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      Emily Is Still in Paris. Why Are We Still Watching?

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      The Netflix hit has been widely mocked from the beginning. But despite its flaws — or perhaps because of them — it’s a pop-culture phenomenon.Here is one inviolable rule that I have learned governs American screens: If ever I see a young woman standing before a mirror holding a pair of scissors, it is almost always a harbinger of some unspeakable doom. Whether in comedy or in horror, this image is cinematic shorthand for when the writers want us to know that whatever this woman’s inner torment may have been in that moment, it won, obliterating her sanity and driving her to this act of assured self-destruction.That is how we find the titular heroine of “Emily in Paris,” in the third season’s premiere: still in Paris, standing before a mirror in the middle of the night, muttering to herself before snipping off a jagged, uneven chunk of hair across her forehead. She has been jolted awake from a nightmare in which she saw herself forced to confront her deepest fear: having to make a decision on her own.This is an existential crisis for Emily Cooper, who, before her French sojourn, was happily shilling tag lines for I.B.S. drugs in Chicago. As laid out in the series’s first season, by way of a mystifying fluke, Emily finds herself at a luxury marketing firm in Paris, going in place of her pregnant boss. (In this universe, we are to assume that this enormous company has only two employees and that corporations simply love to give unasked-for promotions to junior underlings.) She is there in Paris to provide an “American point of view,” despite not possessing much of one, beyond lovingly declaring that “the entire city looks like ‘Ratatouille.’” By the end of the first two seasons, she has conducted sanitized love affairs with a rotating cast of forgettable men and embodied a portrait of American middle-managerial insufferability specifically calculated to drive her Parisian co-workers and watchers of the show equally apoplectic.The show’s second season ends on a low-stakes cliffhanger that kept unwilling “Emily in Paris” hostages like me (I cannot in all honesty call us “fans”) on begrudging tenterhooks for a year: Will Emily choose the safety of a big corporation and stick with Madeline, her mentor from Chicago, an ur-girlboss of corporate marketing who is obnoxiously secure in her American basicness and a cartoonish portrait of who Emily might become two decades from now? Or will she defect and join the marketing coup being staged by Sylvie, the abrasive yet terrifyingly magnetic Frenchwoman whose approval Emily has spent the past two seasons trying to win with an almost-feral desperation?Beneath the Bambi-like visage and the sweet ebullience lies a stark void of nothingness.For the pugnaciously good-humored Emily, whose sole defining characteristic so far has been her geniality (even being called an “illiterate sociopath” by her former friend barely made a dent in her sunniness), this outer turbulence has forced her to exhibit signs of an inner life for the first time in the show’s run. For once, Emily is visibly shaken. And in the time-honored tradition of one-dimensional screen heroines who came before her, Emily has commenced yet another season-long course of causing unintentional catastrophes with the only act of intention seen from her so far: the guillotining of her own bangs.When the first season of “Emily in Paris” debuted on Netflix in October 2020, it was widely mocked and near-universally reviled in both nations for an abundance of reasons. There was the literalism of its construct. (There is truly nothing more to it than here is Emily, who is in Paris.) There was the egregiously loud costuming. (What sort of corporate culture in France allows for bucket hats to be worn at an office, and why is Emily in possession of so many of them?) Then there were the characters, a buffoonish assemblage of dated stereotypes that managed to offend both the Americans and the French.But despite its utter frictionlessness or perhaps because of it, the compulsively hate-​watchable show became a phenomenon.I began watching this show out of the crudest form of identitarian loyalty, because I harbor an unshakable sympathy for any youngish woman (even fictional; even if she wears bucket hats) whose profession (like mine) requires using the word “social” as a noun with a straight face. Far be it from me to demand interiority from rom-com ingénues experiencing character development for the first time, but watching Emily utter marketing argot like “corporate commandments” and breezily brush off every cruel joke about her dimwittedness left me wondering: Does this show want me to laugh at Emily for the particular brand of sincere, millennial smarm she represents? Or am I meant to cheer at her (very American) refusal to change, no matter what her travails in Paris put her through?To say Emily is chasing anything would be ascribing too much agency, with which even her creators have not dignified her.In both literature and cinema, Paris has long been the milieu in which to place a certain class of mordantly restless, cosmopolitan and upwardly mobile white American woman, who finds herself in the city (often fruitlessly) chasing things her homeland has denied her: a renewed sense of self after heartbreak; liberation (both sexual and intellectual); sometimes adventure; occasionally adultery. Paris harbored Edith Wharton’s Countess Olenska when the insipid society gentleman she fell in love with hadn’t the spine or the stomach to claim their life together. In her memoir, “My Life in France,” Julia Child recalls arriving in Paris still a “rather loud and unserious Californian,” and how it was the city, along with her beloved husband, Paul, that molded her into the woman the world got to know. Paris was where Carrie Bradshaw, perpetually in love with the idea of love, finally realized that maybe all it did was make her more miserable. Emily Cooper, however, is not one of these women. To say she is chasing anything (except perhaps a steady stream of head pats of approval from her bosses) would be ascribing too much agency, with which even her creators have not dignified her.In 1919, when Wharton, herself an expatriate in Paris, wrote that “compared with the women of France, the average American woman is still in the kindergarten,” she might as well have been talking about Emily, whose stock-in-trade is a unique brand of empty infantilism. Nowhere is this more evident than in the way the millennial Emily Cooper seems engineered from a boomer’s nightmare of what young people today are like: indolent, addicted to their phones and obsessed with being rewarded for doing the bare minimum. The show’s architects have endowed her with what has come to be known as her generation’s worst trait: a compulsive devotion to online oversharing and the cult of manufactured relatability. But what sets Emily apart is that beneath the Bambi-like visage and the sweet ebullience lies a stark void of nothingness.The Chekhov’s Bangs incident turns out to have only the most minor payoff later on, when for once, Emily makes a life-altering choice that of course fosters zero introspection. For a show that managed to make even the complexity and angst of infidelity as saccharine as the pain au chocolat that Emily posts on Instagram with the caption “butter+chocolate = 💓,” watching her give herself what her friend calls “trauma bangs” was about as abrupt an upping of the stakes in the Emilyverse as can be. But for those of us who’ve continued to watch, we do it despite our bewilderment — like Emily butchering her hair — even though we know it’s a mess.Iva Dixit is a staff editor for the magazine. She last wrote a Letter of Recommendation about raw onions.Source photographs: Stéphanie Branchu/Netflix More

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      How Angela Lansbury and Stephen Sondheim Came to Appear in ‘Glass Onion’

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      A fan of musical theater, Rian Johnson had long hoped to land the two stars. But he was already in the editing phase when they agreed to take part.When “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” isn’t setting up its actors to look like the possible perpetrators of a devious crime, the comic caper is reveling in its star-studded ensemble.There are of course the A-listers who populate the principal cast, including Daniel Craig, Janelle Monaé, Edward Norton and others. And there are the fleeting, unheralded appearances from famous faces like Ethan Hawke, Serena Williams and Yo-Yo Ma that function as rapid-fire visual gags.But a couple of these cameos now carry an unexpected poignancy. In the prologue of the film, which was released on Netflix on Friday, the sleuth Benoit Blanc (Craig) is in a melancholic funk, looking for ways to keep his brain engaged at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.We see Blanc relaxing in his bathtub, playing the multiplayer video game Among Us with a squad of online celebrities that includes Natasha Lyonne and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.The other two members of Blanc’s eclectic gaming group are Stephen Sondheim, the renowned composer of musicals like “Company,” “Into the Woods” and “A Little Night Music,” and Angela Lansbury, the decorated stage and screen actor from “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Murder, She Wrote.”Both stars have died since work was completed on “Glass Onion” — Sondheim in November 2021 at age 91 and Lansbury this past October at age 96 — and the film may well be the final screen appearance for each of them.It’s a bittersweet occasion for their fans, a group that includes Rian Johnson, the writer and director of “Glass Onion” and creator of the “Knives Out” series. As Johnson explained in a recent video interview, he wanted the Sondheim and Lansbury cameos to stand as tributes to two of his favorite artists — and to give him an excuse to interact with these cultural greats whose paths he might not otherwise have crossed.Remembering Stephen SondheimThe revered and influential composer-lyricist died Nov. 26, 2021. He was 91.Obituary: A titan of the American musical, Sondheim was the driving force behind some of Broadway’s most beloved shows.Final Interview: Days before he died, he sat down with The Times for his final major interview.His Legacy: As a mentor, a letter writer and an audience regular, Sondheim nurtured generations of theater makers.New Books: The year since Sondheim’s death has seen an array of books offering further glimpses into his life. We look at some of them.Now, Johnson said, his experience in securing the involvement of his personal heroes has taught him never to take such opportunities for granted. “One thing I’ve learned is that every moment you get with somebody that you respect, savor that time,” he said, “and put yourself in that situation as often as possible.”While Johnson’s affection for Sondheim may not be immediately evident from his résumé — the filmmaker’s credits include “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and the time-travel thriller “Looper” — Johnson grew up a fan of musical theater, and included a shout-out to Sondheim in the original “Knives Out”: a scene of Craig lost in thought as he sings along with “Losing My Mind,” from the Sondheim musical “Follies.”Sondheim was also a lover of wordplay, games and crossword puzzles, and he enjoyed orchestrating murder-mystery parties with his friend Anthony Perkins. He and Perkins wrote the screenplay for the 1973 whodunit “The Last of Sheila,” which starred James Coburn, Dyan Cannon, Raquel Welch and Ian McShane, and which Johnson proudly cited as a source of inspiration for his “Knives Out” films.Sondheim’s ties to the mystery genre go deeper still: his only nonmusical Broadway production was the play “Getting Away With Murder,” which he wrote with George Furth and which ran for just over a month in 1996. In an interview with The New York Times that year, he recounted how Laurence Olivier had told him he’d used Sondheim as his model for the game-loving mystery author he played in the 1972 movie “Sleuth.” (In the same interview, Anthony Shaffer, the author of “Sleuth,” denied a longstanding rumor that he had originally titled it “Who’s Afraid of Stephen Sondheim?”)Through his love of Sondheim’s musicals, Johnson was introduced to Angela Lansbury, who played Mrs. Lovett in the original Broadway production of “Sweeney Todd,” as well as a filmed version that played frequently on Johnson’s television. That is, when Johnson wasn’t glued to “Murder, She Wrote,” the cozy CBS series that cast Lansbury as the crime-solving author Jessica Fletcher. For children of the 1980s, that show “was actually pretty pivotal in installing a love of whodunits and murder mysteries into all of our brains,” said Johnson, who also slipped a few seconds of a Spanish-dubbed “Murder, She Wrote” episode into the original “Knives Out.”Ram Bergman, Johnson’s producing partner, said that Sondheim’s and Lansbury’s cameos were recorded during the editing of “Glass Onion,” as he and Johnson tried to reach them, working every connection they had.In Sondheim’s case, Bergman said, “I wasn’t really sure how to get to him. But then I was on a call with Bryan Lourd, our agent, and it somehow came up. I said, we really would love Stephen to do this. And I swear, five minutes later, he emailed me: he’s going to do it.”Bergman added, “Rian was in heaven, and I was in heaven because I knew how much he meant for Rian.”Sondheim performed his contribution on a recorded Zoom call. In that conversation, Johnson said, “I mentioned to him that we were trying to get Angela Lansbury. And he said, ‘Oh, Angie — I’m friends with her. Tell her I’m doing it. She’ll do it.’”Later on, Johnson went to Lansbury’s home in Los Angeles and recorded her portion on his laptop computer.“She couldn’t have been lovelier and more generous,” Johnson said, adding that Lansbury was perfect for the scene in every way except one: “Not a gamer,” he explained. “And so she was very patient in letting me describe the rules of Among Us, up to a point. At which point she just said, ‘You know what? Just tell me what the lines are. I’ll trust you.’”Those were Johnson’s only interactions with Sondheim and Lansbury before they died. In each of his conversations, Johnson said, he wasn’t ashamed of sharing his admiration for them.“I allowed myself to have that little awkward moment of saying to them what I’m sure every person who meets them says,” he said. “But still, it felt really nice to tell them that I wouldn’t be here doing this if it weren’t for them.”Getting to pay this kind of posthumous homage to his idols is a bittersweet distinction, Johnson said: “It’s sad, because as a fan, I wish they were still around and making stuff,” he said. “I hope they would have enjoyed the little scene and gotten a laugh out of it.”Natasha Lyonne did not get to interact directly with Lansbury or Sondheim but is no less proud to be part of it.Asked what it was like to have played even a minor role in their curtain calls, Lyonne replied in the arch spirit of a “Knives Out” movie: “Honey, I know what you’re getting at and it wasn’t me,” she said. “I have alibis for both.”Then, with more sincerity, she continued, “It goes without saying that they were giant losses of two incredible lives well lived. I guess we’ll only know if I make it to 90, if I was actually worthy of being up there with them.” More

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      ‘The Witcher: Blood Origin’ Is TV’s Latest Big Fantasy Prequel

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      The mini-series series takes place 1,200 years before the events of “The Witcher,” which has been one of Netflix’s most-watched shows since its debut in 2019.Producers of hit series have long used spinoffs to keep the stories going (and the ad and subscription dollars flowing). In our I.P.-obsessed era of pop culture universes, the desire to preserve — and ideally expand — popular TV franchises has only intensified. And more often than not these days, going forward means looking backward.This year, the biggest new series have been prequels, with “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” and “House of the Dragon” being set long before the events of “The Lord of the Rings” and “Game of Thrones.” “Andor” is a prequel for a movie, “Rogue One,” that was itself a prequel for other “Star Wars” films. This month “Yellowstone” added “1923,” another prequel to join last year’s “1883.”Now on Sunday comes “The Witcher: Blood Origin,” a Netflix mini-series that takes place 1,200 years before Geralt of Rivia started slaying ill-minded creatures and thoughtfully pushing back his signature white mane in “The Witcher,” which premiered in 2019 and returns next summer for its third season.Based on stories by the Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski, the franchise is named after monster hunters, of which Geralt is the most famous. It is set on a continent (conveniently named the Continent) where witchers rub elbows with elves and dwarves, powerful sorceresses and power-hungry nobility.A spinoff was probably inevitable for a title that has conquered every platform it has encountered: The streaming adaptation of “The Witcher” followed popular game and comic book versions, and it has become one of Netflix’s most-watched shows ever.For the creator and showrunner of “Blood Origin,” Declan de Barra, the initial motivation was the opportunity to expand on clues or allusions in Sapkowski’s books, including by introducing new characters. Foremost was a desire to focus on the Continent when it was dominated by elves.“My favorite part of the books was identifying with the elvish story,” de Barra, 51, said in a video conversation. “You could see that they were a post-colonized sort of species, they could barely reproduce and they’re pre-agrarian, but yet they have this mythology that’s sort of hinted out in the background. What happened before? What was their Rome before the fall?”As a writer and co-executive producer for “The Witcher,” de Barra had begun mapping out what he thought happened before the Conjunction of the Spheres — the cataclysm that allowed both humans and monsters to travel from their own worlds to the Continent. So when the original series’ creator, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, asked him to draw up a spinoff concept, de Barra was ready. For his story engine, he picked one of the oldest and most tested: A group of mismatched individuals must team up to save their world, in this case from rampaging overlords and one demented wizard.“I just imagined a group of people who would hate each other if they turn up at a party, and put them in the crucible together,” he said. “People who are all different and have reason to have beef with each other but have to work together.”Henry Cavill, the monster-slaying star of “The Witcher,” has said he is leaving the show after next season.Jay Maidment/NetflixThis being the “Witcher” franchise, some of them also find reasons to have sex with one another. And yes, there is just as much jarringly modern profanity in “Blood Origin” as in the main show, along with the goofy irreverence that sets the franchise apart. (Last year’s special, “The Witcher: Fireplace,” is an hourlong shot of a crackling fire.)“What’s great about Declan is that he’s very energetic and he has a very raucous, naughty sense of humor — and he brings that to ‘Blood Origin,’” Lenny Henry, who plays the plotting Chief Sage Balor, said in a video chat. “So you get all the heightened Shakespearean arias from some of the characters and then you get that low side.”Balor plays a crucial role in the “Blood Origin” universe, setting in motion a series of events that will ripple through time and space. Among the characters most affected are Éile (Sophia Brown) and Fjall (Laurence O’Fuarain), two warriors from rival clans who end up fighting on the same side as part of the main superteam. (How super? The mighty Michelle Yeoh is a key part of it.)In a way, Éile is “The Witcher” in a nutshell: a fierce fighter who both comments on and drives the action with song — this is, after all, the rare fantasy series that has spawned a cult hit, with “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” from Season 1. This is an essential element for the Ireland-born de Barra, who used to front a hard-rocking band and who is the co-writer of several numbers for both streaming “Witcher” properties.“My favorite songs are ones that end really short,” he said by way of explaining the decision to cut the prequel down from its planned six episodes to four. He also draws connections between epic Celtic ballads and Éile’s tunes, including “The Black Rose” — a direct reference to the 16th-century Irish song“Róisín Dubh.”“I wanted her to be writing rebel songs for the people,” de Barra said. “I knew there would be nods to Irish mythology as well as Eastern European mythology, because Sapkowski does that himself with some of his places and people, like Skellige Islands and stuff like that.“He has a potpourri of all sort of European mythology and he pulls the stories and puts them together and bakes his own cake,” de Barra added. “So I felt very comfortable doing that.”Offscreen, Brown, who is Black, has been at the center of the kinds of caustic discussions, regarding race and how it relates to source material, that have occurred within other fantasy fandoms. (You might recall how the sight of Black elves in “The Rings of Power” threw some viewers into a tizzy.)“If something new is coming into a space, people are always going to think ‘Oh, that’s not right,’” Brown said. “I got some difficulty when the casting came out, but I’m not new to the industry, and I’ve worked very hard to be here, so it didn’t waver my knowing I was meant to be there.”Henry — who is also Black and who played the harfoot Sadoc Burrows in “The Rings of Power” — chose to laugh at it all. “What you have to say to those guys is, ‘You will believe an Upside Down where there’s a big weird creature made out of corned beef threatening children, but you won’t believe a Black elf?’” he said. “It’s all pretend — anybody can be what they want to be.”Angst about Éile’s function in the “Witcher” mythos is also related to what some fans have decried as drastic departures from the books and video games in the original series. These complaints have grown louder online since Henry Cavill, who plays Geralt and who has been an outspoken fan of the Sapkowski stories, announced, with little explanation, that he is leaving the show after the upcoming season.The series follows a makeshift team trying to save the world, including Éile, a warrior elf played by Sophia Brown.Lilja JonsdottirDe Barra said any adapter of the “Witcher” stories is “never going to be able to satisfy everybody,” explaining that dedicated fans of the books and the games will all have their own differing views of what the characters and the world should look like.“No two people are ever going to agree on it,” he said. “The core that was important for me was just telling a story that I believed in and that could work on its own whilst honoring the books.”The TV shows integrate Sapkowski’s vision and broaden it, and this dual approach is particularly apparent in “Blood Origin.” As the title suggests, we meet some familiar characters and there are plot developments that will bear fruit generations later, in the timeline of the main series. But de Barra cautions viewers against drawing too many conclusions.For example, in one scene a seer — who is well known among “Witcher” fans — says one of Éile’s descendants will be very important in the future, but the show doesn’t indicate whom it will be.“We can’t spell it out, not now, but it will be spelled out later,” de Barra said. “Most people are saying. …” He trailed off. “Anyway, I’ll leave it for now.”Such comments will be cryptic for those new to the “Witcher” universe, but they should not worry: While some plot points will be endlessly dissected on “Witcher” subreddits, “Blood Origin” stands on its own. “I hope we can introduce many new fans to the show and then they can pour into the marquee series and fall in love with fantasy,” Brown said.“I’ve watched things when I was younger that made me want to be an actor and made me want to escape and see the world in different ways,” she continued. “So I hope people can see the world differently through seeing our worlds.” More

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      The One About When Groucho Marx and Dick Cavett Became Great Friends

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      The beloved talk-show host, now 86, spoke about a new PBS documentary that tells the story of the friendship that changed his life.On a hot summer day in 1961, a young TV writer and aspiring comedian named Dick Cavett attended the funeral of George S. Kaufman, the renowned wit and man of letters. There he saw one of his heroes, Groucho Marx. Cavett approached Marx, and managed to tell him that he was a big fan.Without missing a beat, Marx responded: “Well, if it gets any hotter, I could use a big fan.”“That was the beginning of our friendship,” Cavett said last month. “I thought, well God, I’ve talked to him for actual minutes now. Nobody’s going to believe this. And suddenly he said: ‘Well, you seem like a nice young man. I’d like you to have lunch with me.’”Now, 61 years later, their relationship is the subject of a new PBS documentary, “Groucho & Cavett,” which premieres on Tuesday as part of the “American Masters” series.In a video interview from his home in Ridgefield, Conn., Cavett, 86, recalled with fondness his old friend, whose affection and mentorship changed the young Cavett’s life. As a writer for “The Tonight Show,” Cavett went on to write for Marx when Marx joined a brief rotation of hosts after Jack Paar left the show, in 1962. Starting in 1968, when Cavett got his own program on ABC, “The Dick Cavett Show,” Marx was a frequent guest.“Groucho & Cavett,” directed by Robert S. Bader, captures the mutual affection between Marx, who was in the later stage of his career, and Cavett, a talk-show host on the rise during a tumultuous time in American history. It also gives occasion to consider Cavett’s role in TV culture as an erudite, risk-taking and durable presence whose guests came on to engage in thoroughgoing, often contentious discussion with a dash of witty repartee.“I don’t remember being nervous,” said Cavett, right, as seen with Marx on “The Dick Cavett Show” in 1969. “But I was just so damn grateful.”Ron Baldwin, via PBS“There was nothing like it on television then, and there’s nothing like it on television now,” Bader said. “It was actually an intelligent conversation with people you care about, where in other settings, you just see them trying to be clever for eight minutes.”Bader’s first passion was Groucho — “I was an adolescent Marx Brothers fanatic,” he said. As a child he would sit by the television and tape Marx’s Cavett appearances with a cassette recorder. In college, Bader got the chance to meet Cavett, and he asked him a barrage of questions about Marx, which Cavett was happy to answer.By then, Bader was also a Cavett fan: “I realized he had got some pretty interesting people on,” he said. “It wasn’t just Groucho.” He went on to become friends with Cavett, producing a series of DVD compilations of the show and eventually making a documentary, “Ali & Cavett: Tale of the Tape,” about Cavett and his frequent guest Muhammad Ali. But the one he really wanted to make was “Groucho & Cavett.”You never knew what you might get when Marx walked onto Cavett’s stage — he was a guest seven times — but then that was true of “The Dick Cavett Show” in general. Across four decades and in various iterations, the show was a future time capsule of the politics, letters, movies, art and music of its day. Indeed, if you were a cultural figure and you didn’t visit Cavett’s show at the height of its influence in the 1960s and ’70s, it was almost as if you didn’t exist.The show’s ascendancy coincided with the popularization of rock ’n’ roll subculture, and Cavett took all comers, making them accessible to a wide viewership, in part, by keeping a foot planted firmly in the intellectual traditions of his mentors. Rock artists were among his most memorable guests, including Janis Joplin (who seemed to have a blast), Jimi Hendrix (exhausted, but engaged) and John Lennon and Yoko Ono (quite serious, as usual).“It’s funny because I never gave a damn about rock ’n’ roll until they started appearing on my show,” said Cavett, who just turned 86. “I think Janis Joplin was partly responsible because she had such a good time and she told everybody about it. And then I began to get them one after the other.”“The Dick Cavett Show” became a popular destination for rock stars like Janis Joplin.ABC Photo Archives, via Getty ImagesMarx remained friends with Cavett throughout the turbulent ’60s and gave him career advice. As explained in the film, Marx saw an appealing contradiction in Cavett, the Yale-educated Nebraskan, the erudite hayseed. Marx encouraged his young friend to pursue this idea through humor, and Cavett obliged.When Cavett got his own show, he was quick to book his hero. Marx would sing songs (“Lydia the Tattooed Lady”), tell stories and engage with the adoring audience. But mostly he would riff with his young protégé, who always seemed as if he couldn’t believe he was sitting there with Groucho Marx.“I think I was in a state of exalting disbelief and joy that I had Groucho sitting there and being Groucho Marx,” Cavett said. “I don’t remember being nervous, but I was just so damn grateful that I finally had him where I wanted him, so to speak. And that it was going well, and that it was wonderful.”Much of the time, Cavett was in stitches — Marx was, in that sense, one of the few guests who could render him speechless. “Virtually everything he says, if he wants it to be and he usually does, can be funny,” Cavett said. He rattled off some of his favorites. Like: “I’m not a vegetarian, but I eat animals who are.” Or: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them … well, I have others.” (This writer’s favorite, from “Animal Crackers”: “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don’t know.”)Cavett wasn’t too shabby himself.“It was like you were listening to someone in the ’60s from the Algonquin Round Table,” said Ron Simon, the head of the curatorial department and senior curator at the Paley Center for Media, who has done several events with Cavett. “He could always come up with the precise word. And certainly there is a little bit of Groucho in Dick Cavett and his humor. So Cavett was talking to one of his idols, and that made it special.”Cavett with his dog, Reilly. He still tears up when he speaks of his friendship with Marx, who died in 1977.Timothy O’Connell for The New York TimesIt’s easy to see what Marx admired in his young friend. Cavett was soft-spoken but razor-sharp and unflappable, even when chaos was breaking out around him. (Listen to his voice barely change when in 1971 he offers a pugnacious Norman Mailer “two more chairs to contain your giant intellect.”) For a time, he grew his sandy hair long. He grew a beard. Richard Nixon wanted to destroy him.But his temperament didn’t change: He was insatiably curious and quick, whether he was talking to Truman Capote, Lillian Gish, Ronald Reagan, Sly Stone or Orson Welles. Today, one can scarcely watch a documentary about a late-60s or ’70s subject without a vintage Cavett clip popping up — Zelig-like, he stamps his mark on the subject at hand.Cavett knows he had the goods back then. “When I see myself on Decades, I’m often surprised at how good I am,” he said, referring to a network that carries reruns of his show. “That’s a terrible thing to say in public, but I’m completely entertained by myself.”Marx was entertained, too. He saw in Cavett a kindred spirit, a fellow wit.“Groucho was young in mind, although old in body at that point,” Bader said. He was still widely beloved, known for the television show “You Bet Your Life,” which he hosted from 1947 to 1961. The counterculture had embraced the anarchic spirit of movies like “The Cocoanuts” (1929), “Duck Soup” (1933) and “A Night at the Opera” (1935). He was a sort of éminence grise in American comedy, still revered by younger comics like Cavett. And Marx in turn never tired of the stage lights.“Dick gave Groucho this wide open forum, which he didn’t necessarily have when he went on other shows,” Bader said. “He would just take over.”Cavett tears up in the film as he recalls Marx’s death in 1977 at age 86. “We had lost Captain Spaulding,” he says in the film, referring to the name of the character Marx played in the 1930 movie “Animal Crackers.” For nine years, their friendship was a joyous on-air affair.But he still has the memories and stories, which he loves to share. Like the time a couple recognized the two men on a New York sidewalk and the man asked Marx to say something insulting about his wife.Marx paused, Cavett told me, then replied: “‘Well, with a wife like that, you should be able to think of your own insults.’“Let’s put it his way,” Cavett added. “I’ve never enjoyed a guest more.” More

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      Sonya Eddy, ‘General Hospital’ Actress, Dies at 55

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      Ms. Eddy played Epiphany Johnson, the head nurse on the long-running ABC daytime series, for 16 years.Sonya Eddy, who played the no-nonsense head nurse Epiphany Johnson in more than 500 episodes of the enduring ABC soap opera “General Hospital,” died on Monday at a hospital in Burbank, Calif. She was 55.The cause was an infection following nonemergency surgery, said Tyler Ford, her producing partner.Ms. Eddy joined the cast of “General Hospital” in 2006 and quickly established herself as a fan favorite as the head nurse of the hospital where much of the show is set. “General Hospital,” a fixture of ABC’s daytime lineup for nearly six decades, follows the adventures of characters who live in the fictional town of Port Charles, N.Y.Ms. Eddy, right, as the head nurse Epiphany Johnson with the actors Jason Thompson and Kimberly McCullough in a scene from “General Hospital.”Ron Tom/ABC, via Associated PressFrank Valentini, the executive producer of “General Hospital,” said in a statement, “The lights in the hub of the nurse’s station will now be a little dimmer, but her spirit and light will live on in both the show and our set.”Ms. Eddy appeared in 543 episodes in 16 years on the show, the most recent of which aired on Oct. 20. She also played Epiphany in 25 episodes in the spinoff “General Hospital: Night Shift” in 2007 and 2008. The character was the mother of Stan Johnson, who was killed in a mob hit.Sonya Eddy was born on June 17, 1967, in Concord, Calif. She was a theater and dance major at the University of California, Davis, where she received her bachelor’s degree in 1992, according to IMDb.com. While she was a student there, she made her acting debut onstage in a production of “Zora Is My Name!”Ms. Eddy recalled the experience in an interview with the website stonecoldandthejackal.com. “I loved the sense of being able to influence the audience, to open a door in their mind that they otherwise may not have opened,” she said.She later performed in stage productions of “Comedy of Errors,” “The Crucible,” “Into the Woods” and “South Pacific.”Ms. Eddy’s is survived by her mother, Robbie Jean Eddy, and a brother, Lee Eddy.Ms. Eddy made her first television appearance, as “Woman No. 2,” in an episode of “The Drew Carey Show” in 1995, and went on to find steady work with roles on “ER,” “Seinfeld,” “Glee” and other hit programs. Her film credits include “Barbershop,” “Coach Carter” and “Matchstick Men.”But her most enduring role was as Epiphany on “General Hospital.” She must have appeared credible as a nurse because she played one several times throughout her career, including in the film “Seven Pounds,” from 2008, starring Will Smith, and “Year of the Dog,” from 2007. She also appeared as a nurse in the thriller “Frank and Penelope,” which was released this year.She was a supporter of real-life nurses, and led a campaign this year to raise money for scholarships for nursing students.Ms. Eddy was also a singer. On “General Hospital,” she showcased her singing skills during memorial services and nurses’ balls. On Tuesday, the “General Hospital” Instagram account shared a clip of Ms. Eddy’s character leading other nurses on the show as they sang “Hallelujah” in a 2017 episode.Sheelagh McNeill More

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      Best TV Episodes of 2022

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      TV in the streaming era is an endless feast. This year, series like “Barry,” “Ms. Marvel,” “Pachinko,” “Station Eleven” and “This Fool” offered some of the best bites.TV can be a lot of different things these days. So can a TV episode: It can be a “chapter” of a visual novel, a revelatory stand-up special or a straight-up sitcom installment.You’ll find all of those and more in our choices of some of the best individual pieces we’ve sampled this year. Television in 2022 may have been all about the binge, but sometimes what you remember most about a feast is simply that one perfect bite. JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘Amber Brown’ (Apple TV+)Season 1, Episode 3: ‘No Place Like Two Homes’Aw man, I loved this light tween drama about a sixth grader whose parents are newly divorced. In the show’s third episode, Amber (Carsyn Rose) is trying to build up the courage to audition for the school play — she hopes to follow in her father’s drama-club footsteps so they can bond more now that he’s moved back to town. “Do you think he likes me?” she asks her best friend. Of course, her friend says. He’s your father; he loves you. “Well, I know he loves me,” Amber replies. “I just wonder if he likes me.” It’s this kind of brutal, beautiful poignancy that makes the show so special. (Streaming on Apple TV+.) MARGARET LYONS“710N,” from the third season of “Barry,” included some of the year’s most thrilling action sequences.HBO‘Barry’ (HBO)Season 3, Episode 6: ‘710N’More than one scene from this stunner — a high-speed motorcycle chase through a traffic jam, a high-firepower shootout at a car dealership — would have been the high point of any other series. But there was more to “710N” than simply showing off Bill Hader’s directing chops. The action sequences, simultaneously thrilling, slapstick and bathetic, served the larger purpose of “Barry,” to tell the story of an antihero without celebrating his antiheroism. (Streaming on HBO Max.) PONIEWOZIK‘Black Bird’ (Apple TV+)Season 1, Episode 4: ‘WhatsHerName’Dennis Lehane’s mini-series was a showcase for the fine and distinctive actor Paul Walter Hauser, who plays Larry Hall, a convicted kidnapper and suspected serial killer who is close to having his convictions overturned and walking free. It is nominally the story (based on an autobiographical novel) of another convict, played by Taron Egerton, who makes a deal to befriend Hall and compromise him. But Hauser’s soft, sibilant, weirdly sexy performance is all that matters. In the fourth episode, Hall is put in charge of cleaning up after a prison riot (itself a shocking yet poetic spasm of violence, as directed by Jim McKay), and Hauser conveys a deep, narcissistic satisfaction that puts cleanliness next to beastliness. (Streaming on Apple TV+) MIKE HALEShauna Higgins, left, and Dearbhaile McKinney in “Derry Girls.” An episode this season flashed back to when the parents on the show were rebellious teens.Netflix‘Derry Girls’ (Netflix)Season 3, Episode 5Lisa McGee’s rowdy Northern Irish comedy used a high school reunion to turn its clock back from the 1990s to the 1970s, visiting the adolescence of its Derry Mums. The half-hour brought in a new cast to play its adult characters as punk-era teens, but McGee established such a voice and sense of character over three short seasons that you could instantly recognize the elders in their younger versions (and see their daughters in them as well). The tart, heartfelt episode underscored how teenage rebellions, like some political ones, cut across generations. PONIEWOZIK‘Fleishman Is in Trouble’ (FX on Hulu)Season 1, Episode 7: ‘Me-Time’This limited series worked hard to re-create the pyrotechnics of Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s 2019 novel, from the upside-down shots that mimicked the topsy-turvy imagery of the book cover to a copious use of voice-over. (Brodesser-Akner, who created the series and wrote this episode, is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine.) Here, it pulled off the novel’s signature reversal — telling the title character’s divorce story from the perspective of his wife — using the tools of the screen, in particular a wrenching performance by Claire Danes, an emotional volcano who has rarely erupted better. (Streaming on Hulu.) PONIEWOZIK‘Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal’ (Adult Swim)Season 2, Episodes 7-9: ‘The Colossaeus’ (parts I, II and III)In its second season, “Primal” expanded its scope and time frame, dipping into 19th-century England for an episode and introducing various other clans to our cave man and dinosaur protagonists. But it was this three-part blood bath, culminating in a triumphant slave rebellion at sea, that exemplified the show’s tender nuance and also its unrelenting savagery. It was a reminder that while cartoon violence can be exhausting and meaningless in live-action shows, it can still be mesmerizing and meaningful when done where it belongs. “Primal” is almost entirely wordless, and its characters rarely rely on gesture; instead, their ideas are communicated through expression, breath and attention. And yet, few other shows are able to capture passion and pain with such precision, an entire life story told through one furrowed brow. (Streaming on HBO Max.) LYONSIman Vellani, right, with Aramis Knight, plays a teenager with superpowers in “Ms. Marvel.”Disney+‘Ms. Marvel’ (Disney+)Season 1, Episode 5: ‘Time and Again’This “Spider-Man”-like series about Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), a Jersey City 16-year-old in a working-class immigrant family who discovers that she has superpowers, is the most charming and likable of the Marvel shows for Disney+ so far. The obligatory flashback episode revealing how Kamala came by her powers was set during the partition of India and Pakistan; the incorporation of that fraught history could easily have led to something labored and stiff, but in the hands of the writer Fatimah Asghar and the director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy it was ingenious and surprisingly moving. (Streaming on Disney+) HALE‘Pachinko’ (Apple TV+)Season 1, Episode 7The penultimate episode of this Min Jin Lee novel adaptation, set in and around the 1923 Yokohama earthquake, is staggering in its scope and rendering of cataclysm. But it’s equally, quietly devastating in how its expands the depiction of a key character: Koh Hansu (Lee Minho), introduced in the series as a menacing, charismatic gangster. Laying out how he began as a young math tutor with hopes for a legitimate life, then fell onto his path through disaster and circumstance, “Chapter 7” connects him to the series’s other Korean exiles making hard choices in an unwelcoming Japan. (Streaming on Apple TV+.) PONIEWOZIK‘Rothaniel’ (HBO)A lot of “confessional” comedy has ground itself into a rut in recent years. But the comedian Jerrod Carmichael breathes new life into the paradigm with this lyrical and restrained special, in which he comes out as gay and explores his fraught relationship with his family. Carmichael weaves together sorrow and humor, insight and fear, love and disappointment, unraveling family secrets and allowing for messy and unresolved truths to all exist at once. (Streaming on HBO Max.) LYONSAn episode of “The Simpsons,” seemingly about Lisa and Bart in the scouts, gave way to a rapid-fire series of gags.Fox‘The Simpsons’ (Fox)Season 34, Episode 3: ‘Lisa the Boy Scout’A seemingly routine episode of “The Simpsons” is hijacked by hackers (wearing masks that are a frightening combination of Guy Fawkes and Homer Simpson) who demand a $20 million ransom; until it is paid, they will broadcast a stream of “Simpsons” outtakes “so ill-conceived, so idiotic that their exposure would destroy the value of the very I.P. itself.” Luckily, no one pays, and we get to see a lovingly assembled panoply of blackout sketches, written by Dan Greaney and directed by Timothy Bailey, ranging across 34 seasons of characters and animation styles. One highlight: a two-hander for the Sea Captain and Groundskeeper Willie whose dialogue consists entirely of “Yar” and “Aye.” (Streaming on Hulu.) HALE‘Slow Horses’ (Apple TV+)Season 1, Episode 3: ‘Bad Tradecraft’Based on Mick Herron’s Slough House novels, “Slow Horses” — set in a fictional MI5 office where out-of-favor agents pass their time doing busy work — is in one sense a sendup of John le Carré’s moody, cerebral tales of the postwar British intelligence services. But it’s also a completely credible spy thriller, with complicated, believable twists and well executed action. The first season’s third episode, written by Will Smith and directed by James Hawes, best encapsulated the show’s seesawing mix of sardonic humor, deft characterization and sometimes brutal suspense. (Streaming on Apple TV+.) HALE‘Station Eleven’ (HBO Max)Season 1, Episode 9: ‘Dr. Chaudhary’TV’s sweetest apocalypse story began just before the holidays last year, so it was the gift that kept on giving in early 2022. The penultimate episode, which found Jeevan Chaudhary (Himesh Patel) impersonating a doctor in a big-box-store-turned-birthing-center, was an inventive expression of the show’s oddly hopeful vision: the first sparks of humanity’s future being kindled amid the mundane ruins of its past. Like the traveling actors who make the backbone of this story, Jeevan puts on a performance that ends up becoming real and restorative. (Streaming on HBO Max.) PONIEWOZIKAn episode of “This Fool” used “Austin Powers” references to make a point about the importance of change.Hulu‘This Fool’ (Hulu)Season 1, Episode 5: ‘Sandy Says’The closing seconds of this episode-long homage to “Austin Powers” were perhaps the most satisfying payoff I saw this year. “Sandy Says” exemplifies the tricky tone “This Fool” is able to strike, combining the structure of traditional sitcoms with the style of auteur comedies, hitting a sweet spot of goofy and clever. Luis (Frankie Quinones), newly out of prison, is in annoying-eighth-grader mode with his constant “Austin Powers” references, and the episode is packed with shagadelic Easter eggs before Luis explains part of why the movie means so much to him. “I’m tired of wasting time living in the past,” he says. “Ideally, we’ll change. The world is ever-changing, homey. I gotta change with it. That’s what ‘Austin Powers’ is all about. You know, I used to think that movie was a comedy. But now I know, it’s a tragedy.” (Streaming on Hulu.) LYONS‘This Is Us’ (NBC)Season 6, Episode 4: ‘Don’t Let Me Keep You’“This Is Us” did a lot of traveling over its six-season run — through multiple family trees, across the divide of death, from the future to the deep past. But it was often at its best when focused on one story, here Jack’s (Milo Ventimiglia) trip to Ohio to attend his mother’s funeral and reckon with the legacy of his abusive father. It’s a showcase for Ventimiglia, who anchored a big-feeling show through his reserved portrayal of a father, husband and son driven to fix things. (Streaming on Hulu.) PONIEWOZIK More

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      Chelsea Handler Needs More Jennifer Coolidge in Her Life

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      The comedian, whose new Netflix special is “Revolution,” talks about siblings, Kristin Hannah and no longer being annoyed when people talk about gratitude.Early in the pandemic, one of Chelsea Handler’s sisters moved in with her. That wouldn’t have been a problem, except that she brought her three adult children.“I didn’t have children on purpose, and everyone knows that,” Handler said in a phone interview this month. “Just because I have five extra bedrooms doesn’t mean I’m looking for company.”Handler’s new comedy special, “Revolution,” is equal parts Covid diary — Covid sex, Covid pets, Covid houseguests — and social commentary, particularly on the fraught subjects of power, gender and race.“My brother was like, ‘Chelsea, not all white guys are bad guys,’” she says in the special, which begins streaming Dec. 27 on Netflix. “I go, ‘Nobody said that. Nobody ever said that. But now you sound suspicious.’”Handler spoke with us about what it took to move her family out (“I had to put my house on the market and sell it”) as well as some of her favorite things, including skiing, oysters and fiction by Madeline Miller and Kristin Hannah. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Future Islands Somebody turned me on to the band Future Islands about six months ago, and I’ve been loving it. It’s nice and mellow. It’s great background music when I’m home. It’s my cup of tea. You can only listen to so much Top 40 before you want to rip your eyes out.2. My Siblings It’s really nice to have adult closeness with all of your siblings. They’re the only people in your life who understand exactly what you went through with your parents growing up. We’ve gotten closer and closer as we’ve gotten older. There are five of us. We’re a big pack, a unit. My most meaningful relationships are with my siblings.3. “The Great Alone” Kristin Hannah’s “The Great Alone” is a book about something that I would never normally read about: Alaska, the wilderness, living off the grid, all things that I have no interest in. It’s really about aloneness and survival and Mother Nature and what it brings to everybody in terms of mood, in terms of stability, in terms of livelihood — and it’s one of the most beautiful books ever. It’s far out of my comfort zone, and I like it a lot when I enjoy something that I normally wouldn’t have an appetite for.4. “Circe” Madeline Miller’s novel “Circe” is a book that took me to another planet. It was so beautifully written. You would read the end of a chapter and just have to put it down and think about what you just read because it’s so poetic. It’s kind of a metaphor for life and the people that come in and out of your life, and loss and love and death and, again, aloneness. For a long time I was very scared of spending time alone and reading about people being alone. That’s why “The Great Alone” and this book both struck me so much. It made being alone seem like something almost mythical and mystical.5. Oysters My favorite in the world are the grilled oysters at Blue Plate Oysterette in Santa Monica. But I will eat oysters almost every night before I go onstage, whenever I’m somewhere that they’re going to be fresh. I try not to have them in Iowa.6. Gratitude I’d heard people banging on about gratitude for a long time, and it usually just annoyed me. Then someone told me that you can actively shift your energy by writing down everything that you’re grateful for. So, a few months ago, I started writing down 20 things I’m grateful for every morning. I can’t describe to you what a difference it makes. You are on a higher vibration and frequency when you wake up and start counting all the things that you’re happy about.7. Stand-Up Comedy To be able to get onstage and command an audience of a few thousand people every night feels really good. Strangers are sitting next to each other, laughing at the things that you’re saying. That is the best gift that you could give anybody.8. Martha’s Vineyard When I was a little kid, all I wanted to do was go to the Jersey Shore with the rest of my friends, and my parents were like, ‘You’re not going to the Jersey Shore. We have a house in Martha’s Vineyard. That’s much nicer.’ Now that I’m older, I think it’s one of the most magical places. I have the best memories of being there with all of my family. We grew up there every summer of our lives. We still go there every summer. It’s one of the milestones of my life.9. Skiing I’m not very coordinated, so 10 years ago I decided to pay somebody to teach me how to be a good skier. I wanted to be good enough to be able to ski off anything. I had a private ski guide for seven years and now I’m an expert skier — I can heli-ski, I can ski off the top of anything — and that was a big dream of mine. I take skiing very seriously.10. Jennifer Coolidge She’s been great in “The White Lotus.” Everything she serves up in all of her performances is everything that we could all use a little bit more of. The ridiculousness, the kind of wide-eyed, bushy-tailed approach to life, and the kind of unapologetic nature of who she is, I think, is a great example for all women not to take ourselves so seriously. We all need a little bit more Jennifer Coolidge in our lives. More

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      Best of Late Night 2022

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      After a year of significant change, as hosts like Trevor Noah and Samantha Bee signed off, the future of late-night TV has never seemed more uncertain.The landscape of late night has changed significantly since the beginning of 2022, with the departures of several hosts and the end of two weekly shows.With audiences and advertising revenue dwindling, networks are in a precarious place. By the end of the year, the diversity of a format long known as a white-guy haven had dwindled even further, and the future of late night was ever more uncertain amid the growing dominance of on-demand streaming, where topical monologue fodder has little value and talk-show experiments have repeatedly failed.Trevor Noah, for one, was ready to try something else. In November, heshocked viewers and colleagues by saying he would step away from “The Daily Show” after seven years as host. He said that he wanted to devote more time to stand-up, and debuted a new Netflix special and a tour during his last few weeks on air.Noah signed off on Dec. 8 with a tearful exit thanking supporters as well as the Black women who raised him, giving them credit for his success.“I’ve often been credited with, you know, having these grand ideas. People will be like, ‘Oh, Trevor, you are so smart.’ And I’m like, who do you think teaches me? You know? Who do you think has shaped me, nourished me and formed me? From my mom, my gran, my aunts, all these Black women in my life, but then in America as well. I always tell people, if you truly want to learn about America, talk to Black women. Yeah, because unlike everybody else, Black women can’t afford to [expletive] around and find out.” — TREVOR NOAHComedy Central announced that an array of famous funny people will fill in until a permanent replacement for Noah can be found. The guest host lineup includes Wanda Sykes, Chelsea Handler, Kal Penn, Al Franken, Sarah Silverman, D. L. Hughley, John Leguizamo, Hasan Minhaj, Marlon Wayans and Leslie Jones.Noah wasn’t the only host who decided to leave: In April, James Corden announced that he would depart “The Late Late Show” sometime in 2023.CBS hasn’t announced plans for a replacement for Corden, who this fall seemed to be preparing for life after late night by returning to his acting roots. He starred in the Amazon dramedy “Mammals,” which premiered in November.Unfortunately for him, the show’s debut was overshadowed by a slightly ridiculous mini-controversy involving accusations of rude behavior at a restaurant, which Corden eventually was forced to address on air.“I have been walking around thinking that I hadn’t done anything wrong, right? But the truth is, like, I have — I made a rude comment and it was wrong, and it was an unnecessary comment. It was ungracious to the server.” — JAMES CORDENThis year also saw the end of Showtime’s Bronx buddy comedy, “Desus & Mero.” The show shifted its format and time slot several times over four seasons before signing off in July after an apparent falling out between the two co-hosts.Another well-regarded late-night show came to an end in July, albeit involuntarily. TBS canceled “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee,” which won its second Emmy two months later, in the short-form category.Trevor Noah’s 7 Years on “The Daily Show”The host, who took the reins of the show from Jon Stewart in 2015, exposed America’s many blind spots through witty and passionate commentary.Time to Depart: Trevor Noah announced that he would be stepping down in September, citing a desire for a better work-life balance.Saying Goodbye: In his final episode of “The Daily Show,” Mr. Noah told viewers not to be sad and called the night “a celebration.”An Outsider: The talk-show host, who grew up in South Africa and represented a part of the world often neglected by American news, helped his audience see through his eyes.His Best Moments: Noah’s comic perspective set him apart from other late-night hosts. Here are the highlights.At the Creative Arts Emmy ceremony, where that award was announced, the staff expressed hope that the show would be picked up elsewhere. So far there have been no takers, and Bee’s departure leaves Amber Ruffin as late night’s sole female host, with her “Amber Ruffin Show” maintaining its Friday night spot on Peacock.Which leaves the broadcast big guns, the white guys, most of whom will be under contract for several more years. Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers are all staying put for now, and will likely spend 2023 desperately trying (and often failing) to make jokes about anything other than the former president.Insurrection reflectionThe fallout from the Capitol riot has been a late-night focus all year, with Colbert going live after the first night of televised hearings held by the Jan. 6 committee. Colbert presupposed the hearings would be “this summer’s most compelling drama,” but the hosts decided the proceedings just weren’t hot enough for prime time.“What they need to do, you want people to watch in America, is you have to spice things up. You know, have a kiss cam going for the witnesses. Yeah, get Shakira to do a halftime show.” — TREVOR NOAH“The hearing is being produced by a former ABC executive, which is why it’s being marketed as, ‘Extreme Takeover: Capitol Building Edition.’” — JAMES CORDENNot long after the hearings began in June, some “Late Show” staff members were arrested at the Capitol complex while filming a segment featuring Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and the comedian Robert Smigel, who voices the puppet, but the charges were dropped in July.“The Capitol Police are much more cautious than they were, say, 18 months ago, and for a very good reason. If you don’t know what that reason is, I know what news network you watch.” — STEPHEN COLBERTTrump TVTrump may have left office in 2021, but he continued to be a part of the news cycle even beyond his involvement with Jan. 6. Topics like his continued denial of the election results and his company’s fraudulent tax schemes frequently dominated late-night monologues, the hosts unable to resist low-hanging fruit like the news, in February, that he had been dropped by his longtime accounting firm.“Now he’s going to need someone else to do his taxes. I suggest H&R Cellblock.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I’d say he needs a good lawyer, but that’s been true for a while now.” — SETH MEYERSHosts also kept on top of news out of Mar-a-Lago, particularly the revelation, in August, that Trump had taken classified documents from the White House and kept them for himself. (He claimed he had “declassified” them.)“Let me just break down Trump’s defense: He says the F.B.I. planted fake evidence to frame him, and now he wants them to return the fake evidence. Even O.J. is like, ‘Yo, bro, you wildin.’” — DESUS NICE, guest hosting “Jimmy Kimmel Live”“How do you explain this to our allies? ‘Don’t worry, Prime Minister, your country’s nuclear secrets are perfectly, safely stored at the Mar-a-Lago waffle bar between the syrup and the Nutella bucket.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Imagine being a guest at Mar-a-Lago and using the bathroom, and out of the corner of your eye you just notice something and are you like, ‘Hang on, is that — is that Norway’s nuclear codes?’” — JAMES CORDEN“Trump’s argument is that you can just declassify things in your mind. It’s officially declassified as long as you believe it’s declassified. That’s according to Trump’s new legal adviser, Tinkerbell.” — SETH MEYERSTrump’s 2024 campaign announcement was both expected and lackluster, something Kimmel called “the moment none of us have been waiting for.” It was quickly followed by his widely covered dinner with Kanye West and the white nationalist Nick Fuentes.“Now, just in case ‘Holocaust denier’ doesn’t get the point across, Fuentes is not a good guy. He has spread antisemitic conspiracies, he is considered a white supremacist by the Anti-Defamation League, attended the Unite the Right in Charlottesville in 2017 and the Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6. That is the alt-right EGOT, as in, EGOT zero hugs as a child.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“You know it’s a bad sign when Kanye West is only the third most controversial person at your dinner table.” — JIMMY KIMMELBrace for impactWith Georgia a key state in the midterms, Noah took “The Daily Show” to Atlanta for a week of shows, with guests like Stacey Abrams, the ultimately unsuccessful Democratic candidate for governor. Noah’s monologues were more like his stand-up than his usual desk fare, suggesting the stage is where he truly shines.While some midterm candidates attempted to distance themselves from Trump, others embraced the association, which didn’t always work out. Late-night hosts homed in on two such candidates in particular: Dr. Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker.“On the bright side, Dr. Oz now can go back to doing what he does best, which is analyzing the shape and color of our stool.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“A former girlfriend of Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker claimed in a new interview that Walker paid for her to get an abortion in 2009. And the only way that will hurt him with Republicans is if some of that money went to pay down her student loans.” — SETH MEYERSA ‘devastating’ decisionReproductive rights were a hot late-night topic in 2022, spurred by the leak of a Supreme Court decision challenging Roe v. Wade and then the eventual ruling, in June, overturning it. Chelsea Handler, guest hosting “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” discussed her abortions during her monologue, while Meyers brought on Alexis McGill Johnson, the CEO of Planned Parenthood, to discuss the decision’s implications and potential solutions with three of the show’s female writers.Samantha Bee delayed a summer hiatus and went on air while she had Covid to address the “devastating” decision.“It’s not just about voting in November. It’s about doing everything in our power to help vulnerable people access abortion across state lines. And we have to raise hell in our cities, in Washington, in every restaurant Justice Alito eats in for the rest of his life. Because if Republicans have made our lives hell, it’s time to return the favor.” — SAMANTHA BEEReclaiming her timeKimmel has been a champion of Quinta Brunson, reuniting the “Abbott Elementary” creator and star with her inspirational sixth-grade teacher in an early 2022 episode. But when Kimmel appeared at the Emmys, many viewers were less than thrilled with his refusal to leave the stage during a bit that took time and space away from Brunson’s big win for outstanding writing for a comedy series.Kimmel then apologized to Brunson on his show, offering her the chance to interrupt his monologue and continue delivering her thank-yous.Alternative viewsNoah scored a coup near the end of his run on “The Daily Show,” landing the first sit-down interview in which Will Smith substantively discussed his Oscars slap of Chris Rock. But it was Noah’s frank discussion of the late Queen Elizabeth II that illustrated just how different a perspective he brought to late night. While hosts like Corden, a Brit, gave sad remembrances of the matriarch upon her death, Noah addressed how the British Empire’s colonialism affected people in Africa and India and shaped their perceptions of her reign. “You can’t expect the oppressed to mourn the oppressor,” he said.“And I know some people would say ‘Look, Trevor, the queen wasn’t really in charge. She’s just a figurehead. You can’t blame her for the atrocities the British Empire committed.’ Yeah, fair enough, but you also understand in her entire reign, she never repented, she never once made amends, right? There wasn’t even one, like, Notes app apology on her Twitter — nothing!” — TREVOR NOAHBest of the restThe Jimmys played a joke on their audiences, switching shows for April Fools’ Day and pranking fans.“Hi, I’m Jimmy. Please, please settle down, you’re going to offend the other Jimmy.” — JIMMY FALLON, hosting “Jimmy Kimmel Live”“We swapped everything — we swapped shows, bands, even wives. Bad news, Nancy, Fat Jimmy’s coming home.” — JIMMY KIMMEL, hosting “The Tonight Show”Corden took “The Late Late Show” to London, where he invited Lizzo for a spin on “Carpool Karaoke.” It was a memorable installment of the segment viewers will surely miss most when Corden leaves next year.Finally, Jon Batiste, a five-time Grammy winner, sat down for the Colbert Questionnaire before taking what was described at the time as a hiatus from his post as the “Late Show” bandleader.Batiste ultimately decided not to return to the show, his TV home for seven seasons. It was one more late-night departure in a year largely defined by them. More