Latest news with #Emmys
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Emmys have one last chance to make things right with ‘The Comeback'
If at first you don't succeed (at the Emmys), try, try again. HBO has renewed The Comeback, from Emmy winners Lisa Kudrow (Friends) and Michael Patrick King (Sex and the City), for a third and — the network swears — final season, the network announced Friday. It has been 20 years since the first season debuted in 2005, and 11 years since Season 2 aired in 2014. More from Gold Derby Marge lives! Here are 3 other 'Simpsons' characters that returned from the grave - and 3 who stayed dead Fast cars vs. killer dolls: 'F1,' 'M3GAN 2.0' gear up for box-office showdown Season 3 of the comedy series will begin production this summer with returning cast members Kudrow as Valerie Cherish, a washed-up actress who's now the subject of a documentary; Dan Bucatinsky as Billy Stanton, Valerie's publicist; Laura Silverman as Jane Benson, Valerie's producer; and Damian Young as Mark Berman, Valerie's husband. The new season will air on HBO and stream on HBO Max in 2026. The Comeback is one of those that shows that TV fans often cite as being "robbed" at the Emmy Awards. Meaning it never took home a trophy in any category, and only received four total nominations. Season 1 scored three bids — for Kudrow in Best Comedy Actress, King in Best Comedy Directing, and Best Comedy Casting — while Season 2 nabbed a single Best Comedy Actress citation. It was snubbed both times in the Best Comedy Series lineup. But other awards bodies were just as guilty when it came to ignoring The Comeback. The Golden Globes blanked the show completely, and the Critics Choice Awards (which were created in between the first and second seasons), only gave Kudrow a nomination. The Comeback's only victories came from the lesser-known kudos like the Gracies, the GALECA Awards, and the International Online Cinema Awards. Our Gold Derby TV Awards were somewhat kinder, honoring The Comeback with six overall nominations, including a Best Comedy Series bid for Season 2; however, the show was shut out. Sometimes it takes awards voters a season or two to catch on to audience favorites. Remember when the Emmys didn't truly discover Will & Grace, Fleabag, or Succession until their second seasons? And then there's Schitt's Creek, which wasn't fully embraced by the Television Academy until its sixth and final season. Of course, historically lauded shows like Better Call Saul, The Good Place, and The Wire never won Emmys at all, despite the love from critics and fans. So, The Comeback would be in good company if its final episodes fail to materialize into award wins. Neither King nor Kudrow is shocked that The Comeback is returning for a third time. "Valerie Cherish has found her way back to the current television landscape," they said jointly. "Neither of us are surprised she did." "No matter what the industry throws at her, Valerie Cherish is a survivor," said Amy Gravitt, executive vice president of HBO's comedy programming. "On the 20th anniversary of her debut, Michael Patrick King and Lisa Kudrow have brilliantly scripted her return to HBO and we can't wait to see that." Are you excited that The Comeback is back for Season 3? Sound off in Gold Derby's TV forum. Best of Gold Derby Cristin Milioti, Amanda Seyfried, Michelle Williams, and the best of our Emmy Limited Series/Movie Actress interviews Paul Giamatti, Stephen Graham, Cooper Koch, and the best of our Emmy Limited Series/Movie Actor interviews Lee Jung-jae, Adam Scott, Noah Wyle, and the best of our Emmy Drama Actor interviews Click here to read the full article.
Los Angeles Times
17 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
By taming its chaos, ‘The Bear' bravely shows us what addiction recovery looks like
In the beginning there was chaos. Three years ago, FX's 'The Bear' splattered across our screens and made it impossible to look away. The yelling; the cursing; the gravy-slopping, bowl-clattering, grease-slick, jerry-rigged anxious sweaty mess of the Chicago sandwich shop the Beef and the wildly dysfunctional group of people who worked there, including elite chef Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), who inherited the Beef from his dead-by-suicide beloved brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal), wowed critics and raised the culture's collective cortisol count to eye-twitching levels. Critics used terms like 'stress bomb' and 'adrenaline shot'; current and former restaurant workers described symptoms not unlike those of PTSD, and viewers ate it all up with a spoon. Season 2, in which Carmy follows through on his plan to turn the Beef into a fine-dining establishment, only increased the anxiety level. With real money on the table (courtesy of Carmy's uncle Jimmy, played by Oliver Platt), along with the hopes, dreams and professional futures of the staff, including Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), Marcus (Lionel Boyce), Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas), Sugar (Abby Elliott) and, of course, Cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), stakes were cranked to do-or-die. When the episode 'Fishes,' a stomach-clenching holiday buffet of trauma, revealed the twisted roots of a family forged by alcoholism — Carmy's mother Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis) — and abandonment — Carmy's father — viewers could not get enough. This being television, we knew that all the wild dysfunction would inevitably coalesce into triumph — you cannot achieve greatness without driving yourself and everyone else crazy first, right? When, at the end of Season 2, the Bear somehow managed to have a successful opening night, despite Carmy locking himself in a refrigerator and having a full-on existential crisis, our deep attachment to 'yes chef' pandemonium appeared vindicated. Fistfuls of Emmys and dopamine cocktails all around. Except being able to open is a rather low bar for success, even in the restaurant business. Carmy is, for all his talent, an utter mess, and creator Christopher Storer is not, as it turns out, interested in celebrating the time-honored, and frankly toxic, notion that madness is a necessary part of genius — to the apparent dismay of many viewers. When, in Season 3, Storer and his writers opted to slow things down a bit, to pull each character aside and unsnarl the welter of emotions that fueled the Bear's kitchen, some viewers were disappointed. Which, having become dependent on the show's stress-bomb energy, they expressed with outrage. 'The Bear' had lost its edge, was getting dull, boring, repetitive and reliant on stunt-casting; it should have ended with Season 2 or, better yet, become a movie. Thus far, the reaction to Season 4 has run the gamut — where some condemn what they consider continuing stagnation, others cheer a return to form. Which is kind of hilarious as this opens with the staff of the Bear reeling from an equally mixed review of the restaurant from the Chicago Tribune. (Shout out to the notion that a newspaper review still has make-or-break influence, though the Bear's lack of a social media awareness has long been worrisome). Turns out that Carmy's obsessive determination to change the menu daily, and keep his staff on perpetual tenterhooks, was perceived as disruptive, but not in a good way. 'They didn't like the vibe,' he tells Syd in a morning-after debrief. 'They didn't like the chaos,' she replies. 'You think I like chaos?' he asks. 'I think you think you need it to be talented,' she says, adding, 'You would be just as good, you would be great … without this need for, like, mess.' Coming early in Episode 1, Syd's message is a bit on the nose, but addiction does not respond to subtlety, and 'The Bear' is, as I have written before, all about the perils and long-range damage of addiction. That includes Donna's to alcohol, Mikey's to painkillers, Carmy's to a self-flagellating notion of perfection and, perhaps, the modern TV audience's to cortisol. As Season 4 plays out, with its emphasis on introspection and real connection, viewers might consider why 'addictive' has become the highest form of compliment in television. It's such a sneaky bastard, addiction, happy to hijack your brain chemistry in any way it can. Our collective attention span isn't what it used to be and the adrenaline rush unleashed by crisis, real or observed, can create a desire to keep replicating it. Even on broadcast and cable television, most dysfunctional family series take a one-step-forward-two-steps-back approach to their characters' emotional growth. The mess is what viewers come for, after all. Particularly in comedy, we want to see our characters get into jams for the pleasure of watching them wildly flail about trying to get out of them. Early seasons of 'The Bear' took that desire to a whole new level. But having amped up the craziness and the stakes, Storer now appears to be more interested in exploring why so many people believe that an ever-roiling crucible is necessary to achieve greatness. And he is willing to dismantle some of the very things that made his show a big hit to do it. Frankly, that's as edgy as it gets, especially in streaming, which increasingly uses episodic cliffhangers to speed up a series' completion rate — nothing fuels a binge watch like a jacked up heart rate. Like Carmy, Storer doesn't appear content with resting on his laurels; he's willing to take counterintuitive risks. As an attempt to actually show both the necessity and difficulty of recovery, in a micro- and meta- sense, 'The Bear' is an experiment that defies comparison. At the beginning of this season, Uncle Jimmy puts a literal clock on how long the Bear has before, short of a miracle, he will have to pull the plug. Carmy, still addicted to drama, claims they will still get a Michelin star, despite evidence to the contrary, which will solve everything. (Spoiler: A gun introduced in the first act must go off in the third is one of many tropes 'The Bear' upends.) The rest of the staff, mercifully, takes a more pragmatic approach. Richie, having become the unexpected sensei of the Bear (and the show), does the most sensible thing — he asks for help from the crackerjack staff of chef Terry's (Olivia Colman) now defunct Ever. Watching chef Jessica (Sarah Ramos) whip the nightly schedule into shape only underlines the absurdity, and damage, of the auteur theory of anything — greatness is never a solitary achievement. As Carmy loosens his grip, other outsiders pitch in — Luca (Will Poulter) shows up from Copenhagen to help Marcus and also winds up aiding Tina; Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) drafts an actual mentor (played by Rob Reiner) to help him figure out how he can grow the Beef sandwich window and Sweeps (Corey Hendrix) finds his own in another sommelier (played by retired master Alpana Singh). Carmy, thank God, not only returns to Al Anon, but he finally visits his mother, which allows a now-sober Donna (in another potentially Emmy-winning performance by Curtis) to admit the harm she has done and try to make amends. It is, inarguably, a very different show than the one that debuted three years ago, with far fewer cacophonous kitchen scenes, and many more Chicago-appreciating exteriors. When the long-awaited wedding of Richie's ex, Tiffany (Gillian Jacobs), reunites many of the characters from the famous 'Fishes' episode, fears about a gathering of Berzattos and Faks prove unfounded. Despite a high-pitched and hilarious spat between Sugar and her ex-bestie Francie Fak (Brie Larson), the event is, instead, a celebration of love and reconciliation and includes what passes for a group therapy session under the table where Richie's daughter Eva (Annabelle Toomey) has hidden herself. (This scene, which involved all the main characters, was more than a little undermined by said table's TARDIS-like ability to be 'bigger on the inside' and the fact that it held the wedding cake, which did not fall as they all exited, is proof that 'The Bear' is not a comedy.) Not even the digital countdown could generate the sizzling, clanking, sniping roar of chronic, organic anxiety that fueled the first two seasons. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss it — I love my adrenaline rush as much as the next person. But that's the whole point. Real change doesn't occur with the speed or the electricity of a lightning bolt; as many addicts discover, it's about progress, not perfection. Recovery takes time and often feels weird — if you want to have a different sort of life, you need to do things differently. That's tough on a hit TV show, as the reactions to Season 3 proved (we'll see how it fares when Emmy nominations are announced in a few weeks). Few series have made as large a shift in tone and tempo as 'The Bear,' but its intentions are clear. To illuminate the necessity, and difficulty, of breaking an addiction to anything, including, chaos, you can't rely on talk; you life to be different, you have to do things differently.
The Hill
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Bill Moyers, former WH press secretary and acclaimed journalist, dead at 91
Former White House press secretary Bill Moyers died on Thursday at the age of 91 after a 'long illness.' His death was confirmed by Tom Johnson, CNN's former CEO and close friend, according to the Associated Press. Moyers served under former President Lyndon B. Johnson, where he helped create the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and eventually curated informational programming for PBS. Prior to his role at the White House, Moyers helped bolster the Peace Corps as its first associate director of public affairs. 'We knew from the beginning that the Peace Corps was not an agency, program, or mission. Now we know—from those who lived and died for it—that it is a way of being in the world,' he wrote of the government agency in an article reflecting on its success. After years of service in the federal government, Moyers was hired to be a senior news analyst for 'The CBS Evening News' and chief correspondent for 'CBS Reports.' For his lifetime of work, he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame and earned 30 Emmys, 11 George Foster Peabody awards and three George Polks, in addition to two awards for career excellence in broadcast journalism by Columbia University, per AP. Moyers was also the acclaimed producer of 'The Secret Government,' which spotlighted the Iran-Contra scandal. The 1988 film followed his realtime commentary on U.S. foreign relations with Iran. Forty-four years ago, Moyers hosted an episode of 'Bill Moyers Journal' where he discussed Operation Opera, a United Nations resolution condemning the 1981 Israeli bombing of Iraq's nuclear facility and Iran's political massacres with reflections on its historical impact. 'As are all such events, this one was made of many parts. There was reality two realities actually: Iran's and ours. And there was also the perception of reality, again from two viewpoints: theirs and ours,' Moyers said during the June 19, 1981 show. 'The perceptions became so beclouded that reality drifted out of focus, the way your own image does in one of those tricky reflecting mirrors at the circus. In this final edition of my Journal, we'll consider how such flawed perceptions contributed to the crisis.'
Hindustan Times
2 days ago
- General
- Hindustan Times
Bill Moyers cause of death: How former Johnson press secretary die? Family reveals details
Jun 27, 2025 02:23 AM IST Bill Moyers, former press secretary to President Lyndon B Johnson and veteran journalist, has died, his family confirmed to CNN on Thursday. He was 91 years old. According to his family, Johnson's wife of over 70 years, Judith Davidson Moyers, was by his side. His son William Cope Moyers confirmed the death at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Bill Moyers, former press secretary, has died at 91(AP) While no specific condition has been revealed, Moyers' family said he died of complications from a long illness. The cause was complications from prostate cancer, his son told The Washington Post. Moyers died at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. Born Billy Don Moyers on June 5, 1934, in Hugo, Oklahoma, Moyers rose from a small-town journalist to a pivotal figure in American media. His career spanned roles as a Baptist minister, deputy director of the Peace Corps (1962–63), and Johnson's press secretary (1965–67), before he became a broadcast legend. The 91-year-old produced over 70 PBS documentaries and series, including Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth (1988) and Healing and the Mind (1993), earning over 30 Emmys, 11 Peabodys, and a 1995 Television Hall of Fame induction.
New York Post
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
‘The Bear' Season 4 review: a better dish than Season 3, but still lacking flavor
Bear necessities. 'The Bear' is back for Season 4 (now streaming on Hulu), after an aimless third season. TV's worst comedy – as the Golden Globes and Emmys keep awarding it in that category despite it being a drama – follows Carmen 'Carmy' Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), as he takes over his late brother's (Jon Bernthal) Chicago restaurant and wrangles the kitchen staff into giving it a fine-dining makeover, including Syd (Ayo Edebiri), his volatile cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Tina (Liza Colon-Zayas) pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce), and handyman Neil Fak (Matty Matheson). 11 Ayo Edebiri as Sydney Adamu, Jeremy Allen White as Carmey Berzatto in 'The Bear' Season 4. FX 11 Jeremy Allen White as Carmy in 'The Bear' Season 4. FX 11 Ayo Edebiri in 'The Bear' Season 4. FX In Season 4, they're trying to get the restaurant (also called The Bear) back on track after a bad review – which feels unintentionally meta, as Season 3 of the show got numerous negative reviews. They're also on a ticking clock, as The Bear will have to close in a matter of months if they can't make enough money. Season 4 is adequate – not incredible, but a marked improvement over Season 3. 11 Abby Elliott as Natalie in 'The Bear.' FX 11 Oliver Platt as Uncle Jimmy, Brian Koppelman as Nicholas Marshall, Matty Matheson as Neil Fak, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Richie, Jerimovich, Jeremy Allen White as Carmy Berzatto, Ayo Edebiri as Sydney Adamu in 'The Bear' Season 4. FX The story is tighter (which means its still meandering and aimless, at times). There's slightly more plot. Characters outside of the main trio (Carmy, Sydney, and Richie) get to shine. Carmy has a modicum of emotional growth. But, it's largely fueled by people around him stating obvious points that don't need to be spelled out to us (like, 'you're miserable' and 'you're hiding from things'). By the end of the season, it seems like he'll shake up the show's status quo. 11 Edwin Lee Gibson as Ebraheim, Liza Colon-Zayas as Tina in 'The Bear' Season 4. FX He supports his staff more, and he moves his rocky relationship with his sister Natalie (Abby Elliot) to a more stable level. Unfortunately, his emotional progress means that he also revisits his boring relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Claire (Molly Gordon). Big snooze there. Sydney's home life gets the spotlight more. Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) also gets a glimmer of development. (He's one of the chefs, in case you forgot, since the show forgot, too). It only took four seasons for 'The Bear' to remember there are more characters in its kitchen ensemble, aside from Carmy, Sydney, Marcus, and Tina. Progress! 11 Jon Bernthal as Mikey Berzatto in 'The Bear.' FX 11 Jeremy Allen White as Carmy, Ayo Edebiri as Sydney in 'The Bear' Season 4. FX The show's biggest problem has always been that it doesn't have much plot, but it also doesn't have much character development instead of plot. Carmy has spent most of 'The Bear' spinning his wheels, and the show pretends to be an ensemble, but previously never fully fleshed it out, beyond its main trio. So when a show is lacking in both plot and character, what does that leave it with? In the case of 'The Bear,' it's left with scenes vaguely gesturing at restaurant life, held together by duct tape, with just enough flashes of good acting to trick the Emmys into thinking it's profound. 11 Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Richie in 'The Bear' Season 4. FX 11 Jeremy Allen White as Carmy in 'The Bear.' FX In Season 4, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jon Bernthal return to steal scenes, joined by a few new guest stars such as Brie Larson and Rob Reiner. Will Poulter also reprises his role as Luca the tattooed pastry chef. They're all fun to watch, and give Season 4 some nice flavor. (For those keeping track of The Hartnetassaince, Season 3 guest star Josh Hartnett also briefly returns). Bernthal is as magnetic as ever, but he's now appeared in the show a half-dozen times. When a show relies on flashbacks of dead characters for emotional impact, that's never a good sign. It means the present day action isn't compelling enough on its own, if a story needs to ride the coattails of a ghost. 11 Abby Elliott as Natalie in 'The Bear' Season 4. FX The ingredients are all there for 'The Bear' to be as good as the Emmys and Golden Globes think it is, but the dish is undercooked. It remains that way in Season 4, even as the show is on the upswing after an insipid Season 3. The meal this season serves up is decent, but not stellar, and the aftertaste fades too fast.
