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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Golden Bachelor’ and ‘The Irrational’

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      A spinoff of the popular dating show joins the ABC franchise. And NBC premieres a new crime procedural show.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, Sept. 25-Oct. 1. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE VOICE 8 p.m. on NBC. Niall Horan, John Legend and Gwen Stefani are welcoming another a new judge to join them in their red swivel chairs: the country-music star Reba McEntire. Per usual, the season will begin with blind auditions.BELOW DECK MEDITERRANEAN 9 p.m. on Bravo. You all thought I was done talking about the Below Deck franchise? Nope! Captain Sandy Yawn will be back at the helm of this show and also a new boat. Some familiar cast returns (including the deckhand Luka Brunton, who was on TV screens just last week as the crew said goodbye to each other on “Below Deck Down Under.”) and we’ll also get to know a new bosun, chef and a stew. If you want to make the show more enjoyable, take a drink every time Sandy micromanages or mentions the infamous slide.Jesse L. Martin plays the professor Alec Mercer on “The Irrational.”Sergei Bachlakov/NBCTHE IRRATIONAL 10 p.m. on NBC. Apparently 2023 is the year that cable TV is bringing back the art of the crime procedural a la “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” or “Criminal Minds.” This new series follows the behavioral science professor Alec Mercer (Jesse L. Martin) as he uses his expertise on psychology and body language to solve high-stakes crimes.TuesdayDANCING WITH THE STARS 8 p.m. on ABC. Though this is the 32nd season of this show, things are feeling new: There is a new host (Julianne Hough joins Alfonso Ribeiro), a new pro dancer (Rylee Arnold) and, of course, new celebrity contestants. This season is a little trickier than others because of the ongoing Hollywood strikes. A writer on staff is a member of the Writers Guild of America, for instance, and many of the contestants are members of SAG-AFTRA union, which represents TV and movie actors. Though it makes things a little more complicated, “DWTS” also continued amid the 2007-8 writers’ strike.SAVIOR COMPLEX 9 p.m. on HBO. In 2010, Renee Bach, an evangelical missionary from the United States, went to Uganda to set up a charity hospital. She was 20 years old and didn’t have a medical degree. In five years, Bach said that her hospital took in 940 children — and 105 of them died. In 2020, she settled a lawsuit after two mothers of children who had died in her care sued. This three-part documentary examines the lead-up and the aftermath.WednesdaySURVIVOR 8 p.m. on CBS. This season’s castaways are headed to Fiji and are going to be divided up into three tribes of six people. The man we all know and love, Jeff Probst, will be back to host as the season gets underway with a new 90-minute episode.ThursdayTHE GOLDEN BACHELOR 8 p.m. on ABC. The host, Jesse Palmer, is working overtime to get his check this month with two new “Bachelor” franchise shows premiering back to back. First up, we have the new series with the 72-year-old bachelor from Indiana, Gerry Turner, and the women vying for his heart. Since Instagram and influencing isn’t as much the rage with Boomers and Gen Xers, we will hopefully have less of the “here for the right reasons” conversations. Although, my grandfather loved scrolling TikTok, so who really knows?Rachel Recchia and Jesse Palmer on “Bachelor in Paradise.”ABC/Craig SjodinBACHELOR IN PARADISE 9 p.m. on ABC. Jesse Palmer travels to Mexico for the new season of “Paradise.” We know the drill by now: singles who have previously been on “The Bachelor” or “The Bachelorette” head down to Puerto Vallarta with the hope of another chance at love.FridayTHE NEW YORK TIMES PRESENTS: HOW TO FIX A PAGEANT 10 p.m. on FX. The third season of this stand-alone documentary series begins with a look into the world of pageants. Crystle Stewart, a beauty pageant titleholder, became the president of the Miss USA organization in 2020. Three years later, she left the role. This episode features an interview with Stewart after her departure.SaturdayLeonardo DiCaprio in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”Mary Cybulski/Paramount PicturesTHE WOLF OF WALL STREET (2013) 9:30 p.m. on IFC. Jordan Belfort, a corrupt stock trader played by Leonardo DiCaprio, becomes simultaneously lauded and reviled onscreen in this movie about greed directed by Martin Scorsese. What makes the movie “a vital and troubling document of the present is not so much Jordan’s business plan — he tells us repeatedly that it’s too complicated and boring to explain — as his approach to life,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times.SundayFAMILY GUY 9:30 p.m. on Fox. This beloved and long-running adult cartoon is back for its 22nd season and things are starting out with … an accidental baby? Meg agrees to be a surrogate, but when the couple never comes to pick up their baby, the Griffins must welcome another family member. More

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      Netflix Prepares to Send Its Final Red Envelope

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      The company’s DVD subscription service is ending this month, bringing to a close an origin story that ultimately upended the entertainment industry.In a nondescript office park minutes from Disneyland sits a nondescript warehouse. Inside this nameless, faceless building, an era is ending.The building is a Netflix DVD distribution plant. Once a bustling ecosystem that processed 1.2 million DVDs a week, employed 50 people and generated millions of dollars in revenue, it now has just six employees left to sift through the metallic discs. And even that will cease on Friday, when Netflix officially shuts the door on its origin story and stops mailing out its trademark red envelopes.“It’s sad when you get to the end, because it’s been a big part of all of our lives for so long,” Hank Breeggemann, the general manager of Netflix’s DVD division, said in an interview. “But everything runs its cycle. We had a great 25-year run and changed the entertainment industry, the way people viewed movies at home.”When Netflix began mailing DVDs in 1998 — the first movie shipped was “Beetlejuice” — no one in Hollywood expected the company to eventually upend the entire entertainment industry. It started as a brainstorm between Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph, successful businessmen looking to reinvent the DVD rental business. No due dates, no late fees, no monthly rental limits.Edgar Ramos working at one of the facility’s DVD sorting machines. Despite the reduced staff, this operation still receives and sends some 50,000 discs a week. “I am sad,” Mr. Ramos said. “When the day comes, I’m sure we will all be crying. Wish we could do streaming over here, but it is what it is.”It did much more than that. The DVD business destroyed competitors like Blockbuster and altered the viewing habits of the public. Once Netflix began its streaming business and then started producing original content, it transformed the entire entertainment industry. So much so that the economics of streaming — which actors and writers argue are worse for them — is at the heart of the strikes that have brought Hollywood to a standstill.Even before the strikes, streaming had rendered DVDs obsolete, at least from a business perspective. At its height, Netflix was the Postal Service’s fifth-largest customer, operating 58 shipping facilities and 128 shuttle locations that allowed Netflix to serve 98.5 percent of its customer base with one-day delivery. Today, there are five such facilities — the others are in Fremont, Calif.; Trenton, N.J.; Dallas; and Duluth, Ga. — and DVD revenue totaled $60 million for the first six months of 2023. In comparison, Netflix’s streaming revenue for the same period reached $6.5 billion.Despite the reduced staff, this operation still receives and sends some 50,000 discs a week with titles ranging from the popular (“Avatar: The Way of Water” and “The Fabelmans”) to the obscure (the 1998 Catherine Deneuve crime thriller, “Place Vendôme”). Each of the employees at the Anaheim facility has been with the company for more than a decade, some as long as 18 years. (One hundred people at Netflix still work on the DVD side of the business, though most will soon be leaving the company.)Erik Melendrez, 33, who has worked at the warehouse since he was 18, at one of the automated stations that sorts DVDs.Anh Tran and Mr. Melendrez at a station that sorts returned DVDs. At its height, Netflix operated 58 shipping facilities and 128 shuttle locations. Today, there are five such facilities. A few of them started straight out of high school, like Edgar Ramos, and they can run Netflix’s proprietary auto-sorting machines and its Automated Rental Return Machine (ARRM), which processes 3,500 DVDs an hour, with the precision of Swiss watch engineers.“I am sad,” Mr. Ramos said while sorting envelopes into their ZIP code bins. “When the day comes, I’m sure we will all be crying. Wish we could do streaming over here, but it is what it is.”Mike Calabro, Netflix’s senior operations manager, has been with the company for more than 13 years. He said the unexpected moments of frivolity were a big part of why he had stayed, like the drawings made by renters on the envelopes or the Cheetos dust and coffee stains that often mark the returns, evidence of a product that has been well integrated into customers’ lives.But when asked if he had ever met some of the most active customers in person, Mr. Calabro quickly replied, “No!” In fact, the anonymous look of the facility, which provides a stark contrast to the giant Netflix logos that adorn the company’s other real estate, is intentional. Visitors, it is clear, are not welcome.“If we put Netflix out on the door, we would have people showing up with their discs, saying: ‘Hey, I’d like to return this. Can you give me my next disc?’” Mr. Calabro said.That was the usual transaction with a video rental retailer, but Netflix wanted to make sure customers knew this was something different.“It was a decision we made very early on,” Mr. Breeggemann said. “If they knew where we were, we’d run into that problem. And then it wouldn’t be a good customer experience. We wanted to mail both ways.”Lorraine Segura, a senior operations manager, works with the labels that go on packages. Ms. Segura, who started in 2008, used to rip open 650 envelopes an hour. When automation came, she was one of the few employees who traveled to the facility in Fremont, Calif., to learn how to run the machines. Netflix’s DVD operations still serve around one million customers, many of them very loyal.Bean Porter, 35, lives in St. Charles, Ill., and has subscribed to Netflix’s DVD and streaming services since 2015. She said she was “devastated” that there would be no more DVDs. Ms. Porter was able to use her subscription to watch DVDs of shows like “Yellowstone” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” — episodic television made for other streaming services that would have required her to buy additional subscriptions.She and her husband also watch three or four movies a week and find Netflix’s DVD library to be deeper and more diverse than any other subscription service. She often hosts cookouts in her backyard and invites neighbors to watch movies on an outdoor screen. That is easier to do with a DVD, she said, than with streaming because of internet connectivity issues. And she has become involved with the DVD operations’ social media channel, posting videos, interacting with other customers and chatting directly with the social media managers working for the company.“I’m pretty angry,” she said. “I’m just going to have to do streaming, and I feel like what they’re doing is forcing me into having less options.”To ease the backlash, Netflix is allowing its DVD customers to hold on to their final rentals. Ms. Porter intends to keep “The Breakfast Club,” “Goonies” and “The Sound of Music.” As for the last DVD she intends to watch: She’s leaving that up to fate.“I have 45 movies left in my queue, and where I land is where I’ll land, as there are too many good options to pick from,” she said.The morning’s DVDs being shipped out to subscribers. At its height, Netflix was the Postal Service’s fifth-largest customer. Netflix’s DVD operations still serve around one million customers. The employees have a more sanguine attitude. Lorraine Segura started at Netflix in 2008 and used to rip open envelopes — 650 envelopes an hour. When automation came, she was one of the few employees who traveled to the facility in Fremont to learn how to run the machines and pass that training on to others. Now she runs the floor with Mr. Calabro as a senior operations manager.“I’ve learned a lot here: how to fix machines, how to make goals and hit targets,” she said before leading her team in a round of ergonomic exercises to prevent repetitive stress injuries. “I feel empowered now to get out in the world and do something new.” More

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      Progress in Hollywood Writers’ Strike Negotiations, but No Deal Yet

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      A third straight day of bargaining between the studios and the union ended without an agreement. Talks will continue on Saturday.A third straight day of marathon negotiations between Hollywood studios and striking screenwriters ended on Friday night without a deal. But the sides made substantial progress, according to three people briefed on the talks.The sides plan to reconvene on Saturday.The Friday session started at 11 a.m. Pacific time at the suburban Los Angeles headquarters of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the major entertainment companies. For the third day in a row, several Hollywood moguls directly participated in the negotiations, which ended a little after 8 p.m.Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive; Donna Langley, NBCUniversal’s chief content officer of Universal Pictures; Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive of Netflix; and David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery had previously delegated bargaining with the union to others. Their direct involvement — which many screenwriters and some analysts said was long overdue — contributed to meaningful progress over the past few days, according to the people familiar with the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic nature of the efforts.During the Thursday negotiations, the sides had narrowed their differences, for instance, on the topic of minimum staffing for television show writers’ rooms, a point that studios had been unwilling to engage on before the guild called a strike in early May. The Thursday session took a turn, however, after the sides agreed to take a short break at roughly 5 p.m., according to the people familiar with the talks. The executives and studio labor lawyers had expected guild negotiators to return to discuss points they had been working on earlier. Instead, the guild made additional requests — one being that a return to work by screenwriters be tied to a resolution of the actors’ strike.The actors’ union, known as SAG-AFTRA, joined writers on picket lines on July 14. Its demands exceed those of the Writers Guild. Among other things, the actors want 2 percent of the total revenue generated by streaming shows, something that studios have said is a nonstarter.Several hours after talks ended on Thursday night, the guild emailed its membership to say that the sides would meet on Friday.“Your negotiating committee appreciates all the messages of solidarity and support we have received the last few days, and ask as many of you as possible to come out to the picket lines tomorrow,” the email said.The guild extended picketing hours on Friday to 2 p.m. Pickets have typically ended at noon.In Los Angeles, several hundred writers turned up to picket outside the arching Paramount Pictures gate, far more than in recent weeks. The Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA have been staging themed pickets to keep members engaged, and the theme on Friday happened to be “puppet day,” meaning that, in addition to picket signs, some marchers held felt hand puppets and marionettes. The mood was optimistic.Outside Netflix’s Hollywood offices on Friday afternoon, picketing writers even began offering goodbye speeches, delivered via bullhorn. At the CBS lot in Studio City, the theme was “silent disco,” with several hundred writers dance-picketing while wearing headphones.The talks were mostly back on track by the time picketing ended on Friday, according to two of the people familiar with the matter. On the sticky issue of minimum staffing for television shows, the sides were discussing a proposal in which at least four writers would be hired regardless of the number of episodes or whether a showrunner felt that the work could be done with fewer. (Earlier in the week, studios were pushing for a sliding number based on the number of episodes.)They were also discussing a plan in which writers would for the first time receive payments from streaming services — in addition to other fees — based on a percentage of active subscribers. The guild had originally asked the entertainment companies to establish a viewership-based royalty payment (known in Hollywood as a residual) to “reward programs with greater viewership.”The writers have been on strike for 144 days. The longest writers’ strike was 153 days in 1988.“Thank you for the wonderful show of support on the picket lines today!” the guild’s negotiating committee said in an email to members late Friday. “It means so much to us as we continue to work toward a deal that writers deserve.”Nicole Sperling More

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      The Onscreen Apartments That Made Them Want to Live in New York

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      Twelve designers, architects and others reflect on the movie and TV homes, from SoHo lofts to houses on the park, that inspired them to move to the city, and informed their aesthetics.Moving to New York is almost always a decision informed partly by fantasy. It’s impossible to escape the fictional versions of the city that proliferate in books, art, music — and, perhaps most vividly, in movies and television shows, with their typically romantic (and typically misleading) depictions of rent-stabilized studios and affordable brownstones. To coincide with T’s New York-themed home-design issue, we asked a handful of designers, architects and other creative people about the film and TV interiors that shaped their vision of the city they now call home.John Cassavetes and Mia Farrow in the 1968 film “Rosemary’s Baby.”Paramount Pictures/Getty ImagesToshiko Mori, architect: “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968)Moved to New York in the late 1960sI came to New York from Japan with my family to attend high school. One of my first assignments at the summer school I attended that year was to write an essay comparing the 1967 novel “Rosemary’s Baby” by Ira Levin with the film adaptation by Roman Polanski. The building in the movie is called the Bramford, but the exteriors, famously, were those of the Dakota on the Upper West Side. What struck me about the movie’s apartments was their aspect of interiority — the way they seemed to harbor secrets. I also remember their small, framed views of high-rise New York City buildings. Even though the film is, of course, a horror story and the building turns out to be cursed, “Rosemary’s Baby” only made me more excited about living in New York. Coming from Japan, I was used to stories about ghosts and evil spirits. So in an absurd way, it made the city feel more familiar.Jean Arthur in the 1937 film “Easy Living.”© Paramount Pictures/PhotofestJohn Derian, 60, designer and retailer: “Easy Living” (1937)Moved to New York in 1992I was a child who on Saturdays watched every old movie on TV: the 12 o’clock, the two o’clock, the four o’clock and, if I could get away with it, the six o’clock. One of my favorites was the screwball comedy “Easy Living,” starring Jean Arthur. The movie takes you all over New York through multiple dwellings, from a mansion on Fifth Avenue to a little room in a boardinghouse where Arthur’s character lives for seven dollars a week, culminating in an over-the-top Hollywood Regency-style suite at the fictional Hotel Louis with sky-high ceilings, a grand piano and an ornate plunge tub. “Wow,” I thought. “All this in one city? Sign me up!” I still love the smoke and mirrors of a good set, and I’m basically doing the same thing today in my shops, creating a little fantasy.Michael Keaton and Kim Basinger in the 1989 film “Batman.”© Warner Bros./PhotofestStephen Alesch, 57, designer: “Batman” (1989)Moved to New York in 1994Growing up in Milwaukee and later in the Los Angeles area, I loved Batman comics. When Tim Burton’s “Batman” came out, I ate it up. The Gotham of the film was Manhattan exaggerated, and the neo-neo gothic sets blew me away. I loved the shadowy wet streets, the balconies up high in the mist, the buttresses and water towers. One interior that particularly struck me was Vicky Vale’s (Kim Basinger’s) penthouse, with its shiny tile walls and sweeping steel arch covered in rivets. During my first stay in New York in 1991, I couch surfed with friends and walked the streets for hours, taking in the Chrysler Building, Tudor City, the fire escapes of the Lower East Side. I couldn’t help seeing the city through a noirish lens. Within a few years I moved to New York for good, and I still push for rivets on projects and try to add a vaulted buttress wherever I see an opportunity.Tracy Camilla Johns in the 1986 film “She’s Gotta Have It.”© Island PicturesLoren Daye, 48, interior designer: “She’s Gotta Have It” (1986)Moved to New York in 1996I was 21 and living in Chicago when I first saw “She’s Gotta Have It.” Much of the film takes place in Fort Greene, but the protagonist, Nola Darling (played by Tracy Camilla Johns), lives in a semi-empty loft in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, among scrap pieces of wood, buckets of paint and her collages. The loft is painted almost completely white and has incredible arched windows and geometric light fixtures suspended from the ceiling, the whole space anchored by her bed at the very center. The bed has a latticed headboard where she lights dozens of candles every evening — it’s like a shrine to her sexuality. That room was my dream, representing freedom, honesty and self-realization. A year after I saw the movie, I arrived in New York. In 2003 I finally found a place in Fort Greene and I’m still here.Geraldine Page in the 1978 film “Interiors.”© United Artists/PhotofestBilly Cotton, 42, interior designer: “Interiors” (1978)Moved to New York in 2000When I moved to New York to study Russian history at Hunter College I had no inkling I would become a designer. But I do remember watching Woody Allen’s “Interiors” — I think my parents had the VHS cassette — when I was a kid in Burlington, Vt. The matriarch of the story is Eve, an interior designer played by Geraldine Page, and the film’s rambling, sparsely furnished apartments formed my idea of an extremely glamorous New York. Now, looking back at the movie’s spare, monochromatic interiors, I feel like they’re oddly prescient of the current trend for entirely beige, cream and white spaces. But they’re also sort of timeless. This city throws so much visual energy at you on a daily basis, and I love the idea of having just a couple good things you can take with you from place to place.Catherine Deneuve in the 1983 film “The Hunger.”© MGM/UA/PhotofestTal Schori, 43, architect: “The Hunger” (1983)Moved to New York in 2003I grew up in the New York suburbs in the 1990s and the city always held a somewhat intimidating allure for me. This was epitomized in the noirish vampire movie “The Hunger,” which I first saw as a teenager. David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve play the undead lovers John and Miriam Blaylock, who live in a luxurious prewar townhouse near Central Park. Dramatically lit through sheer curtains, the house, with its high ceilings, elegant French doors, paneled walls, ornate moldings and opulent stone cladding, exuded a certain languid luxury and dark transgressiveness. I was seduced. By 2003, I had arrived in New York, renting a modest one-bedroom in a 1960s brick co-op in Ditmas Park.“Hey Arnold!” (1996-2004).© Nickelodeon/PhotofestJared Blake, 33, furniture designer and retailer: “Hey Arnold!” (1996-2004)Moved to New York in 2005To me, Arnold’s room in the Nickelodeon series “Hey Arnold!” is legendary. The show is set in a fictional city called Hillwood, but there’s no doubt in my mind it’s modeled on New York. Arnold had a Murphy bed, a skylight, track lighting, a giant water dispenser and a funky red rug kind of like the one in “The Shining” (1980), but more mod. I was born in New Jersey and moved to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., when I was 7, but I visited New York four times a year to see my dad, who lived in Harlem. I think I knew early on that the city was where I was meant to end up. It’s been 16 years since I arrived, and I’m realizing now that I may have subconsciously created my version of Arnold’s room in my apartment in Ridgewood, Queens. I have a Murphy bed and track lighting, and the whole vibe, like Arnold’s, is very eclectic. I’m just missing the skylight.Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger in the 1986 film “9½ Weeks.”© MGM/PhotofestFarrah Sit, 41, furniture designer: “9½ Weeks” (1986)Moved to New York in 2005I grew up in Kingston, N.Y., just two hours away, and when I was a kid, the sensory overload of New York City — the noise, the stink, the heat — was intense for me. So the interiors in “9 ½ Weeks” were a revelation: an expression of austere minimalism and an aspiring art school kid’s dream. Elizabeth’s art gallery loft was a light-filled box that seemed to float above the chaos of the city. John’s monochromatic, museumlike penthouse, with its furniture by Marcel Breuer and Richard Meier, was luxurious and restrained. These spaces played with light, shadow and texture, expressing an aesthetic that resonates with me to this day. After 18 years living in New York, I still respond to the intensity of the city by creating a feeling of serenity in my work.Meryl Streep and Jeff Daniels in the 2002 film “The Hours.”Meryl Streep and Jeff Daniels in the 2002 film “The Hours.”Fabiana Faria, 37, retailer: “The Hours” (2002)Moved to New York in 2007Meryl Streep character’s in “The Hours,” Clarissa Vaughan, lives in a rustic, rambling, flower-filled home in downtown New York where she often hosts parties. I first saw the movie when I was 14 and living with my parents in Caracas, Venezuela. I wanted to believe that one day I would have a home in New York like that where I would host gatherings of interesting people and be able to walk everywhere, dropping by the butcher or the florist, who both knew me. There are several scenes in Clarissa’s wonderful open kitchen, which has a big stove, hanging pots and wood floors. When I moved to the city I had no illusions of living in such luxury — I shared a two-bedroom with three other roommates on Roosevelt Island — but I held on to that vision of a warm, lived-in, well-loved New York apartment.Parker Posey in the 1995 film “Party Girl.”© First Look Pictures/PhotofestLuam Melake, 36, furniture designer: “Party Girl” (1995)Moved to New York in 2011When I first saw “Party Girl,” I was 22 and living in San Francisco. Posey’s character, an aspiring librarian who prioritizes fashion and parties, struck me as a shinier reflection of my life as a clothing-obsessed pseudo-librarian — I worked at a bookstore — who earned a living basically just to dress up and hang out. Posey’s character lives in a dingy loft in Chinatown that mainly houses her wardrobe and record collection. It’s a flexible space that she transforms for each party. When I was 24, I moved to New York with just my books and clothes and lived in a series of odd spaces around Chinatown. I was always out — and absolutely thrilled to be here. I’m still a fashion-forward librarian now, at Parsons, and I make flexible furniture designed for better social interactions. I spend less time at parties and more time imagining them.Jeffrey Wright in the 1996 film “Basquiat.”© Miramax/PhotofestMinjae Kim, 34, artist and designer: “Basquiat” (1996)Moved to New York in 2015I was in high school in Korea when I first saw the artist Julian Schnabel’s “Basquiat,” a movie about navigating the New York art scene that feels more and more authentic to me as time goes by. I was struck by Basquiat’s East Village apartment, covered wall to wall with his own work, and by the loft apartment of the fictional artist Albert Milo (played by Gary Oldman), where art handlers carried around paintings big enough to be theater backdrops. I was captivated by the romance of living among one’s own work, in a space oriented around the creation of art. The film was inevitably a reference for me when I moved from Seoul to Spanish Harlem and even again last year, when I moved to Bed-Stuy, into my first apartment by myself.An apartment set for “Friends” (1994-2004).©NBC/PhotofestEny Lee Parker, 34, furniture designer: “Friends” (1994-2004)Moved to New York in 2018I grew up in Brazil and, like many middle-school-aged millennials around the world, I religiously watched “Friends” to learn English. The décor of the apartments — the purple walls in Monica’s apartment, the La-Z-Boy chairs in Joey and Chandler’s — didn’t exactly provoke design envy. But I loved how the spaces were a safe, warm environment for these six friends to be themselves. I moved to Williamsburg after grad school, and funnily enough, it was much like “Friends.” Me, my then-husband, my best friend and her then-boyfriend shared a unicorn of an apartment: a rent-controlled three-bedroom, three-bathroom with a private rooftop. We hung out, ate our meals together and threw a few parties. I still love the idea of having friends over, ordering Chinese food and sitting around the coffee table while we eat from takeout containers. More

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      ‘Billions’ Season 7, Episode 7 Recap: The Way of the Ocean

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      Philip gets a hard lesson from the coldblooded sharks around him about the laws of nature.Season 7, Episode 7: ‘DMV’Well, that was a nasty bit of business.One of the best episodes of “Billions” in recent memory, “DMV” — named after the government agency turned into an unlikely bed of low-stakes graft and influence-peddling by the Rhoades family — shows the depths to which many of the show’s leading players will sink to get what they want. Even if their desires are relatively high-minded, the depths remain the same.Philip gets a turn in the spotlight this week when he reels in Prince Cap’s latest whale: bioengineered, self-repairing concrete, invented by one of his mentors in college, Dr. Mike Rulov (Timothy Busfield). Thrilled by the benefits such a material would present for America’s crumbling infrastructure, to say nothing of how rich it would make them all, Philip pitches the idea to Prince, who loves it.A little too much, unfortunately. It’s such a great invention, with such potential for positive change in the world, that Mike insists on owning it lock, stock and barrel. If Rulov demurs, Prince is prepared to snap up related projects and sue Rulov for infringement, a practice called “patent sharking.”Though stunned at Prince’s “blitzkrieg” tactics, Philip tries to play good cop. With the legal and financial resources of one of the smaller G7 nations, Prince would make the new concrete a bigger deal than Rulov could, even with his own high-rollers backing him. But there was clearly no chance of such a sale, even before Prince started making veiled threats. Rulov is simply not the kind of person willing to sell off something into which he has poured so much of himself.When Philip dutifully relays this information to Prince, it only provides the billionaire with more ammo. If Rulov cares about the concrete so much, Prince reasons, then tying it up in litigation for years will force him to sell because of his simple but irresistible desire to see his creation out in the world. Not that Mike is in any hurry for that to happen, even if he wins the fight: At the suggestion of the increasingly sinister Kate Sacker, he considers keeping the technology under wraps until he can roll it out as part of his 2028 re-election campaign. Such is the transactional nature of Mike’s do-gooding at this point.Desperate, Philip turns to Wendy — not for her advice, although that’s the front he puts up, but rather for her connection to Chuck. He knows that if he tells her the whole story, she will reach out to her ex, who will see an opportunity to stick it to Prince.But Philip’s hope that Chuck can shut down the entire patent-sharking sector is a pipe dream. All Chuck can do is have a friend at the Defense Department classify the patent as a matter of national security, seize Rulov’s efforts, and prevent either man from being the sole controller of such an important invention. Of course, the government will most likely sit on it forever, benefiting no one. But if that’s what it takes to stop Prince from getting his hands on this potential game-changer, so be it.Even after this debacle, Philip still wants nothing to do with the plot against Prince, the existence of which Wendy intimates to him after many a knowing glance between herself and Taylor. Philip storms out of her office, all but yelling, “Deniability! Deniability!” with his fingers in his ears.Two parallel story lines echo these abuses of power. In one, Charles Sr. and his grandson, Kevin, are arrested when Charles attempts to bribe a Department of Motor Vehicles employee (Patrick Fischler) into giving Kevin a passing grade on his driver’s test. Chuck throws his weight around, cuts a sweetheart deal with the district attorney, lands the outraged DMV employee a promotion and joins Wendy at Kevin’s next test in his father’s place. Everyone wins, except anyone who thinks we’re all equal in the eyes of the law.Meanwhile, after the disastrous “truth-telling sessions” that saw the Prince Cap foot soldiers tear their boss to shreds, they express discomfort with the idea of Mike conducting the annual performance reviews. But it doesn’t stop there. Banding together, they elect Victor and Rian to tell the committee Mike assembles to take his place — Wags, Scooter, Taylor and Philip — that they reject the committee’s authority to conduct the reviews. They pitch postponing them for a year and detaching their annual comp from the review process in the meantime. Mike caves and even throws them a gala casino night as a morale-building exercise.Or so it seems. In reality, he and Scooter have colluded to have the whole evening recorded, employing the real-life poker ace Vanessa Selbst to analyze their behavior and risk patterns — a performance review without the consent of the performers. Judging from Victor’s and Rian’s reactions, this has exactly the effect on morale you would expect it to.But here’s the thing, as Chuck explains to Philip: In this world, there are harbor seals, like Rulov, and there are sharks, like Prince. Whether it’s running a promising start-up out of business in order to seize it for himself, or making an end-run around his staff’s expressed desires just because he can, Prince will go in for the kill. “Sharks will shark,” Chuck says ruefully. “Harbor seals will harbor seal. That is the way of the ocean.” At this point, everyone’s out in the deep water, watching President Prince’s dorsal fin get closer and closer.Loose changeCharles Sr. gets the biggest laugh lines of the night, twice over. First there’s the precise way he chooses to express his righteous indignation upon being arrested: “This is ridiculous! I was social friends with Robert Moses!” (Charles either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that Moses’s reputational stock has somewhat fallen since their last soirée.)Then there’s the deft way Charles gets Chuck to focus on his own parental neglect in failing to take Kevin to the test — rather than on Charles’s own literally criminal behavior. “Who’s the [expletive] now?” he asks before repeating it more slowly for emphasis: “Who’s … the [expletive] … now?” Chuck’s teary-eyed failure to recognize just how ridiculous this is shows how effective a manipulator Charles remains.What a delight to see Fischler, an actor who in years past cemented his status as one of the screen’s most memorable actors in the space of just two scenes. “Mad Men” viewers will recall his turn as the insult comic Jimmy Barrett, whose dressing down of Don Draper for sleeping with his wife — “You’re garbage, and you know it” — all but flays off the ad man’s skin. Meanwhile, David Lynch fans, or anyone familiar with a “scariest scenes of all time” listicle, know him as the man from the “Winkie’s dream” sequence in “Mulholland Drive,” in which his portrayal of a man facing his worst nightmare is as convincing as it is unnerving.Which members of the Prince Cap Movie Night crew understand that “The Wolf of Wall Street” is intended as a cautionary tale rather than a how-to manual? According to Wags, they are Kate, Victor, and Rian — not that it has stopped any of the three from acting rather wolfish.It’s fun to see the folks on the floor form a sort of pop-up union to collectively fight against the performance reviews. The “Hot Labor Summer” continues, even in “Billions”-land.Normally I’d come down pretty hard on a needle drop as narratively obvious as playing R.E.M.’s “Drive” after a kid passes his driving test, but I’m choosing to believe the song was chosen not for its title but for its somber tone, reflective of the mood of the rest of the episode. Otherwise, “I Can’t Drive 55” by Sammy Hagar was sitting right there. More

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      ‘Sex Education’ Is Back. Here’s What You Need to Know.

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      The raunchy British teen dramedy has been away for two years. Here’s a refresher for the Netflix series’s fourth and final season.School is back in session for the sweet, sometimes absurd British comedy “Sex Education,” which leans heavily into its streaming-series freedom to portray adolescent sex for what it generally is: awkward, mediocre, part of life. Expect close-ups of patchy pubic hair, belly rolls and many (many) penises — among other physical realities of sex that don’t typically appear in teen stories.The show, which won the award for best comedy series at the International Emmy Awards in 2022, centers on Otis (Asa Butterfield), the erudite but romantically floundering son of a sex therapist (Gillian Anderson), who finds that he, too, has a gift for doling out intimate advice — in his case, to his desperately uninformed classmates. Unlike other raunchy teen dramas, like the provocative “Skins” and “Euphoria,” “Sex Education” takes a normalizing, endearingly un-edgy and even occasionally musical approach to the birds and the bees (though the writers would probably choose a more clinical term).In the fourth and final season, now streaming on Netflix, Otis must navigate a new school alongside his effervescent best friend, Eric (Ncuti Gatwa). After the closure of Moordale Secondary School at the end of Season 3, they now face a social hurdle more daunting than trying to become popular: survival as the new kids.But if popularity at Moordale was all about status and appearance, the new school represents something of an alternative educational universe, where learning is student-led, sustainability is cool and gossip is frowned upon.Will Otis and Eric fit in? Will Otis set up a new sex therapy clinic? And where is his broody, wryly sharp love interest Maeve Wiley (Emma Mackey)?Two years have passed since the release of Season 3. Here’s a refresher — a little gossip, if you will — as we head into Season 4.What happened to Moordale?After a schoolwide sexually transmitted infection outbreak in Season 2 and an obscene, intergalactic production of “Romeo and Juliet: The Musical,” Moordale Secondary School attracted news attention for its debauchery and earned the nickname “Sex School.” The administration hired a new head teacher, Hope Haddon (Jemima Kirke), to turn things around, but her shame-based approach to discipline and strict dress code couldn’t keep the students from being sexually curious teenagers.As revenge, the student body revolted at a public assembly for Moordale’s investors and the news media, disrupting the program with a screening of a sex-positive student film in which they dressed in genitalia-inspired costumes. Then the audience chanted, “We are Sex School,” and the band performed an explicit song.It was chaotic and symphonic, and it was enough of a ruckus to scare off investors and prospective paying parents. Moordale’s funding was withdrawn, and it closed its doors, forcing its students to find new schools.Where is Maeve?In Season 3, one of the English teachers at Moordale, Ms. Sands (Rakhee Thakrar), gave Maeve, Otis’s crush and sex clinic business partner, a brochure for a gifted and talented program in the United States. Throughout the season, Maeve wavered back and forth on the decision, concerned about the money and leaving her little sister behind.Otis and Maeve’s will-they-won’t-they relationship got some resolution when they finally kissed on a class trip to France. But in the final scene of the season, we learned that Maeve was leaving to study literature at a prestigious American university.The news came as a blow to Otis, who was happy for Maeve’s dream opportunity but devastated to see her go. Maeve promised that her departure didn’t mean that they were over, but she didn’t define the relationship further.Gillian Anderson in the Season 4 premiere of “Sex Education.”Thomas Wood/NetflixIs Jean … OK?Yes … and no. At the end of Season 3 Otis’s mother, Jean, went into labor with dire complications, including hemorrhaging. But she pulled through, and in the season finale, she delivered a healthy baby girl whom she named Joy. Although the pregnancy had a happy ending, the future of the family is a bit fuzzier. In one of the final scenes of the finale, Jean opened a paternity test and her shock revealed that her partner, Jakob (Mikael Persbrandt), might not be the father.Throughout the pregnancy, Jean and Jakob were committed to raising their baby together and forging a robust, if a bit untraditional, family unit with Otis and Ola (Patricia Allison), Jakob’s daughter (who, in a messy set of circumstances, used to date Otis).Will Jean, a careerist rising in her field, continue her sex therapy practice? Will Jakob remain in the picture? And if he isn’t the father, who is?Where do things stand with Eric and Adam?Eric, who is gay and proudly wears eyeliner, colorful nail polish and silky scarves, has had an emotional roller coaster of a relationship with Adam (Connor Swindells), a closeted bully who is new to intimate relationships. They grew closer as Adam learned to accept his sexuality, but Eric struggled to be with someone who couldn’t fully open up, and he eventually kissed another boy on a family trip to Nigeria.Adam eventually forgave the infidelity, but Eric realized he had outgrown the relationship and broke up with him anyway. Heartbroken, Adam began to come to terms with his identity; in the finale, he came out as bisexual to his mother, finally admitting to her that Eric had been his boyfriend. This could be a turning point for the animal-loving gentle giant who always feels like a misfit.Is there still a wide array of experience in Season 4?Somehow the show’s lens has gotten even wider. “Sex Education” is known for its nuanced depictions of gender, sexuality and disability, and for presenting forms of intimacy that are rarely displayed on mainstream television. A progressive new school promises an even more varied student body, with types of relationships not explored in previous seasons. Whether the school lives up to its “good vibes only” reputation remains to be seen.The show celebrates the body — its limitations, its potential, its drive — in its many forms. Whatever Season 4 may bring, it is sure to explore a wide range of teenage lust and physical complexities. More

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      Robert Klane, Writer of ‘Weekend at Bernie’s,’ Dies at 81

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      He also adapted his best-known novel, “Where’s Poppa?,” into the script for a raw Carl Reiner comedy and directed the disco movie “Thank God It’s Friday.”Robert Klane, a comic novelist, screenwriter and filmmaker with a taste for gleeful vulgarity who wrote the screenplay for “Weekend at Bernie’s,” the 1989 cult film about two young insurance company employees who create the illusion that their murdered boss is still alive, died on Aug. 29 at his home in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 81.His son Jon said the cause was kidney failure.Mr. Klane wrote “Weekend at Bernie’s” more than two decades into a career that began with the publication of two humorous novels: “The Horse Is Dead: A Tasteless Novel” (1968) and “Where’s Poppa?” (1970). He adapted “Where’s Poppa?” into the screenplay for a twisted comedy about a single lawyer (played by George Segal) who dreams of scaring to death or institutionalizing his aged, maddening mother (Ruth Gordon).Ted Kotcheff, who directed “Weekend at Bernie’s,” wrote in his 2017 memoir, “Director’s Cut: My Life in Film,” that Mr. Klane had been inspired to write it by his time as an advertising copywriter in the 1960s, when the top executives at one of the agencies where he worked invited employees to their beach houses on Long Island.Mr. Klane with Donna Summer on the set of the 1978 disco film “Thank God It’s Friday,” which he directed. Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images“But he always wondered what would happen if the underlings got a house all to themselves — inmates taking over the asylum,” Mr. Kotcheff wrote.In “Bernie’s,” the young workers (Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman) discover a $2 million fraud but don’t know that their boss, Bernie (Terry Kiser), is the culprit. Bernie invites them to his beach house, ostensibly as a reward, and asks his mobster partner to kill them. But the mobster tells the hit man to kill Bernie instead for sleeping with his girlfriend.The employees — fearful that they might be next on the hit list — frantically make Bernie seem alive by, among other ruses, putting sunglasses on him, rolling him out to his sun deck and rigging a device that raises his arm so he appears to be waving to people.The film, which grossed a modest $30 million (a little less than $75 million in today’s money), gained fans long after its release through home video and cable-TV viewing. People magazine wrote in 2014 that the movie “has managed to age into something close to respectability.”Mr. Klane believed that the Bernie character was too dead to revive cinematically. But a sequel was made — because Victor Drai, one of the original film’s producers, raised the money from its Italian distributor, Mr. Drai recalled in a phone interview.Mr. Klane was the director as well as the writer of “Weekend at Bernie’s II” (1993), which involves the discovery of Bernie’s offshore bank account, containing the embezzled money, and a voodoo ceremony to try reanimating him.The reviews were roundly negative.“If ever there was a career-ending movie,” the Miami Herald critic Rene Rodriguez wrote, “‘Weekend at Bernie’s II’ is it.”But for Mr. Klane, it wasn’t. He kept working.Robert Klane was born on Oct. 17, 1941, in Port Jefferson, N.Y., on Long Island, and grew up in nearby Patchogue and Bayport. His father, Edward, was a physician. His mother, Adele (Blum) Klane, was a homemaker.After graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in English, Mr. Klane returned to New York and found work in advertising.Over the next few years he was a commercial copywriter at two agencies, Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn (now BBDO) and McCann Erickson (now McCann). In 1967 he went to work at Filmex, a production house, where he directed commercials.In his spare time he wrote “The Horse Is Dead,” about a camp counselor who hates his campers. The book was labeled “filth and smut simply for the sake of smut” by a self-appointed decent literature committee that wanted it removed from a library in Bel Air, Md., in 1968. But commissioners in Harford County, Md., refused to ban it.On the other hand, Jack Benny sent Mr. Klane a fan letter telling him that it was the funniest book he had ever read.Two years later, Mr. Klane published “Where’s Poppa?,” and that same year Carl Reiner directed the film version, with a script by Mr. Klane. Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that the film did not have “much more on its mind than a desperate desire to provoke shock and laughter” — which, he said, it did successfully.Jon Klane recalled going to a theater to see the film with his father, who stayed in the lobby. “I came out to get candy, and he was watching a matronly woman demand a refund,” he said by phone. “I went up to him, and he said, ‘This is exactly the kind of person I want to offend.’”Over the next three decades, Mr. Klane stayed busy in television and film. He wrote six episodes of the sitcom “M*A*S*H”; the 1985 film “National Lampoon’s European Vacation,” with John Hughes; “The Man With One Red Shoe,” a 1985 remake of the French comedy “The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe,” which starred Tom Hanks; and, in 1997, 11 episodes of Tracey Ullman’s sketch comedy series “Tracey Takes On …,” for which he and several others received an Emmy Award for outstanding variety, music or comedy series.His directing work included “Thank God It’s Friday” (1978), set entirely in a disco, which won the Academy Award for best original song, “Last Dance,” sung by the disco diva Donna Summer, one of its stars; and “The Odd Couple: Together Again,” a 1993 TV movie that reunited Jack Klugman and Tony Randall, the stars of that 1970s sitcom.In addition to his son Jon, Mr. Klane is survived by his wife, J.C. Scott; a daughter, Caitlin Klane; another son, David; a brother, Larry; and five grandchildren. Another daughter, Tracy Klane, died in 2011. His marriages to Linda Tesh and the actress Anjanette Comer ended in divorce.About 20 years ago, Mr. Klane worked with his son Jon on a script, set in a ski resort, that would have rebooted the “Bernie’s” franchise. It did not sell.“We wore out the carpet coming up with gags,” Jon Klane said. “It was my best memory of him. He would say, ‘It has to be a laugh a page, Jonny.’” More

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      Don’t Stop Believin’? Considering a TV Golden Age, 10 Years Later

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      “Difficult Men,” Brett Martin’s book about the prestige TV boom, has been rereleased in a 10th-anniversary edition. In an interview, he reflects on how TV has changed since he wrote it.Tony Soprano, Don Draper and Omar Little glower from the cover of “Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution,” Brett Martin’s canon-codifying 2013 book about the prestige TV boom of the 2000s. But as difficult and revolutionary as those fictional antiheroes were, the title just as well describes their brilliant, gnomic, sometimes cruel creators, like David Chase (“The Sopranos”), David Simon (“The Wire”) and Matthew Weiner (“Mad Men”).“Difficult Men,” whose 10th-anniversary edition was published in paperback this summer, is a history of the remarkable moment, starting nearly 25 years ago, when business imperatives and risk-taking executives empowered ornery writers with network experience and chips on their shoulders to create era-defining, artistically lasting programs.One of the book’s through lines was that these shows tended to revolve around men who resembled the way their creators saw themselves: as mavericks taking arms against bureaucratic inertia. It’s a theme that Martin, a New Orleans-based journalist, said he might de-emphasize today in favor of delving into the depth and richness of the characters.“The artistic triumph the original shows allowed,” Martin said earlier this month, “was to create all these real human stories and specific, idiosyncratic characters — which is more important than the easy antihero formulation.”The past decade has seen a societal reckoning with misconduct in the culture industries, including television. Some of the showrunner behavior Martin chronicled in his book — icing out disfavored writers, halting entire productions for petty personal whims, throwing tantrums — looks different now.In a new preface for the anniversary edition, Martin says that were he writing “Difficult Men” now, he would focus more on “the knotty question of how the same men who provided, in many ways, the most astute critiques of toxic male power that mainstream culture had ever seen could nevertheless end up confirming and recapitulating precisely the same dynamics in their own workplaces.”A 10th anniversary edition of “Difficult Men” was released this summer.Even in 2013, Martin held up counterexamples like the showrunners Alan Ball (“Six Feet Under”) and Vince Gilligan (“Breaking Bad”), who ran artistically successful programs while being, by all accounts, nice guys and good bosses.In other respects, 2013 turned out to be a convenient year for a book about this Golden Age of television. It was the year “Breaking Bad” ended and James Gandolfini, the “Sopranos” star, died. And it was the year that “House of Cards,” the first original series commissioned by Netflix, debuted. In a phone interview, Martin discussed why the shows he wrote about still hold up and how the emergence of streaming has affected prestige TV. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Was there one show that provoked you to write the book?It was “The Sopranos,” in both an abstract and a literal sense. I had been hired to write the official coffee table companion during the final season. I maybe outstayed my welcome, treated it like a real reporting job, was there for quite a long time and got a chance to peek behind the scenes. It was a revelation to me: the size of the operation, the ambition, the way people talked about their work — the sense of something very big being made. The number of times I had to explain what a showrunner was back then is, in and of itself, an indicator of what an alien world that was.It’s such a funny term.It just occurs to me what kind of a technical term “showrunner” is, how unromantic. It really is something that, like, the Teamsters would come up with. It’s so literal and so nonartistic: You keep things running. The term betrays the kind of factory mentality that applied to television at the time.Did you think of yourself as establishing a canon?It was very obvious what at least three of the four main shows that I was going to write about were, and most of the peripheral ones as well. In my original proposal, the fourth show was, actually, “Rescue Me” — which is a show whose first few seasons had been perhaps unfairly forgotten but felt very much in keeping with these other shows. It felt extremely daring in being one of the first shows where 9/11 was being treated in a fully rounded way. My first editor pushed me to include “Battlestar Galactica,” but it just really wasn’t my bag. And then “Breaking Bad” asserted itself as the book was being written and became very obviously the ending place. There were the other HBO shows, and “The Shield” was an important step as well, but there weren’t many examples I left out.Have any of the shows in the book not stood up as much as you expected?Quite the opposite: The shows you think might have been dated have proven riveting in ways they maybe weren’t even when they were on. The America of Tony Soprano, the America of Walter White and very much the America of “The Wire” has proved itself to be the dominant America in the past 20 years. “The Sopranos” became this huge pandemic rewatch, and I think it’s because it’s so recognizable: The themes — the rot at the center of America, the grift of American life, the anxiety Tony Soprano has — are all super familiar to us now.Younger generations have adopted “The Sopranos”; it appears in countless memes.It’s great entertainment. It had to be: It had to resemble entertaining network television in many ways. It was still operating as a Trojan horse. It had to be funny and human, and it had to be consumable because the high-art part, the ambition part, was something nobody was looking for.How did the men you wrote about respond to your book?I never heard a word from any of them except for Vince Gilligan, who wrote me a beautiful blurb on the back of the new edition. Not surprisingly, because the book ends making the point that one doesn’t have to be that difficult to create these wonderful shows.Few would be interested in defending some of the behavior you document. But does the fact that it happened during the creation of these really great series make any of it easier to accept?It’s hard for me to see how a lack of empathy for people who work for you is a necessary part of the creative process. I do think people’s feelings could get hurt in a very intense workplace, and I don’t think every hurt feeling is avoidable. But I do think one can maintain a basic level of decency — let alone avoid using your power destructively — and still create quality work. I believe it because I’ve seen the shows that prove it, and because I’m optimistic.There are women characters and characters of color in these shows, but the protagonists and the creators behind them are all white men. Does that taint the legacy of that era?It wasn’t a huge surprise that white men writing about white men dominated the first phase of this new world. But the door had been opened. “Orange Is the New Black” came out something like three weeks after my book. “Transparent” was soon after as well. What came after delivered on the promise, which is that all these other kinds of stories were going to be able to be told, and all these other kinds of voices were going to be empowered. “Atlanta” and “Reservation Dogs” are other deliveries on that promise.What effect did the rise of streaming platforms, with their hundreds of millions of subscribers, have on Hollywood’s appetite for ambitious TV?When the book was published, it was more important [to the producers of these early prestige series] to stand out and find the right kinds of viewers than to have the most. It made sense that that attitude moved from subscription cable to basic — in my book, it’s HBO to FX and AMC — and streaming seemed it would be another step in that. But it does seem as though every piece that I identified as being crucial to the invention of this new TV is now a flashpoint in the writers’ strike: shorter seasons, writer-producers, writers’ rooms. And it’s depressing. With all the stuff that looked great, the streamers saw there were opportunities for cost savings.Are there ways streaming made TV better for viewers?Oh, my God. Look how much work we got! So much that I can’t keep up — that I feel a constant sense of anxiety about missing things. Look how many new voices we got. That’s been the trade-off. More