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      Engaging and Aging on ‘The Golden Bachelor’

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      Two members of The New York Times’s Culture section discuss how a twist on a decades-old reality series has become must-watch television.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.In August, Julia Jacobs visited a Mediterranean-style mansion in Agoura Hills, Calif., the backdrop of “The Golden Bachelor.” The show is a spinoff of the popular “Bachelor” reality TV franchise, with a surprising twist: Participants are at least 60 years old.“The show is coming at a time when there are expanding sensibilities around who is fit to fall in love on television,” said Jacobs, a Culture reporter for The New York Times who visited the set for an article about the reality dating series.In the show’s premiere on Sept. 28, viewers met Gerry Turner (pronounced Gary), a 72-year-old widowed retiree from Indiana looking for romance, and nearly two dozen women hoping to court him on national television. Their relationships unfold on-air every Thursday.Audiences seem to be loving it: The series premiere was the most watched debut for a “Bachelor” franchise season since 2021 and the most watched of any “Bachelor” premiere on the streaming platform Hulu.But it isn’t all coming up roses: Amanda Hess, a critic at large for The Times, wrote in a recent column about how the show portrays older women. The contestants, she noted, engage in stunts like riding a motorcycle to set and performing a “ludicrous” striptease involving a walker.“It celebrates older people, but only if they fit a very narrow image of youthful sexiness,” she said.In a recent conversation, Jacobs and Hess discussed the series’s multigenerational appeal and the ways it differs from past “Bachelor” seasons. This interview has been edited and condensed.Are you fans of “The Bachelor”?AMANDA HESS I’ve watched many seasons, and I’ve been saying for years that they should do a “Bachelor” with widows and divorcées. So I was excited to see this version.JULIA JACOBS I’m not a dedicated viewer, but I do really like writing about dating shows.Some readers may ask: Why is The Times covering this reality TV show?HESS It tells a story about how we see ourselves and how we see older people, how we see marriage and second marriage. It becomes an entry point for a conversation that I think our readers are interested in engaging with.JACOBS It was a huge topic of interest on social media, and even at a senior center in New Jersey, where I went to watch the first episode. For some people, the “Bachelor” franchise feels like the same old show — season after season — and this twist was injecting something new and worth talking about.Other than the age of the contestants, what sets this show apart from other versions of “The Bachelor”?HESS The stakes are so high because many of the women have been married before. Many lost their spouses. They know what marriage is like. That, to me, makes the show both more compelling and harder to watch.JACOBS There isn’t as much drama between the women. Typically you have a lot of women pulling each other out of dates like, “Can I grab him for a second?” But that doesn’t really happen here.HESS The drama is happening within each person.On a recent episode of “The Golden Bachelor,” contestants went to an amusement park for a date.John Fleenor/ABCWhy do you think this show is resonating with viewers across generations?JACOBS The discussions between Gerry and the women he’s dating are more substantive. These women have already lived six or seven decades. They have careers and families. This show does not define their lives. And I think that has allowed them to be a bit more free in their dialogue.HESS I’ve done several profiles of artists and celebrities who are in their 70s and 80s. People in their 20s are building their careers and their personas, but if you interview people who are older, they have already done that; they can tell you what they really think about how it all played out. And I think it’s similar for the women of “The Golden Bachelor.”Julia, a statistic that jumped out at me from your article was that the median viewer age for ABC, the network that airs the show, is 64. Why has it taken so long for a network to tap into dating shows for this demographic?JACOBS The producers said that this show had been in the works for 10 years. They didn’t have a clear answer as to why it had taken so long, but they said they felt as if it was coming at a time when they were seeing a lot of messaging about empowerment in aging. They mentioned Martha Stewart appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated and John Stamos posting a nude photo on Instagram for his 60th birthday.HESS The baby boomers are such a culturally dominant generation.JACOBS They’re certainly dominant in terms of cable viewership.Many of the contestants on “The Golden Bachelor” are retired professionals.John Fleenor/ABCWe’ve talked a lot about the show’s successes, but what about it doesn’t work for you?HESS I don’t enjoy seeing women at any age having to justify the way they look to men. If you’ve never watched “The Bachelor,” the first episode of “The Golden Bachelor” will seem like the most sexist, ageist thing you’ve ever seen; one of the women did this age-play striptease involving an “old” wig and dress, as if to say, Don’t worry, I’m not like those other old people!JACOBS I want to see more unfiltered interactions. You often hear Gerry and the women talk about their connection, but you don’t often see it in action. I’m interested in the mundane conversations about who they are, where they grew up and what their families are like.Anything else you want to add?HESS I’m curious if there’s going to be a “Golden Bachelorette.” I would love to see a group of older men.JACOBS That’s something we’ll definitely watch out for. Maybe that’s our next story. More

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      ‘Too Young for Me!’: A Senior Center Watches ‘The Golden Bachelor’

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      The commentary was sharp and the drinks were virgin at a watch party for the new dating show featuring singles between 60 and 75.After Zumba class wrapped up at the Oakland Senior Center on Friday, regulars gathered around a projector screen with mocktails and plates piled with cheese and crackers to watch the premiere of “The Golden Bachelor,” the reality franchise’s latest spin on its dating show formula.“I haven’t been a bachelor in 55 and a half years,” said John Nicolaysen, 88, one of the two dozen viewers gathered in this leafy New Jersey suburb. He wore his age proudly on a baseball cap: “Est. 1935.”The new show features daters in their 60s and 70s, centering on a mild-mannered 72-year-old man from Indiana named Gerry Turner, who is looking for love again after his wife died several years ago. Eager to generate buzz around the spinoff, ABC has helped to facilitate watch parties at retirement homes around the country, targeting a television audience — people over 60 — that has effectively become the core constituency for broadcast networks.This watch party, however, was homegrown.“I just fell in love with his laugh — and his blue eyes,” one senior center visitor said of Gerry Turner, 72, the show’s star. Craig Sjodin/ABCAs the center’s director, Arielle Preciado, arranged chairs for the incoming audience, she recalled the disapproval of some regulars when she screened a movie about 20-somethings falling in love. “Everybody was like, ‘No one wants to watch our grandchildren getting together!’” Preciado said.So when chatter about “The Golden Bachelor” reached her social media feeds, Preciado decided to organize a viewing in Oakland, where members of the Greatest Generation flocked to after World War II. The senior center now sees a few hundred visitors a week, offering exercise classes and free activities such as Mahjong and knitting.After attending the morning Zumba class on Friday, three girlfriends who met at the senior center more than a decade ago returned to the building for the 2 p.m. “Golden Bachelor” screening. (The premiere aired on ABC the previous night.)Their take on Turner, whose bronzed image has been plastered across billboards, buses and commercial breaks for weeks?“He’s too young for me!” Joanne Craw, 78, said.“Well, he’s right up my alley,” her friend Toni Pflugh, 68, replied. “Except I have a husband.”“I do, too,” their friend Chris Lill, 73, said, joking, “but we’re ready for a change after 50 years.”A scene of Turner putting in hearing aids was a relatable moment for some viewers.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesPflugh, once a devoted “Bachelor” viewer who fell out of the habit after getting tired of what she considered a lack of realism, hoped that this version would be different.As a beaming Turner greeted a cast of hopefuls in the premiere episode, the senior center crowd tittered at attention-getting strategies like riding up to the Bachelor Mansion on a motorcycle, groaning at the franchise’s wink-wink, nudge-nudge innuendo.The group of friends offered guesses on which women had “had work done,” while others simply watched silently. The room broke into gasps and cheers when one of the contestants shared that she was from Teaneck, N.J., a short drive down the highway.“She’s only 60, she’s a baby!” Pflugh called out as one contestant stepped out of a limo in a shimmering golden gown.“I need alcohol,” cut in Craw as she ventured out to the snack table.(She was joking: The senior center does not serve alcohol, so the best Craw could do was an “Orchard Spritzer,” a mixture of pear juice and sparkling white grape juice.)The watch party’s refreshments were nonalcoholic.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesAs the episode concluded with a preview of a season of flirtation, heartbreak and a heavy dose of messaging around aging and female empowerment, the reviews trickled in.“Not my cup of tea,” Nicolaysen said, though he found seeing Turner putting on hearing aids while getting ready relatable. He was certain his wife would ask him to turn it off at home.“I think reality TV is the downfall of civilization,” offered Vicki Wyan, 69, as her group of friends debated how “real” this reality show actually is.Linda Arns, 78, was far more charmed. “I just fell in love with his laugh — and his blue eyes,” she said of Turner.It was an innocent crush: Arns has been with her husband for more than 50 years. But she offered Turner some advice in case he decided to be married again: “Love is blind, but marriage is an eye-opener,” she said.“I think reality TV is the downfall of civilization,” said Vicki Wyan, 69.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesABC’s efforts to capture audiences are off to a decent start, with 4.4 million viewers watching the show the day it premiered, according to data from Nielsen.Not all of the singles at Oakland Senior Center bought its message, though. Sure, a “second chance at love” is good for some people, but what if their era of dating is simply over?“I couldn’t do it again; I had the best, so I really couldn’t do it again,” said Ann Bernhard, 84, who has been visiting the senior center since shortly after her husband died more than 20 years ago.Another widow, Marilu Irizarry, 78, was also thoroughly uninterested in joining the population of older single women searching for love — either on television or in real life.“I don’t know,” she said, looking around at the other women sitting at her table. “Maybe just a good friendship.”John Koblin More

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      On ‘Golden Bachelor,’ Looking for Love and a Pickleball Partner

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      The latest “Bachelor” spinoff stars singles who are 60 and older, a largely ignored demographic in the ever-growing world of dating shows.Drivers in Los Angeles heading north on La Cienega Boulevard these days might notice a bronzed gentleman smiling down at them from billboards poised on either side of the street.He is Gerry Turner, an Indiana retiree who used to work in the food distribution industry. But as one of the billboards explains, those were not the qualifications that led to his becoming the star of the newest “Bachelor” spinoff.“He’s hot. He’s sexy. He’s 72.”The appraisal was taken from a recent headline about Turner, who as the first “Golden Bachelor” is the center of a new spin on the franchise that features singles 60 and older.“This is certainly the first time in a ‘Bachelor’ campaign that we used a quote from AARP in our billboards,” said Shannon Ryan, who oversees the show’s marketing.That “The Bachelor” is trying a slight variation on a tested formula is no revelation. The show’s myriad spinoffs have included “The Bachelorette,” “Bachelor in Paradise,” “The Bachelor” in Canada, “The Bachelor” in wintry weather, “The Bachelor” with a cash prize, and “The Bachelor” featuring people who work in the music industry.But in all of those variations on the theme, most of the eligible singles have been young, fresh-faced 20- or 30-somethings looking to marry for the first time. In “The Golden Bachelor,” which premieres on Thursday, the nearly two dozen women vying for Turner’s attention are between 60 and 75 and include divorcées, widows, mothers and grandmothers.Sitting in the show’s Mediterranean-style mansion in Agoura Hills, Calif., last month, a few hours before an evening of filming began, Bennett Graebner, one of the showrunners, recalled the new cast’s giddy introduction to the lavish home, with its infinity pool and Jacuzzis that look out onto the tree-dotted hills.At first, he said, the contestants’ reactions were similar to the ones he has seen over his 15 years as a producer for “The Bachelor.”“They ran around and looked at their bedrooms and yelled off the balcony, and we said, ‘OK, this feels like “The Bachelor,”’” Graebner said. “And they came down to the kitchen and had mimosas and they were doing toasts, and we said, ‘OK, this feels like “The Bachelor.”’”“And then,” he went on, “one woman said, ‘Let’s toast to Social Security!’”He hadn’t heard that one before.With “The Golden Bachelor,” ABC is recognizing that a core segment of its audience — the network’s median viewer age is 64 — has thus far been largely ignored in the ever-growing array of dating shows. (The median age drops to 42 for ABC shows streaming on Hulu.)In recent years, some programs have experimented with older participants, though not on this level and not with much success.In Netflix’s “Dating Around,” Leonard, a 70-year-old private investigator, became a fan favorite.NetflixIn “Dating Around,” Netflix’s first original dating series, which had its debut the year before “Love Is Blind” became a global phenomenon, the fan favorite was Leonard, a 70-year-old private investigator. On his dinner dates, he reminisced about doing LSD in his younger years and danced the Lindy Hop with one woman on the sidewalk.Last year, executive producers behind the popular dating show “Love Island” introduced a new show called “My Mom, Your Dad” on HBO Max, in which college-age adults watched their parents dating each other from a secret viewing room. The show didn’t last long, but an adaptation in Britain called “My Mum, Your Dad” just had its finale.And then there’s “MILF Manor” on TLC, in which eight mothers in their 40s, 50s and 60s found themselves at a Mexican hotel in a dating pool that consisted of their adult sons.Howard Lee, the president of TLC, said that “MILF Manor” intrigued the network because of its age bracket, which stuck out from the deluge of dating show pitches he gets featuring people in their 20s and 30s.“For the first time, this was a series that didn’t go in that direction,” he said. “MILF Manor” had a viral moment on social media — partly driven by its similarity to a “30 Rock” gag — but it is not yet clear whether it will get a second season.With “The Golden Bachelor,” in which the participants are as young as 60, the idea is getting its tryout in an altogether different league. After more than two decades, “The Bachelor” franchise remains a reality juggernaut, and “The Golden Bachelor” will be one of ABC’s biggest releases this fall, in part because of the network’s narrowed list of offerings during the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes.If “The Golden Bachelor” succeeds, expect more opportunities to arise for senior singles to look for love on television.The showrunners said a broader cultural shift toward embracing, rather than hiding, aging helped pave the way for this show.“Martha Stewart is on the cover of Sports Illustrated at 80 or so years old,” said Jason Ehrlich, one of three “Golden Bachelor” showrunners. “John Stamos was posting photos of himself in the shower nude for his 60th birthday. There seems to be a moment where there’s an appetite for this.”“Bachelor” producers have been talking about a show like this for about a decade. Their efforts to make it a reality started in earnest in 2019, and they began circulating ads to recruit “seniors looking for love” in 2020. But Covid-19 put the idea on hold. (“This is not the show to make in the middle of a pandemic,” Graebner said.)In “My Mom, Your Dad,” college-age adults watched from a secret viewing room as their parents go on dates with one another.MaxWhen the producers returned to the concept earlier this year, they rediscovered Turner’s audition tape. In it he explains that he is ready to find another partner after losing his wife of 43 years, whom he met in high school, to a sudden infection.In an interview, Turner, a father and grandfather, said he is “very, very grateful, not just for myself but for people my age, that this show has been developed and it has come to reality.”The women of “The Golden Bachelor” brought into the mansion a certain self-assured humor that comes with age, the show’s producers said. For example, the cast debated for days whether it was Susan’s meatballs or Edith’s guacamole that gave the house gas. And in Thursday’s premiere episode, when one of the women steps out of the limousine and greets Turner she opens with one thing they both have in common: hearing aids.The women’s fun facts include that Christina’s first concert was the Beatles in 1964 and that Kathy is “OBSESSED” with Christmas. Several of the participants, including Turner, share an enthusiasm for pickleball. And some of the women also have long careers behind them; Marina, 60, has three master’s degrees.“When we cast for the other shows, some of the younger kids come to us and they have a feeling that they need to present a version of themselves that we want to see,” said Claire Freeland, the third “Golden Bachelor” showrunner. “These women were just themselves from the jump.”When dating shows have included older people in the past, it has often been as a kind of gimmick. The original “Dating Game,” which premiered in 1965, once brought on Kathryn Minner, an actress who was known for playing the “little old lady” characters on TV, movies and, most famously, in an ad campaign for Dodge vehicles.“The Bachelor” has always been fond of puns and stunts, and the golden edition is likely to have plenty of age-related bits. In the mansion, there is a supply of Werther’s Originals — just like in your grandmother’s living room — and the show’s promo introducing the female contestants includes footage of a woman cleaning her glasses and another slipping on pantyhose, to the tune of “Believe” by Cher.But the producers have tried to let the age-related humor be driven by the participants themselves.“We’re never laughing at them, but we are certainly laughing with them,” Ehrlich said. He said he studied the sitcom “The Golden Girls” to find interesting conversation topics to pull out if things get dull.The showrunners insist that this is not just a show for the older viewers of “The Bachelor,” about 43 percent of whom are 55 and older, according to a 2020 YouGov poll.They think “The Golden Bachelor” has the potential to bring generations together to watch a more-wholesome version of the franchise. They also hope that a different kind of cast can entice lapsed “Bachelor” fans back into the fold and bring in new audiences who might have turned their noses up at the brand before now.The ads, for example, won’t have the typical reality show snippets of screaming-and-crying dramatics, opting instead for more uplifting messaging, said Ryan, the president of marketing for Disney Entertainment Television, which includes ABC.Even Eileen Zurbriggen, a feminist social psychologist who has argued in her research that dating TV shows like “The Bachelor” are actively harming young viewers’ capacity to start healthy relationships, in part by strengthening the perception of dating as a kind of game, said she saw potential for the show to work against gender clichés.“It is refreshing, in a culture that is still so youth obsessed, to see older women presented as interested in sex and still sexually desirable,” Zurbriggen said.April Jayne, who appeared on the dating show “MILF Manor,” said a cultural shift around aging has allowed her to embrace being 61 in her career rather than hide it.TLCApril Jayne, an actress, singer and fitness trainer who was one of the contestants on “MILF Manor,” said she spent much of her acting career hiding her age. Now at 61, she is seeing more work opportunities than ever before since her reality TV appearance.“Once you hit middle age, it does not mean you’re washed up,” Jayne said, though she noted that the 40-year age gap between her and the young man she was dating on the show was perhaps a bit too large.By the way, she added, if ABC happens to be casting for a “Golden Bachelorette,” she is interested and available.Callie Holtermann contributed reporting. More

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      ‘Live With Kelly and Mark’: Till Death (or Cancellation) Do They Part

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      At the start of the Feb. 16 episode of the ABC morning talk show “Live With Kelly and Ryan,” before the actress Camryn Manheim demonstrated her knowledge of American Sign Language, before Ryan Seacrest and the show’s resident D.J. competed in a game called “Love Songs,” the show’s host Kelly Ripa made an announcement: Seacrest, who had hosted with her for six years, would soon be departing. His replacement? “My husband, Mark Consuelos, in what Ryan and I are calling the nation’s weirdest social experiment.”“Live,” which began in 1988 as “Live With Regis and Kathie Lee,” hosted by Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford, has always depended, as its executive producer Michael Gelman told me, on the illusion that the hosts are a married couple who have invited some unusually glamorous friends over for morning coffee. He referred to the hosts — any hosts — as “this faux husband-and-wife, only they’re better looking and smarter and more vivacious than your normal neighbors,” he said.But Ripa and Consuelos (“Riverdale,” “Alpha House”) are actually husband and wife. They’ve been married for over 27 years. “That’s 270” in showbiz years,” Ripa joked. What would it mean when Take Your Husband to Work Day was suddenly every day? What would it mean to perform your marriage for millions of households?“I can’t wait to watch,” Seacrest said back in February, grinning widely.Ripa said she doesn’t believe her chemistry with Consuelos on “Live” is anything special. “It is my job to make sure my partner looks good at all times, no matter who my partner is,” she said.Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesI visited the show on the first two mornings of the couple’s first full season together, in early September, about five months after Consuelos’s debut. There was no picket line to cross; the show does not employ Writers Guild members. Six cameras — three stationary, three roving — captured Ripa’s sleek blowout, her husband’s impossibly white teeth. This far into Consuelos’s tenure, their rhythms and repartee were established. She was the giddy cheer captain, a glammed up version of, as she put it, “a simple girl from New Jersey.” He was the hunky straight man.I wanted to know, as far one can ever know these kinds of things when it comes to unscripted television, just how much of this was for the many cameras and how much spoke to their real relationship. Marriage, after all, is another kind of performance, with each spouse filling what is hopefully a complementary role. These two seem better at that act than most. Where did the act end? Did it end?The first time Ripa and Consuselos pretended to be a couple was in 1995, during a chemistry read for the ABC soap “All My Children.” Ripa was already a star of the show, playing the party girl turned private investigator turned cosmetics chief executive Hayley Vaughan. Consuelos was auditioning to play her new love interest, Mateo Santos. The two actors had met in the rehearsal hall the day before, Ripa’s hair in giant curlers.“Are you sure you want this job?” she asked him. She gestured to a blob of toothpaste she had applied to a pimple. “Look what they do to you.”Consuelos did want the job. He and Ripa wanted each other, too. They were married, secretly, in Las Vegas, a year later and had their first child a year after that. Hayley and Mateo enjoyed a somewhat more eventful relationship: kidnapping, bigamy, arson, near death and at least one alternate personality. In 2002, in a soap-imitating-life move, their characters were written off, with Hayley moving across the country to host a talk show.In reality, the couple remained a quick cab ride from the ABC studios, with Ripa having joined Philbin as the co-host of what became “Live With Regis and Kelly,” a cozy, upbeat robe-and-slippers hour. But even off the soap, the couple’s onscreen lives remained intertwined, with Consuelos guest hosting “Live” nearly 100 times. They were familiar figures at galas, on red carpets, in the pages of glossy magazines, posting sultry pictures of each other on Instagram, rendering a relationship for the camera.Michael Gelman, a longtime executive producer of “Live,” said that the show has always depended on the illusion that the hosts are a married couple who have invited some glamorous friends over. Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesPhilbin retired in 2011, replaced eventually by Michael Strahan. After Strahan left in 2016 for “Good Morning America,” abruptly and amid tensions that have since been publicized, Ryan Seacrest took up the branded coffee mug. Last year, when Seacrest decided that he would soon move on, his heir was apparent.On the Tuesday after Labor Day, Consuelos, in a sweater tight enough to outline each pec, strode onto the living room set as though it were his second home. Which in a way, it is.Ripa, glamorous in a Barbie-pink dress, shared vacation photos and teased Consuelos about his workout habits, mentioning a recent ice bath. “He looked like a frozen margarita,” she told the audience.Consuelos didn’t mind the ribbing. He teed up punchlines for her. She finished his sentences. During a trivia segment, “Stump Mark,” Consuelos evaluated the truth value of a caller’s statements with terrifying seriousness. Ripa, who joked with me that her husband has “resting dictator face,” teased him for this, too.On one episode they did a segment that involved several team building exercises. “Trust falls and blindfolds? It’s like being at home,” Ripa said wickedly.“We know how to compartmentalize,” Ripa said of keeping certain elements of her and Consuelos’s personal and professional lives separate.Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesReally? Ripa thought so. “The version of us at home is very similar to the version you see on TV,” she said. “But we look nice and we sound good.” This was during a post-show chat on the following day in their actual home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. After the show, wardrobe changes and a few extra segments, a sleek, S.U.V. had spirited the couple from an ABC loading bay across Central Park to their townhouse.Ripa’s brand has always been one of extreme relatability. This house, with its imposing facade and marble interiors, was not quite so approachable, but it was somehow familiar. The living room where we sat (beige furniture, gold accents, light like poured honey) was more luxurious than the TV version but still hewed closely to it. Figuring out which was the simulacrum made my head hurt. Especially because offscreen the couple still sounded good. And they still looked nice, even as Ripa swabbed off her photo shoot makeup with a series of wet wipes.“I’m slowly melting back into myself,” she said, removing a false eyelash.That self seemed very like the TV one. She held her body more loosely, it’s true, and her manner was arguably more subdued, as was Consuelo’s. They do keep some things private, they assured me.“Talk about 401ks or wills, discussions we’ve had about passing things on, you wouldn’t want to watch that,” Consuelos said. Whether this had more to do with self-protection or audience savvy wasn’t quite clear.Their time in the soap, particularly that first year, when their relationship was a secret, has taught them not to let everyday worries or arguments bleed into airtime. “We know how to compartmentalize,” Ripa said.Friends and colleagues say that Consuelos and Ripa aren’t essentially different in real life from their onscreen personas. Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesEven so, colleagues confirmed that there wasn’t a lot of daylight between Ripa and her “Live” persona. The same went for Consuelos. Seacrest said that occasional obscenities were the only difference.“A few vocabulary choices are made, but the essence of their humor and their relationship is what we get every morning,” he said.The TV personality Andy Cohen, a longtime friend, agreed. “What they’re portraying onscreen is a natural extension of themselves,” he said. “For two people in this business, which can be so divisive, they really are such a unit together. And it really shines through in everything they do.” He added that for a long married couple, “they’re very hot for each other.”Between them is a palpable attraction, evident both on the “Live” set and back at home, as Ripa rested her bare feet against Consuelos’s thigh and I wondered if I should leave the room for a while. But Ripa doesn’t believe that the chemistry she and Consuelos share on “Live” is anything special.“I just know that as a co-host of a show, it is my job to make sure my partner looks good at all times, no matter who my partner is,” she said.Still, that chemistry helped make the choice of Consuelos an easy one for network, not so much for the couple, who delayed accepting the offer for months. Consuelos, who was finishing a seven-season stint on “Riverdale,” wondered if people would take him seriously as an actor once he was established as a permanent morning show fixture. There was also the more nebulous worry that he might be perceived as a nepotism hire.“I may have had a flash of, What is this going to look like?” he said.Ripa had her own concerns. For a woman who delights in jokes, she is wholly serious about the job and the comfort she believes it brings. She mentioned mothers struggling to breastfeed, patients undergoing chemotherapy, residents of nursing homes. These people, she insists, are the show’s audience. “There’s a lot of people that are counting on us to make them feel better,” she said.For a long married couple, “they’re very hot for each other,” the TV personality Andy Cohen, a longtime friend, said.Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesThat felt like a lot of responsibility for one couple. “We don’t want to be the people that ruin television,” she said.So far, television — or at least the narrow tranche of unscripted television not subject to contract negotiations — seems fine. Which isn’t a surprise. Consuelos was hardly an unknown quantity and if he has had to acquire a few more skills — intros, outros, how to pause an interview just before a commercial break — he has acquired them quickly. And ratings are steady, which means that the experiment, which was never especially weird, is a success.Gelman had told me that the other secret of the show, other than the faux husband-and-wife act, is the enjoyment that the hosts take in each other. “The audience knows when you’re having a good time versus when you’re faking it,” he said.If Ripa and Consuelos are faking it, no one can tell. Not me. Maybe not even the couple themselves. In their presence, the continuum of reality and performance, life and “Live,” felt as slippery as some very expensive skin care serum. It slid through my fingers every time. The easy banter that Ripa and Consuelos trade onscreen, they kept it going during the commercial breaks, as they accepted hugs and gifts from audience members. They kept it going at home.On the first day I visited the set, after the blindfold bit, the show ended. The cameras stopped rolling. The microphones cut out. Their work was done. But Consuelos and Ripa stayed in their seats, heads bent close together, still chatting. More

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      Fall TV Reflects the Hollywood Strikes, but Not How You Think

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      The tired familiarity of the reality-heavy network schedules is a reminder of the issues that led to the work stoppages.Fall TV this year rolls in amid the fog of the writers’ and actors’ strikes. The networks have been slow to commit to their schedules, still rejiggering their lineups for September and beyond. Cable outlets have been bumping the release dates of in-the-can shows, lest they wither without promotion by their stars, an activity prohibited by the actors’ guild during the strike. The streaming archives beckon.At first glance the fall network schedules suggest the work stoppages have had an impact: They are overstuffed with reality competitions and game shows, whose employees generally work under different contracts from those of the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA.ABC’s Wednesday prime-time lineup consists of “Celebrity Jeopardy!” followed by “Celebrity Wheel of Fortune” followed by “The $100,000 Pyramid.” On Thursdays CBS added a new competition called “Buddy Games” to go along with the long-running “Big Brother” and another installment of “The Challenge: USA.” On Fox, celebrities endure military training on Mondays (“Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test”), guess songs on Tuesdays (“Celebrity Name That Tune”) and croon in ridiculous outfits on Wednesdays (“The Masked Singer”).However, aside from “Buddy Games,” essentially summer camp competitions for groups of adult friends, none of the shows in the previous paragraph are new — the networks have been churning out unscripted prime-time shows by the bushel for years. Overall, their lineups are eerily steady, more like an extended summer season of familiar titles and reruns than an uncharacteristically barren fall slate.So the schedules end up reflecting the strikes not because they look radically different, but because their numbing sameness is a reminder of the issues that led to the work stoppages — that everything is simply “content,” and the only kind of value is monetary value.Jesse L. Martin and Maahra Hill in NBC’s “The Irrational,” one of the few new scripted series arriving this fall.NBCWhat are we to assume about the studios’ feelings toward the people who make television when their offerings suggest apathy regarding the people who watch it? Or perhaps these lackluster lineups are the product of corporate strategy, now that seemingly all of TV has been consolidated within a few media megaliths that are transforming how shows get made and creators get paid.It is little wonder ABC is happy to offer up singing contests and celebs spinning the Wheel when Disney, its owner, would like you to subscribe to Hulu and Disney+ for scripted family and prestige shows along with franchise fare like the Marvel and “Star Wars” series. CBS? Oh, you mean the broadcast home of the Viacom empire, where you can also watch repeats of Paramount+ shows like “FBI True” and “Yellowstone?”(This shift isn’t limited to networks, of course. Think not of HBO as a refined tastemaker in a separate TV universe from home-makeover shows and insects pulled from people’s bodies — imagine instead an array of treasures and garbage and the “Friends” catalog all piled up under one meaningless heading: Max.)This is hardly the first fall to be full of reality shows. ABC was always going to air another season of “Dancing With the Stars” (this will be its 32nd); NBC was always going to air “The Voice” (Season 24); CBS was always going to air “Survivor” (45) and “The Amazing Race” (35); and Fox has slotted “Hell’s Kitchen” (22) in its fall line-up plenty of times. Even though the CW is largely ceding any claim to original programming, opting instead to fill out its fall schedule with an array of existing foreign shows, it is still airing new episodes of its version of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?,” which begins its 12th season in November.NBC is spreading out the reruns of the “Law & Order” and “Chicago” franchises, its reliance on the Dick Wolf universe a core programming strategy for much of the past three decades. ABC will keep “America’s Funniest Home Videos” alive until the sun eats the earth. Fox’s animated comedies are shelf stable for the time being.Even most of the new fare colors comfortably inside the lines. ABC’s “Golden Bachelor” is “The Bachelor” with a 71-year-old widower at its center. NBC has two scripted dramas: “The Irrational” and “Found,” each a spin on the crime procedural, lest any American go more than a few minutes without seeing someone ducking under yellow crime-scene tape. Fox has a new cartoon from Dan Harmon (“Krapopolis”), his third current animated series. CBS is airing the original British version of “Ghosts” as a companion to reruns of its American version — an inspired choice in its way, but also a simple one, given the adaptation’s success.Otherwise, our newcomers include the already mentioned “Buddy Games,” hosted and executive produced by Josh Duhamel, who previously made two movies based on the same concept, and two CBS game shows: “Lotería Loca,” hosted by Jaime Camil, a TV version of the bingo-style game lotería; and “Raid the Cage,” an adaptation of an Israeli show that involves people grabbing prizes out of a cage. Lastly, there is Fox’s “Snake Oil,” a hybrid of “Shark Tank” and “Bullsh*t,” hosted by David Spade.From left, Charlotte Ritchie, Katy Wix and Jim Howick in the original British “Ghosts,” which CBS will run alongside reruns of its own version.Monumental Television, via CBSTo be fair, the networks have been counted out many times before, and shows like ABC’s “Abbott Elementary,” which scored eight Emmy nominations in July, and “Ghosts” demonstrate that there is still plenty of fun and specialness to be had in a broadcast format. Those and other sitcoms and procedurals could be back with new episodes in the new year. (Or perhaps even earlier, if the strikes somehow get resolved soon.) But such sparks are rare.Way back in the early 2000s, premium cable shows began to mostly outshine network ones and plenty of streaming series have since done the same — winning awards, amassing cachet, draining our wallets. Fair enough! After a while, it seemed like the networks were barely putting up a fight; cop shows and singing competitions as far as the eye can see, plus “Grey’s Anatomy” and “The Simpsons.”But now the new flashy ride at the fair is not a pricier, fancier platform; it’s free, ad-supported streaming television. The increasing popularity of these platforms, like the Roku Channel, Tubi, Pluto and Amazon’s Freevee, suggests that viewers want to recreate the basic-cable experience of yesteryear with marathons of classics, but they also want fun and interesting original shows (Freevee’s “Jury Duty” got four Emmy nominations this year, including for best comedy) and are happy to tolerate ads. That’s a network television audience.That also means networks could occupy a different space in the public imagination — the main floor isn’t the penthouse, but hey, it’s not the garden unit or the storage basement either. Mass-appeal comedies and long-season dramas still have value in the streaming era, perhaps more now than ever before as a way to lure parents and children away from their individual screens.Maybe a fall of game shows will eventually alienate viewers and consequently, convince program executives of the worth of actual creativity. Maybe it will lead to more adventurous attitudes in Hollywood when the strikes eventually end. Maybe the next time the networks have to put things on hold, we will actually feel the loss. More

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      Carol Duvall, a TV Queen of Crafting, Dies at 97

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      On Michigan television and then on national shows, she showed viewers how to make all sorts of decorative and practical items. The responses she got could be moving.Carol Duvall looked at the plastic foam trays that meat or vegetables come packaged in and saw picture frames. To her, “rock, paper, scissors” wasn’t a children’s game; it was a list of what you needed to make a personalized gift for someone to place on the mantel or in the garden.Ms. Duvall encouraged countless television viewers to make their own picture frames, greeting cards, place mats, jewelry, Christmas decorations and more, first in Michigan and then nationally through programs on ABC and HGTV.Newspapers called her the queen, or sometimes the empress, of crafting. Some of her fans called her a savior of sorts, the person who showed them a skill that they turned into a business, or who gave them something constructive to do while going through chemotherapy or recovering from surgery.Ms. Duvall, host of “The Carol Duvall Show,” which ran on HGTV for more than a decade, died on July 31 in Traverse City, Mich. She was 97.Rita Ann Doerr, who had been married to her son Michael and accompanied her to many public appearances, confirmed her death, at an assisted living complex that had been Ms. Duvall’s home for several years.Ms. Duvall was on television from the medium’s earliest days. She told The Detroit Free Press in 1997 that in 1951, living in Grand Rapids, Mich., she turned up at a tryout for WOOD-TV, Michigan’s first television station outside of Detroit, and won a spot on a show for children called “Jiffy Carnival.” She said that her father was surprised when she showed him her first paycheck, for $5 — he had thought that she would have to pay the station to be on television.The company that owned the station also owned a radio station, and Ms. Duvall was soon a frequent presence on both. In 1962 she moved to WWJ-TV of Detroit, where she hosted “Living,” a morning show. Two years later the station asked her to fill a five-minute gap between a travel show and the evening news, but didn’t give her much guidance.“I did anything I could possibly think of” to fill the time, she told the Knight Ridder News Service in 1999. She would talk about books she’d read or movies she’d seen. And occasionally, she would try to demonstrate some crafty thing she remembered from childhood, like making a yarn doll.“Every time I did something like that, I just got tremendous response,” she said. “So I started making stuff. I didn’t know what I was doing.”“I’m not a crafter who got on television,” she added. “I’m a television person who got into crafting.”She did those bits for 14 years, then retired, or so she thought. In 1988, when ABC was starting a daytime show called “Home,” a producer remembered her and persuaded her to do crafting segments on the new show, which aired until 1993.In 1994 she joined the new HGTV network with “The Carol Duvall Show,” which lasted more than 1,000 episodes, winding down in 2005. She was also featured regularly on the Lifetime Network shows “Our Home” and “Handmade by Design.”The crafts she demonstrated were things anyone could do. She began a picture frame project by cutting the bottom from a plastic foam tray and covering it in colorful fabric. A homemade greeting card was livened up with a butterfly design complete with bits of wire for antenna. Her 2007 book, “Paper Crafting With Carol Duvall,” includes a “Rock, Paper, Scissors” chapter: Find a smooth stone, cut up some colorful paper or family pictures with scissors, and glue them on the rock.Her show often featured guest crafters with a particular expertise — in stenciling, for instance, or coffee can creations.“Her interview skills brought out the very best in every guest artist and designer that appeared on the show,” Cherryl Greene, her assistant and producer on many shows, said in a written tribute.In the days before Etsy, Ms. Duvall’s HGTV show helped spread the gospel of crafting.“What she’s done is bring crafting into the realm of the mainstream,” Don Meyer, a spokesman for the Hobby Industry Association, told The Stuart News of Florida in 2003 on the occasion of her HGTV show’s 1,000th episode.In interviews over the years, Ms. Duvall told of fans who said they had built businesses that enabled them to feed their families based on craft-making they had learned from her show. She was especially moved, she said, by fans who told her that her shows had helped them while recovering from illness or surgery, or had simply given them the confidence that they could do something creative.Ms. Duvall’s appeal was that viewers could identify with her, Ms. Doerr said, especially when she bungled something on the air and cracked her and her guest up.“She was so approachable and natural,” Ms. Doerr said in a phone interview. “She would laugh at herself.”Carol-Jean Reihmer was born on Jan. 10, 1926, in Milwaukee to Leo and Alice (Davies) Reihmer. When she was 11, the family moved to Grand Rapids.She studied theater for a time at Michigan State University and remained interested in it; a 1953 article in The Lansing State Journal mentioned that she was appearing in a summer theater production of “The Glass Menagerie” in Grand Rapids.By then she was already on local television. The new medium was something of a mystery back then, even in her own home.“I was on the air a whole year before we even had a television set in our house,” she told The Free Press in the 1997 interview. “Nobody even knew what I did when I left the house.”In 1972 she published her first book, “Wanna Make Something Out of It?”Ms. Duvall’s marriage to Carl Duvall, in 1945, ended in divorce. Her son Michael died in 2011. She is survived by another son, Jack; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.Though Ms. Duvall attracted fans whenever she made public appearances, on one occasion, at least, she was surprised by her own celebrity. In the summer of 1997 she was at a TV critics convention in Pasadena, Calif., when the actor Dennis Franz of “NYPD Blue,” then one of ABC’s top shows, came up and shook her hand. She thought he’d mistaken her for someone else and told him who she was.“Oh, Carol, you don’t have to introduce yourself to me,” Mr. Franz said. “You’re in my kitchen every morning.” More

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      ‘Abbott Elementary’ and the Joys of Living Outside the Main Edit

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      The sitcom has tweaked the mockumentary formula to teach an invaluable lesson about the value of life off-camera.There is a scene, early in the second season of ABC’s “Abbott Elementary,” that neatly captures some most contemporary questions about the power and ubiquity of video. Teachers at Abbott, a public elementary school, are in their lounge, watching something alarming. A charter-school company has been running what’s essentially an attack ad against them, featuring unflattering video clips of them on the job. As they process seeing themselves eviscerated onscreen, a question hovers over the proceedings like chalkboard dust: How did the charter school obtain this footage in the first place? The answer comes from the school’s principal, Ava Coleman, who explains that she welcomed in the interloping camera crew — because she had a hard time telling them apart from the regular camera crew, the one supposedly filming the show we’re watching.“Abbott Elementary,” now reaching the close of its second season, is a mockumentary sitcom; its narrative frame involves the production of a documentary about “underfunded, poorly managed public schools in America.” The teachers are used to being filmed, if not always happy about it. (Ms. Schemmenti, the resident South Philly toughie, turns on the regular crew: “See, this is why I never trusted any of youse! Now get the cameras out of my face before I give you a colonoscopy with it.”) They have been subject to a classic sitcom trope, the misunderstanding that leads to humiliation. But the root of that humiliation is unlike most every sitcom character before them: They’ve been captured by the wrong cameras.The show isn’t exactly subtle in its suspicions about what recording culture has done to education.The way “Abbott” deploys comic mix-ups is a technique the show shares with traditional sitcoms, the 20th-century kind with their multicamera setups, stagelike sets and audience laughter (real or simulated). But “Abbott” exists in a world that has been slowly shedding that style. Many examples still exist, but by the end of the aughts, multicamera shows were already seen as quaint compared with their critically acclaimed new counterparts — single-camera comedies like “Arrested Development,” “The Bernie Mac Show” or “Modern Family.” These shows could borrow techniques from film, documentary and reality TV — cutaways, confessional interviews, voice-over — to access jokes unavailable in the old studio-audience setup. The most obvious predecessors of “Abbott” were among them: the American adaptation of “The Office” and, later, “Parks and Recreation,” both long-running NBC mockumentary sitcoms about close-knit workplace colleagues.“The Office” framed itself as a documentary about work at an ordinary company, then let that premise recede into the background; it wasn’t until its final season that it began to reckon with the camera crew’s yearslong presence. “Abbott” has introduced this quagmire much earlier. Across its sophomore year, it has repeatedly turned its attention to the inescapable surveillance we face today — not just from professional camera crews but from one another. Coleman’s gaffe is, in reality, just another expected incursion. The staff’s flabbergasted reaction is an instance of the characters’ not so much breaking the fourth wall as routinely banging their heads against it.The attack-ad scene parallels one from the show’s pilot, in which the premise is introduced. Principal Coleman barges into the teachers’ lounge boasting about the staff’s chance to become famous. After an older teacher, Mrs. Howard, reminds her why the crew is filming — the school is being cast as both underresourced and badly managed — Coleman replies that “no press is bad press.” It’s often unclear whether the biggest challenge facing the teachers is a lack of resources or the fact that Coleman is such an ineffective, uninterested leader. But the charter-school episode marks the first time that the main threat to their work is their own comfort with being observed. The principal may be hilariously awful, but in this case the teachers have ceded their privacy — and that of the small children they teach — to random strangers with cameras.The whole misunderstanding mirrors what the critic Ian Penman once called “the relentless publicity of modern life,” a quality that leads many of us to constantly re-evaluate our relationships with recording technology. On “Abbott,” the main characters have various levels of attachment to cameras and microphones, which wind through plots in countless ways. In one episode, Ms. Teagues — the idealistic protagonist played by the show’s creator, Quinta Brunson — introduces her co-workers to a TikTok challenge that helps them fund-raise for school supplies. Mr. Hill, the dorky young history teacher, tries to help his students start a podcast. Mr. Johnson, the school’s custodian, helps quash a TikTok-style fad and later mugs for the camera at a Sixers game.They’ve been captured by the wrong cameras.But the show sieves most of its video-​age anxiety through Principal Coleman. She pulls out her phone to record videos of teachers arguing. She spends her time watching survivalist reality-TV shows in her office. She live-streams online auctions. The show isn’t exactly subtle in its suspicions about what recording culture has done to education, for either the children or the staff, but Coleman’s online hustles and schemes are a joke that can point in either direction: Sometimes they’re selfish manipulations that waste everyone’s time, and sometimes they pop up in the final act to rescue the school.Crucially, though, it’s the least-pertinent footage that carries an important lesson “Abbott” has for viewers: the value of life lived outside the main edit. In real documentaries, the richest parts often capture something secret or ancillary, something “caught” from outside formal interviews. But these mockumentaries are scripted, meaning showrunners can simply write those moments in. Their use of such footage suggests that the real meaning of our lives is often found outside the stuff we’re presenting on camera for others to see. Even the attack ad speaks to this: Viewers know that the moments captured in that commercial represent only a sliver of what the characters have to offer.“Abbott” uses such incidental footage to interesting effect. In a first-season episode, we watch Mrs. Howard and Mr. Hill try to plant a garden, though neither really knows how. A stoic former substitute, Mr. Eddie, whose father owns a landscaping company, grumbles about the project. Over the course of the episode, the garden mysteriously improves — until, in the closing minutes, we see that Mr. Eddie has been tending to it in secret. In another episode, Ms. Teagues and her visiting sister get into an argument about deep-seated family trauma — one we see play out incidentally, caught by rolling cameras even though it has nothing to do with the supposed theme of the documentary.The question of why the fictional cameras of “Abbott” take this approach has, thus far, gone unanswered. But the show’s sustained critique of our video-saturated era — conditions that models like “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation” never had to contend with — suggests that the narrative function of this “minor” footage is crucial. TikTok and Instagram, two of Principal Coleman’s favorite platforms, might feature much comedy and the language of storytelling, but neither is all that good at doing what great sitcoms have always done: revealing the ways that people are messy and contradictory and fail to align their private and public selves. In this era of curated video, the way “Abbott” treats seemingly throwaway moments is a reminder that our biographical B-roll, in memories and private impressions, is the most valuable viewing material.Source photographs: Gilles Mingasson/ABC; Tim Robberts/Stone/Getty Images; Manu Vega/Moment/Getty Images.Niela Orr is a story editor for the magazine. Her recent work includes a profile of the actress Keke Palmer, an essay about the end of “Atlanta” and a feature on the metamusical “A Strange Loop.” More

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      The Oscars TV Broadcast Is Becoming Increasingly Ordinary

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      A show that’s become a shrink-wrapped, anodyne exercise stuck safely to the script.To paraphrase Greta Garbo, give me back my slap.No, of course onstage assaults are unacceptable. But the 95th Academy Awards could have used a jolt of some kind as they wound their way through three and a half hours on Sunday night. There was a crisis team in place to handle the fallout from any unexpected catastrophes like Will Smith’s attack on Chris Rock at last year’s show, but there was nothing it could do about the ordinariness and sameness of the ABC broadcast.The audience in the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles roared for the early victories of sentimental favorites like Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (for best supporting actor and actress) and the late — very late — victories of the film’s writers and directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, and star, Michelle Yeoh. And their speeches were stirring. But at the end of the now endless awards season, we knew that they would be, and we had a pretty good idea what they would say.There is now, through no one’s individual fault, a consistently promotional, exhortatory, shrink-wrapped feeling to the Oscars. After the depredations of streaming video and Covid-19, no chances are being taken. Jimmy Kimmel, reviving the role of the solo Oscar host, got off some good lines in his monologue — the movies are still distinct from television because “a TV show can’t lose $100 million.” (Though in the age of Netflix and Amazon, is that true?) But on balance it was safe, with the sharp jibes reserved for easy targets who weren’t there, like James Cameron and Tom Cruise. (“L. Ron Hubba Hubba,” maybe the best line of the night.)Kimmel addressed Smith’s slap at length without really talking about it. He focused on what would happen in the extremely unlikely event anyone went rogue this year, pointing out performers in the audience whose screen characters were brutal enforcers — Pedro Pascal of “The Mandalorian,” Michael B. Jordan of “Creed III” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” It was an odd way to signal that violence was unwelcome.(Smith, last year’s best-actor winner, was replaced as a presenter for the lead acting awards by Halle Berry.)More on the 95th Academy AwardsA24’s Triumphant Night: The art-house studio behind “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “The Whale” became the first studio in the history of the Oscars to capture the top six awards in the same year.Normalcy Reigns: After breathing a sigh of relief that the night went smoothly, our co-chief film critics discussed the academy’s carefully staged return to (fingers crossed?) a new normal.Oscar Fashion: Rihanna’s belly, Florence Pugh’s shorts and Cate Blanchett’s archival velvet brought new relevance to awards show dressing, our fashion critic says.After-Parties: Take a look inside the Governor’s Ball and Vanity Fair’s Oscar party, where the stars and filmmakers celebrated with moguls, musicians and models.In current fashion, the show opened not with a production number but a film montage, in this case a series of behind-the-scenes clips from nominated films. The attempt to hook audiences by bringing them inside the process of filmmaking and award-giving was also reflected in the deconstructed see-through set.The win for “Navalny” for best documentary feature was an early highlight.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesThis contemporary feint toward inclusiveness — if they can’t nominate more female directors, at least they can make viewers feel as if they’re getting an inside look — contrasts, for better and worse, with the glossy insiders’ party that the Oscars used to be.The surely unintentional effect, in a broadcast that sang the praises of the theater experience, is to make the movies feel smaller — more suited for the laptop screen and the Netflix interface. Winners don’t stick in the mind they way they used to. Did you remember that “Dune” took home six awards last year, twice as many as any other film? Or that “CODA” won best picture? (You’re welcome.)In this context, the purely promotional segments on Sunday — a long plug for the Academy museum, a creaky salute to Warner Bros.’ 100th anniversary — felt right at home but also, in their reinforcement of the show’s lumpen unremarkableness, more irritating than ever.And seemingly harmless attempts to signal virtue can backfire, as in Kimmel’s awkward and eventually condescending exchange with Malala Yousafzai.As always, there were moments that pierced the veil. The victory of “Navalny” in the documentary feature category, while its subject, the dissident Alexei Navalny, languishes in a Russian prison, was indelible. Julia-Louis Dreyfus and Paul Dano were polished and funny in their presentation of costume design; the award’s winner, Ruth Carter of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” movingly invoked her mother, who had just died at the age of 101, asking the actor Chadwick Boseman to look for her in the afterlife. Yeoh, given carte blanche to emote, showed that feeling could be conveyed in an acceptance speech that was largely polished and non-self-aggrandizing.David Byrne injected a welcome note of weirdness, if not musicality, in the performance of the best-song nominee “This Is a Life” from “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” The production number “Naatu Naatu” from “RRR,” Lady Gaga’s unplugged performance of “Hold My Hand” from “Top Gun: Maverick” and Rihanna’s rendition of “Lift Me Up” from “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” were unimpeachably professional. But the musical highlight of the night was undoubtedly the snatch of the Carpenters’ “Top of the World” sung by the composer M.M. Keeravani when “Naatu Naatu” won best song.When Kimmel wasn’t forced to ad-lib, he and his writers were generally on point. A call for audience votes on whether Robert Blake should be included in the In Memoriam segment was slyly handled. (He wasn’t.) A joke about the editing of footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol didn’t mention Tucker Carlson or Fox News but made its point.The good moments, however, couldn’t change my sense that the modern Oscars have become something more to be endured than enjoyed. If you wanted a glimpse of the zeitgeist on Sunday night, HBO (“The Last of Us”) and TLC (“MILF Manor”) were the places to look. More