FOR MANY, the premiere of FX's English Teacher in September marked the long-awaited arrival of Brian Jordan Alvarez, the comedy series' creator and star. For the better part of the past decade, Alvarez has been making things on the internet-first YouTube sketches, followed by a beloved web series called The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo and, most recently, a menagerie of characters on TikTok, the most famous of which, TJ Mack, has gone viral multiple times over. "I've had enough amateur practice rounds of this to know what I'm doing," he told the New York Times ahead of the premiere. On English Teacher, he plays Evan Marquez, a beleaguered high-school teacher in Austin, Texas, trying to separate the colliding streams of his personal life as a gay man and his work life in conservative environs. The show received universally good reviews for its topicality and wit: It was "a deft, brutal trench comedy," "radically playful," simply "the best new sitcom."
L.A. comedy nerds may recognize many members of Alvarez's old crew on English Teacher. Stephanie Koenig, his longtime collaborator, writes on the show and plays Gwen Sanders, Evan's fellow teacher and, in a replication of their real-life dynamic, his best friend. Her husband, Chris Riggi, plays her boyfriend, Nick. Populating the smaller roles are Ken Kirby and Michael Strassner - both of whom came up through the Groundlings, the 50-year-old L.A. improv institution. They were part of a friend group formed about nine years ago, during a time when they were struggling actors, going to one another's shows and starring in one another's sketches with the hopes of making it. Alvarez was at the center. "Everybody was attracted to Brian because when he wanted to do something, he would do it," remembers a former friend. "He was the go-getter and then hired all his friends."
この記事は New York magazine の December 16-29, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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この記事は New York magazine の December 16-29, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
THE BEST ART SHOWS OF THE YEAR
IN NOVEMBER, Sotheby's made history when it sold for a million bucks a painting made by artificial intelligence. Ai-Da, \"the first humanoid robot artist to have an artwork auctioned by a major auction house,\" created a portrait of Alan Turing that resembles nothing more than a bad Francis Bacon rip-off. Still, the auction house described the sale as \"a new frontier in the global art market.\"
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A STRANGE THING happened with podcasts in 2024: The industry was repeatedly thrust into the spotlight owing to a preponderance of head-turning events and a presidential-election cycle that radically foregrounded the medium's consequential nature. To reflect this, we've carved out a list of ten big moments from the year as refracted through podcasting.
THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - BEST BOOKS
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IT'S BEEN a year of successful straight plays, even measured by a metric at which they usually do poorly: ticket sales. Partially that's owed to Hollywood stars: Jeremy Strong, Jim Parsons, Rachel Zegler, Rachel McAdams (to my mind, the most compelling).
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2024 WAS one big stress test that presented artists with a choice: Face uncomfortable realities or serve distractions to the audience. Pop music turned inward while hip-hop weathered court cases and incalculable losses. Country struggled to reconcile conservative interests with a much wider base of artists. But the year's best music offered a reprieve.
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IT WAS SURPRISING how much 2024 felt like an uneventful wake for the Peak TV era. There was still great television, but there was much more mid or meh television and far fewer moments when a critical mass of viewers seemed equally excited about the same series.
THE BEST COMEDY SPECIALS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - COMEDY SPECIALS
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PEOPLE LOVED Megalopolis, hated it, puzzled over it, clipped it into memes, and tried to astroturf it into a camp classic, but, most important, they cared about it even though it featured none of the qualities you'd expect of a breakthrough work in these noisy times.
A Truly Great Time
This was the year our city's new restaurants loosened up.
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THE CHRISTMAS ENTHUSIASTS on the Strategist team gathered to discuss the oversize socks they drape on their couches and what they put inside them.
