Tag: tv shows

“Curb Your Enthusiasm” Finale, Reviewed: Larry David Gets the Last Word
Entertainment

“Curb Your Enthusiasm” Finale, Reviewed: Larry David Gets the Last Word

On a late December night many years ago, I was riding around midtown cheerfully stuffed into the back seat of a taxi with two of my kids. One was around seven, the other around four. We passed the skaters and the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. We passed by the twinkling displays in the windows of Saks Fifth Avenue, and the clusters of people clutching shopping bags and peering in. There were Santas tolling bells for the Salvation Army, venders hawking blistered chestnuts, flocks of pedicab drivers, tree hustlers, carollers, the whole frenetic birth-of-Jesus, half-off-at-Macy’s phantasmagoria.My kids gazed out the window. A long silence set in. Finally, the four-year-old turned to me and said, “Daddy, why is there so much Christmas, not so much Hanukkah?” As I went about drafting an...
My Grandmother and the Canine Detective
Entertainment

My Grandmother and the Canine Detective

My grandmother, who is ninety-two, has moved three times in her life. She was born in a small town in the province of Shandong, China, and, when she was twenty-three, she took a boat to Shanghai. When she was sixty-three, she moved to Sydney, Australia—where I was born—and then, when she was eighty-five, came with me and my mother to New York. There are a few similarities across these places: all three are port cities—populous, but not the capital—that grew fat off the trade of an eastern coast. Another constant in her life, at least in the past twenty or so years, has been the Austrian police-procedural television show “Inspector Rex,” which is about a crime-fighting dog.“Rex” débuted in 1994, the year I was born, and ran for eighteen seasons over the course of twenty-one years. A standa...
How “This Fool” Became the Summer’s Best Comedy
Entertainment

How “This Fool” Became the Summer’s Best Comedy

Early in Hulu’s “This Fool,” a Los Angeles man named Julio (Chris Estrada) indulges in a fantasy only he would find seductive. It’s the night of his thirty-first birthday—a milestone he’s done his best to ignore—and, after a day spent attempting to escape his friends and family, he finally gets a moment of solitude to relax in bed and think about his ex-girlfriend, Maggie (Michelle Ortiz), and her wide, teasing smile. “I’m the only one who knows you,” he imagines her saying as she sneaks into his room and splays her body next to his. “And I know exactly what you want.” She leans in and whispers, “You wanna lie here and stare at the ceiling and think about how much you fucking hate yourself.” Julio’s breath gets heavier; he licks his lips in anticipation. “Guess what, sucio?” she asks, her...