The Penguin as Populist, Not Plutocrat

"You know, not even a mile from here, there's a bunch of big-time, City Hall f—s sittin’ in some fancy private club," Oswald "the Penguin" Cobb tells a rogues’ gallery of Gotham City crime bosses in HBO’s eponymous series. "They're drinkin’ orange wine. They’re makin’ crooked deals to benefit them. … Why the hell not […]

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A Harsh Reality

As a Zoomer who grew up glued to shows like Big Brother and Keeping Up With the Kardashians, it's hard to imagine a time that reality TV even tried to be ethical. Not that that matters to me. In fact, one of the reasons I most enjoy binge watching Bravo is, to put it simply, watching the people on it suffer. In the last season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, when longtime cast member Kyle Richards sat her crying children down to tell them about her impending separation with their father, my husband could barely stand it. "This is evil," he said. I shrugged, knowing that he was probably right, but also having never really thought or cared about the morality of what I was watching. Reality TV stardom is a lucrative career, and by now everybody should know what they're getting into. Right? The crying kids are just collateral.

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Not Your Typical Coffee Table Book

In the annals of television history, few characters have been as unforgettable as Cosmo Kramer. The eccentric, almost otherworldly neighbor brought to life by Michael Richards on Seinfeld transcended mere entertainment to become a cultural touchstone. With his signature entrance—a frenzied burst through Jerry's apartment door—Richards didn't just walk onto the screen; he exploded into the collective consciousness of a generation.

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Band of Bombers

Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman—the producers of HBO's Band of Brothers and its partner The Pacific—have joined forces with Apple TV+ to bring audiences Masters of the Air, a miniseries that follows the heroic actions of the 100th Bomb Group, a B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber unit in the Eighth Air Force, during World War II.

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REVIEW: ‘Untold: Johnny Football’

Bad boys used to matter in American entertainment. Eminem, who now has lawyers send Vivek Ramaswamy moralistic cease and desist letters, was once a bad boy. Rap was the last bad boy scene; speaking indecorously of the fair sex was like saying hello. Actors would also say crazy things or get into fights. This was true of sports, too. Allen Iverson was the bad boy of the NBA in the ’90s; now we admire Steph Curry.

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Giants On and Off the Court

Basketball has become a numbers game—it’s moneyball, as we say, a lot of somewhat slender-looking guys throwing three pointers. The last legend is Steph Curry, four-time champion, who apparently trains for perfect shooting. Is he a man or a machine? He’s a success, obviously very clever, but the excitement is gone. Basketball is more of a nerd’s game now. It’s been rationalized. Probably every part of training is algorithmic—less playing the game, more gaming the game.

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Foundation for a Hit Series

Foundation is partly a science fiction thriller, partly a coming-of-age story. Maybe it has the right feel for the moment, given worries about the decay of American power. The first season, for example, re-created 9/11 and suggested race riots and religious revolts in the context of an imperial capital. Foundation raises the problems of decline and progress in a way most pop culture doesn't even contemplate. In going back for its sources farther than most of our nostalgia fashions, it also seems to look forward with more daring.

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REVIEW: 'The Idol'

The Idol—HBO and A24's salacious chronicle of the fall and rebirth of sexpot pop star Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp) and her mutually destructive relationship with lover/muse/abusive cult leader Tedros Tedros (The Weeknd, né Abel Tesfaye)—earned a rare trifecta, taking heat from high-minded critics, the Parents Television Council, and puritanical Gen Z scolds alike, all of whom were tremendously put out by the show and its unwavering commitment to hedonistic nudity. Though far from perfect, The Idol is both an amusing throwback to HBO's origins as a venue dedicated to the production of near-prurient televisual entertainment and also a scathing indictment of the entertainment-industrial complex's efforts to manufacture, and then maintain, stardom.

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Where Everybody Knows Your Theme Song

You're going to have to trust me on the following math: Assume, for the purposes of this exercise, that you are piloting a small craft, no more than 30 feet in length, and you motor out of the Honolulu marina having charted a course for a three-hour tour. At some point, the weather starts getting rough, and your tiny ship is tossed. (Perhaps you're familiar, at this point, with this particular word problem?)

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REVIEW: ‘Lucky Hank’

One of the funniest American contributions to the tradition of the campus novel is Richard Russo’s 1997 Straight Man, which follows the middle-aged English professor William Henry Deveraux Jr. during a particularly eventful few weeks at West Central Pennsylvania University (not a real school) in Railton, Pa. (not a real town). An adaptation of Russo’s work is airing on AMC, but because no network executive in his left mind would greenlight a show called Straight Man—you might as well pitch Cisgender Patriarch, even if Russo’s title refers to the stiff in a comedy routine—it’s called Lucky Hank. (The new title is an apt homage to Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim, the ne plus ultra of academic comedies.) Although it’s an enjoyable show with many excellent performances, six episodes into its eight-episode season I’ve found myself disappointed by how it underplays the novel’s slapstick humor and squalid setting.

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