Television

Last spring, the Israeli actress Shira Haas was undergoing a transformation in Berlin. Call it a crash course — with lessons in Yiddish, English, piano and voice — in playing Esther “Esty” Shapiro, a fiercely independent 19-year-old woman who escapes her cloistered Hasidic community in Brooklyn, in Netflix’s “Unorthodox.”The hard work won Haas praise. James Poniewozik, the chief television critic for The New York Times, called her “a phenomenon, expressive and captivating.”In another world, she would have ridden that high to the premiere of her latest movie, “Asia,” at the Tribeca Film Festival and the shooting of Season 3 of “Shtisel,” also on Netflix.Instead, Haas, 24, was sheltering at home in Tel Aviv and pondering the 10 things she doesn’t want to live without. Here are edited excerpts from a conversation about them.1. Nina Simone’s ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free’A friend without any connections to [“Unorthodox”] sent this to me a week or two before I flew to Berlin. I was so into the script already and was like, I can totally relate to it as Esty. I can hear it all the time, it’s such a moving song. And to listen to her doing this live is so powerful. And that song is just, yeah, my song of the year for sure.2. Female directorsTali Shalom-Ezer directed “Princess,” which was not only the first female director that I worked with, it’s also the first project I ever did. I was not yet 17, and it was completely new to me, this cinema world. I was so lucky to work with Tali because she was so sensitive, and she taught me so much, and she gave me so many new ways to see. She was a true inspiration obviously as an actress, but also as a role model. That’s why I mentioned the other directors I’ve worked with — Maria Schrader, Natalie Portman, Niki Caro and Ruthy Pribar. You know that they were running all these projects on their backs. I’ve worked with the most amazing men directors. I cannot complain for a second. But working with strong and talented women is, for me, something that leads to more awareness. The fact that we’re talking about this says that there’s not enough of that, right?3. MandalasA really good friend of mine is a big mandala maker, and a few years ago I was stressed and she was like: “You should make mandalas. I’ll teach you how.” Since then it’s like my meditation. It’s really only for my soul and for myself. I have a lot of them from the last years, and it’s interesting to see which mandala I made in what period, because there’s a lot of meaning in what you create.You take calipers, and the basic one is really just circles. Then you can do whatever you want. Sometimes I put pictures that I love, sometimes I paint, sometimes with pencils or pens or markers. I know lots of people think it needs to be symmetrical, but for me it’s always a big mess. You have the basic shape of it, so you do have rules — but you can break them.4. ‘The Sopranos’It came out when I was 4, so I did not watch it when it was aired. But it was one of the first series that really influenced me. I felt like I’m seeing cinema in my TV. The writing and the acting — I mean, brilliant. I think it affected me as an actress and the stories that I want to tell.I’m a Carmela person. I’m always attracted to the female strong part, so she’s my favorite for sure. But all of the characters, even though they’re talking about murders and criminals, you can really understand them and see their private life. And I think that’s the reason that I love it so much, because that’s how life is complex. In “Unorthodox,” you see a society that you don’t know, but you can understand the people. I’m not trying to say that we’re “The Sopranos.” But you see characters where, if you were to read about them in the news, you would be like, “Oh, this is awful.” But they really touch your heart.5. Chava AlbersteinShe is a singer and composer and a huge, huge symbol here in Israel. She’s been working for over 50 years. She has beautiful songs, and some of them are very old — what my parents and grandparents listened to. But every time I hear them, whether it’s her old songs or current songs, I always get emotional. And like with Nina, it’s not only that her songs are beautiful, but also how she presents the songs is so amazing. I feel like singing in a lot of ways is also acting. You cannot separate it.6. ‘Beware of Pity’ by Stefan ZweigIt’s a very hard core book about relationships, about connections, and the pity and mercy that the man has toward the woman because she’s disabled. It’s kind of a mirror to society’s face, and how our actions and words have consequences. It really touched me. I’m not an easy crier, not at all. But this book was one of the few moments that I found myself sobbing. It was a knife to my heart.7. PhotoshopI do it for fun, for friends, but sometimes it’s more like inspiration for my work and my roles. If I’m writing, for example, and I have this idea, I’m sometimes going to design it, to have pictures and references together and to make colors. It’s like a mood board, but it’s much crazier.8. Pawel Pawlikowski’s ‘Cold War’I told you before, I don’t usually cry. But I went to the cinema with a friend when it was just released, and I had tears in my eyes. It’s a story about history and about passion. I’d never felt such things. And the music and the soundtrack combined together with this cinematography — and even the makeup and the hairstyles — you can really see the emotional journey of the characters and the historical phases they’re going through. I felt like I’m seeing a masterpiece.9. Brené Brown on EmpathyA friend of mine sent this to me when we were 19. It’s less than three minutes, and I remember smiling the whole way through. It was so simple, but not a cliché. And it was so beautifully said and so accurate. I think it’s really helped me in my relations with others, and the difference between showing that you know something versus to just be. You should just listen. It’s a helpful thing for actors because when you’re working on a character, it is so important not to judge her but to really understand and have empathy for her. That’s the key, I think.10. Jérémy Comte’s ‘Fauve’It’s about a friendship between two kids that are playing together, and they have this perfect chemistry. I don’t want to spoil it too much, but it’s about one of them losing the other, and moving on. It’s so, so beautiful for the cinematography and the location and for the art. And I recommend people to see it right now in this time that we’re living. More

At last, proof positive: Kim is a much better liar than Jimmy.We know because as the pair try to win over a skeptical looking, handgun-packing, fish-tank tapping Lalo, it is Kim who proves a far more convincing, far nimbler fabricator. Lalo mentions the bullet holes he found in Jimmy’s car — which turn out to be the biggest holes in Jimmy’s story — and Kim instantly has a simple and plausible explanation.“Bullet holes?” she says, feigning astonishment. “That’s it?”They are no doubt the work of New Mexico’s legion of yahoos, she says, who will shoot at anything made of metal. Kim also serves as a character witness, telling Lalo that Jimmy is a man of integrity. The kind who doesn’t lie, she lies.Our favorite con man, it seems, has married a far more talented con woman. She doesn’t merely persuade Lalo. She admonishes him. For not having a better criminal enterprise, for not hiring more trustworthy minions.“No offense,” she says, “but you need to get your house in order.”It’s a nonviolent, psychologically fraught ending to an episode that is low on action and very interior. If the tale told here has a chewy center, it is the speech Mike gives to Jimmy about the ways that people choose a road, often based on a small decision, and then find it impossible to exit that road. This is a pretty fatalistic vision of life, and one to which Mike sincerely subscribes. With good reason. When he tried leaving his own road a few episodes ago, he wound up a depressed drunk with a death wish.Is Jimmy every bit as chained to his fate? Probably. By accepting a bag of cash in exchange for serving as Lalo’s mule, and by mentioning this mission to Kim, he has cast his lot with the Mexican cartel in a way that can’t be uncast.Nacho, certainly, is stuck on his road. Mike’s efforts to convince Fring to remove the gun he is pointing — at times literally — at the head of Nacho’s father comes to naught. Mike argues that Nacho delivered Lalo, as promised, and is due a chit. Fring is unmoved. He likens Nacho to a dog that bites all of his owners.For viewers, who know Nacho as both a criminal and a human with a soft spot for his father and for compulsive women, this seems unduly harsh. But all that Fring knows about the man is that he tried to kill his previous drug-lord boss, Hector Salamanca.Lalo, on the other hand, doesn’t worry much about his own fate. He makes bail, gets released and nears the Mexican border when it occurs to him that he should double check Jimmy’s desert escape story. Why he didn’t think of this before he arrived at the water well/meeting spot is unclear, and this actually gets to one of the more interesting conundrums for the writers of “Better Call Saul.”How smart, capable and menacing should Lalo be? It’s no fun if he’s dim or merely intelligent, right? What made the contest between Gus and Walter White so compelling in “Breaking Bad” is that each was trying to outsmart the other, and both were surpassingly devious. Their schemes and counter-schemes made them ideal enemies.So far, I’m not sure that the writers have invested Lalo with enough malignant gifts to serve as a Gus-worthy foil. He is charming, he is murderous, and he certainly can jump from high places and land on his feet (Into a ravine in this episode; out of the ceiling of a Travelwire last season.)But he’s always a step behind Gus. He was snowed about the meth superlab. He was manipulated into prison and later manipulated out of prison. This week, he jumped bail, just as Gus planned, and appears to be lamming it to Mexico, just as Gus planned. (Well, he was headed in that direction when last seen.) And as Kim snookered him in that living room showdown, Mike had the cross-hairs of a rifle pointed at Lalo’s chest.The point is that Lalo might need more game. As a fan of the show, and a fan of suspense, I kind of wish that Gus’s organization was now genuinely imperiled. It seems the worst Lalo can do, at present, is compel Gus to blow up his own restaurants. Which is bad.But there’s one episode left in this season. From which cliff are we currently hanging? Kim’s death appears off the table, at least for the time being. I sort of expected that by now Lalo would pose an existential threat to Gus Inc., and we would all be wondering if he was about to sic the Feds on the guy, or preparing to murder Gus, as counterproductive to the cartel’s interests as that might be.We still don’t know whether Lalo will be back for Season 6., though it seems likely given Jimmy’s brief reference to him in Season 2 of “Breaking Bad.” My wish: that he gets back to Mexico and then returns next year, with reinforcements and new ways to cause havoc. A lot more havoc.Odds and Ends:In addition to saving Jimmy’s life, Kim changes career paths in this episode. She’s had enough of the tedium of regulatory work on behalf of a growing regional bank, and she would like to become a public defender. This irks Jimmy, who is — as he has been at other moments — focused on the money. She’s undaunted.The woman has range. She even knows what kind of soaking bath cures a guy desiccated in the desert.So, Don Eladio was behind the attempted hijacking of Lalo’s $7 million in bail cash. At least, that is what Gus has concluded after talking to the elegant, even-tempered señor. The question is, why?Here’s why, according to Gus: “He was trying to protect his business by protecting our business.”All right, hive mind, let’s buy a vowel and solve this puzzle.My guess is that Eladio wants to scuttle the bail deal on the theory that keeping Lalo behind bars is good for Fring’s drug enterprise, and thus good for Eladio’s. It’s a fair assumption. As far as Eladio knows, Lalo has been nabbed by the police and is going to wind up, like his cousin Tuco, neutralized behind bars. Eladio doesn’t know that Lalo was causing huge problems for Fring while in jail. He certainly doesn’t know that Fring has a double agent in the cartel, and that Fring torched his own restaurant. Finally, Eladio doesn’t know that Fring orchestrated Lalo’s release.So Eladio hired some gangsters to steal the cartel’s own money, hoping to keep Lalo in the Big House.For Fring, what’s the end game here? Remember, he said that anything that happens to Lalo on this side of the border is his responsibility. So his plan is surely to let Lalo escape to Mexico and then kill him there, without raising any suspicions.Lalo is in a hurry to get home, unaware that home for him is now one of the most dangerous places on earth.What are you hoping to see in the finale? Share in the comments section.And remember, if anyone asks if you pushed your car into a ditch, the wrong answer — perhaps the worst answer — is “I don’t think so.” More

Stuck on a desert island or confined to a one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment, I will take the 15-year-old medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy” as distraction over any of its newer, shinier, more critically acclaimed, more endlessly dissected and meme-fueling competition.I’ve been onboard since 2007. The show’s creator, Shonda Rhimes, or its current showrunner, Krista Vernoff, could replace the lead character, Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), with an android: I have no desire to ever stop watching. The longevity of my emotional investment is partly the point. Nothing replaces the feeling — unique to television — of watching a show age in real time. And this one has remarkably held up.Besides the occasional tremor when a cast member leaves or acts out — or a pandemic prompts a season to end prematurely, as happened last week — series like “Grey’s” are often taken for granted. Yet the pleasures they dispense are both rare and very real. Here’s why I’m a fan.How I Discovered ItI embarked on my “Grey’s” journey around the middle of Season 4. “ER,” to which I was devoted, was in its penultimate season and running on fumes, and I must have been looking, consciously or not, for another prime-time drama focusing on adults rather than children or families. (The medical genre wasn’t a draw in itself: I never got into, say, “House,” and I didn’t even bother with the “Grey’s” spinoff “Private Practice.”)One night, I stumbled onto Seattle Grace Hospital, and I never left. I can’t remember the episode or why I was hooked — maybe it was an intriguing case, maybe it was a snarky exchange between Meredith and her “person,” Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh). No matter: I was back the following week and have remained loyal.Why I WatchIt’s not just inertia that has kept me hanging on. I have ditched other favorites, like “The Walking Dead,” many seasons in. But “Grey’s” has never flagged in brilliantly stitching together the personal, the professional and the soap-operatically outrageous. Of course, the show handles the medical side of the stories well, deftly balancing one-in-a-million cases with less colorful but just as dangerous illnesses. (It’s amazing how many people have been impaled by implausible objects over the years.)Yet operating-room action alone would not have kept me interested: I have stayed for the ever-changing permutations of horny doctors and to watch characters either settle into relationships or flamboyantly sabotage them. This is a series in which adults have adult concerns, but the impulse control of hormonal teens.The show has also never shied from hot-button issues (Meredith has recently become obsessed with the inequity of the American health-insurance system) or from addressing the moral and ethical quandaries of fallible doctors blinded by hubris, pigheadedness or lust.And all of this has unfurled with a matter-of-factly progressive approach to race (inclusive casting has always been a huge part of the appeal), sexual orientation and physical and mental disabilities — a tolerance woven into the show’s fabric rather than funneled into Very Special Episodes.Why I Keep Coming BackRenewal is built into the show’s DNA: Grey Sloan Memorial, as the hospital is now known, is a teaching institution, which means that new interns and consulting doctors arrive at regular intervals. They are put under observation, and the show either absorbs or rejects them, like a body with a transplanted organ. Established stars can’t sleep soundly either, and anybody can get walking papers overnight. When the powers-that-be killed off the dreamboat Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) in Season 11, ratings did not sink — and the show remains a hit for ABC.If you become overly attached to a character or a couple on “Grey’s,” chances are that at some point you will wind up either sobbing or furiously throwing objects at the wall. And you will keep watching because the show is uncommonly well-written and directed, even when the plot goes off the rails.What I Manage to OverlookLoving means tolerating flaws. “Grey’s” often deploys weapons of mass emotional manipulation that drive me crazy in other shows. I can’t stand sappy acoustic covers of pop songs, but when they play over patients being informed they are going to live or die, I start crying. Likewise, preternaturally perceptive children are my Kryptonite on all series except “Grey’s.” Perhaps this is because said kids are almost always patients, so they come and go fairly quickly. (Many of the doctors have offspring now, but they barely figure in the story lines.)Am I Prepared for When It’s Gone?As a rule, I accept that shows must end. In 2019, the ABC entertainment president Karey Burke said that she would keep the series going as long as Rhimes and Pompeo were game. Pompeo’s contract runs until Season 17, in 2021; she could well renew and renew and renew, until Grandma Meredith bosses around interns a third her age. I will tag along, even if it requires walkers for everybody involved. More