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      The Voice of Milhouse on Saying Goodbye to ‘The Simpsons’

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      After 35 years of voicing Bart’s unlucky but indefatigable best friend, Pamela Hayden is retiring. She still has high hopes for his future.When you answer your phone to hear a grown woman shouting “Wazzzuuuuup?” in the voice of a 10-year-old boy, you can be pretty sure that you’re talking with Pamela Hayden. For some 35 years, Hayden has played many distinctive characters on “The Simpsons,” the long-running animated Fox sitcom, but none with more nerdy exuberance than Milhouse Van Houten, the hapless but good-hearted best friend of Bart Simpson.On Wednesday, however, Hayden announced that after having played Milhouse since before “The Simpsons” was even its own series (and having amassed a roster of other roles including the bully Jimbo Jones and Bart’s sweetly pious neighbor Rod Flanders), she has retired from voice acting. Her final “Simpsons” performances as Milhouse and Jimbo will be shown on Sunday night.Hayden, 70, whose voices have been heard on numerous animated shows since the 1980s, said in a phone interview on Thursday that voice acting is not vastly different from on-camera acting. When you’re putting yourself in the mind-set of a voice character, she said: “You’re thinking to yourself, what do I want? How bad do I want it? What happens if I don’t get it? And Milhouse has to think a lot about what happens if he doesn’t get it, because he hardly ever does.”Dave gets a surprise greetingOur reporter was expecting a call from Pamela Hayden, just not her opening line.And with the same soft-spoken compassion she has brought to her performances, Hayden said she understood why Milhouse became the most enduring and best-known of all the characters she played.“Milhouse is somebody who’s having a rough time a lot of times, but he doesn’t take it personally,” she said. “It doesn’t ruin his life. He wakes up the next day and he still feels like things are going to be better, even if they’re not.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Glicked’ Fans Rejoice in Bloodshed and Broadway Songs

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      Swords clashing and blood curdling screams of gladiators emanate from one room. Across the hallway, witches belt out show tunes.That’s the sound of “Glicked.”Last year, moviegoers swarmed to see “Barbenheimer” — the combined name for “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” — when the films opened on the same day. Now, there is a push from the casts and fans of “Gladiator II” and “Wicked” — which both opened across the country on Friday — to recreate that energy for another double feature with a blended name.Isabelle Deveaux and Emma Rabuano skipped out of theater six at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Brooklyn at 2:38 p.m. on Friday, after watching “Gladiator II.”At 6:15 p.m., the pair, both 25, planned to return to the Alamo Drafthouse to see “Wicked.” The crossover, Ms. Deveaux said, “felt so specifically catered to our interests.”Diego Gasca of Los Angeles went with friends to the opening day of “Wicked” at AMC Lincoln Square 13 in Manhattan, but he said that he was not interested in seeing “Gladiator II.”Colin Clark for The New York TimesOn the surface, the two films, which have a combined running time of over five hours, appear vastly different. One is a family friendly musical prequel to “The Wizard of Oz,” while the other is an R-rated epic sequel about murder, war and the Roman Empire. But Ms. Deveaux and Ms. Rabuano see some common ground in the films.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Marlon James’s ‘Get Millie Black,’ Colonial Rule Haunts Jamaica

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      Marlon James’s new HBO detective series, “Get Millie Black,” draws on Jamaica’s colonial history as well as his family’s experiences.In 2015, the author Marlon James was in London, where he had just won the Booker Prize for his novel “A Brief History of Seven Killings.” Holed away in a hotel room after the ceremony before he flew home to Minneapolis, the characters for a TV show began to take shape.“I’ve always looked at novel writing and storytelling as a kind of detective work,” he said in a recent video interview. “Characters show up in my head and I wonder why. They’re a mystery to be solved.”In the resulting HBO limited series, “Get Millie Black,” there are several other mysteries to be solved. The five episodes, from the showrunner Jami O’Brien, tell the story of an obsessive detective, Millie (Tamara Lawrance), who returns to Jamaica from London to reconnect with her sister and join the local police force. While investigating the case of a missing teenage girl, she comes close to breaking point.With all the requisite twists and turns of the detective genre, “Get Millie Black” — which premieres Monday — is a confronting look at Jamaica’s criminal underworld, set against the misty backdrop of a colonial past that is never far away. “In this country, nothing haunts like history,” Millie says in Episode 1: “Pick something ugly, bigoted hateful, shameful, violent and you see a shadow reaching back 400 years.”James’s mother became a police detective in Jamaica in the 1950s, when it was rare to see women in the role, and even rarer to see them succeed.Amir Hamja for The New York TimesThis long shadow has fallen across much of James’s writing, stalking him since he was growing up in Portmore, a town just outside Jamaica’s capital, Kingston.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘A Man on the Inside’ Review: Ted Danson in Another Good Place

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      Created by Michael Schur and starring Danson, this Netflix sitcom synthesizes the most gutting realities of life and death into cozy, low-stakes comedy.“A Man on the Inside,” created by Michael Schur and starring Ted Danson, synthesizes the most gutting realities of life and death into a cozy, low-stakes comedy populated by well-intentioned sweethearts. The show is as gentle and mild as baby soap, though it could hardly promise no tears.Danson stars as Charles, whose wife died a year earlier from complications of Alzheimer’s. He is a retired professor and a San Francisco booster who wrote a book about the Golden Gate Bridge; he has a warm but arm’s-length relationship with his daughter, Emily (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), who encourages him find a project or hobby. So he responds to an ad in a newspaper and finds himself working for a private investigator, going semi-undercover in a Bay Area retirement community.The show is loosely based on “The Mole Agent,” a Chilean documentary from 2020, though the stakes here have been dialed way down: While the figures in the film were investigating potential abuse in an elder-care facility, here the narrative clothesline is a missing necklace. The only person truly aggrieved by its absence is the necklace owner’s son (Marc Evan Jackson), who icily describes his mother moving back in with him as “suboptimal.”Under the weakly exasperated guidance of Julie (Lilah Richcreek Estrada), the investigator, Charles moves into Pacific View. Virginia (Sally Struthers), an aggressive flirt, and Florence (Margaret Avery), an energetic poet, take an immediate liking to him, which bothers Virginia’s on-again-off-again lover, Elliott (John Getz), who declares Charles his “sexual rival.” Calbert (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and Charles develop the rom-com-y friendship that would be doomed by Charles’s duplicity were the show not defined by its characters’ deep wells of forgiveness. Didi (Stephanie Beatriz) is the devoted administrator running the facility, cheery and capable. Mostly, Pacific View is like a resort, with parties and companionship and dignified care. According to Didi, loneliness is as detrimental to seniors as any aspect of aging.Perhaps it is merciful not to dwell in the self-dissolving agony of dementia, for death to be peaceful, hygienic and offscreen. A subplot about a declining woman named Gladys (Susan Ruttan) is central to the story and handled gracefully — shallowly. Better to discuss a fancy watch that costs $10,000, which the characters do, often, or run up an $800 Uber tab. Elliott, the most ornery and cynical resident, can’t stay mad long, and he encourages Charles to simply become inured to his peers losing themselves.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Carl the Collector’ Puts an Autistic Child (Well, Raccoon) in the Lead

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      Several recent TV series for adults have featured autistic lead characters. A new PBS show looks to expand that trend into children’s programming.Carl isn’t unlike many small children you may know. He balks when his mother suggests he get rid of some of his many stuffed animals. If his friends want to play a game that isn’t his favorite, he feels frustrated. And when he realizes he has left one of his prized toy collections away from home, he needs help falling asleep.But Carl also differs from most of his peers, and not just because he is a fuzzy little raccoon. Carl is autistic, with reactions that are often longer-lasting, more intense or more socially awkward than those of his pals. As the title character in PBS Kids’ animated television show “Carl the Collector” — and the first autistic lead character in a PBS children’s series — he offers young audiences a rare close-up view of autism spectrum disorder, demonstrating to those who are not on the spectrum, and to those who are, how they can help one another navigate childhood challenges.“The stories overall are just human experience, stories for everybody,” said Zachariah OHora, the best-selling children’s author and illustrator, who is the creator of “Carl the Collector.” “We just get to see it through all these different lenses.” (The show began streaming last week across PBS Kids digital platforms and airs on PBS stations.)Geared toward viewers ages 4 to 8, the series debuts with a story in which Carl figures out that he can make a photo scrapbook of the plush toys he seldom plays with, which makes them easier to give away. In another episode, when Carl insists on his choice of what to play and when, his buddies persuade him that they should devise a rulebook that includes taking turns.“So much of the strategies and techniques that are used to support and help autistic individuals are really just extensions of good practice,” said Stephen Shore, an autistic professor of special education at Adelphi University and an adviser to the show.That support seems especially important now. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one in 36 American children is now diagnosed with autism — up from one in 150 in the year 2000. Although medical experts attribute the rise partly to increased testing and broader diagnostic criteria, the disorder remains a major concern for parents.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Late Night Can’t Believe Matt Gaetz Won’t Be Attorney General

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      Jimmy Kimmel said the scandal-ridden ex-congressman’s withdrawal was “exciting news for Judge Jeanine Pirro, who will be our next attorney general.”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.A Distraction From the DistractionsMatt Gaetz, who was President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for attorney general despite allegations that he’d used drugs and had sex with a 17-year-old, withdrew his name from consideration on Thursday.Jimmy Kimmel said the ex-congressman from Florida had “crawled back under the rock of cocaine he scurried out from under.”“He said he decided to take his MAGA hat out of the ring because his nomination was becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance transition. Which is true: President-elect Trump should not be distracted from his critical work of creating other distractions.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Gaetz said he was honored that Trump nominated him, and he looks forward to spending more time posing as a high school senior on the Roblox Reddit page.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“See, the thing is, Trump did this wrong. He did it in the wrong order. First, you nominate Diddy for attorney general, then Matt Gaetz.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This Gaetz situation is a setback for Trump, but it’ll all be forgotten as soon as he nominates new surgeon general Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“All of this attention on this sex criminal was unfairly distracting from the critical work of all the other sex criminals who have been nominated.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And while this is sad news for Gaetz and his fans, it is potentially very exciting news for Judge Jeanine Pirro, who will be our next attorney general.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Poor Rudy Giuliani. He has to be on the twin bed in the office his son converted into a guest room right now, going, ‘What about me?’” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Withdrawal Edition)“Former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz withdrew today as President-elect Trump’s nominee for attorney general. This puts a lot of pressure on Trump, because now there’s not much time to find somebody worse.” — SETH MEYERS“Matt Gaetz is out? But his nomination was only eight days old! Once again, he can’t even make it to 18.” — SETH MEYERS“If you’ve ever dreamed of being an attorney general, update your résumé, because they have an opening.” — DESI LYDICThe Bits Worth WatchingGwyneth Paltrow and DJ Khaled played a game of “True Confessions” on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutRachel Elizabeth Seed’s mother, Sheila Turner Seed, in “A Photographic Memory.”Capariva FilmsRachel Elizabeth Seed’s new documentary, “A Photographic Memory,” weaves meditations on memory and the nature of photography with a personal narrative about her mother, a photographer who died when she was 18 months old. More

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      Chuck Scarborough to Step Down as WNBC News Anchor After 50-Year Career

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      The celebrated broadcaster, who started at the New York station in 1974, announced that he would wrap up his anchoring career on Dec. 12.Chuck Scarborough, the broadcaster who for 50 years brought New Yorkers news of blizzards, financial collapses, terror attacks and assassinations, said Thursday that he would step down from his anchoring duties at WNBC.“The time has come to pass the torch,” Mr. Scarborough said at the end of the 6 p.m. newscast. “Fifty years, eight months and 17 days after I walked into the door here at the headquarters of the National Broadcasting Company, I will step away from this anchor desk.”Mr. Scarborough, 81, said his last broadcast as anchor will be on Dec. 12. He will not leave WNBC entirely, and will contribute periodically to special projects, NBC 4 New York said in a statement.Beginning with “Good evening, I’m Chuck Scarborough,” Mr. Scarborough became an institution in New York over the decades he delivered the news about everything from storms and financial crises to protests and plane crashes. He announced the shooting of John Lennon in 1980, helmed newscasts in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and won praise with his team for its coverage of the Covid pandemic.Mr. Scarborough anchored WNBC’s 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. weekday news shows for more than 40 years. In 2016, he stepped down from the late broadcast and continued as the co-anchor at 6 p.m. The station said his replacement will be announced later.“Chuck Scarborough is the gold standard in American broadcast journalism,” Eric Lerner, the president and general manager of NBC 4 New York, said in a statement.A native of Pittsburgh, Mr. Scarborough was in the U.S. Air Force for four years before he set off on a career in journalism. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern Mississippi, and served as an anchor at two stations in the state.That was followed by anchoring jobs in Atlanta and Boston before Mr. Scarborough landed at WNBC in 1974.When he marked his half-century as an anchor in New York in March, Mr. Scarborough hailed what he described as the city’s resilience.“Each time it was knocked down, people were saying, ‘That’s it, New York can’t possibly survive,’” he told The New York Times. “And each time, we would recover.” More

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      ‘Midnight Family’ Is a Fresh and Energetic Medical Drama

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      Set among a family of private ambulance drivers in Mexico City, the Apple TV+ series is a thoughtful and cinematic adaptation of a 2019 documentary.“Midnight Family,” on Apple TV+, is a Mexican drama (in Spanish, with subtitles or dubbed) about a family that runs a private ambulance. There aren’t enough ambulances for all the emergencies in Mexico City, so bootleg paramedics blare their own sirens and pitch in.Our heroine is Marigaby (Renata Vaca), who splits her time between medical school and working with her father and brothers on the ambulance. She is passionate about medicine but spread awfully thin — eager to keep the hands-on rush of in-the-field emergency care but desperate to be a proper doctor. She is tired of being looked down on by hospital employees, tired of having to solicit payments from patients mid-ride.Her older brother, Marcus (Diego Calva), likes the ambulance fine but mostly thinks about his girlfriend. Her little brother, Julito (Sergio Bautista), is just a kid, but he handles all the crises with precocious aplomb. Her father (Joaquín Cosío) does not take great care of himself and relies on Julito for probably too much. Her mother (Dolores Heredia) is warily inching her way back into the picture.The show is based on a 2019 documentary of the same name, but the vibe of this TV adaptation is less gritty realism than just solid medical drama. Episode 3, about the 2017 earthquake that killed hundreds of people, has both a bleak, broad grounding and also a weepy individual through line, as all good natural disaster episodes do. Mercifully, this is fresher and more energetic than contemporary network doctor shows and also more cinematic. The nighttime color palate glows, sometimes radiating warmth but other times emitting a kind of woozy menace. Scenes set in traffic don’t feel too phony baloney, even if some characters feel pat.Like many other medical dramas, the show gets flabbier the farther it gets from the hospital, or in this case, the ambulance. The domestic plotlines are a mixed bag: Marcus’s relationship woes are not hugely compelling, though the potential for rekindled romance between the separated parents has a fraught charm.There are graver sins than being reminiscent of “Grey’s Anatomy,” though the pointed voice-overs and rule-breaking romances here add to the similarities. If “Midnight” is a little predictable, so be it; it’s still quite a ride. More