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In “Boots,” a new miniseries set in 1990, Miles Heizer plays Cameron Cope, a scrawny, bullied gay teenager who is out only to his best (and only) friend, Ray (Liam Oh). Ray, who is joining the Marines to make his disciplinarian but not unkind father proud, convinces Cam to join alongside him. (The recruiters sell a buddy system, which is a bit of a come-on.) Cam told his messy but not unkind mother, Barbara (Vera Farmiga), where he was going, but she wasn’t listening.

Though the series, which premieres Thursday on Netflix and is based on Greg Cope White’s 2016 memoir, “The Pink Marine,” is novel as regards the sexuality of its main character, it’s also essentially conventional — not a pejorative — and largely predictable. It’s a classic Boot Camp Film, like “An Officer and a Gentleman,” or Abbott and Costello’s “Buck Privates,” in which imperfect human material is molded through exercise, ego death and yelling into a better person, and it replays many tropes of the genre. And like most every military drama, it gathers diverse types into a not necessarily close-knit group.

Cam’s confusion is represented by externalizing his inner voice into a double, “the angel on my shoulder and, honestly, sometimes the devil,” with whom he argues, like a difficult imaginary friend. (It’s the voice of his hidden gayness.) Where basic training stories like this usually involve a cocky or spoiled character learning a lesson about humbleness and teamwork, Cam is coming from a place of insecurity and fear. At first he wants to leave — he had expected nothing worse than “mud and some bug bites and wearing the same underwear two days in a row” — and plots to wash out; but he blows the chance when he helps a struggling comrade pass a test. He’s a good guy. (Heizer is very fine in the part.)

Cameron (Miles Heizer), left, is convinced by his best friend (and only friend), Ray (Liam Oh), to join the Marines with him.

(Alfonso “Pompo” Bresciani / Netflix)

Press materials describe “Boots,” created by Andy Parker, as a comedic drama, although, after the opening scenes, there’s not much comedy in it — even a food fight is more stressful than funny. Using “Also Sprach Zarathustra” as the soundtrack to a long-in-coming bowel movement — I just report the news — was already dated and exhausted in 1990, and is bizarrely out of joint with the rest of the production. “Boots” isn’t anywhere near as disturbing as, say, “Full Metal Jacket” — which Ray told Cam to watch to prepare, though he opted for a “Golden Girls” marathon instead. But it makes no bones about the fact that these kids are being trained to kill. “Kill, kill, blood makes the grass grow,” they chant, and “God, country, Corps, kill.” And sometimes just, “Kill, kill, kill.” And things do turn violent, sometimes for purposes of training and sometimes because someone just goes off his head.

Still, that Cam survives, and, after a period of adjustment, thrives (that’s not a spoiler, Cope White lived to write the book) makes this, strictly speaking, a comedy. (And, by implication, an endorsement of the program.) “We’re killing our old selves so we can be our best selves,” he’ll say to Ray. The Marines may make a man of him, but it won’t be a straight man.

Rhythmically, “Boots” follows scenes in which someone will break a little or big rule — I suppose in the Marines, all rules are big, even the little ones — with some sort of punishment, for an individual or the platoon. Laid across this ostinato are various storylines involving recruits working out the issues that have brought them to this Parris Island of Misfit Boys. Cody (Brandon Tyler Moore) was taught by his father to look down on his twin brother, John (Blake Burt), who is in the same outfit, because he’s fat. Slovacek (Kieron Moore), a bully, has been given a choice between prison and the military. Mason (Logan Gould) can barely read. Santos (Rico Paris) is slowed down by a bum knee. Ochoa (Johnathan Nieves) is a little too much in love with his wife. And Hicks (Angus O’Brien) is a chaos-relishing loon, having the time of his life. Obviously, not everyone who joins the Marines is compensating for something; Nash (Dominic Goodman), a more or less balanced character who seems to be sending Cameron signals, is there to pad his resume in case he runs for president one day; but he’ll have his moment of shame.

Sgt. Sullivan (Max Parker), left, is one of the drill instructors who takes an interest in Cameron (Miles Heizer).

(Alfonso “Pompo” Bresciani / Netflix)

Though they all raise their voices and get in people’s faces, the drill instructors do come in various flavors. Staff Sgt. McKinnon (Cedrick Cooper), the senior instructor, is imposing but obviously sane and sometimes kind; Sgt. Howitt (Nicholas Logan) is an unsettling sort who will prove to have some depth, while Sgt. Knox (Zach Roerig) is a twitchy racist, soon to be replaced by Sgt. Sullivan (Max Parker), tall, steely and tightly wound. He doesn’t yell as loud as the others, but even his posture is intimidating. He focuses immediately on Cameron; make of that what you will. He’s the series second lead, basically.

There are some respites from the training, the running and marching, the room full of tear gas, the dead man’s float test, the hand-to-hand combat, the flower planting. (That part was nice, actually.) The yelling.

Ray winds up in sick bay, where he flirts with a female Marine. We get a few perfunctory glimpses of what the brass is like when they’re out of uniform and quiet; it comes as a relief. McKinnon’s wife is having a baby; he makes Cookie Monster noises on the phone for his son. Capt. Fajardo (Ana Ayora), “the first woman to lead a male company on Parris Island,” is heard talking to her mother, presumably about her daughter’s wedding: “I would rather not spend the time or the money because she can’t live without love.” Of her position, she observes that it “only took 215 years and a congressional mandate.” McKinnon, who is Black, offers a brief history of Black people in the Marine Corps as lived by his forebears.

The social themes become more prominent in the second half, and we learn or are reminded just how toxic the military was to gay people, and how backward was its attitude. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” wasn’t in effect until 1994, and it wasn’t until 2011 that openly gay soldiers could serve. Now, as civil rights are being beaten back to … backwardness by small-minded politicians, there’s a timely element to this perfectly decent, good-hearted, unsurprisingly sentimental miniseries.

There were two questions the 77th Emmy Awards, held Sunday night at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles, had to answer, other than who would win what. (It’s an honor just to be nominated.)

One was how the show, a glittery evening devoted to the most popular of popular arts, would play against a world gone mad. The other, not distinct from the first, was how first-time host Nate Bargatze would do.

The ceremony is hosted by a round robin of the major networks, and this year the honor fell to CBS, whose corporate overlord, Paramount, has come to represent capitulation to the Trump administration, settling a baseless lawsuit in what is widely viewed as a payoff to grease the wheels of its merger with Skydance and promising to eliminate its DEI protocols. Executive interference in the news department amid an apparent rightward turn has led to the resignations of “60 Minutes” producer Bill Owens and CBS News President and CEO Wendy McMahon. And there’s the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show,” the timing of which some have found suspicious.

But if your goal was to avoid insulted celebrities, social media outrage or petulant notes from the White House, you could have done no better than to hire Bargatze, a clean, calm, classical, noncontroversial, nonpolitical, very funny, very successful comedian. Bargatze, who has been in comedy since 2002, saw his career explode over the last few years; his appeal is not so much mainstream, which is to say soft-edged, as it is broad — something for everybody.

The show opened quite brilliantly — perhaps confusingly, if you had missed Bargatze’s “Washington’s Dream” sketches on “Saturday Night Live” on which the routine was closely modeled, including the presence of Mikey Day, Bowen Yang and James Austin Johnson — with the host as Philo T. Farnsworth, “the inventor of television,” foreseeing the medium’s less than sensible future. First presenter Stephen Colbert followed immediately to a standing ovation and chants of his name. “While I have your attention, is anyone hiring? I have 200 very qualified candidates with me tonight who will be available in June.”

Emmys host Nate Bargatze, right, and Bowen Yang appear in an opening sketch at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Then the host introduced his much publicized, one would say quintessentially Bargatzean, gimmick. To keep acceptance speeches short, he would donate $100,000 to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America; $1,000 per second would be deducted for anyone going over the allotted 45 seconds. Money would be added to the pot for anyone running short. (J.B. Smoove, a former Boys Club member, was a sort of co-sponsor, in the audience with a young boy and girl.) This efficiency made professional sense, though it had the potential to put a lid on what is usually the most interesting, unruly, moving, unpredictable part of the show. (If anyone had thought for a second, it also spelled trouble: Try talking for what you imagine is 45 seconds. You will be wrong.)

As it happened, the state of the world was addressed, sidelong and directly. Presenter Julianne Nicholson said of living in a post-apocalyptic bunker in “Paradise,” “compared to headlines that’s positively feel-good TV.” Jeff Hiller, winning supporting actor in a comedy series for “Somebody Somewhere,” thanked the Duplass brothers “for writing a show of connection and love in this time when compassion is seen as a weakness.” “Last Week Tonight” senior writer Daniel O’Brien dedicated their second award to “all writers of political comedy while that is still a type of show that is allowed to exist.” And in a generational echo of their “Hacks” characters, fourth-time winner Jean Smart (who has won seven Emmys overall) ended her acceptance speech saying, “Let’s be good to each other, just be good to each other,” while co-star and first-time winner Hannah Einbinder, finished with, “I just want to say: Go Birds, f— ICE, and free Palestine.” Going way over the 45-second limit, she promised to pay the difference on the tote board.

Hannah Einbinder accepts the award for supporting actress in a comedy series for “Hacks” during the show at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

After Einbeinder, the most direct acknowledgment of current bad events came from Academy Chair and CEO Cris Abrego, speaking of the Governors Award given the week before to the Corp. for Public Broadcasting. In a highly quotable speech, he noted how “Congress had voted to defund it and silence yet another cultural institution.” He continued, “In a time when division dominates the headlines, storytelling still has the power to unite us … In times of cultural regression [it reminds] us what’s at stake and what can still be achieved,” and he rattled off a number of much loved shows that challenged the status quo. “In a moment like this, neutrality is not enough. … Culture does not come from the top down, it rises from the bottom up. … Let’s make sure that culture is not a platform for the privileged but a public good for all.” The stars in the audience nodded approvingly.

There were also some pure delights among the bedrock of desultory scripted banter and unimpressive tributes to old shows (“Law & Order: SUV,” “The Golden Girls”). Reunited “Everybody Loves Raymond” co-stars Ray Romano and Brad Garrett, presenting the award for comedy series, recaptured the essence of their television brotherhood. Jennifer Coolidge, presenting the award for lead supporting actress in a comedy, sounded like she’d walked in from a Christopher Guest film. “Between us, I was actually hoping to be nominated for you tonight for my work on this season of ‘The Pitt.’ I played a horny grandmother having a colonoscopy during a power outage and I had to play a lot of levels. I even had to do my own prep.” She went on, after a while, to tell the nominees that winning “is not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s really not… I thought I had gotten really close with my fellow nominees especially after I won but I’m pretty sure they removed me from the group chat.”

The inevitable losses incurred by Bargatze’s charity gimmick provided a sort of running joke at the host’s expense, which he managed quite well, while some winners made a game of trying to put money back on the board. But the longer it went on, the more pressure it put on the winners to be short. Eventually, the show found its natural level, as winners said what they needed to, or much of it, and the count dropped tens of thousands of dollars past zero. For everyone but the bean counters, the least important thing about an awards show is it running on time; in any case, it was only a few minutes over.

And, as one might have expected, Bargatze — who made it through the three hours in a way that served the event and his own down-home ethos — paid the originally promised $100,000 and added a $250,000 tip.

Mario is headed to outer space for his next cinematic adventure.

Nintendo held a supersized livestream of announcements Friday commemorating the 40th anniversary of “Super Mario Bros.”: The first game in the popular franchise was released in Japan in September 1985. Among the news items shared by the company’s video game maestro Shigeru Miyamoto is that the sequel to “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” is officially titled “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.” The follow-up to the 2023 blockbuster is slated to hit theaters in April.

“What kinds of adventures do you think Mario and his friends will have in space?” Miyamoto, who created Nintendo’s iconic mustachioed hero, said during Nintendo Direct after sharing a brief teaser for the film. “This movie will be the main event of the ‘Super Mario Bros.’ 40th anniversary.”

“The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” is another collaboration between Nintendo and the animation studio Illumination. During the livestreamed announcement, producer and Illumination chief executive Chris Meledandri shared that “while the ‘Super Mario Galaxy’ games are the core inspiration for our story, this next film holds surprises for fans of every Mario era.”

“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” directors Michael Jelenic and Aaron Horvath are once again at the helm for “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.” Also returning are cast members Chris Pratt (Mario), Anya Taylor-Joy (Princess Peach), Charlie Day (Luigi), Jack Black (Bowser), Keegan-Michael Key (Toad) and Kevin Michael Richardson (Kamek), as well as composer Brian Tyler.

The announcement did not mention whether Lumalee — the cheerfully nihilistic star-shaped blue being that Luigi meets during “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” — will return for the sequel, but the teaser did include a glimpse of a yellow Luma. So it’s impossible not to hope that the character will have some sort of role in “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” since the star-shaped creatures appear in both the 2007 video game “Super Mario Galaxy” and its 2010 sequel. While the character in the movie had memorable one-liners about “the sweet relief of death” and how “hope is an illusion,” in the games these blue Lumas are more helpful merchants of life.

New characters likely to debut in the sequel include Rosalina, a sort of guardian of the cosmos and caretaker of the Lumas who first appeared in the “Super Mario Galaxy” game, as well as Yoshi, the dinosaur-like character who can grab faraway objects — and foes — with his tongue. Yoshi was teased in “The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s” post-credits scene.

The success of films like “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which grossed more than $1.3 billion worldwide, is among the reasons Hollywood has recently pivoted to more video-game inspired fare. The “Super Mario” movie sequel was first announced in 2024.

SNOOKER star Mark Allen has slammed Sky Sports News over their transfer deadline day coverage.

It has been an action-packed day of transfers across the Premier League and EFL.

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But Allen has taken exception to the guests who have appeared on Sky Sports News.

He questioned the presence of ‘fans’ on the show discussing transfers, rather than experts.

The Northern Irishman tweeted: “Jesus, just turned on @SkySportsNews to follow deadline day…… why oh why are they bringing in fans rather than experts for discussions?

“Pretty sure paying customers won’t be happy with this. Sort it out.”

Allen, 39, is not afraid to voice his opinion – but this is one that has been shared by other viewers.

One wrote: “Podcasters and youtubers 👎🏼”

Another added: “Games gone Mark. Barely watch it now.”

A third wrote: “The whole thing is hyped-up nonsense!”

And another commented: “Like inviting me down to the Crucible to critique you, Ronnie and Judd’s long potting 🤣”

One supporter remarked: “Very poor.”

There are happy hours that function as post-work gatherings, fueled by discounted pitchers of beer, buckets of chicken wings, sliders and the sort of commiserating that can only happen between colleagues. If the beer is cold and the chicken wings properly sluiced in hot sauce and ranch dressing, this happy hour can be the happiest of hours.

But it wasn’t until I was seated at the bar of Josiah Citrin’s Citrin in Santa Monica that I understood a happy hour’s full potential. Here, happy hour is known as Glass Off, a 90-minute stretch of food and drink specials at the bar. Instead of a truncated list of fried foods intended to coat your stomach while you sip on discounted wine, you’ll find tasting-size portions of some of Citrin and fellow chef-partner Ken Takayama’s signature dishes.

Those spot prawns with young turnip and green tomato finished with a nori sabayon that normally cost $52 an order? You can enjoy a smaller portion at the bar for $22. The $49 risotto studded with Dungeness crab, artichoke and peas with aged Parmesan and Meyer lemon? During Glass Off, you can taste a portion of it for $24.

At the following restaurants, happy hour is designed to give diners a glimpse at a kitchen or bar’s full potential, at a more accessible price point. It’s not simply about ordering as many discounted drinks as possible during a limited window. That’s the sort of thinking that prompted the state of Massachusetts to ban happy hours in 1984. It’s prohibited in six other states, and allowed but highly regulated in a handful of others.

In the great state of California, happy hours abound. Just make sure you indulge responsibly.

Here’s a list of my current favorite happy hours. Save me a seat at the bar, will you?

No one really thought Clipse would get back together.

The duo, composed of brothers Pusha T and Malice, is well known for setting a new precedent for rap throughout the aughts. If you wipe the dust off and think back, you’ll probably remember them for hits like “Grindin’” or “When the Last Time,” both produced by the Neptunes — another duo, Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo — and both off of their debut, “Lord Willin’.”

At the surface level, Clipse was an insanely talented rap duo out of Virginia Beach, Va., closely linked to Pharrell, who would go on to be one of hip-hop’s most in-demand producers.

“I had just turned 8 when we moved from New York to Virginia,” Malice remembers. “I think it was a bit of a culture shock for me… I remember thinking how the people in Virginia just talked different.”

But the brothers, born Gene and Terrence Thornton, quickly noticed that a lot was happening around them. Malice remembers when they used to “congregate down at the ocean front” and freestyle: “everybody would come out there.”

It wasn’t long before they “bumped heads” with Pharrell, who was a friend of a friend.

“I had heard about Pharrell and he had heard about me,” Malice says. “One day, Pusha decided he wanted to rap on a song… it was called ‘A Thief in the Night.’”

“Pharrell was like, ‘Y’all should be a group.’ And we agreed, and it was easy… it all came together in Chad’s room in his attic.”

But their first brush with fame came even earlier than their debut, with the release of “The Funeral.” At the time, the brothers had struck a deal with Elektra Records with some help from Pharrell, but the company ultimately shelved their would-be debut “Exclusive Audio Footage,” which contained the song.

Clipse were released from their contract shortly after, but the project would live on through the love of fans — or, “family,” they say.

“For me, we were superstars when we shot ‘The Funeral’ video in ‘99 in Virginia… I mean, that was it; what else was there to do?” Pusha said. “The video debuted on HBO, and we shot it at home. For me, that was the Grammys.”

“That was the mountaintop,” Malice chimed in.

“That was the mountaintop!” Pusha echoed.

Those early Clipse days were special, and the duo saw themselves at the center of a cultural shift and as a driving force in the rap game at the time. And Virginia, oddly enough, is where it was all happening.

Malice, left, and Pusha T of Clipse have cemented themselves as legends of East Coast rap.

(Cian Moore)

It had a lot to do with Teddy Riley — the father of New Jack Swing — who set up camp in Virginia Beach along with his Future Recording Studios. That became a hub in the ‘90s for established artists like Luther Vandross and Whitney Houston as well as rising stars like Timbaland and the Neptunes.

“It was a time of creativity,” Pusha said. “Whether it was Pharrell and Chad up the street or my brother working with Timbaland in junior high school … the energy of Virginia was at an all-time high.”

“A lot of people in Virginia are very creative and aspire to make something out of this music thing,” Malice added. “And I think what we’ve done is show them that it is very tangible and doable and reachable.”

But it would all come to an end in 2010, when Pusha T and Malice went their separate ways. Albeit an amicable split, it was still abrupt, with the latter experiencing a spiritual reawakening that set a hard contrast to the drug-dealing-infused lyrics that often occupied their music.

It was certainly a shock to fans, but both would remain close. According to Malice, it had a lot to do with the lessons their parents bestowed upon them.

“The way our parents raised us, that family is absolutely everything … there is no bickering, there is no animosity,” he said. “My dad was really big on family, and not only family, but brotherhood. And I don’t even mean like, just biological brotherhood. I mean brotherhood and all that it entails.”

“We always used to say in the earlier Clipse days, ‘want for your brother what you want for yourself,’ and it’s something that we hang on to with both hands,” he added.

So, the door always remained open for a Clipse reunion. And there were hints.

They appeared on longtime collaborator Kanye West’s “Jesus Is King” in 2019, and Pusha T’s solo album “It’s Almost Dry” boasted an impressive Malice feature on track “I Pray for You” in 2022. On the latter, Malice is back, seemingly as if he never left the game:

“When I was in the mix / opened up your nose like I’m cuttin’ it with Vicks / Slavin’ over stoves like I rub together sticks / Paved another road so my soul would coexist / But Heaven only knows, I won’t dig another ditch.”

Malice made a rare guest appearance on Pusha T’s fourth studio album, “It’s Almost Dry,” in 2022.

(Cian Moore)

According to him, there were “quite a few baby steps involved” before an all-out Clipse project was underway. But an enlightening conversation with his father, who died in 2022, made it “make sense for my psyche.”

“One of the last conversations I had with my dad, I asked him what he thought about me rapping again. And why that was important to me was because my dad was definitely in a church. He was a deacon,” he recalls. “And just to hear him say that he thought that I had been too hard on myself, I didn’t even expect him to say anything remotely along those lines.”

“And he was like, ‘You know what to do now.’”

It took Clipse around two years to complete “Let God Sort Em Out,” befittingly, entirely produced by Pharrell. Its rollout led with “Ace Trumpets” and the infatuating “So Be It.” The latter track ingeniously flips an obscure sample of “Maza Akoulo” by Saudi Arabian musician Talal Maddah. Notably, it also takes aim at artist Travis Scott over his alleged disloyalty.

It highlights an ongoing dissatisfaction that the brothers have with the current state of rap, an overall landscape that they say is “flawed.”

“We were coming to set standard and reset the table,” Pusha says.

“We had many opportunities to come back and do something, but it just wasn’t the right time,” Malice adds. “Money’s not going to dictate anything we do. We don’t ever compromise our art for anything. Whatever we do is going to be done at the highest level, and it’s going to feel right.”

It was no surprise that the album featured verses from the West Coast’s Kendrick Lamar and Tyler, the Creator, who are some of the best wordsmiths out right now.

On “Chains and Whips,” Pusha T opens up lethally: “The question marks block your blessings / There’s no tombstones in the desert / I know by now you get the message.”

Malice follows suit, assuring “Your lucky streak is now losing you / Money’s dried up like a cuticle / You’re gasping for air now, it’s beautiful.”

[Warning: Video contains profanity.]

Lamar is a real stand out on the album, and it’s no surprise. Last year, he tore apart Canadian rapper Drake across four diss tracks, which hit its peak with “Not Like Us.” The track ended up hitting 1 billion streams in January 2025, won five Grammy Awards, and broke the internet with its performance at the Super Bowl.

Needless to say, the Compton-born rapper and longtime friend of Pusha T has been on a roll.

“Let’s be clear, hip-hop died again / Half of my profits might go to Rakim / How many Judases that let me down? / But f— it, the West mines, we right now / Therapy showed me how to open up / It also showed me I don’t give a f—.”

Of the collaboration, Malice says “when it comes to Kendrick, I think we are of the same mindset of how important the culture is and that we keep it in existence.”

Indeed, this is something that Clipse have always maintained and they’ve taken issue with in contemporary rap. Especially given the longevity they have — Malice and Pusha T have been in the game since the early ‘90s and are 53 and 48 years old, respectively.

“I don’t think people have been in the game this long and competed at this level, you know?” Pusha says. “I think it’s a new frontier. We’re at a point of really cracking the ceiling to longevity in rap.”

“Not only cracking the ceiling; I feel like we kicked down the entire door,” Malice jumps in. “Looking backwards over the years, rappers have been getting away with murder!”

“We’re here coming for the goal every time. And I think that’s the problem: A lot of people are in the game just existing,” Pusha adds. “Not competing, you’re just in it existing in a minor artistic way.”

If “Let God Sort Em Out” wasn’t impressive enough, Clipse are back on the road, playing sold-out shows across the country. On Saturday, they’ll touch down in Los Angeles at the Novo as part of their first tour as a duo in 15 years.

Malice, who refers to fans as “the family,” is eternally grateful to be back doing what he does best for the people he loves.

“They [the family] see through a lot of the circus acts that’s going on in hip-hop and they speak for us when they show up, when we have sold-out shows, in the record sales,” he says. “We don’t take none of that for granted. It’s a real thing and crucial to our existence.”

The Galaxy are the worst team in Major League Soccer. That’s not subjective opinion, it’s objective fact. Just look at the MLS standings, where the Galaxy are dead last after Sunday’s 4-0 loss to the Seattle Sounders, a game that wasn’t nearly as close as the score would indicate.

But the Galaxy are also one of the four best teams in Major League Soccer. That, too, is not subjective opinion but objective fact because, after an unbeaten run through Leagues Cup group play, the Galaxy are one of just four MLS teams to advance to the tournament quarterfinals.

How can both things be true simultaneously? That’s a good question — and one that can be only be answered subjectively.

“It takes time for a group to come together and a team to find out who they are,” Galaxy general manager Will Kuntz offered. “We had to discover ourselves a little bit.”

The Galaxy’s Mauricio Cuevas lies on the field and covers his face with his hands during his team’s 4-0 loss to the Sounders in Seattle on Sunday.

(Luiza Moraes / Getty Images)

That doesn’t really capture the depth of the Galaxy’s decline. The team had one of the most successful seasons in franchise history last year, matching the modern-era record for victories (19) and going unbeaten in 21 games at Dignity Health Sports Park en route to their sixth MLS Cup.

This season, they got off to the worst start ever for a reigning champion, going 16 games without a win while being outscored 36-13. Since May 31, however, the Galaxy are 5-3-4 in all competition, with two of the wins coming against Mexican clubs Tijuana and Santos Laguna, whom they outscored 9-2 in Leagues Cup matches.

In between there were no trades, no acquisitions and no major lineup or strategic changes. Nor are there likely to be any for the reason of the season; although there are 10 days left in the MLS summer transfer window, Kuntz said “I don’t foresee us doing anything.”

So it’s pretty much been the same players and will pretty much stay the same players. Only now they’re playing (slightly) better.

“The rosters are the same, but the minutes and who’s getting them have maybe changed a little bit. Our start of the season was more of an aberration than where we’re at now,” Kuntz said.

Defender Mauricio Cuevas, for example, started just two of the team’s first 24 MLS games, but he started two of the Leagues Cup games and contributed three assists. The Galaxy were winless in league play when forward Matheus Nascimento made his first start; with Nascimento scoring six goals, they’ve lost just four of 13 games in all competition since then. And winger Joseph Paintsil, who appeared lost early in the season, has found his form from a year ago, notching six goals and an assist in his last eight matches.

Still, Kuntz’s subjective analysis feels like a bit of a cop-out since the Galaxy returned 10 of the 14 players who appeared in last year’s MLS Cup final, a game midfielder Riqui Puig, the team’s most indispensable player, missed with injury.

But it’s not so much how many players left as it is where they played that matters, the GM said. Two of the three players he traded — Mark Delgado and Gastón Brugman — were midfielders. And with Puig yet to play this year, the Galaxy started the season missing three of their top five midfielders in terms of minutes played in 2024.

“The midfield is the heart of any team,” Kuntz said. “That’s not to say we haven’t had some players who underperformed or took longer to get to speed than we thought. But the midfield consistency also impacts guys. Everything’s sort of interrelated.”

Coach Greg Vanney agreed. His team’s decline, he said, can’t be blamed on one thing.

“There are a lot of things,” he said. “I don’t think we have a super deep group when it comes to a lot of games in a short period to match some of the physicality.

“We haven’t executed. We have given up goals soft. We’ve never been able to catch any sort of consistent sort of form and rhythm inside of the league and gotten results out of it and closed out games when we need to.”

And that’s just the short list.

The Galaxy’s tepid turnaround — “We’ve been a lot better over the last stretch,” Vanney said — hasn’t been nearly good enough to lift the team out of the deep, deep hole it dug in the first three months of the season since their 3-15-7 record has them buried at the bottom of the MLS table and their 52 goals allowed are most in the league.

Cruz Azul forward Carlos Rotondi and Galaxy forward Gabriel Pec fight for the ball during a Leagues Cup match on Aug. 3 in Carson.

(Eric Thayer / Associated Press)

Yet a win over Mexico’s Pachuca next week, at home, would leave the Galaxy a win away from a berth in next season’s CONCACAF Champions Cup and two victories away from raising the Leagues Cup, giving them a second major title in nine months.

And they have another chance at hardware in October’s Campeones Cup against Mexican champion Toluca, whom they could also face in the Leagues Cup final.

“It is important to compete for trophies, right?” Kuntz asked. “The other thing you’ve see in this tournament is a bit of a fresh start for us. And guys kind of embrace that. It’s like this is what you’d see if the MLS season started today. This is kind of where we’d be.”

Where they are is last. Winning a trophy while finishing at the bottom of the MLS standings has been done before; in 2013, DC United set an MLS record for fewest wins in a season with three and broke the record for fewest points in a 34-game season with 16.

“Hey, you can still qualify for Champions [Cup]. Pretty incredible,” Kuntz said. “You need to be a goldfish, right? Have a short memory. It’s important that you not dwell on what’s already passed.

“Because the most important stretch is what comes next.”

That’s not subjective opinion. It’s objective fact.

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.

A day or two after the March 3, 1991, beating of Rodney King, Johnnie L. Cochran Jr.’s law firm got a call from the victim’s family, wondering if the popular, but sometimes controversial, litigator would take the case.

Cochran was in court at the time doing what some say he does best: convincing a jury to fork over taxpayer dollars–about $2 million in this instance–to a citizen who had been abused by a person with a badge.

So his secretary told the caller that Cochran wouldn’t be available for several weeks, Cochran says, dropping his head into his hands in mock despair.

Fourteen months later, as the riots triggered by the King verdicts waned, Cochran got another call. A community group wondered if he’d represent the men accused of beating trucker Reginald Denny at the corner of Florence and Normandie.

Cochran turned them down.

Then came an offer to represent the nation’s second most visible beating victim–Denny–and Cochran finally got a piece of this complex and pivotal moment in city history. In a sense, it was a moment to which Cochran’s whole career had pointed, leading like a long fuse from the 1965 Watts riot.

“What makes it ironic,” he says, “is that I’m black and he’s white.”

If that’s an irony, it’s not the only one.

Over the past decade, juries have awarded Cochran’s clients an estimated $35 million in county and city funds, mainly from lawsuits charging law officers with excessive force. Now Cochran’s anticipated civil suit for Denny and three other clients–a black, a Latino and an Asian–will charge that the LAPD failed to act with sufficient force in quelling April’s riots.

“That’s an irony,” Cochran allows, nodding. “It really is . . . “

*

Reggie Denny walks into Cochran’s office like a schoolboy visiting the principal for the first time.

“May I sit down?” he asks, as his 8-year-old daughter, Ashley, plops onto a couch wearing a T-shirt Cochran brought her from the Barcelona Olympics.

As usual, Cochran careers through topics, his mind working at the frenetic pace of Robin William’s animated genie in “Aladdin.”

The 55-year-old attorney never breaks into the cartoon genie’s refrain–”You ain’t never had a friend like me!” But Denny leaves little doubt that he views Cochran as a new best friend with almost magical powers.

As a photographer shoots, Cochran begins a semi-staged discussion of the claim he has filed with the city on Denny’s behalf, for an as-yet-unspecified–but “very substantial”–sum.

“I suspect that between now and the first of the year, we’ll get these massive rejections of the claims. Then we’ll come out and file our lawsuit. We’re ready. We’ve got a few little surprises for them. It’s going to be interesting,” Cochran says.

“Well,” Denny replies, his soft voice filled with admiration, “you know ‘em better than anyone.”

Later, when the meeting winds down, Cochran looks out the window of his Wilshire Boulevard office. In the parking lot 10 floors below, Cochran’s Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, license plate JC JR is visible, parked across from the white crew-cab truck that was a gift to Denny–license plate IBARIOT.

Cochran gestures to a landscape that six months ago was dotted with plumes of smoke from the riots, but now is clear and calm.

“It looks like Utopia, doesn’t it?” he says, chuckling. “Unfortunately, it’s not, yet.” Then, with the charm of a master litigator addressing a jury, he turns to Ashley: “It’s going to be better when you grow up, OK, Ashley? It’s going to be a better world out there.”

Johnnie Cochran sees the pivotal point in his life as the day the 6-year-old and his family boarded a train to California, leaving his Shreveport, La., birthplace.

“This may not be the land of total promise, but I tell you, it’s a lot better than having been raised in Louisiana,” he says.

For a time, Cochran and his two sisters lived with their parents in the Alameda projects, before the family moved to San Diego and finally Los Angeles.

His father, Johnnie Cochran Sr., rose through the ranks of Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Co., while Hattie Cochran raised the children in a small house on 28th Street. The tight-knit family became a part of an old-fashioned watch-out-for-each-other community, attending Second Baptist Church, the political powerhouse to which Cochran still belongs.

After skipping a grade in elementary school, Cochran attended Los Angeles High School, where Dustin Hoffman was a classmate, and then went to UCLA and Loyola Law School.

Cochran had just moved into private practice from the city attorney’s office when Watts exploded amid charges of police brutality in 1965. Nine months later, a police officer made a routine traffic stop of a young black named Leonard Deadwyler, who was accompanied by his pregnant wife and young daughter.

The officer shot and killed him, and the case reignited the city’s simmering racial tensions.

Representing Deadwyler’s family, Cochran played the media, turning the case into a cause. In the end, though, his firm lost the case.

Still, the case showed Cochran that his “burning passion” lay in pursuing this social-change-through-lawsuit strategy.

Today, his firm’s blue-and-gilt brochure says that he and the eight attorneys working for him “have dedicated themselves to being the best that they can be, to eradicating injustice wherever encountered, and to enhancing the quality of life whenever possible for all citizens.”

The attorneys’ quality of life hasn’t suffered either.

Built into the counter that separates the firm’s reception area from its plush offices is an electronic message sign. Lately, its red dots have flashed this message to one of the firm’s young attorneys who just won a nice judgment: “Congratulations, Carl! Welcome to the million-dollar club!”

Cochran had earned his first Rolls-Royce by the mid-1970s.

In 1978, though, he took “a five-fold pay cut” to become third in command of the 900-person Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office. He arrived just after controversy erupted over the shooting of Eula Love, a black woman killed by police after she threatened them with a kitchen knife. Cochran helped create a special “roll-out” team to investigate officer-involved shootings.

Despite his growing legal stature, he was not immune to racial stereotypes.

One evening as he drove his three children home after a show at Magic Castle, red lights appeared in the rear-view mirror of Cochran’s Rolls.

“Out of the car!” the loudspeaker boomed. “Get your hands over your head.”

Cochran knew enough to comply. With his children watching, he edged over to the sidewalk as police officers kept him fixed in the sights of their service revolvers.

When the officer rummaging through the designer bag Cochran carries spotted his D.A.’s badge, the scene changed abruptly. But it taught Cochran a lesson–the same one he gets each time he goes to New York City and watches helplessly as a stream of cabbies refuse to pick him up, he says: “It can happen to anyone who’s black.”

Cochran’s work as a prosecutor was widely lauded. In 1979, the California Trial Lawyers Assn. named him its “Outstanding Law Enforcement Officer.” He left the D.A.’s office in 1981, and nine years later the same group named him “Attorney of the Year”–in part because of his success in suing law-enforcement officers.

Cochran’s skills landed him posts teaching trial tactics and techniques at UCLA and Loyola law schools. His vita grew into a seven-page catalogue of awards, appointments and commendations that range from inclusion in the Los Angeles High School Alumni Hall of Fame in 1987 to being profiled this year by National Law Journal as one of “Ten Litigators Who Stand Apart From the Crowd.”

“He is not a person that pounds the table and screams at the jury,” says Superior Court Judge Stephen M. Lachs, who presided over a trial in which Cochran sued the state on behalf of a man killed by the California Highway Patrol. “He is just very nice and likable. There’s no doubt that he was very, very effective in reaching jurors’ emotions. But in a subtle way.”

Adds Ricardo Torres, presiding judge of Los Angeles County Superior Court: “He’ll charm everybody, but especially the jury. He just exudes ability. . . . I can’t think of anyone, especially a trial litigator, I’d rather talk to.”

Other powerful figures also seem to enjoy Cochran’s company.

On the cabinet behind his desk is a large picture of Cochran with Mayor Tom Bradley, his Kappa Alpha Psi “big brother” at UCLA, and two smaller shots of him shaking hands with President-elect Bill Clinton.

Cochran hit Little Rock, Ark., for the victory celebration, and recently ricocheted on a round-trip red-eye from Washington–where he has an office–to chat with Vernon Jordan about getting minorities into the Clinton Administration.

“Do you know that only one U.S. President in history has ever gone to Africa?” he asks. “There’s never been an undersecretary for African affairs who’s been an African-American. . . . We talked about that.”

Cochran’s encouragement of African-American inclusion doesn’t stop at the top, people say. “As a kid,” says community activist Kerman Maddox, “I remember watching the Deadwyler case on TV. We’d have family dinners and talk about this young, smart, black attorney who was taking on that case.”

Later, when he and his friends saw themselves as young, smart, African-American “nobodies,” Maddox says, Cochran took time to help them figure out “how does one make it in Los Angeles?”

Cochran’s way has not won universal approval.

Attorney Stephen Yagman objects to the way Cochran–whom Bradley appointed to the prestigious Board of Airport Commissioners in 1981–straddles Los Angeles’ legal and political fences.

“Johnnie Cochran trades on the fact that he is politically connected to the Establishment,” says Yagman, who often is listed alongside Cochran as one of the nation’s top police-abuse litigators. “He long has had intimate connections with Mayor Tom Bradley and City Atty. Jimmy Hahn, while at the same time bringing suits against the LAPD.

“In my opinion, there is a conflict of interest between a person who is a city official–who, in fact, administers one of the city’s police forces, the airport police–suing the city . . . It creates the appearance of favoritism by the city attorney’s office and the mayor’s office.”

Earlier this year, a deputy city attorney with the police litigation unit raised just that issue when Cochran’s firm filed suit on behalf of a teen-age girl who had been molested by an off-duty LAPD officer. Jim Pearson, chief assistant city attorney under Hahn, told the deputy that the office had long ago decided there was no conflict in such matters.

The deputy’s motion to disqualify Cochran was withdrawn, Cochran won a record $9.4-million judgment against the city and was awarded another $300,000 in attorney’s fees.

In 1990, The Times included Cochran in its investigation of dubious dealings by Bradley appointees.

The stories pointed out that Cochran and his wife, Sylvia Dale, hosted a Bradley fund-raising dinner at their home, which was attended by people who did business with the airport commission. The stories also noted that Betty Dixon, wife of Rep. Julian Dixon (D-Los Angeles), received a concession contract at LAX two years after her husband appointed Cochran to an important House ethics commission post.

Cochran acknowledges that such matters could well lead to suspicions of conflict of interest. He maintains, however, that he has never knowingly solicited contributions from people doing business with his commission.

As for Dixon, Cochran says that the commission granted a contract to a respected concessionaire, which contracted Dixon as part of its aggressive minority hiring program. He says that he was not involved.

On Dec. 4, Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, in one of his last actions before departing office, closed an investigation of Cochran and 12 other Bradley aides and appointees that had been spurred by The Times’ report. Because of insufficient evidence and the statute of limitations, Reiner concluded that no charges would be filed.

Again, eyebrows might raise, Cochran concedes, since he has raised funds for Reiner in the past, and lists him, Bradley, and James Hahn among others as personal references.

Cochran says that such entanglements are unavoidable for anyone with his political involvement. And there are plenty of political types who value those ecumenical connections. There are, in fact, fans who suggest Cochran should run for mayor.

His answer: “Absolutely not. You’re looking at a guy who is extremely happy with what he is doing.”

Plus, he says, he can do more behind the scenes: “I don’t want to sound like a conservative all of a sudden. But government’s not going to be able to solve all our problems.”

Some big settlements he’s won, Cochran says, allow him to plow money back into the community. He sponsors a UCLA scholarship fund for young African-Americans, and a 10-unit housing project named after his parents, which he contributed to in collaboration with the Community Redevelopment Agency, opened last week on Redondo Boulevard, just west of the Crenshaw district.

Even with such contributions, some contend that many judgments and settlements Cochran wins do more harm than good.

“Mr. Cochran and the attorneys who do those lawsuits . . . have created the perception that law enforcement and peace officers aren’t accountable to anyone,” says Shawn Matthers, president of the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs. Brutality-case attorneys, whom he calls “the ambulance chasers of the ‘90s,” have turned that misperception “into a cash cow of deep-pocket liability at an enormous cost to the taxpayers.

“Our perception is that Los Angeles County is an increasingly violent place. . . . Until the politicians respond to the fact that there’s that level of violence, nothing is going to change.”

Cochran, however, thinks that hitting government in the pocketbook is often the only way to make it change.

He cites the highly publicized Ron Settles case in 1983. By exhuming the young black man’s body, Cochran was able to convince a jury that Settles had not hung himself in a Signal Hill jail as alleged, but rather had been killed by the Signal Hill police.

As a result, that allegedly racist police department instituted sweeping reforms.

Now Cochran believes the King case may have a similar effect in Los Angeles.

* When the rioting triggered by the King verdicts broke out, Cochran was at a television station urging calm.

“I don’t care if you’re black, brown, Anglo, Asian or Native American,” he says, “all of us were fearful of what we saw that day. If you love Los Angeles, you don’t want to see it burn down. That doesn’t take away for one minute the sense of frustration people felt over that verdict. But you can vent your frustrations without burning down your entire community.”

After the riots, when he was asked to represent members of the so-called “Reginald Denny 4,” Cochran recoiled. He has little patience with those who would excuse whomever attacked Denny: “If anyone is totally honest with themselves, there is no justification to what happened there. . . .” The people who attacked Denny, whoever they are, “are not heroes and I hope they don’t become martyrs.”

Nor does he agree that the system that failed to convict King’s attackers should be overthrown. “It’s not a perfect system,” Cochran argues, “but it’s the best system that the world has devised. So what we have to do is keep fighting and talking about it.”

When he was approached to represent Denny, some dissension surfaced in his all-black firm. Cochran told his colleagues that the case was not about race, but rather “about human beings versus human beings, about the kind of conduct you can engage in.”

Cochran smiles at the irony that the man who has hammered the LAPD for excessive force now charges that it abandoned part of the city to the lawless.

But, he says, “I don’t think it’s necessarily a contradiction. . . . One of the burdens we have to prove in a violation of civil rights case is that the officers have a callous disregard for the safety of an individual. That’s pretty much the same burden I’ve got to prove in this case for Denny.

“I think that it’s a variation on a theme. But I think it’s totally consistent. We’re saying, would you have done this in Westwood? Would you ever have pulled back?

“The answer is ‘no.’ ”

In “The Hunting Wives,” a brightly configured murder mystery cum cartoon sex opera premiering Monday on Netflix, Brittany Snow plays Sophie O’Neil, newly arrived from Boston with husband Graham (Evan Jonigkeit) and prop young son to fictional Maple Brook, Texas, a rich people’s town somewhere in the vicinity of Dallas. Graham is an architect, seemingly — at one point he will say, “Soph, you gotta check out this joinery,” which, in the three episodes out for review, is as specific as that will get — who has come to work for rich person Jed Banks (Dermot Mulroney) to build “the new Banks HQ.” What will happen in there is not said.

The O’Neils step into this world by way of a fundraiser at which Banks, who wants to be governor, is making a speech in support of the National Rifle Assn., highlighting the need for guns for “good people” to fend off “all sorts of evil sumbitches” and the “personas malos keep pouring in every day” across the border. This is as much of a platform as he will bother to have; plotwise, the point is that running for office may expose his swinging private life to public scrutiny.

Over the course of the party, we meet the major players: Jill (Katie Lowes) is married to Rev. Clint (Jason Davis), who runs the local megachurch; her son Brad (George Ferrier) — who would be named Brad — is an unpleasant slab of basketball-playing meat who is seeing, which is to say, trying to sleep with Abby (Madison Wolfe), a nice girl from the wrong side of the tracks. (Jill is against the relationship; Abby’s mother, Starr, played by Chrissy Metz, has her own reservations.) Callie (Jaime Ray Newman), second among the eponymous wives, is married to Sheriff Jonny (Branton Box); I’m not sure whether Jonny is his first or last name, but this does seem the kind of place where the sheriff would be known by his first. Supplementary wives Monae (Joyce Glenn) and Taylor (Alexandria DeBerry) are just there to make up the numbers.

Most important is Margo Banks (Malin Akerman), whom Sophie encounters in a bathroom where she has gone to take a Xanax for her social anxiety, and who, within seconds and not for the last time, is casually topless. Margo has no social anxiety.

She seizes on Sophie as fresh blood, or from some genuine connection, or because she recognizes in the newcomer the sort of person who needs a person like her, someone Margo can productively dominate to their mutual advantage. Margo immediately declares they’ll be besties — creating a rift with Callie, the current occupant of that role, who, radiating jealousy at every pore, is determined to get between them.

Sophie, Graham seems proud to announce, was once “a bit of a wild child … a party girl” who became a career woman — a political PR operative — and, for the last seven years, a full-time mother. He has a lightly controlling, “for your own good” manner, keeping her from drinking or driving — there’ll be a reason for that, you’ll have guessed — but before long, she will drink, and she will drive. “Two rules,” says Margo, getting her behind the wheel. “Trust me and do everything I say.”

Drafted into Margo’s world, Sophie is soon shooting skeet, and then, having bought her own guns, wild boar. I cite again the Chekhov dictum to the effect that a gun in the first act ought to go off in the second, but there are so many about here, and our attention so significantly drawn to them, it would be a shock if some didn’t fire — the only questions being which and when and whose, pointed at what or whom.

Developed by Rebecca Perry Cutter (“Hightown”) from May Cobb’s 2021 novel of the same name, the series offers a light dusting of political references — “deplorables,” Marjorie Taylor Greene, no abortion clinics “left to bomb,” negative mentions of feminism and liberals — that might as easily been left off in light of the insular fantasyland within which “The Hunting Wives” operates. (Did J.R. Ewing ever express a political opinion?) Given the context — liberal Northerners camped among conservative Southerners — one might have expected a “Stepford Wives” scenario, but this is something different. Within, or exploiting, their sociocultural limits (“We don’t work, we wife,” says Monae proudly), the women party heartily while the men, even when nominally powerful, come across as comparatively bland, uninteresting and distracted. Graham, who is very nice, can seem positively dim; “Take my wife, please,” he’ll happily joke when Margo rides up on a jet ski to spirit Sophie away from a family day at the lake.

The characters are types, but the actors fill them out well, and the dynamic between Margo and Sophie really is … dynamic. Margo is intriguing because she’s hard to figure. Like Sophie, she has a hidden past — when a mysterious figure at the local roadhouse (Jullian Dulce Vida) calls her Mandy, it makes her atypically nervous because, obviously, she was once called Mandy. She lies to her husband; she’s having sex with Brad, which just seems like bad taste. But there’s something authentic and genuine about Margo magnified by Akerman’s entrancing performance. Margo is a temptress, the devil on Sophie’s shoulder — but maybe the angel too.

Lest we forget, there’s a murder, which opens the show in a flash forward; the series catches up with it by the end of Episode 3. (It brings in Karen Rodriguez as Det. Salazar, which promises good things.) There’s also a briefly mentioned missing girl, which will certainly tie in somehow. But with only three episodes out of eight seen, it’s impossible to say where it’s all going — unless you’ve read the book, I suppose, but even then, you never know. What’s clear is that there’ll be more secrets to reveal, with skeletons tumbling out of every closet. And these are big houses, with plenty of storage.

EastEnders viewers reacted to a scene that aired this week which saw characters Nugget Gulati and Avani Nandra-Hart approach their dad Ravi Gulati about a birthday party

Fans of EastEnders have shared confusion over a scene that aired this week, suggesting that it included a blunder. It featured some of the Panesar family and comes ahead of a special occasion set to take place this month.

The scene in tonight’s episode of the BBC show saw Ravi Gulati (played by Aaron Thiara) approached about organising a ‘sweet sixteen’ party for his daughter Avani Nandra-Hart (Aaliyah James). She’s set to celebrate her 16th birthday later this month with some of her friends on Albert Square.

She was joined by her older brother Davinder ‘Nugget’ Gulati (Juhaim Rasul Choudhury) whilst asking their father about planning a party. Nugget suggested in the scene that the siblings start inviting friends ahead of the event.

Encouraging Ravi to let them go ahead with their plans, Avani told him: “Dad, I’m only 16 once y’know?” Nugget then suggested that he will instead be turning 18 soon, saying: “And my 18th ain’t far away. I’ve got to celebrate that too.”

Following the episode’s early release on BBC iPlayer on Monday, some fans on X have raised questions about the ages referenced in the scene. It’s been suggested by viewers that Nugget is thought to be 16 at the moment.

It would mean that he turns 17 on his next birthday, with his 18th then not until next year. His pal Denzel Danes (Jaden Ladega), who is thought to be in the same school year, is himself turning 17 “soon”, as mentioned just last month.

One viewer wrote: “So confused about the age gap between Nugget & Avani? He’s meant to be born in Sept 2008 & her in July 2009 (making them Irish twins, born 10 months apart). But he reckons he’s 18 soon & yet is in the same class as Denzel who said he was 17 soon (October)? Help!”

They added in a second post: “Also why are they in uniform if they’ve both just finished their GCSE exams last month? They’d be off school for the summer by now. Sort out your continuity fails #EastEnders, pedants are watching!”

The post prompted reaction following the release of the episode earlier this week. Some other viewers shared their thoughts in replies.

Someone responded: “I think they’ve given up on continuity with the ages of these 2.” Another said: “Apparently Nugget is 16 and is going to be 17 in September but he’s saying that he’s turning 18 so I’m confused about that too.”

One person wrote on the platform this week: “He would be 17 in September 18 next year, my son was born Jan 09 and he is now 16 1/2. I hate when tv programs and films don’t follow through with continuity, it’s just messy and lazy!”

Others suggested that it wouldn’t be the first time that a character’s age has been altered. One fan said: “It’s just tradition. Sharon was 13 in 1985 and 17 in 1986.” Whilst another wrote: “They also upped Ian’s age too I believe.”

EastEnders continues tomorrow from 7pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer. The next episode is already available through the streaming platform.

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