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      Conan O’Brien’s Parents Die 3 Days Apart

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      Thomas O’Brien, an epidemiologist, and Ruth O’Brien, a lawyer, juggled successful careers with raising six children, including the comedy star.The parents of Conan O’Brien, the longtime late-night television host and a star in the comedy world, died this week within days of one another.Thomas Francis O’Brien, 95, an epidemiologist, and Ruth Reardon O’Brien, 92, a lawyer who made strides for women in the legal field, both died at their home in Brookline, Mass., according to the Bell O’Dea Funeral Home. Dr. O’Brien died on Monday, and Ms. O’Brien, died on Thursday.Happy families are not exactly a common topic in comedy. The parents of Conan O’Brien, 61, were not only celebrated in their respective fields but by the most well-known of their six children.Conan O’Brien credited his father with introducing him to comedy and described him in an interview this week in The Boston Globe as “the funniest guy in the room.” He added that his father had a “voracious appetite for ideas and people and the crazy variety and irony of life.”Ruth R. O’BrienThomas F. O’Brien, M.D.Bell O’Dea Funeral HomeThomas O’Brien spent most of his career at what is now Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where he was the first director of the infectious diseases division, and was on faculty at Harvard Medical School. He also was a co-founder of the Collaborating Centre for Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance for the World Health Organization. He became known for his work around antibiotic-resistant bacteria.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Christian Slater Went From Bad Boy to Good Dad

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      On a July morning, the actor Christian Slater sat on a bench at the Long Beach marina, grimacing in the California sunshine. Slater sighed, he scowled, he groaned. He looked like a man facing some terrible moral quandary. Or like a man with severe indigestion.Slater, 55, was filming a scene for “Dexter: Original Sin,” the latest brand extension of the florid Showtime serial killer series, which premiered in 2006. (“Dexter: New Blood” debuted in 2021; “Dexter: Resurrection” will air next year.) Premiering Friday on Paramount+, “Original Sin,” set mostly in the early 1990s, describes the early career of Dexter Morgan, a forensic analyst in Miami who offs serial killers that the police can’t corral.It features the same central characters as the original show, though they are now played by different, younger actors, Slater among them.That Slater should join the “Dexter” universe is no surprise. His résumé includes several killers, some accidental and some absolutely psycho. In the late 1980s and 1990s, he specialized in dark matter, playing anarchic, irresistible characters in movies like “Heathers” (directed by Michael Lehmann, a producing director of “Original Sin”), “True Romance” and “Pump of the Volume.”Slater with Patrick Gibson in “Dexter: Original Sin.” “He was definitely more gregarious and friendly and kind than I was expecting,” Gibson, who plays young Dexter, said of Slater. Patrick Wymore/Paramount+ with ShowtimeBack then, Slater didn’t know how to separate himself from his characters. “I didn’t have an identity enough of my own to really be able to separate or differentiate between the two,” he said. “I was latching onto any sort of personality that I could find.” So that darkness impinged on his personal life, too. There were arrests on charges of assault, drunken driving, attempting to board a flight with a gun in his luggage. Interview magazine once called him “the last analog bad boy.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      36 Things That Stuck With Us in 2024

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      The movie scenes, TV episodes, song lyrics and other moments that reporters, critics, editors and visual journalists in Culture couldn’t stop thinking about this year.The Last Scene in a Film‘Challengers’Mike Faist in “Challengers.”MGMReal tennis, like real dancing, happens when the body is rapt and alive, where visceral sensation takes over and the only thing left is the crystallization of every nerve and muscle, both aligned and on edge. That last match was a dance.— More

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      Time Magazine’s Person of the Year Doesn’t Surprise Late Night

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      “Trump is the first man in history to be Time’s person of the year and McDonald’s employee of the month,” Jimmy Fallon said on Thursday.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.‘America’s Main Character’Time magazine has named President-elect Donald Trump as its person of the year for 2024.“Trump is the first man in history to be Time’s person of the year and McDonald’s employee of the month,” Jimmy Fallon said. “History is being made!”“Trump said the honor feels just as exciting as the birth of his child, except he was present for the award.” — JIMMY FALLON“So it’s the second time he’s had the honor, with the first coming after his presidential win in 2016. That was also the same week Hillary Clinton canceled her subscription and smashed her server with a hammer.” — DANA PERINO, guest host of “Gutfeld!”“The editorial board mentioned Trump’s historic comeback, his impact on global politics and how we increased his votes from Blacks, Latinos and people named Biden.” — DANA PERINO“The difference: In 2016, the cover called him ‘President of the divided states of America.’ This year, it’s simply his name, even though there was plenty of room for ‘Cry harder, losers.’” — DANA PERINO“Now, obviously, Donald Trump is the person of the year. At this point, he’s basically America’s main character.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“Sadly, there’s no one left to roll it up and spank him with it. Maybe Elon will do it for him, I don’t know.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“According to the Time website, the person of the year is bestowed upon ‘a person, group, or concept that had the biggest impact for good or for ill.’ Which, that’s him, all right. It was a no-brainer in every sense of the word.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“By the way, just to put Trump’s Time cover in context, it’s not exactly a mark of greatness. The president who currently holds the record for the most Time magazine covers, it isn’t a universally beloved one, like F.D.R., J.F.K. or George Washington. Not because Time wasn’t around in the 1700s, but because Washington was more of a People magazine time of guy.” — SETH MEYERS“But I guess once again, Time has not been kind to Joe Biden.” — MICHAEL KOSTAThe Punchiest Punchlines (Clemency For Christmas Edition)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Move Over, Charlie Brown: Lessons From ‘The Boondocks’ Christmas Special

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      One of the most beloved holiday traditions that doesn’t involve gift-giving is “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” The 1965 animated special, depicting the trials of the titular sad sack and a crew of kids wearied beyond their years by commercialism, has inspired repeat viewings and countless appraisals, including in The New York Times. But the genre of Christmas specials it inspired, including “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” and “Frosty the Snowman,” largely leaned away from Charlie’s melancholy and toward a wholesome belief in the righteous power of the holiday spirit.Almost 60 years ago, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” dared to ask: What’s more Christmas-y than acknowledging the weight of the holiday? Four decades later, “A Huey Freeman Christmas,” a standout episode from the first season of “The Boondocks,” did the same.“The Boondocks,” Aaron McGruder’s satire about an aspiring young Black revolutionary and his rapscallion brother, was a comic strip I read every morning in junior high. It offered me a two-minute solace from the estrangement I felt from the rituals of Catholic school, the mainstream tastes of my classmates and the bits of mid-2000s culture that I was told I should like. I remember coming to believe that social and political critique was a way to understand that distance, and “The Boondocks” television series, which aired from 2005 to 2014 (with some long breaks between seasons), was just lowbrow hilarious enough for a 12-year-old loner to start giving form to that malaise.The chaotic satire that had captivated me also coursed through the show, so I dutifully tuned in when the Christmas episode debuted. It starts out like a sendup of “Charlie Brown”: Huey, a 10-year-old with outsize activist ambitions, tries his hand at directing a school play. When he finds his cast dancing instead of rehearsing, as Charlie Brown did, he immediately fires them with the backing of his teacher, a white man whose enthusiasm for Kwanzaa is a punchline. In another plot thread, Riley, Huey’s brother, writes a letter to Santa Claus. But it’s a threat: He didn’t get the car rims he had asked for, and the debt is due.None of the characters have a Bible passage memorized to sort them out when things inevitably get out of hand. Riley spends most of the episode waging a one-boy war against mall Santas with an airsoft gun, and Huey leverages the contract he finagled from his teacher to nab the services of Quincy Jones (voiced by Mr. Jones himself), Denzel Washington and Angela Bassett for his play, titled “The Adventures of Black Jesus.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘No Good Deed’ Is Star-Studded California Gothic

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      Lisa Kudrow and Ray Romano star as a Los Angeles couple with secrets trying to sell their house. Things get complicated quickly.“No Good Deed” is the latest rich-people-with-sad-secrets show, filled exclusively with famous faces, luxurious real estate and brittle misery.Lisa Kudrow and Ray Romano star as Lydia and Paul, a concert pianist and a contractor who are trying to sell their house. And maybe their grand piano, too, because Lydia is unable to play these days — among the reasons they badly need money. There are several potential buyers, including a couple struggling with fertility (Abbi Jacobson and Poppy Liu); expectant newlyweds and the husband’s overbearing mother (Teyonah Parris, O-T Fagbenle and Anna Maria Horsford); and a soap star and his tarty wife who already live in the neighborhood (Luke Wilson and Linda Cardellini). The show takes a while to get rolling. But then, with a jolt, it introduces its violent ne’er-do-well (Denis Leary), an outsider to the chichi circles but one who has dangerous leverage over Lydia and Paul.“Deed” was created by Liz Feldman, whose previous work includes “Dead to Me,” another Southern California show starring Cardellini as someone who is not quite who she claims to be. “Dead to Me” had much sharper teeth, and its bites went far deeper. “No Good Deed” is more California gothic, still focused on grief and gaining social status but less about how they affect each other than about how each reflects the hollow helplessness of life. You can make a house your life’s work, but everybody moves out eventually.The show plays up its sunny ominousness with a central mystery that some characters are trying to cover up and some are trying to expose, though they often switch sides in that tug of war. Sarah (Liu, a highlight) is horrified when her wife uncovers some specifics. “I’m sure a lot of Indigenous people were also murdered on the block, if that helps,” her wife says as feeble comfort.“Deed” feels shallow and nonspecific in comparison to, say, “White Lotus,” and its mystery is not all that hard to crack. But there’s something alluring about watching the Spill Your Guts Fairy visit each character, the various rituals of shame, blame and contrition. Everybody’s a faker, a liar, trapped. Every house is a glass house. More

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      Stephen Colbert Is Surprised by Luigi Mangione’s ‘Minifesto’

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      “He could’ve just made it a Yelp review: ‘American health care sucks. One star,’” Colbert said of the content of a notebook found with the crime suspect.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.The Rest Is Still UnwrittenLaw enforcement officials said they recovered a notebook from Luigi Mangione after he was arrested on Monday at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., in connection with the killing of the chief executive of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson. Officers said the notebook included detailed plans for the shooting last week.On Wednesday, Stephen Colbert expressed surprise over the brevity of the note’s 262 words. “That’s not a manifesto — that’s a ‘minifesto,’” Colbert said.“He could’ve just made it a Yelp review: ‘American health care sucks. One star.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The document basically rails against the health care industry and ends with, ‘I do apologize for any strife or traumas, but it had to be done.’ Well, at least he apologized. Reminds me of what Manson said after his murders: ‘Whoops, my bad!’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It’s so crazy to think that Donald Trump working the French fry machine was only the second-weirdest thing to happen at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania this year.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Police in Altoona report that they’ve been getting threats from Mangione’s fans, demanding he be released immediately. You know, I’ve been on TV just about nonstop for 29 years. This guy’s been in the news since Monday. He has fans threatening the police? Why do I feel like if I shot somebody, even my mother would be like, ‘Lock him up, teach him a lesson! It’s the only way he’s going to learn!’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“OK, ‘I don’t really know what I’m talking about’ is a surprising thing to put in a manifesto. This is the first murder manifesto I’ve read that could have ended with ‘But no worries if not!’” — MICHAEL KOSTA“You never see the Taliban like, ‘Death to America, although we’re not experts, so, grain of salt.’” — MICHAEL KOSTA“Mangione has now been charged with second-degree murder, but he’s not pleading guilty, and he’s fighting attempts to extradite him to New York. Well, that makes sense — no one wants to be extradited to New York during the holidays. You’ve got to wait in a two-hour line just to be cavity searched at the M&M store.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Two More Weeks Until Christmas Edition)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Labor Board Classifies ‘Love Is Blind’ Contestants as Employees

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      The National Labor Relations Board’s case against the Netflix hit could have ripple effects across the reality TV industry.The National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint against the hit reality show “Love Is Blind” on Wednesday in which it classified the show’s contestants as employees, opening a case that could have ripple effects across the reality television industry.The complaint by the labor board’s regional office in Minnesota says that the show committed several labor violations, including unlawful contractual terms related to confidentiality and noncompete provisions.By classifying the cast members — who date and sometimes marry other singles on the show — as employees with certain federal legal protections, the complaint opens the door to possible unionization. It is one of the labor board’s first forays into reality television and a major development in the effort by some onscreen personalities to change the industry through the legal system.Several contestants on “Love Is Blind,” which streams on Netflix and has been one of the buzziest dating shows since its debut in 2020, have come forward in lawsuits, in interviews and on social media with objections to the restrictions outlined in their contracts.One contestant, Renee Poche, became involved in a legal dispute with the show after she publicly accused the production of allowing her to become engaged, in front of TV cameras, to a man “who was unemployed with a negative balance in his bank account.” She said in court papers that after she had made “limited public remarks about her distressing time on the program,” one of the companies behind the production initiated arbitration proceedings against her, accusing her of violating her nondisclosure agreement and seeking $4 million. (Poche, a veterinarian who lives in Texas, said she had earned a stipend of $1,000 per week, adding up to a total of $8,000.)Two “Love Is Blind” participants — Poche and Nick Thompson — submitted complaints to the labor board, resulting in an investigation into the policies and practices of the production companies behind the show, which include Kinetic Content and Delirium TV.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More