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      Paula Abdul Accuses Nigel Lythgoe of Sexual Assault During ‘American Idol’

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      Ms. Abdul filed a lawsuit against Mr. Lythgoe, a producer of the reality show, that accuses him of assaulting her in an elevator.Paula Abdul filed a lawsuit on Friday against Nigel Lythgoe, a former longtime producer of “American Idol,” accusing him of sexually assaulting her when she was a judge on the reality show in the early 2000s.In the lawsuit, Ms. Abdul says that during one of the early seasons of “American Idol,” Mr. Lythgoe shoved her against the wall of a hotel elevator, grabbed her genitals and breasts and began “shoving his tongue down her throat.” Ms. Abdul said in the lawsuit that she tried to push Mr. Lythgoe away, and that when the elevator doors opened, she ran to her hotel room and called one of her representatives in tears.Mr. Lythgoe helped turn “American Idol” into a phenomenon in the United States in 2002 after developing an earlier iteration of the show in Britain. He was also a creator of “So You Think You Can Dance,” on which he appeared as a judge for 16 seasons.Representatives for Mr. Lythgoe did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday.Both Mr. Lythgoe and Ms. Abdul, who rose to fame as a choreographer and pop star in the late 1980s, became fixtures of American reality television as judges with the power to turn promising singers and dancers into stars. Ms. Abdul spent eight seasons on “American Idol,” entertaining viewers with her gushing commentary and playful rivalry with her fellow judge Simon Cowell.After leaving “American Idol,” Ms. Abdul was a judge on “So You Think You Can Dance,” working alongside Mr. Lythgoe in 2015 and 2016. She says in the lawsuit that Mr. Lythgoe again made advances during this time, while she was at his home to discuss work.“Lythgoe forced himself on top of Abdul while she was seated on his couch and attempted to kiss her while proclaiming that the two would make an excellent ‘power couple,’” the lawsuit said. “Abdul pushed Lythgoe off of her, explaining that she was not interested in his advances, and immediately left Lythgoe’s home.”The lawsuit, which was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, said Ms. Abdul did not speak publicly about the encounters because she feared retaliation from Mr. Lythgoe.Ms. Abdul is suing under a California law that allows people making sexual assault accusations to file claims outside the statute of limitations for a limited period of time.In her lawsuit, Ms. Abdul, 61, also accused Mr. Lythgoe, 74, of verbal harassment, saying that he called her at one point and told her they should celebrate because “it had been ‘seven years and the statute of limitations had run.’”Ms. Abdul also brought the lawsuit against production companies behind “American Idol” and “So You Think You Can Dance,” accusing them of negligence. Representatives for the shows and the production companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.When Ms. Abdul left “American Idol” in 2009, there was speculation that her exit was the result of disagreements about pay disparities with the show’s male faces.In her lawsuit, Ms. Abdul says that as a judge on “American Idol,” she was “discriminated against in terms of compensation and benefits.” She describes her relationship with the show’s producers and other judges as “strained from the start,” saying that she was the target of “constant taunts” from Mr. Lythgoe and others involved in the show and that selective editing made her appear “inept.”Mr. Lythgoe was a largely behind-the-scenes figure with “American Idol,” leaving as an executive producer of the show about a decade ago, but he has been center stage on “So You Think You Can Dance,” turning himself into a performing arts impresario and advocate for dance education. He is scheduled to return as a judge in the spring. More

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      On ‘Survivor,’ the Clothing Choices Are More Deliberate Than You May Think

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      Contestants’ wardrobes are more deliberate than you may think.Year after year, with each new crop of “Survivor” castaways, it’s easy to see that they’re meant to represent a familiar cross-section of archetypes.Even in their off-the-rack tank tops and cargo shorts, characters like the cranky old military vet, the arrogant corporate executive and the pharmaceutical rep next door are recognizable on sight.That’s no accident: While the conventions of reality TV encourage viewers to believe that these contestants arrive with whatever hastily selected items they can grab, their clothing is carefully vetted and assembled with producers and wardrobe staff to maximally portray players’ personalities and emphasize the show’s “Robinson Crusoe” mise-en-scène.Since it debuted in 2000, “Survivor,” which will soon finish airing its 45th season on CBS, has had an ever-shifting cast and has regularly introduced new twists for contestants as they compete to be the last person standing and win a cash prize. Over time, players’ wardrobes — dirt-crusted and minimal though they may be — have helped further plots and create through-lines in the series, which continues to draw among the highest ratings on network television.Jeff Probst, the host of “Survivor” and its executive producer and showrunner, said clothing was at the foundation of the show’s premise.“The idea is, what if you were shipwrecked with a group of strangers?” Mr. Probst said. “A lawyer’s clothing should look very different from a nurse, who looks different from a pizza maker.”Caitlin Moore, a “Survivor” casting producer, works alongside the show’s longtime wardrobe supervisor, Maria Sundeen, to help contestants select clothes for the show. It involves “a lot of going through the closets, trying to find the pieces that will work,” Ms. Moore said.“We are very much in a collaborative process, working together to come up with what really feels like a reflection of their own personality yet also meets the needs of production,” she added.For “Survivor: South Pacific,” producers asked John Cochran, who was then a student at Harvard Law School, to show up in a sweater vest to play up his Ivy League bona fides.Monty Brinton/CBS‘You Should Wear a Red Sweater Vest’John Cochran was completing his studies at Harvard Law School when he was cast in the 23rd season of “Survivor.” He and his mother were at a mall looking for practical attire that could get him through 39 days without shelter on the Samoan island of Upolu, he said, when he got a call from Ms. Moore.“We were, like, looking at REI camping stuff,” said Mr. Cochran, now 36 and a television writer in Los Angeles. “And Caitlin says, ‘We don’t know what you’re going to think of this, but we’re thinking you should wear a red sweater vest.’”Ms. Moore explained that red would be a color scheme for that season, he said. She was hoping to play up his Ivy League bona fides — and his nerdiness — with the vest, he added.Mr. Cochran initially balked at the request. “I’d never worn a sweater vest before,” he said. “I already exude nerdiness. I’m trying to downplay my ruddy complexion and rosacea and red hair.”Mr. Cochran, right, eventually ditched the pink collared shirt from “South Pacific” and just wore his red sweater vest as a tank top. “That was my ultimate act of rebellion,” he said.Monty Brinton/CBSBut in the first episode of “Survivor: South Pacific,” which was broadcast in 2011, Mr. Cochran could be seen furiously paddling a boat across that ocean in a crimson sweater vest, a pink collared shirt and khakis, the tropical sun beating down on his reddening face.This rather ridiculous image made the impression that Ms. Moore and her team had suspected it would, and when Mr. Cochran agreed to join the cast of “Survivor: Caramoan” the year after, it was a no-brainer that he would show up wearing the same attire.“It was a fun journey to go on,” Ms. Moore said, “and to see him start to lean into it.”Mr. Cochran said he acquiesced to the producers’ vision for his wardrobe partly because, as a fan of the show, he recalled how other contestants’ attire had helped them connect with viewers.He pointed to Rob Mariano, who was rarely without a Boston Red Sox hat in his many “Survivor” appearances, and to Rupert Boneham, another contestant in multiple seasons, who was known for wearing a tie-dyed tank top. (When Mr. Boneham ran a third-party campaign for governor of Indiana in 2012, he evoked his “Survivor” wardrobe by occasionally wearing tie-dye accessories. He finished third in that election, which was won by former Vice President Mike Pence.)“Whether it’s a tie-dye shirt or a Boston Red Sox cap,” Mr. Cochran said, “these discrete, identifiable items become so linked to the person.” His red vest, he added, became “my ‘Survivor’ costume.”Sandra Diaz-Twine spent hundreds of dollars on clothes for “Survivor: Pearl Islands,” but a plot twist that season meant that most of the items couldn’t be used.Robert Voets/CBSLillian Morris, a Boy Scout leader, dressed in a full scouting uniform for the “Pearl Islands” season.Monty Brinton/CBSA Sartorial Plot TwistMr. Probst said that the biggest change to the show’s approach to wardrobe came with its seventh season, “Survivor: Pearl Islands,” which was broadcast in 2003.Before then, each contestant had been permitted a knapsack of clothing items, including some survival gear. But for “Pearl Islands,” the players, who included Mr. Boneham, were surprised to enter the competition with significantly fewer items than they had worked with producers to select.Once cast members arrived at the shooting location, Mr. Probst said, they were asked to dress in certain outfits they had brought to wear for press photos that would be used to promote the show. Mr. Boneham wore his tie dye. Lillian Morris, a Boy Scout leader, dressed in a full scouting uniform. Shawn Cohen, an advertising sales executive, was in an Armani suit.But instead of going to a photo shoot, cast members were plunged immediately into the game, wearing only the clothes on their backs.“Some of the most iconic looks of ‘Survivor’ came from that season,” Mr. Probst said.Sandra Diaz-Twine, the winner of “Pearl Islands,” said she was shocked when she realized that most of the clothes the production crew had approved for her to bring couldn’t be used.“I had charged like $500, $600, on my credit card,” said Ms. Diaz-Twine, 49, who lives in Fayetteville, Ark., and has appeared in several subsequent seasons of the show. “I wanted to make sure that I had a different clean outfit like every day. And then they say you’re jumping off the boat with just the clothes on your back. I was like, Oh my god, I charged all this stuff to my credit card.”Since then, “Survivor” has gone back and forth on what clothing — and how much of it — contestants may bring. “We always listen to players,” Mr. Probst said. “It’s a give and take.”Rob Mariano on “Redemption Island,” the show’s 22nd season.Monty Brinton/CBSBuffs, Underwear and SwimsuitsOne garment worn by all contestants who have appeared on the show is the buff: a scarflike band of stretchy cotton emblazoned with the “Survivor” logo. It is rendered in different colors each season and has become one of the series’s sartorial signatures.“There are clearly guys who have ordered a buff before they go on the show and have put it on in the mirror looking at all the different ways they could wear it,” Mr. Probst said.Parvati Shallow, 41, a recurring contestant who first appeared in “Survivor: Cook Islands,” the show’s 13th season, broadcast in 2006, said the buff is critical for players who have only so many clothes. “You can wear it as a shirt, a skirt, a headpiece, a scarf,” she said.After her fourth and latest “Survivor” appearance, in the “Winners at War” season broadcast in 2020, Ms. Shallow, an executive coach and yoga teacher in Los Angeles, made headlines for criticizing the show’s dress code on a podcast hosted by another “Survivor” alum. She said she was pressured to compete in her underwear rather than the bathing suit she had requested. (In the seasons before “Winners at War,” producers began to discourage wearing swimsuits.)“It was a point of contention with me,” she said in a recent interview with The New York Times. “I went back and forth with wardrobe. They said no, nobody was getting a bathing suit.”She ultimately went with patterned undergarments that gave the impression of a swimsuit, but said it was not a happy compromise. “I had just had a baby,” she said. “I was like, My body looks nothing like it used to look like.”Mr. Probst said in an email that Ms. Shallow’s characterization was not accurate. He added that the choice to move away from bathing suits on the show was a creative one. “‘Survivor’ wardrobe has always centered around the conceit that the players were shipwrecked and left only with the clothes on their back,” he said.For Ms. Diaz-Twine, returning to “Survivor” after winning the “Pearl Islands” season offered the chance to upgrade those clothes. In preparation for the show’s 20th season, “Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains,” she said, “for the first time ever, I bought a Victoria’s Secret bra.”“I won a million dollars,” added Ms. Diaz-Twine, who will appear with Ms. Shallow in the second season of “The Traitors,” another reality TV competition, which will be released in January on Peacock. “I can’t show up in panties from Walmart.” More

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      Zombie TV Has Come for Cable

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      Many of the most popular channels have largely ditched original dramas and comedies, morphing into vessels for endless reruns.In 2015, the USA cable network was a force in original programming. Dramas like “Suits,” “Mr. Robot” and “Royal Pains” either won awards or attracted big audiences.What a difference a few years make.Viewership is way down, and USA’s original programming department is gone. The channel has had just one original scripted show this year, and it is not exclusive to the network — it also airs on another channel. During one 46-hour stretch last week, USA showed repeats of NBC’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” for all but two hours, when it showed reruns of CBS’s “NCIS” and “NCIS: Los Angeles.”Instead of standing out among its peers, USA is emblematic of cable television’s transformation. Many of the most popular channels — TBS, Comedy Central, MTV — have quickly morphed into zombie versions of their former selves.Networks that were once rich with original scripted programming are now vessels for endless marathons of reruns, along with occasional reality shows and live sports. While the network call letters and logos are the same as before, that is effectively where the overlap stops.The transformation could accelerate even more, remaking the cable landscape. Advertisers have begun to pull money from cable at high rates, analysts say, and leaders at cable providers have started to question what their consumers are paying for. In a dispute with Disney this year, executives who oversee the Spectrum cable service said media companies were letting their cable “programming house burn to the ground.”“It’s kind of like when you drive by a store and you can see they’re not keeping it up, and it looks kind of sad,” said Linda Ong, a consultant who works with many entertainment companies and used to run marketing at the Oxygen cable network. “It feels like they don’t have the attention. And they don’t — they’re being stripped for parts.”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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      Netflix Builds a ‘Squid Game’ Universe as It Awaits a Second Season

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      A reality show and a live experience are two ways of keeping the dystopian series in the public eye. Is the original’s bleak message being diluted?On the same soundstage where Bob Barker lorded over “The Price Is Right,” “Squid Game” is coming to life.On Wednesday, Netflix will unveil its latest live experience, based on the dystopian hit show in which desperate South Koreans competed in a brutal contest of simple schoolyard games for a prize of 45.6 billion won (around $38 million). Winners moved closer to the money. Losers died. The live attraction mimics both the popular iconography of the series — the massive piggy bank filled with cash, a giant animatronic doll named Young-hee, the sterile white dormitory — and the childish games.For $30, fans of “Squid Game” will compete in some 70 minutes of play, with moral twists and turns and six group activities, including the schoolyard race Red Light, Green Light and a nonlethal version of the series’ terrifying Glass Bridge challenge, which forced contestants to choose between two clear squares for each step across a bridge. If they chose incorrectly, they descended hundreds of feet to their death.To feel even more like a character on the show, customers can buy a tracksuit for $50 and wear it during the experience. There is also a $100 V.I.P. ticket option: In a nod to the original, you can watch the unfortunate masses compete in the games while you sip cocktails in a swanky lounge.“It’s all the fun without the death,” said Greg Lombardo, Netflix’s head of live experiences.A game called Harvest Festival at Netflix’s live experience, which is scheduled to open to the public on Wednesday.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesNetflix plans to expand the live experience into other cities, but no additional locations have been confirmed. It’s one of several “Squid Game” adaptations that Netflix has planned in the hope of keeping viewers engaged during the long gap between the show’s first season, which debuted in September 2021, and its second, which is filming in South Korea and will come out next year.One is an unscripted English-language competition show, “Squid Game: The Challenge.” Its first five episodes debuted on Nov. 22, and a second batch became available on Wednesday; the final episode will arrive Wednesday.Also coming soon is a video game in which players will be able to compete with characters from the series. A virtual reality game is already available, and in Brazil, Burger King has been offering “Squid Game”-themed food combos in four cities. (Care for an umbrella-shaped onion ring to go with that shake?)The brand offshoots follow a formula that Netflix has employed successfully for other popular shows, like “Bridgerton” and “Stranger Things.” A “Stranger Things” play that the streaming service helped develop will open in London’s West End on Dec. 14.The expansion of intellectual property like the “Squid Game” brand, however, is getting more scrutiny in Hollywood. In recent years, the closest an entertainment studio could get to a sure thing was a franchise spun from a popular piece of intellectual property: A film begets a sequel begets a theme park ride begets a line of consumer products. Now a certain amount of audience fatigue has set in.Marvel films like “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “The Marvels” struggled at the box office. The recent Harry Potter spinoff, “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,” and the D.C. Comics film “The Flash” also underperformed. The industry has been forced to ask: What deserves franchise-building attention, and when is it too much?“I’d say in general when you have I.P., if you just do too much of something, that can dilute what it is,” Netflix’s chief content officer, Bela Bajaria, said in an interview. “The other thing we look at is, are you being true to the DNA of the show and why people loved it but expanding that connection?”Losing competitors are marked off at Squid Game: The Trials. Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesThe reasons that Netflix is trying to expand “Squid Game” are obvious. Not only is it the most-watched show on the platform but unsanctioned merchandise from the game, including tracksuits and Young-hee dolls, began selling almost immediately after its debut. Netflix now works with two global partners to meet the demand for the green athletic wear, especially around Halloween.Influencers have also capitalized on the show’s popularity. Last year, the YouTube star MrBeast enlisted 456 contestants to compete for $456,000 by playing tug of war and Red Light, Green Light. The video of the content generated 112 million views in the first five days online.With that kind of interest in an outside version of a real-life “Squid Game,” Netflix decided the time was right to try to capitalize with a reality show of its own, but in English, so as not to confuse audiences.“I was very curious how people would react to those games, the situations, the moral dilemmas,” said Minyoung Kim, Netflix’s head of Asian content, who was responsible for bringing the South Korean show to the service.The contests inspired by “Squid Game,” which is shooting its second season in South Korea, include Red Light, Green Light. Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesStill, some question whether a reality show based on the South Korean filmmaker Hwang Dong-hyuk’s bleak view of his country’s class struggles and the global inequities of modern-day capitalism should exist at all.While “Squid Game: The Challenge” debuted at the top of Netflix’s English-language TV list with 20.1 million views and the original show vaulted back into the Top 10, reviews of the reality series have been scathing. Most criticized the 10-episode season for missing the broader critique of capitalist culture that is at the heart of the nihilistic series.A scene from “Squid Game: The Challenge,” a Netflix reality show, displaying an interim cash prize.NetflixThe show drew 20.1 million views when it premiered.Netflix“I see it obviously as an attempt to expand and monetize a franchise, but it seems particularly absurd given the anticapitalist message of the show,” said Miranda Banks, the chair of Loyola Marymount University’s film, television and media studies department.“‘Squid Game’ was a South Korean series, and it’s inflected with the politics of South Korean culture,” she added. “So part of this is not just a translation of the genre, but it’s also a translation of a nation. And in doing that, it is not surprising — and it’s arguably quite hilarious — that it becomes a pro-capitalist dream fulfilled.”The producers of the reality show are aware of the irony. But they said that by hewing as close to the original as possible — the same number of contestants (456) and a life-changing amount of prize money ($4.56 million) — they felt they could create compelling television despite the lower stakes.The live attraction is just one prong of Netflix’s campaign to expand the “Squid Game” brand.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times“This was a drama that was so much about the fact that people who were eliminated were killed,” the producer Stephen Lambert said. “We were obviously never going to do that, but having such a big prize pot meant that when you were eliminated, your dreams died, and they were really big dreams that people had.”(The filming of the reality show has generated its own drama, with complaints from several contestants about “inhumane” conditions. When asked about the complaints, the producers said in a statement that they “take the welfare of our contestants extremely seriously.”)Still, does allowing fans to play along with a social satire cheapen its integrity?Ms. Banks doesn’t believe so.“I think that you probably have the fans who are there for the social commentary and the drama and the state of the game,” she said. “And then you have the people who love to play games. That might be different age groups. It might be different demographics.”A happy ending to Warships at Squid Game: The Trials. Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesFor Marian Lee, Netflix’s chief marketing officer, the brand offshoots are doing their job — bringing renewed attention to “Squid Game” — yet she acknowledges the risks of creating so many versions that relied on the same source.“We have a hugely popular show that basically captures the cultural zeitgeist, but the doll, all the iconography, is carried through to the unscripted,” she said. “For us as a marketing team, how do you make sure that people understand that this is an unscripted version of that, and not the second season yet? You have to make sure that fans are following along: Oh, this is the unscripted version. Oh, this is the live experience. Oh, Season 2 is coming.“The fandom is there. It’s just making sure that we’re able to create distinct moments for each of those things.” More

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      ‘Squid Game: The Challenge’ Is More Depressing Than the Original

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      “Squid Game: The Challenge” keeps the slick design of the dystopian drama but loses the point.Late in the first season of Netflix’s “Squid Game” — two-year-old spoiler alert, I guess — an elaborate, deadly contest among 456 needy contestants is revealed to be an entertainment for the viewing pleasure of a handful of crass, wealthy “VIPs,” who watch the gruesome proceedings wearing golden animal masks.You could look at that situation and see a dramatization of the way a decadent system exploits desperate souls. Or you could look at it and say: All that production effort and they couldn’t monetize the show for a bigger audience?For everyone in the latter group, there is now “Squid Game: The Challenge.” The reality spinoff, whose first five episodes premiered Wednesday on Netflix, keeps the drama’s kaleidoscopic set design, its outfits and many of its competitions. It gets rid of the messy murder business — sort of — along with most of the uncomfortable ideas.What’s left is a beautifully designed but empty game box, a creepy dystopia cosplay, an answer to the question of what happens when you take a darkly pointed TV satire and remove its brains.The worldview of the original “Squid Game,” written and directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, was as subtle as a gunshot. Debtors, criminals and sundry other last-chancers are recruited by a mysterious organization to compete in scaled-up versions of playground games. One player will win a life-changing sum; the penalty for losing is death.Through the protagonist, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), we confront the question of whether one can survive the game, and by extension a ruthless economic system, and still keep one’s soul. The commentary could be blunt and obvious; “there’s a difference between making reference to something and actually illuminating it,” my colleague Mike Hale wrote. But the show had something to say and said it with style.“The Challenge” keeps the style, with the copycat precision of an A.I. image generator. It opens with a montage of colorful re-created “Squid Game” sets and the singsong of the giant robo-doll that presided over the opening game of Red Light, Green Light.That game opens “The Challenge,” with the full mob of contestants, dressed in familiar green track suits, stop-start racing to a finish line. Those who fail, by moving when they are supposed to be frozen, are eliminated faux-execution-style; tiny squibs explode under their shirts, spattering them with black ink. (Apparently a simulated shooting massacre is tasteful as long as you don’t use red.) They fall “dead,” like war re-enactors. The survivors are brought to a re-creation of the cavernous prison-dorm and burst out in cheers. “Best slumber party ever!” one says.The stakes are real, if not life-or-death. For every player fake-murdered, $10,000 is added to the prize pot, represented as in the drama by a giant piggy bank, up to $4.56 million.The idea of basing a real game on a brutal fake one isn’t inherently bad. (The reports of “inhumane” filming conditions are another matter; Netflix has said that “all appropriate health and safety measures were taken.”) Plenty of great reality shows gamify deadly situations. “Survivor” is a stylized shipwreck. “The Traitors,” from the same studio as “The Challenge,” is essentially a murder mystery.The problem with “The Challenge” is symbolized by those little pops of black “blood.” It’s painfully literal, yet colorless.Between contests, the players stay in a hangar-like dormitory as in the original.Pete Dadds/NetflixIt doesn’t want you to forget for a second that you’re visiting the wonderful world of “Squid Game” — that I.P. is too valuable to abstractify. Besides rebuilding the sets, it tries to reproduce characters from the series, finding contestants to fill the roles of hard villains, doomed softies and sympathetic elders. One group of allies dub themselves the “Gganbu Gang,” using the Korean word for a close friend that was a key term in the series.But “The Challenge” shies away from everything in “Squid Game” that cut to the jugular — in particular, the commentary about how capitalism pits ordinary people in gladiatorial combat. Like a lot of reality shows, it peppers in interviews with players who want to win the prize to support family or achieve dreams. But the competition is cast as opportunity, not exploitation. “The Challenge” does not want to bum you out.Why does it matter? Great games don’t just have good mechanics. They have ideas, like Monopoly, the family rainy-day pastime originally conceived to disseminate Georgist concepts about land use and equity. Reality shows have ideas, too, uplifting or cynical or even satirical. A game’s rules are an expression of values; the kind of play that works in a certain game says something about the kind of behavior that works, or should work, in the world.So if you take a reality competition — even a fictional one — and keep its aesthetics while stripping its foundational ideas, you’re left with, in this case, a well-produced, boring version of “Big Brother.” There’s a lot of generic conflict, a lot of stultifying downtime in the bunk room and way too many characters to try to build investment in.And because “The Challenge” wants to reproduce the look and gameplay of “Squid Game” while staying all in good fun (a producer likened it to a theme-park ride based on a movie), it’s a tonal mess.At times, it offers a bleak view of human nature. Players are disdained for cracking under pressure and one contestant, an early “villain” in the narrative, says, “sympathy, it’s only a weakness.” Other times, it is stickily sentimental and heartwarming. Sometimes the show encourages, or at least allows, cooperation; sometimes it forbids it.“The Challenge” does pull off some exciting set pieces. There’s a wicked twist to set up the pairings in the one-on-one marble game (which was also the dramatic high point of the original series). It even manages to improve on the glass-bridge hopscotch game. (Other events, like a board-game-based replacement for the drama’s tug of war segment, feel interminable.) But even at its best, you’re always conscious of watching an escape-room simulacrum of a famous TV show.And that’s where there is a kind of message in “Squid Game: The Challenge,” if an inadvertent one: It is an object lesson in how entertainment can appropriate any artistic or political statement. There is no dystopia so chilling that, with the right production values, you can’t sell it back to the audience as escapist fun.Since “The Challenge” does depend on being escapist fun, though, it can’t embrace this meta idea either. Maybe the biggest loss in this adaptation is the tension between the players and the competition itself. In the original drama, the game was the ultimate villain, and we saw the hero finally rebel against its shadowy makers.In the reality show, I’d expect no such satisfaction. The only way to win is not to watch. More

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      How ‘Survivor’ and “Amazing Race’ Adapt to Climate Change

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      The CBS hit, along with fellow staple “The Amazing Race,” is learning to deal with climate change, globalization and other seismic shifts.Since its premiere in 2000, the hit CBS reality game show “Survivor” has taken place across the globe, with each season set in an exotic island locale: Pulau Tiga in Malaysia, Ko Tarutao in Thailand, Efate in Vanuatu and many, many more.But around a decade ago, the longtime host and executive producer Jeff Probst had an alarming realization. A growing population was making it harder to find remote islands without anybody on them. Extreme weather, including rising heat and more intense storms, was making it more dangerous to film. And burgeoning political unrest was making it more difficult to work with certain governments or in countries that no longer felt safe.“When we started in 2000, there were lots of places in the world we could go,” Probst said last week in a phone interview. “But over the years, starting in about 2012, 2013, it became clear that we were running out of places to shoot.”Both “Survivor” and its sister series, the globe-trotting adventure competition “The Amazing Race,” have been stalwart hits on CBS for nearly two decades. Both continue to draw sizable audiences: Last week’s Season 45 premiere of “Survivor” and Season 35 premiere of “The Amazing Race,” which screened back-to-back on Wednesday evening, were the most-streamed shows on Paramount+ that night, according to the network, with “Survivor” also topping NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” to win the night in broadcast ratings. But while the popularity of these shows has endured, producing them has continued to be a unique challenge — particularly as the world around them keeps changing.“Our show is really a time capsule of 20-plus years of seeing the world grow,” said Elise Doganieri, one of the creators and executive producers of “The Amazing Race” alongside her husband, Bertram van Munster. “The Amazing Race” challenges teams of American contestants to chart sprawling international courses that take them from one far-flung locale to another, and many of the cities that appeared in the series when it debuted in 2001 have been transformed over the intervening years. “We go back to places that we’ve been to before, but the world has evolved and grown so much, and the landscape has really changed.”Remote landscapes where the crew could shoot with little interference have since been built up, while locals in even the most out-of-the-way regions are more connected to the rest of the world. When “The Amazing Race” paid a visit to Dubai in the early 2000s, Doganieri remembered, the city was by and large still a sprawling desert landscape where “everything was old, with wooden boats and dhows.” Today, of course, “it’s the complete opposite: a futuristic ultramodern city.”“The Amazing Race” started its 35th season at the Hollywood sign. Nicolas Axelrod/CBSIn some ways, Doganieri said, making a show like “The Amazing Race” has gotten easier over time: advancing camera and cellphone technology has streamlined aspects of the production, and location scouting, which used to be done using still photography, can now be done using video.Other changes are more challenging. As with “Survivor,” climate change has begun to affect the way that “The Amazing Race” is made, with extreme heat and tropical storms sometimes interfering with the production. “Weather has made a big change in how we travel,” Doganieri said. “There’s more storms, especially over Asia, and we have flight delays and cancellations that push into the schedule.” Soaring temperatures in the summer have made filming the competition elements more demanding for both the contestants and crew. “We scouted in Asia for the first several episodes. It was hot when we scouted in April. When we filmed, it was 90, 95 degrees.”Although Doganiei said production is prepared for when it’s “unbearably hot” with “electrolyte drinks, snacks, water, anything to keep hydration up,” she admits that “it’s tough” in the midst of more and more grueling summers. “Most of our show is shot outside, so it really does affect you,” she said. “You have to really be aware of it.”“Survivor” solved its location problem by settling on one setting: the show has been set on the Mamanuca Islands in Fiji since its 33rd season. Earlier seasons were distinguished primarily by their location, with subtitles like “Survivor: Panama” and “Survivor: China” luring an audience in with the appeal of an intriguing new place. Shooting in Fiji again and again has removed that novelty, but Probst insists that it was a negligible feature to begin with. “It doesn’t really matter where you do it as long as it’s a real jungle,” he said.“You don’t see Fiji,” said Drea Wheeler, a former contestant. “You’re just on an island. You’re miserable. It’s hot. It rains. It still sucks.”In recent years, “Survivor” has tried to mix things up by devising overarching conceits.Jeffrey R. Staab/CBS“The real challenge,” said Rob Cesternino, a two-time “Survivor” contestant who competed in Panama and Brazil, “is keeping the show interesting with new ideas every season without changing locations.” In recent years, “Survivor” has tried to mix things up by devising overarching conceits, such as “David vs. Goliath,” in which “underdogs” compete against “overachievers,” and “Winners at War,” which featured the return of 10 previous “Survivor” victors. Although not all of these concepts have been considered successful, Probst said that he would “much rather the show burn out due to a bad idea than fade away due to boredom.”Probst also said that filming in Fiji has freed the producers up to spend more time working on such ideas, simply because the static setting has “made everything more streamlined.” The show’s 300-person international crew, which also commands a vast infrastructure including 40 boats and a helicopter, now knows what to expect from the setting season over season, removing some of the environmental unpredictability that could make producing “Survivor” such a risky endeavor. The number of possible options for the production would only continue to dwindle as time went on and the climate continued to change. Nor could they easily reuse old locales after departing them.“A lot of the places we visited in the past became popular because of ‘Survivor,’ and after we left they might have erected a resort on that island,” Probst said. “It was harder to find remote islands simply because there are more people on the planet. Storms were more intense, and there was no denying it — we had been out in these waters before and it was never like that. And it became less desirable to visit places where things were happening politically that made us feel unsafe, or that we didn’t want to be part of.” Given those considerations, sticking to Fiji just made sense.“I think in many ways this was the answer to a problem that was always fast approaching,” he said.“The Amazing Race” in Lijiang, China, in 2011. Shifting geopolitical concerns have restricted the scope of where the crew can now go.Robert Voets/CBSThat problem has continued to vex the producers of “The Amazing Race,” which still involves dozens of international settings per season. Shifting geopolitical concerns, a delicate matter for American productions abroad, have restricted the scope of where the crew can go, making it harder to find new and interesting places to shoot. “The world has gotten a little smaller,” said van Munster. “We’re not going to Russia right now. We’re not going to China. There are a lot of places in West Africa where I would love to go but where we can’t go. Senegal. Logistically, maybe we can figure it out. But is it safe? We don’t want to get ourselves in trouble in another country. The world is a tricky place.”Nor is this the only way in which the world seems to be getting smaller. Phil Keoghan, the host of “The Amazing Race” since its inception, said in a recent video interview that people are more aware of the world around them than every before — that globalization, in short, has changed the function of the show. “It used to be that we were almost opening up another universe for the audience, these unknown worlds that existed out there, these exotic places,” he said. “Some of that innocence has been lost. Now we’re watching Korean TV and Indian movies. We’re seeing the influence of the rest of world across social media. People who live in these places are sharing their homes with us in an intimate way.”Part of the reason that “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race” have endured throughout these many changes is precisely because they are so good at capturing them. As fly on the wall, cinéma vérité exercises, they are not only contending with the realities of an ever-shifting world, but they are also documenting them. What’s evolving, in the environment and in the landscape, is evolving before the eyes of the audience. “The genre we operate in, we go with the flow, and whatever happens in front of the camera we go with it,” van Munster said.“The world is changing so rapidly that what was fun 20 years ago is different fun 20 years later. But whatever it looks like, it’s always fascinating.” 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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      Golden Bachelor, Boomer Bait?

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      “The Golden Bachelor” is part of broadcast networks’ efforts to cater to their mostly older audience.In September 1985, a new hit premiered on NBC. The network envisioned a show like nothing else on TV. “Take some women around 60. Society has written them off, has said they’re over the hill,” the pitch to producers went. “We want them to be feisty as hell and having a great time.”The result, of course, was “The Golden Girls,” the beloved sitcom about a group of single women, widowed and divorced, living together in a house in Florida. The show was ranked in the Top 10 of Nielsen ratings for six of its seven seasons. More than 27 million people watched the 1992 series finale.Thirty-eight years later, ABC is betting that a house full of single women, ages 60 to 75, and the 72-year-old man whose heart they’ll vie to win, can achieve ratings success with the aid of mostly boomer-age viewers who still flip on the TV for the prime-time lineup, and have yet to fully abandon network television for streaming.I tuned in for Thursday night’s premiere of “The Golden Bachelor” at 8 p.m. sharp with high hopes. Buzz for the season promised we’d accompany a mild-mannered retired and widowed “grandzaddy” from Indiana on his quest for a second chance at love with one of 22 equally self-possessed bachelorettes. This sounded more my speed than the high-conflict carryings-on I usually associate with reality TV. Perhaps I’d be part of the showrunners’ hoped-for “new audiences who might have turned their noses up at the brand before now.”In the innuendo-packed first episode, we meet our bachelor, Gerry Turner, who spends the hour speed-dating the eager bachelorettes, including Leslie, a fitness instructor from Minneapolis who tells us she dated Prince; Sandra, a retired executive assistant from Georgia with a Zen practice that incorporates curse words; and Faith, a high school teacher from Washington State who rides in on a motorcycle, serenades Gerry with a guitar and seems from the little time we spend with her to be a leading contender for last woman standing.When the show opened with a scene of Gerry getting dressed, deliberately showing him putting in his hearing aids as he recounted the tale of his wife’s death over the strains of “The Wind” by Cat Stevens, I thought this might be a departure for the “Bachelor” franchise, a more serious examination of aging and mortality. But once we arrived at the mansion where Gerry canoodles with each potential sweetheart — a dizzying procession of bawdy jokes and canned repartee — I remembered that this was a reality show with a bonkers conceit that is about pure entertainment (and ratings). It may not end up being any more cerebral than its brethren, but that’s not its remit.So can “The Golden Bachelor” keep network television afloat through the imminent shortage of scripted shows occasioned by the writers’ and actors’ strikes? My colleague John Koblin says it’s “off to a decent start”: While far from the most-watched show of the week, the premiere episode was the most-watched show on network television on Thursday night and, with delayed viewing, the audience will only grow.But, more pressing for viewers, will Gerry ultimately find his soul mate? Who will get the final rose? And will people like me, still skeptical of love competition shows, tune in to find out?I was charmed to learn that one of the showrunners for “The Golden Bachelor” studied “The Golden Girls” for conversation topics should the repartee on the show start to lag. I’m holding out hope that we will see the golden bachelorettes in their chenille bathrobes and house scuffs, sharing a cheesecake in the middle of the night.For moreSee the moment in the NBC promotional special from 1984 when the “Night Court” actress Selma Diamond joked about an imaginary show called “Miami Nice,” a bit that inspired network executives to create “The Golden Girls.”Part of the networks’ continuing efforts to retain older viewers? Game shows.“Older daters face all of the challenges their younger counterparts do — burnout, ghosting, gaslighting — but many of them have found that dating can be infinitely better when you don’t have as much to prove,” writes my colleague Catherine Pearson of the roses and thorns of dating after 60.THE WEEK IN CULTUREMichael Gambon as DumbledoreJaap Buitendjik/Warner Bros. PicturesMichael Gambon, best known for playing Dumbledore in several of the Harry Potter movies, died at 82. Read how he inhabited the role of the beloved Hogwarts headmaster.A man was charged with murder in the 1996 killing of Tupac Shakur. Since his death, Shakur has become an almost mythical figure.A judge ended a legal arrangement between Michael Oher, the subject of the hit movie “The Blind Side,” and the people who took him in when he was a teenager. It had given them authority over his affairs.Amal Clooney, Anne Hathaway and Jon Hamm hit the fall galas in New York.After a lackluster debut for Helmut Lang in New York, the brand’s creative director, Peter Do, showed a better-received collection under his own name at Paris Fashion Week. In Milan, some of the most interesting looks were on the street.A meme of “King of Queens” actor Kevin James has taken over some people’s social media feeds, Vulture reports.Aerosmith postponed the rest of its farewell tour until next year because its lead singer, Steven Tyler, injured his vocal cords.Performances of Stephen Sondheim’s final musical, “Here We Are,” commenced this week. The composer died in 2021.Cher is accused of hiring four men to kidnap her adult son as an apparent form of intervention, The Los Angeles Times reported.Usher will perform at the Super Bowl. Listen to a playlist inspired by his hit “Yeah!”Electronic Arts, a video game publisher, released “EA Sports FC,” a rebranded version of its popular soccer series FIFA. Much of the game is the same, The Guardian reports.The French actor Gérard Depardieu’s art collection sold at auction in Paris for $4.2 million.The home of the French singer Serge Gainsbourg is open to the public, with everything as it was on the day he died.The eight remaining campuses of the Art Institutes, a system of for-profit colleges, will close by the end of the month.THE LATEST NEWSHiroko Masuike/The New York TimesHeavy rainfall pounded New York City and the surrounding region, causing flash floods, shutting subway lines and turning roads into lakes. See some of the hardest-hit areas.Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who gained national stature in more than 30 years in the Senate, died at 90.Hard-line Republicans tanked Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s long-shot attempt to avert a government shutdown ahead of a midnight deadline tonight to keep federal funding flowing.A co-defendant in the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump pleaded guilty to five charges, the first of the 19 defendants to enter a plea.The United Arab Emirates is giving weapons and medical treatment to one side in Sudan’s war under the guise of saving refugees.An I.R.S. contractor was charged with leaking tax return information believed to be Donald Trump’s.CULTURE CALENDAR📚 “Let Us Descend” (Tuesday): This book, inspired by Dante’s “Inferno,” is the latest from Jesmyn Ward, a two-time National Book Award winner and the youngest recipient of the Library of Congress’s American fiction prize. The novel follows an enslaved teenager named Annis as she travels through the pre-Civil War South after her white slave-owner father sold her. The book is among the most anticipated novels of the year.🎬 “Foe” (Friday): Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan, who are among the buzziest young actors working, play a married couple living on a farm in 2065 in this sci-fi drama. Their lives are upended when Junior (Mescal) is told that he’s been chosen to work on a space station. While he’s away, Henrietta (Ronan) will live with a duplicate version of her husband. — Desiree IbekweRECIPE OF THE WEEKLinda Xiao for The New York TimesTomato sandwichesAs September fades away, it’s time to celebrate some of the last of the good heirloom tomatoes by piling them in the sandwich of your dreams. While there are loads of variations to choose from, my tomato sandwich is probably the messiest, in the very best way. The recipe is a hybrid, combining the garlic-rubbed, oil-slathered toast of Catalan pan con tomate with the kind of slivered onions you would see in a tomato tea sandwich, and the bacon of a BLT. Act fast, because sad winter tomatoes will not do justice to a sandwich as good as this.REAL ESTATEHiroko Masuike/The New York TimesA dining table for six: Inside the Long Island City apartment of a best-selling cookbook author.A new frontier: As rising sea levels threaten coastlines, some developers look to floating homes.What you get for $1.4 million: A Cape Cod-style house in Monhegan Island, Maine; an Edwardian home in Evanston, Ill.; or an 1890 rowhouse in Washington, D.C.The hunt: These newlyweds want a three-bedroom house with a yard and a reasonable commute to Manhattan. Which did they choose? Play our game.LIVINGSimon Bailly/SepiaSelf-esteem: Want to believe in yourself? “Mattering” is key.Going solo: Make the best of attending a wedding alone.Elton John’s piano: Celebrity memorabilia and estate sales headline the coming auction season.Child of Birkin: The new standard-bearer for French-girl style just opened a store in Manhattan.Lessons from summer: Climate change is making travel season less predictable.ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTEREmergency essentialsWhen preparing for a natural disaster, no single strategy is right for everyone. But Wirecutter experts have found a few things to be true. When you put together a bag to grab in an emergency, don’t buy a premade kit. Instead, add gear that you actually need and know how to use. (Here’s a good place to start.) And it’s not just about the gear — simple tasks you can do today, like taking a CPR or first aid class, or designating a point person to be in touch with, can make a big difference. — Ellen AirhartFor more advice, sign up for Emergency Kit, an easy-to-follow guide to preparing for natural disasters from Wirecutter’s experts.GAME OF THE WEEKENDTaylor Swift at last week’s Kansas City Chiefs game.David Eulitt/Getty ImagesKansas City Chiefs vs. New York Jets: Taylor Swift and the N.F.L., two of America’s cultural juggernauts, pulled off a remarkable bit of brand synergy last weekend. Swift showed up in Kansas City to cheer on the Chiefs’ star tight end, Travis Kelce, whom she is rumored to be dating. The TV cameras, of course, cut to her constantly, and her exuberant celebrations brought life to an otherwise lousy game. Will she show up again this week? The N.F.L. surely hopes so — her presence would make this prime-time broadcast must-see TV, even if the game itself is another dud. (Fans who want great football without the spectacle should tune in earlier in the day to the powerhouse matchup between the Miami Dolphins and the Buffalo Bills.) 8:30 p.m. Eastern tomorrow on NBC.NOW TIME TO PLAYHere is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were bootjack and jackboot.See the hardest Spelling Bee words from this week.Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines.And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections.Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — MelissaSign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. More