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      Richard Moll, Towering Bailiff on ‘Night Court,’ Dies at 80

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      In a career that spanned more than four decades, the actor was best known for playing the imposing but lovable Bull Shannon on the NBC sitcom.Richard Moll, the 6-foot-8 actor who delighted television audiences with a childlike charm in his role as the hulking bailiff on the NBC sitcom “Night Court,” died on Thursday at his home in Big Bear Lake, Calif. He was 80.His death was confirmed on Friday by his publicist, Jeff Sanderson. No cause was given by the family.In a career of more than four decades, Mr. Moll played a variety of roles on television shows and in films. But he was best known for portraying the baldheaded, wide-eyed Aristotle Nostradamus (Bull) Shannon on all nine seasons of “Night Court,” which ran from 1984 to 1992 and competed with other hit television sitcoms like “The Cosby Show” and “The Golden Girls.”Mr. Moll worked as an actor and voice-over artist as late as 2018.Kathy Hutchins/Hutchins Photo Agency, via Associated PressBull Shannon’s dimwitted persona offered an air of lighthearted innocence on the series, which was set inside a fictional municipal night court in Manhattan and starred Harry Anderson, who played Judge Harry Stone and died in 2018, and John Larroquette as the prosecutor, Dan Fielding.Mr. Moll was “larger than life and taller too,” Mr. Larroquette, said Friday in a post on X.Richard Charles Moll was born on Jan. 13, 1943, in Pasadena, Calif. to Harry and Violet Moll. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964, with a degree in history and passed over his father’s wishes that he pursue a law career, to take up acting.He started with theater work, performing in Shakespeare plays in California. His first television and film roles came in the late 1970s, and included a part in the 1977 movie “Brigham” and an appearance in an episode of the television series “Welcome Back, Kotter” in 1978.“Probably auditioning for ‘Night Court’ would be my first big break,” Mr. Moll said in a 2010 interview with MaximoTV. He noted that he had been asked if he was willing to shave his head for the part.“I said ‘Are you kidding?’ ” he recalled. “‘I’ll shave my legs for the part. I’ll shave my armpits. I don’t care.’”After “Night Court” ended in 1992, Mr. Moll went on to do voice-over work on various cartoons, including roles as Two-Face, a disturbed villain with a disfigured mug on the “Adventures of Batman & Robin” on Fox, and as Scorpion, one of the many adversaries on “Spider-Man: The Animated Series,” on the same network.Richard Moll, far right, with the cast of Night Court in 1988.Gary Null/NBC, via Getty ImagesThough largely known for his comedic work, including in movies such as “Scary Movie 2” and “But I’m a Cheerleader,” Mr. Moll was also featured in horror and science-fiction films. His first major movie roles included the 1985 horror feature “House” and the 1986 indie fantasy “The Dungeonmaster.”Mr. Moll worked as an actor and voice-over artist as late as 2018, according to IMDb. His final notable appearance was in the 2010 live-action film “Scooby-Doo: Curse of the Lake Monster,” in which he played the mysterious lighthouse keeper Elmer Uggins.Mr. Moll retired to Big Bear Lake in the Southern Californian mountains, where, according to his family, he reveled in the idyllic scenery and exercised his love of bird-watching.He is survived by a daughter, Chloe Moll; a son, Mason Moll; his ex-wife, Susan Moll; and two stepchildren, Cassandra Card and Morgan Ostling. More

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      Stephen Colbert Calls Out Mike Johnson’s First Fail

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      The “Late Show” host chided the new House speaker for offering little more than thoughts and prayers to survivors of the Maine shooting on his first day in office.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.Major FailAddressing tragedies like mass shootings has become a regular part of late night. On Thursday night, Stephen Colbert spoke about a shooting in Lewiston, Maine, that killed 18 people and injured 13 others on Wednesday.“Some people are going to say ‘This is a mental health issue,’ others are going to say, ‘It’s a gun issue,’ but there’s no reason it can’t be both,” Colbert said. “For instance, some people are going to look at this tragedy and say, ‘We don’t have enough guns in America.’ That alone proves some of us are mentally ill.”Colbert pointed out that most Americans want bans on assault-style weapons and for Congress to take action to prevent more mass shootings, yet no one on either side of the aisle has successfully stopped them from happening.“So, ask your representative, ‘What will you do?’ If they don’t have an answer immediately at hand, if they say it’s too soon to talk about this, that means they’ve never really given it any serious thought. Because they’ve had plenty of time since Uvalde and Marjory Stoneman Douglas and Sandy Hook and the Pulse nightclub. So if they don’t have an answer now, they will never have an answer.” — STEPHEN COLBERTHe expressed disappointment over a lack of new ideas from recently elected House speaker Mike Johnson, “a self-professed devoutly religious man,” who offered little comfort to Americans in a statement during his first day in office, which amounted to little more than thoughts and prayers.“We’re already capable of hope and prayer ourselves. You’re capable of governing, theoretically. And I’m sorry if that sounds like too hard of a job for you. If that seems like too hard of a job, you know who’s really got a hard job now? The people in Lewiston, Maine.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And there are very few people like Mainers. I know Mainers. I love Mainers. They’re strong people. They’ve got Moxie — literally, it’s the name of the official state soft drink. It tastes like carbonated cough syrup, but they drink it anyway, ’cause Mainers are tough. These are people whose idea of a beach is a collection of jagged rocks near freezing water. Their state flower, the Maine state flower — and this is true — is a frickin’ pine cone!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And I dare anyone in power to show a fraction of the courage of all the families who have faced their tragedies and faced our failure to change.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Getting to Know You Edition)“Republicans yesterday elected Mike Johnson the 56th speaker of the House, which is crazy ’cause a month ago, we were only at 12.” — SETH MEYERS“Meanwhile, earlier today, Mike Johnson met with President Biden for the first time since becoming speaker. Johnson is pretty famous for being an election denier, so it got pretty awkward when he said, ‘Good to meet you, ‘President Biden. ’” — JIMMY FALLON“But the meeting was very friendly. Biden even invited Johnson to pet his dog.” — JIMMY FALLON“Biden told a story about his days in Congress, and by the time it was over, Johnson was already voted out as speaker.” — JIMMY FALLON“Johnson is also extremely anti-LGBTQ, saying: ‘Homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.’ If you’re doin’ it right.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingThe comedian Jeff Ross dressed down kids in Halloween costumes for “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutCailee Spaeny in “Priscilla.”Sabrina Lantos/A24Adapted from Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir, “Elvis and Me,” Sofia Coppola’s new film, “Priscilla,” re-examines the King from his young wife’s point of view. More

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      Halloween TV: Five Shows That Mix Horror and Humor

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      “Creepshow,” “The Fall of the House of Usher” and other shows serve up humor with their horror.Sorting through the seasonal bounty of horror and supernatural television series timed to Halloween, I have focused on shows that approach the grim task with a sense of humor. Here, in alphabetical order, are five series released this month that put more emphasis on wit than on sheer terror.‘30 Coins’The Spanish filmmaker Álex de la Iglesia careens through the conventions of the religious conspiracy thriller in this preposterous and highly enjoyable series that combines a “Da Vinci Code”-style premise with extremes of gore and a circling, tenuously comprehensible plot.In the first season, a Spanish village became the site of a battle among Roman Catholic cabals and emissaries of Satan over Judas’s 30 pieces of silver, which if collected would give their owner unimagined power. Or something like that. Fighting back against these forces of evil was a motley crew that included a renegade priest, the village’s unhappily married mayor and a plucky veterinarian.Paul Giamatti plays a cult leader in the new season of “30 Coins.”Manolo Pavón/HBOIn Season 2, which premiered this week on HBO and Max, the apocalypse has been averted but its likelihood is still palpable, and the number of creepy beasts in the manner of Bosch and Guillermo del Toro has exponentially increased. Also joining the show is Paul Giamatti as a science-fiction-writing cult leader who is human in form but as frightening as any beast.‘Creepshow’Now in its fourth season on the horror-centric streaming service Shudder (as well as AMC+), this anthology series wears its comic-book sensibility and B-movie aesthetic proudly. And the best of its 22-minute stories (two per episode) also exhibit the cleverness and industriousness that contribute to real pop-culture satisfaction. You’ll see the first twist coming, but the second and the third may take you by surprise.“Creepshow” doesn’t reach too far for its inspirations — Season 4’s familiar scenarios include a persecuted vampire family, a werewolf in a “Little Red Riding Hood” situation, a haunted video game and a cursed pair of 3-D glasses.But along with its unpretentious nature comes a willingness to be self-referential and provide fan service, and some of its most entertaining segments are unabashed in-jokes. The Season 4 opener, “The Hat,” suggests that the novels of a writer strongly resembling Stephen King were actually composed by a snappy homburg that refuses to stop writing. In “George Romero in 3-D,” Romero comes back to life in animated form to battle ghouls of his own creation. King and Romero were, of course, the writer and director of the 1982 film “Creepshow” from which the series was spun off.‘The Fall of the House of Usher’Mike Flanagan’s fifth horror mini-series for Netflix (a collection that began with “The Haunting of Hill House”) is, if you care about consistency with the source, a serious mismatch. The genuinely morbid intensity of Edgar Allan Poe’s writing, on prominent display in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” is out of tune with Flanagan’s well-upholstered, tongue-in-cheek, slightly synthetic approach to horror, where everything is right there on the surface.But that surface is often diverting, if not particularly frightening or memorable, and Flanagan can be counted on for large, capable casts. The eight-episode “Usher” offers Bruce Greenwood and Zach Gilford as current and past versions of Roderick Usher, reimagined as a Sackler-like big-pharma executive; Carl Lumbly as a prosecutor named Auguste Dupin; a raspy Mark Hamill as a corporate fixer named Arthur Gordon Pym; and T’Nia Miller as an Usher offspring named Victorine Lafourcade. The Flanagan regular Carla Gugino cycles through costumes and makeup, “Kind Hearts and Coronets”-style, as a seductive angel of death.Dupin, Pym, Lafourcade and many others are named after Poe characters who had nothing to do with “Usher,” an indication of how Flanagan’s series is less an adaptation of the original — it isn’t really that at all — than a Frankenstein’s-monster collage of references to numerous Poe stories and poems. Episode titles — “Murder in the Rue Morgue,” “The Pit and the Pendulum” — clue you in to the style of gruesome death that’s about to take place. Passages of Poe’s prose and poetry are frequently incorporated into the dialogue, making for very flowery conversations. Gugino’s character is named Verna, an anagrammatic nod to Poe’s favorite bird.Flanagan’s biggest change is to expand and update the story into a carnivalesque critique of capitalist greed and inhumanity. Roderick Usher, childless in the original story, now has six heirs whose lives are a catalog of wealth-and-entitlement motifs: nightclub bacchanals, sex with subordinates, wellness profiteering, antiquities looting, crisis management, A.I. infatuation, baking silly trompe l’oeil cakes. Poe’s Ushers were doomed by malaise and sheer malevolent ambience; Flanagan’s have to die because they’re a virus on the earth. As apocalyptic metaphors go, his “Usher” is reasonably entertaining.‘Shining Vale’Jeff Astrof and Sharon Horgan’s series cunningly blends horror, satire and situation comedy in its picture of a modern American woman’s dilemma: Has Pat Phelps, the struggling writer played by Courteney Cox, been driven crazy by the stresses of marriage, motherhood and career? Or does she act like a crazy person because her house is haunted and she’s fighting off demonic possession?Courteney Cox, left, and Mira Sorvino, in the new season of “Shining Vale.”StarzThe first season of “Shining Vale” on Starz was a riff on “The Shining,” with Pat eventually taking an ax to her suburban Connecticut manse and to her feckless husband, played with simpering perfection by Greg Kinnear. Season 2, whose third episode premieres Friday, tackles another celebrated film, “Rosemary’s Baby”; the herbal tea a neighbor provides to calm Pat’s nerves after her release from a psychiatric ward has the unexpected side effect of reversing her menopause.The avenging (but often friendly) spirit played by Mira Sorvino in Season 1 has supposedly been electro-convulsed out of Pat’s head, but luckily Sorvino returns, now playing the concerned neighbor. She and Kinnear, along with a stellar supporting cast that includes Judith Light, Merrin Dungey, Parvesh Cheena, Allison Tolman and the great Harriet Sansom Harris (Bebe in the original “Frasier”), bring a comic harmony to the show’s indelicate balance of tones.‘Wolf Like Me’A melancholy Australian romantic dramedy with werewolves, Peacock’s “Wolf Like Me” mixes tones and tropes in the manner of “Shining Vale” but with a quieter, less satirical effect. When “Shining Vale” sags, it goes flatly jokey; when “Wolf Like Me” runs out of energy, it gets blandly sentimental.But when the creator, writer and director of “Wolf Like Me,” Abe Forsythe, is on his game, it’s a funny, lovely and moving show that can tap straight into your emotions. Also crucial are the performances of Isla Fisher as Mary, an American werewolf hiding from the world in Adelaide, Australia, and the young actress Ariel Donoghue as Emma, a girl devastated by the loss of her mother who becomes Mary’s de facto stepdaughter and develops a fierce loyalty to her. Josh Gad plays Gary, Emma’s father and Mary’s unlikely new boyfriend, and does a nice job of staying out of Fisher and Donoghue’s way.Season 1 brought this accidental trio together, introduced a teasing note of magical realism (along with the outright full-moon supernaturalism) and established the theme of love’s triumph over grief and alienation. In Season 2, the focus shifts to Mary’s pregnancy, which is both a blessed event and a five-alarm crisis. Forsythe’s inventiveness occasionally runs low, and the characters can get strident and unengaging, but he builds to an exciting and wrenching finale that’s also a dire cliffhanger. More

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      Richard Roundtree, Star of ‘Shaft,’ Dies at 81

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      Richard Roundtree, the actor who redefined African American masculinity in the movies when he played the title role in “Shaft,” one of the first Black action heroes, died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 81.His manager, Patrick McMinn, said the cause was pancreatic cancer, which had been diagnosed two months ago.“Shaft,” which was released in 1971, was among the first of the so-called blaxploitation movies, and it made Mr. Roundtree a movie star at 29.The character John Shaft is his own man, a private detective who jaywalks confidently through moving Times Square traffic in a handsome brown leather coat with the collar turned up; sports a robust, dark mustache somewhere between walrus-style and a downturned handlebar; and keeps a pearl-handled revolver in the fridge in his Greenwich Village duplex apartment. As Mr. Roundtree observed in a 1972 article in The New York Times, he is “a Black man who is for once a winner.”In addition to catapulting Mr. Roundtree to fame, the movie drew attention to its theme song, written and performed by Isaac Hayes, which won the 1972 Academy Award for best original song. It described Shaft as “a sex machine to all the chicks,” “a bad mother” and “the cat who won’t cop out when there’s danger all about.” Can you dig it? The director Gordon Parks’s gritty urban cinematography served as punctuation.A fictional product of his unenlightened pre-feminist era, Shaft was living the Playboy magazine reader’s dream, with beautiful women available to him as willing, downright grateful, sex partners. And he did not always treat them with respect. Some called him, for better or worse, the Black James Bond.He played the role again in “Shaft’s Big Score!” (1972), which bumped up the chase scenes to include speedboats and helicopters and the sexy women to include exotic dancers and other men’s mistresses. In that movie, Shaft investigated the murder of a numbers runner, using bigger guns and ignoring one crook’s friendly advice to “keep the hell out of Queens.”In “Shaft in Africa” (1973), filmed largely in Ethiopia, the character posed as an Indigenous man to expose a crime ring that exploited immigrants being smuggled into Europe. The second sequel lost money and led to a CBS series that lasted only seven weeks.But the films had made their impact. As the film critic Maurice Peterson observed in Essence magazine, “Shaft” was “the first picture to show a Black man who leads a life free from racial torment.”Mr. Roundtree in a scene from the 1972 movie “Shaft’s Big Score,” the first of two sequels.Stanley Bielecki Movie Collection/Getty ImageRichard Arnold Roundtree was born on July 9, 1942 (some sources say 1937), in New Rochelle, N.Y., the son of John and Kathryn (Watkins) Roundtree, who were identified in the 1940 census as a butler and a cook in the same household.Richard played on New Rochelle High School’s undefeated football team and, after graduating in 1961, attended Southern Illinois University on a football scholarship. But he dropped out of college in 1963 after he spent a summer as a model with the Ebony Fashion Fair, a traveling presentation sponsored by a leading news and culture magazine for Black readers.He moved back to New York, worked a number of jobs and soon began his theater career, joining the Negro Ensemble Company. His first role was in a 1967 production of “The Great White Hope,” starring as a fictionalized version of Jack Johnson, the early 20th century’s first Black heavyweight boxing champion. A Broadway production starring James Earl Jones opened the next year and won three major Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for drama.After “Shaft,” Mr. Roundtree made varied choices in movie roles. He was in the all-star ensemble cast, which also included Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner, of the 1974 disaster movie “Earthquake.” He played the title role in “Man Friday” (1975), a vibrant, generous, ultimately more civilized partner to Peter O’Toole’s 17th-century explorer Robinson Crusoe.In “Inchon” (1981), which Vincent Canby of The Times described as looking like “the most expensive B movie ever made,” he was an Army officer on the staff of Gen. Douglas MacArthur (Laurence Olivier) in Korea. He starred with Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds in “City Heat” (1984) and with a giant flying lizard in “Q” (1982).On the small screen he played Sam Bennett, the raffish carriage driver who courted Kizzie (Leslie Uggams), in the acclaimed mini-series “Roots” (1977). That show was transformational, Mr. Roundtree said in an ABC special celebrating its 25th anniversary: “You got a sense of white Americans saying, ‘Damn, that really happened.’”Richard Roundtree in 2019. He remained busy as an actor for more than four decades after his first big role.Celeste Sloman for The New York TimesMr. Roundtree’s name remained associated with the 1970s, but he was just as busy during the next four decades.He was an amoral private detective in a five-episode story arc of “Desperate Housewives” (2004); appeared in 60 episodes of the soap opera “Generations” (1990); and played Booker T. Washington in the 1999 television movie “Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years.” He was a big-city district attorney in the film “Seven” (1995) and a strong-willed Mississippi iceman in “Once Upon a Time … When We Were Colored” (1996).After the year 2000, when he was pushing 60, he made appearances in more than 25 small-screen series (he was a cast member of or had recurring roles in nine of them — including “Heroes,” “Being Mary Jane” and “Family Reunion”) and was seen in half a dozen television movies and more than 20 feature films.In 2020, he starred as a fishing boat’s gray-bearded captain in “Haunting of the Mary Celeste,” a supernatural maritime movie mystery. In 2022, he acted in an episode of “Cherish the Day,” Ava DuVernay’s romantic drama series.Mr. Roundtree married Mary Jane Grant in 1963. They had two children before divorcing in 1973. In 1980, he married Karen M. Cierna. They had three children and divorced in 1998.Mr. Roundtree is survived by four daughters, Kelli, Nicole, Taylor and Morgan; a son, John; and at least one grandchild.The Shaft character, created by Ernest Tidyman in a series of 1970s novels, endured — with Hollywood alterations. Samuel L. Jackson starred as a character with the same name, supposedly the first John Shaft’s nephew, in a 2000 sequel titled “Shaft.”In 2019, another “Shaft” was released, also starring Mr. Jackson (now said to be the original character’s son) and Jessie T. Usher as his son, J.J. Shaft, an M.I.T.-educated cybersecurity expert. The film felt something like a buddy-cops comedy, but the smartest thing it did, Owen Gleiberman of Variety noted in a review, was to take Mr. Roundtree, “bald, with a snowy-white beard,” and “turn him into a character who’s hotter, and cooler, than anyone around him” and whose “spirit is spry, and tougher than leather.”Orlando Mayorquin More

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      Why ‘The Golden Bachelor’ Terrifies Me

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      Television celebrates older people — but only for seeming like sexy young ones.In the first episode of ABC’s “The Golden Bachelor” — the new 60-plus addition to the decades-old “Bachelor” franchise — Gerry Turner, 72, puts in his hearing aids, dons a tuxedo and cries within the first three minutes of airtime. Gerry, our Golden Bachelor, has been widowed for six years. His wife, Toni, died suddenly, of an infection, and in describing her passing he cannot contain his grief. We see photos of their lives together, from young marrieds to parents, from middle-aged partners to retirees enjoying themselves on a boat. Gerry is uncommonly slim and good-looking and seems to have been so throughout these various life stages. Toni, whose age is not specified, ages less magically. Her waist and eyeglasses thicken, as these things tend to. Clearly these changes did not dampen Gerry’s adoration. The type of tears he sheds on camera over her passing reveal what looks like a deep and enduring love — the thing every contestant on the set of “The Golden Bachelor” is now competing to find with him.Like the original, “The Golden Bachelor” presents around two dozen women, all vying for lasting happiness through marriage to a single, eligible catch. Other than the fact that contestants range in age from 60 to 75, the formula is familiar. Like “The Bachelor,” the season aims to end with a proposal. Like “The Bachelor,” most action takes place in a mansion full of bunk beds. Like “The Bachelor,” the contestants are typically lithe, sexy and hyperactive; some wear stilettos to breakfast, along with tube tops and hot pants and all manner of plunging décolletage; there are boobs everywhere, often huge ones. As the contestants emerge from their limousines, one by one, near the start of the first episode, making grand entrances with their mermaid hair and Pilates abs and buns of steel and snatched cheekbones and pneumatic-looking lips, often all over Gerry within minutes, a truth seems to dawn on the septuagenarian widower: Older women are not what they used to be. They are nothing at all like what they used to be. As if to underline this point, one of the contestants emerges from her limo with curler-set gray hair, baggy dress and walker — only to rip the whole kit off, fling the walker onto the paving stones and reveal her true self. This is Leslie, a 64-year-old dancer and former aerobics champion in a tiny lace corseted minidress. Leslie looks about 40 and acts even younger. The show, of course, is fun to watch. Many of the women are beautiful and spirited and accomplished. Gerry seems like a lovely man. Still, there is something here that sends a chill down my spine. The show has received glowing coverage from predictable corners (USA Today) and scored huge ratings for ABC. But is any of this actually good? For older people? Or even for younger people? I mean, this is “The Bachelor,” a mainstay of reality TV — a certain amount of desperation and superficiality is built into the DNA of the genre. But plunging older people into this context and then valorizing them because, perhaps with some nipping and tucking, they can just about fit? This feels more like a denigration of aging. Some of these people have been on Earth for 75 years. Here is an opportunity for them to demonstrate that life, comfortingly, has many chapters — that there is always change and that this change is not only natural, but good. Instead, we get a tight-and-toned show in which success involves being able to repeat Chapter 3 for as long as possible. This version of freedom has nothing to do with wisdom or respite, with taking stock or giving back or the hard-won succor of age. It is about working extremely hard to remain the same as you were when you were younger (or maybe even more fabulously youthy), especially if that youthful you was wont to grind barelegged to “Don’t Stop Believin’” in a tinsel handkerchief dress.A state of nubile teenagehood already coats the age spectrum, from 8-year-olds with gel nails on Snapchat to middle-aged dads in hoodies on longboards. Now it is creeping ever further up the life span. Martha Stewart expanded from her cardigans and sheet-pan suppers to moue on TikTok and chitchat on talk shows about how she should date Pete Davidson. Madonna accuses critics of ageism as she rids her face and body of signs of time, to the point of looking like a different person. The idea of not aging is not only normalized but treated as an accomplishment. No surprise, then, that one “Golden Bachelor” contestant shows up on a motorcycle or that another, age 70, flashes Gerry her “birthday suit” upon meeting him or that everyone stays up all night dancing in skyscraper heels, apparently bunion- and sciatica-free. Other than the odd passing remark about “ear candy” (code for hearing aids) or taking the bed nearest to the bathroom, this show — sold as a showcase for how fabulous and free growing old can be, and how “it’s never too late” to find love — actually negates aging, erases lateness. More than 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 in America every day; by 2034, there will be more Americans over age 65 than children. What we are being told is that they will be vital and relevant mostly insofar as they have maintained arms like Jessica Biel and off-the-chart libidos.A couple of weeks ago, I watched a few episodes of the 1980s sitcom “The Golden Girls” with my daughters. Like any other woman of 50 who knows how old those mostly gray-haired characters were supposed to be — at the start of the series, Blanche, Dorothy and Rose were in their early 50s — I experienced some cognitive dissonance. “Do they seem like they are the same age as me?” I asked my 11-year-old. No, she said. They seemed “more comfortable, like grandmothers used to.”Odd, but true: The kind of aging depicted on “The Golden Bachelor” is itchy and awkward. We hear a contestant say it’s nice to see older women enjoy how they feel in their skin; we hear contestants say they are breaking stereotypes of what it means to be old. But what good is that when those stereotypes are instantly replaced with “Girls Gone Wild” stereotypes about what it means to still be young? In Episode 1, after most of the contestants have sashayed into the mansion, another woman emerges. She is 84. She is wearing a nice blouse and forgiving trousers and flat shoes, like a normal person in her 80s. She says she is Jimmy Kimmel’s aunt — Aunt Chippy, as featured on his show — and she just wanted to meet Gerry, as she was sure he was lying about his age. The gag is that she is not really in the game, because she is old. Sitting with the other women in the mansion, she says: “I don’t belong here. Those ladies are really something. Look at this one. I’m in the wrong place.” She is later caught napping; at least one person here is comfortable with where she finds herself.But of course, Chippy leaves the set. I imagine her going home, making coffee, putting her feet up and calling a grandkid or an old friend to talk about the truly weird day she had, and how — thank God — she doesn’t need to be like that anymore, with the hair and the boobs and the sex. Because she was already young once, and even then it was exhausting, and now? She can’t even imagine.Source photographs for illustration above: Brian Bowen Smith/ABC; Ricky Middlesworth/ABC; Rosemary Calvert/Getty Images; Jonathan Knowles/Getty Images. More

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      The Best True Crime to Stream: Stories That Are Very Scary, and Real

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      Four terrifying, unnerving picks across television, film and podcast.It’s the time of year when I tend to push the boundaries of how many scary stories I can stomach. That includes horror movies, but also, true crime offerings that I may have skipped. Of course, with true crime, that self-soothing mantra of “at least it’s not real” doesn’t apply, which makes it all the more haunting. Here are four picks that shook me to my core.Documentary“Beware the Slenderman”On May 31, 2014, in Waukesha, Wis., Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser, then 12 years old, lured their friend and classmate Payton Leutner into a forest and stabbed her 19 times. Weier and Geyser were trying to appease the fictional character Slender Man, a tall, lanky, faceless ghoul and modern-day boogeyman whose image had been disseminated on the Creepypasta Wiki, a horror-centric online forum. The girls believed that if they killed their friend, they would save their families from Slender Man’s wrath and get to live forever in what they called Slender Mansion.This 2016 documentary, directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky, uses chilling footage of the girls recounting the precipitating events to police officers hours after the stabbing. And Brodsky spent 18 months with the parents of Weier and Geyser ahead of their trial on charges of attempted first-degree murder.Particularly hard to shake is how Slender Man captivated young people. The character originated from a Photoshop challenge to create convincing paranormal images, then spread to platforms across the web and became the basis of popular online games. In the documentary, mental health experts talk about the role of internet as companion; the abundance of grotesque imagery online; and what I found most disturbing: the concept that a meme with great spreadability is in fact a virus of the mind.Docuseries“John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise”The term “killer clown” would normally send me running for the hills. But I was curious about this 2021 six-episode Peacock docuseries, which is a comprehensive exploration of the crimes committed by the serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who preyed on boys and men and was sentenced on 33 counts of homicide in 1980. Gacy, who had been a respected and well-connected figure in his Chicago community and who performed for children as Pogo the Clown, was executed at an Illinois prison in 1994.Along with interviews of investigators, a sister of Gacy’s and family members of victims — as well as film of the excavation of his home, under which dozens of bodies were buried — the series includes a great deal of previously unseen footage of a 1992 interview with Gacy by the F.B.I. profiler Robert Ressler, who is credited with creating the term “serial killer.” (For “Mindhunter” fans, Ressler inspired the character of Special Agent Bill Tench.) Most indelible to me is how utterly ordinary and unremarkable Gacy seemed.While serial killers like him have often been too heavily glorified, there is value in not forgetting the systemic failures that allowed such horrors to continue unchecked. Much as they did with the crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer, the police ignored warnings and pushed aside clues, including pleas from a victim who’d survived, because of entrenched homophobia.Podcast“Dr. Death”: Season 1I decided to binge this 10-episode series on a 12-hour road trip with my dogs. Not even one episode in, I had to pull over and get out of my car for some air. But I persevered, so don’t let that dissuade you.Season 1 of this Wondery podcast, reported and hosted by the science journalist Laura Beil, tells the story of Christopher Duntsch, a young neurosurgeon who arrived in Dallas in 2010 and charmed his patients with confidence and charisma. He claimed that he could cure back pain when nothing else worked. Under his care, which amounted to butchery, over 30 patients were severely injured; two died.As stomach-turning as these accounts are, revelations about how he slipped through the medical system are worse.“In the Dark”: Season 1In 1989, 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped on a dead-end country road in his small Minnesota town, a kidnapping that would fuel an already fast-growing national paranoia: that pedophiles were snatching up America’s children. The search that followed was one of the largest manhunts in U.S. history. Though the investigation was terribly mishandled — as the host Madeleine Baran, an investigative journalist, and a team of reporters make clear over nine episodes and two bonus episodes of this American Public Media podcast (it found a new home at The New Yorker earlier this year).For 27 years, there were no answers, but a couple of weeks before Season 1 was set to debut, in 2016, Wetterling’s remains were discovered, changing everything and taking a story from decades ago and placing it breathlessly in the present. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel: ‘Altoids Last Longer Than These Republican Nominees’

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      “This morning, I didn’t even know who Tom Emmer was,” Kimmel said about a short-lived candidate for House speaker. “Now, I still don’t. I have no idea.”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.‘You Will Be Googled’Representative Tom Emmer, Republican of Minnesota, was nominated for speaker of the House on Tuesday before withdrawing because of a lack of support from the right.Jimmy Kimmel joked that it was just the latest history-making delay of the House “ungaveling before our eyes.”“In the history of our country, there has never been a situation like this. And there’s nothing in the Constitution that covers it, because the founding fathers, as forward-thinking as they were, never imagined such a large group of elected officials being so unbelievably dumb.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This morning, I didn’t even know who Tom Emmer was. Now, I still don’t. I have no idea.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“According to people I pay to care about it, Emmer is the House majority whip. He sits on the Financial Services Committee, and, perhaps most notably, he got two D.U.I.s, then sponsored legislation to lower the legal penalties that face accused drunk drivers. OK, so a little self-serving? He also introduced H.R. 2435: That Mailbox Was Already Knocked Down.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Altoids last longer than these Republican nominees.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Martin Scorsese’s out here making movies that last longer than speaker candidates.” — DESUS NICE, guest host of “The Daily Show”“Farewell, Tom Emmer. You will be Googled.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“At this point, I’d call the G.O.P. a clown car, but clowns go to college.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Who Flips Next? Edition)“Trump 2020 campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty today to a criminal charge in the Georgia election interference case, making her former President Trump’s fourth co-defendant of the trial to plead guilty. So I guess, in the end, he did teach them all ‘The Art of the Deal.’” — SETH MEYERS“That’s three Trump lawyers in one week! Which leads us to America’s favorite new game show: ‘Who … Flips … Next?’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Right now, half of Trump’s lawyers are trying to keep him out of prison; the other half are trying to keep themselves out of prison.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingMick Jagger joined Jimmy Fallon to divulge some “Freezer Secrets” on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe Canadian stand-up comedian, actor and writer Mae Martin will appear on Wednesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutThe Birmingham Royal Ballet performing “Black Sabbath: The Ballet,” which has had sold-out runs in England in Birmingham, Plymouth and London.Ellie Smith for The New York TimesHeavy metal meets classical dance in the Birmingham Royal Ballet’s smash hit, “Black Sabbath: The Ballet.” More

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      Book Review: ‘If You Would Have Told Me’ by John Stamos and ‘Being Henry’ by Henry Winkler

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      Candid memoirs by Henry Winkler and John Stamos reveal how lucky breaks — and Yale training, and a curling iron — made them into household names.IF YOU WOULD HAVE TOLD ME: A Memoir, by John Stamos with Daphne YoungBEING HENRY: The Fonz … and Beyond, by Henry Winkler with James KaplanWhen I worked for a casting director in the 1980s, the most fun part of the job was looking at the marked-up appointment sheet at the end of each day. Because film and TV auditions are intimate, often conducted over a desk, my boss had devised a code by which to secretly rate the sensitive actors sitting just inches away from her: CBNC (close but no cigar), LLIT (a little long in the tooth), and so on.Listen to This ArticleOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.So you can imagine my surprise when, after a very chatty young actor known for playing snotty know-it-alls had auditioned one day, my boss abandoned her usual hieroglyphics and simply scrawled next to the actor’s name on the appointment sheet, in all caps, the seven-letter epithet that starts with “A” and ends with “E” and is synonymous with “backside.” Cowabunga!Neither of the smart and entertaining new memoirs by Henry Winkler and John Stamos inspires such odium — even if both TV stars have written books that traffic heavily in their authors’ lesser angels. These foibles elicited differing reactions from me — I wanted to give the adorably needy Winkler the kind of slow-burn hug that would both congratulate and pacify him; I wanted to abandon the businesslike and unidealistic Stamos in a black box theater with Stella Adler until he starts babbling about “making choices” and his “instrument.”Winkler’s essential m.o. in life, we learn, is to try to make everyone love him because his Holocaust survivor parents didn’t. After graduating from Yale Drama School, he got his breakout role as the too-cool-for-school Fonzie on “Happy Days” just six weeks after moving to Los Angeles.Playing the Fonz has been a meal ticket that has yielded Winkler interesting reactions from unlikely sources. “You do not have to tell me who you are,” Marcello Mastroianni made clear. “Finally, we meet,” Orson Welles uttered.On the flip side, Winkler has spent much of his post-Fonzie career trying not to be typecast — an obstacle not made easier by the fact that he didn’t learn he was severely dyslexic until he was 34. Winkler has made up for lost time by branching out into other pursuits — directing, producing, writing children’s books .But Winkler’s bigger obstacle, it seems, has been emotional immaturity: Until he started therapy seven years ago, he had intimacy problems, including not being able to tell his partner, Stacey, that he loved her. (Wonderfully, Stacey, now his wife, writes responses throughout the book, such as “There were times when I thought … ‘Now I have another child?’”)Winkler’s affective shortcomings throw his social anxiety and bouts of verbal diarrhea into high relief. After meeting Paul McCartney, Winkler, hoping to hang out with the former Beatle, called him 10 times without getting an answer; after chattering incessantly at Neil Simon’s house over dinner one night, he spent months summoning the courage to ask Simon over, only to be told twice that the playwright was “busy.” It’s this kind of candor — coming from someone who once duct-taped deli turkey to his shoes so his dog would play with him — that makes Winkler so lovable on the page. Under the juddering neediness lies a mensch: After Winkler had shot his role in “Scream,” he was told his name couldn’t be on the movie poster because the Fonzie connection would create the wrong expectations for a horror film. But, Hollywood being Hollywood, when the film came out Winkler was asked to do press. Which he agreed to. Winkler’s story is also aided by the fact that his deepest work as an actor — on the terrific recent HBO series “Barry” — came directly after the therapy sessions that helped Winkler with his intimacy issues. As my former boss might have written, VTEBNLPBI (very tidy ending, but no less powerful because of it).John Stamos, he of “Full House” and “E.R.” and Broadway, takes longer to warm to on the page. Stamos is blessed with some of Winkler’s candor — he admits to having had two nose jobs and having gone to Alcoholics Anonymous. However, it’s hard to rouse a head of steam for a thespian whose raison d’être is to “get famous” and who cops to “trying to achieve sex symbol status.” WIJJ (where is the joy, John)?Such dampening pragmatism seems to spill over even to Stamos’s love life. After saying of one actress more famous than he was that “it wouldn’t hurt to get to know her,” he dated her for almost a year. Later in the book, Stamos confesses that he used to want to partner up with “someone who has a bigger, more exciting life than mine to elevate me” so they’d be “a power couple always in the press,” but, once he started seeing his now-wife, Caitlyn, he realized that what he’d always needed was someone who’s cozy-making — someone who would tell him when he has “too much product in my hair.” Some Stamos fans may enjoy this kind of Malibu verismo, but I found myself repeatedly looking floorward in search of a dog to pet. That said, a few things save Stamos from hanging himself. For one, he’s great with period detail. When Stamos auditioned in the early ’80s to play the thief and urchin Blackie Parrish on “General Hospital,” he had his mother feather his hair with a curling iron — hair that was already streaked with Sun In. He rejected his father’s Members Only jacket in favor of his mother’s long leather jacket, and tied a yellow bandanna around his leg in homage to Chachi on “Happy Days.” Then he drove to the audition in an El Camino he calls “the El Co.” You can almost smell the Travolta.Second, we can chalk some of Stamos’s apparent lack of passion about acting up to the fact that music — specifically, drumming — seems to be his true love. After befriending at Disneyland a Beach Boys cover band called Papa Doo Run Run early in his career, Stamos proceeded to charm his way into the inner circle of the actual Beach Boys and then to play drums hundreds of times with the legacy pop group during the 1980s and ’90s. These sections of the book are some of its most exciting.Lastly, Stamos is a highly social creature. I enjoyed reading about his mentors, Garry Marshall and Jack Klugman; the charity work he has done with abused and neglected kids; and the strings-pulling that he did on behalf of both his first wife, the actress Rebecca Romijn, and his pal Don Rickles. Similarly, the chapter about his friend and “Full House” colleague Bob Saget, who died last year, is lovely.Speaking of tidy endings: Winkler, it turns out, was an early influence for Stamos. After meeting the affable fellow actor, Stamos decided, “I’m going to treat people the way he treats me.”ALAFWARHC: At last, a friend for Winkler who’ll always return his calls.Audio produced by More