“The way this one happened seems particularly troubling,” Andrew Marantz says of ABC’s abrupt decision to indefinitely suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show. But, first, some thoughts on a decidedly lighter moment of television history: the series finale of the mega-popular Gen-Z show “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” Plus:

Vinson Cunningham
A staff writer and critic covering television, theatre, and more.

I began watching “The Summer I Turned Pretty” last night for the series finale, feeling a refreshing innocence. I’d never seen a single minute of the show. Unfettered by the past, I could just enjoy the dramas of these lovesick kids!

A young lady named Belly (Lola Tung)—not Bella—has moved to Paris, partly because of the romantic entanglements that she’s been caught up in back home. Conrad (Christopher Briney) comes to visit her unannounced, on the eve of her birthday. (Belly had been engaged to Conrad’s very tall brother Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno), but then Conrad made a dramatic declaration of his love for Belly, causing the engagement to go up in flames. Somebody sort of summarizes this all for you during the finale.) Soon the pair stand on a rooftop, looking out at the skyline, talking about how a city only coheres when you can see it from above.

“It’s like the human body,” Conrad says, his face emptied of affect by this attempt at impromptu philosophy. “If you try to make sense of it organ by organ, it’s a Sisyphean task—it’s overwhelming. But if you’re able to take a step back and look at it as a whole, and see how the body works together in concert, suddenly it makes sense. And it’s fucking miraculous.”

I have only witnessed one organ from the surely miraculous and overwhelming body of this show—which apparently drew twenty-five million viewers for its season première, and has inspired countless posts online from fans proclaiming themselves to be either Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah—but I think I grasped some of its wholeness over the course of the episode. Some early twentysomethings pass around a joint in a manner their age-mates must find sexy. When coitus occurs, it’s scored by unctuous music. (Taylor Swift’s “Dress,” and not the last we’ll hear from her.) Somebody runs to catch a train to make a last-ditch speech. (Swift, again.) I didn’t get the total view of this great city, but I promise I understand. Sometimes it takes a TV show to inform you that you’re getting old.

Last night, ABC announced that it had suspended “Jimmy Kimmel Live” indefinitely. The news came just hours after the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, speaking on a right-wing podcast, had suggested that local affiliates should refuse to air the show, because of remarks that Kimmel had made about the response to the shooting of Charlie Kirk.

How Bad Is It?

“In recent New Yorker pieces, and on our Political Scene podcast with Tyler Foggatt, I’ve been trying to parse moments like these: Which of these are merely decisions that I may disagree with, and which seem like more consequential blows to our democracy? In isolation, it may seem silly to take the suspension of a late-night comedian, even under galling or capricious circumstances, too seriously. But the way this one happened seems particularly troubling. The F.C.C. chair, Brendan Carr, appeared on a MAGA podcast and warned ABC’s parent company, Disney, ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way.’ Later, after the suspension of Kimmel’s show was announced, Carr went on Fox News, and said, ‘I’m very glad to see that America’s broadcasters are standing up for the interests of their community.’ ”

— Andrew Marantz, a staff writer who covers technology, politics, and the press.

The immense, unfinished church in Barcelona has been obsessively built in the years since Antoni Gaudí’s death, a century ago. D. T. Max travels to Spain, where a team of architects is working to finish—for real, they promise—the endlessly debated icon. Read or listen to the story »

Watch: “Adaptation,” the classic black comedy starring Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep, is about trying to turn some “sprawling New Yorker shit” into a movie.

Listen: “I guess you’re attractive / Or something,” Clairo croons on her sparkly, lo-fi song “Flaming Hot Cheetos.” Get inspired by some more great pop moments.

P.S. Donald and Melania Trump are in the United Kingdom this week on an official state visit, in which they were honored with a lavish dinner at Windsor Castle. Before the President’s first-term visit to Britain, Green Day’s hit “American Idiot” made a surprise leap up the local pop charts.

Ian Crouch and Erin Neil contributed to today’s edition.