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      ‘Beef’ Review: Mad in America

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      A thrilling dark comedy explores the complexity of anger, through a road-rage feud between two drivers who are more alike than it seems.“I’m so sick of smiling,” says Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) in the first episode of Netflix’s “Beef.” You may have noticed that he’s not alone in this. Blame it on the pandemic, the culture, the economy, but people are mad right now, on planes and on trains and — like Danny and his car-crossed antagonist, Amy Lau (Ali Wong) — in automobiles.“Beef,” a dark comedy about a road-rage incident that careers disastrously off-road, has good timing, but that’s not enough to make a great TV series. What makes this one of the most invigorating, surprising and insightful debuts of the past year is how personally and culturally specific its study of anger is. Every unhappy person in it is unhappy in a different and fascinating way.Amy and Danny’s high-speed chase through suburban Los Angeles, following a run-in at a big-box-store parking lot, sets the tone for all 10 episodes (which arrive on Thursday). The show floors the accelerator with heedless gusto, racing a course of revenge, subterfuge and terrible decisions.But what gives “Beef” its interest is its attention to the motivations that brought the pair to that parking lot in the first place.Danny, a hard-working, hapless contractor saving to build a house for his Korean parents, is trying to return merchandise while fretting over his family and finances. Amy, an entrepreneur who married into art-world money, is trying to sell her small business to the big store’s owner, a deal she hopes will finally allow her to exhale after years of pressure. Each is this close to breaking, and each, after their near fender-bender, ends up being the other’s last straw.It is easy to see how this could have become a cynical class-war story: His working-class struggle vs. her upscale ennui, his pickup vs. her Mercedes. Instead the creator, Lee Sung Jin (“Dave”), couples a raucous story with a generous spin on the truism that the biggest jerk you meet is fighting battles you know nothing about.Danny’s problems are more existential and dire: He is the hard-working son who has taken his family on his back, including not only his parents but also his crypto-bro younger brother (Young Mazino) and his ex-convict cousin (a volatile David Choe), who become dangerously entangled in his payback schemes. It’s not just cash that he lacks; he feels an emptiness, which he tries to fill by stress-eating Burger King chicken sandwiches and by joining a rock-gospel church, an intriguing if underdeveloped subplot.Steven Yeun in “Beef.” Most of the major characters are shaped by their family and upbringing.NetflixAmy has a cushier living situation, but her stressors are not so different. She smiles through endless microaggressions from Jordan (Maria Bello), her business’s rich white potential buyer, and the intrusions of her wealthy mother-in law (Patti Yasutake). Her husband, George (Joseph Lee), has the sweet but irritating chill of privilege. She keeps a gun (paging Mr. Chekhov) in a home safe, a seeming symbol of Amy herself — a sleek container that keeps something dangerous locked away.As their battle escalates, Amy and Danny become enmeshed in each other’s lives, and their similarities become clearer. “Beef” develops into something of a love story, except about hate. You’d expect Yeun (“Minari,” “The Walking Dead”) to excel in the show’s drama and the comedian Wong (“Tuca & Bertie”) to nail the humor, but they do the reverse just as well. Wong especially taps the tension behind Amy’s exquisite octagonal glasses, the pressure to provide and be perfect — she’s like Rachel Fleishman with a gun instead of yoga.That nearly all of the major characters in “Beef” are Asian is both a casual fact of the setting and integral to its themes. These are characters given less social permission for anger in America, in part because of “model minority” stereotypes of docility. (“You have this serene Zen Buddhist thing going on,” Jordan tells Amy.)But they’re also shaped by their family and upbringing. Amy describes learning to repress her emotions from her father — “Chinese guy from the Midwest, I mean, communication wasn’t his forte” — and her mother, a Vietnamese immigrant who “thought talking about your feelings was the same thing as complaining.”As philosophy, self-help and “Star Wars” have taught us, anger is a destructive emotion. “Beef” provides ample evidence of this, in the cascade of escalations that builds to a climax so weird and explosive that it defies spoiling. And the personal war brings out the best in neither Amy, who insults Danny as “poor,” nor Danny, who calls Amy “some rich bitch from Calabasas.”But “Beef” also pushes past easy cant to explore the idea that anger — even petty, stupid anger — can be liberating. At the end of the first episode, Amy and Danny meet face to face, and it does not end well; she winds up chasing him down the street on foot. He, despite having bought himself trouble he can’t afford, wears a wide, childlike smile. She, planning her next countermove, relaxes into a tiny grin.It’s the first lightness you see on either of their faces. Their dispute will prove to be the worst thing that has happened to either of them, but in the moment, it is also the best. They fight not just out of pride but also out of their seeming belief that their rage might somehow make everything right.Among the motifs that Lee Sung Jin weaves through “Beef” is hunger. Danny has his Burger King addiction — he eats like it’s his job, straining and puffing — while Amy has a sweet tooth, a legacy of her depressed childhood, that she has passed on to her daughter. Which brings us back to this weird, remarkable show’s title.Colloquially, “Beef” means “feud.” But this series shows you how anger can also, for some people, be meat. It fills an emptiness, it sustains, it momentarily satisfies — even if, in excess, it’s terrible for your heart. More

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      Late Night Celebrates Donald Trump’s History-Making Arrest

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      “It is a great day to be in New York City — well, unless you’re one person,” Jimmy Fallon joked on Tuesday.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.Trump Makes History“It is a great day to be in New York City — well, unless you’re one person,” Jimmy Fallon joked on Tuesday night. Stephen Colbert said the day was “70 degrees and sunny with a chance of jail.”Former President Donald Trump’s arraignment was the talk of late night, with hosts noting he was the first U.S. president ever to be arrested and face criminal charges.“Trump made history. The only good news for Trump: In Florida, all the history books have been thrown out, so it’s all right.” — JIMMY FALLON“That guy was the president of the country. If you asked for the manager at Best Buy and that guy came over, you’d say, ‘No, the manager.’” — SETH MEYERS“That’s right, former President Trump was arraigned today in Manhattan. And, like anyone else, Trump is presumed innocent until he outright confesses on Truth Social.” — SETH MEYERS“At that point, of course, he was read his Miranda rights. Then he claimed Miranda wasn’t even his type, asked her to sign an N.D.A. and got indicted again.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Once he got inside the courtroom, Trump was formally charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, which are class E felonies. Yep, Trump was like, [imitating Trump] ‘Of course they were very classy felonies. Some would say the classiest of felonies.’” — JIMMY FALLON“And he alone. Ain’t none of your boys around no more — you gave them all pardons. And everybody know you don’t pardon all of your partners — you got to leave one in jail so you have somebody to talk to.” — ROY WOOD JR., guest host of ‘The Daily Show”The Punchiest Punchlines (Trump in Court Edition)“That’s him in court. Look at his face. This is the first time in his life anything’s ever dawned on him.” — SETH MEYERS, on a photo of Trump in the courtroom“Look at how sad Trump looks. My man look like somebody told him his dog died or that Mike Pence is still alive.” — ROY WOOD JR.“He looks like he’s watching another table at Applebee’s get their food first.” — JIMMY FALLON“Looks like he had to sit through two unskippable ads on YouTube.” — JIMMY FALLON“He looks like Ben Affleck at the Grammys.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThe former host Jon Stewart popped by “The Daily Show” to talk about Trump’s arrest.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightCecily Strong, who stars in “Schmigadoon!” will appear on Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutChucky, the sinister doll behind a horror franchise, is the subject of the documentary “Living With Chucky.”Cinedigm/ScreamBoxThe documentary “Living With Chucky” takes a personal look at the legacy of one of horror’s most lasting and loved villains. More

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      In This ‘Grease’ Prequel Series, Pink Is the Word

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      “Rise of the Pink Ladies” describes the origins of the title 1950s girl gang before Rizzo and Frenchy took over, as viewed through a 2020s lens.If you’re into musicals, you may often find yourself wondering: Why should sci-fi fans be the only ones to enjoy ever-expanding franchises?“I know a lot of people who get so much joy from Marvel and ‘Star Wars’ and all the iterations of those universes,” the television writer and producer Annabel Oakes (“Atypical,” “Minx”) said. “I have always been a little jealous of that.“So when ‘Grease’ came as an opportunity to me, I realized that Rydell High is a universe I wanted to spend a long time living in and exploring.”What resulted was the 10-episode prequel series “Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies,” premiering Thursday on Paramount+. (Oakes is the creator and showrunner.) Set in 1954, four years before the events of the hit 1978 film starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John — itself an adaptation of the 1971 stage musical — “Pink Ladies” explores how a group of four Rydell outcasts forged a friendship, then became the title girl gang, forebears to Rizzo, Frenchy and the other beloved Pink Ladies from the movie.Both the stage musical and the film filtered the 1950s through the prism of the 1970s, offering an often frank, funny and unsentimental view of sex, class and gender at an American high school. The movie’s sequel, “Grease 2” (1982), viewed the early ’60s through the early ’80s.“Pink Ladies” is similarly reflective of its time, offering a more diverse, more self-aware take on the ’50s. Like its predecessors, the series embraces candy-colored exuberance, but it also looks more overtly — and at times, more seriously — at coming-of-age concerns like race and sexual orientation.“We want to talk to 2023 and we want to talk to 1954 and we want to talk to 1978,” Oakes said in a video call. “And we want to do all that in the music, in the scripts, with the characters. We’re in conversation with all three of those time periods.”Oakes grew up a fan of “Grease” — when she was a child, she once dressed up as the cheerleader Patty Simcox — so when, in February 2020, Paramount solicited pitches for a show set in the world of the movie, she started reflecting on what she had loved about it.The series tells the origin story of the Pink Ladies, whose members are predecessors to the ones in the movie. Eduardo Araquel/Paramount+Counterclockwise, from top, Stockard Channing, Jamie Donnelly, Didi Conn and Dinah Manoff played the Pink Ladies in the original film “Grease.”Paramount Pictures/Everett Collection“I thought about that sleepover scene with the girls, singing ‘Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee,’ and I just really wanted to be at that sleepover,” she said. “That was what I wanted out of my life as a 10-year-old girl.”Crucially, that scene centers not on the movie’s leads but on the Pink Ladies, a group of independent-minded girls who stand apart from the cheerleaders and the jocks, the greasers and the nerds, and are led by Stockard Channing’s charismatic, swaggering Rizzo. The answer to that character in the series is Olivia (Cheyenne Isabel Wells), a confident Mexican American student who struts down the Rydell hallways in pencil skirts.“Once I put on that outfit and the hair and the makeup, I was ready to bring on that Olivia walk,” Wells said in a video chat. “It was like, ‘All right, time to be cool.’ ”The Pink Ladies were memorably distinct — so much so that they became the focus of “Grease 2,” starring a gum-snapping Michelle Pfeiffer. Oakes decided their origin story was worth investigating.“This aligned with what Paramount was really looking for, which was: How can we tell the stories that you couldn’t have told in 1978 and that you definitely couldn’t have told in 1958?’” Oakes said.The show applies a more modern sensibility to coed relationships than films like “Gidget” (1959), in which a teen played by Sandra Dee somehow clings to her innocence while surrounded by hunky surfers. Now, it’s not just acceptable but recommended to portray girls as embracing their sexuality and also having a degree of agency. In the second episode, boys spike the punch and the future Pink Ladies retaliate by putting castor oil in the booze.“You’re right,” Olivia tells them, “it’s not funny to put something in somebody’s drink that makes them feel out of control of their body.”Naturally, the score plays an important role in helping viewers navigate eras. Aside from an updated version of the movie’s title track — a recurring musical motif throughout — the songs mostly navigate a fluid zone that is not entirely vintage, not entirely modern. For that, Oakes worked closely with the show’s executive music producer, Justin Tranter, who grew up loving musicals and is a regular presence on the upper rungs of the Billboard Hot 100, with writing credits on hits by Justin Bieber, DNCE and Selena Gomez.Michelle Pfeiffer, center, starred in “Grease 2,” which also focused heavily on the Pink Ladies. Paramount PicturesTranter, who oversaw and co-wrote the series’s 30 original numbers and uses the gender-neutral pronouns they and them, drew inspiration from the movies, which, as they noted in a video call, had a relaxed attitude toward period authenticity: Some songs that were added for the 1978 movie, they said, didn’t bother to sound like the 1950s.“‘Grease is the word,’ that is just a disco song, there is no nostalgia,” Tranter said. (The song, whose proper title is “Grease,” was performed by Frankie Valli but written by Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees.) “In our arrangement, we actually used more ’50s instrumentation than the ’70s movie did, on purpose,” Tranter continued, but the songs also included contemporary flourishes, like “the vocal being a little more modern,” or the inclusion of “sub bass, or 808s,” a type of drum machine.“So there is that modern element,” they added, “just like the original ‘Grease’ had.”Like Oakes, the young actors who portray the Pinks, as they all referred to their characters in separate video conversations, grew up with “Grease,” so they were familiar with the premise and tone. “It’s been in and out of my life since childhood,” said Tricia Fukuhara, whose character, Nancy, is a Japanese American student who wants to become a fashion designer. Wells said she had waited until after she landed the role to rewatch the movie. But she and “Grease” were hardly strangers.“I’d seen it before,” she clarified. “I mean, who hasn’t?”What was less familiar at first was the 1950s setting. But the creative team and the cast quickly realized it was not quite as foreign as they expected. Oakes looked up and interviewed some of the students in the 1950s yearbook of a Southern California high school where parts of “Grease” were shot, now in their 80s; she grilled her own mother about her experience. She read up and discovered that interracial and mixed-ethnicity relationships were not unheard-of in that time and place.The young cast members were all familiar with the premise and tone of “Grease” going in. “I’d seen it before,” said Wells, far right. “I mean, who hasn’t?”Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesFollowing the showrunner’s example, the actors portraying the Pink Ladies researched what it was like growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, especially as a girl. They were all struck by how much they could relate.“I talked to a woman who was not out in the 1950s but was aware of her sexuality in high school, which was truly a huge benefit to me, being able to sort of communicate and authentically connect with someone who had that lived experience,” said Ari Notartomaso, who plays the gender-nonconforming goofball Cynthia. “There’s a lot more of a connection between generations than we may be told.”Marisa Davila, whose character, Jane, stirs up Rydell by running for president of the student council against a popular boy, also found resonance close to home.“My father is a first generation Mexican American, so I grew up hearing stories and being influenced by his background,” she said. “I used my dad as a big inspiration for the role: He was the first and only in his immediate family to get a college degree, and that’s all Jane wants — to learn more and go really far.”That drive to follow one’s heart and brain wherever they might lead made the original Pink Ladies feel iconoclastic even in the 1970s, Tranter, the music producer, said — a timeless idea that carries over into this newer iteration. “So many people watched ‘Grease’ so young that I think they don’t realize how progressive and edgy it was for the time,” they said.“What’s so great about Annabel’s story is that these Pink Ladies are radical and subversive and rebellious,” Tranter added. “They’re causing a moral panic in their town just because they want something.” More

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      Stephen Colbert Takes a ‘Mug Shot’ on Donald Trump’s ‘Arraignment Eve’

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      It’s unclear whether Trump will have a mug shot taken, Colbert said, “but here’s my mug and I will definitely be doing a few shots.”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.Colbert Takes a ‘Mug Shot’Stephen Colbert brought out a bottle of bourbon for a few celebratory shots ahead of former President Donald Trump’s expected arrest in Manhattan on Tuesday.“One question a lot of people are asking is: Will there be a mug shot? Well, I don’t know about of him, but here’s my mug and I will definitely be doing a few shots,” Colbert said, calling Monday “Arraignment Eve.”“How are we going to explain that to our grandchildren? Hopefully in the book, ‘Donald and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad N.D.A.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“What if he goes to jail? He could end up the head of a violent white supremacist gang, but in prison this time.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Tomorrow, the moment the world’s been waiting for: He’ll head into the D.A.’s office, where he will receive a booking number and be fingerprinted. They won’t even have to use ink — I’m pretty sure there’s enough ketchup on there all the time.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Reverse Spring Break Edition)“Today, ahead of his scheduled arraignment, former President Trump flew from Florida to New York and landed at LaGuardia Airport. Yep, he was smart — nothing helps you ease into prison like spending time at LaGuardia.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, Trump flew from Florida to New York, where he’ll soon be arrested. He’s basically doing a reverse spring break.” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump’s got to provide a DNA sample, which, if you think about it, that’s kind of how he got in this mess in the first place.” — ROY WOOD JR., guest host of “The Daily Show”“The upside with Trump’s DNA? Now the NYPD can probably solve a bunch of cold cases from the ’80s.” — ROY WOOD JR.The Bits Worth Watching“The Daily Show” correspondent-turned-guest host Roy Wood Jr. spoke with Ron DeSantis’s education adviser while leading a class called White History 101.What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightU.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will appear on Tuesday’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”Also, Check This OutIn a new solo show at 59E59 Theaters, the comedian Judy Gold mentions her forebears, including Totie Fields and Joan Rivers.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesComedian Judy Gold’s new solo show “Yes, I Can Say That!” is equal parts uncomfortable and hilarious by design. More

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      ‘Perry Mason’ Season 2, Episode 5 Recap: Follow the Money

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      Paul is pushed to new extremes. Perry finds a hole in the prosecution’s case.Season 2, Episode 5: ‘Chapter Thirteen’Whodunit? Oh, we are so far past “whodunit” in this season of “Perry Mason,” folks.We know exactly who killed Brooks McCutcheon now. As put forth by the prosecution and confirmed last week, it was Mateo and Rafael Gallardo. Their motive may be complicated, including a payoff from an unseen puppet master and a personal desire for revenge — their apartment was cleared and burned to make room for Brooks’s baseball stadium, which killed their kid sister. But their guilt is beyond doubt.Fortunately for the second half of the show’s second season, there are now bigger questions to answer: Who paid whodunit, and why? Brooks’s unpopularity with, well, pretty much everyone who knew him doesn’t simplify matters. As Perry puts it regarding Brooks in his opening argument to the jury, “You won’t be asking who in this town wanted him killed, you’ll be asking who in this town didn’t.” To be fair, this is characteristic Masonic bluster, designed to create reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors without much to back it up … yet.That’s where Paul Drake, the ace up Perry’s sleeve, comes in. In many ways, this is his episode; his story is that of a decent and dogged man who is forced constantly into humiliating or outright morally compromising positions, emerging largely intact but increasingly scarred each time.For example, Paul is the fellow Perry dispatches to interview Councilman Taylor (Damian O’Hare), the influential brother of the mystery-shrouded Noreen Lawson. Perry’s team presumes that Brooks had something to do with Noreen’s current unresponsive state, but all the councilman will do is mindlessly repeat that she was injured in a car accident. Of course, he does this with a heaping helping of racial antagonism — an occupational hazard for a Black private investigator.Paul is also tasked with tracking down Ozzie Jackson (Terrence Hardy Jr.), a low-level gangster whose trademark Converse shoes make him a standout. With help from his no-longer-estranged friend and housemate Mo, Paul learns that Ozzie works for Melvin Perkins (Christopher Carrington), the relatively benevolent racketeer currently mired in legal trouble thanks to pictures taken by Paul while he was working as a stringer for the district attorney’s office.So Paul makes a deal with Perkins: He’ll render the photos useless in court by refusing to testify to their veracity in exchange for Ozzie’s location. When Perkins learns that Paul was the photographer in question, though, he forces the investigator to beat the info he needs out of Ozzie. Then he forces Paul to continue beating Jackson, even after the kid admits that he received the order from the husband of a rich woman to whom he used to sell heroin — until he was paid better not to.Paul winds up crawling into bed with his wife Claire, touching her skin with the same hand he used to beat Jackson. “Am I … good?” he asks her. She assures him he is. What else could she say?Unfortunately for the Mason team, a mysterious person — no really, that’s how he’s listed in the closing credits: “Mysterious Person,” played by Kyle T. Heffner — has eyes on Perry. He’s there when Mason visits the Gallardo family’s Hooverville to ferret out the initial tip about Ozzie and his Converse shoes.Worse, this mystery man tails Della and Anita to an underground lesbian club. I’ve been wondering how long it would be before Della’s sexuality would be weaponized against her the way the more externally obvious fact of Drake’s race has been used against him.It’s worth keeping in mind that District Attorney Burger is vulnerable along the same lines. Note also that he is under some kind of as-yet unidentified pressure to settle the case, despite seeming to be firmly in the driver’s seat. He offers a plea deal to Perry — not an exceedingly generous one, but still, a deal — over the obvious dismay of his ambitious lieutenant Tom Milligan. No one on Perry’s team can figure out why he would do this unless someone was forcing his hand. Who? Why?Milligan doesn’t seem to care either way. What he wants to do is win the case, one virtually designed to put him on the map; the vocal support of the radio firebrand Frank Finnerty could make him a political superstar overnight. (His verminous epithet for Perry has caught on to such a degree that a witness refers to Mason as “Mister Maggot” on the stand.) Milligan helps wrap up the episode by asking Perry’s old pal Pete to turn against him; knowing Pete, he’ll do it if the price is right.And the hits just keep on coming. Della is confronted by her girlfriend (Molly Ephraim) about her late night with Anita. Perry returns to his apartment after another assignation with the surprisingly forward schoolteacher Miss Aimes to discover that someone has set up his son’s model train set and left behind a still-burning cigarette. It’s one of the more whimsical ways of sending someone a warning that they can be gotten to, but it’s no less alarming for that.The message is clear: You can either get on board, or get run over.From the case files:I’m a broken record on this point, I realize, but good gravy, the lighting in this show. This time we can credit the director, Marialy Rivas, and the director of photography, Eliot Rockett, for the way Perry’s cigarette smoke obscures his face as light streams through his blinds; for the near-blinding morning light that similarly illuminates Milligan’s office when Pete pays his fateful visit; for the cold blue-gray glow of the small hours when Paul staggers in from the beatdown Perkins forces him to deliver, a smart, stark divergence from the lighting scheme of pretty much every other scene.I’m impressed with the way the show tied the Perkins story line, which seemed like a minor conflict driver for Paul, Pete and Mo, into the main plot. I didn’t see that coming — not that a mystery tyro like me ever sees anything coming on this show.The closing credits begin unspooling over an image of a little girl’s shoes catching fire and burning up, a grimly poetic metonymy of the Gallardos’ tragic back story.I enjoyed the contrasting demeanors of Burger and Milligan when they discuss the opposition. Milligan reacts with evident disdain when Burger tells him that Perry passed the bar with only a few hours’ preparation, a fact he imparts in order to impress upon the younger man how formidable his opponent is. Burger wears the unmistakable look of “I’ve made a huge mistake,” in terms of both tangling with Perry and relying on Milligan to take the matter seriously.It’s minor in the scheme of things, but a ton of fun in as a scene: Thanks to the fortuitous placement of his shot glass, Perry discovers that the print number on the crime-scene fingerprint photo is reversed. This helps him uncover the fact that the print was bogus, placed on Brooks’s steering wheel in order to more thoroughly frame the Gallardos. It wasn’t enough for the Gallardos to kill the guy — they had to do so in a way that was guaranteed to be found out. Whoever hired them gilded the lily, and now the case against the Gallardos is weaker. When the judge says that “the jury will disregard” Perry’s statement about the fingerprint’s being planted by the cops, Perry simply murmurs, “No they won’t,” under his breath, and he’s right.My favorite bits of physical acting this week: Chris Drake as Paul, wincing with misery every time he has to take a fist to Ozzie, and Katherine Waterston as Miss Aimes, matter-of-factly raising her leg to kick shut the front door when Perry shows up for a little romance.Oh yeah: Della and Anita are now officially in love. So that’s nice! Unless you’re Della’s girlfriend, I guess. More

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      ‘Saturday Night Live’ Tackles the Trump Indictment

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      The episode, hosted by Quinta Brunson, envisioned the former president going to unusual lengths to pay for his legal defense.Two days after Donald J. Trump was indicted in New York, marking the first time that a U.S. president, sitting or former, has faced criminal charges, “Saturday Night Live” envisioned Trump going to unusual lengths to pay for his legal defense by selling his own album of musical covers.“S.N.L.” also used its Weekend Update news segment to lampoon Trump’s legal predicament, as well as the reactions of his political supporters and rivals.This week’s broadcast, which was hosted by Quinta Brunson and featured the musical guest Lil Yachty, began with the show’s resident Trump impersonator, James Austin Johnson, addressing the audience directly.“Well, folks, it happened,” Johnson said as Trump. “I got indicted. Or as I spell it, indicated. Frankly, it’s time that I come clean. Admit that I broke the law and go quietly to prison.”He quickly added: “April Fool’s! That was a prank. I was doing a Jim from ‘Office.’”Johnson went on to pitch a satirical album titled “Now That’s What I Call My Legal Defense Fund,” purporting to offer his versions of hit pop songs.“I didn’t even sleep with Stormy Daniels, but in many ways I did,” Johnson said. “And isn’t it ironic that the first time I actually pay someone, they try to send me to jail?” He then sang a few bars of “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette.Later in the show, on Weekend Update, the anchor Colin Jost began the segment by announcing what he said was “great news for conservatives: New York Is finally cracking down on crime.”He continued, “Former President Donald Trump was indicted for his role in paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels. And the trial will be like a Stormy Daniels movie, because I’m deeply ashamed at how excited I am to watch it.”Given the unprecedented nature of the news events, there’s no exact blueprint for “S.N.L.” to follow here. The show made its debut a year after Nixon’s resignation, and in the time since, it has variously capitalized on or discounted other executive controversies depending on how near to airtime they occurred, as well as other factors in the cultural mix.In a Jan. 9, 1999, broadcast that aired a couple of weeks after the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Clinton, “S.N.L.” opened with a sketch that lampooned two Republican lawmakers who lost their posts during Clinton’s deepening sex scandal.In the sketch, Bob Livingston (Will Ferrell) and Newt Gingrich (Chris Parnell) meet at a bar and commiserate. “He lies about it, under oath,” Parnell laments. “Then we prosecute him and he’s still in the White House and we lose our jobs.”On that show’s Weekend Update, then-anchor Colin Quinn joked that Clinton should attend his own impeachment trial projecting confidence, “with a big-haired, tube-topped Ponderosa waitress with a Marlboro menthol hanging out of her mouth, just like, ‘Hey, what’s up, boys? Heard you talking about me. You don’t take me down — I take you down.’”Two decades later, in the first “S.N.L.” broadcast that followed the House’s vote to impeach President Trump for the first time, the show was more focused on the return of Eddie Murphy, a cast alumnus who had returned to host.That episode, on Dec. 21, 2019, opened with a parody of a Democratic presidential debate. On Weekend Update, Colin Jost delivered a somewhat time-sensitive joke about then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to not transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate.“Now we’re all in this weird limbo where no one knows exactly what’s going on,” Jost said. “There’s this cast of wild characters making fools of themselves, and everyone is thinking, please God, just let this end. So basically, it’s ‘Cats.’” (Again, it was 2019.)Both the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and the House vote to impeach Trump for the second time took place during an “S.N.L.” hiatus. When the show returned on Jan. 30 of that year, Jost remarked on how distant these events already seemed in topical-comedy time.“Well, guys, a lot has happened since our last show,” he said on Weekend Update. “Some of it was good. The inauguration, that was nice. Christmas, I liked Christmas, and hey, now the terrorist watch list includes white people. So yay for diversity. Yay for diversity, it’s important to see yourself represented.”In this week’s opening sketch, Johnson sang duets with Don King (Kenan Thompson), Afroman (Devon Walker) and Donald Trump Jr. (Mikey Day). He went on to tell the audience, “Folks, if they can come for me, they can come for you too. Or in the case of Jan. 6, they can come for you and not for me. I like that one a little bit better.”Opening monologue of the weekBrunson, the creator and star of “Abbott Elementary,” used her first-ever “S.N.L.” monologue to take some apt potshots at “Friends” (“Instead of being about a group of friends, it’s about a group of teachers,” she said. “And instead of New York, it’s in Philadelphia. And instead of not having Black people, it does.”)Though Brunson lamented the fact that she’s now expected to solve any problems that come up in public schools, she also praised real-life teachers including her mother with a video assist from “my friend Barack,” also known as former President Obama.Fake commercial of the weekAt a time when true-crime documentaries about cults are providing the foundation of nearly every streaming TV library, “S.N.L.” added its own entry to this seemingly limitless trend.This fake filmed ad for a would-be Netflix mini-series chronicles another arcane American institution that demands total loyalty from its participants: being a bridesmaid. The ritual is described by talking heads played by Brunson, Heidi Gardner, Ego Nwodim and Sarah Sherman, who looks especially horrified as she recounts how a single text from a maid of honor — ending with a sparkle emoji — was enough to compel her to sell her car.Weekend Update jokes of the weekAfter rebounding from an April Fool’s prank in which Che had told the “S.N.L.” studio audience not to laugh at Jost’s jokes, the anchors continued to riff on the political response to a shooting attack at a Christian elementary school in Nashville.Che began:In the wake of the Nashville shooting, President Biden once again called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban. Or, hear me out, stop-and-frisk for whites.Jost continued:Congressman Andy Ogles, who represents the district where the Nashville shooting took place, is being criticized for a Christmas card where he and his family are holding assault rifles. OK, even putting aside mass shooting, who are you psychos sending these cards to? If I received that in the mail, I would move. All that card tells you is, “I’m armed, I have terrible judgment and I know where you live.”Weekend Update desk character of the weekFollowing the news that the principal of a charter school in Florida was forced to resign after students there were shown Michelangelo’s David during a lesson on Renaissance art, Michael Longfellow could have responded in any number of ways.He could have appeared on Weekend Update playing an aggrieved parent or a student from the school. But instead, he chose to play David — not the biblical figure but the statue itself, for which Longfellow proudly went bare-chested with his face and body painted a marbly white. We applaud his commitment to the bit and we hope the coloring washes off in the shower. More

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      ‘Succession,’ Season 4, Episode 2 Recap: The Serious People

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      Logan Roy does not care about any of your social norms, and he lacks the patience for apologies.Season 4, Episode 2: ‘Rehearsal’Here’s what you need to know about Logan Roy: He does not care about any of your social norms or niceties. In last week’s “Succession,” while his kids were stealthily trying to outbid him for Pierce Global Media, Logan did not bother to play their little games. He demanded that Tom call Shiv to find out what was what — and he did it in a room full of Waystar executives, so Tom could not say no. Logan never minds coming off as rude or presumptuous. Manners are a waste of time, which is a waste of money.This week, the younger Roys are at it again, weighing a pitch from the maverick Waystar board members Stewy Hosseini (Arian Moayed) and Sandi Furness (Hope Davis) to gum up the works with the impending GoJo sale. So what does Logan do? He does not wait patiently and politely to see what will happen — heavens, no. He crashes a karaoke party.Logan spends a lot of this episode in places no one wants him to be. Apparently, without telling anyone — except for maybe Kerry and Tom — Logan has made a plan for how to spend the rest of his life. Once Waystar is officially sold to GoJo, he is going to dedicate himself to “fixing” ATN, because the only part of his business that he has every really cared about is the news.He shows up unannounced at the ATN offices late one afternoon and starts “terrifyingly moseying” around, according to Greg. (“It’s like ‘Jaws’ if everyone in ‘Jaws’ worked for Jaws.”) Logan complains to Tom about how much everything costs, from the air conditioning bill for ATN’s new hangar-style bullpen to the fresh pizzas being stacked atop the unfinished cold pizzas in the break room. (“There’s a sog factor,” Greg weakly explains.)In a stirring and terrifying speech — delivered to the assembled employees from atop some boxes of printer paper — Logan proclaims his vision for ATN. A state-of-the-art election package with spiffy new graphics? Who cares? What Logan wants is for his team not just to report the news but to make it. He wants them to start giving the audience “something everyone knows but nobody says.” It is time, at last, for brutal honesty.So it is inevitable really that Logan ends his night facing some of that honesty himself from two of the people with the biggest grudges against him: Kendall and Shiv. (But not Roman. We will get back to that.)The showdown is set up by a couple of typically petty Logan moves. The kids are supposed to helicopter into New York City for Connor and Willa’s wedding rehearsal, but their father cancels their Waystar chopper privileges with no warning. This infuriates Shiv, who is already fuming because he advised Tom to tie up every notable divorce lawyer in New York, so that they are all “conflicted out” from handling her case — a classic Logan breakup move. (“I got Mommed,” Shiv grumbles.)The vibes are even worse in the city, where just as Kendall, Shiv and Roman are walking in late to the rehearsal dinner, Willa is ducking out. Connor explains that when his fiancée rose to give a speech, she said, “I can’t do this,” and then disappeared into the bathroom. Connor is now mopey and anxious, and tracking Willa’s whereabouts via a locator app on his phone. Roman, incapable of letting a prime opportunity to needle a loved one go unheeded, revels in describing what kind of decadent escapades Willa might be up to. (Connor, when the app shows Willa at an aquarium supply retailer: “Is that a drug thing?” Roman: “It is.”)To cheer Connor up, they indulge his longstanding dream to sing karaoke at a “real” bar “away from the Fancy Dans,” just like people do in the movies. But while Connor is in the middle of an impressively miserable version of Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat” — an impressively miserable song — the kids get the alert that Logan is on his way.Because Logan knows everything — in this case, thanks to Connor — he knows his children are thinking about squeezing GoJo’s Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) for more money. He is also convinced that deep down, this is personal for them not business. He needs to give them something they want more than money: an apology.But an apology for what? Logan wants to limit his regrets to some of his minor recent obnoxiousness. But Kendall and Shiv, who have had enough of their father’s pretending to atone one day then going back to being awful the next, want him to acknowledge his biggest sins: ignoring Connor, hitting Roman, weaponizing Tom against Shiv, conspiring with the kids’ mother to push them out of Waystar … everything, basically.Logan sees no point to this, so he abruptly ends his family reconciliation time with a gentle but devastating kiss-off: “I love you, but you are not serious people.” Only after he leaves the karaoke bar does Logan start raging, ranting to Kerry about how in New York there are “rats as fat as skunks.” He then pivots back into Logan mode, deciding to cancel the board meeting and to meet with Mattson again, with every major Waystar player there except Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron). He wants to skip the procedural hoo-hah and settle this person to person.Shiv and Kendall seem almost giddy that they got to tell the old man off to his face — though later as they ride home separately, only Kendall is still smiling. And Roman?Well, it turns out Roman has been texting little “hey how are you” messages to his father for weeks. So after the karaoke fiasco, he drops by his dad’s home and immediately gets roped into the big Mattson plan. Logan needs “pirates” like Roman to lead his new ATN. “Smart people know what they are,” he tells his son.This is something Shiv and Kendall have missed, as they have been dragging Roman from one Logan-skewering plan after another and treating him like their mascot. They think their brother is the George Harrison of their band. But when pushed, Roman stares them down and straightens them out, proclaiming — with a confidence that should frighten them — “I’m John.”Due diligenceThe best running gag in this episode — just edging out how Kendall keeps pestering Roman with snackable bits of Buddhist philosophy — involves Kerry’s audition to become an ATN anchor. She has produced a terrible tape. (For some reason she keeps smiling at all times, even when reporting on a child abduction.) Tom, tasked with figuring out what to do about this, gravely tells Greg that the situation is “like Israel-Palestine, except harder and much more important,” before passing the buck and offering a step-by-step guide for how Greg should handle it. But when Greg tries to follow those steps, he botches it. His best attempt to soften the suggestion that her tape is awful is to say, “It can happen that they shoot weird, the cameras.”A serious question for serious people: Why do the Roy children even want to be in the news business? News is Logan’s passion. The children, based on all available evidence, seem baffled by its appeal. While watching some PGM programming and brainstorming about how to improve it, they sound completely lost. Shiv only knows they should “broaden out and stop over-indexing to college professors.” Kendall tosses out jargon like “from global-global to hyperlocal” but when he tries to clarify what he means all he can come up with is, “Every day: What is happening in Africa?” And as a bit of possible foreshadowing, Roman comes closest to imagining something like his dad might want when he proposes info-dumps in the day and “A Clockwork Orange” at night.The younger Roys do a lot in this episode to torpedo any sympathy viewers might be nurturing for them. When they follow Connor into one of his non-Fancy Dan bars (where he sighs, “Ah, America! I’ve missed you.”), Roman mutters, “Do you think they know how to make a vodka tonic?” while Shiv chuckles, “House red? Do I dare?” Later, Roman seems bemused and repulsed by the plastic menus listing basic pub food like wings. The Roys’ contempt oozes … and it stinks. More

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      ‘Hot Ones’ Was a Slow Burn All Along

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      This YouTube talk show’s premise is simple: Disarm celebrities with deep-cut questions and scorchingly spicy wings. Nearly 300 episodes later, the recipe still works.Bob Odenkirk was dubious when he walked onto the set of the long-running YouTube interview show “Hot Ones” last month. He was, after all, about to take on the “wings of death,” as the lineup of treacherously spicy chicken is called.“I’ve heard such good things about the show,” Odenkirk told Sean Evans, its even-keeled host, once cameras were rolling, but “I think I’m perfectly capable of talking without having a part of my body injured.”Despite peppering the interview with a couple of F-bombs, Odenkirk, the Emmy-nominated actor from “Better Call Saul” and “Breaking Bad,” underwent a familiar shift: He’d warmed up — emotionally. Particularly after wing three, when Evans, quoting a 1989 Chicago Tribune article, asked him about his one-man show “Half My Face Is a Clown.”“That was far more entertaining and fun than I thought it would be,” Odenkirk said in the closing credits through spice-induced coughs.“Hot Ones” — a breakthrough pop-culture phenomenon in which stars eat 10 progressively fiery wings (or, increasingly, a vegan substitute) while being asked 10 deeply researched questions — has built itself into an online pillar, holding steady amid the shifting tides of digital media.Since 2015, First We Feast, the food culture site that produces “Hot Ones,” has aired nearly 300 episodes, almost all of which have amassed millions of views. Guests this season, its 20th, include Pedro Pascal, Bryan Cranston, Jenna Ortega and Florence Pugh. In the early days of the show, guests were mostly rappers, comedians and athletes. Now Oscar winners like Viola Davis and Cate Blanchett often occupy the hot seat, as do headliners like Dave Grohl and Lizzo. The two most watched episodes, with Gordon Ramsay and Billie Eilish, both in 2019, have a combined 165 million views. The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson popped in to discuss our place in the universe, and its place in us.Bob Odenkirk, the star of “Better Call Saul,” conquered the “wings of death” in March, during Season 20 of the show. Peter Fisher for The New York TimesEvans uses his affable, unassuming approach to his advantage, with his deep-cut questions disarming guests, as the wings set them ablaze. Often visibly suffering, the guests are swiftly won over by Evans’s knowledge of their careers and his uncanny ability to keep conversations on track, even when they come dangerously close to going sideways.When he asked Josh Brolin why the Geva Theater Center in Rochester, N.Y., was special to him, Brolin responded, “Literally the greatest questions I’ve ever been asked. Seriously. I’m blown away. I don’t know who’s working for you, but don’t fire them.” (Turns out, it’s the small theater where he earned his stripes as a character actor.)In recent years, “Hot Ones” has edged itself into the big leagues: with spoofs on “The Simpsons” and “Saturday Night Live,” and Daytime Emmy nominations for Evans and the show. Its influence seems to have rippled down into the bevy of late-night or online segments that test celebrities one way or another: “Seth Meyers Goes Day Drinking” or Vanity Fair’s lie-detector series.Since its start, Evans said, “We’ve lived through like four different new media generations over that time, and we’ve been able to ride those rocky waters just in like the smoothest way.”The show could have easily been pigeonholed as a novelty or gimmick, but Evans and Chris Schonberger, the co-creator and executive producer of “Hot Ones,” say its steady ascent is a product of their dedication to the craft of interviewing and, perhaps unexpectedly, to linear TV: New 20-30 minute episodes drop on Thursdays. “‘Hot Ones’ is a little bit of like a sitcom from the ’80s or ’90s,” Evans said, comparing its cozy watchability with “The Office” or “Friends.”Schonberger calls “Hot Ones” a “true Venn diagram,” where today’s emphasis on viral formats overlaps with time-tested journalism. “It’s rooted in doing the research, trying to be factually accurate, trying to be broader than the gossip of the day,” he said. Its North Star has always been to answer the classic question, “What would it be like to have a beer with that person?”Peter Fisher for The New York TimesDomonique Burroughs, now a senior producer for “Hot Ones,” has been with the show since the start.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesThis is all so much more than Evans, 36, and Schonberger, 39, could have fathomed when the idea was born almost a decade ago.First We Feast, started by Complex Networks in 2012 and led by Schonberger, was struggling to catch up to legacy food brands like Gourmet Magazine or Bon Appétit, with their thousands of recipes or restaurant listings. Then, in 2014, digital brands pivoted hard to video. “It was this amazing flattening of the landscape,” Schonberger said. “Suddenly we were not way behind the starting line, and we also had this brand that could credibly speak to pop culture and not just food.”And with platforms like YouTube evolving, Schonberger said, “People were looking for something to puncture the veneer of celebrity — how interviews were becoming more experiential and gamified.”“‘Hot Ones’ was just the dumbest idea of all time,” Schonberger said, only half-joking. “How is it, philosophically, that the dumbest idea is the best?”“It’s like, well, we can’t just have people get drunk or high,” he went on, “but I think we can get people to eat spicy food, which might just be hilarious.”“Hot Ones” started selling its own hot sauces in 2016, and in 2022, it sold more than two million bottles.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesPeter Fisher for The New York TimesThe N.B.A. star Shaquille O’Neal was a guest on the show in 2019.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesCasting someone formally was not in the budget, Schonberger said, so he went hunting for onscreen talent “down at the end of the hallway.” And there was Evans, who had been hosting segments for Complex News, playing golf with Stephen Curry, for example, or eating Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson’s diet.In the beginning, the show had a more contentious, unhinged quality (like a “Wild West U.F.C. barroom,” as Schonberger put it). Publicists, Evans said, would bring in their client, “half apologizing for it in front of us.” Conversations that Evans had during Season 1 (which didn’t feature any women) — like when he used numerous expletives during a question to Machine Gun Kelly about his relationship with Amber Rose — would not fly today.In 2018, Charlize Theron’s episode kicked open the door for top-tier female guests, like Scarlett Johansson and Halle Berry, previously difficult to book in part because of the show’s unconventional, unproven concept, which hadn’t quite broken out of its bro-centric box.Evans, left, with the creator of “Hot Ones,” Chris Schonberger. “How is it, philosophically, that the dumbest idea is the best?” Schonberger has asked himself over the years.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesIf you’ve pictured Evans going into hiding for a week before each interview to consume every part of his upcoming guest’s career, you wouldn’t be wrong. But he also gets a lot of help from his brother, Gavin Evans, the show’s researcher, who compiles a dossier on each celebrity that might be 50 pages long — no magazine profile, podcast interview, IMDb entry, Wikipedia page or archived local news story is left unplumbed.Sean Evans, a Chicago native who grew up admiring Howard Stern, David Letterman and Adam Carolla, turns out to have a knack for demystifying celebrity. Near the end of his interview, the Oscar nominee Austin Butler, who told a touching story about riding roller coasters with his late mother, hugged Evans, saying, “I’ve made a new friend that I hope stays in my life for a long time.” The night after Grohl’s episode, in which the two drank an entire bottle of Crown Royal whisky, Evans attended a friends-and-family Foo Fighters show.Despite consistently trending on YouTube, the show has managed to maintain some level of underdog appeal. Maybe it’s that a team of around 10 people has worked on it since its inception. This includes a hot sauce curator: Noah Chaimberg, the founder of the Brooklyn-based small-batch hot-sauce shop Heatonist. The lineup of sauces changes every season, but a mainstay is the brutal Da’ Bomb Beyond Insanity, a turning point in nearly every interview. The final wing tops two million on the Scoville scale.Or maybe it’s the unchanging bare-bones set: an all-black liminal space akin to the Looney Tunes void.The set was “a byproduct of us being broke,” Evans said, but it’s been a boon to the show. Though it often films in New York or Los Angeles, “we can pop that set up wherever,” Evans said, as when they traveled to Hawaii to interview Kevin Hart or London for Idris Elba. “The restrictions of the show became a superpower,” Schonberger said.The bare-bones “Hot Ones” set was originally “a byproduct of us being broke,” Evan said.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesSchonberger and Evans said that cable networks and other platforms have expressed interest in buying the “Hot Ones” brand, but they have prioritized their control over it, staying with YouTube and expanding their reach by creating and selling hot sauces (first conceived as a keepsake for superfans, then broadened exponentially to meet demand). They have had collaborations with Shake Shack, Reebok and Champion sportswear. And in 2021, Hot Ones started selling chicken bites in the freezer aisles of Walmart.And while “Hot Ones” wasn’t created with social media in mind, it is “made for it,” Schonberger said, with each wing being its own two- to three-minute segment designed to have a beginning, middle and end. Then come the reaction GIFs and compilations, which rack up millions of views on TikTok, along with videos of fans trying the sauces themselves.“We’ve just continued to focus on making the whole as good as possible and having faith that once it’s out in the world,” Schonberger said, “it belongs to the internet, and they’re going to find their ways to have fun with it and amplify it.” For the duo, who are admittedly bullheaded about their vision, the future will look a lot like the present.“I don’t really have these world takeover plans or aspirations. I think I’m just happier being a duke or being a baron on my little corner of the internet,” said Evans, who has eaten thousands of wings onscreen. “Hopefully I can just sustain this as long as my stomach will allow.”Peter Fisher for The New York Times More