Let's celebrate Christmas early this year (2024)

Not long ago, a college friend of mine was traveling back home to Dallas from Nashville, his business weekend having been turned into an impromptu road trip. Hungry, he pulled off the interstate into a gas station Taco Bell (please don’t tell me that every Taco Bell is, in fact, a gas station ... I’m letting my breakfast settle), and he ordered a Crunchy Taco Supreme.

The cost: $6.49.

For one taco! A Taco Bell taco!

So when Times food columnist Jenn Harris decided to rank fast-food chains’ $5 meals, I was curious. What does a fiver buy you these days? The answer can, more or less, be found in Jenn’s guidelines for evaluating the meals: value, food quality, taste, how closely they resembled the advertised photos — and whether or not she felt ill after eating. (Jenn tells me that none of the meals passed that last test. “My stomach was not right all week.”)

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, host of The Envelope’s Friday newsletter and the guy eager to break out the headlamp because it’s too freakin’ hot right now to hike when the sun’s up. Let’s look at the week’s news.

An oral history of ‘The Bear’s’ chaotic Christmas episode, ‘Fishes’

Television series love to give viewers the gift of a good Christmas episode, but there’s never been one quite like “Fishes,” the sixth episode of the Emmy-nominated second season of “The Bear.”

It begins with the wafting sound of Andy Williams singing “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and ends with the family matriarch crashing her car through the house. In between, we’re thrust into a chaotic family gathering, five years back in time, in which three adult children navigate their way through awkward conversations with relatives (blood and honorary) while managing their alcoholic mother, who’s teetering on collapse while trying to prepare the Feast of the Seven Fishes.

Even for a show known for its tense, emotionally exhausting storytelling, “Fishes” put its audience through the wringer, not that anyone seemed to mind. Of the 23 Emmy nominations “The Bear” received this year, nine were specifically for “Fishes.”

I’ve been obsessed with this episode since it aired, so it was a thrill to talk to so many of the people involved in making it — cast regulars Jeremy Allen White and Abby Elliott, guest stars Jamie Lee Curtis, Jon Bernthal and Bob Odenkirk, executive producer and co-writer Joanna Calo and cinematographer Andrew Wehde — for an oral history of this extraordinary hour of television.

“The biggest comment I get walking down the street is: ‘This is why I don’t go home for Christmas,’” Bernthal told me, laughing. If you’ve seen the episode, you know what they’re talking about.

Jamie Lee Curtis, an Emmy nominee for her work on “The Bear” episode “Fishes.”

(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)

Gena Rowlands was extraordinary

I wonder if, in “The Bear’s” fictional world, Jamie Lee Curtis’ Donna Berzatto, the alcoholic mother prone to massive mood swings, ever watched Gena Rowlands in John Cassavetes’ “A Woman Under the Influence” and felt a certain kinship with this housewife undergoing a mental breakdown. My old friend, filmmaker Scott Derrickson, called Rowlands’ work in that movie “the best acting performance I’ve ever seen.” It definitely belongs in the conversation.

Rowlands died Wednesday at the age of 94. She’s probably best known to general moviegoers for her heartrending turn in 2004’s “The Notebook,” directed by her son, Nick Cassavetes. But she really cooked in the movies she made with her husband, John Cassavetes, three of which you can easily find if you subscribe to Max or the Criterion Channel. Spend the weekend watching “Opening Night,” “Faces” and, yes, “A Woman Under the Influence.” You’ll come away changed.

I met Rowlands briefly at the 2015 Governors Awards, where she received an honorary Oscar. I was just one of many coming to her table to pay respects, joining a line that included Cate Blanchett, Lily Tomlin and Laura Linney.

“Gena Rowlands was always completely truthful,” Carey Mulligan said before the ceremony. “And she was never remotely concerned with vanity.”

Said Rowlands that night: “What’s great about being an actress is you don’t just live one life, you live many lives.”

And she lived them well.

Gena Rowlands in “A Woman Under the Influence.”

(The Criterion Collection)

‘Baby Reindeer’ has the numbers. Soon the Emmys?

Not long after I returned from visiting my daughter in Madrid in April, I logged on to Netflix to see what I had missed while I was overseas. Now, it’s not altogether unusual that a glance at the platform’s “Top 10 TV shows in the U.S. today” row yields some unfamiliar results. “Too Hot to Handle,” on the list as I write this, is now in its sixth season, and for all I know, it’s a reality series about testing cookware.

Seeing a series titled “Baby Reindeer” at the No. 1 spot piqued my interest. Strange title. Maybe a reality show following a caribou breeder in Alaska? Could be a cute nature program. Who doesn’t want to see a bunch of adorable baby reindeer learning to walk?

The next day, a publicist called.

Have you seen “Baby Reindeer”? No. But I see it’s the No. 1 show on Netflix. I’ll have to check it out.

The next day, the same publicist rang again.

“Did you watch ‘Baby Reindeer’?” Dude. It’s been one night.

The next day, I watched “Baby Reindeer.” And the day after that, I finished watching “Baby Reindeer.” Seven episodes, most of them running about a half-hour. Initially, it looks like a horror story about a stalker hounding Donny, a sad-sack bartender who harbors dreams of becoming a comic. But it quickly becomes deeper and more complex, as Donny’s own behavior becomes erratic, fueled by self-loathing and neediness rooted in shame.

And then you get to that fourth episode and you find out why it took Donny so long to report the stalker. Watching it was the closest I’ve ever come to pausing or flat-out stopping a TV show because what I was seeing was so horrifying and painful to witness. It makes the Christmas Eve dinner flashback episode of “The Bear” feel like a Hallmark holiday movie.

And yet, nearly everyone I know watched “Baby Reindeer.” I have neighbors who have seen it twice. And they weren’t alone. “Baby Reindeer” reached Netflix’s top 10 TV charts in 92 countries. Three months after its premiere, it had racked up 88.4 million views.

Have you seen “Baby Reindeer”? Do I even need to ask? Certainly, if you’re one of the 24,000 Television Academy members voting for the Emmys, it’s a rhetorical question. Even with the headlines surrounding the self-proclaimed real-life stalker suing Netflix for defamation, the show is poised to win big at the Emmys this year. For a niche series that wasn’t on anyone’s radar four months ago, that’s a remarkable story.

Emmy contenders for limited series. See any of your favorites?

(Taylor Le / Los Angeles Times; Showtime; HBO; Apple TV+; Netflix)