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      ‘Yellowjackets’ Season 3, Episode 8 Recap: ‘Eat It’

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      A familiar face comes back into the picture, but it’s a face with a different name. And questionable motives.Season 3, Episode 8: ‘A Normal, Boring Life’This week, we tackle what the question of a “normal” life looks like for a Yellowjacket. Meet Adult Melissa, otherwise known as Kelly, played by Hilary Swank.Adult Melissa thinks she has it pretty good. How did she achieve this? First, she faked her own death and changed her name. Then she married Hannah’s daughter, whom she ended up falling in love with despite initially semi-stalking her to make sure she was safe. Now, they have a kid, go to church and live in a house with a cheesy sign that says, “The Kitchen Is the Heart of the Family.” She still likes to wear backward baseball caps.Melissa-slash-Kelly believes that she is pretty well-adjusted despite it all, and compared to Shauna, who broke into her home to kill her wife, she certainly seems to be. In order to move forward, Melissa erased the past, started completely fresh. And when the past came back to haunt her, she decided to exorcise it again. That’s why she sent the tape to Shauna after she learned about Adult Natalie’s death. It wasn’t, she says, a threat. It was a way to absolve herself, to keep the guilt at bay.Shauna doesn’t necessarily believe that, and I’m not sure I do either. Melissa is almost a little too at ease with her transformation. But sitting across the table from each other, these former lovers seem like polar opposites. Shauna is jittery and paranoid, constantly thinking someone is out to get her; Melissa is calm, just wanting to maintain the peaceful existence she fought hard to create for herself.Their dynamic in the present day is mirrored by the fracture we see in the ’90s story line this episode. With the arrival of Hannah and Kodiak, some of the Yellowjackets are thrilled to be heading home, dreaming of the “normal” lives they’ll have when they get back to civilization. Meanwhile, another camp is, perhaps rightly, unsure that normalcy will ever be an option.All of this is brought into stark relief during a sequence set to Supergrass’s “Alright,” which has the jaunty lyrics “We are young, we run green, keep our teeth nice and clean.” (You might know it best from the “Clueless” soundtrack.) As the song plays, we see how some of the girls fantasize about the creature comforts they’ve been missing. Mari’s water bottle turns into a Slurpee. Misty imagines sitting on a toilet and using real toilet paper. Van falls into a fluffy bed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      10 Wild Clips to Help You Understand Andy Kaufman’s Greatness

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      The standup, who’s the subject of a new documentary, expanded the ambition of comedy. These videos show how far ahead of his time he was.Andy Kaufman became one of the most influential comedians ever in a brief amount of time — really only a decade, from his first national television appearance to his death from lung cancer in 1984 at 35. In between, his comic stunts blurred the lines of reality and fiction and found a variety of ways to provoke audiences and upend expectations, while doing more than any club performer to expand the conceptual ambition of comedy, turning stand-up into performance art. What makes this even more remarkable is that he did almost none of it via regular roles in movies or high-profile television, with the exception of the sitcom “Taxi.”And yet, Kaufman and his many characters were a constant presence in popular culture, clubs and wrestling matches and on talk and variety shows, many of which are long forgotten. These bits have lived on the internet, divorced from the context in which they appeared. Now on YouTube, the Andy Kaufman rabbit hole is deep and packed with pleasures. A new documentary on his life, “Thank You Very Much,” was made by artists who clearly spent a long time exploring it. Here are 10 of the best examples that show how Kaufman broke from the past and anticipated the future.Foreign ManThe first Kaufman character to break out was the tentative, thick-accented immigrant from the Caspian Sea known as Foreign Man, an antecedent to Borat but sweeter, more sensitive and deluded. He mangled Borscht Belt jokes that fizzle like this one-liner: “My wife’s cooking is so bad, it’s terrible.” Before he turned into Latka Gravas on “Taxi,” Foreign Man showed up in short sets on shows like “Van Dyke and Company.” In one of the first, Foreign Man loses a Fonzie look-alike contest, becoming upset at Dick Van Dyke, who, unlike some television hosts who interacted with him (see Dinah Shore), clearly delights in Kaufman. To make things right, the host offers him the opportunity to tell some jokes. Playing an overly enthusiastic innocent with a shaky grasp on English and an even looser grasp on American humor, Kaufman fumbles through some bits and a terrible Ed McMahon impression. Somehow his errors endear him to the audience. Kaufman’s large, anime-like eyes do a lot of the work.Celebrity InterviewerSilence. Kaufman uses it as well as any comedian, building suspense, tension and most of all, awkwardness. On his ABC special taped in 1977 but broadcast two years later, he used that technique magnificently in a spoof of a disastrous talk-show interview that anticipated everything from “The Eric Andre Show” to “Between Two Ferns.” As the host, looking down on his guest, the “Laverne & Shirley” star Cindy Williams, from a desk towering high above her, (a disparity he would take to more extreme heights later in his career), he stops talking entirely, and the banter ends. Then the camera moves from him to her and back again, unease building. It’s almost a minute of dead air but seems much longer. Then he asks: “You have hobbies? You have any diseases?”Bongo PlayerWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Through Tears, ‘Mid-Century Modern’ Makes Them Laugh

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      On an evening in mid-January, there were bouquets piled outside of Linda Lavin’s trailer on the Disney lot in Burbank, Calif. Nearby, on a soundstage, a black ribbon was wrapped around her caricature.Lavin had died on Dec. 29, at age 87. Now the creators and cast of “Mid-Century Modern,” a Hulu sitcom that shoots in front of a live studio audience, had returned to work to honor her. That night, they would film a half-hour episode designed to pay tribute to her character, Sibyl Schneiderman, while also eulogizing an actress with an outstanding seven-decade career.That was hard enough. Even harder: They had to make it funny.“The job is to make sure it doesn’t get too sad and too sentimental,” said James Burrows, the multicamera-sitcom legend who directed the episode. “You have to remember it’s a comedy, and you’ve got to make the audience laugh.”I had reached out to the sitcom’s creators back in the fall. A new sitcom set among gay men in later life — think “Golden Girls” for the marriage equality set — it sounded like a hoot. It also offered a chance to explore how depictions of queer relationships have changed since the 1990s.But when Lavin died unexpectedly after most of the season had been shot, an irreverent sitcom with an impressive zingers-per-minute rate suddenly had to pivot. So the reporting assignment pivoted, too. (All 10 episodes arrived on Friday.)The ensemble of “Mid-Century Modern” played a group of gay men living in Palm Springs, Calif., with the mother of Lane’s character, played by Lavin.Chris Haston/DisneyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Best True Crime to Stream: 1970s and ’80s Kidnappings

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      Across television, film and podcasting, here are five stories of child abductions that shook parents across the United States.Documentary Film“Chowchilla”It took just a few minutes into this 2023 documentary for me to be dumbfounded that I had never heard about this chapter in American history, when an entire school bus of children and their driver, 27 people in total, disappeared mid-route on a hot summer day in 1976 in the small California town of Chowchilla.What unfolded from there and the motivation behind the kidnapping are beyond imagination. In fact, those responsible for the crime were inspired in part by the Clint Eastwood movie “Dirty Harry.”In this documentary, from CNN Films and streaming on Max, we hear from some of the abductees, who recall the experience in great detail. Unlike many other such stories, we learn quickly that no one died in the ordeal, but that doesn’t make the decades-long fallout less tragic.The trauma was so acute that the survivors were able to help catapult the field of child psychology forward. “Chowchilla children are heroes,” Lenore C. Terr, a child psychiatrist who has studied the victims in depth, said in the film. “And they continue to teach us what childhood trauma is.”Documentary Series“The Beauty Queen Killer: 9 Days of Terror”For this three-part 2024 docuseries from ABC News, Tina Marie Risico — who survived a nightmarish nine days with the serial killer Christopher Wilder in 1984 before he made the astonishing decision to release her — sits down to tell her story for the first time.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel Updates the Never-Ending Story of the Signal Leak

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      “There are many books and stories to come,” Kimmel said of the Trump administration’s leaky-group-chat scandal, comparing it to the Harry Potter saga.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Incredibly TransparentThe Trump administration’s high-level Signal group chat to which a journalist was somehow invited continued to dominate late night on Thursday.Jimmy Kimmel called the scandal “the never-ending story” and compared it to the Harry Potter saga, saying, “There are many books and stories to come.” News outlets found some of the key players’ personal information online, including the Venmo contacts of Michael Waltz, the national security adviser.“You know how some people feel the need to share their Venmo transactions with everyone they know? Michael Waltz is one of them. He shares his name, there’s a picture of him, and all of his contacts up on Venmo. Even Matt Gaetz was, like, ‘How could you be so careless?’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And security issues aside, isn’t it a little bit disturbing that a guy overseeing our national defense, our weapons — our nuclear weapons — is still in the ‘Dude, you owe me $14 for tacos’ phase of his life?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He’s Venmo-ing his doctor? My man, if your doctor takes Venmo, that ain’t a doctor.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“This story won’t be going away anytime soon, because Mike Waltz has made a key strategic error: being an idiot everywhere at all times.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Because of how incredibly sloppy they are, a German newspaper, Der Spiegel, was able to find personal email addresses, phone numbers and passwords — some of which seem to be still in use — for Mike Waltz, Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth. What a group. We have a national security adviser who doesn’t know how to secure, a defensive secretary of defense, a pro-measles secretary of health, and a secretary of education who wants to close the Department of Education.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, she’s standing firm. She said today the administration has been ‘incredibly transparent about this entire situation.’ Yeah, that’s the problem — they’ve been so transparent, we’ve seen all their information.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Pete Hegseth and Mike Waltz have said and done so many stupid things this week, Trump might have to start calling them Eric and Don Jr.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (McRib Edition)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Clive Revill, Original Voice of Emperor Palpatine in ‘Star Wars,’ Dies at 94

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      His voice can be heard for only a minute in “The Empire Strikes Back,” but it provided the first draft of a character that would be a mainstay of the franchise for decades.It was a minute that changed the course of the “Star Wars” franchise. In “The Empire Strikes Back,” the now-celebrated 1980 sequel, audiences were treated to the first on-camera sighting of Emperor Palpatine.After receiving only a glancing mention in the first movie, he could have looked and sounded like anything. A human. A Wookiee. A droid. A turtle. There was, instead, a disfigured, robed face — portrayed by the actress Marjorie Eaton — that terrified fans and etched the character into “Star Wars” lore.But Palpatine’s voice — cool, crisp and commanding — belonged to Clive Revill, who in about 60 seconds set the stage for one of the most feared and infamous characters in science fiction. Mr. Revill died on March 11 in Sherman Oaks, Calif., his daughter, Kate Revill, said on Thursday. The cause, she said, was complications of dementia. He was 94.Palpatine’s appearance, however brief, is pivotal. In the conversation with Darth Vader it is established that Vader, already an iconic villain, has a boss — one whom Vader himself fears. Additionally, Palpatine recognizes Luke Skywalker as a true threat.In just a few lines, Mr. Revill established Palpatine as a cold, dominant figure.When the original trilogy was rereleased in 2004, his voice was replaced by that of Ian McDiarmid, who played Palpatine in subsequent “Star Wars” films, starting with “Return of the Jedi” (1983). But in various iterations of Palpatine since the original — including the franchise films, the video game “Fortnite” and even Lego re-enactments — the character’s voice is built on Mr. Revill’s work.“Those voices are all influenced by this first example,” said Greg Iwinski, a writer on the animated “Star Wars” series “Young Jedi Adventures.” “That was 45 years ago. That’s the importance of that legacy. He was the first guy to do it.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Fight for Glory’ Is an Ecstatic Treat

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      This three-part documentary about the 2024 World Series has an interesting task: Retell a story that is already pretty good and pretty legible.A lot of TV sports documentaries in the post-“Drive to Survive” world take a broad, rudimentary and personality-driven approach: Make the sport welcoming to new viewers, and give extant fans new access to their faves. After “The Last Dance,” we also got a wave of sit-down interviews and ostensible introspection — the stories behind the story.“Fight for Glory: 2024 World Series,” a three-part documentary that arrives Friday, on Apple TV+, is playing a different game.This mini-series, directed by R.J. Cutler (“The September Issue,” “Martha”), is almost all on the field. Rather than cutting away to seated talking-head interviews, the additional intel and commentary is delivered in voice-over, while the camera stays on the game. Only a few players get any back story, and only one, the Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman, drives the emotional arc of the show.“Glory” has an interesting task, which is to retell a story that is already a pretty good, pretty legible story without the documentary. Championships have built-in stakes; the Yankees and the Dodgers are internationally known legacy franchises; many of the players here are already huge, huge stars; and some of the contextualizing footage is from news conferences. There is no excavation of the unknown. The games have been played.Instead, “Glory” is a distillation, an ecstatic highlighting of highlights in their most alluring form. Sure, there’s a brief interlude about the battle between a batter and a pitcher, but that takes all of one at-bat. The hero here is home runs, and not just any home runs but grand slams — and not just any grand slams but a walk-off grand slam from Freeman, the World Series M.V.P.The Yankees fan in me was of course writhing in agony while I watched this. But the sports hedonist in me was dancing a jig. Just the good parts, please, and make them extra good. Never let me go more than a few minutes without hearing the crack of a bat and the roar of a crowd — a Yankee Stadium crowd, when possible. Feature only super-duper fans, and show them only losing their minds. Replay the injuries in slow motion. Frame the errors as egregious and the homers as a symbol of processing personal tragedy. Show us some loving families so that we may experience their joy as well. Take us all out to the ballgame, why don’t you. More

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      Hollywood Has Not Recovered Jobs Lost During Strikes, Report Says

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      Many entertainment industry workers have been jobless for months, leading state officials to consider increasing subsidies to keep film and television production in California.Hollywood has yet to recover the jobs in film and television production that were lost when strikes by writers and actors brought production to a halt in 2023 as the industry was shifting, according to a report released Thursday.The report by the Otis College of Art and Design found that jobs in the entertainment sector in 2024 remained 25 percent below their 2022 peak, when the industry was working to make up for time lost during the pandemic shutdown.One measure of production, the number of shooting days in Los Angeles County, decreased by 42 percent last year compared to 2022, according to the report.“The film, TV, and sound sector appears to be settling into a new normal characterized by lower employment and production levels when compared to its pre-strike peak,” the report said.Michael F. Miller Jr., a vice president at the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees who oversees film and television production for the union, said that over the two-year period from 2022 to 2024, roughly 18,000 full-time jobs had evaporated. One recent survey of more than over 700 crew members found that almost two in three reported that their income fell short of expectations last year.The new report found that the entertainment sector added almost 15,000 jobs last year, but that the gains were not enough to make up for all the jobs lost during the strikes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More