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      Without Another Debate, the Campaign Became a Duel of TV Scenes

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      As the candidates raced to claim different corners of the national screen this week, it was “Undercover Boss” vs. “Roll the clip.”In a typical election season — remember those? — right about now we would be preparing for, or recovering from, the final presidential debate. But Oct. 23, the date of a proposed CNN showdown that Kamala Harris accepted and Donald J. Trump declined, came and went without one.Instead, as Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump raced to claim different corners of the national screen, they were essentially staging a virtual debate, presenting competing versions of themselves on strikingly different stages.Mr. Trump substituted the debate podium with a takeout window, performing a shift on the fry cooker at a closed McDonald’s franchise and violating the occasional job protocol. It was a familiar kind of reality-TV stunt for a reality-TV candidate.This time, however, he was not emulating “The Apprentice” but staging a political version of “Undercover Boss.”On the CBS reality series, which aired 11 seasons from 2010 to 2022, company executives went incognito to work low-level jobs at their companies. The premise was to show bigwigs how the grunts lived. But it also served, in the years after the financial collapse and Great Recession, as a form of prime-time crisis P.R. Chief executives were people too, it told us; they shared common purpose and mutual respect with the rank and file.Mr. Trump’s shift, which lasted less time than a single “Undercover Boss” episode, had different aims. Most overtly, it was a way of using virality — what news producer can resist footage of Donald Trump shoveling fries into a container? — to spread his unsubstantiated claim that Ms. Harris had lied about working at McDonald’s while in college. (As with his birtherism campaign against Barack Obama, media coverage generally noted that his charges were baseless, but the dust still got kicked up, the doubts potentially sown.)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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      ‘Somebody Somewhere’ Is Going Out on a Bittersweet Note

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      Ahead of the final season, the creators discuss Midwestern humor, queer communities of faith and why they made a show “about people who aren’t very equipped to talk about their feelings.”Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen met at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where they bonded over being displaced Midwesterners and began writing plays together. A few years later, in early-2000s Manhattan, they met a bawdy, big-voiced cabaret performer named Bridget Everett.“I played harp in a two-girl ukulele band, and we were often on the same bill as Bridget,” Thureen said recently. “Which kind of makes sense.”As the three became fast friends, Bos and Thureen came to believe there was more to Everett than her outsize stage personality, which is perhaps best exemplified by her tendency to rub her breasts in an unsuspecting audience member’s face. They saw a quieter, more vulnerable side, and they wanted to write something that honored both that and her rollicking stage persona.The series the three of them came up with (along with the executive producer Carolyn Strauss), “Somebody Somewhere,” premiered in 2022. Its third and final season debuts Sunday on HBO and Max.“We would keep on doing this show as long as we could, if it was up to us,” Thureen said. “But we also know that it’s not up to us and that in this landscape, more than three seasons of a show our size would be unlikely.”Set in Everett’s hometown, Manhattan, Kan., the series finds quiet drama and humor in a pocket of open-minded Midwestern tolerance, where Everett’s character Sam and her friends, including her best friend Joel (Jeff Hiller), deal with loneliness by creating a sort of found family. They’re all trying to have a good time and create meaningful relationships in their small town. “Somebody Somewhere” also, unassumingly, remains one of the most L.G.B.T.Q.-friendly series on television, a place where church, beers and queerness coexist with barely a shrug.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 Fallon Rallies for Queen Bey

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      The “Tonight Show” host was excited about Beyoncé’s plans to appear with the vice president: “What a night — the most powerful woman in the world and Kamala Harris.”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.Texas Hold ’emThe pop superstar Beyoncé will join Vice President Kamala Harris onstage at a campaign rally in Houston on Friday.“What a night — the most powerful woman in the world and Kamala Harris,” Jimmy Fallon said on Thursday.“Woo, baby. Talk about a get! The last time Beyoncé appeared onstage with a presidential candidate was Hillary in 2016, so things are looking good.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“Yeah, Beyoncé will sing ‘Irreplaceable,’ and Biden will be like, ‘Too soon!’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, Harris is rallying with Beyoncé while Trump will be onstage claiming migrants are eating Snoop Dogg and Doja Cat.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Daddy Issues Edition)“At a Trump campaign rally yesterday in Georgia, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson compared former President Trump returning to office to a father who comes home to give a ‘bad little girl’ a ‘vigorous spanking’ for being disobedient. Wow. I guess for my part, I’m just glad he’s standing behind a podium.” — SETH MEYERS“OK, so this might be why you’ve never been invited to speak at a political rally before.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“You know, most people just clear their browser history, they don’t put it in their speeches.” — SETH MEYERS“Not to fact-check you there, Tuck, but we know from Stormy Daniels that Daddy’s the one who likes to get spanked.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“You see, America? These Trump people — they aren’t weird. They just know that Trump is a big strong daddy that’s coming home to spank us all. Totally normal stuff. I can’t wait to hear Tucker’s thoughts on the economy: ‘Inflation is like a babysitter, and she’s been naughty.’” — MICHAEL KOSTA“I just can’t figure out why they’re having trouble appealing to female voters.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingColbert and Julia Louis-Dreyfus shared their earliest memories during “The Colbert Questionert” on Thursday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutBridget Everett in a scene from Season 3 of “Somebody Somewhere.”Sandy Morris/HBOBridget Everett’s small-town dramedy series “Somebody Somewhere” returns to HBO on Sunday for its third and final season. More

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      in Music

      Jack Jones, a Suave, Hit-Making and Enduring Crooner, Dies at 86

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      With his smooth voice, he drew crowds to cabarets and music halls for six decades. He also sang the themes for films and TV shows, including “The Love Boat.”Jack Jones, a crooner who beguiled concert fans and stage, screen and television audiences for decades with romantic ballads and gentle jazz tunes that even in large venues often achieved the intimacy of his celebrated nightclub performances, died on Wednesday in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 86. His wife, Eleonora Jones, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was leukemia.While his popularity peaked in the 1960s, Mr. Jones found a new audience in later years singing the theme to the hit television show “The Love Boat.” But even then he seemed always to have stepped out of an earlier generation, one that dressed in tuxedos for the songs of Tin Pan Alley and reminded America of its love affairs with the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen.He won two Grammy Awards and recorded numerous albums of American Songbook favorites that hit the upper reaches of Billboard’s charts on the strength of his smooth vocal interpretations. He performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the White House and the London Palladium, and for more than 60 years drew crowds to cabarets and nightclubs around the world.At the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan in 2010, marking his 52nd year in show business, Mr. Jones opened and closed a two-hour retrospective of his songs with Paul Williams’s “That’s What Friends Are For.” He sang to a packed house of longtime fans:Friends are like warm clothesIn the night air.Best when they’re oldAnd we miss them the most when they’re gone.“Those lyrics evoked the vanishing breed of pop-jazz crooner, of which Mr. Jones and Tony Bennett remain the great survivors,” Stephen Holden wrote in The New York Times. “Mr. Jones, now 72, draws the same kind of well-dressed sophisticated audiences that used to attend the annual appearances at the defunct Michael’s Pub of his friend Mel Tormé, who died 11 years ago at 73.”Mr. Jones with his fellow vocalist Tony Bennett in 1972.Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Lynda Obst, Producer, Dies at 74; Championed Women in Hollywood

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      She helped make films like “Sleepless in Seattle” and “Contact.” She also wrote widely about the industry, for The Times and other publications.Lynda Obst, a New York journalist turned Hollywood producer who promoted women in films like “Sleepless in Seattle” and “Contact” while writing incisive dispatches from Tinseltown for outlets like The Atlantic and The New York Times, died on Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 74.Her brother Rick Rosen said the cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.Known for her booming, raspy laugh and her startling candor, Ms. Obst was a colorful character even by the standards of a colorful industry.Even more unusual for Hollywood, she was at times an outspoken critic of the movie industry, especially its treatment of women.As a producer, she excelled at both frothy romantic comedies and serious science fiction dramas. She helped shepherd Nora Ephron’s seminal “Sleepless in Seattle” as an executive producer in 1993 and the box-office hit “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” as a producer in 2003. But she also produced Robert Zemeckis’s “Contact” in 1997 and Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” in 2014.She was an advocate for stories focused on women, and often made by women, at a time when there weren’t many. She pushed, for example, for Jodie Foster to star as an astronomer in “Contact” when it was unusual for a major science fiction movie to have a female lead. An acolyte and admirer of Ms. Ephron, she produced her directorial debut, “This Is My Life” (1992).Ms. Obst excelled at both frothy romantic comedies and serious science fiction dramas. She was an executive producer of the hit Nora Ephron comedy “Sleepless in Seattle” (1993), which starred Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, seen here with Ross Malinger.TriStar PicturesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      The Menendez Brothers: How True Crime Is Re-Examining Old Cases

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      A thriving genre built on podcasts and documentaries, coupled with younger generations’ more skeptical worldview, helped revitalize interest in this case and others like it.There’s a montage during the new Netflix documentary “The Menendez Brothers” in which comedians, late-night hosts and other pop culture figures of the 1990s mock Lyle and Erik Menendez. The brothers had recently delivered testimony at their first murder trial, detailing their accounts of sexual abuse at the hands of their father, Jose Menendez, whom they had gunned down and killed in 1989, alongside their mother, Kitty.There was a 1993 “Saturday Night Live” skit that had John Malkovich and Rob Schneider mimicking the brothers in the courtroom, weeping dramatically and sarcastically. On the “Late Show,” the comedian Sandra Bernhard told David Letterman, “These two arrogant brothers are gonna fry,” to whoops and laughter from the audience.“I called Jay Leno’s show once, to protest them making fun of them,” Joan Vander Molen, Kitty Menendez’s sister, says in the documentary. “That’s all they did. They just made fun of them.”Some 30 years later, Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were 21 and 18 when the murders were committed, have gone from pariahs and punchlines to something approaching sympathetic figures in the eyes of a growing number of people.They’ve also gone from the prospect of spending the rest of their lives in prison to having a chance at freedom after George Gascón, the Los Angeles district attorney, announced on Thursday that he would recommend a resentencing that would make the brothers eligible for immediate parole.Gascón cited the work the brothers have done to improve the lives of their fellow inmates. “I believe they have paid their debt to society,” Gascón said.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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      ‘Somebody Somewhere’ Is Back for Its Final Season

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      The HBO dramedy about a Kansas woman finding love and community after tragedy returns for its third and final season on Sunday.Bridget Everett in a scene from Season 3 of “Somebody Somewhere.”Sandy Morris/HBO“Somebody Somewhere,” a perfect dramedy starring Bridget Everett as a Kansas woman finding love and community after her sister’s death, returns for its third and final season starting Sunday at 10:30 p.m., on HBO. The show is full of ecstatic tenderness and easy warmth, but it avoids pat tidiness.Sam (Everett) is ebullient and loyal, and over the course of the series, her life has stabilized a lot: The cold clutch of grief has loosened, her friendship with Joel (Jeff Hiller, fantastic) continues to blossom, and she’s more comfortable singing in front of everyone. But her battle between vulnerability and defensiveness wages on. As often as “Somebody” is a detailed taxonomy of love — platonic, familial, religious, romantic — it is also a portrait of loneliness. Perhaps there is no such thing as “enough” love, the show admits; things can be wonderful without being perfect, and they can be painful but still worth it. Even the seemingly simple love of a dog comes with complications.One of my favorite parts of “Somebody” is how often the characters laugh. They all find each other screamingly funny, for good reason, and they’re all able to laugh at themselves, too. Usually when we think about Big Acting Moments, they’re quivering, tearful monologues, sobbing or ranting. “Somebody” certainly has those, but its more cathartic scenes are ones of laughter — where the real bonding happens, the real changes, the real surrender. They are also where the ensemble shines the brightest.One of the primary arcs of the show is about Sam’s re-embracing her singing voice, and in the first episode of Season 3, she sings “Smalltown Boy” alone in her car. She moves through various harmonies but then backs off a big wail, sighing that she wishes she could hit that note. But it seems like she could hit it, if she could relax into it and be a little brave.“I’ve never been comfortable expressing my feelings in public, you know?” admits Brad (Tim Bagley), Joel’s prim and adoring boyfriend. “Yeah, I think I understand that,” Sam replies. “I think that’s what’s so great about singing: Somehow the music just makes it so much easier. It’s like you’re not doing it alone.” More

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      Erin and Sara Foster Discuss ‘Nobody Wants This’ and Their ‘IVF, Baby’ Shirts

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      Sara and Erin Foster took a short break to discuss the hit show loosely based on Erin’s life, everyone’s love of Adam Brody and their advocacy for reproductive rights.On Tuesday morning, Sara and Erin Foster, the sisters behind the Netflix series “Nobody Wants This,” joined a video call from their respective homes in Los Angeles. Sara, 43, was wearing an oversize sweatshirt, and Erin, 42, was in a bathrobe.The sisters are known for their laid-back style, but by any standards they’ve had a busy month.“Nobody Wants This” premiered Sept. 26, rising to the top of Netflix’s ratings within a week. The show, which is written by Erin and produced by both sisters, was inspired by Erin’s real-life love story of falling in love with her now-husband, the music executive Simon Tikhman, before converting to Judaism. In the Netflix version of the story, Joanne, a blonde, agnostic relationship podcaster played by Kristen Bell, and Noah, a bearded rabbi played by Adam Brody, navigate the various hurdles of getting into a serious relationship.Last week, with less than a month before Election Day, the Fosters also waded into the debate over reproductive rights and in vitro fertilization. They released a limited edition T-shirt through their fashion brand, Favorite Daughter, with the bold, black words, “IVF, Baby.” (The sisters partnered with CCRM Fertility on the project. All proceeds will be donated to Resolve: the National Infertility Association.)“They just launched like four days ago, so we haven’t had a chance to run into anyone wearing them yet, but we hope we do,” said Erin, who underwent 20 rounds of I.V.F. before welcoming a daughter in May. Sara, who has two daughters with her ex-partner, the former tennis star Tommy Haas, said sales were higher than expected.The sisters chatted about this whirlwind time in their lives.This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.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