no good alternative, but you can’t make us feel good about it. The only people who can feel good about this are the service members and their families who aren’t going to see soldiers sent into harm’s way for no reason that the commander in chief of either party can articulate. But there’s one more thing: For the last 20 years, four separate administrations told the American people to care about the plight of all the Afghan people, especially the women, and we did care and that’s not going to change. All that’s changed is that there’s nothing we can do about it now. So pulling out may be the right thing to do, but it’s heartbreaking; it’s humbling when the right thing feels so wrong.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Blame Game Edition)“Former President Trump released a statement on Friday amid the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and, yeah, he’s enjoying this.” — SETH MEYERS“Pretty weird to blame Biden for withdrawing troops when this summer he was claiming credit for it.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“So you can’t put all the blame for a debacle you helped set the stage for. That’s like Andrew Lloyd Webber calling ‘Cats’ a terrible movie. You wrote a musical with no plot — how did you think this was going to end?” — STEPHEN COLBERT“You can tell things aren’t good for Biden, because today he said, ‘You know, maybe the election was stolen.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump made a peace deal with the Taliban to end the war, and now after Biden’s withdrawal, they’re back in power. So, on the bright side, it’s nice to have a bipartisan screw-up.” — JIMMY FALLON“I have a hard time believing Trump would have done it in a more orderly way, since nothing he ever did was orderly. He couldn’t even withdraw from an umbrella in an orderly fashion.” — SETH MEYERS“So what’s happening now is the responsibility of both parties, and the American people who voted them into office. So, children and convicts, you’re off the hook. Also, thanks for watching.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingThe country music star Maren Morris was the guest host on Monday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightCourtney Barnett will perform on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutJan GrueNTB Scanpix Sipa USA
      Michael J. Fox reviews “I Live a Life Like Yours,” Jan Grue’s new memoir about living with spinal muscular atrophy. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Stand Up to Cancer’ and ‘Nora From Queens’

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      Common, Stevie Wonder and Brittany Howard are slated to perform at a fund-raiser for cancer research. And Awkwafina’s Comedy Central sitcom returns.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Aug. 16-22. Details and times are subject to change.MondayBEN & JERRY’S: CLASH OF THE CONES 9 p.m. on Food Network. While this title might call to mind the recent debate over the ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s political advocacy, the series is pretty tame. “Clash of the Cones” is a reality show in which six ice cream makers compete to create new and unusual flavors, which they feed to discerning judges.TuesdayCHANGELING (2008) 5:40 p.m. on HBO Signature. Angelina Jolie stars in this period drama, which was directed by Clint Eastwood and is based on actual events. The story, set in Los Angeles in the 1920s and ’30s, follows a single mother whose young son goes missing from their Los Angeles home. Months later, authorities present her with a boy that they say is her missing son. She insists that it is not, and is painted as delusional when she tries to argue that point. “When it works best, ‘Changeling’ is a feverish and bluntly effective parable of wronged innocence and unaccountable power,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The New York Times. But taken as a whole, Scott wrote, the movie presents a “distended, awkward narrative whose strongest themes are lost in the murky pomp of period detail.”WednesdayFrom left, Awkwafina, Lori Tan Chinn and BD Wong in “Awkwafina is Nora From Queens.”Zach Dilgard/Comedy CentralAWKWAFINA IS NORA FROM QUEENS 10 p.m. on Comedy Central. The actress and one-time viral video creator Awkwafina based the concept of this half-hour sitcom on her own upbringing in Queens. The first season saw her character, the fictional Nora, flitting from gig to gig — ride-hailing app driver, real estate assistant — while navigating life at home with her feisty grandma (Lori Tan Chinn), her father (BD Wong) and her cousin (Bowen Yang). The two episodes that kick off the show’s second season, which debuts Wednesday night, involve CBD and time travel. In a 2020 interview with The Times, Awkwafina discussed the show, which premiered after roles in “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Ocean’s Eight” and “The Farewell” had brought her a new level of stardom. “Nora is where a lot of us find ourselves in our 20s,” she said. “What’s next? Do you find success and suddenly it fixes everything? No, life is an open-ended question.”IN THE SAME BREATH (2021) 9 p.m. on HBO. Nanfu Wang, a co-director of the well-received 2019 documentary “One Child Nation,” about the history of China’s long-lived one-child policy, takes on another politically difficult subject in this new documentary, which looks at the Chinese and United States governments’ responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. Wang explores the flaws in those responses, and how many of the consequences of political decisions fell on the shoulders of health care workers.WAR OF THE WORLDS (2005) 12:30 a.m. on TNT, and on TBS and TNT on-demand platforms. For an apocalyptic scenario that’s entirely fictional, skip “In the Same Breath” and watch this take on H.G. Wells’s classic sci-fi story of invaders from space. This adaptation — the third in Steven Spielberg’s 2000s run of dark sci-fi films which includes “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” and “Minority Report,” — stars Tom Cruise as a New Jersey father who fights to protect his two children (played by Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin) as the alien tripods descend. If you’d prefer sci-fi with a higher fashion sense — Cruise’s character navigates much of the film in a hoodie — consider instead BLADE RUNNER 2049 (2017) with Ryan Gosling, which airs at 7:55 p.m. on HBO Signature.ThursdayHaruko Sugimura, left, and Setsuko Hara in “Late Spring.”ShochikuLATE SPRING (1949) 8 p.m. on TCM. The Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu kicked off a cycle of films about families with “Late Spring,” one of his most celebrated movies. The story follows a widower (Chishu Ryu) who is convinced to force his only daughter (Setsuko Hara) to marry, despite her wishes. In 2005, the critic Roger Ebert wrote that “Late Spring” is “one of the best two or three films Ozu ever made.” TCM is showing it alongside several other Ozu movies, including TOKYO TWILIGHT (1957) at 5:30 p.m. and BAKUSHU (1951) at 10 p.m. A large collection of Ozu’s films — including EARLY SUMMER (1951) and AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON (1962) — is also available to stream online through the Criterion Channel.FridayHERCULES (2014) 11 p.m. on TNT. What happens when you take Greek mythology, turn it into a graphic novel, and adapt that graphic novel into a movie from the “Rush Hour” director Brett Ratner? You get this 2014 blockbuster, which casts Dwayne Johnson as Hercules. (He might be one of the few performers who can make the 1990s animated Disney Hercules character look like a pipsqueak.) The plot, which imagines a Hercules who leads a gang of mercenaries, takes some liberties with the traditional myth: In his review for The Times, Ben Kenigsberg labeled this movie “tongue-in-cheek revisionist mythology, pitched at classics students who prefer to attend their lectures stoned.”SaturdaySTAND UP TO CANCER 8 p.m. on various networks including ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. The seventh edition of this cancer research fund-raiser will be hosted by Anthony Anderson, Sofia Vergara, the comedian Ken Jeong and his wife, Dr. Tran Ho, who is a physician and a cancer survivor. The broadcast is slated to include appearances by Jennifer Garner, Matthew McConaughey and Ed Helms, and performances by Common, Stevie Wonder and Brittany Howard.SundayCindy Adams in “Gossip.”ShowtimeGOSSIP 8 p.m. on Showtime. The life of the longtime New York gossip columnist Cindy Adams is the subject of this new, four-part documentary. The series uses Adams’s career as a way to look at the history of American tabloids over the past several decades — she started writing a column for The New York Post in the late 1970s, soon after it was purchased by Rupert Murdoch. More

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      Jake Lacy Says Aloha to ‘The White Lotus’

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      In an interview, the actor discusses the HBO social satire, Sunday’s season finale and the possibility of his returning for Season 2.This interview includes spoilers for Sunday’s season finale of “The White Lotus.”Before Jake Lacy landed in Hawaii to shoot “The White Lotus,” he had only received the first script of what was at the time a six-episode limited series. (HBO recently renewed it for a second season.) He knew a character had died — a cardboard coffin of human remains was loaded onto a plane. But who was it?“Mike White [the show’s creator, writer and director] was like, ‘All these limited series start with a body,’” Lacy said. “So there’s an element of narrative satire along with the social satire. It’s like, If a dead body is what you want, then we’ll start with a dead body. We’re making fun of the device that is part of this very popular narrative format.”“The White Lotus” doesn’t deal with its opening mystery right away, and only gives us a few clues at first. Before a backward time jump to a week’s events at a Hawaiian luxury resort called the White Lotus, we see that Lacy’s character, Shane, seems disturbed both by the dead body and by a friendly question put to him regarding the whereabouts of his wife Rachel, (played by Alexandra Daddario). Hmmm.“I kept asking myself, ‘When do I kill my wife?’” Lacy said. He assumed he was the killer, and she would be his victim. From the character’s perspective, the couple’s honeymoon had gone off the rails the minute they failed to get the prized Pineapple Suite they booked, and the hotel manager Armond (Murray Bartlett) put them in the Palm Suite (no plunge pool, but a nicer view) instead. Things soured further thanks to Shane’s temper tantrums and Armond’s odd responses to them.“Either one could back down,” Lacy said, “but they both keep upping the ante.”The actor recalls reaching the last pages of the final script — the scene in which Armond slips into Shane’s room to leave a parting gift in his suitcase — and pumping his fists with glee. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is it!’ How did I not see this coming four episodes ago? I can’t believe we’re going to have a guy defecate in my suitcase and then I murder him!”During a phone conversation, Lacy, who was in Vermont, discussed the series’s social satire, male Karens and Season 2 possibilities. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.HBO just announced a renewal of “The White Lotus” for a second season, to focus on a new location, new staff and new guests.This is the first I’m hearing of it! I’m thrilled. I hope I get to have Shane in the background at the pool, complaining about his daiquiri.You think he would go back to a White Lotus resort? He wouldn’t rather avoid the chain entirely?I don’t think shame or embarrassment are in his wheelhouse. He might be haunted by what happened and make up some excuse why he’s not going back, but it would be out of paranoia. I think he assumes people are whispering, “That’s the guy who killed the guy.” The more brazen Shane move is to play the victim: “I should be able to stay at any one of these places for free, anywhere in the world, for the rest of my life, because of what they put me through! I should have sued them for this!” That might actually be his mentality, to think he’s got the short end of the stick as a multimillionaire 30-year-old. He doesn’t know he’s the villain, not the victim.Shane appears to escape all accountability and just walk away from the death he caused. On the other hand, Kai (Kekoa Kekumano) will likely be severely punished for stealing the Mossbachers’ jewelry.I think that’s intentional. In this “White Lotus”-reality, here’s how one class of person is treated by the criminal justice system and here’s how someone with access, money and privilege is treated. Yes, you would normally be told, “Don’t leave the island,” or “Don’t leave the state.” But Shane’s dad probably called in a favor — a senator? a judge? That’s how at times a certain level of this world operates. Kai will be a felon, but Shane will not have to serve any time — and Shane will still paint himself as a victim, because he might become a social pariah. He might not be invited to summer parties in the Hamptons because of this.How replicable do you think the show’s concept is as it continues as an anthology series? How many oblivious rich people can we take?If Mike White didn’t have more to offer at this same level, he would go do something else. But you could do something more like “Upstairs, Downstairs,” with the second season being more about the service end of things.People have been talking about how the show is about entitlement, but Mike says it’s more about how money corrupts the dynamics of every relationship, whether it’s a business relationship, a friendship or a marriage. Tanya [Jennifer Coolidge] unfairly dangles this hope to Belinda [Natasha Rothwell] of having her own spa, and it’s messed up how quickly she snatches that hope away. But you also see how Belinda changes in the face of this opportunity. Nobody’s free from it, except maybe Quinn [Fred Hechinger] and the guys in the outrigger canoe, because none of them are making money from the ocean. There is a certain equality in that relationship.The story also seems to be about complicity. When Rachel joins Shane at the airport, she is essentially accepting his objectionable qualities in exchange for the benefits he provides. But since she spent the night in another hotel room, do you think she knew that Shane killed Armond?Oh, man! I always assumed that she knew, but maybe she just heard through the hotel, “Oh, somebody killed somebody.” Or maybe Shane’s mother Kitty [Molly Shannon] called her and told her. But it would be a wonderful scene to show her finding out after they get on the plane. He’d be like, “I killed that guy,” and she’d be like, “What are you talking about?! Oh no, no, no, no! I thought you were just rude to waiters!”But yeah, she’s giving Shane a get-out-of-jail-free card with her decision to stay. It’s just short of being in abusive relationship. The conclusion she’s come to is that having money is better than not having money in a capitalist society, but that’s not a healthy choice. You want to see her follow her heart, but that’s not what happens here. She makes a pretty pragmatic choice as to what she wants her life to be. Maybe she regrets it later. Maybe she walks away. But for the moment, she is settling, essentially, and the cost is the loss of some sense of self.“She’s giving Shane a get-out-of-jail-free card with her decision to stay,” said Lacy, with Alexandra Daddario in the season finale of “The White Lotus.”HBOOne of the things Shane and Rachel fight about is having sex on their honeymoon. Isn’t that when you’re supposed to have the most sex of your life?Some of what we shot didn’t make it in. We had one scene where Shane wanted to have sex, and Rachel wasn’t quite saying no, but she wasn’t in the mood. It’s not assault, but they took it out because it ended up looking far more aggressive than what they had intended. The purpose of the story wasn’t meant to be that Shane sexually assaulted his partner as much as he was not reading when she was in the mood or not.Some of those references about how sexed up he is maybe made more sense with those kinds of pieces in there. I think there is a multitude of things happening under that, too. She’s saying, “My concern is that is all you want from me.” She’s not saying, “This is too much sex.”If it were a white woman trying to get Armond fired, we’d have a name for her: Karen. I don’t know if we have a male equivalent of that name, but here it seems like “Shane” might work.I hope it does! The Karen thing is like, “I won’t stand for this,” as if they’re taking the side of justice. And Shane’s thing is, “Don’t make me make this ugly.” There is this aggression there, like, “I won’t be treated this way!” It’s the same in Shane as it is in a Karen.At the same time, Armond gave him the wrong room. I mean, these rooms cost $26,000 a night. It’s as if you bought a car, and they were like, “Oh, we just know this is the one you wanted,” and you’re like, “This is definitely not the car I paid for.” He booked a room, and he feels they should give him that room. Even if his behavior is increasingly inappropriate, and the way he treats people is terrible, what he wants seems pretty fair: “I want what I paid for.” Not that that excuses his behavior. In a perfect world, he would chill out and let it go.Who do you think was the worst?I feel like people are going to say Shane, but that’s my guy! I still have a little empathy for him. I feel like most of these characters are pretty unpalatable. In actions alone, Shane is the worst, for sure. No one else kills a guy. But Paula [Brittany O’Grady], as honest and progressive as she claims to be, is an accomplice to a felony, and when the rubber meets the road, she gets back on a plane. She doesn’t say anything. And Rachel will put up with Shane if it means she gets the nice dinners.To me, a lot of the show is saying is, “How clean are you? How innocent are you? How free of guilt are you?” Whether it’s the opportunities you’ve had that others haven’t, or your privilege, or money, or the way you look, or the color of your skin — if you’re in a transactional world, how clean are you?The hope is that all this gets reflected back to the audience: “You probably do some of the same things, don’t you? On some level?” Whether it’s at the Four Seasons, the carwash, in line at McDonald’s or at Starbucks, how much expectation do you have for what the world owes you and how you deserve to be treated?That is the part of the show that most intrigues me. It’s less about who’s worse, and more about who’s kidding themselves the most. More

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      ‘Like Choosing a Pope’: How Succession Got Messy at ‘Jeopardy!’

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      The decades-old game show, TV comfort food for many, has been rocked by drama over who would replace the late Alex Trebek.When Ken Jennings arrived at the “Jeopardy!” studios in November for the first day of his audition to become the new host of the long-running quiz show, he found a gift waiting for him: a pair of Alex Trebek’s cuff links, along with a handwritten note from his widow, Jean.Mr. Trebek, the “Jeopardy!” galaxy’s central star, had died of pancreatic cancer three weeks before, setting off a frenzy in Hollywood: one of the greatest jobs in television was available for the first time in 37 years.For some members of the “Jeopardy!” crew, the cuff links validated their assumption that Mr. Jennings, a genial Utahn who rose to fame in 2004 after winning a record 74 consecutive games, had been Mr. Trebek’s preferred successor. (“Jeopardy!” producers had arranged for a phone call between Mr. Jennings and Mr. Trebek two days before he died.) But “Jeopardy!,” while a beloved cultural icon, is also a lucrative asset of Sony Pictures Entertainment, and in the television industry, sentiment only goes so far.“Jeopardy!,” whose first iteration began in 1964, is one of TV’s last bastions of comfort food, a place where politics don’t matter and the real world is easily digested in just-the-facts bites. Then its succession drama got messy. After a cattle call of guest hosts, including Anderson Cooper, Robin Roberts, Aaron Rodgers, LeVar Burton and even Dr. Mehmet Oz, the announcement of the winner sent fans into a tailspin. The new weekday host would be Mike Richards, the show’s obscure executive producer and the man initially charged with finding Mr. Trebek’s replacement.Mr. Richards, it seemed, did not have to look very far.Critics accused Mr. Richards of rigging the contest à la Dick Cheney, who led the vice-presidential search for George W. Bush. Old lawsuits surfaced from Mr. Richards’s previous job, at “The Price Is Right,” involving his treatment of female staff members. (He denies wrongdoing.) After Sony said the “Big Bang Theory” actress Mayim Bialik would host the show’s prime-time spinoffs, her past skepticism about vaccines recirculated. (Her team said “she is not at all an anti-vaxxer.”)Mike Richards, the show’s executive producer, was named Mr. Trebek’s weekday replacement.Carol Kaelson, via ReutersUnder the retro, feel-good surface of “Jeopardy!,” the succession battle is a story of television’s dwindling real estate in American life and the strenuous efforts to occupy one of its remaining desirable plots.“It is a little like choosing a pope,” Mr. Jennings said, in his first interview since the new hosts were announced. “If you don’t watch ‘Jeopardy!,’ you don’t understand, but people take this very seriously.”In an age of atomized audiences, “Jeopardy!” still averages 8.8 million viewers a week, according to Nielsen — not quite “NCIS” territory, but roughly comparable to a network evening newscast. Its audience skews older: Last year, about four viewers out of five were over age 55.And the job itself is, as any Hollywood agent would tell you, a pretty sweet gig.When the “Jeopardy!” cast and crew gather on the Sony Pictures stage in Culver City, Calif., they film five 30-minute shows in a single day, the equivalent of one week of syndicated television. The host works roughly two days a week, two weeks a month — and toward the end of his tenure, Mr. Trebek’s salary was estimated at $16.5 million. Sony would not disclose Mr. Richards’s compensation, but several people familiar with internal discussions said it was significantly less.There are other perks to being the face of a show that is still watched by a broad audience on local network affiliates, a rarity as the nation divides into ever-more-partisan extremes and as traditional TV is supplanted by niche streaming services.“It’s appointment television, which is rare,” said George Stephanopoulos, the ABC News anchor, who guest hosted for a week. “It’s the kind of thing you can watch with your whole family.”Plus there is the reflected glow of always having the right answers.“It’s absolutely iconic,” said Rick Rosen, the TV superagent at Endeavor. “Everybody knows the show and has played along with it. And it’s not the type of show where you’re just a genial host — there’s a perception of intelligence that goes along with it.”Unlike his rivals, Mr. Richards, 46, had a deep background in game shows. Born in Burbank, Calif., he started his career as a stand-up comedian and went on to host game shows like the mid-2000s concoction “Beauty and the Geek.” He hosted and produced numerous series on the Game Show Network before auditioning to replace Bob Barker on “The Price Is Right.” Drew Carey got the job, but Mr. Richards was brought on as executive producer; his successful 11-year tenure revived the wilting franchise into a hit.By “Jeopardy!” standards, though, he was a newcomer.He started as executive producer at both “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune” in May 2020, replacing Harry Friedman, who oversaw both shows for 25 years. Mr. Richards overlapped with Mr. Trebek on set for only 15 shoot days before the host stepped aside, 10 days before he died.Sony said that while Mr. Richards initially led the hunt for Mr. Trebek’s replacement, he moved aside after he emerged as a candidate.But as executive producer, Mr. Richards retained a key role in selecting which appearances by each prospective host would be screened for focus groups, whose reactions weighed heavily in Sony’s decision-making, according to three people familiar with the show’s internal deliberations. The other supervising “Jeopardy!” producers were excluded from that process, the people said.Asked about Mr. Richards’s role, Sony referred to a memo from its TV chairman, Ravi Ahuja, who told staff that after the company began considering Mr. Richards as a potential host, “he was not part of” the selection process. The ultimate decision was made by Tony Vinciquerra, the chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment.As questions mounted, Mr. Richards sent a memo to “Jeopardy!” staff that was distributed by Sony’s publicists.“The choice on this is not my decision and never has been,” Mr. Richards wrote. He said the “Price Is Right” litigation — which included an allegation that he made insensitive comments to a pregnant employee — “does not reflect the reality of who I am.” (Sony said it had “spoken with Mike about the issues raised in these cases and our commitment to maintaining a workplace environment where our employees are respected and supported.”)Mayim Bialik was announced as a co-host.Carol Kaelson, via ReutersOn Thursday, Sony announced Mr. Richards and Ms. Bialik as co-hosts, although for now, only one prime-time special featuring Ms. Bialik is scheduled. “What started out with my 15-year-old repeating a rumor from Instagram that I should guest host the show has turned into one of the most exciting and surreal opportunities of my life!” Ms. Bialik said in a statement.Mr. Jennings, who remains a consulting producer at “Jeopardy!,” praised Mr. Richards’s performance. “Mike was the only person up there with any game show hosting chops, and it showed,” he said.Some fans argue that a relatively bland, little-known host was always a better outcome than a celebrity. “The game is the star, and the contestants are the stars,” said John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary magazine and a 1987 quarterfinalist in the “Jeopardy!” Tournament of Champions. “The host should be a secondary figure.”For his part, Mr. Jennings agreed. “What was great about Alex was we didn’t know anything about him: He came into our homes every night and he hosted ‘Jeopardy!,’” Mr. Jennings said. “Today, it’s very hard to find a broadcaster whose priors and opinions you know nothing about.”Mr. Jennings, who guest hosted six weeks’ worth of shows, said he harbored no hard feelings about the outcome.“I knew ‘Jeopardy!’ was in a spot this year, and I mostly wanted them to have a smooth transition,” Mr. Jennings said. “I was not going to lobby for that job in the media, ever. I was not going to plant stories about what a promising young candidate I was. I wasn’t interested in doing any of that. I am a company man.”Marc Tracy More

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      ‘Ted Lasso’ Season 2 Episode 4 Recap: A Very Special Christmas Episode

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      It’s only a matter of time before the poster-board and markers come out …Season 2, Episode 4, ‘Carol of the Bells’Houston? We have a Christmas Episode.Here I’ve been, trying to convey the relatively subtle ways in which the second season of “Ted Lasso” differs from the first. And then, four episodes in, they give away the whole game. It’s not merely that they’ve produced a Christmas episode — albeit one airing in August — it’s that it’s an episode that, back in the day, would have been billed as a “Very Special Christmas Episode”: absurdly uplifting — even for “Ted Lasso”!—seasonally sweet, devoid of tension or discord, et cetera.This was the unfair knock on the first season of “Ted Lasso”: That it was too much about just making viewers feel good (as if that were a bad thing), and was unwilling to plumb deeper — which it actually did, mostly without making a big deal about it.Our newest episode, by contrast, is not merely a holiday episode, but a meta-holiday episode: an episode about holiday movies, and about one movie very much in particular. There are red herrings scattered about — you’ve got to love the “Christmas Story” leg lamp that Keeley unveils early on and the fractional glimpses of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But this episode is aiming at a much more specific target.Rebecca’s invitation to a Christmas party at Elton John’s may be the first obvious clue. Why, her Yuletide plans sound almost as awesome as those of a certain over-age rocker circa 2003.And then, about a third of the way in, we get the holiday calamity of Phoebe’s bad breath. “A boy at school was mean to me,” Phoebe explains, prompting perhaps the most terrifying interrogative in televisual history by her Uncle Roy: “What did he do?” (Roy’s subsequent “Where does Bernard live?” suggests a quite different, decidedly intriguing direction that the “Lasso” franchise might have taken.)Instead, we get a remarkably familiar London door-to-door mission by Roy, Keeley and Phoebe. They’re looking for oral-health assistance — this is perhaps the most American joke at the expense of Britain that “Ted Lasso” has yet allowed itself — but they might as well be Hugh Grant asking “does Natalie live here?”Yes, this is actually the “Very Special ‘Love Actually’ episode of ‘Ted Lasso.’ ” And while I have some exceptionally strong feelings about Richard Curtis’s quasi-amorous opus, I’ll keep them to myself for once. (Though I should probably note here that there is a prominent “Once” reference in the episode.)The commercially upbeat subplots that ensue fall as thick upon the ground as snow might have if it weren’t the middle of summer. Ted has his first FaceTime Christmas cut short by his son embracing the thrill of the new drone he’s acquired. But just as he begins pouring himself some sad, solo whiskey and watching an unshaven Jimmy Stewart at the end of his rope — boom! — Rebecca shows up with a sidewalk-tinsel greeting outside his window. Moments later, we get a busker singing “Last Christmas.” This is, I hope, as close as “Ted Lasso” will ever come to “Glee.”What follows is highly enjoyable television without any meaningful hint of conflict or adversity. The Higgins’s family Christmas — to which they always invite AFC Richmond’s far-from-their-families players — unexpectedly welcomes a crowd; Ted and Rebecca deliver absurdly oversized Christmas stockings to kids who sent Santa letters; and, as Roy announces to Phoebe and Keeley, “We’re going to my stupid posh neighborhood …. And if we don’t find a dentist in ten houses, you each get a thousand pounds.”And, because we all believe in Christmas miracles — or, at least in my case, Roy Kent-related miracles — they do indeed find a dentist, who has a treatment plan for Phoebe’s halitosis. Merry August 13.I would like to write “and it all ends (as it must) with some cue cards and markers.” But instead I need to write, “and it all almost ends (as it probably should have) with some cue cards and markers.”The “Love Actually” money shot is evidently not quite special enough for this Very Special Episode, so we need our occasional reminder that Hannah Waddingham, who plays Rebecca, is a musical-theater superstar, who offers a glorious street-side rendition of Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”Did I enjoy the episode? Absolutely. Does it make me worry for the future of “Ted Lasso”? Absolutely squared.Odds and EndsRoy’s admitting that he pooped his pants to a tween whose door he’s randomly ringed was a bit of a surprise. His turning it into a learning opportunity — “Let’s both try to knock it off, shall we? If you can do it, I can do it” — makes me want to be a better human being.“God bless me, everyone” — could Jamie Tartt possibly have found a more personally apt way of channeling the Christmas spirit?I continue to love Sam’s increased screen time. And what better way could there have been for him to capture the magic of Santa for one of Higgins’s boys than to explain his “true power is not his speed but his endurance”?This week’s pop-cultural references (in addition to the many already cited) included Paw Patrol, John Holmes(!), the Helter Skelter murders, and Rachel Weisz and Daniel “Double-Oh-Heaven” Craig. More

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      Modern Love Season 2: An Interview with Mary Elizabeth Williams

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      When Mary Elizabeth Williams got back together with her husband, she didn’t expect a cancer diagnosis — or for her story to inspire a television episode.In her 2014 Modern Love essay, “A Second Embrace, With Hearts and Eyes Open,” the writer Mary Elizabeth Williams tells the story of rekindling her marriage only to find out, shortly thereafter, that she had malignant melanoma. Suddenly, their future looked very different from their past.Miya Lee and I recently caught up with four writers whose essays inspired episodes in the second season of the “Modern Love” television series on Amazon Prime Video. Below is my conversation with Ms. Williams, whose episode stars Sophie Okonedo and Tobias Menzies. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.You can also read my interview with writer, actor and director Andrew Rannells (“During a Night of Casual Sex, Urgent Messages Go Unanswered”) and Miya Lee’s interviews with Katie Heaney (“Am I Gay or Straight? Maybe This Fun Quiz Will Tell Me”) and Amanda Gefter (“The Night Girl Finds a Day Boy”).Daniel Jones: Your essay was published seven years ago, and it was about events that took place years before that. Can you catch us up on where you are now with your marriage, your health and your family?Mary Elizabeth Williams: My husband and I are still together. One of our daughters is in high school and the other is in college. Like everyone else, we’re just coming out of a long period of enforced closeness in a small New York City apartment where one person is working in one space, one person is working a few feet away, someone else is doing band practice and someone else is doing college work. It was all chaotic.Over the past few years, we’ve had a lot of challenges and sorrows and difficult experiences involving our health and work and the health of loved ones. And it’s funny, because in the midst of feeling trapped over the past year, I still wake up in the morning and choose to be here with this person. Those moments of looking at someone and thinking, “Yeah, I’m here voluntarily” — maybe that’s not the sexiest thing to think about someone, but I also feel like it’s probably the most important.How does it feel to write about something so personal, even as a writer?The day I got my cancer diagnosis, I told very few people, and I even said to my husband, “I don’t think I’m going to share this because I don’t want it to change how people see me. That’s a bell I won’t be able to unring.”The next day I went to Sloan Kettering, and that night I wrote an essay called “My Cancer Diagnosis” that was published in the morning. So less than 48 hours after I got diagnosed, I published my first essay about having cancer. Clearly, I don’t know how to not talk about my life.What kind of cancer did you have?Metastatic melanoma. Melanoma is a cancer of the skin, which is very common. Metastatic melanoma is not. That’s when the cancer has moved into your organs. And the thing about melanin is you have it everywhere, so the cancer can go everywhere. When you get it, it can be rapidly fatal. Typically, at the point I got it, you had about seven months to live. My cancer had moved into my lungs and soft tissue. You could see it on my body.How was it treated?First I had surgery. That was before it had spread. I had a big circle taken off the top of my head. Then, a year later, I had a recurrence, and by then the cancer was spreading everywhere and moving really fast. That was the point when my oncologist said, “We’re recruiting for a clinical trial. You should talk to the people on the clinical trial floor.”They had just approved the first immunotherapy treatment for melanoma in over 30 years. To get accepted, I had to pass a bunch of tests; it’s really hard getting into clinical trials. It shouldn’t be. But I was fit and had a flexible schedule and met all of the requirements — you have to be sick but otherwise fit and not have done any other treatments. So I got into the trial, and I felt it working after the first treatment. I was cancer free the first time I got scans, 12 weeks later. And I’ve been cancer free for nine years.In talking about your successful experience with the clinical trial, do you worry about giving people false hope?I’m glad you brought that up. I am extremely aware that I am unusual. And I never want to give people false hope. I want them to have hope and to know there are options. But also, hope can be for different things, whether it’s in your relationship or your health, and sometimes you’re hoping for just a little more time. It’s like I always say: The mortality rate for being a human being is 100 percent. If you’re lucky, you can postpone that so you get more good stuff. And I hope you get to get more good stuff with the people you love and give them good memories and leave something better than you started it.What was the impact of publishing your essay in Modern Love?I got messages from so many people I hadn’t heard from in years, who didn’t know about the breakup, didn’t know I had been sick, didn’t know any of it, and were like, wow, you’ve really been through it. And then there was the response from readers who saw different parts of themselves — in the relationship, but particularly in the sickness, in that story of cancer. People seeing a love story of sickness that wasn’t gooey and sentimental.You and your husband never divorced; you separated. Did that make stepping back into the marriage easier?I guess if you look at it as stepping back, but I don’t. I look at it as stepping forward. That relationship ended. And what came next was different and new. For me, it was important to feel like I wasn’t going backward. This was about moving forward, about being in a different place in life and having different expectations and understanding and respect.I wanted to tell a story that was about the kind of tender and unique love you see when things are awful. Unsexy situations like when he has to go out and buy you stool softeners. That’s a unique kind of romance. I hope that for men who read it, they were able to see themselves — and see that being caring and nurturing and capable is the most loving gesture in the world.Daniel Jones is the editor of Modern Love. Mary Elizabeth Williams is the author of “A Series of Catastrophes and Miracles: A True Story of Love, Science, and Cancer” and a doctoral student of medical humanities at Drew University.Modern Love can be reached at modernlove@nytimes.com.To find previous Modern Love essays, Tiny Love Stories and podcast episodes, visit our archive.Want more from Modern Love? Watch the TV series; sign up for the newsletter; or listen to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify or Google Play. We also have swag at the NYT Store and two books, “Modern Love: True Stories of Love, Loss, and Redemption” and “Tiny Love Stories: True Tales of Love in 100 Words or Less.” More

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      Bad News for ‘Trump-Adjacent Weirdos’ Delights Seth Meyers

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      Meyers enjoyed seeing Mike Lindell get word on camera that a defamation suit against him over his claims of election fraud would proceed.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.Lawsuit TV, LiveOn Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that Dominion Voting Systems could proceed with its defamation lawsuits against Mike Lindell, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Seth Meyers called them “Trump-adjacent weirdos” and poked fun at their election fraud conspiracy theories on Thursday’s “Late Night.”“OK, so there are only two plausible explanations for what happened here: Either a federal judge appointed by Donald Trump ruled that unfounded claims of election fraud made by three Trump allies were not exempt from defamation laws, or Hugo Chavez teamed up with China and the C.I.A. to use Italian military satellites to hack the judge’s computer and alter his opinion, which was then printed out on paper smuggled in from China covered in bamboo fibers. The only way we can know for sure is if we take the judge’s ruling to a cabin in Montana, examine it under a powerful ultraviolet light, then bury it in the backyard, wait three days and see if it rains.” — SETH MEYERSMeyers and Stephen Colbert largely focused on Lindell, the MyPillow C.E.O., whose reaction to the news was caught on camera.“Watching someone get bad news, in real time, at their own symposium is my new kink.” — SETH MEYERS“This week, he held a livestreamed cybersymposium, for which he hired a cyberexpert ‘red team’ and gave them what he said was 37 terabytes of irrefutable evidence that hackers broke into election systems using intercepted ‘packet captures.’ ‘Packet captures,’ of course, is a technical term that you might know by their street name, ‘pillow cases.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Honestly, poor cyberexperts. You go to school to get a degree in computer science, spend your whole career mastering a highly specialized skill that would be actually very helpful in today’s high-tech economy, and then a psycho pillow magnate hands you what I’m guessing is a garbage bag full of dry cleaning slips and CBS receipts and said, ‘I need you to switch who the president is.’” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Today in Rudy Edition)“Rudy has also been sued by Dominion for a billion dollars. Now he’s facing a mountain of legal fees. That mountain’s in his apartment, right next to the mountain of empty Franzia boxes.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Man, I wish I could have seen Rudy’s face when he found out. And that’s something, because I’ve wished to see Rudy’s face.” — SETH MEYERS“On top of that, Rudy’s law license in Washington was suspended, and he was suspended from practicing law in New York due to ‘demonstrably false and misleading’ statements about the election — which means he’s cut off from his previous source of income: telling lies next to a dildo shop.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingIn honor of Jimmy Fallon’s 1,500th “Tonight Show” episode, Kit Harington gave the host something he’s been waiting for — a “straight-up” rendition of Train’s “Drops of Jupiter.”Also, Check This OutLou Platt’s work as a therapist on productions like “I May Destroy You” often starts before filming even begins.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesFilm and television productions in Britain have started bringing therapists on-set to offer counseling for the cast and crew members. More