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      ‘S.N.L.’ Imagines the Origins of Abortion Law

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      On an episode hosted by Benedict Cumberbatch, “Saturday Night Live” contemplated the possibility that the Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade.“Saturday Night Live” dug deep for its opening sketch this weekend, far into the text of a leaked draft opinion indicating that the Supreme Court has voted to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision, at the section where the draft opinion’s author, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., cites legal theory from 13th century England.As an introductory voice-over described the scene, “We go now to that profound moment of moral clarity, almost a thousand years ago, which laid such a clear foundation for what our laws should be in 2022.”Within the stone walls of a medieval castle, wearing period costumes and wigs, the cast members James Austin Johnson and Andrew Dismukes were brainstorming with a third character, played by the show’s guest host, Benedict Cumberbatch.“While I was cleaning the hole on the side of the castle where we poop and then it falls through the sky into a moat of human feces, I started to think about abortion,” Cumberbatch said, adding, “Don’t you think we ought to make a law against it?”“Exactly. Something fair and reasonable like those laws. We should make a law that will stand the test of time, so that hundreds and hundreds of years from now, they’ll look back and say, no need to update this one at all — they nailed it back in 1235.”Dressed as a medieval woman, Cecily Strong interrupted the men’s discussion. “I was outside watching the sheriff throw left-handed children into the river and I couldn’t help but overhear you talking about a new law,” she said.Strong asked them, “I was just wondering since I’m almost at the childbearing age of 12, shouldn’t women have the right to choose, since having a baby means like a 50 percent chance of dying?”Cumberbatch answered, “Yes, but that’s why we’re also offering maternity leave. When you’re done with 20 years of continuous maternity, you can leave.”When the three men all voted in favor of their new law, a fourth man, played by Chris Redd, attempted to vote against it.“I’m just playing,” Redd said. “I know I can’t vote. But you know, Moors gonna be Moors.”Kate McKinnon entered the room wearing long gray hair and a pointed hat, and Cumberbatch recoiled: “An ogre!” he exclaimed.“No, no, just a woman in her 30s,” McKinnon replied. She explained that eating a weird mushroom had given her the power to see far into the future, when this oppressive law would be overturned and then that outcome would itself be undone.McKinnon tried to offer some words of encouragement. “No matter how many choices they take away from women, we’ve always got the choice to keep fighting,” she said.“That’s really inspiring,” Cumberbatch responded. “And after hearing your perspective, I suddenly realize — you’re a witch and we’re going to set you on fire.”Hidden Talent of the WeekOne potential upside of hosting “S.N.L.” is that you might get to show off a skill or talent the audience doesn’t know you have. In the case of Cumberbatch, the Oscar-nominated star of “The Power of the Dog” and the “Doctor Strange” films, he demonstrated that he’s a pretty decent singer when he assumes the guise of a prison inmate on a chain gang in 1950s Georgia.While fellow convicts played by Johnson, Redd and Kenan Thompson smash rocks and lament their long internments, Cumberbatch is the one enjoying cherry pie and boasting that he’s the prison snitch. (He also put his pipes to use in a later sketch playing half of a 1980s New Wave rock duo that finds itself playing a gig at Chuck E. Cheese.)Weekend Update Jokes of the WeekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on the Supreme Court’s draft opinion and its potential impact on abortion access.Jost began:Well, guys, tomorrow is Mother’s Day. Whether you wanted to be one or not. In an unprecedented move that could cause lasting damage to the Supreme Court, a draft opinion was leaked which indicates that they intend to overturn Roe v. Wade. So the Court is usually careful, but they slipped up just this once and now they’ve got to live with it forever. Sounds really unfair.The opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito, and he bases his arguments on laws from the 1600s. So it’s an outdated opinion from an angry 70-year-old? This shouldn’t be a Supreme Court decision; it should just be a Facebook post. The opinion also seems like it was written in a weird conservative bubble. Here’s how you know: He quotes his own colleague Brett Kavanaugh six times. One for each beer in the pack. He even cites Kavanaugh on civil rights, which is like citing Amber Heard on how to make a bed. Chief Justice John Roberts said that the leak was “the work of one bad apple.” One bad apple is also another legal argument used in Alito’s opinion [his screen shows a picture of Eve in the Garden of Eden].Che continued:As a man, there’s no way I can understand the full impact of this issue. But I asked a bunch of women around the office what their personal experience was with abortion, and I’ve got to admit, I learned a lot from the HR meeting they made me go to.But I do know this ruling will have a disproportionate effect on poor people. I mean, most Americans don’t have access to the same resources that I do. The average person can’t just text Lorne in the middle of the night and say, “Yo, it happened again.” I just don’t get why Republicans are so against this. Maybe don’t think of it as an abortion. Think of it as a patriot storming a uterus to overturn the results of an unfair pregnancy.Weekend Update Desk Segment of the WeekMcKinnon, who for many years was “S.N.L.”’s resident impersonator of the liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, appeared this week at the Update desk to play her conservative successor, Justice Amy Coney Barrett.Playing Barrett in a comic back-and-forth with Jost, McKinnon tried to tamp down the perception that she was pleased about the overturning of Roe v. Wade. “I don’t know what would make you think that, other than everything I’ve ever said,” she explained.McKinnon also emphasized so-called safe-haven laws that allow parents to give up custody of an infant.“Give it to a stork and the stork will give it to a lesbian,” she said. “I would think that lesbians would be happy because now there’s more babies for them to adopt. Until we ban that, too.” More

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      In ‘I Love That for You,’ Vanessa Bayer Sells Out

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      The “Saturday Night Live” veteran’s new sitcom draws on her experience of childhood cancer and her obsession with home shopping TV.Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.According to Vanessa Bayer, being diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia as a 15-year-old wasn’t all bad.It got her out of gym class. The attendance lady at her high school never marked her as tardy. She told a boy she didn’t like that she couldn’t be his date for the homecoming dance because she had chemo that weekend. (She didn’t). Her father talked his way out of a speeding ticket by using her illness as an excuse, a tactic he referred to as “dropping the L-bomb.”Bayer survived the L-bomb. The experience didn’t change her, she said, but it did intensify characteristics that were already inherent — determination, resilience, a borderline delusional sense of optimism. Who receives a diagnosis of cancer and accentuates the positive? Bayer does.“I was always a person who loved attention,” Bayer said chirpily. “This allowed me to get so much attention.”Bayer is getting attention now. On Sunday, Showtime will premiere the first episode of “I Love That for You” (the Showtime app will have it on Friday), a sitcom that draws on Bayer’s pediatric cancer and her longtime obsession with home shopping shows. She stars as Joanna Gold, a sheltered young woman and leukemia survivor who auditions to become the newest host on the Special Value Network. Nearly fired after her disastrous first hour on camera, she saves her job by telling her colleagues that her cancer has returned. (It hasn’t.)Bayer’s character pretends to have cancer in order to keep her job at a home shopping network.Tony Rivetti Jr./ShowtimePlaying Joanna isn’t cathartic for Bayer — she doesn’t seem to need catharsis — but it does offer her a chance to work through her past, this time with even more jokes. “It’s really nice to be able to have some distance from that time and to be able to laugh at it even more,” she said.Bayer grew up in a Reform Jewish family in the suburbs of Cleveland. A star student and a cross-country runner, she decided that she wouldn’t let her illness mess with her G.P.A., even when teachers told her she could coast.“It lit this fire under me,” she said. “It was important to me that everybody saw me as someone who wasn’t weak.”Diagnosed in the spring of her freshman year, she spent time in the hospital, then in outpatient treatment, completing chemotherapy just before her senior year. She graduated on time. As prom queen.She first performed comedy as a member of Bloomers, an all-female troupe at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduation, she moved to Chicago and studied and performed at various improv theaters, which eventually led to a spot on “Saturday Night Live” in 2010. There she created characters such as Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy and Dawn Lazarus, an anxious meteorologist. But long before she got paid for it, Bayer had relied on jokes as a coping mechanism.“I had to use humor to make everyone, including myself, feel OK,” she said, speaking of her time in treatment. Here comes that optimism again: “I also think it made me funnier.”She was speaking, from a bench on the fringes of Central Park, on a recent Friday afternoon. The temperature had climbed to nearly 70 degrees, but Bayer, who had just flown in on a red-eye from Los Angeles, was bundled against the spring in a belted coat, a knit beanie and Rag & Bone fleece sneakers. She had a green juice in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. A medical-grade mask had left a red mark high on each cheek.Even sleep-deprived and apparently very cold, Bayer radiated positivity. She smiled approvingly at the gamboling dogs, the sweating men, the woman who had arrived for a constitutional in high heels and full makeup. “Nothing like New York birds!” she said, when a flock of pigeons flew over, Hitchcock close. In high school she was voted Most Likely to Succeed. Most Likely to Bake a Mean Casserole would have tracked, too — even sitting in the middle of Manhattan, she emanated Midwestern normalcy and niceness.Over seven years on “Saturday Night Live,” Bayer (with Michael Che) was a dependable utility player with many memorable appearances on Weekend Update.Dana Edelson/NBC“She almost doesn’t seem like an actress,” said Molly Shannon, an “S.N.L.” veteran who now co-stars opposite Bayer as SVN’s superstar host. “She’s very steady and calm and grounded.”The comedian Aidy Bryant, who worked with Bayer in Chicago before they both found their way to “S.N.L.,” noted that Bayer has a way of turning that mildness into a strike force. When it comes to comedy, Bryant said, “She is a quiet, smiling assassin.”“Vanessa has a real reserved, polite, wonderfully Midwestern energy,” she added. “Then she hits with a punchline or a funny reaction or her truly incredible smile, which she can weaponize as a force of pain.”On “S.N.L.,” Bayer became a dependable utility player, often infusing characters (football widow, early career Jennifer Aniston) with a manic intensity — eyes overbright, speech a tick too fast. Taran Killam, another “S.N.L.” co-star, noted how calm the offscreen Bayer seemed, a composure he attributed to her history.“It must have given her incredible perspective,” he said. “‘S.N.L.’ is a very passionate job, a dream job. It feels like it matters more than anything in the world. She would always be the first one to say: ‘Who cares? No big deal. So they didn’t like the sketch? Move on.’”“S.N.L.” has a famously punishing schedule. But Jeremy Beiler, a former “S.N.L.” writer who joined around the same time Bayer did, noted how she met the stresses of the job with buoyancy.“She only looks in one direction,” he said. “It’s only forward.”In 2017, after seven seasons on “S.N.L.,” Bayer moved on. Another comedian might have worried about what would come next. Unsurprisingly, Bayer stayed positive. “My attitude is just that stuff kind of works out,” she said. And it did work out, more or less, with guest spots, voice work, supporting roles in a few movies.“I had to use humor to make everyone, including myself, feel OK,” Bayer said, speaking of her time in cancer treatment as a teen. “I also think it made me funnier.”Sabrina Santiago for The New York TimesAs she was leaving “S.N.L.,” her management team asked her about dream projects, and her mind somehow flashed on home shopping TV. She had watched the channels often as a child: The peek into adult life fascinated her, and she loved the elegance of the hosts and the ways in which they would spin seemingly extemporaneous stories in their attempts to entice buyers.She described the hosts’ particular rhythms and vocabulary as “the first foreign language I ever learned,” and the network most likely provided her first taste of improv, too. (In college, when it came time to write her first sketch, she wrote one set in the world of home shopping, in which the host was selling cardboard with a hole in it. It killed.)A few months later, over brunch, Beiler mentioned that he had, by coincidence, begun a series pilot set in the world of home shopping. They began to collaborate, even arranging a field trip to QVC’s headquarters in West Chester, Pa., where they met with two hosts, Jane Treacy and Mary Beth Roe, whom Bayer had idolized as a child, and also managed to score some free soft pretzels. (Everyone I spoke to mentioned Bayer’s enthusiasm for snacks, and most of them mentioned her gift for scamming her way into free ones.) In the gift shop, they bought matching QVC mugs.Back at work, with Jessi Klein as showrunner, they began to build out a back story for Bayer’s character, Joanna, that would give her stakes and drive. They decided to borrow from Bayer’s own story, particularly her diagnosis and treatment and the way that those years of chemo and radiation stunted her emotional growth for a while.“I didn’t understand dating at all,” she said. “It was just playing catch up. Even out of college and into my 20s, I always was trying to fake being an adult.” In an hour’s conversation, this was the closest she ever came to acknowledging that pediatric cancer hadn’t been entirely a walk in the park.Bayer didn’t mind lending Joanna her medical chart — she has never been shy about her diagnosis. As a teen she used it to win her family a trip to Hawaii courtesy of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. (She had thought about asking to meet Jared Leto, but she eventually decided she would prefer to meet him as a peer. Years later, she did.) Colleagues at “S.N.L.” have heard her introduce leukemia into the conversation just to get free ice cream, which jibes with advice she offered during our interview: If you are sick, use it to get whatever you can.Bryant said, “She always takes the things that are hard and makes them something that she can use to empower herself or use to her advantage.”Gradually, Joanna took shape, a woman more guarded than Bayer and more stunted, with her same love of snacks and her same gift for antic improvisation but none of her obvious success. A woman who lies about having cancer shouldn’t be a woman you root for, but Bayer has a way of communicating a kind of desperate brightness that makes terrible things seem less terrible, just because she does them with such enthusiasm.What the camera recognizes is what Shannon, who also survived a major childhood trauma (her mother, youngest sister and a cousin were killed in a car accident), identified as a shared joy and determination to wring the utmost out of life.“We don’t take it for granted,” Shannon said. “We feel so lucky that we’re alive. For real.”There are many stories about illness. (Admittedly, there are fewer of them set in the world of home shopping.) But this is one — with its snacks and its sunniness and its heroine’s determination to exploit her fake diagnosis for all she can — that seemingly only Bayer can tell.“I always wanted to do something about when I was sick,” she said contentedly, as the gentle chaos of Central Park swirled around her. “Specifically, the fun I had.”Audio produced by More

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      ‘SNL’ Offers Easter Wishes From Elon Musk, Donald Trump and More

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      The host and musical guest was Lizzo, probably the first “Saturday Night Live” guest to get audiences cheering for a flute solo.The Easter holiday is a period for rebirth and renewal — and also an opportunity for “Saturday Night Live” to pack as many celebrity impersonations as possible into a single sketch.This weekend’s “S.N.L.,” which featured Lizzo as its host and musical guest, opened with its cast members performing a grab-bag of impressions, starting with Bowen Yang as the Easter bunny.He explained that although he may not be the most popular holiday mascot, “I am the freakiest: a man-sized bunny with no back story.”Yang added that, unlike Santa Claus, “I don’t use enslaved elves to make my Easter baskets. I get them on Etsy. Because I support women.”Yang was followed by Kate McKinnon, in her recurring role as Dr. Anthony S. Fauci. “Trust me, I’m not here to give you any more Covid guidance,” McKinnon said. “I’m not stupid enough to think you’re actually going to follow it. All I’ll say is that Covid cases are a lot like Jesus: They’ve risen again.”Cecily Strong played Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who said she had been aggressively wishing a happy Easter to her Jewish and Muslim colleagues. Chris Redd played Mayor Eric Adams of New York, who shared some good news with the audience:“We got him: We got the shooter,” Redd said, a reference to the man accused of opening fire in a subway car in Brooklyn on Tuesday. “Sure, it took 30 hours, and the suspect turned himself in, but we got him. Case closed. Subway’s fixed. Ride without fear.”Mikey Day appeared as the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and announced that he planned to buy Easter. “I am offering 43 billion Peeps,” he said. After some stilted laughter, Day added: “That was a joke. Ha ha ha. Do you get it? That’s why, afterwards, I say, ‘That was a joke.’”Chloe Fineman portrayed Britney Spears, who was celebrating her recent release from a yearslong conservatorship. “Don’t worry; I’m finally free, and I’m having a baby,” she said. “I just pray my baby is born happy, healthy and with the power of attorney.Next, Kyle Mooney appeared in long hair and a beard, identifying himself as Jesus Christ. “Just kidding — I’m Jared Leto,” he said. He added that his Easter message this year was to encourage positivity. “So if you go to see my new movie, ‘Morbius,’ please don’t review it,” he said.Just as Yang appeared to be wrapping up the sketch, he was interrupted by James Austin Johnson, playing former President Donald J. Trump. Johnson, as Trump, complained that his omission was “another example of how whites are being treated horribly in this country.”He went on to give a rambling, discursive monologue about Cap’n Crunch, Seabiscuit and Little Caesar (whom Johnson claimed he taught to say, “Pizza, pizza”). He then marked the holiday by observing: “I’ve told America Covid would be over by Easter. I just didn’t say which one.”Nostalgia plays of the weekThis was the week that “S.N.L.” realized it had the ideal distribution of cast members to play the members of the Black Eyed Peas for a sketch in which two producers in 2008 (played by Lizzo and Aidy Bryant) help the bandmates (Kenan Thompson, Strong, Redd and Yang) spin their none-too-complex insights and emotions into hit singles like “Boom Boom Pow” and “I Gotta Feeling.”And if that sketch wasn’t enough to satisfy your desire to be transported back to a more innocent time of, like, 13 or 14 years ago, there was also this segment in which several performers played Mr. Six, the inexplicably spry former mascot of Six Flags theme parks.Lizzo performances of the weekLizzo’s musical talents were put to productive use in a few sketches this week, most notably this filmed segment in which she and the Please Don’t Destroy team frantically attempt to brainstorm a new hit single for her in 10 minutes, resulting in the hilariously disastrous song (and music video) “Horny Zookeeper.” (A close runner-up would be this sketch that casts Lizzo as a twerking flutist whose unconventional methods inspire an entire orchestra.)Lizzo was pretty successful, too, when it was time to be a legitimate, non-comedic musician: Her performance of her new song “About Damn Time” is probably the first time we’ve seen the “S.N.L.” audience go nuts for a flute solo.Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on President Biden’s political woes and Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter.Jost began:A new poll shows that President Biden’s approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 33 percent. For a perspective, that’s less the half the approval rating of “Sonic the Hedgehog 2.” “Sonic 2” features the characters Tails and Knuckles, which are also the names of two gang members Joe Biden claims he fought in the 1960s. A video has also gone viral of President Biden finishing a speech in North Carolina, then apparently turning to shake hands with an invisible person. Hey, her name is Kamala.Che continued:President Biden, seen here trying to remember where he left his mask, announced new federal regulations for ghost guns. I mean, look, I don’t like the idea of people having ghost guns, either. But if there’s something strange in your neighborhood, who ya gonna call? [His screen showed the cast of “Ghostbusters.”] Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for over $40 billion so he can loosen its free speech rules. That’s how badly white guys want to use the N-word.Jost added to this thread:Honestly, I don’t understand why Elon even wants to own Twitter. It used to be something that seemed important and even fun, and now you look at it and it’s confusing and depressing. It’s the Giuliani of apps. And come on, Elon built electric cars, he’s going to Mars. Why is he even involving himself with Twitter? It would be like if the prince of England gave it all up just to marry an actor from “Suits.” Plus, I’ve got to say, Twitter’s not even profitable anymore. It just feels like a bad business decision. And I say that as someone who bought a Staten Island Ferry with Pete. More

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      Jerrod Carmichael Comes Out in ‘Rothaniel,’ but It’s About More

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      In “Rothaniel” on HBO, the stand-up grapples with secrets that defined his upbringing, the toll silence has taken and the price he’s paying to break it.In his 2014 debut special, “Love at the Store,” the stand-up comic Jerrod Carmichael offered advice to gay people about the right time to come out of the closet. “Save it until you need it,” he said, quipping: “I would come out of the closet when a friend asked me to move.”It’s one of many of his old jokes that hit differently after “Rothaniel,” a riveting new special from Carmichael who, sitting onstage at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York, reveals that he is gay, has been lying about it for years and wants to now tell the truth. Coming out of the closet will be the headline, especially in a stand-up scene historically rife with homophobia, but the most fascinating, charged material in this hour (premiering at 9 p.m. Friday on HBO) grapples with the roots of his silence — and the price of breaking it.Stylishly directed by Bo Burnham, who staged Carmichael’s last special, “8,” with similar idiosyncrasy, “Rothaniel” begins with a street-level shot looking up at snow falling, then follows Carmichael walking toward the club, but from so far away that you can’t make him out. As a director of specials, Burnham specializes in claustrophobic close-ups, which he employs here too, but he begins at a distance.As soon as Carmichael starts talking, you realize that he has kept us at one, too — until this reintroduction. While he has the same charming smile and supremely relaxed conversational style, he sounds different here: melancholy, earnest and poetic, direct. He’s now sitting, encouraging the crowd to talk back, speaking in an intimate tone, leveling with us and himself. Those old provocative stand-up premises only hinted at this new man, especially when they dug into family matters. “I want to talk about secrets,” he says early on here. “I felt like I was birthed into them.”This is a work about the complexity and ubiquity of secrets. It’s a word he has used before in similar ways. In his last special, he looked at a white woman in the front row who came with a Black boyfriend and said: “If his grandma were alive, you would be a secret.”Now he isn’t joking. Or he isn’t only joking. This special doesn’t feel like stand-up but it is. Carmichael is masterful at disguising punch lines in a thought so as not to interrupt its flow. The jokes are ultimately ornamental, decorating the emotional core: a story told through confessions. The initial one reveals that his first name is actually his middle name. The special’s title is a reference to his real one, a conflation of two of the names of his grandfathers. He explains in detail how much he hated the name, how he bribed yearbook editors in school to change it and got the bank to remove it from cards. It’s one of many biographical moments that illustrate how he developed the tools for the closet, how to live with things that, as he put it, “exist but don’t exist.”Much of this has to do with family history, which he has always talked about in his work but glancingly. Now he is blunt, detailing lives that also held secrets people knew but didn’t at the same time. Carmichael is alert to how pervasive they are, showing us the normal ones we don’t think much about. For example, he digs into the irony that we all are a product of our parents having sex, but none of us can stand to talk with our parents about sex.Carmichael is an incredibly poised, even chilly performer, comfortable in silences, seemingly unflappable. But what he does in this special is deconstruct this persona, reveal it as a useful mask, even an inherited one. He doesn’t just show us the roots of this façade, but also why he clung to it — and what it cost him. Some of this, like his explanation of why he smiles so much, is brutally frank. Other times it’s really funny. Being in the closet, he says, made him overcompensate: “Sometimes we’re making out,” he says about a boyfriend, “and just whisper ‘no homo’ to each other.”The heart of this show is about the painful tension between family ties and personal growth, and the most searing segments focus on his relationship with his mother. Her reaction to his sexuality, rooted in her faith, leaves him cold. The fact that he has such love for her, that he describes himself as an echo of her in some ways, makes this even more poignant. This special, which at its climax finds its star hunched in a nearly fetal posture, hits jarring notes that have never been matched in this form.It’s not just emotionally raw, but present and immediate in a way that a polished joke will never be. In one remarkable moment toward the end, he looks directly at the camera, and I physically turned away, as if it were so private that it would be impolite to watch.Art this uncomfortable tends to have rough edges, and this special does, too. But it’s artfully presented, almost to a fault. Burnham and Carmichael are such slickly skillful and assured artists that it can be hard to believe them when they get messy. Carmichael isn’t trying to tell an uplifting story so much as a real one, and “Rothaniel” does not build to a tidy resolution. It’s raw, and you might have some questions.I would recommend watching Carmichael’s lovely little 2019 documentary, “Home Videos” (also on HBO Max), shot in his hometown Winston-Salem, N.C., that features a conversation with his mother to give her some equal time. You can see the warmth between them, and his role as a needling son, asking her if she ever did cocaine or slept with a woman. When she says no, he tosses out abruptly that he hooked up with men. In a later interview, he downplayed the comment as just something he said in the moment.His mother has her story, too, though this special isn’t about that. Earlier this week, Carmichael performed at Union Hall in Brooklyn to prepare for hosting “Saturday Night Live” this weekend, an episode that will be surely dominated by bits about the Academy Awards. He joked that he was the least famous person to ever host “S.N.L.” and that all you had to do to get the gig was come out of the closet. He said he hadn’t talked to his mother in months though he once did every day.Once again, he was sitting, chatting with the crowd less than delivering a set, and seemed to be seeking something in the moment, a real experience, albeit one that could help him build a monologue. Carmichael asked the audience what he should talk about on Saturday. Someone yelled gas prices. “I’ve been rich too long,” he retorted.Another person mentioned the feud between Kanye West and Pete Davidson. Carmichael said he knew both of them through discussions about mental health and suicide. “But now,” he joked, “every time I hear about either of them I want to kill myself.”But when someone mentioned possibly doing a song, Carmichael shook his head, saying that was not in his performer’s tool kit. “I wish I was an entertainer,” he said. “My skill is I’m not afraid and I have a pocket full of matches.” More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Promised Land’ and a Janet Jackson Special

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      ABC debuts a new drama about a wine-country power struggle. And a four-part documentary about Janet Jackson debuts on Lifetime and A&E.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Jan. 24-30. Details and times are subject to change.MondayMARCH 8 p.m. on CW. This new, eight-part docuseries takes a close look at the prestigious marching band at Prairie View A&M University, a historically Black university in Texas. Some of the more than 300 band members share the sacrifices they make to be a part of the group — which, in 2021, was ranked eighth among all H.B.C.U. Division I bands by the ESPN publication The Undefeated — while balancing a busy college life.PROMISED LAND 10 p.m. on ABC. A wildly successful, family-run wine business is at the center of this new drama series, which is set in California’s Sonoma Valley region. Here, familiar power-struggle themes are paired with an exploration of immigrant experiences. The family that controls the vineyard is led by a self-made patriarch (played by John Ortiz) who has achieved an archetypal American dream. The show also follows a group of new immigrants who, in Monday night’s episode, cross into the United States from Mexico in search of their own version of that dream.TuesdayWAIT UNTIL DARK (1967) 6 p.m. on TCM. Looking for a suspenseful heart racer that might make you gasp or shriek? Audrey Hepburn earned her fifth and final best-actress Oscar nomination for her performance in this edge-of-your-seat classic, in which she plays a woman who, after being blinded in a car accident, takes possession of a doll that’s stuffed with heroin. A group of clever gangsters (played by Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna and Jack Weston) go through horrifying lengths to get it. “The tension is terrific and the melodramatic action is wild,” Bosley Crowther wrote in his 1967 review for The New York Times.WednesdayI CAN SEE YOUR VOICE 8 p.m. on Fox. Can you tell if someone can sing without ever hearing a single note? This music guessing game puts that deceptively complex question to the test. One contestant must tell the difference between good and bad singers using a lip-sync challenge, a series of questions and other unorthodox methods. Whichever singer the contestant picks reveals their vocal abilities in a duet performance with the episode’s special musical guest, which could result in either an epic collaboration or a laughable catastrophe. The comedian Ken Jeong hosts, and the actress Cheryl Hines and the TV personality Adrienne Bailon-Houghton serve as the show’s permanent “celebrity detectives.”ThursdayAna de Armas and Daniel Craig in “Knives Out.”Claire Folger/LionsgateKNIVES OUT (2019) 7 p.m. on Syfy. After directing “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” the filmmaker Rian Johnson wrote and directed this thrilling, star-studded whodunit. The mysterious death of an acclaimed novelist, Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) at a sprawling estate leads a master detective (Daniel Craig) to investigate the members of the novelist’s flawed family. “‘Knives Out’ is essentially an energetic, showy take on a dusty Agatha Christie-style murder mystery with interrogations, possible motives and dubious alibis,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The Times. In addition to Craig, the ensemble cast includes Ana de Armas, Chris Evans and Jamie Lee Curtis.GROWN-ISH 10 p.m. on Freeform. In this coming-of-age comedy spinoff of the ABC hit “black-ish,” Zoey Johnson (Yara Shahidi) and her friends come back to their fictional California university as upperclassmen. Expect a fresh take on the hardships that come with entering adulthood — student loans, work-life balance, bad breakups and the rest — during the current fourth season. This show was created by Kenya Barris (who created “black-ish”) and the comedian Larry Wilmore.FridayJanet Jackson in the new documentary “Janet Jackson.”LifetimeJANET JACKSON: PART 1 & PART 2 8 p.m. on Lifetime and A&E.The life and legacy of the powerhouse performer Janet Jackson is the subject of this new two-night, four-hour documentary special. Expect an intimate look at Jackson’s more than 40-year career, told through newly surfaced footage, home videos and interviews with Jackson’s friends and collaborators, among them Mariah Carey, Paula Abdul and Missy Elliott. The documentary’s creative team presumably had plenty of access: Jackson herself is one of its producers, alongside her brother Randy Jackson, who was a member of the Jacksons. “This is my story told by me,” Janet Jackson says in a trailer, “not through someone else’s eyes.” The first two parts will air simultaneously on both networks on Friday night; the second half will follow on Saturday night.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      On ‘S.N.L.,’ Donald Trump Tries His Hand at Wordle

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      Colin Jost and Pete Davidson provided an update on their purchase of a retired Staten Island Ferry boat, in this episode hosted by Will Forte.It’s the viral phenomenon that gets picked apart on social media, where you throw out random words and see what gets a response — but first, the “Saturday Night Live” opening sketch.This weekend’s broadcast, hosted by the “S.N.L.” alumnus Will Forte and featuring the musical guest Måneskin, began with a parody of the Fox News program “The Ingraham Angle,” with Kate McKinnon as its host, Laura Ingraham.She lamented the first year of the Biden administration, which she said had been a disaster, citing rising inflation, high gas prices and the green M&M’s getting canceled. She added that the nation “is still mourning from the sudden loss of America’s dad, Robert Durst.”McKinnon introduced her first guest, Senator Ted Cruz, played by Aidy Bryant. Bryant explained that her beard was “like Jan. 6: shocking at first, but sadly it’s been normalized.”Bryant’s Cruz went on to deliver a warning to her constituents in Texas: “February’s going to be a cold one, so you might want to book your vacay to Cancún now,” she said. “Live más, everybody.”After offering shout-outs to her remaining sponsors (including Covid Negs, “the Covid test that’s guaranteed to be negative, even if you have it”), McKinnon brought out Pete Davidson as Novak Djokovic, the unvaccinated tennis star who was recently deported from Australia.“People love to tear you off your pedestal, just because you’re really rich or you’re the best at tennis or you go to a charity event with 200 kids even though you’re dripping with Covid,” Davidson said.Ego Nwodim appeared as the conservative commentator Candace Owens (“It’s my greatest honor to continue to fight for African Americans,” she said, “no matter how many times they ask me to stop”), followed by James Austin Johnson in his recurring role as former president Donald J. Trump.“I’m back just like ‘Tiger King 2,’” Johnson said. “You had fun the first time, but now you’re like, how are more people from this not in jail yet?”This time, his Trump-style free associations were accompanied by a round of Wordle, the popular online word game (as well as a boast that he would beat Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida if he opposed him for the presidential nomination). After rambling about the booster shot, John Mayer, Hilary Duff and Jason Momoa, Johnson landed at the correct Wordle answer which turned out to be — what else? — Trump.Opening monologue of the weekForte, who was a “Saturday Night Live” cast member from 2002 to 2010, made his first appearance as a host this weekend. And to hear him tell it, he was not at all bitter that he finally got to do it after hosting duties had previously been handled by his fellow alums Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Andy Samberg and Fred Armisen. (Then Wiig again, then Hader again, as well as Jason Sudeikis, Seth Meyers and John Mulaney four times.)But Forte didn’t exactly welcome an onstage appearance from Wiig. (“I flew in for this,” she explained as he shooed her away. “Oh, great, so you know where the airport is,” he replied.) Nor was he pleased to see next week’s host, Willem Dafoe, in the house when the “S.N.L.” boss Lorne Michaels claimed that Forte’s booking had been a mistake: “I texted Willem and, you know, autocorrect,” Michaels said.MacGruber of the weekC’mon, you didn’t think you would get a Forte-hosted episode without a return appearance (or three) from MacGruber, the hapless MacGyver wannabe he originated on “S.N.L.”?It’s been more than a decade since Forte last played MacGruber in an “S.N.L.” sketch (though the character went on to have his own movie and a streaming TV series). But rest assured that MacGruber is still an overconfident blowhard who finds himself trapped in rooms with ticking time bombs that spell his imminent demise.Oh, and now he’s an unrepentant conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer. Did we mention he was joined by Wiig and Ryan Phillippe, and he also believes in QAnon?Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on President Biden’s recent news conference and the Senate’s defeat of a voting-rights bill.Jost began:President Biden marked the end of his first year in office with a two-hour press conference. Because that’s how long it took to list everything that’s gone wrong. It was actually the longest presidential press conference in history. But as I’ve been told many times before, just because you went for a long time doesn’t mean you did a good job.Che continued:Senate Republicans lined up to shake Kyrsten Sinema’s hand after she voted against changing the filibuster to pass voting rights. Ah, the U.S. Senate. Keeping Black folks down with a quiet handshake since 1787. Senator Bernie Sanders suggested that he supports replacing fellow Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Damn, Bernie, stab your own co-workers in the back? That’s unforgivable. I would never suggest Colin should be fired, no matter how much better I think Bowen would be. [The screen shows an image of Che anchoring Weekend Update with his “S.N.L.” co-star Bowen Yang]Most important news development of the weekWhat started as a not-so-innocent visit to the Weekend Update desk by Alex Moffat as his recurring character Guy Who Just Bought a Boat turned into a timely opportunity to roast Jost about this week’s news that he and Davidson were among the investors who won an auction for a decommissioned Staten Island Ferry boat.Joining Jost and Moffat at the desk, Davidson declared in a deeply chagrined tone, “We bought a ferry — the windowless van of the sea.”Jost replied: “Yes, it’s very exciting. We thought the whole thing through.”To which Davidson added, in disbelief: “Even the mayor tweeted about it. Which is how I found out we have a new mayor? What happened to Bloomberg?” More

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      John Bowman, Comedy Writer With a Knack for Crossing Over, Dies at 64

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      A white writer who left a corporate job, he became known for working on series with Black stars like Keenen Ivory Wayans and Martin Lawrence.John Bowman, a white television comedy writer and producer who left the corporate world to find success on Black-centered shows like “In Living Color” and “Martin,” died on Dec. 28 at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 64.His wife, Shannon Gaughan Bowman, said the cause was dilated cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle.Mr. Bowman’s work consisted primarily of writing for and running comedy series. But he also made an important contribution later in his career as a labor leader, helping unionized TV and movie writers get a cut of streaming revenues long before services like Netflix and Hulu changed viewing habits and grabbed tens of millions of subscribers.Mr. Bowman had been a writer on “Saturday Night Live,” as had his wife, when he joined the staff of the Fox sketch show “In Living Color” in 1990.“In Living Color,” created by the Black comedian and actor Keenen Ivory Wayans, brought an African American hip-hop sensibility to network television. Mr. Bowman was one of the show’s first white writers and became head writer in its second season.“He got Keenen, and Keenen got him,” Ms. Gaughan Bowman said in a phone interview.Mr. Bowman had said that Mr. Wayans did not want his show’s writers to bring an overtly political or racial point of view to their work.“Sometimes the white writers would come up with a hard-hitting thing that took a racial attitude,” Mr. Bowman was quoted as saying in the book “Homey Don’t Play That! The Story of ‘In Living Color’ and the Black Comedy Revolution” (2018), by David Peisner, “and Keenen would say, ‘No, no. That may be politically correct but it’s not funny. All you’re doing is trying to incite people, you’re not trying to make them laugh.’”Among the more memorable “In Living Color” sketches Mr. Bowman worked on was “Men on Football,” part a live episode that Fox used to counterprogram against the Super Bowl halftime show in 1992. The sketch, a variation on the regular feature “Men on Film,” featured Mr. Wayans and David Alan Grier as flamboyantly gay reviewers playfully employing double and triple entendres to discuss football.Later that year, Mr. Bowman left “In Living Color” to create “Martin,” also for Fox, with Martin Lawrence and Topper Carew. The show gave Mr. Lawrence, who played a talk-show host in Detroit, a showcase for the arrogant but goofy persona he had perfected as a stand-up comedian.Keenen Ivory Wayans, left, and Damon Wayans in “Do-It-Yourself Milli Vanilli Kit,” a sketch from the first season of “In Living Color.” Mr. Bowman was one of the show’s first white writers and became head writer in its second season.20th Century Fox/Courtesy Everett CollectionMr. Bowman, who was the showrunner for the series, “understood my vision,” Mr. Lawrence said in a statement after Mr. Bowman’s death, adding, “There wasn’t anything too big or too small that could faze him, which made working together a great experience.”Mr. Bowman recalled that Fox’s censors were tough on “Martin” in its first season, which began in the fall of 1992, and that the show suffered for it.“The language on this show is more uncompromisingly Black than it is on any other show,” he told Entertainment Weekly that year. “But you find yourself in the most absurd discussions with censors. I think we’re all frustrated.”Mr. Bowman tapped into his time on “In Living Color” when he teamed with Matt Wickline to create “The Show,” a short-lived 1996 sitcom about a white writer working on a Black series. He was later the showrunner for two other series with Black stars: “The Hughleys,” with D.L.Hughley, and “Cedric the Entertainer Presents,” of which he was also a creator.Ms. Gaughan Bowman said that her husband “liked Black comedy and culture.”“He liked the way Black comedians used language,” she added. “He didn’t want to run ‘Everybody Loves Raymond.’”John Frederick Bowman was born on Sept. 28, 1957, in Milwaukee. His father, William, was a lawyer, and his mother, Loretta (Murphy) Bowman, was a homemaker.White attending Harvard as an undergraduate, Mr. Bowman was an editor at The Harvard Lampoon. He graduated from Harvard Business School in 1985 and became an executive at PepsiCo, based in Purchase, N.Y., before deciding that what he really wanted to do was work in comedy.At the time, his wife was writing for “Saturday Night Live.”“I told Jim that my husband wasn’t happy at PepsiCo and he wanted to do this,” Ms. Gaughan Bowman said, referring to Jim Downey, the longtime “S.N.L.” head writer.It was a big leap from a corporate job to the “S.N.L.” writers’ room, but Mr. Downey, a former president of The Lampoon, had mined the magazine for writers and was familiar with Mr. Bowman through his writing and through mutual friends. He asked Mr. Bowman to submit sketches; he was hired a year later.“He had the best dry sense of humor of almost anyone I’ve ever worked with,” Mr. Downey said by phone. In his only season with the show, Mr. Bowman shared a 1989 Emmy Award with the rest of the writing staff.He went on to be the showrunner in the mid-1990s for “Murphy Brown,” starring Candice Bergen.In addition to his wife, Mr. Bowman is survived by his daughter, Courtney Bowman Brady; his sons, Nicholas, Alec, Jesse and John Jr.; a sister, Susan Bowman; and two brothers, William and James.Mr. Bowman, center, leaving the Writers Guild of America West offices in Beverly Hills, Calif., in 2008 after voting to end a strike by Hollywood writers. He was chairman of the union’s negotiating committee.David McNew/Getty ImagesFrom 2007 to 2008 — when he was working on his final series, “Frank TV,” starring the impressionist Frank Caliendo — Mr. Bowman was chairman of the negotiating committee of the Writers Guild of America West during its 100-day strike against TV and movie producers. During the strike, he talked individually to top studio executives about the union’s position on giving writers a percentage of revenues from what would come to be called streaming — a demand that was ultimately met in a deal struck with production companies.“A lot of it was explaining to people like Les Moonves” — then the chief executive of CBS — “that if they didn’t make money, they didn’t have to pay us anything,” Patric Verrone, who was the writers guild’s president at the time, said in an interview. Referring to Mr. Bowman, he added: “He was a rock. We stood on him and when we needed him, we threw him at things.”Mr. Bowman later taught comedy writing at the University of Southern California. More

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      Paul Rudd Hosts a Year-End ‘S.N.L.’ Disrupted by the Omicron Variant

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      “Saturday Night Live” sought to persevere with an episode featuring special guests, but no musical performer and only two regular cast members.In a week when the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus had disrupted Broadway shows, concerts, sports and numerous other entertainment events, “Saturday Night Live” inevitably found it challenging to broadcast live from New York.Hours before a year-end holiday “S.N.L.” episode that was to be hosted by Paul Rudd and feature the musical guest Charli XCX, NBC suddenly announced several changes to this sketch variety show’s familiar format: citing “an abundance of caution,” the network said on Saturday afternoon that “S.N.L.” was pulling its live audience and would have “limited cast and crew.” A short while later, Charli XCX said that she would be unable to perform on the program at all.Even so, “S.N.L.” tried to persevere, as it has throughout the pandemic. The onset of the coronavirus had forced the cancellation of several live broadcasts in its 2019-20 season, which the show finished out with episodes consisting of sketches its cast members recorded from their home quarantines. Since the beginning of the 2020-21 season, in October 2020, “S.N.L.” has aired a full run of live shows from its Manhattan home in Studio 8H in 30 Rockefeller Plaza with many new protocols in place but little apparent interruption.But this week’s episode, which offered a mix of new segments filmed earlier in the week and vintage sketches from past years, was bound to come across differently. As Rudd told viewers at the end of the night, “I know it wasn’t the Christmas show that you expected but that’s the beauty of this place. Like life, it’s unpredictable.”However, the first performer to cross the show’s threshold tonight was a surprise guest: The opening sketch, which took place on the Studio 8H stage with no set, began with Tom Hanks, who was wearing his smoking jacket from the Five-Timers Club.Hanks offered his gratitude to the program’s “surviving crew members,” adding that it was his intention to induct a new member into the club tonight “but Covid came early this year,” he said.Though many “S.N.L.” cast members would be absent, Hanks said, “I came here from California, and if you think I was going to fly 3,000 miles and not be on TV, you’ve got another thing coming.”He was joined by Tina Fey, an “S.N.L.” alumna, who explained that this was not the smallest audience she had ever performed for, “because I have done improv in a Macy’s,” she said.When Rudd entered, he glanced into the studio audience and said brightly, “I’m extremely disappointed.” He was nonetheless inducted into the Five-Timers Club by Kenan Thompson, one of only two current cast members to be seen onstage tonight. (The other was Michael Che.)Rudd then explained to viewers that the rest of the show would feel “a little bit like that new Beatles documentary: a lot of old footage but enough new stuff that you’re like, OK, yeah, I’ll watch that.”Commercial Parody of the WeekIt may be long and shaggy and constructed of variations on, basically, just one joke. But after the week that just transpired, how can you not be charmed by Aidy Bryant and Kate McKinnon as two senior moms (and frequent customers at HomeGoods) whose participation in a TV commercial boils down to telling its director (Rudd), over and over, the truth about what they really want for Christmas? (It’s grandchildren, by the way. They want grandchildren.)Unexpected Scorsese Homage of the WeekMany of Pete Davidson’s sketches now are about the fact that Pete Davidson is Pete Davidson, and still this latest one proved to be a worthy entry in that surprisingly abundant genre.Beginning with a sendup of the bookend segments from “Raging Bull,” this mostly black-and-white film imagines an aging Davidson in the year 2054, with a gut and a receding hairline, now the star of a meager nightclub act in which he tries to recapture his past “S.N.L.” glories. (At least things appear to have turned out better for him than they did for his pal Machine Gun Kelly.)Weekend Update Jokes of the WeekIn what had to be the loosest, most low-fidelity production of Weekend Update since the Chevy Chase era, the news-satire segment this week featured Che and Fey sitting on the stage in directors’ chairs as they read jokes to Rudd, Hanks and Thompson. (Fey explained that, though she was filling in for the regular co-anchor Colin Jost, “It’s not what you think — he’s having work done.)Among the highlights from their routine:Che: “Well, it’s Christmas, so let’s start with some good news, Tina. O.J. Simpson has been released from parole two months early because of good behavior. Said O.J., ‘I can’t believe I got out of parole early but I did it. I did it.’”Fey: “Time magazine has named Elon Musk ‘Person of the Year.’ You can read more about it on your phone while your Tesla is self-driving you into a lake.”Che: “It was revealed that on January 6, three Fox News hosts all texted Mark Meadows to urge him to get Trump to call off his supporters. And you know you’ve gone too far when Fox News is like, somebody better calm these white people down.”Vintage Sketch of the WeekSeveral of the classic sketches resurfaced tonight were tried-and-true “S.N.L.” Yuletide gems, like “D*** in a Box” and “Christmastime for the Jews.” But then there was this curveball: a 1990 segment called “The Global Warming Christmas Special,” which if nothing else proves that, like climate change, the show’s predilection for bits in which its cast members play random celebrities is not a recent phenomenon.Watch for impersonations of Carl Sagan, Dean Martin, Sally Struthers, George Hamilton and many more. And see if you can keep it together when the late, beloved “S.N.L.” stars Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks walk onstage to perform a duet, as Isaac Asimov and Crystal Gayle. More