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      Joyce Randolph, Last of the ‘Honeymooners,’ Is Dead at 99

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      Joyce Randolph, who played Trixie Norton, the wife of a guffawing, rubber-limbed sewer worker forever mired in a blowhard neighbor’s get-rich-quick schemes and other hazards of life on the classic 1950s sitcom “The Honeymooners,” died on Saturday at her home in Manhattan. She was 99. Her son, Randy Charles, confirmed her death.She was the last survivor of a cast of four that dominated the Saturday night viewing habits of millions in the golden age of live television, and for decades afterward on rerun broadcasts and home video. Jackie Gleason (Ralph Kramden) died in 1987; Audrey Meadows (Ralph’s wife, Alice) in 1996; and Art Carney (Ed Norton) in 2003.Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, Audrey Meadows and Ms. Randolph in a scene from 1954. While her character was less developed than the others, Ms. Randolph was revered by aficionados as the last link to a show that had a cultlike following.CBSIn an age when status symbols in a gritty Brooklyn tenement were telephones, television sets and refrigerators, the Kramdens had none on a bus driver’s $62 a week. Reflecting America’s working-class experience, they struggled for a better life, shared disappointments and had fun, even if there was no uranium mine in Asbury Park and no market for glow-in-the-dark wallpaper, no-cal pizza or “KramMar’s Delicious Mystery Appetizer,” which turned out to be dog food.As Trixie, Ms. Randolph played the upstairs wife who crossed her arms and commiserated with her best friend, Alice, over addlepated husbands who somehow got drunk on grape juice, found a suitcase of the mob’s counterfeit cash, invented a “handy” kitchen tool that could “core a apple” and, after waiting all year for the convention of their International Order of Friendly Raccoons, took the wrong train.While her character was less developed than the others, Ms. Randolph was revered by aficionados as the last living link to the inspired lunacy of a show that had a cultlike following, with fan clubs, esoteric trivia contests and memorabilia sales. At a 1984 Long Island meeting of the Royal Association for the Longevity and Preservation of the Honeymooners, or RALPH, one could buy a size-52 bus driver’s uniform or a coveted Trixie apron.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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      Peter Crombie, Actor Known for ‘Seinfeld’ Appearances, Dies at 71

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      Crombie was perhaps best known for playing “Crazy” Joe Davola on the hit television sitcom.Peter Crombie, the actor who was probably best known for playing the role of “Crazy” Joe Davola on five episodes of the hit television sitcom “Seinfeld,” died on Wednesday in a health care facility in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 71.Crombie had been recovering from unspecified surgery, said his ex-wife, Nadine Kijner, who confirmed his death.In his role as Davola, Crombie played a temperamental character who stalks Jerry — a semi-fictionalized version of the comedian Jerry Seinfeld — and develops a deep hatred of him.Tall and lanky, Crombie’s character had a flat, borderline menacing affect and an unblinking 1,000-yard stare. In the series, he also stalked the tough New Yorker Elaine, in one case plastering a wall of his apartment with black-and-white surveillance photos of her.Aside from his part in “Seinfeld,” Crombie also had roles in the movies “Seven” (1995), “Rising Sun” (1993) and “Born on the Fourth of July” (1989), among other acting television and movie credits.Crombie was born on June 26, 1952, and grew up in a neighborhood outside of Chicago.His father was an art teacher, and his mother taught home economics, Ms. Kijner said. Crombie trained at the Yale School of Drama before moving to New York.Crombie and Kijner met in Boston in the late 1980s before marrying in 1991. Though they divorced after about six years of marriage, the two remained friends.“He was like a rock,” she said. “He was someone you could always call and lean on.”Kijner said Crombie is survived by a brother, Jim. She said Crombie stepped back from acting around 2000, and worked on his other passion, one of which was writing.The comedian Lewis Black commemorated Crombie on social media, calling him a “wonderful actor” and an “immensely talented writer.”“More importantly he was as sweet as he was intelligent and I am a better person for knowing him,” Mr. Black wrote.Larry Charles, a “Seinfeld” writer, also mourned Mr. Crombie.“His portrayal of Joe Davola managed to feel real and grounded and psychopathic and absurd and hilarious all at the same time,” Mr. Charles wrote on social media. “This was a juxtaposition I was always seeking on my Seinfeld episodes and reached a climax of sorts with ‘The Opera.’ Seinfeld was a sitcom that could make you uncomfortable and no guest actor walked that line better than Peter.” More

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      What Inspires Peter Capaldi: Vermeer, ‘Demon Copperhead,’ ‘The Wire’

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      Seeing “A Maid Asleep” at the Met, he said, “without wishing to sound pretentious about it, it was the first picture that I developed a relationship with.”Sometimes it pays to stick close to home.The more Peter Capaldi heard as his wife, the producer Elaine Collins, and the writer Paul Rutman hashed out the story line for the new Apple TV+ thriller “Criminal Record,” the more he hinted that he was their man.They cast him as Daniel Hegarty, a veteran detective on the police force, who has a murky past. As Rutman wrote the script, Capaldi’s voice and face were front and center.“That’s the first time that has really happened to me,” said Capaldi, whose adversary, June Lenker — a younger detective contending with misogyny and racism within the force — is played by Cush Jumbo. “I know that that’s who they’re visualizing, so I was able to respond to the material from quite an early date.”Capaldi also had to veil his emotions, a rather tall order for an actor who starred as the 12th Doctor in “Doctor Who.”“I had to hide what was really going on, but at the same time, you still have to have something going on,” he said in a video interview from London, before chatting about the Scottish artist John Byrne and walking in the footsteps of the Romans. “You can’t just sit there.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1Vermeer’s ‘A Maid Asleep’Without wishing to sound pretentious about it, it was the first picture that I developed a relationship with. I was in New York doing a show and perhaps going through some melancholic times and carousing too much and enjoying Broadway, but not really that happy myself. So I would often go to the Met and sit and look at that picture if I was feeling anxious. There was a spirit of wisdom and calmness that reached 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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      How to Watch the Emmys: Date, Time and Streaming

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      TV’s top honors will finally be handed out on Monday, four months later than usual. Here’s what to know.Postponed for months because of last year’s Hollywood writers and actors strikes, the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards will finally be handed out on Monday night.The Emmys are arriving just over a week after the Golden Globes, which also include TV honors. And just like at those awards, HBO’s dynastic dramedy “Succession” is set to dominate.It is unclear, however, how many people will actually see this happen. Viewing numbers for the Emmy Awards have been trending downward over the years — the most recent ceremony, in September 2022, brought in a record low audience of 5.9 million people on a night when the award show had little competition. This year, the Emmys will go head-to-head against an N.F.L. playoff game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and against live coverage of the Iowa caucuses.Emmy producers hope to lure viewers with homages to classic television shows including “The Sopranos,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “I Love Lucy.” Perhaps others will be curious about how or to what extent the ceremony will address last year’s SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes.Or perhaps not — we will find out on Monday night. If you are among the interested, here is what to know.What time does the show start, and where can I watch?The ceremony begins at 8 p.m. Eastern at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles and will be broadcast on Fox.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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      ‘Pokémon Concierge’: Finding Serenity with Pikachu and Bulbasaur

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      On Netflix’s “Pokémon Concierge,” the hyperactivity of the original gives way to soothing sights and tones that can help grown-up fans calm down.Welcome to Pokémon Resort, where you and your adorable pocket monster can indulge in such amenities as the spa, zip-lining and extreme yoga. If that sounds like paradise, then you’re probably in the target demographic for “Pokémon Concierge,” Netflix’s unassuming yet refreshing new stop-motion series.At just four episodes, none of them longer than 20 minutes, “Pokémon Concierge” may seem like nothing more than a shallow TV confection targeted toward tots. But the series’s instant popularity indicates otherwise. “Pokémon Concierge” is a lovable diversion, but for an older crowd; it’s not quite a confection, but more like comfort food for the modern, anxious millennial.The show follows Haru, a young woman in need of a change after facing job problems, a breakup and a string of bad luck. She comes up with a practical solution: get on a boat and travel to an island resort to become a concierge to cute lil’ magical battle-pets.There’s no plot whatsoever to the series; each episode is just a peek into a day of Haru’s time on the island. The most difficult tasks she faces involve making sure the guests aren’t running too close to the pool and tracking down a Pokémon’s floaty.And yet Haru is incessantly worried, letting her anxieties get the best of her. The first assignment she’s given — to simply explore and enjoy the resort like a guest — nearly breaks her spirit. Scared she has failed the job on the first day by accidentally getting too relaxed, she tries to prove her worth like any harried office worker would — by making a PowerPoint presentation.Haru, a new Pokémon Resort concierge, with Psyduck.NetflixWe 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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      Reggie Wells, Makeup Artist for Oprah Winfrey and Other Black Stars, Dies at 76

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      At a time when cosmetic brands did not cater to Black women, Mr. Wells found a niche working with Black stars and models who had struggled to find makeup options for their skin tones.Reggie Wells, who parlayed a background in fine art into a trailblazing career as a makeup artist for Oprah Winfrey, Whitney Houston, Beyoncé, Michelle Obama and other Black celebrities, died on Monday in Baltimore. He was 76.His death was confirmed by his niece Kristina Conner, who did not specify a cause or say where he died.For Mr. Wells, every face was a canvas to explore. One of his most famous clients was Ms. Winfrey, for whom he worked as a personal makeup artist for more than 20 years at the height of her television career.“Reggie Wells was an artist who used his palette of talent to create beauty no matter the canvas,” Ms. Winfrey said in a statement. “He always made me feel beautiful. Ooo my, how we’d laugh and laugh during the process. He was an astute observer of human behavior and could see humor in the most unlikely experiences.”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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      ‘True Detective: Night Country’ Review: Iced In

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      HBO’s eerie crime drama returns after a five-year break and trades in Southern gothic for Arctic horror.“True Detective” was never a series that went in for tender moments, but “True Detective: Night Country” — the show’s fourth season, after a five-year hiatus — takes a particularly unforgiving approach to the human condition. There is a moment late in the six-episide season, however, when the dour pop soundtrack turns sentimental and it’s clear that we are supposed to be tenderly moved by what is happening. What is happening is that someone is disposing of the dismembered body of the close family member they have just killed.Created for HBO back in 2014 by the writer and English professor Nic Pizzolatto, the original iteration of “True Detective” was a gothic crime drama, in anthology form, marked by Pizzolatto’s penchant for ostensibly profound, quasi-poetic dialogue — Raymond Chandler by way of Rod McKuen.The new season, directed and largely written by the Mexican filmmaker Issa López (it premieres on Sunday), dispenses with the poetry — it is by and large a plain-spoken affair. But where Pizzolatto’s “True Detective” stories were essentially traditional noirs with a gloss of pop psychology and horror-movie sensationalism, López commits fully to the outré and the supernatural. Parricide? That’s just coming up for air.López is coy about whether the cops, scientists, mine workers and Indigenous Alaskans who populate her story are actually dealing with malevolent spirits, but she is profligate in her use of horror effects to jolt the audience and goose the plot. Unseen voices abound, and dead people are frequently seen. Polar bears loom in the darkness. Oranges mysteriously, repeatedly appear out of nowhere and roll under characters’ feet. A group of men freeze together in a big jumble, naked and mid-scream, and have to be cut out of the ice and slowly thawed under bright lights. (Somewhere, “The Thing” is wondering why it didn’t think of that.)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 Curse’ Season 1 Finale Recap: Things Are Looking Up

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      A jump ahead in time finds the Siegels almost seeming happy, or at least faking it well enough. Then something absolutely bonkers happens.Season 1, Episode 10: ‘Green Queen’Certain kinds of surprises are de rigueur in television. The shock of when a character unexpectedly dies, for instance. It’s jolting, sure, but it’s nothing too out of the ordinary. Television writers do it all the time.And then there is whatever just happened in the final episode of “The Curse.” Since watching this hour-plus of television, my mind has been reeling as I try to figure out what to say about it. Should I attempt to determine what actually occurred, even though I don’t think there’s an explanation? Should I just marvel at its weirdness? Should I try to unpack symbolically the intentions of Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie? Sure, I guess, to all of it. But I also think the pure bizarreness is sort of the point.All I know is that the final episode of this first season (but perhaps not the only season) of “The Curse” is one of the most bonkers, baffling, creative and I think brilliant episodes of television I’ve watched in a long time, the kind of thing that challenges what TV can do.Because here’s what happens at the end of the episode: Asher is sucked into space. Not metaphorically. Literally. The last image of Asher we see is him frozen, floating above the Earth into the stars.Before that, “Green Queen” begins like a normal episode (if “normal” is a word we can even use with this series). We’ve jumped ahead in time about eight or so months. Whitney is visibly pregnant while she and Asher go on “The Rachael Ray Show” to promote their series, smiling awkwardly on a video stream as Ray seems far more interested in the man making meatballs in her kitchen, Vincent Pastore (who played Big Pussy in “The Sopranos”) than in the couple onscreen.Things seem to be going relatively well for the Siegels. Sure, maybe it’s hard to find “Green Queen” streaming on HGTV GO, but the network has ordered a second season, which will include their baby, an addition they think will draw attention. Asher and Whitney are doing a solid job at playacting as the happy couple over a Shabbat dinner when Asher tells her he has a “push present” for her, using the (gross, in my opinion) term for a mother-to-be gift.He wants to give Abshir and his family the Questa Lane property for good. Their joy in the Siegels’ generosity will be a memory Whitney can cherish forever, Asher believes.But when they arrive, Nala and Hani are not present, but some stranger is, and Abshir is terse. He isn’t groveling with gratitude. He just wants to know if they will pay the property taxes for the rest of the year. This is his chance to have the Siegels out of his life, and he takes it. You can see the disappointment on Asher’s and Whitney’s faces when they get back into the car. All they want is for their altruism to be rewarded by the acknowledgment that they are good people. Abshir refuses to give them that, and it’s crushing.We get no tender full circle moment between Asher and Nala. Just a closed door. Does that unresolved tension explain what happens next? I truly don’t know.Because one morning, Whitney turns off the alarm on her phone, and the camera pans upward to show Asher, not in bed next to her, but on the ceiling, his body facing her from above. It’s one of the most disorienting images I’ve recently encountered. But it’s not a dream sequence. Asher’s body has somehow become untethered by gravity.The explanation he comes to is that the house has turned on him. They have installed a climate controlled room for the baby — because they fear their passive house could kill their newborn — which has perhaps unbalanced the pressure inside the structure, sending Asher skyward. But opening doors and windows doesn’t work, and even if Whitney tries to pull him down he keeps being pulled in the opposite direction by some unknown force.What follows is several incredible, disturbing sequences of physical comedy from both Fielder and Stone as they try to solve this mysterious problem. Fielder moves his body like an alien, his limbs heavy as he tries to maneuver around the skylight and tasteful wood beams. He pants and struggles and stretches. Stone is reduced to crawling on the floor for fear she will get sucked up too.In their most bravura moment, she hands him a vacuum that he then uses to try to retrieve her phone, which she left behind in the bedroom. As he struggles upside down, she starts going into contractions.There’s something almost sweet about the way we see them truly working together. Whitney and Asher have been so deeply in conflict throughout the series that we haven’t seen much of this until now. As he tries to secure the phone with the vacuum, he starts counting to determine the length of her contractions. They really are a family now, bound together by these ridiculous circumstances.But then that connection between them is shattered because Asher truly cannot come down. The doula (Elliot Berlin), who has arrived to help Whitney get to the hospital, tries to pull Asher off the underside of the portico. He is successful, but instead of returning to Earth, he winds up stuck in a nearby tree, clinging for dear life to a branch, where he stays until Dougie arrives to help. Whitney is whisked away for a C-section.Having not seen his initial flight, neither Dougie nor the firefighters believe his concerns as he grows more and more frantic. Dougie thinks Asher is panicking about the baby, and he sees this as great material for the show. But when the firefighter saws off the tree branch, Asher is sucked into the sky, high above Española. As he floats up, Whitney’s baby is extracted from her abdomen, one Siegel replaced by a newer model.Dougie is distraught, crying on the ground, realizing that his carelessness has lost him another person. Whitney, having given birth, smiles tenderly at her baby, seemingly unconcerned about Asher’s whereabouts. And Asher, well, Asher is gone past the clouds, his body frozen in space.And what are we supposed to make of all of this? Are we supposed to take it literally? I think, on some level, yes: This is what happens in the context of this world we’ve been watching and its many ambiguities. It is also unmistakably surreal, and arguably mystical. Alice Coltrane’s “Jai Ramachandra,” which we also heard at the end of Episode 3, plays over the final minutes, the sound of her Sanskrit prayer accompanying these sad people.“The Curse” has always played with the idea that maybe some level of magic is real, and there’s an argument to be made that Asher’s ultimate journey is the result of the hex Nala placed on him, his punishment for the indiscretion of snatching that $100 bill from her hand. But I think there’s something too pat about that explanation. I think we’re left instead with a question about the nature of both television and reality, themes that have been persistent preoccupations of Safdie’s and Fielder’s.The final words of the episode are delivered not by our protagonists but by some of the onlookers. A man remarks: “What movie they filming? How did they do that?” A fellow lookie-loo explains, “That’s the guy from HGTV.”Their exchange goes as follows:“Huh, so it’s for TV?”“I think so.”“Huh.”“Huh” is right. The questioner clearly believes — or at least finds it easier to believe — that Asher’s disappearance is just a bit of Hollywood magic. And in some ways it is. But if you look at this conversation in the context of what came before, it takes on a sadder bent.Asher, Whitney and Dougie consistently tried to fudge the truth of their lives for the cameras in the name of good TV. Now their truth is stranger than anything they could manipulate, and just as easy to disregard.Notes From EspañolaGiven that it’s the 25th anniversary of “The Sopranos,” I’ve been thinking about that show a lot, so I was tickled to see Pastore turn up.Cara quit art and was profiled in The New York Times. I’d like to see that write-up.Whitney casually remarking, “I’d have to say it was a statement about the Holocaust or something” sent shivers down my spine.So did “There’s a little me inside you” from Asher.Safdie has said a second season is “not off the table,” but I can’t really imagine what a follow-up would look like.I can’t wait to read a million post-mortems about how they accomplished the upside-down sequences. Did they build an upside-down version of the house?Thank you for reading. It’s been a ride. More