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    Al Pacino Is Still Going Big

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    Al Pacino has been one of the world’s greatest, most influential actors for more than 50 years. He’s audacious. He’s outrageous. He’s Al Pacino, and I’m pretty sure you know what that entails.Listen to the Conversation With Al PacinoA conversation with the legendary actor about, well, everything.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppSo I’d like to talk about some aspects of him that merit fresh discussion. Did you know, for example, that he is cinema’s greatest-ever swearer? (This is fact, not opinion.) He delights in those words. He lustily chomps on them. This zest for delivering colorful language, I suspect, is a source of the criticism that he has become a scenery-chewer. Which isn’t nearly the whole picture. Fans of his layered, subtle work in “The Godfather” or “Dog Day Afternoon” need to immediately see more recent films like “The Humbling” or “The Insider” or “Manglehorn” to understand his enduring range. But also, the parts of Pacino movies where Pacino goes big are always the best parts of Pacino movies! Did anyone want him to underplay Satan in “The Devil’s Advocate”?Though he can go small and internal, Pacino’s ability to really emote is one of his singular gifts. That’s why, secretly, the best Pacino is crowd-pleasing Hollywood movie star ’90s Pacino. Given the revolutionary work he did in the ’70s, this is akin to claiming that the key work of a critically acclaimed, groundbreaking band occurred after it went pop. But ’90s Pacino is when his gargantuan skill, volcanic charisma and joyful desire to entertain all coalesced magically.“Hoo-ah!”The first time I ever consciously noticed a Pacino performance was also the first time I ever consciously saw an actor in a movie and thought, That’s good acting. It was 1990, I was only 8 years old and I’d just seen Pacino play the grotesque gangster Big Boy Caprice in “Dick Tracy.” (Don’t scoff. Pacino earned an Oscar nomination for the part.) Hidden under garish makeup and a hunchback, Pacino was kinetic and uninhibited and, most of all, believable in a way that registered to even a child. That lusty emotionality and passionate exuberance — his sense of being truly alive to each moment in his character’s life — is what Pacino brought with such distinction to his movies in that period, which was also the period when I grew from a child to a young man.Pacino’s engagement with his art was a model for how passionately — and variously — you could engage with the world. He has always been brilliant at playing cops and criminals like Big Boy. But he has also played biblical kings, cockney sociopaths, sharkish salesmen, a short-order cook and a Gucci. He’s done Mamet and Brecht and Shakespeare. (His majestic, tragic Shylock was the best theatrical performance I’ve ever seen.) He has played Phil Spector, Jimmy Hoffa, Jack Kevorkian, Joe Paterno, Roy Cohn and, on two occasions, versions of himself. He did it in the artfully self-reflexive documentary “Looking For Richard,” then in the somewhat-less-artful Adam Sandler vehicle “Jack and Jill.” Has he always been perfect? No. He strives for something riskier and more alive than perfection. Is he always perceptive, free, unmissable? God, yes. More

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      in Music

      Lucine Amara, 99, Dies; Familiar Soprano at the Met Saw Bias There

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      She sang with the Metropolitan Opera for decades, often on short notice, including after lodging a successful age discrimination complaint against the company.Lucine Amara, an American singer who continued a decades-long career at the Metropolitan Opera after she successfully brought the company up on age-discrimination charges in a widely publicized case, died on Sept. 6 at her home in Queens. She was 99. Her daughter, Evelyn La Quaif, a soprano and stage director, who had shared an apartment with her mother in recent weeks, said that the cause was respiratory illness and heart failure and that Ms. Amara also had dementia. She had lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for decades.A lyric soprano known for her clear, supple voice, Ms. Amara sang 748 performances with the Met between 1950 and 1991, an impressively long tenure.Her dozens of roles there included Mimì in Puccini’s “La Bohème,” Nedda in Leoncavallo’s “I Pagliacci,” the title part in Richard Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos,” and Donna Elvira in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” and Pamina in his “Magic Flute.”Appearing in a 1964 Met production of Gounod’s “Faust,” Ms. Amara was described by Theodore Strongin in The New York Times as “a first-rank Marguerite in all respects.”If Ms. Amara was not as well known to the general public as other singers in her cohort — among them Roberta Peters and Victoria de los Angeles — it was partly, her admirers say, because she was damned by her own competence and by her matter-of-fact approach to her craft.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      A Woman Sleeping With Her Stepson? This Director Knows It May Shock.

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      The French filmmaker Catherine Breillat has been exploring relationships between girls and older men since the 1970s. Her latest, “Last Summer,” flips the script.When the French director Catherine Breillat was 40, her then-husband and the father of her first child ended their relationship to be with a much younger woman. Soon after, Breillat started dating a man 12 years her junior.“Men want to repudiate their wives of a certain age by saying they couldn’t be loved by anyone anymore,” Breillat said in a recent video interview via an interpreter. “But for me that’s not true. I want to tell other women there’s no cause for despair.” In “Last Summer,” which comes to theaters Friday, she probes at this realization through an incendiary premise.Since the 1970s, the lauded director, now 75, has repeatedly focused her unflinching gaze on the troubled sexual awakenings of girls, often in the uncaring hands of older men, but in “Last Summer,” that dynamic is inverted: A middled-aged lawyer, Anne (Léa Drucker), risks her career and marriage by having a clandestine affair with her 17-year-old stepson, Théo (Samuel Kircher).In “Last Summer,” Anne, played by Léa Drucker, risks her career, and her marriage to Pierre, played by Olivier Rabourdin, by having an affair with her stepson Théo.via Sideshow and Janus FilmsThe film, Breillat’s first in a decade, joins several recent movies concerned with the power dynamics of heterosexual couples in which the woman is older, including the lighter Anne Hathaway-vehicle “The Idea of You” and Todd Haynes’s divisive “May December.” (Haynes’s movie was inspired by the true story of a teacher who started a relationship with one of her students.)According to Breillat, this wave of films reflects a simple reality. “It’s the truth,” she said: “Young people are attracted to older women.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      Age and the Image of Capacity

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      “Watch me,” President Biden likes to say when he’s asked — he’s asked a lot, these days — whether he is too old to serve a second term. He is getting his wish.For the first three years of his administration, in contrast to the last president’s chaotic omnipresence, Mr. Biden kept himself scarce. Now his smallest appearance brings with it a thousand remote diagnoses from armchair gerontologists. A major speech, like his State of the Union address in March, is assessed not for its policy but its fluidity as spoken-word performance. A minor gaffe, like bungling a single sentence at a Philadelphia rally in April, is dissected as possible evidence of decline.At a campaign rally in April, President Biden fumbled during his speech, urging Americans to choose “freedom over democracy.”He is facing an image problem that time exacts on everyone. Now the first presidential debate of 2024 is happening months earlier than usual, in part because the Biden campaign wants to overcome a mounting concern that the president, at 81, is not up to four additional years of service. “Old age isn’t a battle; old age is a massacre” — or so Philip Roth’s “Everyman” howled in 2006. Electorally, this year, it might be both.The president is indeed rather old, older than anyone who has held the office. When he first won his Senate seat in 1972, the current leaders of Britain, France and Italy were not yet born. If Mr. Biden serves a full second term, he will retire to Delaware at 86. Already, after three-and-a-half years in a job that superannuates everyone, he appears a different man from the days of the Covid campaign, his hair thinner, his gait tighter. His age may be nothing but a number. But the perception of his age has become desperately entangled with cultural connotations of elderliness, formed over centuries, handed down to us through religion and literature and art.His predecessor and rival is also old, and also has trouble speaking clearly. But the same polls that have Mr. Biden trailing the 78-year-old Donald J. Trump, even after the latter’s conviction on 34 felony counts, show too that only one of these men is facing such widespread anxieties about the way of all flesh. The principal roadblock to the incumbent’s re-election, the polls keep telling us, is not policy. Younger Democrats, to his left and right, outpace him down-ballot.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      For Len Cariou, Dying Onstage Each Night Has Been ‘Invigorating’

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      In “Tuesdays With Morrie,” the 84-year-old actor was eager to tackle “a rich role in a show that asks, ‘What if despair and death are not the end?’”Chris Domig was ready to throw in the towel.After a year-and-a-half-long search, a church chapel in Gramercy Park was the only affordable space Domig, the artistic director of the Off Off Broadway company Sea Dog Theater, had been able to find to mount a production of “Tuesdays With Morrie.” Chairs would have to be arranged on a set of risers on the altar. The props would be a piano, a couple of chairs, a walker and a wheelchair.The company also had almost no advertising budget.But it did have Len Cariou, an elder statesman of the theater who in 1979 won a Tony Award for originating the role of Sweeney Todd on Broadway. He would play Morrie, a former sociology professor who, after receiving a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., reconnects with one of his students in what becomes a series of weekly meetings.Cariou, also known for his turns in musicals like “A Little Night Music” and “Applause,” had been taken with the character of Morrie ever since he read the 1997 memoir by Mitch Albom on which the 2002 play is based.“I said, ‘One day, I’d love to play that part,’” Cariou, 84, said last month during a joint interview with Domig at St. George’s Episcopal Church, where the recently extended “Tuesdays With Morrie” is set to run through April 20. “It’s such a rich role in a show that asks, ‘What if despair and death are not the end? What if there’s something more?’”Chris Domig, left, and Cariou in the Sea Dog Theater production of “Tuesdays With Morrie.”Jeremy VarnerBut one major hurdle remained, Domig said: How were they going to pull off the play with only a handful of props?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      Japanese Talk Show Host Blazed Trails for Her Gender, and Now, for Her Longevity

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      Tetsuko Kuroyanagi has been one of Japan’s best-known entertainers for seven decades. At 90, she’s still going strong.Pushing a walker through a television studio in central Tokyo earlier this week, Tetsuko Kuroyanagi slowly climbed three steps onto a sound stage with the help of an assistant who settled her into a creamy beige Empire armchair.A stylist removed the custom-made sturdy boots on her feet and slipped on a pair of high-heeled mules. A makeup artist brushed her cheeks and touched up her blazing red lipstick. A hairdresser tamed a few stray wisps from her trademark onion-shaped hairstyle as another assistant ran a lint roller over her embroidered black jacket. With that, Ms. Kuroyanagi, 90, was ready to record the 12,193rd episode of her show.As one of Japan’s best-known entertainers for seven decades, Ms. Kuroyanagi has interviewed guests on her talk show, “Tetsuko’s Room,” since 1976, earning a Guinness World Record last fall for most episodes hosted by the same presenter. Generations of Japanese celebrities across film, television, music, theater and sports have visited Ms. Kuroyanagi’s couch, along with American stars like Meryl Streep and Lady Gaga; Prince Philip of England; and Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of the Soviet Union. Ms. Kuroyanagi said Gorbachev remains one of her all-time favorite guests.Ms. Kuroyanagi, who jokes that she wants to keep going until she turns 100, is known for her rapid-fire chatter and knack for drawing out guests on topics like dating, divorce and, now, increasingly, death. Even as she works to woo a younger generation — the Korean-Canadian actor and singer Ahn Hyo-seop, 28, appeared on the show this month — many of her guests these days speak about the ailments of aging and the demise of their industry peers.Ms. Kuroyanagi with a guest, Kankuro Nakamura VI, a sixth-generation Kabuki actor, as seen on a screen.Noriko Hayashi for The New York TimesHaving survived World War II, she broke out as an early actor on Japanese television and then carved out a niche as a feel-good interviewer with a distinctive style that is still instantly recognized almost everywhere in Japan. By fashioning herself into a character, rather than simply being the person who interviewed the characters, she helped establish a genre of Japanese performers known as “tarento” — a Japanized version of the English word “talent” — who are ubiquitous on television today.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      in Music

      Colette Maze, Pianist Who Started Recording in Her 80s, Dies at 109

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      Born before the outbreak of World War I, she began making albums in the 1990s. She released her latest, “109 Ans de Piano,” this year.When the French composer Claude Debussy died at his home in Paris in 1918, he probably had no idea that one of his youngest fans lived just a few blocks away. Colette Saulnier, not yet 4, was already learning the rudiments of music, and even at that age she was drawn to the work of her famous neighbor.“I love these climates where you have to create an atmosphere, a daydream,” Colette Maze, as she later became known, said in a 2021 interview with the website Pianote. “I’m connected with Debussy because he corresponds to my deepest sensibility.”Mrs. Maze would go on to become an accomplished pianist and teacher. But it was only in the late 1990s, when she was over 80, that her son persuaded her to begin recording commercially.What followed was one of the most surprising second acts in classical music history: seven albums, largely but not exclusively the music of Debussy, and a fan base drawn as much to Mrs. Maze’s exquisite finger work as to her sheer, irrepressible joy, which shone through in interviews with French television and in videos posted to her Facebook page.“As soon as I get up, I start playing the piano to connect with the forces of life,” she told Pianote. “It’s a habit. It’s always been that way. I don’t need to motivate myself, it’s natural. It’s like an automatic function.”Mrs. Maze, who was widely considered the world’s oldest recording pianist, died on Nov. 19 in the same Paris apartment where she had lived since she was 18, with views of the Eiffel Tower and the Seine River. She was 109. Her son, Fabrice Maze, confirmed the death.Mrs. Maze at age 18. She studied under Alfred Cortot and Nadia Boulanger.via Maze familyColette Claire Saulnier was born in Paris on June 16, 1914, a month before the beginning of World War I. Her father, Léon Saulnier, managed a fertilizer factory, and her mother, Denise (Piollet) Saulnier, was a homemaker.She grew up surrounded by music. Her mother, who played violin, and her maternal grandmother, who played piano, gave concerts in the Saulnier home, and chords wafted in from a piano-playing neighbor. By 4 she was learning to play.She aspired to be a concert pianist, but her parents — who were strict and, according to her, miserly with their love — disapproved. When she applied to the performance track at the École Normale de Musique, a new conservatory founded by Alfred Cortot, her parents refused to let her stay home alone to practice for her audition.Her score wasn’t quite high enough, but she still qualified for the teaching track. She studied under Mr. Cortot and Nadia Boulanger, who tutored some of the 20th century’s greatest musicians, including Daniel Barenboim, Virgil Thomson and Philip Glass.Mrs. Maze later credited the Cortot method of playing, with its emphasis on relaxation, for her ability to continue at the piano without suffering the sort of joint stiffening that can strike older pianists.“If I still play at my age, it is because the teaching of Alfred Cortot and Nadia Boulanger was very flexible and based on improvisation,” she said in a 2018 interview with the newspaper Le Parisien. “He told us that our hand was a diamond at the end of a silk stocking.”After graduating in 1934, she stayed at the conservatory to teach. When the Germans invaded in 1940, she and a friend fled on bicycles to the deep south of France, where they remained until the end of World War II.Back in Paris, she had a relationship with a married man, Hubert Dumas, with whom she had a son, Fabrice. But Mr. Dumas left her in 1952.She married Emile Maze, another musician, in 1958. He died in 1974. Along with her son, she is survived by two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.Even after she retired from teaching in 1984, Mrs. Maze continued to play four hours or more a day. Her son later began encouraging her to record an album, to capture both her talents and the influence of Mr. Cortot’s unique methods.Her first album, a recording of Debussy’s preludes, was released in 2004, the year she turned 90. Three more albums of Debussy followed, as well as three others featuring music from different composers: “104 Years of Piano” (2018), “105 Years of Piano” (2019) and “109 Years of Piano” (2023).As her discography grew, so did public curiosity, which turned into acclaim as critics praised her technique and her supple interpretations of not just Debussy but also Robert Schumann and Erik Satie, as well as more modern composers like Astor Piazzolla and Ryuichi Sakamoto.She found even more fame in 2020, when she took to Facebook to share daily comments of good cheer during the darkest days of the pandemic. As restrictions eased, fans streamed to her home, coming from as far as Japan to ask for a brief lesson.“I always preferred composers who gave me tenderness,” she told NPR in 2021. “Music is an affective language, a poetic language. In music there is everything — nature, emotion, love, revolt, dreams; it’s like a spiritual food.” More

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      in Television

      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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      in Television

      ‘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