Dating culture in the first quarter of the 21st century is more about the journey than the destination. So long, of course, as someone else is behind the wheel. Whether it’s a road trip that veers off into a chainsaw-dense no man’s land or just a demolition derby, the entertainment value increases with the chaos, the humiliation, and our own distance from their consequences. Our culture is rife with shows about catfishing, ghosting, and romantic fraud. Personal essays extol the virtues of “heterofatalism,” and screenshots of dating app chat logs are clear breaches of ambiguous courting etiquette. We consume all of these things with the glee of Sadean aristocrats. Every generation gets the dating culture it deserves. Ours is less debauched than it is disillusioned — we let our phones match people who never get what they want with people who never know what they want. Yet lately, a fatigue seems to be setting in. The most recent season of The Bachelorette was pulled off the air because the drama promised by its titular object of affection proved far too toxic for its brand. The entire internet dined out on the romantic misadventures of Olivia Nuzzi and Lindy West, stopping just short of buying the books they were promoting in the first place. And while 90-day fiancés seem to be renewable, there were not enough buxom moms with handsome sons to fill every room in MILF Manor. Reaching the apparent nadir of this disaster voyeurism, there is logically nowhere to go but up. Love on the Spectrum, a multinational show whose American version has run for four seasons on Netflix, is so at odds tonally and conceptually with the glut of our dating media that it might as well exist in a parallel dimension. It is sweet rather than cynical, prefers blunt candor to subtle euphemism, and is firmly destination-oriented. And yet it works. Two weeks since its premiere, the current season remains in Netflix’s top 10 series. Its participants have gained as many as 1 million social media followers. Even the New York Times praised the show for “restoring our faith in dating.” Logan and Hailey on season 4 of Netflix’s ‘Love On The Spectrum.’ (Courtesy of Netflix) The show’s appeal is aided in no small part by one important detail, one indicated in its title: All of the participants have autism. Which is to say that they meet a general criterion of autism that is distinct but accessible to most viewers. They are high-functioning individuals but lack the life skills other adults take for granted. Difficulties vary between individuals. Some struggle with speech and social cues, and others are more obsessive-compulsive and anxious. Although they range in age from their early 20s to middle age, they retain childhood sensibilities: collecting toys and dolls, watching cartoons or other children’s programming, living with their parents or caregivers. They are at once highly conscious of what makes them different without being self-conscious. Every act they undertake and thought they express is done with undiluted sincerity. When director Cian O’Clery asks subjects what love means to them, one answers simply that “falling in love is going to be the most amazing feeling in the world.” That sincerity of substance is complemented by the style. It is the downiest of reality shows. O’Clery, who helmed the Australian version as well, applies soft lighting, intimate camerawork, and synthetic orchestral scoring. Its narration is reminiscent of library storytime: “Finding love can be hard for anyone. But for some people, it can feel like an impossible dream.” The show goes to impressive lengths to make that dream a little more possible, matching subjects with other autistic, or otherwise disabled, people. There are no schemes or challenges, just vibes. The subjects comport themselves in a manner that makes their sheltering hard to overlook. Their views on love and courting echo attitudes that “neurotypicals” of 2026 can afford not to take seriously. They’re hypersensitive about their behavior, asking for clear permission to hug or hold hands, confirming and reconfirming emotional states, and stating intentions with telegraphic bluntness. There is no subtext. Not coincidentally, several are practicing Christians. Sexuality is a touchy or non-subject in most cases, but even the participant with the most open attitude to sex, an animator named Dani Bowman, does so by combing through how-to guides like Talmudic scrolls. But childhood always beckons. Fairy tales are a common reference point. It’s “not if the glass slipper fits,” says Madison Marilla, “but if the cowboy boot fits right.” Emma Miller, a Mormon in Utah whose hobbies include romantic fan fiction and a passable Donald Duck impersonation, writes and performs a ballad called “My Own Fairy Tale,” confessing her struggles with the concept against her actual reality: “No dragon’s fire could ever burn/Like the loneliness inside my room/A bride to be without a groom.” This has led critics, often other autistic people, to accuse the show of “infantilizing” its subjects. There are aspects of the show that support this charge. Its editing, which foregrounds awkward silences and stilted small talk, is closer to Adult Swim or the films of Todd Solondz than reality TV. Much of the framing, from the elaborate dates to unblemished depictions of family life, comes off as contrived for effect. Yet this criticism is also rooted in the conflict over autism as a disability against autism as an identity. Parents of the show’s subjects have been scrutinized over sympathies for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The subjects, for their part, are critical of him. There is as much safety for the viewer in watching someone ride with training wheels as there is in watching someone drive with cut brake lines. But Love on the Spectrum’s true achievement is in showing how safety can also be inertia. While the show can’t rid itself of cuteness in the fourth season, it dials it down as subjects navigate the realities of being in committed relationships. One ends in an engagement, another in a break-up, and another struggles (through no fault of their own) in the pursuit of homeownership. Subjects long to escape their sheltered stasis into the trappings of adulthood they see all around them. IN HOOVER COUNTRY WITHOUT A MAP But that leaves a larger question of the nature of disability. To what extent can it be overcome? And is overcoming it, rather than finding love, the real destination? The show is only now beginning to entertain an answer. In her time on the series, Madison agonized over which of her dolls to bring with her for comfort on outings. But in the moment before she is engaged, she tells the crew, with solemnity as much as confidence, that she no longer needs to. It’s a moment of growth for someone who earlier had a panic attack when a fan called her “Maddie,” and the show takes it seriously. Comfort consumption, whether from Love on the Spectrum or Love Island, is its own kind of training wheels. It represents the desire for repetition that both reflects and is somehow beneath the viewer’s own repetitive experience. And in life as much as in media, there is no worse humiliation than watching someone seemingly beneath you find a faster route to their destination. It is left once again to the person on the couch to reshape their own “arc” en route to a better place — maybe after binging the new season of Couples Therapy. Chris R. Morgan writes from New Jersey. His X handle is @CR_Morgan.

There have been some great films about painters — say, the documentary The Mystery of Picasso (1956) or Robert Altman’s entry in the Van Gogh biopic subgenre, Vincent & Theo (1990) — but by and large, the excitement of watching someone apply paint onto a canvas is more theoretical than actual. It is not for nothing that people fall asleep while watching Bob Ross reruns.  This proves especially true in the lamentable case of the new Steven Soderbergh movie The Christophers. Here, we are presented not merely with a painter as a protagonist but a particular painter-protagonist whose inspiration, relevance, and even productivity have long expired. Played by Ian McKellen, British artist Julian Sklar was most recently in the public eye as a panelist on a British art-themed reality show called Art Fight — think American Idol, but with the contestants bearing canvases rather than microphones — and he has even taken to selling his work at fairs rather than through galleries. What’s more, the movie is not even about what Julian is working on in the present. Instead, the entire plot in Ed Solomon’s script turns on a mysterious lot of never-finished portraits by Julian of someone called Christopher — hence the application of the article “The” in the title The Christophers. Years ago, Julian hastily abandoned the series, but they are now considered sufficiently valuable by his uncouth, estate-minded children (played by Jessica Gunning and, unaccountably, former talk-show host James Corden) to involve the services of Lori Butler (Michaela Coel), who advertises herself as a painting restorer, pays the bills by working at a food truck, and may, in fact, be a forger.  Michaela Coel and Ian McKellen in “The Christophers.” (Courtesy of Tiff) If you think that a tale of missing or forged art sounds more thrilling than the average movie set in the world of art, well, then you haven’t seen The Christophers. In years — or, more precisely, decades — past, Soderbergh was considered a master practitioner of the tersely plotted, crisply directed heist film, including Out of Sight (1998) and the first three Ocean’s films. Here, though, his skills have abandoned him, or, at least, his budget has. After the Sklar children persuade Lori to turn up as their father’s new assistant with the intention of finishing the Christopher portraits — to be sold, after his looming death, for their profit — we might expect knottily satisfying plot turns. Instead, it soon becomes obvious that most of the film will take place in Sklar’s residence, and that most of the scenes will consist of extended duologues between Sklar and Lori. McKellen is reasonably amusing in the early going: He is seen recording online messages to fans (who pay more if they wish him to “sign” — with a hand motion — his greetings). McKellen leans hard into the image of the dissipated, senescent artist, as when, upon meeting Lori, he asks if she would like a drink and then proceeds to tell her to go downstairs to fetch one. Also diverting is when Sklar complains to Lori about his Wikipedia page, which, he says in his usual pedantic manner, includes both quotes taken out of context and those he uttered “in a state of inebriation.”  Yet McKellen’s comic performance merely papers, or paints, over the fact that the main action never really takes off. Although Lori is under orders to finish the Christopher portraits by adopting his artistic aesthetic, Sklar quickly becomes wise to her plans. The suspense goes right out the window. He then demands that the paintings be obliterated, though this never really happens. Instead, the film, like its protagonist, dodders: At one point, Sklar wants Lori to finish them in an intentionally bad manner — perhaps to deprive his offspring of their inheritance — while at another, he becomes involved in finishing them himself in a spirit that honors their subject (a former lover of the McKellen character). In his best films — Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), Out of Sight, The Limey (1999) — Soderbergh can be the most acerbic of filmmakers, but in The Christophers, he becomes bogged down in some very soggy notions about art and artists, and the film’s lone attempt at a hipper reference — that the Sklar spawn have pre-sold the Christopher paintings to a billionaire “tech bro” — is almost completely undeveloped.  REVIEW: THE UN-SHOCK EFFECTS OF UNDERTONE  Never before has a film attempted to sustain interest on the basis of whether some so-so paintings will or will not cease to exist, and one can see why. The film trudges forward with scene after scene of Sklar and Lori talking, arguing, and, occasionally, painting. Things get even worse when Sklar dies — apparently while painting a self-portrait for Lori, a particularly treacly touch — and we are left with several eleventh-hour plot reversals involving Lori, a “new” batch of Christopher portraits, and a forged document that results in those Christophers falling out of the family. Pardon me for saying that none of these twists are as compelling as the various scheming in the Ocean’s movies. The movie asks us to take seriously Lori’s posthumous tribute to Sklar, one of those insufferable “video installations” one sometimes finds in university exhibition spaces — in this case, a room featuring numerous video monitors of Sklar talking. Above all, it’s simply boring — about as invigorating as listening to an episode of NPR’s Weekend Edition. Although the movie loses whatever interest it has when McKellen leaves the scene, in one way, his character’s death is deeply relatable: He has entered heavenly rest that resembles the state of rest most will have entered by the time the credits roll. Peter Tonguette is the Life & Arts editor for the Washington Examiner magazine.

Twenty-eight-year-old Elle Fanning has been nominated for an Academy Award (Sentimental Value) and a Primetime Emmy (The Great) and has co-headlined a Disney flick that grossed three-quarters of a billion dollars (Maleficent). Yet, the role with which I instinctively associate her is her work as a backyard film “star” in J.J. Abrams’s 2011 thriller, Super 8. There, cast as the plucky child of troubled parents, the then-13-year-old was utterly convincing as a young woman on the brink of possibility or disaster. Though the timeline doesn’t quite fit, a grown-up version of that character could easily be the lead of Apple TV’s winning new show.  Margo’s Got Money Troubles stars Fanning as Margo Millet, a doe-eyed coed lured into bed by predatory English prof Mark Gable (Michael Angarano). Seduced, like millions before her, by her lover’s bad poetry (“We are a hungry sheep on a green plane”), Margo falls helplessly into an affair, an assignation that eventually leaves her pregnant, broke, and banished from California’s Fullerton College. How this happens in the age of the Title IX office and the student-development Karen is never quite clear. Mark’s idea of discretion is to close his office blinds when Margo visits. Nonetheless, by the end of the first episode, Margo is possessed of a squalling babe with no means to support him. As a doleful Mark observes during a later exchange, “This has become very real.” Audiences have been here before, of course, most notably in Jason Reitman’s much-loved tale of teenage motherhood, Juno (2007). Like its predecessor, Apple’s latest is unabashedly pro-life, framing as villains both Margo’s abortion-mongering friends and the male feminists for whom “a woman’s choice” means relief from fatherly obligations. But the show is also realistic. At home with a colicky infant, Margo has no one on whom to rely but her comically narcissistic mother, Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer). By the time the second episode ends, even veteran parents will be cringing as they recall those early days of feeding, crying, blithely consolatory doctors, and despair.  Elle Fanning and Michelle Pfeiffer in “Margo’s Got Money Troubles.” (Carl Herse/Apple TV) Accompanying and driving these contradictions is some legitimately fine TV writing. “I don’t need to analyze you; I know you,” a friend tells Margo in one of the show’s many psychologically astute moments. “He’s tender and thoughtful and sweet,” our heroine boasts of her lover, “and he writes beautiful emails.” I have quoted already from Mark’s insipid verse, but the wise viewer will hit pause and read the whole dismal composition, a small masterpiece of MFA-program banality. As for the show’s earthier lines, could anyone improve upon Margo’s lament that the baby “just spits [my nipples] out with such vicious contempt”? The mothers in my life assure me that the joke gets very close to the truth.  As the series proceeds, two plot developments arise to carry us into novel territory. The first is the arrival of “Jinx” (Nick Offerman), Margo’s absent father and a former World Wrestling Entertainment champion. Fresh from prescription-drug rehab, Jinx moves in with Margo and her roommate (Thaddea Graham), taking up the role of babysitter, housemaid, and friend. The second is Margo’s discovery of OnlyFans, the subscription-based website currently turning scores of young American women into pornographers. At the risk of sounding the understatement of the year, some readers of this magazine will disapprove of Margo’s flight into “sex work.” I eagerly join you! Yet, Margo’s nemeses are so phony — her “cosplay”-inflected videos are so weird — that one is tempted to overlook the error. “You simulate sex acts with space aliens,” an aggrieved Mark complains during a mid-season custody hearing. Well, yes. And you, sir, sell literature degrees financed by student loans. Which one of us is perfect?  HONEY, I SHRUNK WOMEN’S RIGHTS None of this would work were Margo’s Got Money Troubles not anchored by so charming a lead. As the title character, Fanning delivers at least as good a performance here as she did in Super 8, crafting a young heroine at once vulnerable and optimistic, frazzled and cocksure. Faced with seemingly endless hurdles, Margo never loses sight of the blessing with which she has, however inconveniently, been bestowed. While other cast members are more than solid, particularly Greg Kinnear as Shyanne’s sweetly unsophisticated boyfriend, Kenny, the series belongs to its star. Fanning already had a bright future ahead of her, but after this triumph, her performances will be worth actively seeking out.  A word, finally, about perspective. Watching its trailers, I expected Margo’s Got Money Troubles to be a tone-deaf take on blue-collar Americans from writers who have never met one. Instead, the show’s satire is sharp but affectionate, a poke in the ribs informed by real familiarity if not love. Visiting Kenny’s church, we see a cross stained with bird poop and learn that the youth group recently staged a production of Rent. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you mainline Protestantism. Following white working-class trends, Margo christens her newborn Bodhi (pronounced “Bodie”). To borrow a joke from my favorite subreddit, that name is a tragedeigh. If the majority of its characters weren’t so likable, the series might have seemed cruel: another entry in a long line of “look-at-these-rubes” programming. Because the characters are so appealing, the show comes across as nervy and heartfelt. That it serves up enough real laughs to keep audiences entertained is further cause for joy. It’s the best new comedy of the year.Graham Hillard is the TV critic for the Washington Examiner magazine.

Maybe you have no interest in sitting in a bar with a bunch of strangers, drinking a beer, and bonding over a national sporting event. And that is fine. It is a free country. Sports bars aren’t for everyone.  But for millions of Americans, that feeling of community, of coming together to share something historic, not only adds to the enjoyment of sports but is a key component of what used to be our nationally shared culture. Now, thanks to streaming, your local sports bar is in danger. Fans watch Super Bowl LX at the sports bar, Saloon, on Feb. 8, 2026, in Boston. (Finn Gomez/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) As recently as 2021, anyone with a basic cable subscription could pop on the TV and, with a few clicks, find whatever NFL game was being nationally broadcast that day. True, on Sundays when most of the league was playing, most games were only locally available unless you forked over a huge subscription for DirecTV, but the big national games, Thursday Night Football, Monday Night Football, Thanksgiving, and the playoffs were all available to everyone with basic cable. All that is changing in the streaming era.  Starting in 2022, the NFL sold the rights to Thursday Night Football to Amazon on an exclusive basis. If you want to watch the same game the rest of the country is watching on Thursday nights, you now must have an Amazon Prime subscription. And it has only gotten worse since then. In 2025, you needed YouTube to watch the opening game between the Chiefs and Chargers in Brazil, Prime Video for the Black Friday game, Peacock for Saturday games in December, Netflix for the Christmas Day games, ESPN+ for a Monday Night game, and Prime Video again for the Wild Card playoff game between the Packers and Bears. If you count a basic cable package as one subscription service (giving you access to ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC broadcasts), you need an additional five subscriptions to watch all nationally broadcast NFL games last year, including Amazon Prime, ESPN+, Netflix, Peacock, and YouTube. That number rises to six if your cable package does not include the NFL Network, which aired six exclusive regular-season games played in Europe. As complicated as finding all of these games is for casual fans, the logistics are even worse for sports bars. Even if your bartender knows how to get Netflix or YouTube TV to show up on a smart TV screen, that doesn’t mean he is legally allowed to show the game. Commercial establishments need a special license to put games on their televisions, and if they’re caught breaking the rule, they can be fined more than $20,000. Yes, it is possible to track down all of the equipment and licenses to air every game. But it is time-consuming and expensive. For one sports bar in New York City, it costs about $100,000 a year. Not every local sports bar has the revenue to invest that kind of cash just to make sure they have the rights to every game. It doesn’t have to be this way. There is no natural right to intellectual property. The NFL can sue bar owners for showing games without permission only because Congress artificially created that cause of action to begin with. What Congress created, Congress can take away. The only reason the NFL is even allowed to sell its broadcast rights as a single unit is that Congress gave it an antitrust exemption with the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. Congress has every right to revisit that special exception and attach conditions to it: no more exclusive streaming deals. All national games must be available through traditional cable channels. We don’t have to subscribe to six different streaming services just to watch football if we don’t want to. It is a policy choice. CONN CARROLL: THE REAL REASON FERTILITY IS FALLING Technology drives cultural change. On some level, we can’t stop that. But many of our technologies, and the manner in which they are monetized, are completely dependent on the policy choices we make. If Congress won’t stop the streamification of sports, the neighborhood sports bar may soon need fewer barstools and more passwords.

Self-proclaimed No. 1 Trump fan Nicki Minaj plans to attend the White House Correspondents' Association's annual dinner on Saturday, Seen, Heard & Whispered has learned.

"Just what I told you I'd do!"

We can either be a "static display" and not engage the enemy, or we can take up the armor and report for duty.

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