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      Why We Keep Rewatching ‘Gilmore Girls’

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      The show, which ended in 2007, was still one of the 10 most-watched shows across major streaming platforms last year, according to the research firm Nielsen.Some things have inexplicable staying power. The Hermès Birkin bag. Cheetos. Crocs.And for nostalgic millennials, there is “Gilmore Girls.” The show ended its seven-year run on the WB and CW networks in 2007, yet viewers keep returning to the familiar comfort of the fictional town of Stars Hollow, Conn., where the series was set.Netflix recorded 500 million viewing hours for the show from January to June of last year, surpassing hits like “Seinfeld” and “Stranger Things,” and data released on Monday by the research firm Nielsen showed that “Gilmore Girls” was among the Top 10 most-watched shows across the major streaming platforms in 2023.The show, which concluded the month before the iPhone was introduced, is even finding a younger audience on TikTok, where users post scenes they love and argue about their favorite romantic partners for every character.Yanic Truesdale, who played the grumpy inn concierge Michel, lovingly called it “the show that will never die.”“I’ve had hundreds, if not thousands, over the years, of people saying, ‘I got a surgery, and your show kept me going,’” he said. “Or, ‘I lost my dad,’ or ‘I lost this person, and I would watch the show and I would feel better.’”He added that he still meets fans who offer testaments to its popularity: “I’m always amazed that 10-year-olds, 15-year-olds — kids — are watching it as if it just came out.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      ‘Feud: Capote vs. the Swans’ Review: Cold Blooded

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      In FX’s series about Truman Capote’s downfall, there’s nothing waiting at the rainbow’s end.“Feud: Capote vs. the Swans,” which premieres Wednesday on FX (streaming on Hulu), is something that its protagonist could not abide: a bore.The second season of the anthology series “Feud” stretches the story of Truman Capote’s falling out with the “swans” of New York society across eight episodes and more than seven hours. Much of the action takes place between the publication of the thinly fictionalized story “La Côte Basque, 1965” in November 1975 — in which Capote spills the tea about the misbehavior of many of his rich acquaintances — and the death in July 1978 of Babe Paley, one of the socialites who dropped him after the piece came out. Flashbacks touch on his grim childhood, his ascent to fame in the 1960s with the revolutionary “In Cold Blood” and his happy days as a dinner-party darling; other scenes cover his late 1970s to early 1980s spiral into alcoholism and addiction, leading to his death of liver disease in 1984.This could be the framework for gossipy, sexy, stylish, tragic entertainment, but that does not appear to be what the show’s creators — who include the writer Jon Robin Baitz; Gus Van Sant, who directed six episodes; and the executive producer Ryan Murphy — had in mind. They have gone instead for chilly, moralistic and cautionary. “Capote vs. the Swans” feels as forbidding and vindictive as the society wives who pass judgment on Capote.An element in that affect is the fashionably fractured approach the show takes to its storytelling. The action jumps back and forth relentlessly in time. One result is that it can take a few beats, even when there are titles with the years, to figure out whether what we are seeing is happening before or after the pivotal publication of “La Côte Basque, 1965.”Another, more important result is that the themes the show puts forth — the discrimination and condescension Capote faces as a gay man, even from those who champion him; the rigid patriarchy that oppresses the swans despite (or because of) their social standing; and the rapid changes in the culture that perplex all of them — are not elaborated on in a dramatic way. Ideas don’t develop — they agglomerate in a repetitive, undifferentiated jumble, and the power they might have drains away. The show is peculiarly lacking in dramatic tension (though not in melodramatic flourishes); it’s eight episodes of Capote circling the drain, bobbing higher or lower depending on the time frame.Chloë Sevigny as C.Z. Guest, one of the socialites Capote betrayed with his 1975 story in Esquire.FXWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Chita Rivera Lived to Entertain. Here Are 9 Memorable Performances.

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      A quadruple threat, Rivera could make a lasting impression in minutes, whether onstage or onscreen. These videos illustrate why.Chita Rivera, who died on Tuesday at the age of 91, was known for her extraordinary artistry. Yet, it is hard to comprehend the full scope of her talent because, like so many Broadway performers of her generation, much of her best work was not captured on-screen. Her Anita in the landmark 1957 Broadway production of “West Side Story”? Rita Moreno took it on in the Hollywood adaptation. Rose in the hit “Bye Bye Birdie,” from 1960? That role went to Janet Leigh in the movie. Only in 1969 did Rivera make her feature-film debut, in “Sweet Charity,” almost two decades after her Broadway debut. Thankfully, we have variety shows, TV specials and unofficial fan videos to help us patch together a compelling video portrait. Her life force bursts through in every second.Here’s a look back at some of those indelible moments.1962‘This Could Be the Start of Something’Although this song is closely associated with its writer, Steve Allen, Rivera made it her own in this appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1962. The dancers welcome her by singing “Hey, Chita! Like, wow!” and that pretty much sums it all up. Rivera did not need a whole show to make an impact: She could deliver a knockout punch in just a few minutes. Not only did the era’s variety shows provide perfect settings for those self-contained gems, but they also introduced her to a national audience.1964‘I Believe in You’Rivera easily held her own against the best, including Judy Garland. The two women performed a duet of this song from “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” on Garland’s variety show in January 1964. On that same episode, Rivera also blew the roof off the studio with “I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin’,” a number from “Porgy and Bess” reimagined as a va-va-voom dance extravaganza choreographed by Peter Gennaro.1965‘Blue Is a Color’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      The World Needs Love. Hallmark Is Cashing in.

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      When more people are watching the Hallmark Channel than CNN, you know we’ve reached a new level of interpersonal isolation.In this lull between perhaps the most successful slate of the Hallmark Channel’s Countdown to Christmas films ever and the Jane Austen-drenched debut of Hallmark’s Loveuary 2024, it’s time to admit that Hallmark movies are actually just Hollywood movies — and specifically rom-coms. Straight couples dance, in well-lit venues, to the music of real instruments. Wrenching decisions are suffered through. Misunderstandings abound. Soulful kisses are for denouements. Happy endings feel required by law. Call it vapid if you will, but the culture of the Hallmark universe has been around since the 16th century, when a shrew apparently needed to be tamed. Since 2015 (when Hallmark started its own production arm), the network has been filling a slot that used to hold date-night and slumber-party films like “The Bridges of Madison County” (1995), “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” (1998), “Bend It Like Beckham” (2002) and “The Notebook” (2004). The people who love those films, like readers of romance fiction (which has led the print growth category), want quantities of quality storytelling, and Hallmark, whose company values include creating “a more emotionally connected world,” understands the assignment. The network’s holiday programming, along with its films in general, continues its pine-scented journey toward cultural domination. Hallmark rose from the sixth-most-watched cable network at the top of October to the third-most-watched the week of Nov. 20, when it won out over CNN and MSNBC in total eyeballs. Decisions about who gets to be quaint can seem mawkish and basic, but they have far-reaching impact. In 2019, Bill Abbott, the president and chief executive of Hallmark’s parent company at the time, said, “Until we get to ‘Walking Dead’ numbers, I’m not going to be happy.” Almost 300 Hallmark Christmas films have aired since 2002, including “The Christmas Card” (2006), for which Ed Asner received an Emmy nomination. One of Hallmark’s strategies — elevating television actors who are either aging gracefully or were tapped out at co-star level — is especially potent. As an example: 23 years after the Salinger siblings Bailey (Scott Wolf) and Claudia (Lacey Chabert) were accepted to college in the series finale of the acclaimed teenage drama “Party of Five,” Hallmark’s “A Merry Scottish Christmas,” starring Wolf and Chabert, made its debut. Portraying a different (estranged) sister and brother (who not only repair their relationship but also discover they are Scottish royalty), the duo fall into the camaraderie of their Golden Globe-winning days.Hallmark, like various systems of artificial intelligence, is learning, and easing up on its compositional jargon. In “A Merry Scottish Christmas,” Chabert’s character has a love interest, and in Hallmarkian (and Sirkian) tradition, he is hunky, sensitive and handy. Yet unlike so many Hallmark heroines, she is not leaving a high-powered career in the big city for an ostensibly more substantial small-town life. Chabert’s character thinks she can stay in Scotland if she can run her own medical practice. And the “Party of Five” reunion overperformed. Taking into consideration all ad-supported cable, “A Merry Scottish Christmas” was the most-watched movie of 2023. The core viewers included women in key advertiser-prized categories, and the demographic details go broader than what many perceive to be Hallmark’s viewership: crotchety and cane-shaking “N.C.I.S.” fans.What has become a cultural juggernaut began as a plan to market postcards. Joyce, Rollie and William Hall were born into Nebraska poverty in the late 19th century, and by 1911, they owned and operated a tiny venture called the Hall Book Store. There they sold, among other printed goods and gifts, “Christmas letters.” One advertisement from the time described the letters as “neat dainty folders of beautiful Christmas sentiments and mottos.” This snow-globe spirit is alive in Hallmark to this day. By the late 1940s, the company was sponsoring a Reader’s Digest radio show on the CBS network, but it soon went into the entertainment business on its own. Its radio show “Hallmark Playhouse” morphed into “Hallmark Hall of Fame,” a series of television specials that began in 1951. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      The Queer Kids Are All Right. And Now They’re Making Me Better.

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      Here’s a list of every openly queer person I knew when I was 15:That’s it. None. Not even myself.Oh sure, Paul Lynde and Liberace were flouncing on television; closer to home, a boy I kept my distance from decoupaged his notebooks. But even if they really were what people whispered or snarled about them, it was not then an identity they would dare to acknowledge.Nor would I. Unable to see through their closet doors to the truth of what their lives might be, I did not have the benefit of their stories, which meant not having the benefit of my own.Cut to today, 50 years later. Another 15-year-old boy — like me intense, unathletic and bullied — is the lead character on “Heartstopper,” a hit teen romance. But this boy, Charlie, knows all about queerness. He is, after all, growing up in the 2020s and, more to the point, in 2020s pop culture. In that magical land, also known as Netflix, adolescence for people like him is not only survivable but often a lovefest, all closet doors blown off their hinges.And I do mean all. Charlie (adorkable Joe Locke) is happy to be gay, and why not: When he crushes on a dreamy and apparently straight rugby player, the rugby player promptly comes out as bisexual. Their romance is supported by a cute teenage lesbian couple they hang out with. Also in the group is a bookish nerd who realizes he’s asexual — or “ace,” as he explains, pinning a fun new name on that identity. Even the straight boy, vastly outnumbered, gets a queer love story when he falls for his best friend, a beautiful trans girl.Welcome to the classic lifeboat plot, checking boxes on a diversity agenda. But this time it’s mostly calm seas and clear sailing.Do I sound envious? I am. Also slightly embarrassed.Don’t get me wrong: My husband and I devoured the first two seasons. (The third is expected in the fall.) I’ve also been watching, with or without him — for these are guilty pleasures — a slew of other queer youth stories, all the while trying to sort out my feelings.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Jimmy Kimmel Breaks Down MAGA’s Super Bowl Conspiracy Theories

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      Is the N.F.L. rigged? Is Taylor Swift a psy-op? Kimmel says that “this nonsense is now everywhere your angry grandpa goes.”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.Chief ConcernsSupporters of former President Donald Trump are spreading conspiracy theories about the Super Bowl, Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs and his girlfriend, Taylor Swift.“Even this clown who ran for president, Vivek Ramaswamy, added his nut voice to the chorus of cuckoos,” Kimmel said on Tuesday. He pointed to the former G.O.P. candidate’s suggestion that Kelce and Swift were “an artificially culturally propped-up couple” and that the Super Bowl would be rigged, all to get President Biden re-elected.“And it’s not just on Twitter — this nonsense is now everywhere your angry grandpa goes,” Kimmel said, calling the conspiracy theorists “not-too-Swifties.”“The same people who believe Joe Biden has dementia and needs Kamala Harris to feed him butterscotch tapioca every night also believe that he has somehow planned and executed a diabolically brilliant scheme to fix the N.F.L. playoffs so the biggest pop star in the world can pop up on the Jumbotron during the Super Bowl in between a Kia and a Tostitos commercial to hypnotize her 11-year-old fans into voting for Joe Biden. I mean, it makes sense. It makes total sense. These people — these people think football is fake and wrestling is real.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The average price for a ticket to see the Chiefs play the Niners is a little over $12,000 right now. But here’s the thing, it’s not just a football game; it’s also a live game of ‘Where’s Waldo?’ starring Taylor Swift, if you can spot her.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Ten grand’s a lot for a football game, but it’s dirt cheap to see Taylor Swift live, I will say that.” — JIMMY FALLON“Nothing like being down ten grand before stepping foot in Vegas, you know what I’m saying?” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Where Credit Is Due Edition)“I saw that Trump just took credit for the record-high stock market under Biden. Trump was like, ‘If I had not not lost the election, this never would have happened.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Even crazier, Trump said, ‘Eric and Don Jr.? That’s all Biden’s fault.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Chaos in the Middle East? Biden’s fault. Booming economy? All Donald Trump, three years after he left office! It’s incredible. You know, I’m starting to feel like he might be making some of this stuff up.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingOn Tuesday’s “Late Show,” Emma Stone explained why she wants to compete on the noncelebrity version of “Jeopardy.” What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightLola Tung, star of “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” will sit down with Seth Meyers on Wednesday night ahead of her Broadway debut in “Hadestown.”Also, Check This OutKlaus Biesenbach, director of the Neue Nationalgalerie, and the artist Kandis Williams, a co-curator, at the opening of the exhibition.Andreas Meichsner for The New York TimesAn exhibition in Berlin, “Josephine Baker: Icon in Motion,” highlights the groundbreaking entertainer’s life, career and influence. More

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      Minute-Long Soap Operas Are Here. Is America Ready?

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      Popularized in China during the pandemic, ReelShort and other apps are hoping to bring minute-by-minute melodramas to the United States.When Albee Zhang received an offer to produce cheesy short-form features made for phones last spring, she was skeptical, and so, she declined.But the offers kept coming. Finally, Ms. Zhang, who has been a producer for 12 years, realized it could be a profitable new way of storytelling and said yes.Since last summer, she has produced two short-form features and is working on four more for several apps that are creating cookie-cutter content aimed at women.Think: Lifetime movie cut up into TikTok videos. Think: soap opera, but for the short attention span of the internet age.The biggest player in this new genre is ReelShort, an app that offers melodramatic content in minute-long, vertically shot episodes and is hoping to bring a successful formula established abroad to the United States by hooking millions of people on its short-form content.“The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband” is one of the many short features you can watch on ReelShort, an app that offers short dramatic content meant to be watched on phones. ReelShort

      @reelshortapp On your 18th birthday, the Moon Goddess granted you a RED wolf. She said a new journey awaited you, but there were also evil forces after your power… Called weak your whole life, what POWER could you possibly have?! #fyp #reelshort #binge #bingeworthy #bingewatching #obsessed #obsession #mustwatch #witch #alpha #werewolf #moon #wolfpack #booktok #luna #drama #film #movie #tiktok #tv #tvseries #shortclips #tvclips #filmtok #movietok #dramatok #romance #love #marriage #relationship #couple #dramatiktok #filmtiktok #movietiktoks #saturday #saturdayvibes #saturdaymood #saturdaymotivation #saturdayfeels #saturdayfeeling #weekend #weekendvibes ♬ original sound – ReelShort APP We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      The Women of ‘Feud: Capote vs. the Swans’ Are Birds of a Feather

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      Famous women play the famous women in Ryan Murphy’s new period drama. In a group interview, they discuss the series and the burdens of public life.The first season of Ryan Murphy’s “Feud” aired in 2017. A juicy survey of the bitter rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, the co-stars of “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?,” the show earned 18 Emmy nominations, winning two. A second season, based on Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s troubled marriage, was developed then scrapped, mostly because Murphy felt that he could never outdo “The Crown.” Another iteration, centered on William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal, also fell apart. Murphy and his producers toyed with a half dozen other ideas, though never for very long.“It’s very easy to do a show where people are just nasty to each other,” Murphy said in a an interview earlier this month. “But feuds are never about hate. They’re about love.”Then Murphy read “Capote’s Women,” by Laurence Leamer, a gossipy, trenchant study of the novelist Truman Capote and the society women he befriended and later betrayed. Murphy had long been fascinated by Capote. He was equally entranced by the women Capote referred to as his Swans, self-created creatures whom he admired for their style, wealth and savoir faire. Their gift, as Capote wrote in his late collection “Portraits and Observations,” was to offer “the imaginary portrait precisely projected.”Tom Hollander plays Capote, whose betrayal of Babe Paley (Watts) was perhaps the most cutting.FX“It was a full-time job,” Moore said of the roles performed by the real-life women she and her co-stars play in “Feud.” “There were no casual sweatpants.”FXLeamer’s tale had luxury, treachery, artistry and spite. It had love, too, “the very fragile, wonderful relationships that exist many times between gay men and straight women,” Murphy said. With a script by Jon Robin Baitz and direction by Gus Van Sant, the story became “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans,” an eight-episode series that premieres on FX on Wednesday. (Episodes will stream on Hulu the day after they air.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More