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      ‘Ted Lasso’ Season 3, Episode 6 Recap: Dutch Treat

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      In Amsterdam for an exhibition match, everyone tends to their individual story lines.Season 3, Episode 6: ‘Sunflowers’This was for me an odd and largely dissatisfying episode in addition to being, at over an hour, the longest episode to date. It felt an awful lot like the “bottle episodes” added to the run late last season: “Carol of the Bells” (which I rather liked) and “Beard After Hours” (which I did not). It is not, however, a bottle episode, as two characters’ story lines move notably forward; it’s just an episode that, apart from those characters, goes essentially nowhere. And did I mention it was really long?The team is visiting Amsterdam for a “friendly”(an exhibition match) against the Dutch team AFC Ajax. They lose 5-0, but this blowout is quickly forgotten. The team’s dejection leads Ted to declare that there will be no curfew in this city of vice — a more accurate episode title would have been “Everyone After Hours.”In any case, let me start with the story lines I thought were dull or unnecessary and then reward your patience with the ones that were actually moving and/or interesting.The team (minus Colin and Jamie)What will the team do, set free in this world capital of legalized drugs and prostitution? Van Damme (formerly known as Zoreaux) proposes, plausibly enough for a pro athlete let loose in Amsterdam, that the team attend a sex show. Jan Maas, back in his home country, recommends an all-night party where his cousin is DJ-ing, located two hours away. (Dani suggests the team look for a single tulip but finds no takers).The sensible route, as Dani notes, would be for the players to split up and seek their pleasures wherever they wish. But Isaac, the team captain, demands that they all do something together, and from that moment it’s clear that there will be an exceptionally silly resolution to the dilemma. Although they finally choose to make the trip to Jan’s cousin’s party, they immediately fall into a subsidiary argument about where to get food beforehand.So, of course, it winds up that they go nowhere and instead have a pillow fight at the hotel. If I’d made a list of 10 possible lame conclusions for this story line, “pillow fight” probably would have been worse than any of them. C’mon, “Ted Lasso.” You’re better than this.Higgins (and Will)Shortly after the match, Higgins announces that he can’t go out with Rebecca and Keeley because, “I have a date with someone special in the Red Light District.” Later, after inviting Will the kit boy to join him, he announces, “Tonight’s the night young William becomes a man.”Scandalous! Higgins, who seemed so happily married with five boys at home, is going to the sex hub of Amsterdam — and he’s taking young Will with him!Except, of course, anyone who’s watched more than 10 minutes of “Ted Lasso” knows perfectly well that this is a red herring, and that Higgins will have some perfectly innocent reason for visiting this zone of iniquity. Moreover, as with the joint team activity, it seems likely that the faux-surprise will be silly, bordering on annoying.And indeed it is. The “someone special” whom Higgins drags Will to see is jazz legend Chet Baker — or rather, a plaque commemorating the spot where he fell out a window to his death in 1988.As for making young William “a man,” Higgins means that he will introduce him to jazz, a meaning that I suspect has never before been imputed to that phrase in human history. Later, Higgins himself ascends to the stage of the jazz club they visit and is delighted to play Baker’s “Let’s Get Lost” on standing bass with the band.Cute? Sure. And if Higgins’s previously (if briefly) glimpsed love of jazz were a significant theme of the show, it might have been a charming scene. But mostly it all felt like many more minutes spent for very little payoff.Jamie and RoyThis subplot is a bit better, in large part because the evolution of Jamie, however quick and improbable — his namesake on “Game of Thrones” took seasons to achieve the self-improvement Tartt has accomplished in mere episodes — is pretty enjoyable.But what is it with “Ted Lasso” and bikes? Last season, Dr. Sharon was run over by a car while cycling, which itself seemed to be an inside joke on the fact that the actress who plays Sharon, Sarah Niles, didn’t know how to ride a bike when she got the “Lasso” gig.Now it’s Roy who is lacking in basic bicycle skills, because the grandfather who was going to teach him died before he had the chance. So it falls upon Jamie to teach him, so they can go out in search of a genuine Dutch windmill.Like the Higgins story line, it’s modestly charming, and in this case has the advantage of being part of the ongoing Roy-Jamie subplot. But it’s still an awful lot of time spent to move that story forward only incrementally.That said, there are a few amusing moments along the way. When Jamie reveals that his degenerate father brought him to Amsterdam to lose his virginity at 14 and Roy notes, “That must have been traumatizing,” Jamie’s response is priceless: “No, she loved it.” Pause. “Oh, it’s me you mean.”And we see Good Jamie at his best when Roy, clearly upset all day, reveals “I think Keeley’s got a girlfriend.” Jamie does not take the bait, replying only, “Hmm. Let’s go find us some windmills, eh?”Relatedly, the scene earlier in the episode, when Roy learned of Keeley’s trip to Norway with Jack to see the Aurora Borealis, led to one of the best exchanges of the episode. Roy: “Where’s she going?” Rebecca: “Somewhere that believes they deserve her.” I tire of saying this, but the show was simply better when Roy and Keeley were together. Please fix this before it’s too late, “Ted Lasso.”Phil Dunster, left, and Brett Goldstein in “Ted Lasso.”Apple TV+TedCoach Beard unsurprisingly follows the motto, “When in Amsterdam, do as the Amsterdammers do.” And so he makes cups of hallucinogenic tea for him and Ted. Beard drains his quickly and heads out for what we can assume is another chapter of “Beard After Hours” — we are only privy to the postscript, when he shows up for the team bus as “Piggy Stardust.”Ted, on the other hand, is understandably conflicted. He’s uncertain about the drugs, and he already despises tea. But he nonetheless ultimately gives it a shot, following which he heads out to the Van Gogh museum, where a docent provides Ted with what can only be described as a series of Lassoisms — i.e., “When you know you’re doing what you’re meant to do, you have to try.” Is this a hint about Ted’s complete failure to learn anything much at all about coaching soccer (a failure many commenters here have pointed out)?The next scene suggests it may be. Ted, having had his fill of foreignness, heads to the Yankee Doodle Burger Barn restaurant, which advertises American food in American portions. (For those who didn’t make the connection, the barbecue sauce the waitress brings him is from Arthur Bryant’s, Ted’s favorite joint in Kansas City.) Faced with a pyramid of onion rings, he begins thinking about triangles. Coincidentally, an old Jordan-era Bulls game is on the television, featuring the triangle offense implemented by the coach Phil Jackson.I initially thought that this was merely a callback to the John Wooden “Pyramid of Success” that Ted has hanging on his wall, and at which he gave a meaningful look late in the last episode. Instead, after a rather tedious hallucination in which he believes himself to be speaking to the True Spirit of Adventure (Disney voice actor Corey Burton), Ted begins formulating a variation on the triangle offense suitable for soccer, utilizing ketchup and mustard squeeze bottles.It all leads to two late exchanges with Coach Beard. The first is the revelation that Beard’s drugs were duds: Ted wasn’t high at all! I’m not sure how precisely we are meant to take this. Ted’s hallucination was rather a lot to be a placebo effect, and the only alternative would be that he is clinically mentally ill. It’s another element of the episode that would have been better left on the cutting-room floor.The second interaction is better: Coach Beard, impressed by the fact that Ted has come up with a game strategy for perhaps the first time in the series, recommends the term “Total Football,” before explaining that the concept was in fact invented right there in Holland back in the 1970s. But as the Van Gogh docent recommended, they will give it a try.ColinAt last, a story line with some genuine emotional impact. Colin, feigning a stomach ache, sneaks away from the team to head to a gay bar. But he is followed by Trent Crimm. Colin is horrified, but Trent reassures him: “I’ve known for months. I haven’t said anything to anyone. I must have a good reason for that, mustn’t I?”The reason, of course — and I know I’ve been writing “of course” a lot, but it’s that kind of episode — is that Trent himself is gay and out to both his wife and daughter. Which is all well and good, but seems unnecessary. How about letting his “good reason” for not outing Colin be merely that he is a decent human being? Memo to the “Ted Lasso” writers: You don’t need to be gay to want not to potentially ruin a gay person’s life.The scene is redeemed, however, by Billy Harris, who plays Colin. “I don’t want to be a spokesperson; I don’t want a bunch of apologies,” he explains. “All I want is for, when we win a match, to be able to kiss my fella the same way the other guys get to kiss their girls.”RebeccaI have saved the best for last, a subplot strong enough that it almost justifies the whole episode. Rebecca, alone in Amsterdam after her abandonment by Higgins and Keeley, is nearly run over by a bicyclist while standing on a bridge and falls head over heels into a canal. It appears that this is what the psychic predicted back in Episode 3: “You’re upside down, and you’re drenched.” There is, however, no “thunder and lightning” — unless that is a metaphor for what happens next.A nearby houseboat resident, kind and endearing, helps her dry her clothes and offers her the use of his shower. (The character, as yet unnamed, is played by the prolific Dutch actor Matteo van der Grijn.) He makes her tea and later dinner, and Rebecca gradually sheds the emotional armor in which she encased herself following dates with jerks such as John Wingsnight.It’s not easy at first, as each shows signs of sexual paranoia sheathed in jokes: Is the tea drugged? Could there be a peephole into the shower? Are the women’s clothes he has in his closet “trophies”? Happily, the answers are no, no and no.As she did last episode, Hannah Waddingham does marvelous work. You can almost hear the tension gradually leaving her body. Dinner, which had been a “no,” becomes a yes. Likewise, the invitation to a drink (or several), and ultimately a foot massage. (Shades of “Pulp Fiction”: As Vincent Vega would explain, “There’s a sensuous thing going on.”)The next morning, Rebecca asks this nameless charmer, “Did we?” He answers, accurately, that they did not. (We saw him pull a blanket over her after she fell asleep during the foot massage and then retire to his bedroom.) But after she departs with a rather significant kiss, he asks himself the same question, and answers “Oh yes, we did.”That’s because he’s asking himself a different question. Something happened between them. It was not sex; rather, it was more important than sex — a genuine connection of kindred spirits. I mean how often do two people find themselves sharing a bilingual duet of Kenny Rogers’s “She Believes in Me”? It is, as he keeps noting, “Gezelligheid.”I found this truly lovely. TV and film typically operate on the premise that a romance is not real unless it is consummated in bed. It’s heartening to see a show recognize that that is not the case. Oh, and did I mention that Rebecca, post-shower, looked into what was clearly the bedroom of a young girl and beamed with delight?I don’t know where this story line is headed. Will Rebecca learn her quasi-paramour’s name and track him back down to make the “family” the psychic promised her? Or will the house-boater merely have served the purpose of proving to her that she can take the armor off, that she is still able to love and be loved? Given that I found the scenes between the two of them to be perhaps the best of the entire season, I am strongly rooting for the former. And let us not forget that Sassy shared a premonition with Rebecca — a warmth in the belly — right before Rebecca tumbled.From left, Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple and Jeremy Swift in “Ted Lasso.”Apple TV+Odds and endsTwo enjoyable moments with the Dutch reporter after the blowout match: Jan responding (in Dutch), “Luckily our spirits were already broken,” and Roy deriding every element of the proceedings, including the reporter, as “pretend.”A nice little joke with the Zava poster in the Ajax stadium, which shows him characteristically to have played with the team from 2013 to … later in 2013.Ted is pretty quick to interpret Coach Beard’s “Pineapple Percussions” to be “doldrums.” And one has to like him name-checking “Hill Street Blues” as the inspiration for his “Let’s be careful out there.”You have to love the use of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” as Roy is learning to ride a bike, especially if you remember the scene from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” that it was written for. More

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      Stephen Colbert Rues the Fox Settlement

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      “I wanted to see Rupert Murdoch put his hand on the Bible and burst into flames!” Colbert said of Fox News settling the defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems.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.Trial and ErrorDominion Voting Systems settled its defamation lawsuit against Fox News on Tuesday, with the conservative news network agreeing to pay $787.5 million to avoid a trial.“I want my trial!” Stephen Colbert bemoaned on Tuesday.“I want it! You were supposed to provide me six weeks of delicious content! I wanted to see Rupert Murdoch put his hand on the Bible and burst into flames!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I guess it’s satisfying for Dominion that Rupey had to fork over a pile of cash, but that does nothing for our democracy. What we need is Fox News personalities to look straight into the camera, admit that they lied over and over again about the 2020 election, and then hurl themselves into Mount Doom.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I am glad that there is some accountability here. But still, I am pretty disappointed we are not going to get a trial, because all the Fox anchors would have been forced to testify. It would have been like the ‘Seinfeld’ finale, but instead of — instead of soup Nazis, it’s just Nazis.” — JORDAN KLEPPER, guest host of “The Daily Show”“Since Fox is going to have to pay nearly a billion dollars, they’ll need to implement cost-cutting measures. Sadly, they have to fire Brian Kilmeade’s reading tutor, Jeanine Pirro has to switch to the cheap box of wine, development on a third Doocy has been halted. They’re going to have to switch from Jesse Watters to tap waters. And of course, they’re going to have to put down Sean Hannity.” — JORDAN KLEPPERThe Punchiest Punchlines (Settling Up Edition)“You could tell Fox was stressed about the trial ‘cause they spent the day chugging Bud Light.” — JIMMY FALLON“It’s going to take a lot of reverse mortgage ads to pay that one off.” — JIMMY KIMMEL on the settlement“Immediately after the settlement, Fox issued a statement that said, ‘This settlement reflects Fox’s commitment to the highest journalistic standards.’ They’re already lying in their statement about lying.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s a fitting lesson for the world from the American justice system. Yes, it is — there’s a price to pay for lying to the American people, and if you can afford that price, go for it!” — JAMES CORDEN“Fox News has to pay Dominion nearly $800 million. It’s so much money, they’ve already started selling ad space on Tucker Carlson’s forehead.” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth WatchingJordan Klepper took “Daily Show” cameras inside the world’s largest gun show.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightMichelle Obama will appear on “The Tonight Show” on Wednesday.Also, Check This Out“I wanted to be considered for a range of roles,” Chita Rivera writes in her new memoir, “and for the most part I succeeded.” Daniel Dorsa for The New York TimesThe 90-year-old singer-dancer Chita Rivera reflects on her life and career in “Chita: A Memoir.” More

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      Happy 100th Birthday, 16-Millimeter Film

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      The format was initially a boon to amateurs. Now, with moviemaking gone digital, it’s the choice of auteurs like Darren Aronofsky and Kelly Reichardt.One hundred years ago, the Eastman Kodak Company introduced a shiny new camera that promised to revolutionize moviemaking. The company had been selling filming devices for more than two decades by then, but this novel contraption — the Ciné-Kodak camera, sold with the Kodascope projector — offered a new thrill: the ability to make and screen movies at home, with no special expertise.The technical marvel, however, wasn’t just the camera but also the film inside. Until 1923, the film used most commonly in motion pictures was 35 millimeters wide. That year, Kodak produced a new format that was only 16 millimeters. The image wasn’t as sharp when you blew it up on the big screen, but it allowed for smaller, cheaper and more portable cameras.16 millimeter ushered in a new era of movies made outside the Hollywood system. Regular folks could now record their own lives, journalists and soldiers could film in the midst of war, and activists could shoot political documentaries in the street. Until digital video arrived in the late 1990s, 16-millimeter film was the mainstay of the amateur or independent filmmaker, requiring neither the investment nor the know-how of commercial cinema.Last week, at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which holds thousands of 16-millimeter reels in its collection, the film archivist Elena Rossi-Snook projected some shorts for a group of undergraduates from Marymount Manhattan College. As the projector whirred, a beam of light cut through the darkened room, painting the screen with scenes from the 1946 animated “Boundary Lines,” a stirring movie by Philip Stapp about social integrity in the wake of World War II. That was followed by “The End,” an antiwar stoner comedy directed by a teenager, Alfonso Sanchez, in 1968. The third film, “Black Faces” from 1970, was an ebullient, one-minute montage of portraits of Harlem residents.These productions, precious documents of the lives and concerns of ordinary Americans, have endured, Rossi-Snook explained, because their makers had relatively cheap and convenient access to film, a medium that can last hundreds of years if stored properly.Natalie Portman in “Black Swan,” another Aronofsky film shot on 16 millimeter.Niko Tavernise/Fox Searchlight PicturesToday, 16 millimeter is no longer optimal for the amateur filmmaker. Analog film is increasingly expensive, fewer and fewer labs can process it, and the format doesn’t allow the nearly unlimited shooting and instant playback that video does. But even as it turns 100, 16 millimeter still has a unique look that neither 35-millimeter film nor video can rival.When projected on the screen, analog film has a three-dimensional, pointillist texture called “grain,” a product of its synthetic makeup. There is more grain in 16 millimeter than in 35 millimeter, resulting in a fuzzier, flickering picture. In the 20th century, that was a drawback for professional filmmakers seeking crisp, theatrical images. But today, as high-definition media saturate our lives, some directors choose 16 millimeter precisely for its rougher look. It reminds us that what we’re watching is not the world as is, but filtered and transformed, with great creativity, through a chemical process.The filmmaker Darren Aronofsky has shot several movies on 16-millimeter film, including “The Wrestler” (2008), “Black Swan” (2010) and “Mother!” (2017). But when he was making his debut feature, “Pi” (1998), 16 millimeter was a necessity, not a choice. The resolution of available digital cameras wasn’t good enough for feature filmmaking at the time, and Aronofsky couldn’t afford 35 millimeter. But he and his cinematographer, Matthew Libatique, soon realized that 16 millimeter — especially the high-contrast stock they used called reversal film — emphasized the hallucinatory style of “Pi,” a black-and-white psychological thriller that delves into the obsessions of a paranoid number theorist.“We decided to really lean into 16 millimeter,” Aronofsky said in a phone interview. “I wanted the big grain and the contrast-y look. It’s funny, because we just had the 25th anniversary of the film, and we blew it up for IMAX. And the IMAX people were nervous because of how grainy it was. They wanted to know if I wanted to clear out some of the grain with computer technology. And we said, absolutely not. We loved the look of it.”Several TV shows from the late ’90s and early 2000s, including “The O.C.” and “Sex and the City,” used Super 16, a variation of 16 millimeter with a larger picture area that gave them a sense of real-time immediacy. The first 10 seasons of “The Walking Dead” were also largely shot on 16 millimeter to capture the grimy, crumbling feel of classic horror cinema.The cinematographer John Inwood, who filmed 150 episodes of the comedy “Scrubs,” recalled that 16-millimeter cameras, which are smaller and lighter than their 35-millimeter counterparts (and even many contemporary professional video cameras), were crucial in developing the series’s frenetic mockumentary style.“It was good for ‘Scrubs’ because we moved the cameras a lot, and we were sometimes in tight spaces,” he told me. “We shot in an actual hospital, the former North Hollywood hospital, and we shot in every square inch of it, even down to the morgue.”Chadwick Boseman in a flashback to the Vietnam War in Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods.” The director wanted those scenes to look as if they were archival newsreel footage.NetflixAs digital cameras have become sharper and more versatile, many filmmakers have turned to 16 millimeter to evoke the analog past and the blurry, precarious nature of memory. In an interview with Gold Derby, Newton Thomas Sigel, who filmed Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods” (2020), said the director had insisted to Netflix that they use 16-millimeter reversal film for the sequences set amid the Vietnam War, despite the costs and logistical challenges. The film had to be shipped from Vietnam to an American lab for processing, and by the time the crew members could see what they had shot, Chadwick Boseman’s acting schedule had already ended. But Lee was adamant that the scenes look authentic, like archival newsreels filmed in the field in the 1970s.The veteran cinematographer Ed Lachman used Super 16 on two of his collaborations with the director Todd Haynes, both of them period dramas: the mini-series “Mildred Pierce” (2011), and “Carol” (2015), which garnered him an Academy Award nomination.On both projects, the format was chosen to mimic photographic images from the 1940s and ’50s, and the grittiness of postwar America. But Lachman realized that the grain also brought “tension to the surface of the image,” paralleling the repressive qualities of the characters in both “Mildred Pierce” and “Carol.”For Lachman, the appeal of 16 millimeter transcends nostalgia. It comes down to cinema’s status as an art, meant to stylize rather than simply reproduce reality. He likened film to painting, and grain to brushstrokes. “The grain changes in each frame with exposure,” he said. “It’s like breathing, almost like an anthropomorphic quality.”Kelly Reichardt turned to 16 millimeter after video shots of the snow looked too flat.Sony Pictures ClassicsThe filmmaker Kelly Reichardt recalled that when she started shooting her 2016 feature, “Certain Women,” she didn’t have the budget for 16 millimeter. But when she and her cameraman, Christopher Blauvelt, did test shoots in Montana, where the film is set, Reichardt was horrified at how “flat” the snow looked on video.“With film stocks, things weren’t so real looking,” Reichardt said. “A lot of it is grain, and 16 has more grain than 35. So when you blow it up, you don’t get the hard lines that you get in HD, which is what you see in sports.”A grant ultimately allowed Reichardt to shoot “Certain Women” on 16 millimeter. It made the production more laborious, but the results — soft, textured images of wide roads, snowy mountains and grassy plains, all shimmering with light, dust and shadow — made it worth it.“I guess it’s about beauty, in a way,” Reichardt said. “I remember on ‘30 Rock’ they did a little thing where Lemon walks in front of the HD camera, and it’s like, she’s a skeleton hag. You know? You see every single thing. It’s very unforgiving. For nature, too.” More

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      In ‘The Diplomat,’ Keri Russell Shows Her Good Side

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      The actor’s first substantial TV role since the Soviet spy drama “The Americans” finds her switching sides, starring as a savvy civil servant tasked with upholding America’s reputation abroad.On a recent Thursday afternoon, the actress Keri Russell paused in a corner of Brooklyn Bridge Park to admire a starling.It was technically spring, though the weather had other ideas, and Russell, in subdued plumage, braved the wind in chunky boots and a black puffer jacket. Her hair was tousled. Liner ringed each eye, possibly a souvenir from the previous night’s too many margaritas with friends. She didn’t look much like a woman who devoted years of her life to undermining the American democratic project. Or like a woman now charged with safeguarding it.But Russell has been both of those women (and a lot of other women besides). At this point in her career, she is probably best known for her six seasons on the FX drama “The Americans” as Elizabeth Jennings, a Soviet sleeper agent with an ambitious collection of ruses and wigs who earned Russell three Emmy nominations. Now Russell has taken on an opposing role: In the “The Diplomat,” a Netflix series debuting on Thursday, she stars as Kate Wyler, a savvy U.S. civil servant tasked with upholding America’s reputation abroad.A veteran ambassador, Kate is about to take a post in Kabul when an international incident shunts her and her husband, Hal (Rufus Sewell), to London. An English manor house is not a war zone, but Kate behaves otherwise. Armored in punishing heels and sleek sheath dresses, she treats even polite conversation as battlefield maneuvers. But in a departure from “The Americans,” Kate’s work is almost entirely aboveboard. She wears no wigs.As some Canada geese waddled nearby, Russell considered the disparities between these two roles. “It was fun being a baddie, doing sneaky stuff,” she said. But “The Diplomat” also has its pleasures, she insisted. “It’s awesome to be smart and capable and dress people down and be so steady about it,” she said.If Elizabeth is a baddie, does that make Kate a goody? Russell gave a cagey smile. “We’ll see,” she said.In “The Diplomat,” Russell plays a veteran ambassador who is about to take a post in Kabul when an international incident shunts her and her husband, Hal (Rufus Sewell), to London. Alex Bailey/NetflixRussell began her career as a teenage dancer in “The Mickey Mouse Club” and then starred in “Felicity” as a capricious college student and the patron saint of dithery girls everywhere. She did not necessarily expect to spend her midcareer playing hypercompetent women while also showing the uncertainty that undergirds that competence. In addition to playing Elizabeth and Kate, she has also recently appeared as an indomitable mother in the horror comedy “Cocaine Bear” and as a cool, if not especially effective, assassin in “Extrapolations.”Felicity would not have excelled at either espionage or high-stakes diplomacy. “Felicity would write a poem about it,” Russell said. But that was 20 years ago. Russell, who in person is outspoken, unfussy, charmingly profane and so candid that she encourages similar candor in others and now absolutely has kompromat on me, has grown up. She has since become a mother. She has two children with her former husband, Shane Deary, and a young son with her partner Matthew Rhys, her co-star on “The Americans.”“Moms are like that!” she said of these recent capable characters. “You’re going to make it happen. A mom can do 37 things in one day!”Russell comes to this park, near the home that she shares with Rhys and her children, on the rare occasions when she has an early morning to herself. Sometimes, before anyone else is awake, she’ll ride her bike through the park’s loops. “It’s a beautiful, happening place,” she said, pointing out the roller rink, the basketball courts, a meadow, the indelible view of Manhattan across the East River.Over the last year or so, those mornings have been rarer. It was during the Christmas holiday of 2021, when Russell had volunteered to cook dinner for the children’s three sets of grandparents, that she received the scripts for “The Diplomat.” With Rhys already away for part of the year filming the gloomy HBO revival of “Perry Mason”—“I was already punishing him with guilt for not being home,” she said — she wasn’t looking for another starring role.Russell has played several indomitable mothers, including in the horror comedy “Cocaine Bear.”Universal PicturesStill, something in Kate’s ambition and savvy, as well as the humor of her marital tussles with Hal, called to her. She agreed to a video call with the show’s creator, Debora Cahn, a veteran of “Homeland” and “The West Wing.”Cahn had wanted Russell for the role, trusting that Kate would benefit from Russell’s beauty, grace and ability to convey emotions even in characters who control and repress their feelings. But Kate was a more neurotic proposition than past Russell characters — gorgeous enough to be the subject of a Vogue spread in the show but also sweaty, squirrelly, with a lot of angst behind the poise.“There’s a part of Kate that is itchy and twitchy and always uncomfortable in her own skin,” Cahn said in a recent phone interview.Russell was a woman of far more poise, Cahn assumed, but she knew that Russell was also a skilled actor. She could perform that discomfort. And yet, as she watched Russell squirm through the video call, she discovered that discomfort was part of the Russell package, too.“I get really nervous,” Russell confirmed in the park. “I do really sweat a lot.” (She didn’t seem to be sweating here, though it was quite cold.)This contradiction — glamour in the front, social anxiety in the back — helped Cahn explore the thesis of “The Diplomat,” which is that everybody sweats, even (or especially) the bodies in power.“In Buckingham Palace, in the Great Hall of the People, everybody in there is still a leaky human,” Cahn said.Kate, on the show, puts it more tartly. “You show people the nice parts because, believe me, that’s all that anyone wants to see,” she says.The effort that Kate makes to maintain a flawless veneer resonated with Russell, though largely because she has never had much patience with or talent for the public-facing aspects of her profession — the interviews, the award shows, the times when she has to perform a more idealized version of herself. She used to beat herself up for this unease, but she has since accepted it.“I’m like, that’s who I am,” she said.“I like to never be busy,” Russell said, despite recent evidence to the contrary. “I like to like drift away and roam the park.”Celeste Sloman for The New York TimesAnd yet, sets are places where she has always felt at home. “The Diplomat” filmed last summer, mostly in London and mostly on location. Sewell had never met Russell, his work wife, until they were both in the hair and makeup trailer, but he was struck by her openness and ease.“She immediately was very friendly and personable and easy,” he said. “I automatically thought it was going to be relatively straightforward working with her, because she was a lot of fun.”Fun is not necessarily a word that anyone would apply to Kate or that Kate would apply to herself. However sweaty Russell feels herself to be, she moves through the world, or at least through the park, with less strain and tension. (And she is fun. At one point, she pulled out her phone and showed a picture of herself looking unhinged in an ash-blond wig, an outtake from “The Americans.” She sends the picture to her friends when it’s time to party. “We don’t let her have chardonnay anymore,” she said of the image.)While Kate is a creature of ambition, Russell has always held her work more lightly, even as she pushes herself to give vivid, committed performances.“When I’m there, I work hard,” she said. “I want to be good.” But she drew a distinction between herself and Rhys, even though they take on many of the same projects. (He is in “Extrapolations” and “Cocaine Bear,” too.)“He likes to be busy,” she said. “I like to never be busy. I like to like drift away and roam the park.”She was near the river now. The sun turned the gray water gold. Ducks dabbled. Unlike Kate, no one needed her to save the world today or to sweat through her clothes while neutralizing some new crisis. Hypercompetence could wait. She needed only to find her way back through the park and text Rhys to see if he could meet her at an Italian restaurant close by. Among the 37 things, there was just time for a beer before school pickup. More

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      Why TV Can’t Quite Take a Stand on Stan Culture

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      “Dave” and “Swarm” try to demystify extreme fandom but end up pledging fealty to celebrity.The “stan,” a word that comes from Eminem’s seminal 2000 song about obsessive, sometimes violent superfans, has become a locus for celebrity anxiety in recent years. Popular fan bases can be malicious in defense of their idols — see Taylor’s Swifties, Nicki’s Barbz and Beyoncé’s BeyHive. (Selena Gomez recently had to chide her fans for sending death threats to Hailey Bieber because of a convoluted rivalry instigated in part by eyebrow lamination.) It can create an awkward dynamic for the famouses: Denounce your fan base’s zealotry, and you risk seeming ungrateful. And while obsessive fans have existed for as long as celebrity has, the internet, which is conducive to acts of anonymous virulence, has made stan fury particularly potent. It was only a matter of time before scripted TV tackled this subject. In the FX comedy “Dave,” Lil Dicky (Dave Burd), the annoying or — depending on your tolerance for anxiety-ridden white rappers — endearing M.C. at the center of the series, has several uneasy encounters with fans in the Season 3 premiere. While trying to destroy a concrete bust of his head that a fan gives him after a show, he meets a young woman named Campbell (Jocelyn Hudon), and they strike up a conversation. “Sorry, I don’t know you,” she says. Relieved, Lil Dicky confesses that he prefers that anonymity. She invites him to a house party, during which one of her friends inadvertently reveals that Campbell is actually a huge Lil Dicky fan and that her mission was to have sex with him.Later, party guests ask to see Lil Dicky’s penis; he refuses. They surround him, yelling and screaming. They rip his clothes off. Eventually he flees. The escape is played mostly for laughs, but a current of unease and even violence lurks in the scene. FX“Dave” has always possessed a meta, synergistic relationship to fame. Burd, who’s also a creator of the show, essentially plays an exaggerated version of himself; he became popular thanks to his catchy, puerile raps under the same moniker he shares with his alter ego. His hypeman, GaTa, is also his hypeman in real life. Travis (Taco) Bennett, who plays Elz, Lil Dicky’s producer, was part of the rap collective Odd Future. Celebrities like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Justin Bieber, Kourtney Kardashian and Doja Cat have played themselves. During the first season, Lil Dicky desperately desires the spotlight, and the show — as if expressing its bona fides — brings out a constant parade of famous people to heighten its verisimilitude. But what’s notable about the second and third seasons (at least based on the first three episodes) is their focus on fame’s darker side, how it distorts the ego and emboldens zealous, even aggressive fans. Stan worship is taken to its most extreme conclusion in “Swarm,” a new Amazon Prime Video limited series created by Janine Nabers and Donald Glover. The show’s protagonist, Dre (Dominique Fishback), kills anybody who speaks ill of her pop idol, Ni’Jah (Nirine S. Brown), a clear stand-in for Beyoncé, whose fan base is notoriously overprotective, to put it diplomatically. After Dre loses her foster sister, Marissa (played by the R.&B. singer Chloe Bailey), to suicide, she fixates on the people who tweeted something mean about Marissa or Ni’Jah. But Dre’s uncontrollable urges extend to Ni’Jah herself. After some ingenious maneuvering, Dre shows up at an after-party she knows Ni’Jah is attending and — in a winking nod to a Tiffany Haddish story about an actress who bit Beyoncé in 2017 — bites her idol on the chin. In the final episode, Dre, after killing a ticket scalper to get in, commandeers her way to the front row at a Ni’Jah show. The series ends on a deliberately surrealist note, which calls the logic of the entire series into question. But the takeaway remains unclear. The ambiguity seeps into the framework of the show, which, as compelling and mordantly funny as it is, can’t seem to figure out what exactly it’s trying to say about stan culture. Is Dre really a stan? Or a deeply disturbed young woman who fixates on a pop star as a way to cope with grief? Or both? The “Dave” premiere ends in a similarly ambiguous place, though that show’s embrace of sophomoric sexual humor undermines its more salient points about the frightening consequences of standom. Both “Dave” and “Swarm” opt for dark humor, the better to highlight the absurdity of toxic stan behavior — an affection so passionate that it turns vicious. And both shows seem ultimately ambivalent and unsure about this state of affairs, gesturing toward the dangers of such fandom before retreating into fantasy. There’s an odd uncertainty at their cores, a sense that even the writers don’t quite know where to land on the fierce relationships people have with celebrity. The phrase “parasocial relationship” has been bandied about as of late, defining the warped one-sided dynamic that some fans have with their favorite celebrities. But perhaps some of the confusion “Dave” and “Swarm” seem to convey lies in the fact that the critique is coming from inside the house. Their creators — Burd and Glover — are both famous. Both shows question the excessive adoration some fans feel for pop stars but rely in part on securing public figures to appear in them. (In addition to Bailey, who’s signed to Beyoncé’s label, Billie Eilish and Paris Jackson, daughter of Michael, make guest appearances on “Swarm.” And Malia Obama wrote for the series.) As bizarre as Dre and Campbell’s actions are, fame’s corrosive force goes both ways. Nicki Minaj, for example, is notorious for siccing her most rabid fans on people who dare to tweet criticism. Other celebrities (including, notably, Beyoncé) don’t always engage with their fan bases enough to tell them to cool it when their devotion turns threatening. Critiquing such passion while benefiting and sometimes even exploiting celebrity clout is an inherently untenable position.“Dave” seems to understand this tension to some degree; there are plenty of episodes that mock Lil Dicky’s growing egocentrism. “Swarm” doesn’t really engage with Ni’Jah’s celebrity from her point of view. She remains a cipher — another nod to Beyoncé’s real-life inscrutability — but the decision to characterize her that way further blunts the show’s critique of stan culture. Even the “Swarm” brain trust seems to acknowledge their awkward proximity to the show’s main theme. In a recent interview with Vulture, Nabers said she wrote Beyoncé a letter about the show to explain their intention. At another point in the conversation, she mentioned that Glover and Beyoncé are friends. In a different interview, Fishback politely demurs from naming the BeyHive as the inspiration behind Ni’Jah acolytes at all. “It’s an amalgamation of different celebrities and our current climate’s being kind of intense about our love for celebrity.” Their deference to Beyoncé is telling. Even they seem to fear her fans’ venom.Source photographs: Byron Cohen/FX. More

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      Late Night Skewers Clarence Thomas for Not Disclosing Gifts

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      “The Daily Show” guest host Jordan Klepper joked that Thomas has “taken more free vacations than all the Bravo housewives combined.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.The Best of FriendsJustice Clarence Thomas is under fire for unreported gifts, trips and other financial transactions with the conservative donor Harlan Crow.On Monday, the “Daily Show” guest host Jordan Klepper joked that Thomas is “the Supreme Court justice who’s taken more free vacations than all the Bravo housewives combined.”“Last week, we learned that Thomas had secretly accepted luxury trips from right-wing billionaire Harlan Crow. And that’s his actual name, not his ‘Game of Thrones’ cosplay character.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“Crow is an arch-conservative who’s known for his assorted Nazi memorabilia and garden full of statues of the 20th century’s worst despots. It’s so impressive that they put him on the cover of ‘Hitler Homes and Goebbels.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“On top of that, Clarence Thomas’s mom is still living in that house rent-free, and Harlan Crow is paying for thousands of dollars of renovations. All of which Clarence Thomas should have disclosed by law — although, in his defense, the law is complicated, and he is only a Supreme Court justice.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“Justice Thomas claims that he did not have to report all these gifts because he and Crow are such close buds. But this must be one hell of a friendship because on Thursday we learned that, back in 2014, Harlan Crow bought property from Clarence Thomas, including the house where Thomas’s elderly mother was living. That might give him a little influence.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, Crow claims there’s nothing corrupt about this, saying, ‘My intention is to one day create a public museum at the Thomas home.’ Just a reminder, Harlan Crow has Hitler’s napkins and a statue of Stalin in his garden. So building you a museum? Not a huge compliment.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Love is Blind Edition)“Netflix is apologizing after last night’s ‘Love is Blind’ live reunion was delayed due to technical issues. Yeah, even though they couldn’t see the reunion, ‘Love is Blind’ fans still managed to fall in love with it anyway.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingFreddie Highmore, a guest on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” shared horror stories from previous talk show experiences (though he would not name names).What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightFresh from her Coachella performance, the rapper Glorilla will perform Tuesday on Jimmy Kimmel.Also, Check This OutJessica Hecht, left, said she and her “Summer, 1976” castmate, Laura Linney, right, share a “clarity of purpose.” She added: “I’m interested in plays that talk about intimacy.”Thea Traff for The New York TimesLaura Linney and Jessica Hecht play intensely intimate friends in David Auburn’s new play, “Summer, 1976.” More

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      Hollywood Writers Approve of Strike as Shutdown Looms

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      The writers have not gone on strike in 15 years, and the vote gives their unions the right to call for a walkout when their contract expires on May 1.Hollywood is getting ever closer to a shutdown.The unions representing thousands of television and movie writers said on Monday that they had overwhelming support for a strike, giving union leaders the right to call for a walkout when the writers’ contract with the major Hollywood studios expires on May 1.The unions, which are affiliated East and West Coast branches of the Writers Guild of America, said more than 9,000 writers had approved a strike authorization, with 98 percent of the vote.W.G.A. leaders have said this is an “existential” moment for writers, contending that compensation has stagnated over the last decade despite the explosion of television series in the streaming era. In an email last week to writers, the lead negotiators said that “the survival of writing as a profession is at stake in this negotiation.”With two weeks to go before the contract expires, there has been little sign of progress in the talks. In the email, the negotiating committee said the studios “have failed to offer meaningful responses on the core economic issues” and offered only small concessions in a few areas.“In short, the studios have shown no sign that they intend to address the problems our members are determined to fix in this negotiation,” the email said.The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of Hollywood production companies, said in a statement that a strike authorization “should come as no surprise to anyone.”“A strike authorization vote has always been part of the W.G.A.’s plan, announced before the parties even exchanged proposals,” the statement said. “Our goal is, and continues to be, to reach a fair and reasonable agreement.” It added, “An agreement is only possible if the guild is committed to turning its focus to serious bargaining by engaging in full discussions of the issues with the companies and searching for reasonable compromises.”The last time the writers went on strike was in 2007, and that strike lasted 100 days.Nick Ut/Associated PressIn recent weeks, Hollywood executives have begun preparing for a strike, both by stockpiling scripts and by getting ready to produce a torrent of reality series, which do not need script writers. David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns the Warner Bros. film and TV studios as well as HBO, said at a news media event last week that he was hopeful a deal would be reached. He added that “a strike will be a challenge for the whole industry.”Still, he said, the company was fully prepared if there was a walkout.“We’re assuming the worst from a business perspective,” he said. “We’ve got ourselves ready. We’ve had a lot of content that’s been produced.”A strike authorization does not guarantee writers will take to the picket lines in two weeks. In 2017, a last-minute deal was struck with the studios not long after 96 percent of the writers voted to authorize a strike. The last time the writers went on strike was in 2007. That stoppage dragged for 100 days, into early 2008, and cost the Los Angeles economy an estimated $2.1 billion.If a strike begins in early May, late-night shows like “Saturday Night Live” and talk shows hosted by Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers will go dark immediately. It would take a strike of several months before viewers began to notice an effect on scripted television series and movies.The streaming era has resulted in a significant rise in the number of scripted television series that are produced, but writers say working conditions have not kept pace.“Writers are working more weeks for less money,” said Eric Haywood, a veteran writer and producer, and a member of the W.G.A. negotiating committee. “And in some cases, veteran writers are working for the same money or, in some cases, less money than they made just a few years ago.”In some cases, veteran writers are working for the same money or, in some cases, less money, than they made just a few years ago,” said Eric Haywood, right, a veteran writer and producer, and a member of the W.G.A. negotiating committee. Sarah Stacke for The New York TimesThe timing of the talks has an added complexity given the current financial challenges for all media and entertainment companies.Over the last year, share prices for those companies have nose-dived after Wall Street began questioning why many streaming services were losing billions of dollars a year. The studios are quickly trying to make those streaming services profitable, after years of focusing primarily on growth. The shift is coming at a cost.Disney is in the midst of 7,000 job cuts. Warner Bros. Discovery, confronting a debt load of about $50 billion, shelved projects and laid off thousands of workers last year. Other media companies are taking similar cost-cutting measures.The writers do not appear to be sympathetic.“The current status quo is unsustainable,” Mr. Haywood said.The writers have taken particular aim at so-called minirooms. There is no one definition of a miniroom, but they have proliferated in the streaming era.In one example, the studios will convene a miniroom before a show has been picked up by a studio and scheduled to air. A small group of writers will develop a series and write several scripts over two or three months.But because the studios have not ordered the series, they will use that as justification to pay writers less than if they were in a formal writers’ room, union leaders said. And given the relatively short duration of the position, those writers are then left scrambling to find another job if the show is not picked up.One union leader likened minirooms to “labor camps” during the negotiations, according to two people familiar with the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.A W.G.A. spokesman said the reference was not literal and had come during a presentation lasting an hour and a half.“Development work has always been paid at a premium because you’re coming up with the idea,” Ellen Stutzman, the chief negotiator for the W.G.A., said in an interview. “If you’re going to have these rooms before you pick up a show or a season, you should pay writers a premium.”The writers have also said residuals — which Ms. Stutzman called “the profit participation of the middle-class writer” — have been affected in the streaming era. Before streaming, writers could receive residual payments whenever a show was licensed, whether that was for syndication, an international deal or DVD sales.But in the streaming era, as global services like Netflix and Amazon have been reluctant to license their series, those distribution arms have been cut off and replaced with a fixed residual, Ms. Stutzman said.“If an overwhelming majority of the content writers create is for the streaming platforms where they are completely cut out of global growth and success, that is a very big problem,” she said. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Amityville: An Origin Story’ and ‘Revengineers’

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      A docuseries on MGM+ delves into the history of the real Amityville house of horrors, and a new prank show from Mark Rober and Jimmy Kimmel premieres on Discovery.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, April 17-23. Details and times are subject to change.MondayFrom left, Kevin Garnett, LaKeith Stanfield and Adam Sandler in “Uncut Gems.”Wally McGrady/A24UNCUT GEMS (2019) 5 p.m. on SHO2e. This film from the Safdie brothers “blows in like a Category 4 hurricane” with its “tumult of sensory extremes,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The Times. The movie follows Howard Ratner (​​Adam Sandler), a debt-ridden New York City jeweler and gambling addict, as he attempts to retrieve and sell a large black opal in order to keep his debt collector — also known as his mafia-adjacent brother-in-law (Eric Bogosian)— at bay. As Ratner juggles familial obligations and relationships with his own survival, “the Safdies don’t judge Howard or, worse yet, ask us to,” Dargis writes. “Instead, they situate him in a specific historical moment (the year is 2012), throwing him into a late-capitalist, wholly transactional, anxiously insecure world.”TuesdayDEADLIEST CATCH 8 p.m. on DISCOVERY. This reality series about fishing crews in the Bering Sea near Alaska is back for its 19th season, in which a new generation of skippers will partner with the show’s veteran fishing captains to start their careers and learn how to become successful in a dangerous industry.Michael Cera, left, and Elliot Page in “Juno.”Doane Gregory/Fox Searchlight PicturesJUNO (2007) 8 p.m. on MAX. This Academy Award-winning film from the director Jason Reitman tells the story of Juno MacGuff, a wisecracking, smart teenager who becomes pregnant. The film follows Juno “on a twisty path toward responsibility and greater self-understanding” as she decides to move forward with the pregnancy and give the child up for adoption. This journey is “a message that is not anti-abortion but rather pro-adulthood,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. “‘Juno’ could not be further from the kind of hand-wringing, moralizing melodrama that such a condition might suggest.” Instead, he wrote, it “evolves from a coy, knowing farce into a heartfelt, serious comedy.”WednesdayM. Sanjayan in “Changing Planet II.”Jennifer Jones/BBC StudiosCHANGING PLANET II 9 p.m. on PBS. This show about the changes affecting some of the most vulnerable ecosystems in the world — and what local experts and scientists are doing to combat those changes — returns for its second year, as Ella Al-Shamahi, a paleoanthropologist and stand-up comic, and Ade Adepitan, a television presenter and children’s author, join the global conservation scientist M. Sanjayan in revisiting the communities featured last year. From Brazil to California, Greenland to the Maldives, and Kenya to Cambodia, the series highlights the progress and setbacks of a series of conservation projects across the world.ThursdayREVENGINEERS 11 p.m. on DISCOVERY. This new prank show from Jimmy Kimmel and the NASA engineer turned YouTube star Mark Rober follows Rober and his team as they exact revenge on social wrongdoers through a series of elaborately engineered pranks. After identifying their targets, the series documents Rober’s team as they brainstorm funny and technically interesting ways to catch the wrongdoers in the act. The show is a companion series to “This Is Mark Rober,” a behind-the-scenes series of Rober’s viral video ideas, which premiered last week.FridayTupac Shakur in “Dear Mama.”FXDEAR MAMA 10 p.m. on FX. Titled after the rapper Tupac Shakur’s 1995 hit song “Dear Mama,” this five-part docuseries from Allen Hughes (“The Defiant Ones”) explores the relationship between Tupac and his mother — the civil rights activist Afeni Shakur — as well as their individual lives and legacies. Archival footage and interviews with Tupac and Afeni are interspersed with Tupac’s music as a way to link mother and son across the decades in this documentary, which tells their stories in the context of Black activism, hip-hop and the struggle for human rights.CONTINUUM: JASON MORAN & CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE 10 p.m. on PBS. In this new episode from PBS’s “Next at the Kennedy Center,” a series that spotlights cultural leaders from various genres of music, theater and dance, the bassist Christian McBride and the pianist Jason Moran come together to play music by jazz masters like Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus and Louis Armstrong, and tell stories about their teachers and students. Revered as modern jazz luminaries, McBride and Moran hold eight Grammys and a MacArthur fellowship between them.SaturdayCHASING THE RAINS 8 p.m. on BBCA. Timed to premiere on Earth Day, this three-part documentary series follows a different animal matriarch in each episode — a cheetah, an elephant and an African wild dog — as they fight to take care of their families amid one of the worst droughts in decades. The series is filmed in the Kenyan wilderness and narrated by Adjoa Andoh (“Bridgerton,” “Invictus”).Dustin Hoffman, left, and Robert Redford in “All the President’s Men.”Associated PressALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (1976) 8 p.m. on TCM. Based on the best-selling book of the same name by the Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, this multiple Academy Award winning film follows Woodward (Robert Redford) and Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) as they uncover and break the story of the Watergate scandal that ultimately brought down the Nixon presidency. In his 1976 review for The Times, Vincent Canby described the film as “an unequivocal smash-hit,” praising its accuracy and writing that it is “a vivid footnote to some contemporary American history that still boggles the mind.”SundayAMITYVILLE: AN ORIGIN STORY 10 p.m. on MGM+. This four episode docuseries delves into the real story behind what happened at the Orchard Avenue home in Amityville, N.Y., after the 1979 film, “The Amityville Horror,” inspired by the book of the same name by Jay Anson, generated a slew of paranormal theories, movies and books. Beginning with the DeFeo family’s murder in 1974, and continuing with an examination of the Lutz family’s 28-day stay in the house, this series uses archival footage, along with interviews with family members, witnesses and former investigators to try to find out what exactly transpired in this Long Island “house of horrors.” More