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      Why We Keep Rewatching ‘Gilmore Girls’

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      The show, which ended in 2007, was still one of the 10 most-watched shows across major streaming platforms last year, according to the research firm Nielsen.Some things have inexplicable staying power. The Hermès Birkin bag. Cheetos. Crocs.And for nostalgic millennials, there is “Gilmore Girls.” The show ended its seven-year run on the WB and CW networks in 2007, yet viewers keep returning to the familiar comfort of the fictional town of Stars Hollow, Conn., where the series was set.Netflix recorded 500 million viewing hours for the show from January to June of last year, surpassing hits like “Seinfeld” and “Stranger Things,” and data released on Monday by the research firm Nielsen showed that “Gilmore Girls” was among the Top 10 most-watched shows across the major streaming platforms in 2023.The show, which concluded the month before the iPhone was introduced, is even finding a younger audience on TikTok, where users post scenes they love and argue about their favorite romantic partners for every character.Yanic Truesdale, who played the grumpy inn concierge Michel, lovingly called it “the show that will never die.”“I’ve had hundreds, if not thousands, over the years, of people saying, ‘I got a surgery, and your show kept me going,’” he said. “Or, ‘I lost my dad,’ or ‘I lost this person, and I would watch the show and I would feel better.’”He added that he still meets fans who offer testaments to its popularity: “I’m always amazed that 10-year-olds, 15-year-olds — kids — are watching it as if it just came out.”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?  More

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      Minute-Long Soap Operas Are Here. Is America Ready?

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      Popularized in China during the pandemic, ReelShort and other apps are hoping to bring minute-by-minute melodramas to the United States.When Albee Zhang received an offer to produce cheesy short-form features made for phones last spring, she was skeptical, and so, she declined.But the offers kept coming. Finally, Ms. Zhang, who has been a producer for 12 years, realized it could be a profitable new way of storytelling and said yes.Since last summer, she has produced two short-form features and is working on four more for several apps that are creating cookie-cutter content aimed at women.Think: Lifetime movie cut up into TikTok videos. Think: soap opera, but for the short attention span of the internet age.The biggest player in this new genre is ReelShort, an app that offers melodramatic content in minute-long, vertically shot episodes and is hoping to bring a successful formula established abroad to the United States by hooking millions of people on its short-form content.“The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband” is one of the many short features you can watch on ReelShort, an app that offers short dramatic content meant to be watched on phones. ReelShort

      @reelshortapp On your 18th birthday, the Moon Goddess granted you a RED wolf. She said a new journey awaited you, but there were also evil forces after your power… Called weak your whole life, what POWER could you possibly have?! #fyp #reelshort #binge #bingeworthy #bingewatching #obsessed #obsession #mustwatch #witch #alpha #werewolf #moon #wolfpack #booktok #luna #drama #film #movie #tiktok #tv #tvseries #shortclips #tvclips #filmtok #movietok #dramatok #romance #love #marriage #relationship #couple #dramatiktok #filmtiktok #movietiktoks #saturday #saturdayvibes #saturdaymood #saturdaymotivation #saturdayfeels #saturdayfeeling #weekend #weekendvibes ♬ original sound – ReelShort APP 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?  More

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      ‘True Detective’ Season 4, Episode 3 Recap: Toxicity

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      Danvers and Navarro both must face some cold realities about who and what they represent in a community being poisoned by its biggest employer.Season 4, Episode 3: ‘Part 3’By Scott TobiasIn the first two episodes of “Night Country,” we knew Annie Kowtok as a dead person, a young Inupiaq activist who was stabbed 32 times and whose memory haunts the living every bit as much as the hallucinations that seem to slip in their minds during permanent darkness do.And so it’s especially powerful to meet Annie when she is associated with life, thanks to a stealthily placed flashback in the cold open in which she is helping an expectant mother through a water birth. Navarro has turned up to arrest her in connection with trespassing and destruction of private property at the mine, but the officer is literally disarmed by the scene she witnesses and is enlisted to help with: Annie is defiant about bringing an Inupiaq baby, the next generation, into the world.In perhaps the season’s strongest hour to date, the episode moves the procedural elements forward as expected, but the one common thread is the tug Annie and the town’s Indigenous population has on the consciences of our two lead characters. It starts with that flashback, in which Navarro has been put in the awkward spot of enforcing the law on the mine’s behalf, only to be put in a situation where she is disrupting an Inupiaq birth. For as much tension as we’ve witnessed in Danvers’s relationship with Ennis’s Native population, the show reminds us that Navarro, too, has complicated feelings about her place in the community. An Inupiaq herself, she has been hiding away from her own identity. Her sister has the kakiniit tattoo on her chin. Navarro, conspicuously, does not.To be a police officer in Ennis is often to represent the interests of the town’s biggest employer. Navarro and Danvers are not in the business of administering environmental justice or blowing the whistle on polluted groundwater. If there is tension around the mine, they’re the ones squelching protests or arresting activists like Annie for breaking the law. That, inevitably, puts them on one side of a stark racial line.The discomfort for Navarro is more acute, given her roots, but there is a lot of evidence in this episode that Danvers has been fighting her own conscience — and is perhaps starting to lose the battle. She rages at Leah to wipe the temporary tattoo marks off her face, perhaps as a protective instinct, but they’re on Annie’s face, too, and the weight of it seems to stir her sympathies.Meanwhile, the law is being administered much less delicately. It is a sharp narrative strategy to cut from the flashback with Navarro and Annie to a scene in which Hank is rounding up a civilian army to “search” for Raymond Clark, the missing scientist who had a secret affair with Annie. The term “search” is in scare quotes because Hank seems to have deliberately gathered a collection of armed-to-the-teeth yokels for a bounty hunt. He tells them that Clark is armed and dangerous and sends them on their way. When Navarro turns up to remind Hank that they want Clark alive, he replies, “Do we?”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?  More

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      Ukraine Criticizes HBO, Saying New ‘White Lotus’ Actor Supports War

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      On social media, Ukraine’s foreign ministry posted clips of the Serbian actor Milos Bikovic receiving a medal for cultural achievement from Vladimir Putin in 2018.Ukraine’s foreign ministry criticized HBO this week after Milos Bikovic was cast in the third season of “The White Lotus,” saying without evidence that the Serbian actor had supported Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.HBO announced on Jan. 12 that Bikovic, 36, would be joining the dark comedy about wealthy tourists at island resorts. On Wednesday, the foreign ministry of Ukraine made the accusations against Bikovic on social media, writing, “HBO, is it all right for you to work with a person who supports genocide & violates international law?”Bikovic was awarded the Pushkin Medal, which honors contributions to Russian arts and culture, by President Vladimir V. Putin in 2018 and received Russian citizenship by presidential decree in 2021.In February 2022, the day after the invasion began, Bikovic said on Instagram that he wished the war had not happened. “War and bloodshed on any side reminds us of how far humanity is from global unity and love,” he wrote in Russian and Serbian. “God save the lives of all those who are now in danger!”Ukraine’s foreign ministry and Bikovic did not respond to requests for comment. An HBO spokesman said questions should be directed to Bikovic’s representatives.President Biden has called Russia’s invasion genocide, and The New York Times has collected evidence of brutalities by Russia, including the willful killing of noncombatants.A 79-second video that Ukraine’s foreign ministry posted on social media interspersed scenes from “The White Lotus” with clips of Bikovic accepting the award from Putin and previous comments it said the actor had made about Russia. In a voice-over, it claimed that Bikovic was “the Kremlin’s foreign mouthpiece.”During Bikovic’s acceptance speech for the Pushkin Medal, he emphasized unity between Russia and Serbia. “What a joy for Russians and Serbs in our homeland because we have the same worldview,” he said in Russian.Ukraine barred Bikovic from entering the country in 2019 for what it called national security reasons. At the time, he told a Serbian publication that “from the human and poetic point of view the situation is absurd and interesting.”Before he was cast in “The White Lotus,” Bikovic acted in movies including “South Wind,” which follows a gang member in Belgrade; “Sunstroke,” about military officers remembering the collapse of the Russian Empire; “Ice,” in which he plays a figure skater; and “The Balkan Line,” about a military operation during the Kosovo war.Season 3 of “The White Lotus” is set to begin production in Thailand next month and is scheduled to air in 2025. It will feature Walton Goggins, Carrie Coon, Parker Posey and the returning cast member Natasha Rothwell. More

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      Trump Campaign Bars an NBC Reporter From a New Hampshire Event

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      Donald J. Trump, who popularized the term “fake news” and as president declared the news media “the enemy of the people,” is again clashing with journalists over press access, this time to his 2024 campaign events.An NBC News correspondent said on Sunday that aides to Mr. Trump stopped him from covering an event in New Hampshire, where the former president was expected to make his first in-person remarks after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida dropped out of the race.Vaughn Hillyard, a longtime NBC News correspondent who regularly covers Mr. Trump, had planned to attend as a pool reporter representing five major TV networks. But he told other campaign journalists that the Trump team objected to his presence.“Your pooler was told that if he was the designated pooler by NBC News that the pool would be cut off for the day,” Mr. Hillyard wrote in an email to the rest of the pool that was obtained by The New York Times. “After affirming to the campaign that your pooler would attend the events, NBC News was informed at about 2:20 p.m. that the pool would not be allowed to travel with Trump today.”Because candidate events often take place in cramped spaces, campaign journalists have long relied on a so-called pool system, in which one reporter attends on behalf of other news organizations. The television pool consists of ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC, with the networks taking turns on a preset schedule. Each network selects the individual journalist who is assigned to represent the pool.A spokesman for the Trump campaign, Steven Cheung, acknowledged that the network pool did not attend the New Hampshire event, but he said the Trump campaign does not “bar reporters based on their reporting.” Mr. Cheung said the campaign holds some events without a network pool, and noted that the pooling system for presidential candidates is less formal than the system in place for covering the president at the White House.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?  More

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      Recap: Jacob Elordi Hosts ‘Saturday Night Live’

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      Jacob Elordi hosted an episode in which Alaska Airlines was mocked with a parody ad about finding the upside in a flight where a door plug blew out.With 2024 underway and the presidential race in full swing, it was time for “Saturday Night Live” to get back to doing what it loves best: lampooning former President Donald J. Trump.In its first new broadcast of the year, hosted by Jacob Elordi and featuring the musical guest Reneé Rapp, “S.N.L.” kicked off with a sketch featuring its resident Trump impressionist, James Austin Johnson. It parodied Trump’s impromptu remarks outside a courtroom in Lower Manhattan where he is again on trial facing accusations that he defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll, after an earlier jury verdict in May that Trump defamed and sexually abused her.After a brief introduction by Chloe Fineman, who played Alina Habba, Trump’s lawyer, (“I am new at this, and I am learning,” she said), Johnson entered as Trump and quickly dressed down his own legal representation.“You’re great on TV,” Johnson told Fineman, adding: “Maybe the worst lawyer I’ve ever had, which is quite an accomplishment. Look at this team — this is the bottom of the barrel, folks, this is who said yes. I’m in the lead for president, and this is the best I can get. Feels like a red flag, no?”Johnson addressed his remaining lawyers and said, “You’re not getting paid, by the way.”He promised to abide by a gag order that prevented him from discussing the current defamation trial. “So I will not be saying that the judge is an idiot,” Johnson said, “or where he lives or what kind of crappy car he drives. I didn’t know they still made Wagoneers.”Johnson celebrated a first-place finish in the Iowa caucuses by taking potshots at rivals like Ron DeSantis (“Ron DeStupid,” he said. “It just works. We’re going with Ron DeStupid”) and Vivek Ramaswamy (“who dropped out of the race and has agreed to live in my suit pocket,” he said. “I love my little ‘Ratatouille.’”)He went on to contrast himself with President Biden, his likely rival in this year’s election. “He sniffs little girls’ hair,” Johnson said. “I am different, of course, I do far worse than that. You ever see that video of me dancing with Epstein? Boy, is that some dark energy.”Johnson predicted he would prevail because of his loyal voters: “We just need ’em to stay alive till November,” he said. “Stay alive till November. Just pull that lever and drop dead.”No matter what, Johnson predicted that 2024 would be an exciting year for him. “I’m either going to jail, be president or frankly, the Purge,” he said. “Perhaps all three; let’s spin the chamber.”Celebrity worship of the weekThe awards season has already produced several viral video clips of celebrities talking to one another in conversations inaudible on camera. So who better to interpret what they’re saying than a pair of professional lip readers, played by Elordi and Bowen Yang? Well, probably anyone else — the two were genuinely terrible, but hilarious, as they misconstrued a romantic heart-to-heart between Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner and an obvious joke from Jennifer Lawrence. Aptly, for a comedy sketch about spoken language and its meaning, no written words can fully do justice to the dopey voice that Elordi adopts when trying to lip-read Travis Kelce, a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs and Taylor Swift’s boyfriend.Fly the friendly skies of the weekThere’s basically no upside to the episode this month in which an Alaska Airlines flight had a door plug blow out shortly after takeoff. But that didn’t stop “S.N.L.” from seeking a positive spin in this fake commercial for Alaska Airlines, which reveals the company’s (fake) new slogan: “You didn’t die and you got a cool story.” The ersatz ad also points out that Alaska was the carrier in an episode in which an off-duty pilot was accused of trying to cut the engines on a flight in October and was charged with more than 80 counts of attempted murder. As a flight attendant, played by Kenan Thompson, says: “Now we’re so proud to say that’s our second-worst flight.”Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on the 2024 presidential election.Jost began:Well, guys, it’s 2024. But is it? [His screen showed photographs of Trump and Biden] I don’t know about you, but when I think of the year 2020, I never think we should run that one back. And if you’re feeling confused, you’re not the only one. At a rally on Thursday, President Biden said he was mixed up when he claimed he had just taken a photo with a woman who wasn’t even there. Then the next day, Donald Trump repeatedly confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi. Guys, I don’t know if we should do this election. It’s honestly starting to feel like elder abuse. And I don’t even blame them — I blame us for allowing it. It reminds me of those bum fight videos, where they made two homeless guys fight for money. And now we look back on it and we’re like, how did we as a society let that happen? So I think the best solution is, we should just tell Trump and Biden that they both won. And that we’re very proud of them. And that they can rest now.Che:In Monday’s Iowa caucuses, Ron DeSantis beat out Nikki Haley for second place. [His screen showed a photograph of DeSantis smiling awkwardly.] Well, that ought to put a — whatever this is — on his face.Weekend Update desk segment of the weekOff Friday’s news that Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina had endorsed Trump at a rally in New Hampshire, Devon Walker performed an impersonation of Scott, seeking to justify his endorsement. After poking fun at Scott’s voice (“My voice is like if Bill Clinton was actually Black,” Walker said. “I sound like the princess and the frog. I sound like if Forrest Gump was doing an impression of Ja Rule”). Walker explained that he didn’t see color: “When I looked at all the people at Trump’s rally, I did not see a single color,” he said. He also contended that it was not “a racist dog whistle” to ask whether Haley was born in America. Walker then took out what he said was an actual “racist dog whistle” and blew on it, seemingly to no effect — until Jost, wincing in discomfort, asked, “What is that noise?” More

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      Inside CNN’s Debate Over Airing Trump’s Iowa Caucus Victory Speech

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      Tensions within CNN over coverage of former President Donald J. Trump burst into the open on Thursday during an internal call with the network’s journalists, as an executive candidly questioned the approach of the channel’s new chief executive, Mark Thompson.CNN aired roughly 10 minutes of Mr. Trump’s victory speech after he won the Iowa caucuses on Monday before cutting away. The decision to cut him off prompted derision from the former president and his allies, although critics on the left questioned why CNN had taken Mr. Trump live in the first place, given his tendency to spread falsehoods and conspiracies. MSNBC chose not to take any of his remarks live.Mr. Thompson opened his morning conference call on Thursday by acknowledging a debate within his newsroom, saying he believed the network had a journalistic obligation to broadcast the remarks of the leading Republican candidate for president.After a period of silence, a senior vice president of programming, Jim Murphy, jumped in, telling Mr. Thompson that the network had given Mr. Trump too much airtime when the network aired Mr. Trump’s live news conference last week after his civil fraud trial. Mr. Murphy said that CNN should cover Mr. Trump’s comments when he makes news, not when he is repeating political talking points.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?  More

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      Ron DeSantis and Fox News, Old Friends, Hit Turbulence

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      When the Fox News host Laura Ingraham urged Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida “to step aside and endorse Trump” on Tuesday night, it was the latest sign of a sharp deterioration of relations between the Republican presidential hopeful and the network that made him a star.Ms. Ingraham’s exhortation, in the wake of Mr. DeSantis’s second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, was met with mockery and derision by two of the governor’s most prominent aides.“Why would DeSantis take advice from the opposing campaign?” Christina Pushaw, the campaign’s rapid response director, wrote on X, to which Mr. DeSantis’s spokesman in the governor’s office, Jeremy Redfern, chimed in.“The Fox News PAC,” he wrote.It was the latest broadside from Mr. DeSantis’s inner circle against the cable network that until recently had been among the loudest advocates of his candidacy.But Mr. DeSantis lashed out last week, accusing Fox News of bias toward his rival, former President Donald J. Trump. Speaking to reporters in Iowa, Mr. DeSantis said that conservative media outlets, including Fox, had acted as “a Praetorian Guard” for Mr. Trump. “They just don’t hold him accountable because they’re worried about losing viewers,” Mr. DeSantis said, “and they don’t want to have the ratings go down.”The governor’s campaign manager denounced Fox as “full blown Trump TV, honesty thrown to the wind.” On caucus night, Ms. Pushaw assailed Fox News for projecting a victory for Mr. Trump only a half-hour after Iowans began to caucus. “Corporate media election interference,” she wrote on X.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?  More