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    ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ Is Getting a Four-Episode Revival on Disney+

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    The return of “Malcolm in the Middle,” which aired from 2000 to 2006, will follow Malcolm as he helps his parents celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary, Disney+ announced.One of America’s wackiest families is making a comeback.“Malcolm in the Middle,” the hit television show from the early 2000s, will get a revival on Disney+ with four new episodes, the company announced on Friday. Frankie Muniz, who played Malcolm Wilkerson, helped tease the comeback in videos posted on Disney+ social media accounts.“I have been waiting for this moment for 18 years,” Muniz said in one video, referring to the show’s finale in 2006. “Let’s find out where Malcolm and his family are now.”The post also featured videos of Bryan Cranston, who went on to star in “Breaking Bad,” and Jane Kaczmarek, who will be reprising their roles as Malcolm’s parents, Hal and Lois.“What a delight that I get to yell at that kid again,” Kaczmarek said. “We are very, very excited about coming back together.”According to Deadline, Linwood Boomer, the show’s creator, will be a writer on the four episodes. Ken Kwapis, one of the directors of the original show, will direct all four episodes.The new episodes follow Malcolm’s return home with his daughter to help his parents celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary.It’s unclear whether Christopher Kennedy Masterson, Justin Berfield and Erik Per Sullivan, who played Muniz’s brothers on the show, will reprise their roles. Sullivan, who played the youngest brother, Dewey, left Hollywood after the show ended.“Malcolm in the Middle,” which aired on Fox from 2000 to 2006, tracked Malcolm, a young genius, navigating life with his dysfunctional family of scheming, bickering brothers and unconventional parents.In just its second week, the show became the most-watched comedy on television at the time, drawing 23.2 million viewers, The New York Times reported in 2000.Unlike other sitcoms at the time that were filmed with multiple cameras in front of a studio audience, “Malcolm in the Middle” was produced like a movie and used a single camera for a more realistic look. It also lacked a laugh track.But beyond aesthetics, “Malcolm in the Middle” was built on a cast of characters that were unpredictable and funny, with Malcolm often serving as the narrator and speaking directly to the camera.The show was nominated for 33 Emmys and won seven times in categories including outstanding directing for a comedy series and outstanding writing for a comedy series.Muniz largely stepped away from acting after the show ended and went on to become a professional racecar driver. But in interviews over the years, Muniz teased about the possibility of a “Malcolm in the Middle” reunion, saying his co-star Cranston was working on reviving the show.Variety reported that a premiere date has not been set. More

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      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.”Asked if he had ever tried alternative medicine, Thompson replied in the affirmative, “When they tell me how much the procedure costs, I go, ‘what’s the alternative?’”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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      Jim Abrahams, 80, Dies; One of Trio Behind ‘Airplane!’ and ‘Naked Gun’

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      Along with David and Jerry Zucker, he revolutionized film comedy with a style of straight-faced, fast-paced parody.Jim Abrahams, who with the brothers David and Jerry Zucker surely comprised one of the funniest trios of comedy writers in film history, layering on the yucks in classics like “Airplane!” and “Naked Gun,” died on Tuesday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 80.His son Joseph said the death was from complications of leukemia.Mr. Abrahams and the Zucker brothers — often known around Hollywood as the “men from ZAZ” — revolutionized film comedy with their brand of straight-faced, fast-paced parodies of self-serious dramas like 1970s disaster films and police procedurals.Along the way they littered pop culture with a trail of one liners seemingly custom-cut to drop into daily conversation: “Have you ever seen a grown man naked?” “Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.” And “Nice beaver!”Their films spawned an entire genre of spoof comedy, many of them pale, scruffy comparisons to the tight scripts and cleverly paced plots that gave the ZAZ films their punch.The trio shared writing credits on five films, starting with “Kentucky Fried Movie” (1977), a compilation of parody sketches that grew out of a comedy show they developed after college in Madison, Wis., and took to Los Angeles in 1972.The idea for their second film, “Airplane!” (1980), came after watching a 1957 thriller called “Zero Hour!” about an ill-fated passenger plane on which the crew are stricken with food poisoning, forcing one of the passengers, a psychologically scarred ex-pilot, to take control.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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      On ‘S.N.L.,’ a Peaceful Transition to Trump’s Cabinet of Curiosities

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      Sarah Sherman plays Matt Gaetz as well as the widow of P’Nut, the conservative darling of the rodent world, while Charli XCX and pals serenade a mom-to-be.An amicable White House transition meeting between President Biden and President-elect Donald J. Trump provided the template for the opening sketch of this weekend’s “Saturday Night Live,” and it also gave “S.N.L.” another opportunity to rearrange its musical chairs of who’s playing whom in the Trump administration, with new roles for Sarah Sherman (as Matt Gaetz) and Alec Baldwin (as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.).Dana Carvey, the “S.N.L.” alum who has lately been impersonating Biden on the show, returned to play the part, promising a “respectful conversation” with Trump, played by James Austin Johnson.“Yeah, get a load of me,” Johnson said. “Instead of being rude and crazy like usual, I’m doing quiet and serene. Which, in many ways, is a lot scarier.”After shooing away the reporters who were covering their meeting, Johnson said forlornly to Carvey that he was not looking forward to returning to the White House. “So many of the carpets are stinky and sticky at the same time,” he explained. “Sort of like being at a Regal Cinemas. Now I have to live here for the next four years. Possibly longer.”Carvey responded that he had many wonderful memories of his time there: “Dr. Jill hosting foreign leaders,” he said. “My dog attacking every single one. I brought my party together so much they teamed up and kicked me out. Wait a minute — maybe I hate it here, 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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      Judge John Hodgman on Humorous Bathroom Signs

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      If you make the request funny, can you tell your guests how to use your toilet?Anonymous writes: At my mother’s suggestion/command, my brothers and I have always peed sitting down, to minimize splashing. I continue that practice, and I would like my guests to as well. I want to hang a humorous sign in the bathroom instructing guests to sit down, but my wife says that it would be rude.I think you can ask this of your own close family, but your brothers are already in the good-boy club. Otherwise, I agree with your wife. It may seem strange that it’s OK, for example, to require your guests to take their shoes off but impolite to ask them not to pee all over your floor. But the gracious host presumes innocence. A guest might inadvertently step in mud, but it’s infantilizing to suggest — even via jokey sign — that they can’t handle their own waste without Mother’s special training. If a guest misses the target from time to time, that’s the cost of inviting other bodies into your world, and you owe them the grace of not reminding them how gross we all are during a nice dinner. More

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      The Onion Buys Alex Jones’s Infowars Out of Bankruptcy

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      The satirical news site planned to turn Infowars into a parody of itself, mocking “weird internet personalities” who peddle conspiracy theories and health supplements.The Onion, a satirical publication that skewers newsmakers and current events, said on Thursday that it had won a bankruptcy auction to acquire Infowars, a website founded and operated by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.The Onion said that the bid was sanctioned by the families of the victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, who in 2022 won a $1.4 billion defamation lawsuit against Mr. Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems.Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit dedicated to ending gun violence that was founded in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting, will advertise on a relaunched version of the site under The Onion.The publication plans to reintroduce Infowars in January as a parody of itself, mocking “weird internet personalities” like Mr. Jones who traffic in misinformation and health supplements, Ben Collins, the chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said in an interview.Family members of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting, which claimed the lives of 20 first graders and six educators, sued Mr. Jones in Connecticut Superior Court in 2018 after he spread the baseless claim that the rampage was a fabricated pretext for confiscating Americans’ firearms.The Onion declined to disclose the price it paid for Infowars and its assets, including its production studio and diet supplement business. Mr. Jones could not immediately be reached for comment, but he said on the social media platform X this week that he planned to continue producing his online program, “The Alex Jones Show,” until he was forced to stop.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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      El equipo de Trump teme por los comentarios racistas en el mitin del Madison Square Garden

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      La campaña del expresidente emitió un inusual comunicado distanciándose del chiste ofensivo de un cómico sobre Puerto Rico en su mitin del domingo, una señal de que le preocupa perder votos cruciales.Donald Trump y sus aliados presumen de sus posibilidades de victoria en los últimos días de la campaña de 2024. Pero hay indicios, públicos y privados, de que al expresidente y a su equipo les preocupa que las descripciones de sus oponentes, en las que lo presentan como racista y fascista, puedan estar calando en algunos segmentos de votantes.Esa ansiedad quedó clara tras el acto de seis horas de Trump en el Madison Square Garden de Nueva York, donde los incendiarios discursos del domingo incluyeron un acto de apertura a cargo de un cómico conocido por su historial de chistes racistas, quien se burló de Puerto Rico y calificó a la nación como “una isla flotante de basura” y habló de personas negras que tallan sandías.La reacción de las celebridades y los artistas puertorriqueños fue instantánea en las redes sociales, lo que llevó a la campaña de Trump a emitir una rara declaración defensiva en la que se distanciaba de los comentarios ofensivos. En una contienda tan reñida, cualquier electorado puede ser decisivo, y la considerable comunidad puertorriqueña del disputado estado de Pensilvania estaba en la mente de los aliados de Trump.Danielle Alvarez, asesora principal de la campaña de Trump, dijo en un comunicado que la broma sobre Puerto Rico “no refleja las opiniones del presidente Trump ni de la campaña”.El ethos de Trump ha sido, por lo general, no disculparse nunca, no admitir errores e intentar ignorar la controversia. La declaración de Alvarez fue una rara ruptura de esa práctica, que refleja la nueva preocupación de que Trump corra el riesgo de recordar a los votantes indecisos el oscuro tenor de su movimiento político en la fase final de la campaña de 2024.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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      “Shogun” Emmy Win Lifts FX Past Bigger Rivals

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      The network has been a darling among critics for years. But it hit a new high on Sunday, with “Shogun” winning best drama and “The Bear” picking up several awards as well.When the “Shogun” writer and producer Justin Marks stormed the Emmys stage after his show won best drama on Sunday night, his first order of business was to pay tribute to the people who helped bring him there: the executive team at FX.How, he wondered aloud, did the network approve a show that was extremely expensive, and would be mostly subtitled in Japanese?“I have no idea why you did that, but thank you for your faith in this incredible team,” he said.For roughly two decades, that team at FX has been a darling to television critics with series like “American Horror Story,” “The Americans,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “Atlanta.” But the network, with less money at its disposal than rivals such as Netflix and HBO, had never won television’s most prestigious prize, best drama, until Sunday.And that’s not all it won.“Shogun,” an adaptation from a 1975 best-selling book centered on 17th century feudal Japan on the brink of civil war, had a dominant night at the Emmys. It set a record for most Emmys won by a show in a single year, winning 18 in all. It was also the first time a foreign language show (roughly 70 percent of the show was in Japanese) had taken the best drama award that is normally the domain of shows that take place in the United States, the United Kingdom or Westeros.Hiroyuki Sanada in a scene from “Shogun.”Katie Yu/FX, via Associated PressAnother FX show, “The Bear,” won several major Emmys on Sunday night, including three acting awards. But in an upset, Max’s “Hacks” defeated “The Bear” in best comedy series.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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      Jean Smart Wins a Third Emmy for ‘Hacks’

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      Jean Smart has just won a third Emmy for her starring turn in the Max series “Hacks,” the gleefully sardonic half-hour sitcom set in the rarefied, ruthless world of stand-up comedy.It is her sixth Emmy overall.“It’s very humbling. It really is. I appreciate this,” Smart said in a low voice, as she accepted the trophy. Then she went in for the punchline. “Because I don’t get enough attention. I’m serious.”Smart beat out a roster of actresses including Quinta Brunson, the creator and star of “Abbott Elementary,” who won the award in the previous Emmy ceremony, in January; and Ayo Edebiri of FX’s “The Bear,” who moved into the lead actress category after winning best supporting actress in January. Also nominated were Selena Gomez, for “Only Murders in the Building,” and the former “S.N.L.” co-stars Maya Rudolph, for “Loot,” and Kristen Wiig, for “Palm Royale.”As Deborah Vance, a celebrated comedian enjoying a late-career triumph, Smart, 72, is able to play smart, sexy, callous, vulnerable and very, very funny. In this latest season, she executes a mercenary plan to achieve something typically denied to women: a host gig on a major late-night show.In May, Smart told The New York Times, “I’ve always been part way to between leading lady and a character actress.” Who could doubt her leading-lady chops now? More