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TORONTO — Tyler Glasnow threw seven, maybe eight, pitches in the bullpen. There was no more time to wait. The red emergency light was flashing.

For 14 years, Glasnow has made a nice living as a pitcher. He has thrown hard, if not always durably or effectively.

There is one thing he had not done. In 320 games, from the minors to the majors, from the Arizona Fall League to the World Series, he never had earned a save.

Until Friday, that is, and only after the Dodgers presented him with this opportunity out of equal parts confidence and desperation: Please save us. The winning run is at the plate with no one out. If you fail, we lose the World Series.

No pressure, kid.

He is not one of the more intense personalities on the roster, which makes him a good fit in a situation in which someone else might think twice, or more, at the magnitude of the moment.

“I honestly didn’t have time to think about it,” Glasnow said.

In Game 6 on Friday, the Dodgers in order used a starter to start, a reliever to relieve, the closer of the moment, and then Glasnow to close. In Game 7 on Saturday, the Dodgers plan to start Shohei Ohtani, likely followed by a parade of starters.

Glasnow, who said he could not recall ever pitching on back-to-back days, could be one of them.

“I threw three pitches,” he said. “I’m ready to go.”

The Dodgers had asked him to be ready to go in relief on Friday, so he moseyed on down to the bullpen in the second inning. He didn’t really believe he would pitch. After all, Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto had thrown consecutive complete games. If Yamamoto could not throw another, Glasnow did not believe he would be the first guy called.

He was not. Justin Wrobleski was, protecting a 3-1 lead, and he delivered a scoreless seventh inning. Closer Roki Sasaki was next, and the Dodgers planned for him to work the eighth and ninth.

Glasnow said bullpen coach Josh Bard warned him to be on alert. Sasaki walked two in the eighth but escaped. He hit a batter and gave up a double to lead off the ninth, and the Dodgers rushed in Glasnow.

“I warmed up very little, got out there,” Glasnow said. “It was like no thinking at all.”

The Dodgers’ scouting reports gave Glasnow and catcher Will Smith reason to believe Ernie Clement would try to jump on the first pitch, so Glasnow said he threw a two-seam fastball that he seldom throws to right-handed batters. Clement popped up.

The next batter, Andrés Giménez, hit a sinking fly ball to left fielder Kiké Hernández. Off the bat, Glasnow said he feared a hit.

If the ball falls in, Giménez has a single and the Dodgers’ lead shrinks to one run. If the ball skips past Hernández, the Blue Jays tie the score.

Glasnow said he had three brief thoughts, in order:

1: “Please don’t be a hit.”

Hernández charged hard and made the running catch.

2: “Sweet, it’s not a hit.”

Hernández threw to second base for the game-ending double play.

3: “Nice, a double play.”

Wrobleski tipped his cap to his new bullpen mate.

“He’s a beast, man,” Wrobleski said. “To be able to come in in that spot, it takes a lot of mental strength and toughness. He did it. I didn’t expect anything less out of him, but it was awesome.”

Wrobleski was pretty good himself. The Dodgers optioned him the maximum five times last year and four times this year. He did not pitch in the first three rounds of the playoffs, and his previous two World Series appearances came in a mop-up role and during an 18-inning game.

Dodgers reliever Justin Wrobleski reacts after striking out Toronto’s Andrés Giménez to end the seventh inning in Game 6 of the World Series on Friday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

On Friday, they entrusted him with helping to keep their season alive. They got three critical outs from Wrobleski, who is not even making $1 million this season, and three more from Glasnow, who is making $30 million.

“We got a lot of guys that aren’t making what everybody thinks they’re making, especially down in that bullpen,” Wrobleski said. ”We were talking about it the other day. There’s a spot for everybody. If you keep grinding, you can wedge yourself in.”

He did. He was recruited by Clemson out of high school, then basically cut from the team.

“They told me to leave,” he said.

Did a new coach come in?

“No, I was just bad,” he said. “I had like a 10.3 ERA.”

Glasnow signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates out of Hart High in Santa Clarita. In the majors, the Pirates tried him in relief without offering him a chance to close. Did they fail to recognize a budding bullpen star? “I never threw strikes,” he said. “I just wasn’t that good.”

We’ve all heard stories about the kid who goes into his backyard with a wiffle ball, taking a swing and pretending to be the batter who hits the home run in the World Series.

Glasnow doesn’t hit.

“I’ve had all sorts of daydreams about every pitching thing possible as a kid — relieving, closing out a game, starting in the World Series,” he said. “I thought about it all the time. So it’s pretty wild. I haven’t really processed it, either. I think going out to be able to get a save in the World Series is pretty wild.”

The game-ending double play was reviewed by instant replay, so Glasnow missed out on the trademark closer experience: the last out, immediately followed by the handshake line. Instead, everyone looked to the giant video board and waited.

Eventually, an informal line formed.

“I got some dap-ups,” he said. He smiled broadly, then walked out into the Toronto night, the proud owner of his first professional save. For his team, and for Los Angeles, he had kept the hope of a parade alive.

High school basketball in Southern California will be without one of its finest coaches this season.

Stephen Singleton, who guided Eastvale Roosevelt to state and Southern Section Open Division championships last season, announced his retirement from coaching on Thursday after 10 years at Roosevelt and 25 years in the business. He will continue as a teacher.

Singleton intends to spend more time coaching his young son.

He also won a state Division I title in 2017 with Roosevelt and won a state Division II title coaching briefly at Dominguez in Compton in 2001.

He was The Times’ coach of the year for the 2024-25 season.

With official basketball practice starting soon, Roosevelt intends to open the position to all candidates, but there’s two assistants who are teachers at the school that could possibly ease the transition if they are interested in the head coaching position.

A member of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners who led a nationwide search to hire a new LAPD chief and sparked condemnation from activists for his previous counterterrorism research is stepping down.

Erroll Southers confirmed his plans to resign through a spokesperson on Friday, ending a stormy two-year tenure on the influential civilian panel that watches over the LAPD.

The spokesperson said that Southers, 68, wanted to spend more time with his family and pursue other professional opportunities — something that wasn’t always allowed by the demands of serving as a commissioner. The officials often spend time outside their weekly meetings attending community events.

According to the spokesperson, Southers was not asked to submit his resignation, but she declined to say more about the timing of his departure.

Southers has been a member of the panel since 2023, when Mayor Karen Bass picked him to serve out the term of a departing commissioner.

Southers remained after serving out that term because of a bureaucratic loophole that allows new members to join any city commission if the City Council fails to vote on their appointment within 45 days. When the council members took no action on Southers earlier this month after his re-nomination by the mayor, a seat on the commission remained his by default.

His last commission meeting is expected to be Oct. 21 and he will step down at the end of that week. A replacement has not been announced by the mayor.

Southers had a long career in law enforcement before switching to academia and earning his doctorate in public policy. He worked as police officer in Santa Monica and later joined the FBI. He is currently a top security official in the administration at USC.

During this time on the commission, Southers pushed for changes to the way that the department hires and recruits new officers.

But more than any other commissioner, Southers has accumulated a loud chorus of detractors who point to his work on counterterrorism in the mid-2000s in Israel — which has especially become a lightning rod because of the ongoing crisis in Gaza.

Southers’ abrupt departure underscores the increasing difficulty in filling out one of the city’s most influential commissions. The panel was down a member for months after a former commissioner, Maria “Lou” Calanche, resigned so she could run for a City Council seat on the Eastside.

One previous candidate dropped out of the running after a disastrous hearing before the council, and another would-be commissioner quietly withdrew from running earlier this year.

Next Wednesday, a council committee will consider the nomination of Jeff Skobin, a San Fernando Valley car dealership executive and son of a former commissioner. Skobin’s move to the commission would still need approval from the full council.

ATLANTA — The head of a nonpartisan agency tasked with finding a prosecutor to take over the Georgia election interference case against President Trump and others is asking for more time after a judge set a two-week deadline for that appointment to be made.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who’s overseeing the case, wrote in an order Friday that if the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council doesn’t appoint a new prosecutor or request a “particularized extension” within 14 days, he would dismiss it. The fate of the case has been in limbo since Fulton County District Atty. Fani Willis was disqualified from continuing the prosecution over an “appearance of impropriety” caused by a romantic relationship she had with the lead prosecutor.

Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council, said in a court filing Monday that his office has yet to receive the physical case file and does not expect to receive it for about four weeks. He asked McAfee to reconsider his order or to give him at least 90 days after he receives the case file to appoint a new prosecutor.

Without the case file, Skandalakis wrote that he “cannot intelligently answer questions of anyone requested to take the appointment or to do his own due diligence in finding a prosecutor who is not encumbered by a significant appearance of impropriety.”

He noted the case is one of 21 waiting to have a prosecutor assigned by his office. So far in 2025, he wrote, 448 criminal matters have been referred to his office because of a conflict of interest or a recusal by the relevant elected prosecutor.

“Each case requires individual review and assignment due to the unique nature of conflicts and the facts and circumstances of the particular case,” he wrote. Because of the complexity of the election case and the extensive resources required to handle it, “it will require time” to find someone to take it on, the filing says.

Even if a new prosecutor is named, it is unlikely that any prosecution against Trump could move forward while he is the sitting president. But there are 14 other people still facing charges in the case, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.

If a new prosecutor is named, that person could continue on the track that Willis had charted, decide to pursue only some charges or dismiss the case altogether.

Willis announced the indictment against Trump and 18 others in August 2023. She used the state’s anti-racketeering law to allege a wide-ranging conspiracy to try to illegally overturn Trump’s narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

Defense attorneys sought Willis’ removal after the revelation in January 2024 that she had engaged in a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she had hired to lead the case. The defense attorneys said the relationship created a conflict of interest, alleging that Willis personally profited from the case when Wade used his earnings to pay for vacations the pair took.

McAfee rebuked Willis, saying in an order in March 2024 that her actions showed a “tremendous lapse in judgment.” But he said he did not find a conflict of interest that would disqualify Willis. He ultimately ruled that Willis could remain on the case if Wade resigned, which the special prosecutor did hours later.

Defense attorneys appealed that ruling, and the Georgia Court of Appeals removed Willis from the case in December, citing an “appearance of impropriety.” The high court last month declined to hear Willis’ appeal, putting the case in the lap of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council.

Brumback writes for the Associated Press.

Luc Robitaille knew his hockey playing career was over when it took him longer to get his battered body ready for a game than it did to play it.

“It became harder and harder physically,” said Robitaille, whose next stop was the hall of fame. “I think I knew at that point.”

And once his mind was made up, there was no turning back.

For Anze Kopitar, who is in the peak of good health, the decision was a little different. The Kings’ longtime center announced last month that, at 38, he will retire after this season and spend more time with his family. But, like Robitaille, there will be no turning back.

“I’m not going to change my mind,” he said.

In fact, he’s not going to change anything. Kopitar said he’s approaching this season, his 20th with the Kings, the same way he approached the first 19.

“The last few years, I told myself that I have to enjoy it because you don’t know when the ending is com[ing],” he said. “So I’ve been enjoying it. I’m obviously having a lot of fun, still playing the game. This year won’t be any different.

“The focus is still on this season.”

A season that kicks off Tuesday when the Kings host the Colorado Avalanche. But while Kopitar is starting the season the same way as always, he’s hoping for a different ending since the Kings’ last four years have ended with first-round playoff losses to the Edmonton Oilers.

Another Stanley Cup title would be a nice parting gift, especially since Kopitar, entering a team-record 10th season as captain, would be the first man to hoist the trophy, an honor that went to Dustin Brown when the Kings won in 2012 and 2014.

“I’d like to win every year. I’d like to win this year,” he said.

“My kids weren’t born when we won, so I’d like to win so they can experience that feeling too.”

Kings captain Anze Kopitar skates during a game against the Chicago Blackhawks in March.

(Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

However Kopitar’s season finishes, his career will end with him joining Robitaille, now the Kings president, in the Hockey Hall of Fame. He is the Kings’ all-time leader in games (1,454), assists (838) and winning goals (78) and ranks in the top three in goals, points, plus-minus and power-play scores.

And just nine players in NHL history have played more games with one team than Kopitar, who has spent his entire career with the Kings.

Unlike Robitaille, he’s hardly hobbling off into retirement. He led the Kings with 46 assists and was second with 67 points last season, playing in 81 of 82 games. He also won his third Lady Byng Memorial Trophy, which goes to the player exhibiting the best sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct in the NHL.

But his two children — daughter Neza, 10, is a talented figure skater and son Jakob, 9, plays hockey — deserve more of his time and attention, he said.

“I still love to be in hockey and I’m still productive,” Kopitar said. “But on the flip side, the kids need their dad to be more present and be a dad, not a hockey player. I can walk away on my own terms and not be forced to retire because of injuries and because the body’s not holding up.”

Anze Kopitar and his wife, Ines, attend a Lakers game at Crypto.com Arena in January 2024.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

That wasn’t Robitaille’s experience. A fractured ankle late in career and lower back pain so severe he could hardly get out of bed, led to his retirement in 2006, less than six months before Kopitar’s NHL debut.

“It kind of felt to me that I had squeezed everything out of the lemon. There was nothing left,” Robitaille said. “I was really at peace.”

As for what advice he’d give his captain, Robitaille said he’ll tell Kopitar to make time to stop and smell the roses on his last trip around the league.

“If you listen to 99% of the guys that retire in any sport, the one thing they miss is the [locker] room,” he said. “So when you know you’re near the end, you’ve got to make sure you pay attention to every one of those little moments that you’re going to miss for the next 50 years of your life.

“You’re playing a game. You’re 30 years old or 40 years old — 38 for Kopi — and he’s playing a game. It’s amazing. Most people don’t get to do that in their life, you know?”

Kopitar’s decision comes with the Kings at a crossroads. They tied team records for points (105) and wins (48) last season while going a franchise-best 31-6-4 at home in Jim Hiller’s first full season as coach. That earned the team second place in the Pacific Division, its best finish in a decade.

Kings captain Anze Kopitar, left, speaks to defenseman Drew Doughty during a game against the Winnipeg Jets in December 2023.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The postseason was déjà vu all over again, however, with the Oilers eliminating the Kings.

General manager Rob Blake resigned four days later and was replaced by Ken Holland, who won four Stanley Cups as GM of the Detroit Red Wings. The Kings’ core is also in transition because when Kopitar steps aside, only defenseman Drew Doughty will remain from their Stanley Cup-winning teams.

“Passing the torch, [we]’ve been trying to for the past few years, been trying to mentor some of the kids in this locker room,” Kopitar said. “Maybe that’s what it is.”

Holland had mixed results in his first summer with the Kings, adding forwards Corey Perry (who will miss the first month of the season because of a knee injury) and Joel Armia, defensemen Brian Dumoulin and Cody Ceci and goalkeeper Anton Forsberg, and re-signing winger Andrei Kuzmenko to a club-friendly contract.

Also back are leading scorers Kevin Fiala and Adrian Kempe, who had 35 goals each, wingers Warren Foegele and Quinton Byfield and goaltender Darcy Kuemper, who had a career-best 2.02 goals-against average and finished third in Vezina Trophy voting.

But Holland lost veteran defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov to the New York Rangers and failed to land Mitch Marner, the summer’s most-sought player, who wound up in Las Vegas.

And now he’s the team’s first general manager in two decades who has been forced to ponder a future without Anze Kopitar.

Anze Kopitar takes the ice before a game against the Winnipeg Jets in December 2023.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“We’re really going to enjoy having Kopi in the lineup this year. But next summer it’s going to be a big void,” Holland said on the Canucks Central podcast. “He’s big and strong. And it’s hard to find big, strong, talented centermen.

“He’s very intelligent. And I think the team follows his lead.”

As for Kopitar, he’s not thinking past the next nine months. He has the rest of his life to figure out what comes next.

“I haven’t really given too much thought of what’s going to happen [next], except for being home for my kids,” he said. “I’ll take my time and then see what, see what life throws at me.

“I’m going to miss the game of hockey. What I’m not gonna miss is working out, getting ready for the season, all the hours you’ve got to put in. But the game itself, of course, I’m going to miss it. It’s been here for the better part of 35 years. But listen, the summers are going to be more enjoyable.”

PROVO, Utah — An attorney for the 22-year-old man charged with killing Charlie Kirk asked a judge Monday for more time to review the large amount of evidence in the case before deciding if the defense will seek a preliminary hearing.

A preliminary hearing would determine if there is enough evidence against Tyler Robinson to go forward with a trial. Defendants can waive that step, but Robinson’s newly appointed attorney Kathryn Nester said her team did not intend to do so.

Utah prosecutors have charged Robinson with aggravated murder and plan to seek the death penalty.

Both the defense and prosecution acknowledged at a brief hearing Monday that the amount of evidence that prosecutors have is “voluminous.” Robinson was not present for the hearing and appeared via audio from jail at his defense team’s request.

Judge Tony Graf set the next hearing for Oct. 30.

Defense attorneys for Robinson and prosecutors with the Utah County attorney’s office declined to comment after Monday’s hearing. It took place in Provo, just a few miles from the Utah Valley University campus in Orem where many students are still processing trauma from the Sept. 10 shooting and the day-and-a-half search for the suspect.

Authorities arrested Robinson when he showed up with his parents at his hometown sheriff’s office in southwest Utah, more than a three-hour drive from the site of the shooting, to turn himself in. Prosecutors have since revealed text messages and DNA evidence that they say connect Robinson to the killing.

A note that Robinson left for his romantic partner before the shooting said he had the opportunity to kill one of the nation’s leading conservative voices, “and I’m going to take it,” Utah County Atty. Jeff Gray told reporters before the first hearing. Gray also said Robinson wrote in a text about Kirk to his partner: “I had enough of his hatred.”

The killing of Kirk, a close ally of President Trump who worked to steer young voters toward conservatism, has galvanized Republicans who have vowed to carry on Kirk’s mission of moving American politics further right.

Trump has declared Kirk a “martyr” for freedom and threatened to crack down on what he called the “radical left.”

Workers across the U.S. have been punished or fired for speaking out about Kirk‘s death, including teachers, public and private employees and media personalities — most notably Jimmy Kimmel, whose late-night show was suspended then reinstated by ABC.

Kirk’s political organization, Arizona-based Turning Point USA, brought young, evangelical Christians into politics through his podcast, social media and campus events. Many prominent Republicans are filling in at the upcoming campus events Kirk planned to attend, including Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Sen. Mike Lee at Utah State University on Tuesday.

Schoenbaum writes for the Associated Press.

Rob Gronkowski first retired from the NFL in 2019 as a member of the New England Patriots.

The future Hall of Fame tight end retired again in 2022 as a member of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

And even though he hasn’t played in the league since then, it appears that Gronk will retire one more time, again as a member of the Patriots.

The idea of Gronkowski signing a ceremonial one-day contract with the team that he helped win three Super Bowls was floated publicly Tuesday by Susan Hurley, the founder and president of the CharityTeams fundraising firm for nonprofits.

Hurley was speaking at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the newly built “Gronk Playground” on the Charles River Esplanade in Boston when she threw in a personal plea toward Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who was sitting behind Hurley next to Gronkowski.

“Can we just make it official and sign [Gronkowski] for a day so he can retire as a Patriot?” Hurley asked before looking in Kraft’s direction and adding, “What do you say?”

Gronkowski applauded and nodded while looking in Kraft’s direction. The owner, who was off camera at the time, apparently gave his approval, as Gronkowski later confirmed to reporters.

“[Kraft] gave her a thumbs up, so we’re going to make it happen in the future and it’s gonna be a special moment,” the five-time Pro Bowl selection said. “Come back for a day, a weekend, whatever it is. So we’ll make it happen and it will be a really, really cool moment. It’s gonna happen, we just don’t know when.”

The Patriots have not announced such a move and did not respond immediately on Thursday to The Times’ request to comment. On Wednesday, a somewhat less official announcement came on the Instagram account of the “Dudes on Dudes” podcast hosted by Gronkowski and former Patriots teammate Julian Edelmen.

“Gronk will sign a one day contract and retire a New England Patriot,” read the post that was accompanied by a video that featured Gronkowski speaking on the podcast about being drafted by the Patriots. The video doesn’t mention anything about him signing a one-day contract with the team, but it does feature a graphic that reads: “Breaking — Gronk will retire a New England Patriot.”

New England selected Gronkowski in the second round of the 2010 draft. He became a key and beloved member of the team’s dynasty under coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady. After Brady left for Tampa Bay before the 2020 season, Gronkowski came out of retirement to join him and ended up winning his fourth career Super Bowl that year.

Robert Wilson, a leader in avant-garde theater who collaborated with Philip Glass, David Byrne and Lady Gaga over his six-decade career, has died. He was 83.

The “Einstein on the Beach” director died Thursday at his home in Water Mill, N.Y., after a “brief but acute illness,” according to his website.

“While facing his diagnosis with clear eyes and determination, he still felt compelled to keep working and creating right up until the very end,” the statement reads. “His works for the stage, on paper, sculptures and video portraits, as well as the Watermill Center, will endure as Robert Wilson’s artistic legacy.”

Wilson was born on Oct. 4, 1941, in Waco, Texas, to a conservative Southern Baptist family. He struggled with a speech impediment and learning disabilities as a child but was aided by his ballet teacher, Byrd Hoffman.

“She heard me stutter, and she told me, ‘You should take more time to speak. You should speak slowly,’ ” he told the Observer in 2015. “She said one word over a long period of time. She said go home and try it. I did. Within six weeks, I had overcome the stuttering.”

In 1968, Wilson opened an experimental theater workshop named after his mentor: the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds. He created the Byrd Hoffman Water Mill Foundation in 1969, under which he established the Watermill Center in 1992.

In his early 20s, Wilson moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., where he studied interior design and architecture at the Pratt Institute. Later, he joined the recreation department of Goldwater Memorial Hospital, where he brought dance to catatonic polio patients with iron lungs.

“Because the patients were largely paralyzed, the work he was doing with them was more mental than physical,” wrote his former colleague Robyn Brentano in Frieze. “With his unconventional frankness and tenderness, he drew out people’s hidden qualities.”

Wilson started teaching movement classes in Summit, N.J., while he wrote his early plays. One day in 1968, he witnessed a white police officer about to strike a deaf, mute Black boy, Raymond Andrews, while walking down the street. Wilson came to Andrews’ defense, appeared in court on his behalf and eventually adopted him. Together, Andrews and Wilson created “Deafman Glance,” a seven-hour “silent opera,” which premiered in 1970 in Iowa City, Iowa.

“The world of a deaf child opened up to us like a wordless mouth. For more than four hours, we went to inhabit this universe where, in the absence of words, of sounds, 60 people had no words except to move,” wrote French Surrealist Louis Aragon after the 1971 Paris premiere. “I never saw anything more beautiful in the world since I was born. Never, never has any play come anywhere near this one, because it is at once life awake and the life of closed eyes, the confusion between everyday life and the life of each night, reality mingles with dream, all that’s inexplicable in the life of deaf man.”

In 1973, Glass attended a showing of Wilson’s “The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin,” which ran for 12 hours from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The two artists, united by their interest in experimenting with time and space in theater, soon teamed up to create “Einstein on the Beach,” which premiered in 1976 in Avignon, France.

“We worked first with the time — four hours — and how we were going to divide it up,” Glass told the Guardian in 2012. “I discovered that Bob thinks with a pencil and paper; everything emerged as drawings. I composed music to these, and then Bob began staging it.”

Times classical music critic Mark Swed called “Einstein” “easily the most important opera of the last half century,” even though “nothing about what composer Philip Glass and director Robert Wilson put onstage was opera.” Indeed, “Einstein” has become a cult classic despite the fact it has no Einstein, no beach and no narrative.

Wilson and Glass partnered again to create “the CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down,” which also featured music from Talking Heads frontman Byrne, for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The project, meant to span 12 hours, was ultimately never completed due to funding problems. In 1995, Wilson shared his concerns about arts funding in the U.S. with The Times.

“The government should assume leadership,” Wilson told Times contributor Jan Breslauer. “By giving the leadership to the private sector in a capitalistic society, we’re going to measure the value of art by how many products we can sell. We need to have a cultural policy [instead]. There has to be a balance between government and the private sector.

“One of the few things that will remain of this time is what artists are doing,” Wilson says. “They are the journal and the diary of our time.”

In addition to his stage work, Wilson created drawings, sculptures, furniture and installations, which he showed at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York beginning in 1975. In 2004, Wilson produced a series of video portraits featuring Brad Pitt, Winona Ryder, Renée Fleming and Alan Cumming. He would return to the medium again in 2013 with Lady Gaga as his subject.

His work on the installation “Memory/Loss” earned him a Golden Lion for sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1993.

One of Wilson’s last projects was an installation commissioned by Salone del Mobile in April Centering on Michelangelo’s Rondanini Pietà at Milan’s Castello Sforzesco, the project explored the Virgin Mary’s pain following Christ’s death with a combination of music, light and sculpture.

“I’m creating my own vision of the artist’s unfinished masterpiece, torn between a feeling of reverential awe and profound admiration,” he told Wallpaper.

Wilson is survived by Andrews; his sister, Suzanne; and his niece, Lori Lambert.

Fans of System of a Down desperately hoping the Armenian American alt-metal band will one day release a full-length follow-up to their chart-topping 2005 companion albums “Mezmerize” and “Hypnotize” can at least seek some solace in the latest offering from band co-founder Daron Malakian. “Addicted to the Violence,” the third album from his solo project Daron Malakian and Scars on Broadway, may lack System frontman Serj Tankian’s mellifluous singing, iconoclastic rants and feral screams, but its eclectic structure, melodic earworms, fetching vocal harmonies and poignant themes are sonically and structurally similar to System of a Down — and with good reason.

“All of my songs can work for either Scars or System because they come from my style and have my signature,” Malakian says from his home in Glendale. “When I wrote for System, I didn’t bring guitar riffs to the band. Like with [System’s 2002 breakthrough single] ‘Aerials.’ That was a complete song. I wrote it from beginning to end before I showed it to them.”

Malakian — who tackled vocals, guitar and bass — assembled “Addicted to the Violence” (out Friday) during the last five years, using songs he’d written over roughly two decades. The oldest track, “Satan Hussein,” which starts with a rapid-fire guitar line and features a serrated verse and a storming chorus, dates to the early 2000s, when System’s second album, “Toxicity,” was rocketing toward six-times platinum status (which it achieved nine months after release).

With Scars, Malakian isn’t chasing ghosts and he’s not tied to a schedule. He’s more interested in spontaneity than continuity, and artistry takes precedence over cohesion. None of the tracks on the band’s sporadically released three albums — 2008’s self-titled debut, 2018’s “Dictator,” and “Addicted to the Violence”— follow a linear or chronological path. Instead, each includes an eclectic variety of songs chosen almost at random.

“It’s almost like I spin the wheel and wherever the arrow lands, that’s where I start,” he explains. “I end up with a bunch of songs from different periods in my life that come from different moods. It’s totally selfish. Everything starts as something I write for myself and play for myself. I never listen to something I’ve done and say, ‘Oh, everybody’s gonna love this.’ For me, a song is more like my new toy. At some point, I finish playing with it and I go, ‘OK, I’m ready to share this with other kids now.’”

Whether by happenstance or subconscious inspiration, “Addicted to the Violence” is a turbulent, inadvertently prescient album for unstable times — a barbed, off-kilter amalgam of metal, alt-rock, pop, Cali-punk, prog, Mediterranean folk, alt-country and psychedelia — sometimes within the same song. Lyrically, Malakian addresses school shootings, authoritarianism, media manipulation, infidelity, addiction and stream-of-consciousness ramblings as dizzying as an hour of random, rapid-fire channel surfing.

Is writing music your way of making sense out of a nonsensical world?

I like to think of it as bringing worlds together that, in other cases, may not belong together. But when they come out through me, they mutate and turn into this thing that makes sense. In that way, music is like my therapist. Even if I write a song and nobody ever hears it, it’s healthy for me to make and it helps me work stuff out. When I write a song, sometimes it affects me deeply and I’ll cry or I’ll get hyped up and excited. It’s almost like I’m communicating with somebody, but I’m not talking to anyone. It’s just me in this intimate moment.

Is it strange to take these personal, intimate and therapeutic moments and turn them into songs that go out for the masses to interpret and absorb?

I want people to make up their own meanings for the songs, even if they’re completely different than mine. I don’t even like to talk about what inspired the songs because it doesn’t matter. No one needs to know what I was thinking because they don’t know my life. They don’t know me. They know the guy on stage, but they don’t know the personal struggles I’ve been through and they don’t need to.

Was there anything about “Addicted to the Violence” that you wanted to do differently than “Dictator”?

Different songs on the album have synthesizer and that’s a color I’ve never used before in System or Scars. Every painting you make shouldn’t have the same colors. Sometimes I’m like, “Will that work with the rest of the songs? That color is really different.” But I’m not afraid to use it.

[Warning: Video includes profanity.]

“Shame Game” has a psychedelic vibe that’s kinda like a hybrid of Strawberry Alarm Clock and Blue Oyster Cult, while the title track has a prog rock vibe redolent of Styx, Rush and Mars Volta.

I love all that stuff. I spend more time listening to music than playing guitar. It’s how I practice music. I take in these inspirations and it all comes out later when I write without me realizing it.

In 2020, System released the songs “Protect the Land” and “Genocidal Humanoidz,” which you originally planned to use for Scars on Broadway.

At that time, I hadn’t recorded “Genocidal Humanoidz” yet, but I had finished “Protect the Land,” and my vocals on the song are the tracks I was going to use for my album. Serj just came in and sang his parts over it.

Why did you offer those songs to System when every time you tried to work on an album with them after 2010, you hit a creative impasse?

Because [the second Nagorno-Karabakh War] was going on in Artsakh at that time between [the Armenian breakaway state Artsakh and Azerbaijan], and we decided we needed to say something. We all got on the phone and I said, “Hey, I got this song ‘Protect the Land,’ and it’s about this exact topic.” So, I pulled it off the Scars record and shared it with System.

You released the eponymous Scars on Broadway album in 2008, almost exactly two years after System went on a four-year hiatus. Did you form Scars out of a need to stay creative?

At the time, I knew that if I wanted to keep releasing music, I needed a new outlet, so Scars was something that had to happen or I would have just been sitting around all these years and nobody would have heard from me.

You played a few shows with Scars before your first album came out in 2008, but you abruptly canceled the supporting tour and only released one more Scars song before 2018.

That was a really strange time. I wanted to move forward with my music, but we had worked so hard to get to the point we got to in System, and not everyone was in the same boat when it came to how we wanted to move forward. I just wasn’t ready to do a tour with Scars.

Was it like trying to start a new relationship after a bad breakup?

I might have rushed into that second marriage too quick. I had [System drummer] John [Dolmayan] playing with me, and I think that was [a sign that] I was still holding onto System of a Down. That created a lot of anxiety.

A few years later, you announced that you were working on a new Scars album and planned to release it in 2013. Why did it take until 2018 for you to put out “Dictator”?

I was writing songs and thinking they were amazing, but in my head I was conflicted about where the songs were going to go. “Should I take them to Scars? Is that premature? Would System want to do something with them?” I underwent this constant struggle because Serj and I always had this creative disagreement. I finally moved past that and did the second album, but it took a while.

“Everything we’ve experienced has brought us to where we are now. And now is all we’ve got because the past is gone and the future isn’t here yet. So, the most important thing is the present,” Malakian said.

(Travis Shinn)

System of a Down played nine concerts in South America this spring, and you have six stadium gigs scheduled in North America for August and September. Is there any chance a new System album will follow?

I’m not so sure I even want to make another System of a Down record at this point in my life. I’m getting along with the guys really well right now. Serj and I love each other and we enjoy being onstage together. So, maybe it’s best for us to keep playing concerts as System and doing our own things outside of that.

The cover art for “Addicted to the Violence” — a silhouette of a woman against a blood-red background holding an oversize bullet over her head, and standing in front of a row of opium poppies — is the work of your father, Iraqi-born artist Vartan Malakian. Was he a major inspiration for you?

My approach to art and everything I know about it comes from my dad, and the way we approach what we do is very similar. We both do it for ourselves. He has never promoted himself or done an art exhibition. The only things most people have seen from him are the album covers. But ever since I was born, he was doing art in the house, and he’s never cared if anyone was looking at it.

Do you seek his approval?

No, I don’t. He usually is very supportive of what I do, but my dad’s a complicated guy. I admire him a lot and wish I could even be half of the artist that he is. And if he and my mom didn’t move to this country, I would not have been in System of a Down. I would have ended up as a soldier during Desert Storm and the Second Gulf War. That’s my alternative life. It’s crazy.

Have you been to Iraq?

When I was 14 years old, I went there for two months to visit relatives and it was a complete culture shock. I’m a kid that grew up in Hollywood, and I went to Baghdad wearing a Metallica shirt and I was a total smart aleck. Everywhere we went, I saw pictures and statues of Saddam Hussein. I turned to my cousin and said, “What if I walked up to one of the statues and said, ‘Hey Saddam, go f— yourself?’” Just me saying that made him nervous and scared. Talking like that was seriously dangerous and I had no idea. That was a definite learning experience of what I could have been. And it inspired me later to write “Satan Hussein.”

You had a glimpse of life under an authoritarian regime. Do you have strong feelings about the Trump administration and the way the president has, at times, acted like a dictator?

I don’t hate the guy and I don’t love the guy. I’m not on the right, I’m not on the left. There are some things both sides do that I agree with, but I don’t talk about that stuff in interviews because when it comes to politics, I’m not on a team. I don’t like the division in this country, and I think if you’re too far right or you’re too far left, you end up in the same place.

Is “Addicted to the Violence,” and especially the song “Killing Spree,” a commentary on political violence in our country?

Not just political violence, it’s all violence. “Killing Spree” is ridiculous. It’s heavy. It’s dark. But if you listen to the way I sing, there is an absolutely absurd delivery, almost like I’m having fun with it. I’m not celebrating the violence, but the delivery is done the way a crazy person would celebrate it. So, it’s from the viewpoint of a killer, the viewpoint of a victim, and my own viewpoint. I saw a video on social media of these kids standing around in the street, and one of them gets wiped out by the back end of a car and flies into the air. These kids are recording it and some of them are laughing like’s it’s funny. I don’t want to say that’s right or wrong, but from what I’m seeing, a lot of people have become desensitized to violence.

You’re releasing “Addicted to the Violence” about six weeks before the final six System of a Down dates of 2025. Have you figured out how to compartmentalize what you do with System of a Down and Scars on Broadway?

There was a time that I couldn’t juggle the two very well, but now I feel more confident and very comfortable with where System and Scars are. I love playing with System, and I want to do more shows with Scars. I couldn’t tell you how either band will evolve. Only time will tell what happens and I’m fine with that as long as it happens in a natural way. Everything we’ve experienced has brought us to where we are now. And now is all we’ve got because the past is gone and the future isn’t here yet. So, the most important thing is the present.

Kat Timpf wants fans of Fox News’ “Gutfeld!” to know why she will be missing from the show this time around — if only so the internet can’t develop nutty theories about where she might be hiding.

The comedian and co-host of Greg Gutfeld’s hit late-night show had a very dramatic start to maternity leave in February when she found out she had breast cancer and then 15 hours later went into labor with her son. She had a double mastectomy in March and returned to the show in the middle of June.

On Monday, she announced the upcoming break on the show. Tuesday on Instagram, she wrote, “I’ll be back on Gutfeld! in a few weeks! Huge thanks to those of you who have taken the time to offer me words of kindness and support. I love u all so much.”

She included a video clip from “Gutfeld!” in which she gave more details.

“When I came back, I said I still had some surgeries to go,” she said, referring to upcoming reconstructive work. The first one, she said, is next week.

“Even … the best case scenario of breast cancer can involve quite a road to feeling whole again,” Timpf said. “So this is the first step in that. Just so the internet can’t come up with theories about where I am, that’s where I am. Thank you everyone for all your support, vibes and prayers or however you show that. I really appreciate it and I can’t wait to come back soon.”

Fellow Fox News contributor Guy Benson, weekend “Fox & Friends” co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy and “The Five” contributor Kennedy — who earned praise for her work filling in for Timpf on “Gutfeld!” during maternity leave — all posted well wishes in comments on the post.

“Never been more impressed with Kat Timpf,” Campos-Duffy wrote. “The very definition of a strong mom!”

Some viewers earlier this year worried that the comedian’s double-mastectomy decision was rash, given that her cancer had been found early, at Stage 0.

“Every case of breast cancer is very different,” the “I Used to Like You Until…” author said upon her return to Fox News in June. “There are a lot of details of mine that I haven’t shared, but I just wanna say, you know, trust that I’m making the best decision for me and my family. I’m getting the best medical advice that I could possibly be getting.”

A lot of people online have been very, very upset over the Trump Department of Justice’s twofold conclusion, announced last Sunday, that Jeffrey Epstein’s death in jail in 2019 was a suicide and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had no “incriminating ‘client list’ ” among its Epstein files.

The tremendous uproar against the Justice Department and FBI has crossed partisan lines; if anything, it has been many conservative commentators and some Republican elected officials who have expressed the most outrage, with accusations and implications that the government is hiding something about the case to protect powerful individuals.

Given the sordid nature of the underlying subject matter and the fact the feds closely examined “over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography,” the obsession with the “Epstein files” gives off a vibe that is, frankly, somewhat creepy. To be sure, it is always righteous to seek justice for victims, but many don’t want public scrutiny.

The Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files has not been its finest hour. During a February interview on Fox News, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said, in response to host John Roberts’ question about whether the Justice Department would release a “list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients,” that the list was “sitting on [her] desk right now to review.” It is an astonishing about-face for Bondi to now disavow that investigators have any such list. The Trump administration owes us all a clear explanation.

With that large caveat aside, though, the fact remains: This is just not the biggest deal in the world — and if you think it is, then you probably need to log off social media.

The midterm elections next fall are not going to be determined by the existence — or absence — of a “client list” for an extravagantly wealthy dead pedophile. Nor will they be decided on the absurd grounds of whether FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino have somehow been “compromised.” (They haven’t.) Instead, the election — and our politics — will be contested on typical substantive grounds: the economy, inflation, immigration, crime, global stability and so forth. This is as it should be. There are simply better uses of your time than fuming over the government’s avowed nonexistence of the much-ballyhooed client list.

You might, for instance, consider spending more time, during these midsummer weeks, with your family. Maybe you can take the kids camping or fishing. Maybe you can take them to an amusement park or to one of America’s many national park treasures. You can spend less time scrolling Instagram and TikTok and more time reading a good old-fashioned book; you will learn more, you will be happier and you will be considerably less likely to traffic in fringe issues and bizarre rhetoric that alienates far more than it unifies.

Instead of finding meaning in the confirmation biases and groupthink validations of social media algorithms, perhaps you can locate meaning where countless human beings have found it since time immemorial: religion. Spend more time praying, reading scripture and attending services at your preferred house of worship. All of these uses of your time will fill you with a sense of stability, meaning and purpose that you will never find deep in the bowels of an X thread on the Epstein files.

Too many people today who are deeply engaged in America’s combustible political process have forgotten that there are more important things in life than politics. And even within the specific realm of politics, there are plenty of things that are more deserving of attention and emotional investment than others. Above all, it is conservatives — those oriented toward sobriety and humility, not utopianism and decadence — who ought to be able to properly contextualize America’s political tug-of-war within our broader lives and who ought to then be able to focus on the meaningful political issues to the exclusion of tawdry soap opera drama.

Like many others, I expect that the Justice Department’s recent — and seemingly definitive — waving away of the Epstein files saga will not actually prove to be the final word on the matter. To the limited extent that I allow myself to think about this sideshow, I hope that the administration does squarely address the many legitimate and unanswered questions now being asked by a frustrated citizenry that has seemingly been misled by the Trump administration, either in Bondi’s February statement or in this month’s report. But I also hope that the extent of this past week’s rage might serve as an edifying moment. Let’s return to the real things in life and focus on what matters most.

Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer

ST. LOUIS — The revolving door on the pitcher’s mound continues to spin for the Dodgers, who called Justin Wrobleski up from the minors to start Friday’s game against the St. Louis Cardinals.

There’s a good chance Wrobleski will be on his way back to the minors by the start of Saturday’s game.

In between he pitched six innings in a 5-0 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, the Dodgers’ fourth loss in six games and their 11th loss in 20 games dating to May 16.

“I wouldn’t say, a problem,” manager Dave Roberts, who has used 13 different starting pitchers through 64 games, said of the revolving door. “It’s certainly not ideal.”

Nor is it unusual for the Dodgers, who used 17 starters and 40 pitchers overall last season when they won the World Series. But that door is certainly spinning faster than it did last year with the Dodgers using 11 different starters before May 1.

The Dodgers’ bullpen leads the majors in innings pitched while their starters have thrown the second-fewest innings because of injuries.

The Dodgers have 15 pitchers on the injured list, among them Blake Snell, Roki Sasaki and Tyler Glasnow. Including bonuses, the Dodgers will pay the three pitchers more than $100 million combined this season. So far, that has bought them 15 starts.

In their absence, Wrobleski, Landon Knack and Jack Dreyer have made a combined 12 starts; none of them will make more than $800,000.

And it’s not just pitchers: The Dodgers have made 18 transactions in June and the month is just a week old, creating a constant shuffle between the majors and triple-A Oklahoma City that could disrupt Dodgers’ locker room chemistry.

Roberts, however, said he’s not worried.

“It’s part of the culture nowadays in the major leagues, as far as kind of having optionable players and kind of having guys in and out of clubhouses,” he said. ”For our particular club, the core is still the core. But certainly on the periphery or the ancillary players that kind of go up and down, they’re kind of in and out, which is not easy for them.”

To combat that, Roberts said his coaches try to make sure the players feel comfortable during their stays, which can sometimes last less than 24 hours.

“It’s still not easy when you’re here for a couple days and then you’re out, then you’re back,” Roberts said.

Wrobleski (1-2), who made his second start of the season, agreed.

“Obviously, it’s a challenge,” he said. “But at the end of the day, I kind of know how this works and I know that my next start is not guaranteed to always be in one place or another. I wouldn’t say it’s an excuse. I haven’t pitched great up here.

“It’s definitely hard. But at the end of the day, you have to be ready to pitch whenever you’re called upon, no matter where you’re at. That’s kind of my mentality and wherever I’m at, I’m just going to continue to try to get better and continue improving.”

In a game delayed 77 minutes by rain, Wrobleski was undone by a pair of two-out pitches. The first was hit into the left-field stands by Pedro Pages for a two-run home run in the second inning. Brendan Donovan lined the other up the middle in the fifth to score two runners, both of whom reached on walks.

Willson Contreras accounted for the final run with an eighth-inning solo homer off reliever Chris Stratton.

But if injuries have crippled the Dodgers’ pitching, the offense simply crumbled Friday. They stranded nine runners, were one for 13 with runners in scoring position and struck out nine times. So while they lead the majors in runs, batting average and homer runs, they’re hitting just .228 in June.

All of which makes the absence of infielder Hyeseong Kim from the starting lineup all the more baffling. Kim, who is hitting .404/.436/.558 in 24 games, has just seven at-bats in June.

“I wish every time somebody got on base, we could get a hit and score,” said Mookie Betts, who had three of the Dodgers’ 10 hits. “I really wish every time runners are in scoring position, we could get those timely hits. But that’s not how the game works.

“The game is going to go through its ebbs and flows. You have to just kind of ride the wave. You can’t jump off.”

But you can’t get stuck in a revolving door either.

In “Overcompensating,” Prime Video’s newly released comedy series, everyone is doing too much. That’s what Benito Skinner, the creator and star of the A24-produced show, experienced in college in the mid-2010s, and why it felt like a perfect backdrop to tell a heightened version of his own coming out story.

“Overcompensating” centers around Benny (played by Skinner), a closeted former high school football player turned college frat bro who spends too much energy posing as a straight guy by lowering his voice and keeping his love for Lorde’s songwriting in check. That’s the case even, or especially, when he’s greeted by “The Alliance of Gay People and Lesbians and Bisexual People and Asexuals too even” as he makes his way around campus.

But Skinner knew there was plenty of narrative potential in focusing on the thorny relationship Benny strikes up with Carmen, a girl who ends up being both his beard and his BFF. Only in this telling, Carmen, played by Wally Baram, isn’t just a supporting player in Benny’s path toward self-acceptance.

“Naturally that story and getting to college, it’s this coming of age thing,” Skinner says. “And for so many gay people, it’s meeting these girlfriends who are creating these safe spaces — all the while they have their own s— going on. What was so interesting to me is thinking how I’m going through this whole journey inside. But so is she. She is having this whole other experience too.”

Benny (Benito Skinner) and Carmen (Wally Baram) in “Overcompensating.”

(Sabrina Lantos / Prime Video)

Baram says when she read the show’s pilot episode, she instantly understood where the character was coming from.

“I got the script, and within the first three pages, there’s this character — this frizzy, curly haired girl who’s kind of awkward and just can’t do the same thing that everyone else is doing,” Baram recalls. “And who, over the course of the script, is overcompensating with love. That was just so me for a really large chunk of my life, frankly.”

After meeting at orientation — and bonding over the need to ignore the kid who insists on telling everyone he’s Amanda Knox’s cousin — Benny and Carmen fumble through a performed kind of meet-cute. Wishing to do away with his sexual urges for cute boys on campus and hoping to avoid becoming a campus pariah if he doesn’t sleep with a girl on his first day at school, Benny pursues Carmen.

Over the course of the eight-episode season of “Overcompensating,” their freshman situationship quickly gets more and more complicated. Carmen is clueless at first about why things aren’t clicking with Benny in the bedroom (or more like the dorm room). And the root of the issue can be difficult for her to discern.

“It’s like, how could you not know he was gay? But in these relationships I’ve had with women, there was so much confusion and miscommunication through sad dishonesty,” he says. “The Carmen character was so fun to write because this girl is experiencing this on the other side being like, ‘What the f— is wrong with this guy?’ I found that for women, gay was the last thing on their list of things why these relationships weren’t working. And I’m like, ‘No, babe, that’s No. 1.’ You did nothing wrong.”

Benito Skinner on writing the relationship between his character and Carmen: “I found that for women, gay was the last thing on their list of things why these relationships weren’t working. And I’m like, ‘No, babe, that’s No. 1.’ You did nothing wrong.”

(Dutch Doscher / For The Times)

Finding the right actress to nail Carmen’s charming awkwardness was a challenge. Like Benny, Carmen is trying to start anew and fit in at the fictional Yates University. She’s often pushing herself to perform whatever normalcy looks like for a college freshman.

Carmen doesn’t nail collegespeak — “Here’s to a night we’ll never remember with the friends we’ll never forgive,” she captions her first selfie with Benny — but she’s skilled at beer pong, first-person shooters and chugging drinks like the frat boys on campus. More importantly, she is sweet and attentive, the kind of tender girlfriend a closeted boy like Benny would naturally gravitate toward.

At the suggestion of A24 producer Alli Reich, Skinner watched Baram’s 2021 set on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” There, the young comedian, who’s Mexican and Syrian (“or as Fox News would call me, a ‘very lazy terrorist,’” she joked), poked fun at how she’s struggling with adulthood, especially since her body felt both childlike and grown-up at the same time. “I’m 5’2”, I have a baby face, but I’ve [got] boobs and the voice of like an eighth grade Jewish boy,” she deadpanned in the set.

“I had sat with this character for four and a half, five years,” Skinner recalls. “And I watched this video, and it was this very surreal moment. She was exactly what I had in my head for Carmen. I was like, ‘OK, well, it’s her.’”

Baram’s winsome self-deprecation felt like a perfect match for the cast of this off-kilter comedy Skinner was assembling.

“When we met in person, I felt like I had little maracas out,” Baram jokes. “The energy in that room was just like, ‘Oh, hello!’ Like when two dogs meet, and their tails go up.”

“It was so two chihuahuas meet, finally,” Skinner adds.

“When we met in person, I felt like I had little maracas out,” Wally Baram says about Benito Skinner.

(Dutch Doscher / For The Times)

“Overcompensating” hinges on their crackling chemistry. But as the season unfolds, the series becomes more and more of an ensemble piece. As Benny navigates his first semester at Yates, we spend more time with his sullen sister, Grace (Mary Beth Barone); her douchey frat boyfriend, Peter (Adam DiMarco); Benny’s swoon-worthy crush, Miles (Rish Shah) and Carmen’s brassy, sassy roommate Hailee (Holmes).

Together, they create a vision of college life that will make millennials cringe in recognition. The pilot, after all, opens with Britney Spears’ “Lucky” and the foundational queer film “George of the Jungle,” starring a chiseled, loin-clothed Brendan Fraser. But it’s the needle drops throughout the show that best capture that generation and moment in time. Charli XCX may get the spotlight treatment — she guest stars as herself in Episode 4 — but the deployment of a My Chemical Romance song in a later episode made the cast realize just how wounding and specific the writing on the show could be.

“I read ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’ and it sent a chill down my spine because I thought that was private to me, alone in my room,” Baram says. “And then you put it in there and I was like, ‘OK, so we all had that moment,’ which is both good and also, wow, my plight is not special.”

“That is so true that it felt private to all of us,” Skinner adds. “Because that was also something with Mary Beth, too. When we were talking about that song, she’s like, ‘I feel this in my bones, maybe in a good and a really mortifying way.’ I hope it has a resurgence. I do think Gen Z will really enjoy that song. It feels very them.”

Barone’s cringey karaoke rendition of that emo 2006 banger resonates because it captures the joy (and embarrassment) that comes from being unabashedly oneself — something every character in “Overcompensating” grapples with to varying degrees of success.

“Overcompensating” hinges on the chemistry between Wally Baram and Benito Skinner.

(Dutch Doscher / For The Times)

Skinner’s comedy excels at capturing those crippling feelings of inadequacy — whether you’re a closeted dude rushing a frat, a secretly emo girl trying to please her boyfriend or a shy freshman figuring out who she could be away from home.

“Some of these people that come into college where they’re like, ‘I’m gonna do me no matter what, and I’m coming in here like a bat out of hell’ — I felt so in awe watching them,” Skinner says. “I was like, ‘This is so incredible that you can do this.’ Meanwhile I feel so confident in one room and in the next room I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I should not be here.’”

That’s precisely what Baram keyed into when bringing Carmen to life, as well as listening to “Truth Hurts” by Lizzo to get into character.

“Because it reminds me of a time in my life in which I thought I was conquering the social. I was going to a party, and I thought that I was gonna, you know, get down and dirty,” she says. “But really, I was a disingenuous version of myself, and ultimately ended up feeling unrewarded at the end, no matter what I did, whether I had a successful social interaction or I failed miserably.”

“Overcompensating” broadens concepts that are central to the queer experience — like the closet and found families — and places them at the heart of the modern college experience. And, in between jokes about pink eye, Grindr dates gone wrong and a pitch perfect takedown of college improv, the series makes a heartfelt case for how to make the best out of those formative years.

“To do it right, I think, is the Benny and Carmen way,” Skinner says. “It’s finding the person that doesn’t make you feel like you have to be so inconsistent with who you are and the things you actually want to do. For me it’s like, you’re bad at overcompensating when you’re with the right person.”