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    ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3, Episode 4 Recap: Party Time

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    The gal pals finally moved out of their hermetic bubble this week in search of a little fun. The results were questionable.Season 3, Episode 4: ‘Hide or Seek’There is something about the experience of being on a luxury vacation that can get into the vacationers’ heads. Mike White understands this. Through three seasons of “The White Lotus,” he has focused on the nagging dissatisfaction of the privileged — especially when they are supposed to be at leisure. Are they really enjoying themselves? Are they getting the escape from the everyday they needed? Most important: Are they getting their money’s worth?White seems to love characters who are earnestly searching for something, who could be on the precipice of a real change in their lives if they could just get past their doubts, their fears, their patterns of behavior, the general sense that they are being cheated. White clearly empathizes with these people. He also manages to make them hilarious.With that in mind, I want to start again this week with the gal pals, who have been this season’s most reliable source of pure, pitiless comedy. In this episode, the ladies finally move out of their hermetic bubble of giggles and gossip and start trying to engage more with their surroundings. The experiment does not go well.Jaclyn, as always, drives the action. Frustrated that her husband is not responding to her texts, she decides to do a little misbehaving. The resort is too staid, too serious. She asks Valentin to suggest someplace she and her friends can go that has “more of a vibe.”Valentin directs them to what seems to be a more party-friendly hotel. The music is loud, and the drinks are large and colorful. But when Jaclyn gets roped into a conversation with two very un-“posh” Australian widows who recognize her from TV, she senses something is off. They appear to be at “a bargain hotel for retirees.” They return to Valentin, feeling insulted.Valentin next recommends a fun club that will open in the evening for the local community’s full moon celebration. But when the ladies try to kill time by shopping in the marketplace, they are chased by hordes of children armed with water pistols. Jaclyn, Kate and Laurie take refuge in a convenience store. The children lurk outside, like ravenous zombies.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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      ‘S.N.L.’ Imagines an Oval Office Meeting With Trump, Rubio and Musk

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      This week, the opener described a conflict between Elon Musk and Marco Rubio. Lady Gaga proved to be a capable joke-teller as both the host and the musical guest.Following a report in The New York Times about a White House meeting where Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had clashed in front of President Trump, it was up to “Saturday Night Live” to imagine how they might make peace — and to let us listen in on their inner monologues.This week’s “S.N.L.” broadcast, for which Lady Gaga was both the host and the musical guest, began with a voice-over that described the conflict between Musk and Rubio as a stain on “an otherwise remarkably cool and smooth start to the Trump presidency.”Inside the Oval Office stood James Austin Johnson, in his recurring role as President Trump, and Marcello Hernández, playing Rubio.Johnson said he forgave Hernández for “being under a lot of stress,” but told him, “I need you to be my good little Marco.”“If you think I’m going to stand here and let you call me that,” Hernández replied, “you’re right.”Johnson added, “Unfortunately, I just made English the official language. So now your name is Mark Ruby.”Hernández said he objected to Musk “having total access to our government,” but Johnson praised the billionaire for his management of SpaceX, which he said was “doing incredible things in terms of explosions, and with regard to rocket debris.”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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      ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Review: Can You Fight City Hall?

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      The sort-of-rebooted series from Marvel and Disney+ pits the blind vigilante against a chaos-inducing, revenge-minded office holder.In the new Marvel series “Daredevil: Born Again,” the gangster Wilson Fisk — a felon preoccupied with status, profit and revenge — embarks on a dark-horse, fear-mongering election campaign. It is for mayor of New York, not president of the United States, but the real-life resonance is hard to miss.And as the season, which premieres Tuesday on Disney+, proceeds through its nine episodes, the sense of familiarity only grows. The spuriously-populist Mayor Fisk rules by executive fiat, sidelines anyone who tries to rein him in and cultivates an atmosphere of violent chaos.Yes, Fisk, also known as the Kingpin, first became mayor of New York in the “Daredevil” comic books on which the series is based, and nothing in “Born Again” is at odds with his previous portrayals. But this is not a coincidence of character or timing. Long before the blind crime-fighting vigilante Daredevil intones, “This is our city, not his, and we can take it back,” it is clear that “Born Again” is summoning the specter of Donald Trump — perhaps as a statement of resistance, perhaps as a dramatic convenience, probably both.The problem is that in this case, real life has become stranger than fiction. “Born Again” is a deluxe comic-book adaptation, meticulously produced and filmed, and on that level it will delight a lot of people. But while it tries to get at something meaningful about social tumult, it does not rise above conventional comic-book ideas or emotions. It doesn’t carry the shock of the real.Within the multiverse of Marvel TV series, “Born Again” has a complicated provenance. “Daredevil” was one of the six shows made for Netflix, beginning a decade ago; it ran for three seasons and ended in 2018. After Marvel began making series for Disney+, the stars of the old show — Charlie Cox as Daredevil (real name Matt Murdock), and Vincent D’Onofrio as Fisk — popped up as supporting players in “Hawkeye” and “Echo,” biding their time.Now their new show is here, sort of a reboot and sort of a new season, with story lines that more or less track. If you haven’t checked in since the original “Daredevil” and certain things puzzle you, such as why Fisk is not in jail, then you may want to watch “Hawkeye” and “Echo.”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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      Stephen Colbert on Trump-Zelenskyy meeting: ‘Embarrassing, chilling and confusing’

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      Late-night hosts recap Donald Trump’s shocking rebuke of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during a disastrous White House press conference.Stephen ColbertStephen Colbert braced himself on Monday to recap Friday’s chaotic White House meeting between Trump, JD Vance and Zelenskyy that devolved into a shouting match between the two world leaders, with Trump as the aggressor, blaming Zelenskyy for continuing Russia’s war in his country.“In just 10 minutes, Donald Trump reversed 80 years of postwar US foreign policy,” the Late Show host explained. “A mere six weeks ago, America defended democracy against autocrats and promoted free and open societies all over the world. Now, we’re on the same pickleball team with Russia. And you don’t want to know who’s pickled balls we’re playing with.“So our friends are now our enemies, our enemy is now our friend, we’re breaking up with Europe, we’re friends with Russia,” he continued. “You could argue that’s a good thing, you could argue that’s a bad thing. But what you can’t argue with is that’s the thing.”The talks, nominally to sign a deal in which Ukraine promised the US 50% of its profits from rare earth minerals, collapsed within 10 minutes. “So things were looking promising, but then everything exploded and collapsed. It’s a phenomenon political scientists refer to as the Emilia Pérez Oscar campaign,” Colbert quipped.“Zelenskyy kept reminding these numbnuts that Putin breaks every single deal he ever signs,” he added. When a reporter then asked Trump what would happen if Putin broke any deal, the president responded: “What if anything? What if a bomb drops on your head right now.“Yeah, that’s how Putin’s going to break the ceasefire,” Colbert responded. “This meeting was embarrassing, chilling and confusing.”Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers also tore into Vance and Trump for their handling of the Zelenskyy meeting, starting with Vance’s insistence that Zelenskyy thank Trump personally for US aid. “JD Vance sounds like a boyfriend who just got caught cheating for the third time – ‘You keep asking where I was last night, but have you said thank you once for the bracelet I got you!’” said Meyers.“For the record, Zelenskyy has said thank you many times, directly to the American people, in English, a language he speaks more fluently than Donald Trump,” he added.Meyers went on to note: “Diplomacy is good, we should try to achieve a ceasefire to stop the killing and bring peace, but it is possible – in fact, it’s necessary – to do that while also remaining clear-eyed about who the aggressor is. Who violated sovereignty and international law and human rights by starting the war in the first place.“But Trump doesn’t give a shit about any of that,” he continued. “All he cares about is self-enrichment and raw power and territorial conquest. That’s why he’s doing a solid for Russian oligarchs by letting them keep their superyachts.”Meyers also blasted Democrats for their feckless response, referring to comments from Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, that “we’ll need to see some mature leadership from the Trump administration.”“What is wrong with all of you?” Meyers fumed. “You want to see some mature leadership from the Trump administration? Well, I want to see all the gold in Fort Knox. And guess what? Neither of us is getting what we fucking want!“Seriously, Democrats, show some spine,” he added. “Do you want to get primaried? Why do you guys keep acting like this is your first day on the job?”Jon StewartAnd on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart mulled an offer by Elon Musk to appear for an interview on the show, as long as it was unedited. “After thinking about his offer, I thought, you know, hey, that’s actually how the in-studio interviews normally are. It’s unedited,’” Stewart said. “So sure, we’d be delighted.”Stewart added that he would “sweeten the pot” and keep the cameras rolling for as long as Musk wanted their conversation to last. “The interview can be 15 minutes. It can be an hour. It can be two hours, whatever,” he said.Musk later appeared to renege on his offer, posting on X that “Jon Stewart is much more a propagandist than it would seem” and not “bipartisan”.“The guy who custom-made his own dark Maga hat that he wears to opine in the Oval Office with the president who he spent $270m to elect thinks I’m just too partisan,” Stewart laughed. “I’m really not sure what he thinks bipartisan means, but it’s generally not ‘I support Donald Trump and also Germany’s AFD party.’ That’s not bipartisan, that’s just the same shit.“Look, Elon, I do have some criticisms about Doge,” he continued. “I support, in general, the idea of efficiency and delivering better services to the American public in cheaper and more efficient ways. And if you want to come on and talk about it on the show, great. If you don’t want to, sure.“But can we just drop the pretense that you won’t do it because I don’t measure up to the standards of neutral discourse that you demand and display at all times? Because quite frankly, that’s bullshit.” More

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      Oscars Draw 18 Million Viewers, an 8% Drop

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      The show was broadcast on ABC, as it has been for decades, but also streamed live on Hulu, where there were glitches.The Academy Awards drew 18 million viewers on Sunday, ABC said, citing Nielsen data. That is an 8 percent drop from the 19.5 million who watched last year.The audience decline ends a three-year streak when Oscar ratings had been on the rise.The decline follows a trend among other award shows, which have seen their ratings growth come to a halt this year. The Grammy Awards attracted 15.4 million viewers last month, a 9 percent decline from the year before. The Golden Globes in January also saw a modest decline from last year.ABC said the Oscars had grown 3 percent among adults under the age of 50.ABC broadcast the Oscars on Sunday, as it has for decades, but the show also streamed live on Hulu, which helped boost viewership.The livestreaming experience, however, was far from perfect. There were glitches at the beginning of the show, and some subscribers did not see the finish, when their feed was abruptly cut off shortly before the best actress and best picture awards were given out.“Thank you for watching!” read the on-screen message. “This live event has now ended. You may exit playback and select something else to watch.”Still, even with this year’s decline in audience, the Oscars will be among the highest-rated entertainment shows of the year. And, perhaps more significant, the Oscars will go another year as the most-watched live awards show, continuing to best the Grammys.The show, which was hosted by Conan O’Brien, received mostly good reviews. Vanity Fair said it was “the best ceremony in years,” although Variety argued that “the telecast felt too small for Hollywood’s biggest night.”The ceremony was also long: It clocked in at nearly four hours.Sunday’s Oscars came nowhere close to the box office firepower of last year’s telecast, which was fueled by “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie.” “Anora” took home best picture on Sunday night, one of its five Oscar wins. But with that win, “Anora” secured a record for having the lowest domestic ticket sales in best picture history, outside of the pandemic. More

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      ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3, Episode 3: The Snake Show

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      The guests are getting restless, and Mike White seems ready to start making messes.Season 3, Episode 3: ‘The Meaning of Dreams’In last week’s “The White Lotus,” the three gal-pals — who are supposed to be on a bonding trip in Thailand — took turns pairing off and, in insinuating whispers, tearing each other apart. Kate and Jaclyn muttered anxiously about Laurie’s draining divorce, stalled career and delinquent daughter. Kate and Laurie took shots at Jaclyn’s cosmetic procedures and sham marriage.So who does that leave? Ah yes, Kate. When will she leave the room and get snipped to bits by her oldest and dearest?It happens this week — and it partly happens to her face. And Kate is not the only one who feels a bit bummed out and betrayed in this episode. On Day 3 at the White Lotus, the guests are getting restless. After two hours spent creating a context for various situations to go awry, the show’s creator, Mike White, seems ready to start making those messes.Let’s start with the Kate scenes, which, in a way, represent this episode’s biggest moments of shocking violence — if emotional violence counts. The inciting incident for the Kate takedown is an “energy healing” session Laurie has with Valentin. The other ladies have been urging Laurie to have a fling with the Vladivostok-born Valentin. (It’s a fling kind of weekend, they say. Plus, Valentin insists he left Russia before the Ukraine invasion, so he is not politically problematic … probably.)White goes hard with the sound design and editing during the energy healing session. As Valentin holds his hands just above Laurie’s body, the soundtrack is filled with eruptive moans and sighs, woven through the percussive, chiming musical score. When the ladies reunite, Laurie jokes, “I haven’t been not-touched by a man like that in a long time.”That’s when Kate makes a surprising confession: She finds all this new age healing stuff “goofy,” “spooky” and “kind of witchy.” When Jaclyn suggests that eastern spiritual practices are superior to Christianity because they are more empowering to women, Kate defends the church she has been attending since moving to Texas. This leads to several probing questions. Is this, like, a “real Texan church, with bible-thumpers?” (Kate, noncommittal: “They’re nice people, really good families.”) Does talking politics ever get awkward? (“Why would it?”) Is Kate a conservative now? (“I’m an independent.”) Did Kate vote for Trump? (Long pause, and then, “Are we really gonna talk about Trump tonight?”)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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      Trump Sums Up His Zelensky Showdown: ‘This Is Going to Be Great Television’

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      One of the most surreal moments of Friday’s Oval Office showdown between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine came at the very end.After all the shouting and the saber-rattling and the lecturing and the pleading and the politicking had ceased, the American president shifted a little in his seat and shared an observation.“This is going to be great television,” he remarked. “I will say that.”It was a conclusion as startling as it was fundamentally Trumpian.This was not a season finale boardroom scene of “The Apprentice” that had just taken place. It was the highest of high-stakes talks — one that could determine the fate of millions, the existence of a sovereign nation and the security of a continent — going wildly off the rails.But for Mr. Trump, one thing that was on his mind, as always, was the ratings. He sounded almost excited by the drama of the spectacle, as though he could feel the front pages of the world’s newspapers being written in real time.This is a man who spent years yelling at people on TV as a way to make a living. He is wired to think about things in terms of “great television.” He is a highly conscious performer. But playacting as a tough guy on NBC on Thursday nights between 9 and 10 p.m. is not the same thing as bossing around an ally before the eyes of the world, even if Mr. Trump uses the same language to describe one performance as he would the other.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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      Stephen Colbert on Trump’s second term: ‘The last five weeks have been shock and awful’

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      Late-night hosts took aim at Donald Trump’s disastrous start to his second term as president and looked at the rising cost of food.Stephen ColbertOn The Late Show, Stephen Colbert spoke about his expectations versus his reality of Trump’s comeback, saying that the president has done “every terrible thing I could imagine” but that “I just never imagined he’d do all of them at once.”He said: “The last five weeks have been shock and awful.” Things have got so bad, he added, that even those within the Maga-verse have been getting “buyers’ remorse”, with reports of unhappy Trump voters.Colbert said it was “kinda hard to feel a lot of sympathy” for them, though. “They ordered the turd soup then said: ‘Waiter, there’s turds in my soup’ and then they came back four years later and asked: ‘Do you still have that turd soup?’” he joked.While Trump had promised that prices would go down on day one, his supporters “still think things are too expensive”.The last few weeks have seen “Elon slice through the federal government like a drunk raccoon with a samurai sword”.Colbert moved on to the soaring price of eggs, which may still go up even further by 41%. “This year’s Easter egg hunt is going to be The Purge,” he said.Stores in New York have been selling loose eggs for those who can’t afford a full pack and customs agents have stopped at least 90 people from smuggling them into the country.Colbert said that the head of the smuggling operation is “Pablo Eggs-cobar”.Jimmy KimmelOn Jimmy Kimmel Live! the host also spoke about how bad things have quickly become under Trump, joking that he was “tired of all the winning”.He said that “no one seems to know what the hell is going on” with Elon’s ongoing “chainsaw massacre of the federal workforce”.He spoke about an email sent to federal workers asking them to share five things they accomplished last week or face job loss while also talking about Republican senators demanding a meeting with the White House chief of staff to complain about cuts.The Department of Veterans Affairs has seen 1,400 jobs cut, which is a “tricky situation for Trump” as “we know he doesn’t think much of veterans but he loves affairs”.He said that Elon had been “just about as efficient as a Cybertruck in 2in of snow”.This week has seen the far-right Republican Lauren Boebert tweet that she didn’t realise how much “distain” she had for many of these departments. “Maybe let’s not get rid of that Department of Education just yet,” Kimmel said.The Federal Aviation Administration also cancelled its major contract with Verizon to instead sign with Starlink, a company owned by Elon Musk. “Nothing shady about that at all,” he said.Giving Musk government contracts is “like putting Pac-Man in charge of fruits”.The Trump administration also claimed it would release the full list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients and flight logs this week but instead just released “binders full of information everyone already had”, which led Kimmel to say: “Everything these people do is screwed up.”He remarked that the craziest thing is that Trump was “good friends” with Epstein, something his followers have chosen to ignore. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel on Trump: ‘Somehow, he’s managed to make everything disgusting’

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      Late-night hosts talk Donald Trump’s proposed “gold card” visas, Trump’s first cabinet meeting and confusion over who leads the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).Jimmy KimmelTrump announced another disquieting idea on Wednesday – to allow foreigners to purchase new “gold card” visas for $5m apiece – and Jimmy Kimmel was not happy about it. “What a good idea – I’ve always said our immigration system should run more like the customer rewards program at a casino in Atlantic City,” he joked on Wednesday evening.“Somehow, he’s managed to make everything disgusting,” Kimmel continued. “This is basically what he does at Mar-a-Lago. He’s selling memberships to a country club, but this club is actually our country. The land of the free, and by free I mean $5m bucks.”Trump also said he would consider selling the visas to Russian oligarchs: “I know some Russian oligarchs who are very nice people, it’s possible.”“Let me tell you something: he may know oligarchs, but not as well as they know him,” Kimmel quipped.Kimmel also mocked Elon Musk, who tried to defend Doge’s slash-and-burn approach to civil servant layoffs as an organization that owned up to mistakes. During Trump’s first cabinet meeting, Musk conceded that Doge “accidentally” canceled USAid’s Ebola prevention program, but “restored it immediately”.“Oh, well, that’s fine then,” Kimmel joked. “He only canceled our Ebola prevention for a couple of days, calm down, everybody.“That’s not an excuse,” he added. “Just ask the doctor – ‘As soon as I realized I unplugged my mother’s life support to charge my iPhone, I immediately plugged it back in.’”Stephen ColbertOn Wednesday, Trump held his first full cabinet meeting of his second term, “and everybody was there”, said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “It was a who’s who of why them?”“As commander in chief, Trump made it immediately clear who is in charge: Elon Musk,” Colbert continued. Musk, who attended the meeting, introduced himself as “humble tech support” because “that is almost a literal description of the work that the Doge team is doing”.“Well, of course. I mean, we’ve all had that call with tech support,” Colbert mocked. “Hello? Yes, you’re computer’s frozen? Have you tried turning it off and then firing 4,000 people with an email.”Trump rambled on in nonsense fashion about Doge, somehow landing on the topic of circumcision. “That long, rambling response actually reminds me of circumcision, because somebody really should have cut that dickhead off,” Colbert quipped.While Musk is supposedly head of Doge, the White House continues to insist that he’s not in court filings and through its press secretary. Finally, on Tuesday, for reasons that remain unclear, the White House stated the agency is led by the career civil servant Amy Gleason. “Why Gleason? We don’t know for sure!” said Colbert.At the time of the announcement, Gleason was on vacation in Mexico. When reached by reporters, she declined to comment. “I am not surprised,” said Colbert. “It’s really hard to speak clearly when you’re under a bus.”The Daily ShowAnd on The Daily Show, Desi Lydic mocked Trump’s proposed “gold card” visas, which he described as “green card privileges plus”.“Oh? Green card privileges plus? See, I was still getting America with ads,” Lydic joked. “Quick question: if I’m unhappy with America, can I cancel my subscription after seven days?”According to Trump, the gold card visas will be “a route to citizenship, and wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card. They’ll be wealthy, and they’ll be successful and they’ll be spending a lot of money.“Did this guy just put a cover charge on America?” Lydic wondered. “It’s $5m to get in, but he’ll waive it if you bring three hot girls with you.“I mean, I guess this beats the old way of becoming a citizen? Which was to marry Donald Trump,” she added.“Now you might be thinking, wait a second, if the US is just going to put citizenship up for sale, doesn’t that mean can any monster can buy one as long as they’re rich? Well, according to Trump, yes,” she continued, pointing to Trump’s comment that he knows Russian oligarchs who are “very good people”.“Seems like Trump watched Anora, and his takeaway from that movie was ‘we need to do more to help out that rich Russian teenager. He’s so good at sex!’” Lydic joked. More