Television

Kieran Culkin, who plays Roman Roy — “one of the top 10 worst humans on TV” — on HBO’s hit satire, Succession, made his debut hosting Saturday Night Live. But it wasn’t his first time on stage in Studio 8H. During Culkin’s monologue, the actor recalled how he performed on SNL with his older brother, Macauley Culkin, back in 1990 when Mac was the child star of the hit Christmas comedy, Home Alone. Culkin cued up a vintage clip from the episode that shows the credits rolling and the cast...

Saturday Night Live skewered Aaron Rodgers’ disastrous first post-Covid interview earlier this week by bringing the Green Bay Packers quarterback (played by Pete Davidson) to Jeanine Pirro, with Cecily Strong reprising her role of that Fox News host. “Our first guest is brave enough to say ‘Screw you, science. I know Joe Rogan.’ Please welcome NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers,” Strong’s Pirro said. “It’s my body and my Covid,” Davidson’s Rodgers said. “I can give it to whoever I want. But suddenly, the woke mob has come after me.” Rodgers’ 10-day...

In Anchorman, Paul Rudd’s Seventies TV newsman Brian Fantana says of his beloved Sex Panther cologne, “They’ve done studies, you know: 60 percent of the time, it works every time.” Will Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy considers this equation for a moment, then replies, “That doesn’t make sense.” I have watched Anchorman often over the years, and thought a lot about that “60 percent” line in particular. Does it make more sense than Ron would argue? I’m not talking about Sex Panther itself, since other characters compare its aroma to “pure gasoline,” “a...

So at what point did you finally give up on the world of The Walking Dead? Was it when Negan turned Glenn and Abraham’s skulls into mashed potatoes with his bat five years ago on The Walking Dead? When the series’ nominal leader Rick Grimes was lifted off by a chopper for parts unknown in Season 9? When Madison or her son Nick were killed off in the offshoot series, Fear the Walking Dead, leaving behind a few less (and much-needed) charismatic characters? When, in the current season of that spinoff, Morgan...

A review of this week’s Succession, “Lion in the Meadow,” coming up just as soon as there are goons and stooges and roughjacks there to administer a beating… “The Beatles put out some of their best shit when they were suing each other, right?” Kendall argues midway through “Lion in the Meadow.” This, like a lot of Kendall’s bold pronouncements, gets some crucial details wrong — Paul technically didn’t sue John, George, and Ringo until after Abbey Road had been recorded, though he had already hired his own management and...

Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update pushed Ice Cube — or Kenan Thompson — to explain his refusal to get vaccinated on the show’s latest episode. In late October, news emerged that the rapper exited his upcoming comedy with Jack Black, Oh Hell No, after declining the producers’ request to be vaccinated ahead of shooting; Ice Cube walked away from a $9 million payday over his decision.  Weekend Update’s Michael Che asked Thompson’s rapper why he refused to get the vaccine.  “I just rather be myself than take the vaccine like...

On Saturday Night Live‘s recurring ‘Dionne Warwick Talk Show’ sketch, Ego Nwodim plays the iconic singer who is constantly confused — and occasionally spooked — by contemporary musicians like Miley Cyrus (played by Chloe Fineman) to Post Malone (Pete Davidson) to Jason Mraz (Kieran Culkin) to Ed Sheeran (who played himself). But at long last, Warwick found an icon worth interviewing: “Me.” Then, the real Dionne Warwick walked onstage in a surprise appearance and sat beside her SNL doppelgänger, Nwodim, who asked her, “Dionne, why are you perfect?” To which...

The new Showtime drama Yellowjackets is Lord of the Flies meets Lost meets Alive meets It meets the collected works of Megan Abbott. Many of its influences already overlap, and thus work together well. The ones that don’t can at times combine to create something that feels new and potent, but at others make it feel like the stew could have done with fewer ingredients. Here are the basics: In 1996, a New Jersey high-school girls’ soccer team (the titular Yellowjackets) win the state championship and board a cross-country flight...

The Money Heist is up for good in a month and Netflix gives a peek into La Casa de Papel (Money Heist) Part 5, Volume 2 with its final trailer. It premieres on Dec. 3. Volume 1 culminated with Tokyo (Úrsula Corberó) dead after she sacrificed herself, taking bullets and setting off a grenade to defeat Gandia. Meanwhile, the Professor (Álvaro Morte) and his gang were stuck in the Bank of Spain. While they were able to rescue one of their own (Lisbon), they lost Tokyo and their darkest times...

When Alejandro Edda showed up at the federal courthouse in downtown Brooklyn on Jan. 28, 2019, he didn’t turn heads — not at first. The 37-year-old actor is not a household name, and in real life he doesn’t much look like the man he depicts in his best-known role to date, the man he was there to see in the flesh: Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the notorious Mexican drug trafficker better known as El Chapo. Edda had already appeared in the first season of the Netflix show Narcos: Mexico and had...

Tiger King‘s Joe Exotic said he has “an aggressive cancer” in a note shared on his official Instagram account. The convicted felon posted a handwritten letter informing fans that a prostate biopsy revealed the diagnosis and pleaded that they advocate for his release. Exotic is serving 22 years in prison for a murder-for-hire scheme involving hiring a hitman to kill rival Carole Baskin, and the conviction also included violations of the Lacey Act and the Endangered Species Act. Netflix’s true-crime documentary Tiger King detailed the years-long feud between Exotic — who...

Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle dig even deeper into the mortifying depths of middle-school misery in the new trailer for Pen15, which returns to Hulu on Dec. 3. Pen15 is set in a perpetual purgatory of seventh grade in the year 2000, with Erskine and Konkle playing adolescent versions of themselves while the rest of the cast is filled with actual middle and high school-aged kids. The new run of seven episodes will mark the second part of the show’s second season, the first of which premiered last September (a...

Who is Dexter: New Blood for? I ask this not to sound snarky or incredulous about the idea of doing a sequel series to Dexter, the beloved, and then reviled, drama starring Michael C. Hall as a serial-killer vigilante who only targets other murderers. We live in the age of IP, when no title that was once associated with a hit can ever be considered too radioactive for some kind of reboot or revival. Sure, everyone is still mad about Hall’s Dexter Morgan turning into a lumberjack — really, about...