Trump, is visiting, ostensibly to review the damage caused by the devastating wildfires. But like pretty much all Republicans, he has also responded to the them with incredible cruelty and pretty bitterness. That includes using the fires as an excuse to say bigoted things, spread conspiracy theories, attempt to punish California for being a blue state by holding aid hostage. Which of course is par for the course.

So it makes perfect sense that Kimmel during his monologue on Thueresday lamented that Trump is actually coming here “to blame us for the fires in person.”

“It’s the first time in history that a natural disaster will be visited by an even bigger natural disaster,” Kimmel joked. “He’s coming to, I guess to survey the damage and meet with the governor, mostly to get away from Elon for a couple of days.”

“You know, we knew Donald Trump was gonna be terrible. When I say ‘we,’ I mean you know ‘us’  here in the room. But what we didn’t know? He would be so terrible that he would actually threaten to not help us in an emergency situation if he doesn’t get what he wants,” Kimmel said, at which point he played a clip of Trump doing just that.

“Great point Jacques-Off Cousteau,” Kimmel retorted. “He is so ridiculous. And we have to sit around with the place on fire, hoping he gives us our own money back.” This was of course a reference to the very real fact that the vast majority of taxes come from blue states, especially California, and get sent to red states.

“Trump and his minions are planning to leverage any federal aid that they might give to force us to help him round up and deport our neighbors,” Kimmel explained, referring to their racist demands that California cooperate with unconstitutional treatment of immigrants or lose federal disaster aid.
 
“As if we’re Eric and he’s cutting off our allowance to teach us some kind of a lesson. Which, on one hand you might think, ‘wow, what a truly, only a despicable human being would use disaster relief money as a bargaining chip,’ but on the other hand… there is no other hand.  It’s just that hand,” Kimmel declared. “It’s just that grubby, grabby little hand of his.”

It should be noted that blue state leaders and Democrats have never demanded that disaster aid be withheld from red states in retaliation for racist, anti-democratic or similar policies that are nearly ubiquitous in states controlled by Republicans.

Watch the full monologue below:

The post Jimmy Kimmel Jokes Trump is Coming to LA ‘to Blame Us for the Fires in Person’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

The film, which premiered Thursday at Sundance, begins with a car accident occurring offscreen. Putting its darkly comedic tone on immediate display, we get the most jarring cut to a funeral since “Hereditary” and see Rocky is having to be the person everyone else gets support from, even as he has just lost his twin brother.

Left adrift and angry at the loss without any real way of processing it, Rocky begins to attend the aforementioned support group. It’s there we get the first of many great dark jokes and O’Brien makes each that much funnier through his reactions alone. That’s also when we meet Dennis (Sweeney) who is attending the group as well. The two bond over their loss with Rocky calling up his new bud at all hours to help him do menial tasks like going grocery shopping because he likes the company. They couldn’t be more different in sexuality and disposition — Rocky is bro-ish and a bit dim while Dennis is quick-witted and dryly funny — but they still begin to just be present for the other. We see this all unfolding from Rocky’s perspective as he clings to the relationship like a life raft in the hope that he can move forward.

But this is just the beginning. Once the title card drops unexpectedly late into the film, everything changes. Just when you think the movie is teetering on the edge of falling into repetition, or even worse, running out of steam, the perspective shifts to Dennis and Sweeney’s master plan clicks into place. It is not a spoiler to say that nothing is exactly what it seems, but the precise details of how this soon takes shape would be a crime to give away. What can be said is that both of these young men are about to find that their lives will be forever changed. As each goes about their days in the pointedly bustling yet isolating big city of Portland, we spend much of our time with Dennis as he is the one driving almost all the significant events and yet is increasingly having a hard time holding everything together. He despises his job, his coworkers, and much of his life. When he’s with Rocky, he seems more joyful. There is a sweetness to their interactions.

The film morphs into something else, and what fun Sweeney has contorting his characters into a whole host of hilarious, yet still uncomfortable, situations. It isn’t a mystery, as the audience is clued in quite early, though “Twinless” still gets plenty of mileage from watching certain characters begin to piece together what is happening. The film could be mistaken as cringe comedy, but it’s much more than that, and Sweeney never lets the film’s delightful twists overtake the emotion at the root of the movie.

On a formal level, there are also some fun uses of split screen that show the diverging paths of characters before they come back together again. Sweeney excels at marrying style with character.

When the film reaches its inevitable breaking point, the movie that started coming to mind most was the late, great Lynn Shelton’s Sundance classic “Humpday.” Even as “Twinless” is not quite as simultaneously audacious and thoughtful as that, the scenes in the confines of Seattle hotel rooms where the two men finally begin to open up to each other shares a similar unpredictable, intimate energy.

The film never gets bogged down in its more starkly depressing elements, with Sweeney remaining light on his comedic feet in everything from a goofy movie he has his character watch to a killer final gag involving the cover of a children’s book. But it also hits on something bittersweet in the last lines that provide a cathartic little button to the whole affair.

“Twinless” is a sales title at Sundance.  

Check out all our Sundance coverage here

The post ‘Twinless’ Review: Dylan O’Brien and James Sweeney Are a Great Duo in Delightfully Diabolical Dramedy appeared first on TheWrap.

“Jimpa,” the latest film from “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” director Sophie Hyde, does this about as fully as one could ever hope to do. In a script Hyde wrote with her “52 Tuesdays” co-writer Matthew Cormack, we are taken fully into the world of Jim (aka Jimpa), played by John Lithgow, and his daughter Hannah, played by Olivia Colman, as they try to navigate their respective lives. Jim is a gay man who left Hannah and her mother when she was a child and she is now attempting to make a film about him while also raising her own child Frances (Aud Mason-Hyde), who is nonbinary.

As they all spend time together in the beauty of Amsterdam, the love they have for each other comes crashing into the lingering tension that Hannah has spent most of her adult life attempting to not just process, but speak openly about. 

The result is a film that’s not just incisive and compassionate, but fully attuned to the rhythms of this modern family. Conversations around queerness, polyamory and sexuality take place throughout in ways that embrace their complexity rather than shy away from them. In a world that seeks not just to repress such conversations but target those who have them, it is as refreshing as it is essential to see a film tackling them with such frankness.

As we hear them talk with radical openness about some things, Hyde pulls off a delicate balancing act where we come to see that there is also much that they are not yet fully able to talk through. It’s a film built around such conversations and our desire for connection that may be a little fragmented at times but cuts deep all the same.

Just as last year’s Sundance saw the excellent film “A Real Pain” capture the delicate relationship between two cousins, this one sees its own messy family trying to open up to each other and make sense of the pain they’re feeling before it’s all too late. It earns every emotion and then some, breaking the heart open with such breathtaking truthfulness that you get bowled over just before you land softly in its final frames. That it is also a film partly about its very construction only makes it all the more wonderfully rich to experience. 

Premiering Thursday at Sundance, “Jimpa” begins with Hannah and Frances talking about Jim. The former is doing so as part of a pitch about the film she wants to make about her father, and the latter is doing so for a class presentation. Both are earnestly passionate and clearly love him, though there is still a sense that we are hearing a possibly rosy portrait of the man. Critically, this earnestness must not be mistaken for complete honesty.

Instead, as Hyde gently teases out, we realize that Hannah in particular is invested in not expressing anger or even conflict about her father. This results in a humorous opening conversation about how all dramas must contain some element of conflict, but “Jimpa” doesn’t just use this for jokes. It is also flagging up to us that the film we are watching is about someone attempting to reckon with their past and the challenges of making art that can do full justice to this. That it does so within some of the familiar narrative beats of the family dramedy is part of its potency. Not only does Hyde remain aware of how the overly saccharine version of this film could go, she holds it up to the light in order to see all the ways the narratives we fall back on may actually be hiding critical parts of the lives we lead. 

You see, Jim is a flawed man as well as a caring one. He fought for the civil rights of others, speaking out after being diagnosed with AIDS even as the world was fighting him at every turn. And he has tried to continue doing so even in his older age. He is also egotistical, selfish and occasionally cruel, especially when he doesn’t always listen to others.

Lithgow, all tattooed up and often bearing his body in addition to his soul, is terrific at capturing all the seemingly contradictory yet completely authentic layers of the man. He is capable of turning a scene on its head with such withering charm and conviction that you go along with it until you realize just how hurtful he can be to the others around him. Alongside Colman, whose eyes contain entire worlds of tumultuous emotion in these scenes, we feel how it is the family has settled into this comfortable uncomfortableness. 

However, if there is a breakout star in the film, it is Aud Mason-Hyde. That they are the child of director Hyde only makes it all the more engaging as we can feel an extra sense of natural lived-in emotion in the way the scenes unfold. Even alongside heavy-hitters like Lithgow and Colman, it is remarkable how effortlessly Mason-Hyde holds their own. In many ways, their scenes are what bring everything out that the adults are looking away from. Even when there are some conversations amongst the older generation that can feel a little clunky in how they underline what they are saying, it is Mason-Hyde who brings us into the more complicated gray areas that are necessary to understanding what “Jimpa” is attempting to grapple with. For all the joy that Frances discovers in the city and the desire they have to move away from home in order to find community, we see in their eyes how life is not always so simple. When tragedy does inevitably arise, it makes the quiet and often unspoken details of their performance all the more impactful.  

As we see in the hands of cinematographer Matthew Chuang, who previously shot the gorgeous “You Won’t Be Alone,” the past and present are always crashing together. It is in these striking juxtapositions that the lives of all the characters come into greater focus. There is pain in how they are intercut into the present, but there is also a captivating quality to them that only cinema can provide. At times, it even recalls the shattering way director Barry Jenkins captured the various characters in his astounding adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk.”

With that being said, there is still much that Hyde uncovers that she can call her own in her directing. The way moments will linger and intersect takes the breath away just as they never feel like they are overdone. It’s all one would hope a film like this to be: honest, bittersweet and true. In the end, whether Hannah the character is able to make her film, Hyde has done so herself in beautiful fashion.

The post ‘Jimpa’ Review: Olivia Colman and John Lithgow Soar in Beautiful, Bittersweet Drama appeared first on TheWrap.

Despite everything Mark S. (Adam Scott) put Lumon through at the end of “Severance” Season 1, the powers that be desperately need him to get back to work on his current assignment – the Cold Harbor file.

The second episode of Season 2, titled “Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig,” unpacks what the fallout looked like in the outside world after the MDR team activated the overtime contingency. Lumon activated Milchick (Tramell Tillman) to make the rounds and fire Irving (John Turturro) and Dylan (Zach Cherry) but bring Mark back. Mark spent much of the episode trying to convince his sister (and himself) that him screaming “she’s alive!” was in reference to his niece and not Gemma (Dichen Lachman).

Back at Lumon HQ, Helena (Britt Lower) plans to bring in a stringer team to replace Mark’s crew because they’re bent on him finishing the Cold Harbor file — which was about 68% done. Helena says they don’t need to have chemistry with Mark S., they just need to be around so he can focus on work.

But if the company was fine firing Irving and Dylan after the overtime contingency was activated, what’s so important about the Cold Harbor file, and Mark, to get him back to work?

Here’s what we know about the Cold Harbor file and what it could actually be.

Where is Ms. Casey?

Toward the end of Season 1 it was revealed that Outie Mark’s dead wife — whose death precipitated him agreeing to the severance protocol — wasn’t dead at all. In fact, dead wife Gemma was alive and well (to some extent at least) serving as the counselor Ms. Casey on the severed floor at Lumon.

Our last shot of Ms. Casey in the Season 1 finale shows her being let go from her post as wellness counselor and being sent to someplace ominously called the “testing floor.”

What is known about Cold Harbor?

Cold Harbor was the name of the encrypted file Mark S. was working on when all the craziness of Season 1’s finale went down. The Season 2 premiere also gave viewers a glimpse of Ms. Casey surrounded by readings.

What do the Cold Harbor readings on Ms. Casey mean?

There is a lot to parse from the brief image of Ms. Casey and her Cold Harbor readings. To start simply, one seems to be a heart rate monitor and other stats keeping track of her vitals.

At the bottom are five percentage bars lined up much like the sorting boxes that the MDR team place their encrypted data in once it makes them “feel something.” There are a four acronyms featured beneath each of Ms. Casey’s percentage bars as well: WO, DR, FC, and MA. Eagle-eyed fans drew a connection in Season 1 between these acronyms and the Four Tempers Lumon’s cult-like founder Kier Eagan claimed every soul possessed — Woe, Dread, Frolic and Malice. It’s likely these four emotions are close to the ones the MDR team “feels” when refining their data at work.

One of the more mysterious and possibly terrifying bits of the reading is the label ITNO: 25.00. This could be an acronym for Iteration Number 25 meaning this is the 25th attempt at creating/recreating Ms. Casey/Gemma.

What Could Cold Harbor be?

We’re in full-blown theory territory here but one thing seems relatively ironclad. Mark’s work on the Cold Harbor filed is directly tied to whatever is happening on the testing floor. Based on the fact that the Season 2 premiere ended with Mark dropping data into his Cold Harbor file and the percentages increasing both for him and on Ms. Casey’s readings, it’s clear their tie could relate to many assumptions it has to do with reintegration of people — possibly clones.

The file — like most of the others seen on the show — references a place in the real world. Cold Harbor is located in Virginia, near Mechanicsville. It is not clear where Lumon is based — maps and glimpses state the company town Kier is in a state labeled PE, which could be near Virginia. One theory wonders if the file name could correspond to the place Gemma “died” which later prompted Mark to go through the severance process.

Another possible — but long-reaching — connection is the file’s name in relation to a battle in the Civil War. The Battle of Cold Harbor was fought in 1864 and saw the Confederacy earn a decisive win against the Union. In the show’s lore, Kier Eagan founded Lumon in 1865 when he was 24 years old. Throwaway dialogue in Season 1 also mentions he was a military doctor before he founded Lumon. All this lends some ground to the theory that the South might have won the Civil War as questions about the state of the larger world mount.

A fun note that doesn’t say much about what Cold Harbor could be, but does point to the clear importance of it to the show – “Cold Harbor” was the working title for the show while they shot Season 2.

Why does Mark need to be working on Cold Harbor?

Season 1 revealed that Mark S. has a unique aptitude for refining the encrypted data assigned to MDR. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) has obviously taken a shining to him as he’s had one success after another — it’s become an obsession to the point that she’s inserted herself into his outie’s life — and it’s implied that some of the projects he’s worked on helped keep her in Lumon’s good graces.

Toward the end of Episode 2, Helena and Milchick discuss Mark’s plea to the board from the premiere, and it’s revealed that despite choosing to fire Irv and Dylan, they’re going to bring them back because they need Mark working on Cold Harbor.

“We need Mark S. back to work long enough to complete Cold Harbor,” Helena says.

It might just be that they need Mark working on Cold Harbor because he’s particularly talented at refining data, but the fact that the file is directly connected to Gemma/Ms. Casey points to how Mark’s proximity to them both inside Lumon and out might play a larger factor in their plans.

“Severance” airs new episodes Fridays on Apple TV+.

The post ‘Severance’ Season 2 Episode 2 Ending Explained: What Is Cold Harbor? appeared first on TheWrap.

“My goodness, that chair is gorgeous,” we hear via playful, often poetic, narration by Melanie Griffith before we cut to a sad little meal being shared by Camille, played by a fantastic and committed Juliette Lewis, plus her two friends. The voiceover shifts into being biting as the camera notably pulls away. Gone is Griffith’s effusive affection and in its place is a more oddly wistful sadness. 

In terms of all the memorable ways films have opened, this doesn’t sound like it would be that meaningful of a way to do so, but my goodness is it. It’s gleefully silly without overselling itself while laying the seeds for a humorous yet heartfelt juxtaposition between the life being led by Camille and the chair at the furniture showroom. If this sounds ridiculous, it’s just the wondrous beginning to the journey Kramer takes us on — one where Camille, after attempting to buy the chair, does the next best thing: become the furniture herself. Rather than serve as a shallowly classical body swap story that provides a moral lesson about her growing to appreciate the life she had, the aftermath of this decision is more thematically complicated and engaging. It’s also sincere, tapping into anxieties about being not just liked or even loved, but truly seen. 

You see, rather than despise her confinement, Camille’s lonely existence becomes infinitely better. The people around her love her far more when she is nothing but a chair. 

Premiering Thursday at Sundance, this is the first film Kramer has shown at the festival and it also feels like the one she’s spent her whole career building up to. Rather than compromise her ideas that she’s explored with spirited, if sometimes a little scattered, verve in past works, she deepens the emotions she’s tapping into just as she dives further and further into absurdity. Merging a somewhat similar visual style to “Please Baby Please” with the thorny introspective elements of the smaller-scale “Pity Me,” it’s not just her funniest film yet, but also her best. 

Set in only a handful of locations, all are shot with maximum creativity and an eye for whimsical compositions by cinematographer Patrick Meade Jones, who has worked on all of Kramer’s previous narrative features. As it traces the path Camille takes in her newfound existence as a chair, she discovers something oddly liberating in the change that is also not to last.

Initially, she is bought as a gift for Olivier, played by a magnificent Mamoudou Athie, who is living a lonely life of his own but also becomes infatuated with her in chair form. He takes her to a dinner party and must fight off the other attendees from getting their hands on her. The expressions that Athie makes in this scene and his repeated outbursts of “No!” are a riot, though the actor never descends into relying on one-note gags.

Instead, he takes part in a variety of eerie dance numbers, both with others that seem to come from his subconscious and by himself with Camille/the chair being rapidly cut between, as well as an uproarious sequence surrounding an awkward photo shoot being done for a magazine. It’s strange in an intentionally stilted fashion. Critically, the cast approaches their parts with the seriousness necessary to pull the cocktail of silliness and sincerity off. It will alienate some, but that’s also what makes it work. 

At the center of this is Lewis, whose every rhythmic line delivery, desperate expression, and eventual scream is operating on the precise wavelength that the film needs. It’s all ludicrous in snapshots, but the full picture that lurks underneath is one of discontentment. The film lays this out in both the narration that interjects throughout and the commitment that Lewis brings to the part. This includes her spending a significant portion of the film playing the chair as Camille, as the swap involves the furniture taking over her body, meaning she doesn’t move or speak. If this sounds like it’d distance you from her character, the opposite that ends up happening. Even as there is one darker scene in the middle that sends the film teetering a bit, it’s everything that surrounds it which proves to be unexpectedly yet richly saddening and silly to sort through. 

While she has never been one to shy away from what are often impenetrable narratives about troubled people struggling to connect, “By Design” is the one that brings it all together in the most potent package. The film’s final fleeting lines underline this perfectly, making it land with an unexpected gut punch as you get one last look at Camille, back alone all over again.

We feel all the pieces Kramer has been designing for us falling into place one last dreamlike and despairing time, echoing where we began in a lonely showroom with the spotlights coming down. All you need do is pull up a chair and take it all in.    

The post ‘By Design’ Review: Juliette Lewis and Mamoudou Athie Are a Joy in This Bold Body Swap Comedy appeared first on TheWrap.

“The Sex Lives of College” wrapped up Season 3 with an unexpected reveal: A coming out story for Amrit Kaur’s Bela.

Despite only dating guys throughout her time at Essex, Bela’s romantic interest is piqued by Hailey (Melinda Belle Adams), the host of the storytelling show she joined in last week’s episode. After kissing Hailey at a party, Bela officially comes out as bisexual to her roommates — a twist showrunner Justin Noble said hasn’t been in the works since Season 1, but one that doesn’t surprise him.

“Bela has always been this character who’s down to try anything, do anything,” Noble told TheWrap, adding that many sheltered teens like herself have “massive discovery journeys” in college. “I wanted Bella to be a counterbalance to the story we did with Leighton (Reneé Rapp) — Leighton came into college knowing exactly who she was. But she was closeted, and that’s what made it tough.”

“Bela is not that person,” he continued. “She’s the form of queer representation where she’s discovering it on her own in real time as we watch.”

Though Kaur only found out about Bela’s coming out story before the Season 3 finale’s table read, Noble recalled that Kaur weighed in on how Bela might come out to her mom, given stigmas in certain South Asian families. Tracing back Bela’s fears of disappointing her parents during her first family weekend at Essex, Noble and Kaur wanted to show that coming out might be scary for Bela.

“Coming out stories are usually not for the person who came out at 14 and had an easy time doing it — it’s always like that kid who lives in an area that’s not super accepting whose parents are saying off-putting things as TV show characters are playing in front of them or on the news, and that it could be a little difficult for them to come out,” Noble said. “Our show and other shows can be a little bit of a road map of watching someone do it, watching someone honor that fear that they might have, that struggle that they might have, but then getting through it and giving a happy ending, because God who wants to see a bad one?”

Below, Noble unpacks the rest of the girls’ Season 3 journeys and teases what’s ahead for a potential Season 4, once he and cocreator Mindy Kaling get the official greenlight from Max.

TheWrap: That twist with Arvind caught fans off guard. Did you consider keeping him around longer?

Justin Noble: Arvind was obviously very uncool in the way he handled that, but in the scheme of life and thinking about relationships and even friendships, and what people go through and have fights and come back from, I think we could end up seeing Arvind again. I think there’s a possibility for it. I believe in the power of forgiveness for people. It’s not usually very common in TV watching.

Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet) also has an interesting arc in the last few episodes. How does the protest shift how she might go about her professional goals?

Kimberly came into school so nervous — so much of Kimberly is weirdly inspired by a little bit of me, because I went to a school like this and I didn’t know anyone there, and I was terrified of that aspect and my parents thought they were out of the right class to be there. Her goal is the ultimate example of rule following, so she can’t have anything wrong, and then we see her make a couple mistakes that give her pause, and people are like, “Chill. You don’t need to put this pressure on yourself.” This protest is an interesting fork in the road for her, because she knows what she thinks is right, but it does not align with the rules she has put upon herself given the person that she wants to be professionally. She, of course, makes the decision to be true to what she believes, but that comes at a cost, so we’ll have to see what that means for her.

There definitely seemed to be a spark with her and the protest organizer. Would he ideally be back in Season 4?

I think he could be.

Whitney’s (Alyah Chanelle Scott) storyline spotlights the pressures of being a student athlete. How did that come about?

This is something that we had decided very early on, because we knew Whitney was going to be the soccer player — it felt like a type of person you meet in college, the student athlete who’s in your room, who has to take on other things that other people don’t. They have to wake up early for practices, they have to get their lifts in. They struggle to keep up on their classes because of all the time. We talked to a bunch of female student athletes and some soccer players, and we just felt deeply for how much they had on their plates, compared to some other people who were like, “Oh, I think I might audition for this comedy group” — they didn’t have the luxury of doing things like that. I was so inspired by Naomi Osaka’s story a couple years ago in tennis, and I wanted Whitney to be like a poster child for pushing back against this.

Whitney is not a doormat character — she pushes for what she wants, and I think she sees injustice. She’s had a particularly — intentionally — rough go of it in soccer, dating back to Coach Dalton, and it was time for her to speak up and demand change, and we see her get it.

Kacey (Gracie Lawrence) also went through her first post-Calvin break up. Why did you decide to end this one pretty quickly and how will it be a learning experience for her?

Kacey was the opportunity to tell a story about confidence, which felt so important for all college students, but particularly young, female college students. From the moment we meet Casey, there’s this front of extreme confidence, and then mom comes to visit, and mom cracks that veneer a little bit, and we see that maybe she’s not as strong as she puts out in front. In the gay rodeo episode, we see that it’s much deeper than we thought — when she’s facetuning the photo of herself and changing everything about her face, it just kills me. Just one little throwaway comment, where they’re asking what exes would say about you, totally sets her off on this journey where she has to know from Calvin what it was about. Calvin basically says, I don’t think I could have stayed a virgin for four years, and then adds this one haunting, lingering comment, saying, “I don’t think any guy could.” And she makes a bad decision, in a true way that felt like what our writers in the room talked about. She got a little too attached too quickly. But the friends are there. The show is always about the love story between these girls, and they build her back up, and she has her biggest confident win of the season.

Taylor (Mia Rodgers) seems to be finding the strength in herself to stay sober, but moving off campus means she’s a bit more isolated. Do you think this was a positive decision for her? 

Totally. A lot of Bela’s advice over the course of the season has been correct, and she’s like, “God, this girl doesn’t quite get it.” And then I love in Episode 9 when Bella’s like, “this is bad — you shouldn’t be doing this,” but Ash is a good person, and she’s a good person for Taylor to have around. I just wanted to set up a nice, happy queer story with the two of them, as opposed to another mistake made in relationships. There’s so many queer women in my life who have lived up to the stereotype of U-Haul lesbians, and we’re just going to show a version of it that’s very positive. They move in together, they have different amounts of makeup, and they’re there for each other.

I’m anticipating that some fans might start shipping Bela and Taylor — do you get any romantic vibes from them?

I have been seeing those comments all season — I desperately wanted to be like, “Do you not realize how deeply inappropriate it would be for Bela to put a move on her?” She’s not only a first-year student who Bela has under her care, she’s in a vulnerable, sober journey space, so I truly don’t see them that way. I think they’re a nice friendship, but because queer audiences, for decades, remain so thirsty for love stories between queer characters, as soon as a show has two queer characters, they end up together, because shows at large don’t have a plethora of bonus queer characters. Our show just has a lot of queer characters, so it’s a little different in that there’s just queer friends. That being said, nothing’s off limits in future seasons. Hopefully Taylor wouldn’t be a first year student, but I think they have a cute friendship that I like — I like how much Taylor needles Bela, and they’re a little different. I love what Ruby Cruz brings to Ash, and I love the dynamic between Taylor and Ash, even though we don’t see a tremendous amount of it this season.

What are some storylines you’d like to dig deeper into in a potential Season 4?

Kimberly has the cliffhanger of this season — she thinks that the school is going to sue her for property damage. I’d love to see how that goes down and if Tig Notaro’s character would play into that if she has to come to her aid. We have multiple new love interests that appear in these two episodes at the end of Season 3, we have the closing of some doors and different extracurriculars and school things, so there’s a lot of momentum heading into a Season 4, and lots of ways we can go. So pending a phone call, Mindy and I and the writers will be at the ready to decide which way to go.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

“The Sex Lives of College Girls” Season 1-3 are now streaming on Max.

The post ‘Sex Lives of College Girls’ Season 3 Ending Explained: Showrunner Breaks Down Bela’s Big Reveal appeared first on TheWrap.

As with some of the students in Toossi’s classroom drama, I have no talent for learning foreign languages despite all the courses taken, all the money spent. I know the fear, the awkwardness, that constant feeling of stupidity. Watching “English,” I also felt the tedium of sitting in a classroom — or Zoom class — while people struggle desperately to express themselves in a foreign language. Yes, the tedium. My classes tend to be 90 minutes. Toossi’s play is only slightly longer.

Set in Iran in 2008, the four students here (Tala Ashe, Ava Lalezarzadeh, Pooya Mohseni and Hadi Tabbal) and their teacher (Marjan Neshat) speak fluent American English when they’re supposed to be speaking Farsi, and a very accented broken English when they’re supposed to be speaking English. In other words, we in the audience can always understand what they’re saying except when the accents get a little too thick or the English gets really mangled, which is when Toossi reveals her dated sense of humor. Anyone who watched Ricky Ricardo “’splain” himself on “I Love Lucy” has heard these kinds of malapropism jokes before.

My takeaway from “English” is definitely not the message of identity and pride that Toossi has in mind. For me, the teacher Marjan (Neshat exudes extreme patience throughout) is trying hard to teach disrespectful students who don’t really want to learn. For example, when the teacher insists they speak English, a couple of the students believe she is infringing on their Arab identity and insist on speaking their native tongue so they can really “express” themselves. One student gets so incensed she plays a Farsi song in class.

For me, this is the moment I would demand my tuition back. We’re learning German, so let’s listen to Lady Gaga?

Another such tuition-refund moment comes when the students perform a language exercise and throw a small green ball at each other. When they catch it, they have to speak an English word on a given topic, such as “kitchen” or “sports.” The exercise adds action to a drama that desperately needs it, but this exercise is trauma-inducing for anyone trying to verbalize a foreign word.

But back to those recalcitrant students: They shame Marjan for having let people in England, where she lived for nine years, call her Mary. That’s a lesson learned. This week, I must remember to tell my Italian instructor to stop calling me Robertino.

Of course, there’s a difference between foreign language as a hobby and foreign language as destiny and survival. These Iranian students’ future depends on passing the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language). The anxiety and fear of failure permeates the actors’ performances, and there’s something else they’re even better at communicating: resentment. “English” was conceived as Toossi’s MFA thesis, and running around the edges of her play is the inherent patriarchy of formal education. Toossi tweaks that indictment by having the teacher be female, but the subjugation of the students by an illiberal force propagating Western culture remains. They study a Ricky Martin song, watch the movie “Moonstruck” and, of course, drink Coca-Cola. That’s cultural tyranny.

The other choice is chaos — let the students run the classroom and no one learns. “English” explores the tyranny, but fudges the chaos. Left unexplained is how one incompetent student eventually aces her TOEFL. Also weakly explained is why another student, proficient in English, takes this class.

Under Knud Adams’ direction, Neshat is wise to play against the authoritarian instincts of her character. Ashe and Mohseni, unfortunately, play right into their respective character’s self-righteousness with regard to so-called students’ rights. Such entitled behavior has led to many in the United States leaving the teaching profession. It’s doubtful it has ever been tolerated in Iran, especially in 2008.

“English” is written in short snippets of scenes, and Toossi emphasizes this choppiness by concluding many of these five-minute skits with an overly pithy remark. Adams brings some connective tissue to the play by providing musical interludes as Marsha Ginsberg’s classroom set spins around to offer us a variety of viewpoints. The only thing missing is the drama.

In one respect, “English” fits perfectly into the dramatic works the Pulitzer committee likes to promote. It tells us that Western culture is bad, everything else is just great.

The post ‘English’ Broadway Review: Something Gets Lost in the Translation appeared first on TheWrap.

“The Hills” stars banded together with more than 20 other Pacific Palisades residents, filing a suit Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The suit alleged that the city’s water supply system failed its residents.

“On information and belief, the Palisades Fire was an inescapable and
unavoidable consequence of the water supply system servicing areas in and around Pacific Palisades as it was planned and constructed,” the lawsuit read. “The system necessarily failed, and this failure was a substantial factor in causing Plaintiffs to suffer the losses alleged in this Complaint.”

The plaintiffs are suing for an undetermined amount from the city, but they will have to prove how the city’s water system caused damage to the property. The “inverse condemnation” suit also demands a jury trial.

The lawsuit specifically outlined how Santa Ynez Reservoir was “completely offline and emptied before the fires erupted in the area.” The plaintiffs also alleged that fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades “failed after three tanks
each holding one million gallons of water went dry within a span of 12 hours.”

Pratt has been vocal on social media about his family’s loss during the fires, even promoting his wife’s music on TikTok to bring the family revenue during the difficult time. Both Pratt and his parents lost their homes in the Palisades fire. His parents are also plaintiffs in the suit.

This case is one of many inverse condemnation cases that have been filed against the city. In total, the L.A. wildfires have burned just over 50,000 acres since they began on Jan. 7. Additionally, at least 28 people have been killed and more than 15,798 structures have been destroyed. While the Eaton fire is nearly contained at 95% after burning 14,021 acres, the Palisades fire has now reached 23,448 acres at 72% containment.

Analysts have estimated that this is the costliest fire in American history, with estimates of around $250 billion.

The post Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt Sue City of LA Over Wildfire Damage, Saying Its ‘System Necessarily Failed’ appeared first on TheWrap.

The new two-man team of John Dickerson and Maurice Dubois will take over the evening slot beginning Monday. The broadcast, which had been based in Washington D.C., will return to New York, and Margaret Brennan will serve as lead correspondent from Washington, D.C.

O’Donnell will stay at the network as a senior correspondent, promising viewers that they’ll see her on CBS News programs including “60 Minutes” and “Sunday Morning.”

In July, O’Donnell shared a note with CBS staffers announcing her exit, “There’s so much work to be proud of! But I have spent 12 years in the anchor chair here at CBS News, tied to a daily broadcast and the rigors of a relentless news cycle. It’s time to do something different.”

“Norah will have the time and the support to deliver even more of the exceptional stories she is known for across our shows and streams, across CBS network and Paramount+,” president and CEO of CBS News Wendy McMahon added. “She will have the real estate and flexibility to leverage big bookings on numerous platforms.”

As she said her final good night Thursday, her CBS News colleagues gathered around her and applauded.

O’Donnell follows a short but powerful line of women who have helmed their own news broadcasts. In 1993, Connie Chung was the first woman to co-host a network news show: She was given second billing behind Dan Rather on “CBS Evening News With Dan Rather and Connie Chung,” which ran through 1995.

Over a decade later, in 2006, Katie Couric became the first woman to anchor a news program by herself. She hosted the CBS Evening News through 2011.

Over at ABC, Diane Sawyer served as the nightly news anchor for ABC World News Tonight from 2009 to 2014.

The post Norah O’Donnell Signs Off From CBS News, Oprah Winfrey Praises Her ‘Incredible Impact’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

“The Night Agent” Season 2 ended with a realization many refuse to confront: We’re more like our parents than we think.

After abandoning his mission to save the ones he loved, Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) must make amends for the wreckage he left in his path. While attempting to halt a chemical weapons threat to the United States, he released a witness, stole intelligence and ultimately swung a presidential election.

Even though he saved Rose (Luciane Buchanan), Peter is not proud of his choices. The Night Agent turned himself in to his trainer Catherine Weaver (Amanda Warren), but she did not let him off the hook just yet.

Catherine tells Peter that he made the same mistakes his father did to protect the ones he loved, and she gives Peter the same chance he did to atone for them: a new mission as a double agent.

“He’s realizing the amount of hatred he probably had for his father, the amount of bitterness he probably had for their relationship and lost time,” Basso told TheWrap. “The more he learns about this business, I think he realizes the harder it is to make good decisions in that environment, and the decisions my dad was making were the best given his options.”

Showrunner Shawn Ryan said that Peter’s complicated relationship with his deceased father was what drew him to develop Matthew Quirk’s novel for Netflix initially, telling TheWrap that the hit Netflix series wouldnt exist if not for the mystery surrounding his own dad’s death.

“It was very personal to me, because I lost my father very quickly and unexpectedly, and the 10-year anniversary of his death actually will be premiere day, which I found to be a very symbolic thing this year,” Shawn Ryan told TheWrap ahead of the Jan. 23 premiere of Season 2.

“There were things I learned about my father after his passing that were very mysterious to me, nothing as nefarious as Peter’s father being a traitor or anything, but this has always been the core, important part of the show to me,” he added. 

Peter must confront before accepting his next mission that what he had resented about his father may be the thing that makes them alike.

“He’s becoming him, I think sort of freaks [Peter] out,” Basso said. “He doesn’t want to be his father, but maybe that’s not a bad thing.”

“To me, this has always been the core emotional anchor of this show: Is Peter trying to be a better man than his father was?” Ryan said. 

Peter accepts the mission, perfectly setting up Season 3. This time he will commit his life to an even more exclusive position than the night agent team. He must determine the exact nature of Monroe’s relationship with Hagan from the inside by gaining their trust and turning over classified information.

Peter and Rose’s relationship is also on the line in the finale. The agent has to make the hard decision to tell Rose that they can not communicate as long as he’s on this new mission. Rose wants security, but Peter craves the rush of the night agent lifestyle. Ultimately, she agrees not to call him or come looking for him, and they tearfully part ways.

Filming has already started for Season 3, and Ryan teased that “it’s just the beginning.” Basso teased to TheWrap that the team wrapped up Episode 1 in Istanbul and will return to New York to shoot the remainder of the series.

“What we were able to get on-camera is just sort of mind-blowing to me,” Basso said of the first episode’s Istanbul sequences. “We were getting stuff that I felt like would have taken months and months and months of prep to plan, and we were doing it accidentally. There were things that happened on camera that weren’t planned, that were just sort of mind-blowing, so I’m psyched about it.”

“The Night Agent” Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.

The post ‘The Night Agent’ Season 2 Ending Explained: Gabriel Basso Teases ‘Mind-Blowing’ Season 3 Opener appeared first on TheWrap.