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      in Television

      On ‘S.N.L.,’ Luigi Mangione Is Busting Out All Over

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      As Chris Rock hosts, the man charged in the UnitedHealthcare shooting dominates this week’s riffs on the news.The 50th season of “Saturday Night Live” continues to provide the show with opportunities to revive many of its long-running characters. Last week, it was the Church Lady; this week, it was Nancy Grace, the TV personality and frequently outraged true-crime commentator, who has been frequently impersonated on “S.N.L.” over the years by cast members including Ana Gasteyer and Amy Poehler.On this outing, Grace was played by Sarah Sherman as she commented on the outpouring of online support for Luigi Mangione, who was charged in the fatal shooting of the UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson.“What is going on in this country?” Sherman declared. “Y’all, this man is not a sex icon, OK?”She added, “And yet, folks online are posting things like — am I reading this right? — ‘Luigi got that BDE.’ Really? I hope ‘BDE’ stands for Behavior Dat’s Evil.”Sherman went on to interview guests including Kenan Thompson, playing a regular customer at the Pennsylvania McDonald’s where Mangione was arrested.“Well, Nancy, I’ve been eating McDonald’s every day for three years,” Thompson said. “I got Type 10 diabetes. Blue Cross? Bitch, I got blue foot. You know what my health insurance plan is called? Hoping it goes away.”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 Television

      The Trump Show Is Returning. Will It Be Triumph, Tragedy or Farce?

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      On his last show before Election Day, John Oliver allowed himself to dream a little dream. Mr. Oliver, whose “Last Week Tonight” speaks to a mostly left-of-center crowd, spent most of the episode making the case for Kamala Harris. But also, he asked his audience, wouldn’t it be nice, for the first time since 2015, to have the option of simply ignoring Donald J. Trump’s existence? “I want so badly to live in that world!” he said.A week later, Mr. Oliver was back, reporting from a world he found rather less preferable. He devoted the episode to what the Trump victory meant. But first, he gave his audience permission to change the channel.“It is understandable,” he said, “not to want yet another guy in a suit doom-squawking at you.”Mr. Oliver, of course, spoke from a particular political position. But he was also voicing a kind of weariness that goes beyond reproductive issues or deportation policies or the health of democracy. The Trump Era has been a lot, and for a long time. One person has been Topic A, B and C for nearly a decade, throughout popular culture, but most of all on his native medium, TV.On Nov. 5, that might all have ended. It didn’t. How will we — collectively, as a culture — do four more years of this? And what might that even look like?WHEN I SAY THAT Donald Trump, in his first term, was a “TV president,” I mean something different than when we used the phrase for, say, Richard M. Nixon or Bill Clinton.It isn’t just about his having been a politician who “used the medium” to send a message, though he was that. It isn’t just about his having been a reality-TV star and decades-long media gadfly who instinctively thought like television, who craved the same types of conflict and provocation that the cameras do, who was always on, who for all practical purposes was as much TV character as man — though he was that too.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 Movies

      Richard Gere Calls ‘Blonde on Blonde’ His All-Time Favorite

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      “He’s our Picasso,” the actor said of Bob Dylan.It has been more than four decades since an Armani-clad Richard Gere slunk around Los Angeles in Paul Schrader’s “American Gigolo.”Now Gere, 75, and Schrader have reunited on “Oh, Canada,” an adaptation of Russell Banks’s 2021 novel, “Foregone,” about a dying documentarian who wants to confess, mostly to his wife.Gere and Schrader were each dealing with end-of-life losses when they jumped into the project: Banks, a close friend of Schrader’s, had died from cancer in 2023. Gere’s father also died that year.“We were coming from emotional places,” Gere said.In addition to “Oh, Canada,” Gere made his American TV series debut last month in “The Agency,” an adaptation of the French hit “The Bureau.”“My wife and I binge-watched the French show and genuinely loved it,” he said. “So when I got a call saying they wanted to do an English-language version, I thought, Hmm, that’s kind of a double-edged sword. One, yeah, that sounds interesting, but two, the French one was so good, would they screw this up?”Gere was about to travel from Paris to Marrakech to meet his family when he called to talk about his admiration for former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and the chef-humanitarian José Andrés, the Dylan song he can’t imagine not existing and the importance of Tibet. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.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 Television

      Conan O’Brien’s Parents Die 3 Days Apart

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      Thomas O’Brien, an epidemiologist, and Ruth O’Brien, a lawyer, juggled successful careers with raising six children, including the comedy star.The parents of Conan O’Brien, the longtime late-night television host and a star in the comedy world, died this week within days of one another.Thomas Francis O’Brien, 95, an epidemiologist, and Ruth Reardon O’Brien, 92, a lawyer who made strides for women in the legal field, both died at their home in Brookline, Mass., according to the Bell O’Dea Funeral Home. Dr. O’Brien died on Monday, and Ms. O’Brien, died on Thursday.Happy families are not exactly a common topic in comedy. The parents of Conan O’Brien, 61, were not only celebrated in their respective fields but by the most well-known of their six children.Conan O’Brien credited his father with introducing him to comedy and described him in an interview this week in The Boston Globe as “the funniest guy in the room.” He added that his father had a “voracious appetite for ideas and people and the crazy variety and irony of life.”Ruth R. O’BrienThomas F. O’Brien, M.D.Bell O’Dea Funeral HomeThomas O’Brien spent most of his career at what is now Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where he was the first director of the infectious diseases division, and was on faculty at Harvard Medical School. He also was a co-founder of the Collaborating Centre for Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance for the World Health Organization. He became known for his work around antibiotic-resistant bacteria.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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      How Christian Slater Went From Bad Boy to Good Dad

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      On a July morning, the actor Christian Slater sat on a bench at the Long Beach marina, grimacing in the California sunshine. Slater sighed, he scowled, he groaned. He looked like a man facing some terrible moral quandary. Or like a man with severe indigestion.Slater, 55, was filming a scene for “Dexter: Original Sin,” the latest brand extension of the florid Showtime serial killer series, which premiered in 2006. (“Dexter: New Blood” debuted in 2021; “Dexter: Resurrection” will air next year.) Premiering Friday on Paramount+, “Original Sin,” set mostly in the early 1990s, describes the early career of Dexter Morgan, a forensic analyst in Miami who offs serial killers that the police can’t corral.It features the same central characters as the original show, though they are now played by different, younger actors, Slater among them.That Slater should join the “Dexter” universe is no surprise. His résumé includes several killers, some accidental and some absolutely psycho. In the late 1980s and 1990s, he specialized in dark matter, playing anarchic, irresistible characters in movies like “Heathers” (directed by Michael Lehmann, a producing director of “Original Sin”), “True Romance” and “Pump of the Volume.”Slater with Patrick Gibson in “Dexter: Original Sin.” “He was definitely more gregarious and friendly and kind than I was expecting,” Gibson, who plays young Dexter, said of Slater. Patrick Wymore/Paramount+ with ShowtimeBack then, Slater didn’t know how to separate himself from his characters. “I didn’t have an identity enough of my own to really be able to separate or differentiate between the two,” he said. “I was latching onto any sort of personality that I could find.” So that darkness impinged on his personal life, too. There were arrests on charges of assault, drunken driving, attempting to board a flight with a gun in his luggage. Interview magazine once called him “the last analog bad boy.”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 Theater

      36 Things That Stuck With Us in 2024

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      The movie scenes, TV episodes, song lyrics and other moments that reporters, critics, editors and visual journalists in Culture couldn’t stop thinking about this year.The Last Scene in a Film‘Challengers’Mike Faist in “Challengers.”MGMReal tennis, like real dancing, happens when the body is rapt and alive, where visceral sensation takes over and the only thing left is the crystallization of every nerve and muscle, both aligned and on edge. That last match was a dance.— More

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      in Television

      Time Magazine’s Person of the Year Doesn’t Surprise Late Night

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      “Trump is the first man in history to be Time’s person of the year and McDonald’s employee of the month,” Jimmy Fallon said on Thursday.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.‘America’s Main Character’Time magazine has named President-elect Donald Trump as its person of the year for 2024.“Trump is the first man in history to be Time’s person of the year and McDonald’s employee of the month,” Jimmy Fallon said. “History is being made!”“Trump said the honor feels just as exciting as the birth of his child, except he was present for the award.” — JIMMY FALLON“So it’s the second time he’s had the honor, with the first coming after his presidential win in 2016. That was also the same week Hillary Clinton canceled her subscription and smashed her server with a hammer.” — DANA PERINO, guest host of “Gutfeld!”“The editorial board mentioned Trump’s historic comeback, his impact on global politics and how we increased his votes from Blacks, Latinos and people named Biden.” — DANA PERINO“The difference: In 2016, the cover called him ‘President of the divided states of America.’ This year, it’s simply his name, even though there was plenty of room for ‘Cry harder, losers.’” — DANA PERINO“Now, obviously, Donald Trump is the person of the year. At this point, he’s basically America’s main character.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“Sadly, there’s no one left to roll it up and spank him with it. Maybe Elon will do it for him, I don’t know.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“According to the Time website, the person of the year is bestowed upon ‘a person, group, or concept that had the biggest impact for good or for ill.’ Which, that’s him, all right. It was a no-brainer in every sense of the word.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“By the way, just to put Trump’s Time cover in context, it’s not exactly a mark of greatness. The president who currently holds the record for the most Time magazine covers, it isn’t a universally beloved one, like F.D.R., J.F.K. or George Washington. Not because Time wasn’t around in the 1700s, but because Washington was more of a People magazine time of guy.” — SETH MEYERS“But I guess once again, Time has not been kind to Joe Biden.” — MICHAEL KOSTAThe Punchiest Punchlines (Clemency For Christmas Edition)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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      Move Over, Charlie Brown: Lessons From ‘The Boondocks’ Christmas Special

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      One of the most beloved holiday traditions that doesn’t involve gift-giving is “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” The 1965 animated special, depicting the trials of the titular sad sack and a crew of kids wearied beyond their years by commercialism, has inspired repeat viewings and countless appraisals, including in The New York Times. But the genre of Christmas specials it inspired, including “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” and “Frosty the Snowman,” largely leaned away from Charlie’s melancholy and toward a wholesome belief in the righteous power of the holiday spirit.Almost 60 years ago, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” dared to ask: What’s more Christmas-y than acknowledging the weight of the holiday? Four decades later, “A Huey Freeman Christmas,” a standout episode from the first season of “The Boondocks,” did the same.“The Boondocks,” Aaron McGruder’s satire about an aspiring young Black revolutionary and his rapscallion brother, was a comic strip I read every morning in junior high. It offered me a two-minute solace from the estrangement I felt from the rituals of Catholic school, the mainstream tastes of my classmates and the bits of mid-2000s culture that I was told I should like. I remember coming to believe that social and political critique was a way to understand that distance, and “The Boondocks” television series, which aired from 2005 to 2014 (with some long breaks between seasons), was just lowbrow hilarious enough for a 12-year-old loner to start giving form to that malaise.The chaotic satire that had captivated me also coursed through the show, so I dutifully tuned in when the Christmas episode debuted. It starts out like a sendup of “Charlie Brown”: Huey, a 10-year-old with outsize activist ambitions, tries his hand at directing a school play. When he finds his cast dancing instead of rehearsing, as Charlie Brown did, he immediately fires them with the backing of his teacher, a white man whose enthusiasm for Kwanzaa is a punchline. In another plot thread, Riley, Huey’s brother, writes a letter to Santa Claus. But it’s a threat: He didn’t get the car rims he had asked for, and the debt is due.None of the characters have a Bible passage memorized to sort them out when things inevitably get out of hand. Riley spends most of the episode waging a one-boy war against mall Santas with an airsoft gun, and Huey leverages the contract he finagled from his teacher to nab the services of Quincy Jones (voiced by Mr. Jones himself), Denzel Washington and Angela Bassett for his play, titled “The Adventures of Black Jesus.”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