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      Best TV Episodes of 2023

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      “Bob’s Burgers,” “Frontline,” “Killing It” and “A Spy Among Friends” were among the series that gave us some of the best episodes of television this year.Great TV series can run for dozens or hundreds of hours, but we still experience them a piece at a time. This list is dedicated to those pieces: a handful of the best episodes that Mike Hale, Margaret Lyons and I saw in a year of professional viewership.As usual, this list isn’t comprehensive — it wouldn’t be if it were 10 times as long. And as usual, I avoided repeating shows that were on my Best of 2023 list. So I could have, but didn’t, include standout installments from “The Last of Us” (“Long, Long Time”), “Succession” (“Connor’s Wedding”) and “The Bear” (for me, “Forks” not “Fishes,” nothing against the latter). Consider it a starting point, and feel free to add your own. JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘Australian Survivor’Season 8, Episode 7: ‘Return of the King’“Australian Survivor” has been outplaying the U.S. version for a while now, and nowhere was that more evident than in this jaw-dropping episode from the “Heroes vs. Villains” season. The episode’s final tribal council featured a masterstroke of psychological manipulation by George Mladenov, or “King George,” who emerged as one of the most telegenic antagonists of any version of the show. American “Survivor” is still a delight, but this iteration currently wears the crown. (Streaming on 10play.) PONIEWOZIK‘Bob’s Burgers’Season 14, Episode 2: ‘The Amazing Rudy’It’s a rare comedy that can maintain quality, and even improve, going into its 14th season. It’s an even rarer one that, this long into its run, can pull off a striking and effective departure from form like this side-character spotlight. Shunting the Belcher family to the wings for most of the episode, this half-hour dove into the family history of the anxious grade-schooler Regular-Sized Rudy (voiced by Brian Huskey) as he searched for a magic trick that could save an awkward dinner with his divorced parents. Funny, poignant and ultimately uplifting, “The Amazing Rudy” showed that this burger joint can pull off a distinctive special of the week. (Streaming on Hulu.) PONIEWOZIKA scene from the “Amelia” episode of “Bob’s Burgers,” where Louise takes a class assignment personally.Fox‘Bob’s Burgers’Season 13, Episode 22: ‘Amelia’You could fill this list with episodes of “Bob’s Burgers”; from the past 12 months, “The Plight Before Christmas” and “These Boots Are Made for Stalking” also come to mind. The Season 13 finale typified the Fox comedy’s embrace of eccentricity, individuality and generosity of spirit, as the compulsively competitive fourth-grader Louise (Kristen Schaal) agonized over a multimedia report on her hastily chosen hero, Amelia Earhart. Her eventual triumph was a satisfying and gently comic victory for all ambitious, difficult, undervalued girls and women. (Streaming on Hulu.) MIKE HALE’Carol & the End of the World’Season 1, Episode 4: ‘Sisters’To the burgeoning genre of big-hearted apocalypse stories (“Station Eleven,” “The Last of Us”) add this adult animated series, set in the months before a looming planetary collision, which arrived too late for my annual best-TV list. Through a series of home-video snippets, this episode follows the introverted Carol (Martha Kelly) on a hiking trip with her exuberant sister, Elena (Bridget Everett), as the mismatched siblings try to bond before doomsday. (Streaming on Netflix.) PONIEWOZIK‘Cunk on Earth’Season 1, Episode 3: ’The Renaissance Will not be Televised’I could probably have picked any of the five ridiculous episodes of this history mockumentary, but I’m partial to the Renaissance installment. In it, Philomena Cunk (Diane Morgan) walks us through some of the major events between 1440 and 1830 or so, with her dopey and bizarre questions. She and a da Vinci expert look at “The Vitruvian Man,” and she asks, “What’s it for?” In praising the artist’s Last Supper, she marvels, “You almost feel like you could crawl inside it and betray Jesus yourself.” As for the French Revolution, she explains that “The guillotine was specifically designed to be the most humane way to decapitate someone in front of a jeering crowd.” “Cunk” is dorky buffoonery at its best. (Streaming on Netflix.) MARGARET LYONSDave Burd, seated, as Dave, with child-actor versions of himself.Byron Cohen/FX‘Dave’Season 3, Episode 2: ‘Harrison Ave.’The fictional-autobiographical FXX comedy about the rapper Lil Dicky (Dave Burd) can be raunchy and scatological and outrageous. This third-season episode, however — well, it was still all that but also insightful and sweet. As the title character returns home to shoot a video about a childhood romance — cast with a slew of child-actor versions of himself as well as his actual young love, now grown up — the ensuing chaos becomes a reflection on celebrity, memory and the responsibilities of memoir. (Streaming on Hulu.) PONIEWOZIK‘Extraordinary’Season 1, Episode 8: ‘Surprise!’In “Extraordinary,” everyone on earth gets a superpower on their 18th birthday; Jen (Máiréad Tyers) is 25 and hasn’t gotten hers yet. While the humiliation and confusion she feels about this drives some of the show, it is secondary to the loving but bickering friendship with her roommate and bestie, her tense relationship with her mother and her budding romance with a shape-shifter who entered her life as a stray cat. This all comes to a head in the season finale, when a big, messy party pulls together all the show’s quirky characters and plot lines — and then just when things are feeling happy and resolved, it ends with a perfect record-scratch twist. Ah, the best kind of hurts so good. (Streaming on Hulu.) LYONSIn a scene from “Frontline,” the photographer Evgeniy Maloletka picks his way through the aftermath of a Russian attack in Mariupol, Ukraine, in 2022.Mstyslav Chernov/Associated Press‘Frontline’Season 42, Episode 5: ‘20 Days in Mariupol’This unaffectedly brutal documentary, filmed by the Associated Press video journalist Mstyslav Chernov, belongs on every list of the year’s best movies; through the good offices of “Frontline,” which was involved in its production, it can be included here. In backyards, on debris-strewn streets and in the ruins of a bombed-out maternity hospital, Chernov records the anger, despair and utter bewilderment of Ukrainian civilians during the early days of the Russian invasion. And as he and his team sprint across open areas and hunker down in flimsy stairwells, he narrates their desperate efforts to get the news to the world. (Streaming on PBS.org.) HALE’Killing It’Season 2, Episode 2: ‘Mallory’Claudia O’Doherty gave one of 2023’s best comedic performances in Peacock’s capitalism satire, as Jillian Glopp, a gig worker turned partner in a struggling saw palmetto farm. In the second season’s second episode, the theft of her beloved car — a budget Kia she’s named “Mallory” — cracks her sweet disposition, turning her into a raging vengeance seeker and unleashing the frustration of years scraping by in a dog-eat-dog economy. O’Doherty filters her character’s crackup through a blazing beam of Aussie sunshine. (Streaming on Peacock.) PONIEWOZIK‘A Spy Among Friends’Season 1, Episode 5: ‘Snow’Alexander Cary’s miniseries dramatizing the last days of friendship between the traitorous British spy Kim Philby (Guy Pearce) and his fellow agent Nicholas Elliott (Damian Lewis) emphasized subtle, complex psychology over spy craft (though it had that too). This may be why it didn’t receive the notice it should have. The penultimate episode, in which the full dimensions of Philby’s downfall became apparent, was — like the entire series — a clinic in naturalistic acting by Lewis, Pearce and their co-star Anna Maxwell Martin. (Streaming on MGM+.) HALEIn its attempts to understand some of the victims, Zachary Heinzerling’s thorough, judicious documentary series made the events more opaque.Hulu‘Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence’Season 1, Episode 3: ‘Larryland’Everything about the case of the middle-aged dad Lawrence V. Ray and the group of bright young college students he drew into a cultlike miasma of mind control, sexual exploitation and indentured servitude is hard to fathom. Zachary Heinzerling’s thorough, judicious documentary series made the events both more comprehensible and, in its attempts to understand some of the victims, more opaque and mysterious. The final episode, which came out during Ray’s trial (he is serving a 60-year sentence for sex trafficking and other crimes), was a heartbreaking, mesmerizing summation of the case’s contradictions. (Streaming on Hulu.) HALE‘Telemarketers’Part 1From its opening moments, HBO’s “Telemarketers” is all about shaggy veracity: When we meet our protagonists, Sam Lipman-Stern (also one of the show’s directors) is shirtless in bed, and Patrick J. Pespas is high in the front seat of a car. The two worked together at a telemarketing company, small cogs in a despicable grift, but the office itself is home to real camaraderie — and real chaos, thanks in part to pervasive drug use. Lipman-Stern’s grainy footage from his teenage years captures the outrageousness of his workplace but also Pespas’s intense, charismatic vitality. While the subsequent episodes expose more of the telemarketing industry’s shadiest work, the first installment is an instant, startling immersion into its subjects’ perspectives. (Streaming on Max.) LYONSHaley J in “Wrestlers,” a documentary series with a mother and daughter match that includes folding chairs. Netflix‘Wrestlers’Season 1, Episode 5: ‘Mother’There are dozens of poignant, personal moments in “Wrestlers,” a documentary series about a low-level professional wrestling league. Humor, passion, ambition — plenty of all of those, too. But one episode is a genuine jaw-dropper, and its climax is a death match between a mother and daughter. Marie was a young mom and went to jail while her daughter, Haley, was a child. They never really reconciled, but now they’re in the same wrestling league, where Marie is a doting veteran and Haley, now also a young mother herself, a fast-rising star. Marie says Haley is a “carbon copy” of her; Haley does not see it that way. But they both like turning one kind of pain into another kind of pain, and they bring all their anger and grief into the ring. They also bring folding chairs, a trash-can lid and thousands of thumbtacks, and by the end of the match, they’re both battered, and Marie’s face is covered in blood. It is perhaps the most visceral catharsis I have ever seen. (Streaming on Netflix.) LYONS More

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      On QVC, Shawn Killinger Can Help You Sell Yourself

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      On a Saturday night earlier this month, the QVC host Shawn Killinger kicked off another episode of “Shawn Saves Christmas,” the seasonal series she hosts live at QVC’s gargantuan 24/7 broadcast center in West Chester, Pa., about an hour’s drive from Philadelphia. But by the end of the first segment, it seemed like Shawn was going to sink Christmas instead.As I watched from behind the cameras, she accidentally tipped over a rolling tote bag, shattering a wine bottle loudly enough to be heard on air. “We are going to need a mop,” she said with a cringe and levity, owning the oopsie, as did the camera, which lingered on the aftermath for several seconds. As the screen cut to a photo of the product, Killinger hustled to another part of the set to talk about mascara as the crew, panicked-looking but resolute, made the mess disappear in minutes.Having talked to Killinger quite a bit by that point, I suspected she was mortified by the disaster. When she is presenting on QVC, she had told me earlier, she feels like she is “pedalling a unicycle uphill through a rancid windstorm while juggling flaming swords while chewing gum and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.”But if she was, she didn’t show it. And the secret to that friendly composure is what brought me to QVC HQ.“I’m not a salesperson,” Killinger said. “I’m a storyteller.”Christopher Leaman for The New York TimesMost TV shows are trying to sell you something, whether it’s the Lexus in a conventional ad, a product-placed luxury watch or just a Netflix subscription. But on QVC — it originally stood for “Quality Value Convenience,“ in case you’ve ever wondered — the selling is the entire point, and many of the products verge on the nutty.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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      What’s on TV This Week: New Year’s Eve Specials and ‘Time Bomb Y2K’

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      Several networks air countdown-to-2024 specials. And HBO releases a documentary about mass hysteria in the final days of 1999.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, Dec. 24-31. Details and times are subject to change.MondayMariah Carey and Billy Porter during last year’s “Mariah Carey: Merry Christmas to All!”James Devaney/CBSMARIAH CAREY: MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL! 9 p.m. on CBS. In November 2022, Mariah Carey went on a mini-tour performing a show with some holiday songs, featuring (obviously and most importantly) her hit “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” The concert she performed at Madison Square Garden is returning to small screens to liven up the Christmas mood after all the presents have been unwrapped, the spiked hot cocoas are kicking in and the tension with a relative over a politics has eased to a silent simmer.TuesdayTHE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). If you’ve ever wondered how the prince actually got put into the nutcracker, Alan Cumming is here to tell you. This version of Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” takes the story from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s 1816 book, and Cumming recounts it as an orchestra plays along.WednesdayTHE 46TH ANNUAL KENNEDY CENTER HONORS 8 p.m. on CBS. These honors took place on Dec. 3 in Washington, but now we get to see snippets of the ceremony and some of the performances. This year’s honorees are Dionne Warwick, Billy Crystal, Queen Latifah, Renée Fleming and Barry Gibb; as is tradition, each star was treated to special performances by others, including Missy Elliott, Rob Reiner, Dove Cameron and Michael Bublé.Robin Roberts on the set of ABC News’s “Year 2023” special, which airs on Wednesday.Jennifer Pottheiser/ABCTHE YEAR: 2023 9 p.m. on ABC. This recap show, hosted by Robin Roberts and other ABC News anchors, dives into some big moments from 2023, such as the Eras Tour, Barbenheimer, the actors’ and writers’ strikes and the “Vanderpump” Scandoval. Ronald Gladden, our sweet Everyman from “Jury Duty,” Missy Elliott (she’s everywhere this week!) and some of the cast of “Dancing With the Stars” are set to make appearances to discuss a year that, for me at least, has simultaneously felt like it just started and also won’t end.Thursday27 DRESSES (2008) 3 p.m. on FX. Now that Christmas is behind us, I can get back to my regularly scheduled romantic comedy viewings. Katherine Heigl stars as Jane, who has a crush on her boss, George (Edward Burns), and also happens to be a hopeless romantic who religiously reads the vows section of the newspaper. When her pesky younger sister comes to town (my words, not hers) and starts dating George, Jane has to decide just how good of a sister she wants to be. James Marsden also stars as Kevin, a wedding reporter, who is somehow charming despite the fact that he always pops up at the most inconvenient times.FridayTHE WORLD ACCORDING TO FOOTBALL 8 p.m. on Showtime. This show, hosted by Trevor Noah, is closing out its run with an episode about the football — or soccer for us Americans — culture in Qatar. The episode will look specifically at the $220 billion the country, which drew criticism over its treatment of migrant workers and its anti-L.G.B.T.Q. policies, spent hosting the 2022 World Cup.SaturdayA still from “Time Bomb Y2K.”Brian Langley/HBOTIME BOMB Y2K 10 p.m. on HBO. At the end of the 1990s, a fear started to arise about a computer bug that came to be called “Y2K.” According to the theory, one second after midnight on Jan. 1, 2000, computer software could malfunction because the last two numerals of the year were 00, which could wreak havoc such as power failures, grounded planes and inoperative life support machines. People were loading up on guns and water; President Bill Clinton appointed a Y2K czar. In the end, computers easily adjusted to the 2000 date stamp. But this new documentary examines the concerns of the time through interviews with computer experts, survivalists, scholars, militia groups, conservative Christians and pop stars.SundayCNN NEW YEAR’S EVE LIVE WITH ANDERSON COOPER AND ANDY COHEN 8 p.m. on CNN. To tequila or not to tequila — that has been the question surrounding this special for the past couple of years. This will be Cooper and Cohen’s seventh year doing this show together, but the executives at CNN banned them from drinking alcohol during the live broadcast last year, to Cohen’s vocal displeasure. It is unclear if the two old friends will be slinging back shots, but what we do know is that Jeremy Renner, Neil Patrick Harris, the Jonas Brothers and Enrique Iglesias are set to make appearances.DICK CLARK’S PRIMETIME NEW YEAR’S ROCKIN’ EVE WITH RYAN SEACREST 2024 starting at 8 p.m. on ABC. The traditional ball drop may be in New York City, but this New Year’s Eve show takes it all around the world. NewJeans is set to perform in South Korea, Post Malone will be at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Las Vegas and Ivy Queen will be live in Puerto Rico. And of course, cameras will be rolling in Times Square to count down to midnight. More

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      Leo Reich Likes Nothing Better Than a Movie Where Nothing Happens

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      “Any movie by Alexander Payne, Lena Dunham, Greta Gerwig, anything European,” said the comedian, who has a special on Max. “Anything where a woman with ennui wanders around a medieval town.”Like a lot of comedians, Leo Reich works out the kinks in his stand-up routines by pacing the floor and talking to himself.During the pandemic, that process reached a fever pitch.“I think that’s where a lot of the angst in the show was from,” he said about “Leo Reich: Literally Who Cares?!,” his Gen Z lampoon now streaming on Max, “the fact that I was at home in the childhood bedroom where I’d always lived with all of my old posters on the wall, just furious about the state of affairs that I was finding myself in.”Under that strain, what began as a confessional, rather traditional set eventually morphed, he recalled in a video call from London, into a kind of self-parody “of the worst excesses of my own personality.” During the new set, Reich, 25, flop-sweats across the stage in short shorts and black eye makeup.“It’s so funny having done a show that tries to send up on some level that whole idea of the fetishization of young talent,” he said, before elaborating on snobbery, eating animals and the freedom of humiliation, “and then essentially become what I was trying to lovingly criticize.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1Two Pints of Beer and a CigaretteIt can be hot sun, Coronas and a Camel Blue. It can be dead of winter, subzero temperatures, two pints of Guinness and a Marlboro Red. What I will say is that after you’ve had two pints of beer and a cigarette, that is actually scientifically peak physical performance that a human being can get to. You will never feel as good as that in any other context.2Bird Watching and Pondering the Natural WorldThere was a period when I was 9 to 15 where I was a really obsessive bird watcher. Not to get religious about this, but sometimes in our lives we have to sit back and be in awe of the majesty of nature. It also makes you think, “God, I really know nothing about the universe because this little guy is dressed in bright, bright blue, and there is no possible explanation for that that I could possibly make sense of.”3Bad Sketch ComedyI passionately believe that perfection is the enemy of joy. To watch someone onstage do something that is on some level quite humiliating, but have the absolute best time doing it, you get a feeling of freedom and human connection that is unparalleled.4Movies Where Nothing HappensAny movie by Alexander Payne, Lena Dunham, Greta Gerwig, anything European. Anything where a woman with ennui wanders around a medieval town and runs her hand along a curtain. Something where someone wonders, “Is this all there is to life?” That’s perfect to me.5OffalIf you’re going to kill and eat an animal, you should do it in the style of a Renaissance king and make sure that you eat the whole thing. The perfect intersection of that for me is eating a liver, a kidney, some intestines — something where you truly cannot hide away from the fact that what you are doing out of your own free will as a human being is biting into something that was once alive.6Snobbery and Reverse SnobberySome things I’m a snob about: superhero films, interior design, restaurants, grammar, weirdly. Things I’m not a snob about: coffee, wine, reality TV, pop music. You’ve got to choose a couple of things where you’re like, “Listen up, I know more than you about this.” And some other things where you’re like, “Don’t over-intellectualize it. I’m just here to have fun.”7PiningYou don’t need any material reason or justification for it. You can pine after literally anyone, and your brain and heart will create the most gorgeous back story out of absolutely nothing that will sustain you, in my experience, years at a time.8Dancing to ’80s PopI mean, if you are dancing in a club that’s got lasers in it and, I don’t know, some Pet Shop Boys, come on. It rewires your brain forever.9Novels Where Nothing HappensThe person wandering around the city is probably from the ’20s or ’30s, and they’re doing something like planning a party or collecting a package. The whole novel is a metaphor for civilizational decline. I’m talking “Mrs. Dalloway” — almost any novel by Virginia Woolf will work for this. I’m talking Flaubert’s “Sentimental Education.” Something that if someone saw you reading it, they’d go, “Oh, the guy’s an intellectual.” Little do they know you don’t understand a thing that’s going on.10Saying Something StupidI think that one of the nicest things in the world is to embarrass yourself in a social setting and just accept that it’s happened. More

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      Just How Formulaic Are Hallmark and Lifetime Holiday Movies? We (Over)analyzed 424 of Them.

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      The Hallmark and Lifetime networks are known for their prolific output of made-for-television holiday movies each year. Even in the age of streaming, they bring in impressive cable television ratings, perhaps aided by how easy they are to leave on while, say, baking several batches of gingerbread for a tree lighting ceremony. They also have […] More

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      ‘The Curse’ Season 1, Episode 7 Recap: The Power of Delusion

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      This week characters young and old are indulging in magical thinking.Can you make yourself believe something even if it isn’t true? The characters on “The Curse,” either consciously or unconsciously, seemingly think that might be possible. It’s certainly a disease of sorts that Asher and Whitney have, and it seems like it might be trickling down to Nala.The episode this week is bookended by two scenes of Nala in school. It opens with her in gym class. As her bully climbs a rope Nala whispers, “fall,” trying to see if she can hurt her. For a moment both Nala and the audience are convinced that maybe she’ll plummet. Nala’s focus is intense. There is a close-up of the hook holding the rope to the ceiling. It quivers. It wouldn’t be surprising if it breaks. But it doesn’t. The girl makes it down safely.Has Nala convinced herself she has magical powers? Has Asher convinced her she does with all of his questions? Regardless, whether or not she thinks she can make her classmate fall, she gives it a shot. At first it seems fruitless, but then in the episode’s final moment her enemy runs into a wall in the playground. Maybe there’s something to Nala’s belief after all.Not that Nala actually really knows all that much. As her enemy crashes into the wall we hear Nala telling another girl there’s makeup you can wear for an entire month. We are reminded that she has the knowledge of a child and probably doesn’t wield metaphysical power.Whitney has a similar, parallel story line specifically centered around the artist Cara Durand. Whitney and Cara’s relationship has always seemed one sided — Whitney thinks they are friends; Cara seems less convinced. Whether or not they can actually be called pals, it’s clear that Whitney’s interest in Cara isn’t entirely about camaraderie: For Whitney, Cara’s friendship is also a business partnership. If Cara likes her, she’ll sign the release to let her art be featured on “Fliplanthropy.” If Cara likes her, she’ll agree to be a consultant on the show, bolstering Whitney’s credibility with the Native community.In an effort to make this happen, Whitney shows up at Cara’s door bearing a truly strange gift. She buys an offensive statue that Cara had pointed out to Dougie from a mini golf course, and gives it to Cara, explaining that she can use it in her art and “recontextualize it.” Cara appears disturbed. Whitney’s sense of altruism is askew — in thinking she is helping a Native artist she just brought a terrible stereotype into her house. Yes, Cara clearly plays with these images in her work, but Whitney doesn’t realize how off-putting it is for a white person to essentially force her to grapple with this kind of depiction.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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      Why We Can’t Get Enough of Cult Documentaries

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      The stories are juicy, but the volume is perhaps tied to a persistent question: Why do so many people believe so many crazy things?Nobody joins a cult. They just joined an exciting group of people trying to change the world. They just wanted to empower themselves, to feel better, to know Jesus, to do drugs with interesting people, to be different from their parents, to live off the grid. Then things got hairy and now here they are, sagely describing this process to a dutiful filmmaker.Our current cult documentary boom has been going strong for years now, beginning in earnest with 2018’s “Wild Wild Country” and not really letting up. There has been “Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle,” “Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults,” “The Way Down,” “Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey,” “Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence,” “Waco: American Apocalypse,” “Shiny Happy People,” “The Deep End,” “In the Name of God: A Holy Betrayal.” There were two Nxivm documentaries — “The Vow” and “Seduced: Inside the Nxivm Cult” — and two more on the online romance group Twin Flames Universe: “Desperately Seeking Soulmate” and “Escaping Twin Flames.” In the past month or so there has been “Love Has Won” on HBO and “Born Into Synanon,” on Paramount+. This is nowhere near a comprehensive list.So what’s to account for our apparently bottomless appetite for such tales? (Streamers wouldn’t keep making them if nobody was watching.) Well, on a purely craven level, these stories are juicy as hell — sex, love, murder, redemption, ecstatic connections and a rending of the social fabric. Money, money, money. You’d be crazy not to make a documentary about all of it, about all the weird hairdos and strange lingo, all the anguish and absurdity.But the volume and repetition perhaps reflects a broader, persistent sense of unease, a need to ask, over and over: How in the world do people believe things like this? Why do people worship lies? Is there a way to show them the light?Oh, gosh, if anyone knew the answer to that, we’d be living in a very different world. Individually, these documentaries demonstrate that lots of people believe lots of garbage. Taken as a whole body, though, they suggest that, actually, nearly everyone believes at least a little garbage.Some of the better documentaries stress the relationship between high-control groups and general social ills: “Seduced,” the shorter but more perceptive Nxvim documentary, highlights the misogyny that drove much of the organization. “The Way Down” traces an Evangelical leader’s message from intense body shaming to even more intense advocacy for corporal punishment.The less curious instantiations, which present the leaders’ hectoring and philosophizing at length, can start to feel misguided. They’re like those 1990s girls-magazine articles about the dangers of eating disorders that also doubled as how-to guides for budding anorexics.But even as quality and particulars vary, there is a sameness to a lot of these shows. Subjects ready themselves and chat to off-camera producers. We see joyous footage of the early days, and then usually an ex-member says, “Or that’s what I thought,” or sometimes, “But then things started to change.” Some former members are horrified by what they’ve done, and others want to make sure the story includes the good parts, too, or they even still believe. Sometimes family members describe their heartache.Many of these groups have already been the subjects of at least one podcast or article before making the leap to television. If you’re interested in high-control groups in general, this can make the TV documentaries feel even more repetitive.In format, perspective, style and distribution, the contemporary cult exposé nestles in comfortably with two other recent booms: true crime and scam sagas. Cults are also adjacent to conspiracies, another growth industry — both are forms of tribalism defined by their distance from reality. Synanon and the like sit alongside stories of Theranos, crypto frauds, pyramid schemes and QAnon not just on streaming services, but also within the greater misinformation and disinformation diaspora.“Wild Wild Country” was a hit for Netflix in 2018.NetflixThere’s a gawking appeal to this programming, of course, and a reasonable desire to hold people accountable for causing so much despair. But after spending hundreds of hours hearing from all sorts of devotees, what becomes clear is that participation in a cult is often a response to the sorrows of the world, to its shortcomings and capricious cruelty, to being stuck or maligned or afraid. No, we are not all equally susceptible to undue influence, but if you’ve ever bought something because of advertising, easy does it on that high horse.In “Escaping Twin Flames,” a former member says her deconstruction occurred when the leader told her to write a report on the two Nxivm documentaries to affirm the ways he was not a cult leader. “Every point we were coming across when we were doing this research was pointing to the fact that he was, in fact, a cult leader,” she says. “Things started to churn at that point.”Perhaps things start to churn for viewers, too. The drive to understand others is also a drive to understand ourselves. Could it be that the appeal of cult stories partly reflects a desire to deconstruct pernicious control in our own lives? Or to at least reconsider the extent to which we’ve substituted the standards of capitalism, patriarchy, diet culture, consumerism, improv comedy, whatever, for our own? If we can nail down how other people get fooled and then unfooled, then maybe we’d know what to do when something seems not quite right.It is scary when you begin to think that the institutions, leaders and premises that define your life and way of thinking may be corrupt and illegitimate. But maybe if you could watch, oh, hundreds of people in a variety of smaller contexts on every streaming platform and cable network go through that process, the path forward would become a little clearer. You would have some idea of where to head. You might feel less isolated. Actually, maybe we could watch together. In fact, we could form a little group. More

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      The World Has Finally Caught Up to Colman Domingo

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      Colman Domingo was at the Equinox on 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue when his agent called. A rush of hope overtook him: After a week spent auditioning for eight film and television roles, finally he was about to get something.This was in 2014, which Domingo experienced as a year of incredible highs and dangerously low lows. He had just come off a successful, soul-enriching transfer of the stage musical “The Scottsboro Boys” in London, but upon returning to New York, he felt quickly cut down to size. Despite his Tony nomination for the Kander and Ebb musical, Domingo was stuck auditioning for “under-fives,” screen roles that had little more to offer than a line or two. Still, he felt backed into a corner, praying that one of them would hit.The most promising was a callback for HBO’s Prohibition-era drama “Boardwalk Empire”: To audition for a maître d’ at a Black-owned nightclub, Domingo had donned a tuxedo to sing and tap dance for the producers. You can imagine how he felt, then, when his agent began that call at the gym by saying that everyone on “Boardwalk Empire” had loved his audition. This is the one that’s going to change it up for me, Domingo thought. This is the one that’s going to finally be my big break.There was just one problem, his agent said. After the callback, a historical researcher on the show reminded producers that the maître d’s in those nightclubs were typically light-skinned, and Domingo was not. “Boardwalk Empire” had passed.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