“Harper & Hal,” premiering Sunday on the cinema-centric streamer Mubi, is a gorgeous, generous limited series that has nothing to show you other than people, how they are and how they do or do not get along. Its elements are not unfamiliar, because they’re drawn from life, rather than from the movies — or just from the movies, as they’re subjects to which the movies have often turned.
But, like this year’s “Adolescence,” which it (differently) resembles in its mix of naturalism and artifice, the series, written and directed by and starring 28-year-old Cooper Raiff — writer-director-star of the indie features “Shithouse” and “Cha Cha Real Smooth” — demonstrates that something fresh can still be done in an oversaturated medium.
While the story spreads out over eight episodes, the cast is compact. Harper (Lili Reinhart) is the daughter of Mark Ruffalo’s character, credited only as “Dad”; Hal (Raiff) is her younger brother. Alyah Chanelle Scott plays Jesse, Harper’s longtime girlfriend; Havana Rose Liu is Abby, Hal’s shorter-time girlfriend; Kate (Betty Gilpin) is Dad’s girlfriend. The company is completed by Audrey (Addison Timlin), divorced with two small children, who shares an office with Harper, and Hal’s roommate, Kalen (Christopher Meyer).
In scenes set in the past, Reinhart and Raiff play their younger selves, a la Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle’s “Pen15,” with less overt comedy, though Raiff’s performance as very young Hal, whom no one in the series describes as hyperactive (though I will — not a doctor) is often funny. It’s not a gimmick but a device — much as the one-shot production of “Adolescence” was not performative cleverness, but the right fit for the material — both in the sense of the child being the parent of the adult, and because it allows for a different, deeper sort of performance than one is liable to get from a first or a third grader. (As spookily good as small child actors can be.) Significantly, it unifies the characters across time.
A confluence of events triggers the drama. The house Hal and Harper grew up in — and which Dad, who spends much of the series seriously depressed especially, can’t let go — is being sold. (Harper and Hal are in L.A.; the house, and Dad and Kate, are elsewhere.) Kate is pregnant; there’s a chance the baby might have Down syndrome, which leads Dad to reflect that with “a disabled kid … you gotta meet them where they are every day” and that he might have been a more present parent to his older children. Jesse has a job offer in Texas and wants Harper to come with her. Hal, a college senior who isn’t pointed anywhere in particular, though he likes to draw, breaks up with Abby after learning — when she tells him she’d like them to become “exclusive” — that up until then they hadn’t been. And Harper has become attracted to Audrey.
The loss of their mother and their father’s unresolved grief has made Hal and Harper unusually close; she’s a caretaker to her brother, who, even though he’s grown, sometimes wants to crawl in bed next to her; at the same time, Harper’s internalized the feeling that she’s holding everything together, which makes it hard to move on. They’re on an island together.
“Are we friends?” young Hal asks Harper.
“We’re brother and sister,” she replies.
“Not friends.”
“I guess we can be friends, too.”
There is an almost complete absence of expository dialogue. The characters are not afflicted with speechifying; silences allow the viewer to enter into the spaces between them, and to let their experience echo with one’s own. (If you’ve lived long enough to be reading television reviews, you’ve felt some or all of these things.) There’s no wall of declaration erected between the viewer and the viewed, but the actors, Reinhart and Gilpin especially, can destroy you with a look. (Although some writers and actors love them, there’s nothing that feels less true to life than a long monologue.)
Though the story feels organic, it’s also highly structured, stretching the length of Kate’s pregnancy, shot through with resonances and reflections — “I Will Survive,” sung by adult Harper at karaoke and in a flashback as part of a children’s chorus, or a precocious young Harper reading “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” “It’s about this family where everyone’s super lonely,” she tells Hal, shining a light back on her own, “but then it gets even worse because they withdraw and they became selfish and so miserable. But maybe it gets better.” (We see her often with a book.) There’s a slow-fast rhythm to the cutting; short scenes alternate with long; memories explode in montage. Just as Raiff doesn’t bother overmuch with explanations, he eliminates transitions. We’re here, then we’re there. You won’t get lost.
Once or twice, I fretted Raiff might be steering his ship to some cliched dark outcome, but I needn’t have worried.
Bomb the United Nations headquarters. Or maybe gas it. Fox News host Jesse Watters had plenty of ideas about how to punish the U.N. after President Trump’s humiliating visit to the organization’s New York headquarters Tuesday.
Trump’s arrival at the General Assembly meeting with First Lady Melania Trump began with the pair stranded at the bottom of an escalator that stopped just as the couple stepped on. The hijinks continued when he stepped behind the lectern to speak and the teleprompter was not working. Trump decided to wing it, leaning into his impromptu-diatribe skills with threats, boasts, mentions of assorted global thingamabobs and something about ending seven wars.
The “from the heart” address did not appear to impress the gathering of world leaders, especially the part where he said, “Your countries are going to hell.” Here’s where I imagine Norway leaning over and whispering to Oman, “At least our escalators work.”
But one man’s technical glitch is another man’s conspiracy theory, as Watters showed Tuesday on Fox News’ talk show “The Five.” He asserted that Trump’s troubles were the result of sabotage and that those malfunctions were in fact “an insurrection.”
“What we need to do is either leave the U.N. or we need to bomb it,” Watters joked. Co-hosts Dana Perino and Greg Gutfeld groan-laughed, if there is such a thing.
Watters then said, “[The U.N. headquarters] is in New York, though, right? Could be some fallout there. Maybe gas it?”
“Let’s not do that,” Perino said.
Watters acquiesced, then said, “OK, but we need to destroy it. Maybe can we demolish the building? Have everybody leave and then we’ll demolish the building.”
He continued: “This is absolutely unacceptable, and I hope they get to the bottom of it, and I hope they really injure, emotionally, the people that did it.”
The comments did not come from a liberal late-night host, which probably explains why there were no Mafioso-style threats from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr calling for Fox and Watters to tone it down — or else.
Like Watters, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt smelled escalator sabotage and said as much in an X post: “If someone at the UN intentionally stopped the escalator as the President and First Lady were stepping on, they need to be fired and investigated immediately.” She shared a screenshot of a Sunday article from the Times of London with reporting that said U.N. staff members had “joked that they may turn off the escalators” and “tell him they ran out of money so he has to walk up the stairs.”
Then guess what everyone is now posting about? That would be former VP hopeful and current Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s response to Leavitt’s post: “Not only do they need to be fired, they need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. It’s a miracle the President ever made it up the stairs.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who on X has been mocking Trump’s social media approach for months, zeroed in on the 79-year-old president’s careful climb up the stationary set of stairs Tuesday. “DOZY DON WAS DEFEATED BY THE ESCALATOR, POOR GUY! THE ENTIRE WORLD IS LAUGHING AT THE LOW IQ ‘PRESIDENT.’ NEXT STOP: THE BEST ROOM AT MEMORY MEADOWS RETIREMENT RESORT. TYLENOL INCLUDED. ENJOY YOUR STAY, DON! — GCN.”
Leavitt said the U.S. Secret Service is among the agencies deployed to investigate the escalator whodunit.
But the escalator perpetrator may be closer to home than Trump’s inner circle and his supporters in the media imagined. According to a spokesperson for U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, Trump’s videographer may have been responsible for jamming the escalator when he ran ahead of the president, potentially triggering a safety mechanism.
As for the teleprompter, the Associated Press reported that the White House was responsible for operating the teleprompter for the president. And a person with knowledge of the situation revealed to the Daily Beast that delegations are allowed to bring their own laptops and teleprompter operators, and the U.N. was not running it for Trump’s speech. The source said that the White House had its own laptop and U.N. technicians were not in the booth for the president’s address. A separate anonymous source also told ABC News that the teleprompter was being operated by someone from the White House, not a member of the U.N. staff.
Watters’ “blow up the U.N.” joke was not funny, especially in our current climate of deadly attacks on political figures by troubled men with guns. But his dangerous strain of humor was soon overshadowed by what another TV personality had to say that evening.
In Jimmy Kimmel’s first opening monologue since his show was pulled last week by ABC, he asked that Americans fight censorship, not each other. The host’s long-running show was indefinitely pulled by the network a week ago after conservative outcry over his remark that “the MAGA gang [was] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
On Tuesday, Kimmel teared up when he spoke of Kirk’s death and said he never meant to make light of a young man’s killing. The host also reiterated that liking him or his show was not the point. “This show is not important. What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this,” he said, emphasizing the value of free speech.
The ousting of Kimmel, a longtime critic and target of the president, was the most high-profile test yet of protecting the 1st Amendment right to free speech in the face of an administration that has weaponized the FCC against its detractors. Upon his return Tuesday, the host was greeted with a standing ovation by his studio audience. Kimmel’s monologue then amassed 11 million YouTube views in its first 12 hours online and is now poised to set a record for being the host’s most-watched opening monologue ever.
Kimmel’s comeback was yet another unfortunate turn for Trump on the Worst Tuesday Ever, and it can’t be explained away as the act of a teleprompter terrorist. But the MAGA-verse is doing its best to make the case, or when it comes to Watters, joking about blowing up places that offend their leader, proving there’s more broken in America than just a U.N. escalator.
ARIEL, Wash. — Music thumps. Boots stomp. Smoke swirls.
It rises like a dry mist from red-glowing cigarettes. It ebbs around an elk’s skull, five-point antlers still attached, and a muzzle loader hanging on the wall.
A potbellied stove washes its warmth over strutting men, women and children. A skinned-out bobcat dangles from the ceiling. A two-man chain saw with a 12-horsepower engine roosts on a canopy over the bar. A sign says: “This Business is Supported by Timber Dollars.”
Tab tops pop. Bartenders slide Budweiser and Rainier and Miller and Coors across the varnished bar top, 3,120 cans and bottles in all. On a wall nearby, these people have tacked up $40. The money is waiting for D.B. Cooper. If he ever shows up, they would like to buy him a drink.
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All of this is in his honor. For 11 hours, a guitar and a bass and a mandolin and a sax and a dobro and an accordion and some drums do not stop, and neither does the dancing nor the singing nor the drinking nor the joking. One husky man lifts his redheaded lady high in the air, puts her feet gently back on the floor and gives her a big kiss.
Maybe that is him. Or maybe that is her. The thought stops conversation cold. If D.B. Cooper were a woman, would she be a redhead? “Nah,” shouts Bill Partee, over the pounding of the band. He is 64 and has lived here a dozen years. He has a full, white Old Testament beard, and he wears a cap that says: Ariel Store, Home of D.B. Cooper Days. “She had dark hair when she did this thing, but by now she’s a blond.”
What D.B. Cooper did was hijack a plane. It had just taken off from Portland, Ore. At Seattle, he forced airline officials to bring him four parachutes and $200,000 in $20 bills. In the air again, somewhere around here, high over the cedars and the firs and the hemlocks that cover the Cascade Mountains, he strapped on two of the parachutes, and he jumped out. He disappeared. Vanished. No ripped rigging. No bones. Nothing.
In this undated file photo, a helicopter takes off from search headquarters to scour the area where hijacker Dan Cooper might have parachuted into in Woodland, Wash.
(Associated Press)
That was 25 years ago on Thanksgiving eve. People have found only two things in the wilderness to show that this hijacking ever happened: a placard that blew off the back door of the plane when he opened it, and money–a few bundles of $20 bills with serial numbers that match the loot. These prove that he died, some say. Others say no, he simply dropped some of the dough. Too bad, they add, not unkindly.
To many, D.B. Cooper is a folk hero. Nobody else in America has ever hijacked a commercial airliner for money and never been caught. He has become a legend, a new Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, Billy the Kid. Books have been written about him, a play staged, a movie filmed. He is the inspiration for ballads and bumper stickers and T-shirts and coffee mugs. Saloons across the country adopt his name and invite people to “drop in on us sometime.”
Every year, on the weekend after Thanksgiving, his fans gather here at the Ariel Store and Tavern, in this mountain town of 50 people, 35 miles north of the Oregon state line. This year they are 500 strong, and they come from as far away as Brooklyn, N.Y., and Birmingham, Ala., and even Seward, Alaska. Their appraisals of D.B. Cooper and what he did offer a case study in how Americans create mythic figures and the ways in which they worship them.
Some stand and read the walls in the southeast corner of the bar, which are covered with newspaper accounts of D.B. Cooper’s exploit. They scrawl their names on a white parachute canopy spread across the front porch. They eat D.B. Cooper stew and D.B. Cooper sausages. They shake their heads at a photograph of a headstone someone put up in a front yard across the Lewis River. “Here Lies D.B. Cooper,” it says. “We spent your money wisely.”
The headstone, regardless of its attempt at humor, runs contrary to an article of faith: that D.B. Cooper is very much alive and enjoying a modest and well-deserved decadence. To his fans, the headstone shows an impertinence that borders on the unseemly. They are relieved to learn that the stone and an oval of smaller rocks outlining a faux grave were judged in bad taste and that the attempted humorist finally removed them.
Mostly, though, they party. For much of Saturday and often into Sunday they holler and dance and set off roaring fireworks. Each explosion sends clouds of white smoke billowing into a light rain and then up through the trees. They draw for prizes, mainly D.B. Cooper T-shirts, and they stage a D.B. Cooper look-alike contest. One year the winner was a basset hound in D.B. Cooper’s trademark disguise: sunglasses.
This year the contest is hard-fought. Dona Elliott, 59, owns this combination country store and saloon, built in 1929 of clapboard and shingles, uphill from the river and hard by a narrow woodland road. She holds one hand over a young man, then an older man, both in sunglasses; then a man with a $20 bill pasted on his forehead; then a couple wearing torn clothes and parachute rigging with fir twigs snagged in the straps.
By hooting and yelling and applauding, the crowd decides. Jim Rainbow, 48, a Susanville, Calif., mortician, tangled in the rigging and the twigs, is here with his wife for their 10th anniversary. He runs second. The older man in sunglasses, Eldon Heller, 70, a retired contractor from Washougal, Wash., wins by a hair. He thinks for a minute about D.B. Cooper’s current age and then smiles. “I’m just about right, huh?”
The crowd cheers again, and the band, called the Enlightened Rogues, swings through another verse about “good women who drink with the boys.” Dona Elliott is short, soft-spoken and has wavy brown hair, but she has been known to throw unruly drunks out the front door bodily and by herself. She pronounces the event a good one.
She knows that celebrating D.B. Cooper angers pilots, the airlines and especially Ralph Himmelsbach, 71, a retired FBI agent who spent the last eight years of his career trying to find him. He has written the most authoritative book about the hijacking, called “NORJAK: the Investigation of D.B. Cooper.”
Himmelsbach, who code-named the case NORJAK when he was still with the agency, spends D.B. Cooper Day at his home in Redmond, Ore. To him, Cooper is “a bastard,” nothing more than a “sleazy, rotten criminal who jeopardized the lives of more than 40 people for money.”
“That’s not heroic,” he declares, and he means it. “It’s selfish, dangerous and antisocial. I have no admiration for him at all. He’s not at all admirable. He’s just stupid and greedy.”
Elliott understands. She knows why people on the hijacked plane, for instance, might not appreciate what goes on here. But she wishes that Himmelsbach would come up anyway.
Himmelsbach, for his part, says: “I know I wouldn’t be welcome there.”
“Oh, sure he would!” Elliott responds. She chuckles. “He’s chicken.”
Thanksgiving Eve 1971
As people here tell and retell the tale of D.B. Cooper and his feat, they praise Himmelsbach’s book as the most thorough.
Folklore has entwined itself around the story like heavy brush. But from Himmelsbach’s account and news reports at the time, this much can be said:
Shortly before 2 p.m. on Nov. 24, 1971, a man stepped out of a blowing rain at the airport in Portland, Ore., and walked to the Northwest Orient Airlines ticket counter. He asked for a seat on the next flight to Seattle.
The man was middle-aged, pleasant. He stood nearly 6 feet tall. He had olive skin, dark brown eyes and dark hair. It was cut short, neatly trimmed. He wore a lightweight black raincoat and loafers, a dark business suit, a crisp white shirt, a narrow black tie and a pearl stick-pin.
He had no luggage to check. In his left hand, he carried an attache case.
Returning?
“No,” the man replied.
His name?
“Dan Cooper.”
The fare was $20. He placed a $20 bill on the counter.
Ticket in hand, he walked to Gate 52, unhindered at the time by X-ray machines or metal detectors. As he walked, he slipped on a pair of dark glasses.
Departure was scheduled for 2:50 p.m. He waited and smoked a cigarette, a filter-tip Raleigh. Finally a gate agent called Flight 305 for Seattle. Dan Cooper shuffled into line. He handed his ticket envelope to the agent, who took it and checked off his name on a boarding list, then handed back the envelope and his boarding pass.
Cooper stepped onto the plane. It was a jet, a Boeing 727. It had a pilot, a co-pilot and a flight engineer. It had three flight attendants, and it offered nearly 100 seats. But it was less than half full. Besides himself, there were only 36 passengers. He walked to an empty row in back and sat in seat 18C. But he did not take off his sunglasses or his raincoat.
The plane began to taxi. A flight attendant, Florence Schaffner, took a seat nearby. She asked him to put his attache case beneath the seat in front of him.
She settled in for the roll-out and climb.
He handed her a note.
It was Thanksgiving, and he was away from home, and she was attractive. She thought that he was proposing something indiscreet. So she paid no attention and put the note aside.
“Miss,” he said, “you’d better look at that note.”
He paused. “I have a bomb.”
To Jim Lissick, 69, of South St. Paul, Minn., who is here at the Ariel Store and Tavern to celebrate with a son and a daughter, such good manners are a sign that Cooper is a gentleman. “He was a caring person,” Lissick says, then catches himself. “Still is.”
Certainly, Lissick says, people such as D.B. Cooper can be tough and extremely demanding. But history, he says, is full of hard cases who were unfailingly polite to women and always kind to children. All of this, he adds, simply becomes part of the mythology that grows up around them.
Mike Holliday, 40, agrees. He has lived in this area since the days when loggers came to the Ariel Store and Tavern after work, hung up their wet clothes to dry and sat around the potbellied stove in their long johns drinking beer and telling stories.
To him, D.B. Cooper shows the unflappable cool of a modern Robin Hood. “But I doubt like hell that he is the kind of guy who gives money away.”
3 p.m.
Florence Schaffner glanced at the man’s note. It was neat, clear. She looked at the man’s face. He was not joking.
The note specified his demands. Take it up to the captain, he ordered, and then bring it back with his response. The man repeated: Return the note.
She hurried to the cockpit and gave the note to Captain William Scott and First Officer Bill Rataczak. They radioed that Flight 305 was being hijacked: A man with a bomb wants $200,000 in negotiable bills, a money sack and a pair of back-pack parachutes.
Part of the money that was paid to legendary hijacker D.B. Cooper in 1971 is shown during an F.B.I. news conference, Feb. 12, 1980, where it was announced that several thousand dollars was found 5 miles northwest of Vancouver, Wash., by Howard and Patricia Ingram and their 8-year-old son Brian on Feb. 10.
(Eric Risberg / Associated Press)
Schaffner returned to Dan Cooper with his note. He opened his attache case. She saw red cylinders, a battery and wires. She hurried back to the cockpit and described the contents to Scott and Rataczak. They radioed authorities on the ground: It looks like dynamite.
Cooperate, responded Northwest Airlines headquarters in Minneapolis, and try not to alarm the passengers. By now Flight 305 was over Seattle, but Cooper refused to let it land until the money and the parachutes were ready. Scott told the passengers that the plane had a mechanical problem requiring it to circle and burn off fuel. The flight attendants served drinks. Cooper had a bourbon and water. He paid with a $20 bill.
Tina Mucklow, another of the flight attendants, sat down next to him. She was easygoing, pretty and wore her hair long and flowing. They developed a rapport. He smoked another Raleigh. She lit it for him so he could keep both hands on his briefcase. “He wasn’t nervous,” she recalled later. “He seemed rather nice. He was never cruel or nasty. He was thoughtful and calm.”
Now Cooper wanted two more parachutes, for a total of four–two front packs and two backpacks. Four meant that he might jump with a hostage, and this signaled: Do not tamper with the gear. The Air Force offered two. But Cooper demanded civilian models. Civilian parachutes meant that he might free-fall away from the flight path before pulling the rip cord, and this signaled: A tail plane will be useless.
As Flight 305 circled over Seattle, airline officials, FBI agents and Seattle police scrambled to get the money that Dan Cooper was demanding. They rounded up $20 bills from several banks. Twenties would be easy to pass and would signal cooperation. It took time, but they found enough–10,000 of them. The bills weighed 21 pounds and filled a white cotton sack. The FBI microfilmed every one.
Cooper grew impatient. He ordered another bourbon and water. Then he demanded that a truck meet the plane and refill it with fuel when it landed in Seattle. He said he would release all passengers, but he wanted meals brought on board for the crew.
A skydiving school finally came up with four civilian parachutes. In a mistake that the rigger would not discover until later, they included a dummy chute that would not open.
At 5:39 p.m., a message went by radio up to Flight 305. “Everything is ready for your arrival.”
Captain Scott eased the jet onto runway 16R. He taxied to a corner of the airfield. “He says to get that stuff out here right now.”
A fuel truck drove over.
Dan Cooper sent Tina Mucklow out to get the money and the parachutes.
Then he let the passengers go.
It is commonly held in Ariel that all of this demonstrates beyond the silly doubt of any pinch-nosed naysayer exactly how brilliant D.B. Cooper really is.
“He pulls it all off pretty good,” says Steve Forney, 40, of Kelso, Wash., a biker who parks his 1979 Harley shovelhead in a special spot at the door that Dona Elliott reserves for motorcycles.
A friend, Jim Smith, 49, of Castle Rock, Wash., who pulls up on a 1987 Harley blockhead, wipes the rain off his leather jacket. He declares with approval:
“D.B. Cooper is one smart outlaw.”
6 p.m.
Arguably, ground crews were less smart. The first fuel truck they sent out to the plane had a vapor lock. The second ran dry. Finally a third topped off the tanks.
Inside the plane, Cooper announced that he wanted to go to Mexico City, and he wanted to fly in a certain way: with the landing gear down, the wing flaps down and the aft air-stairs down.
Flaps?
“Fifteen degrees,” Cooper said, with precision.
This meant that he knew the rear stairway on a 727 could be lowered in flight. It also meant that he knew flying with the gear and the flaps down would slow the plane, and he knew how far the flaps could be lowered to do it safely.
He gave another order: Stay below 10,000 feet.
This meant that he knew flying any higher with the aft door open would be risky. At 10,000 feet, the outside air had enough oxygen in it to make it safe to breathe. But any higher it did not.
First Officer Bill Rataczak figured that flying this way would burn a lot of fuel. By his calculation the plane would have a range of only 1,000 miles. Mexico City was 2,200 miles away.
This called for refueling stops on the way. Cooper agreed that one would be Reno, Nev.
A hijacked Northwest Airlines jetliner is seen in this Nov. 25, 1971 file photo as it sits on a runway for refueling at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Nov. 25, 1971, Seattle.
(Associated Press)
He freed attendants Alice Hancock and Florence Schaffner but kept Tina Mucklow seated next to him. At 7:37 p.m., Flight 305 was back in the air.
Cooper told Mucklow to go up to the cockpit and pull the first-class curtain closed behind her. She glanced back once. He was cutting cord from one of the parachutes and tying the money bag to his waist.
At 7:42 p.m. Captain Scott saw a cockpit light indicating that the aft stairs were down.
The plane leveled off at 10,000 feet and cruised at 196 mph. Outside it was dark, stormy and 7 degrees below zero. Now First Officer Rataczak’s watch showed almost 8 p.m.
“Everything OK back there?” he asked on the intercom. “Anything we can do for you?”
Finally a light showed that the stairs were fully extended.
“No!” Cooper replied.
At 8:12 p.m., the nose of the plane curtsied, and its instruments showed a small bump in cabin pressure. This meant that the tail had suddenly gotten lighter and that the stairs had bounced up and into the plane and then dropped down again.
Dan Cooper had jumped.
Around the potbellied stove in Ariel, two airline employees marvel at D.B. Cooper’s knowledge.
Phil Brooks, 34, of Speedway, Ind., an aircraft dispatcher, thinks that Cooper either was involved with an airline or did his homework very well.
“He was intelligent and gutsy,” Brooks says. “That tells me he had a good background, maybe Special Forces or intelligence. He didn’t work down at the carwash. And he was a major stud; he had the guts to jump out of an airplane at night in the winter.”
Brooks proudly shows off a Cooper Vane, a device named after D.B. Cooper, which locks aft air-stairs from the outside during flight. It was installed on all 727s after the hijacking to prevent further Cooper capers. Years later, Brooks found the hijacked jet in a Mississippi scrap yard. He recovered the Cooper Vane from the Cooper plane.
With Brooks is Dan Gradwohl, 30, a first officer on 727s for Ryan International Airlines, a charter service. “Cooper knew something about the 727,” Gradwohl says, “or he had to have talked to somebody and learned about it.
“He beat the system,” Gradwohl points out, and spectacularly so. “If D.B. Cooper would have simply robbed a bank, he wouldn’t be a legend.
“But he robbed several banks, and then he parachuted out of a plane.”
When Flight 305 landed in Reno, the FBI found two parachutes, the butts of eight filter-tip Raleighs and 66 fingerprints. None matched prints in the FBI files.
The next day in Seattle, the parachute rigger realized his mistake. Cooper had jumped with a good parachute and a backup that would not open.
At one point, a reporter for United Press International spotted FBI agents at the Portland police station and asked a clerk what they were doing.
“They’re looking for a guy named Cooper,” the clerk replied. “D.B. Cooper.”
The reporter phoned in his information. While it was a fact that agents were checking out a man named D.B. Cooper, they cleared him almost immediately.
But the initials stuck.
Dan Cooper entered history–and folklore–with the wrong name.
The only significant evidence that Ralph Himmelsbach ever processed was the $5,800, found on a Columbia River sandbar by Brian Ingram, 8, of Vancouver, Wash., while he was picnicking with his family. Himmelsbach matched the $20 bills to Cooper’s loot.
Will D.B. Cooper ever be located?
“I doubt it,” Himmelsbach says.
Officially, though, the FBI case against Dan Cooper is not closed. Ray Lauer, an agency spokesman in Seattle, says:
“We’re still trying to find the guy.”
Researchers Paul Singleton, Julia Franco and Steve Tice contributed to this story.
The former New South Wales policeman accused of murdering Australian TV personality Jesse Baird and his boyfriend Luke Davies has pleaded not guilty.
On Tuesday (26 August), Beau Lamarre-Condon appeared in court via a video link to enter his not guilty plea to two charges of domestic violence-related murder and one charge of aggravated break and enter.
When Deputy Chief Magistrate Theo Tsavdardis asked Lamarre-Condon to confirm his not guilty plea, the latter replied: “Yes, Your Honour.”
In a statement outside the courthouse, the accused’s lawyer Benjamin Archbold told reporters: “My client’s pleaded not guilty to all charges. As you’ll probably appreciate, there are always more sides to every story, and we’ll have an opportunity to tell ours.”
According to an additional report from The Guardian, the case is scheduled to proceed to the Supreme Court on 3 October to be listed for trial, likely in 2026 or 2027.
The recent development comes over a year after Lamarre-Condon – who joined the police force in 2019 and was once romantically involved with Baird – handed himself in to Sydney Police.
According to court documents, Baird and Davies were allegedly murdered between 12:01am and 5:30pm on 19 February, and a “significant” amount of blood was found at Baird’s home in Paddington.
Neighbours reportedly heard a “verbal argument” that morning.
Police alleged that the bodies were then moved in a rented van that was captured on CCTV footage the same evening.
A few days later, the remains of Baird and Davies were found on a rural property in the town of Bungonia, 20 minutes from the original search location.
Detective Superintendent Daniel Doherty said their bodies were discovered near the entrance and were covered with rock and debris.
“Police located a projectile at the premises which had been discharged…this has been ballistically matched to a NSW Police firearm,” Doherty told reporters.
Instagram @jessebairddd
Baird and Davies’ murder resulted in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras organisers formally requesting New South Wales police to withdraw from marching in the 2024 parade.
“In recent days, many have voiced their concerns to us, particularly regarding feelings of unease at the Parade. Their concerns centre on whether it can still be a space to protest, celebrate, and advocate for equality, as well as to honour and grieve for those we’ve lost, given the NSW Police’s participation in this year’s event,” they said.
“Our community needs space to grieve the loss of Jesse and Luke, who, before this tragedy, would have been here celebrating with us at the Festival.”
The NSW police obliged the request, with a spokesperson for the force stating: “While disappointed with this outcome, NSW police will continue to work closely with the LGBTIQA+ community and remain committed to working with organisers to provide a safe environment for all those participating in and supporting this Saturday’s parade.”
I read George Skelton’s column (Dec. 2) and agree with his main point of the need for public financing of campaigns. However, I take exception with his lines about my father: “The word in those days was that the price for guaranteeing a bill’s passage through the Assembly was a $10,000 contribution to the political coffer of the late Speaker Jesse M. Unruh (D-Inglewood). I never knew whether that was true, but I didn’t doubt it.”
Frankly, that was a cheap shot at someone who’s not here to defend himself from rumors. Even more that that, I’m surprised that Skelton, with his years of experience in Sacramento, would write as if he only remembers my father’s line about money as the mother’s milk of politics while forgetting his less polite line to freshman legislators about resisting lobbyists. Please let me refresh his memory with the following: “If you can’t eat their food, drink their booze, screw their women, take their money and then look them in the eye and vote against them you have no business being here.”
I worked for Sen. David Roberti (D-Van Nuys), both on his district staff and in his fund-raising operations. I have met all the named principals of Skelton’s article and I must say that I also found his use of Alan Robbins’ statements to lump Roberti in with convicted felons to be offensive. I did not always agree with his political positions but I always found Roberti to have a strong sense of personal ethics and morals toward his public and private responsibilities. Please understand, I did not say this out of self-interest since I left Roberti’s staff under less than pleasant circumstances. As for Robbins, he failed to explain that delivering votes and support were also necessary for receiving “perks” in the Senate. What he called “perks,” such as increased staff, are generally considered to be necessary when one is given increased responsibility, which was the case with Robbins. It is the facts of politics, not Roberti’s ethics, which are in question.
Skelton would have gotten no argument from my father on the need for public financing of campaigns. I’m just amazed he would dredge up old gossip to try make his point. That has never been the way to influence public opinion toward positive changes. In the future, Skelton might consider his own journalistic ethics before he throws more stones in an attempt to make a point. That is, if he is genuinely concerned about helping change what needs to be changed.
Fox News host Jesse Watters acknowledged Thursday that his program made a mistake in reporting on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s phone conversation with President Trump during last month’s immigration raids in Los Angeles.
Newsom filed a $787-million defamation lawsuit against Watters and Fox News on June 27 after the host reported on comments Trump made about a phone call with the governor as tensions heated up over the raids and the president’s decision to deploy the National Guard.
After the lawsuit was filed in a Delaware court, Newsom’s lawyers said they were prepared to drop the suit if the governor got a retraction and a formal on-air apology. The suit claims Fox News willfully distorted the facts about the Trump call to harm the governor politically.
Asked for a reaction to Watters’ remarks about the matter, Newsom showed no signs of backing down. “Discovery will be fun,” he said in a statement. “See you in court buddy.”
Watters’ on-air persona is snarky and tongue-in-cheek and he did not deviate from it when he addressed the Newsom matter. He acknowledged he misunderstood Newsom’s social media post on Trump’s remarks and used the words “I’m sorry.” But it was far from a fulsome apology.
“Fox News invited [Newsom] on the show to talk it out man to man, but he said no,” Watters said.
The dust-up began after Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on June 10 that he spoke to Newsom “a day ago — called him up tell him you’ve got to do a better job, you’re doing a bad job.” Trump’s comment gave the impression that the two spoke on the same day 700 Marines were deployed in Los Angeles.
Newsom refuted the claim in a post on X. The governor had already said publicly he spoke to Trump after midnight Eastern time on June 7 and the National Guard was not discussed. They never spoke after that.
“There was no call,” Newsom posted on X. “Not even a voicemail. Americans should be alarmed that a President deploying Marines onto our streets doesn’t even know who he’s talking to.”
Trump sent Fox News anchor John Roberts a screen shot showing the June 7 date stamp of the phone call, which Watters showed on his program to assert that Newsom was lying when he said they did not speak.
When Watters showed a clip of Trump’s June 10 comments about the call on his program, it omitted the portion where the president said he spoke to Newsom the previous day. A banner at the bottom of the screen read: “Gavin lied about Trump’s call.”
Watters told viewers Thursday he believed Newsom’s X post asserted that the two had not spoken at all.
“‘Not even a voicemail’ — we took that to mean there was no call ever,” Watters said.
“We thought the dispute was about whether there was a phone call at all when he said without qualification that there was no call,” the host continued. “Now Newsom’s telling us what was in his head when he wrote the tweet. He didn’t deceive anybody on purpose, so I’m sorry, he wasn’t lying. He was just confusing and unclear. Next time, governor, why don’t you say what you mean.”
The $787-million figure in the lawsuit is the amount Fox News paid to Dominion Voting Systems to settle another defamation case in 2023. Fox agreed to pay the company, which said the network aired false claims that its voting equipment was manipulated to help President Biden win the 2020 election.
Times staff writer Taryn Luna contributed to this report.
Season 2 of HBO’s “The Last of Us” ends with the ultimate cliffhanger (seriously, if you have not seen and do not want to know, please stop reading right now): An Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) vs. Ellie (Bella Ramsey) face-off in which only Abby has a weapon. As Ellie cries out, a gun goes off and … we are sent back in time to Day 1, Abby’s viewpoint.
So if any of y’all were looking for some kind of closure, emotional or narrative, well, you have got a bit of a wait.
The episode itself played out like a mini-epic. Picking up where last week’s mostly flashback episode ended, Ellie returns to the theater to find Jesse (Young Mazino) tending to Dina (Isabela Merced), who got an arrow through the leg, courtesy of the Seraphites, in Episode 5. When Dina refuses an anesthetic slug of alcohol during the proceedings, Jesse gets the wind up. As he and Ellie then set out to find Tommy (Gabriel Luna), he (kinda) tricks Ellie into revealing Dina’s pregnancy.
That admission only adds fuel to the tension between Ellie, with her obsessive need to make Abby pay for killing Joel, and Jesse, who is angry at Ellie for putting her personal desire for revenge above the needs of the community back in Jackson. High words are spoken before the two split up, with Jesse going to search for Tommy, Ellie to continue tracking Abby.
After a frankly weird hero’s journey in which she braves stormy seas and faces execution by the Seraphites, Ellie makes it to the abandoned aquarium to find Abby. There she surprises Mel (Ariela Barer) and Owen (Spencer Lord), two of the former Fireflies who were with Abby when she killed Joel (Pedro Pascal). When Owen reaches for a gun, Ellie fires, shooting him through the throat. The bullet also, alas, hits Mel, who reveals her advanced pregnancy and, as she bleeds out, begs Ellie to cut the baby out. Horrified, Ellie can do no such thing, and Mel dies even as Jesse and Tommy show up.
Ellie (Bella Ramsey) also has to battle the elements in “The Last of Us” Season 2 finale.
(Liane Hentscher / HBO)
It’s a powerful and terrible scene. Upon their return to the safety of the theater, Ellie is, understandably, very shaken and appears to be rethinking the wisdom of her revenge tour when Abby shows up and kills Jesse (sob). As Ellie takes responsibility for Mel and Owen’s deaths and struggles to explain, we see her original fury reflected in Abby’s face. She points the gun at Ellie, a shot rings out and the story resets on Day 1 of the outbreak.
The Times’ Lorraine Ali, Tracy Brown and Mary McNamara discuss the finale and the season that came before it.
McNamara: As someone who has not played the game but has watched a lot of television, I am going to make the wild guess that Ellie is not dead. Not that I expect to discover this for quite a while, as the final scene indicates that Season 3 will be giving us Abby’s backstory before bringing us (one hopes) back to the theater and the series’ present.
This finale, like much of what preceded it, felt both rushed and oddly slow. This season has been very much (and at times too obviously) focused on Ellie’s growth, as a person and a main character. And with the exception of her love for Dina, I’m not sure how much is there. That Ellie is relentless has been made abundantly clear; ditto the fact that she is confused about her purpose in life. But I admit I was relieved when Jesse read her the riot act about how this mission of vengeance put so many people in danger, including and especially the woman Ellie claims to love.
The stakes in Season 1 were very clear — get Ellie to where she can be used to make a cure — even if they were subverted in the end. This season, the main tension appears to be more about Ellie becoming mature enough to accept that not all heroes have to make dramatic sacrifices or win a blood feud.
That’s a fine message, but it required a lot of attention on her emotional growth, which honestly seemed to occur mostly in the final few minutes, while offering only tantalizing slivers of the larger forces around her. How do you introduce a crazy cult and not offer any real explanation for it? How do you enlist Jeffrey Wright (or for that matter, Hettienne Park) as WLF commanders and then give them so little to do? Not to mention poor Mel and Owen, who are sacrificed, apparently, merely to broaden Ellie’s worldview.
I realize that some of this is about staying true(ish) to the game, which I understand offers different viewpoints, but even with the action-packed finale, it’s hard not to feel like Season 2 was simply a preamble to Season 3. What do you think, “Last of Us” player Tracy Brown?
Isaac (Jeffrey Wright) remains a mystery in “The Last of Us” Season 2 finale.
(Liane Hentscher / HBO)
Brown: I have to agree with you, Mary — the finale’s pacing felt a bit awkward as it barreled its way toward the perspective shift into Abby’s side of the story that will likely be the focus of Season 3, while also trying to pack in familiar moments from the game. I also think you’re feeling a version of the confusion and frustration that “The Last of Us: Part II” players felt when Ellie and Abby’s showdown at the theater abruptly cut to something completely different and you’re suddenly being forced to play as the character you’ve spent hours trying to hunt down.
In the game, up until that cliffhanger, you’ve primarily been playing as Ellie outside of a few sequences before Joel’s death. Players don’t learn much about the Washington Liberation Front or the Seraphites or their conflict until they get to Abby’s side of the story. And when you’re playing a game, you’re used to knowing only as much as the character you’re playing as and learning more about any enemies as you go. You’re also much more mission-oriented — as great as a game’s story is, you’re main focus is gathering as much information as you can to accomplish your goal. The mission and the themes are a bit more straightforward in the first “Last of Us” game.
In “The Last of Us: Part II,” there’s a bait and switch. You start the game’s main storyline playing as Ellie, with the assumption that your mission is to get revenge, only to find yourself suddenly playing as Abby. Because “Part II” is more about an exploration of trauma and cycles of violence, Abby and her story have to be more than something you learn about as Ellie. In the game, the perspective shift is essential and revelatory because, navigating any discomfort while playing as Abby is part of the experience. It’s something dependent on the unique way players become attached to characters they play as.
In television, stories can unfold differently. Because audiences are not playing as Ellie, they can be introduced to Abby’s ties to the events in Salt Lake City and characters like Isaac (Wright) much sooner than in the game because we’re not locked into one point of view. And that freedom brings its own challenges. I should also mention that as acclaimed as the franchise is, “Part II” was a bit more divisive among players too. Lorraine, what did you think about the finale?
Ali: You’ve both expressed many of the same feelings I have about the finale and about Season 2 in general. Does that mean I can have the night off? If I took my cues from Ellie, I’d do just that. Ellie predictably put her own interests above everyone and everything else, which didn’t leave much room for an interesting story twist or character growth in the Season 2 finale. To Mary’s point about pacing, Episode 7 spent precious time hammering away on what we already know: Ellie’s need for revenge put everyone who cares about her in danger. Poor Dina. The only way Jesse was getting that crossbow bolt out of her leg was pulling it straight through. The credits are nearly ready to roll by the time Ellie realizes her single-minded quest is as barbaric as Abby’s killing of Joel, but not before she gunned down a pregnant woman.
Tracy, I wonder if the trouble the show had picking out where to spend its time is partly a game-to-TV adaptation problem. You mentioned the shifting perspectives in the game, of players seeing the world through Ellie’s and then Abby’s eyes. But serieswatchers are a passive audience and that left the show with a lot of options to tackle and/or leave out. The finale’s hopscotching from scenario to scenario appeared like it was born out of duty rather than purpose. Ellie’s choppy boat ride, the rogue wave washing her ashore, her capture and release at the hands of the cult — all were colorful and dramatic but felt abrupt and even extraneous to the story. That said, the decaying Costco storefront was a nice touch even if it was totally random.
Lastly, I loved the Seattle-centric soundtrack and poster choices of grunge bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. But a lot of great female bands came out of the Pacific Northwest too, and I can’t help but feel the feral screams of 7 Year B— would have been a perfect soundtrack for Ellie’s rage. So what do we all think about the last moments of the finale, which set us up for Season 3?
Jesse (Young Mazino) is not too pleased with Dina (Isabela Merced) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in “The Last of Us” Season 2 finale.
McNamara: I love the granular music criticism, Lorraine! For the life of me, I could not figure out what to make of Ellie’s brief capture by the Seraphites, which felt a lot like finale padding — don’t forget the crazy cult in the woods about which we know nothing yet! — or even her “Twelfth Night”-like near-drowning. (“What country, friends, is this?”)
I can see how the switch from Ellie to Abby might work in the game — you’ll never understand your “enemy” until you walk a mile in her shoes — but for a series to flip viewpoints seasonally (as opposed to episodically) is a big ask for viewers, especially those not familiar with the game.
With the exception of Ellie and Dina’s burgeoning relationship, much of this season felt like a big teaser reel for Season 3. Ramsey is a talented actor, but the task of carrying the show by portraying a recognizable teen on a complicated existential journey in the middle of a life-or-death adventure tale is a formidable one, especially without the benefit of an older, wiser guide/co-star. But then no one said adapting a game to a series would be easy.
As for the final moments, well, as I said, I don’t think Ellie’s dead, though Jesse certainly is, which is tragic — he and Tommy were the real heroes of Season 2. I am intrigued by the “Day 1“-ness of the final scene. I always like when postapocalyptic tales take the time to explain how it all went down. So I will be counting the months to see what happens next, which I suppose is what every TV writer wants.
Brown: I’ll refrain from spoiling Ellie’s fate here, even though the game with the answer came out in 2020! But I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that the cut to Abby’s “Seattle Day 1” signals the show is likely sticking to the structure of the game — meaning Season 3 will tell Abby’s story, following the former Firefly for the same three days that Ellie has spent in the Emerald City leading up to their violent reunion. If the show stays true to the game, we won’t be seeing what happens to Ellie following that cliffhanger gunshot until the story reaches that part of “Day 3” from Abby’s perspective. Sorry, Mary!
I was a bit surprised when I realized the show was going to follow this same route, especially after it introduced Abby’s backstory so early. One of the perks of television is that it’s possible to follow the multiple storylines of more than one character, so I thought the show might try weaving Ellie and Abby’s narratives a bit more. One benefit of following the game’s road map, though, is there are distinct breaks in the overall story to build seasons around. (I’m calling it now that the Season 3 finale will be around their clash at the theater again.)
Back to Lorraine’s point, I do think that some of the struggles of this season comes down to the choices around which game moments to give space to. Some game-to-TV moments were very successful, like Joel taking Ellie to the museum for her birthday in Episode 6. Others, like Ellie taking that boat to get to the aquarium, were a bit less successful. Ellie getting tossed around those waves was a great nod to that sequence in the game, but on the show, it wasn’t as clear why she even needed to hop on the boat to begin with.
We’ve all mentioned how Dina and Ellie’s relationship has been one of the highlights of this season. Without spoiling anything, what I am most curious about is how Ellie’s excitement around Dina’s pregnancy and becoming a dad is going to affect the story to come. How about you, Lorraine, is there hope for “The Last of Us” to win you back?
Ali: There is always hope, Tracy, even in the blighted, rotting, fungus-filled world of “The Last of Us.” My meager hope for the Season 3 opener? That Ellie emerges a survivor, and her comeback scene is set to Pearl Jam’s “Alive.”
A PRISON governor has been jailed over an illicit relationship with a drug gang boss who gifted her a £12,000 Mercedes.
Kerri Pegg was seen as a “rising star” in the Prison Service and quickly rose through the ranks to become governor at HMP Kirkham in Lancashire.
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Kerri Pegg received a car from her lag lover after she green-lit his releaseCredit: PA
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She has now been jailedCredit: PA
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The prison governor had a fling with Anthony SaundersonCredit: Unpixs
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He gifted her a £12,000 MercedesCredit: PA
But her career is now in ruins after she embarked on a relationship with inmate Anthony Saunderson, who was known as Jesse Pinkman after the series Breaking Bad.
Pegg, 42, has now been jailed after she was found guilty of two counts of misconduct in a public office.
One relates to the divorcee’s fling with Saunderson and the second by failing to disclose county court judgements about her debts.
She was also convicted of one count of possessing criminal property, the Mercedes car, from Saunderson.
Preston Crown Court heard Pegg released Saunderson on licence in 2019 despite not having the authority to approve the bid.
After he was granted his freedom, the prisoner used cash from selling 34 kilos of amphetamines to buy Pegg the Mercedes coupe.
On April 6, 2020, Saunderson was sent a message on Encrochat saying “car her for ya bird 12 quid or work” and a photo of the vehicle.
The court was told “12 quid” meant £12,000 and “work” meant drugs.
Saunderson asked “what work they want” and he was told “top or weed” – meaning cocaine or cannabis.
Two days later, he arranged for “17 packs” to be dropped off in Manchester to pay for the car.
The Mercedes was registered in Pegg’s name, with a pal messaging Saunderson: “Where u ya seedy man u and Peggy out floating orrel in the new whip?”
Law enforcement agencies cracked the criminal’s Encrochat and discovered he was involved in drug trafficking on a huge scale.
Saunderson, who was also known to his criminal pals as James Gandolfini -the actor who played Tony Soprano in the mafia TV Series – has now been locked up for 35 years.
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Police found flip flops at Pegg’s home that contained Saunderson’s DNA
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She was arrested in November 2020
The court was told other messages revealed the “ongoing nature” of his relationship with Pegg.
Police searched her home on November 19, 2020, and found a toothbrush and flip flops containing Saunderson’s DNA.
Officers also discovered a haul of designer clothing and found Pegg was subject to a number of county court judgements for unpaid debts.
Prosecutor Barbara-Louise Webster said: “Her downfall was two-fold, the first, despite having a good income, she lived beyond her means.
“She spent all her income and more, incurring debts and she had county court judgements made against her.
“As a consequence, she became vulnerable and open to exploitation.
“The second was that she became emotionally and personally involved with a serving prisoner, Anthony Saunderson and later accepted an expensive car, a Mercedes C class, which was paid for by him out of his proceeds of criminal activity ie trading in drugs.”
Pegg joined the prison service in 2012 as a graduate entrant and worked at prisons in Risley, Liverpool and Styal.
By April 2018, she was a governor at HMP Kirkham, where Saunderson was serving a lengthy jail term.
He had been locked up in 2014 for his part in importing £19m of cocaine in shipments of corned beef from Argentina.
From the start, there were concerns about Pegg being inappropriately close to prisoners.
It was also noted that she spent a lot of time in her office with Saunderson.
In October 2018, he put in a request to be released on temporary licence.
Despite Pegg not having the authority to green light his release, she intervened and approved his application without notifying the official who should have dealt with the case.
Days later she was moved to another jail, later becoming duty governor at HMP Lancaster Farms.
Saunderson meanwhile was revealed as one of nine gangland figures responsible for producing amphetamines on an industrial, multi-million-pound scale.
The gang made and dealt 2.6 tonnes of amphetamines worth £1million – as well as trafficking heroin, cocaine, cannabis, ketamine, MCAT and diazepam.
Tarryn McCaffrey, from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said: “Kerri Pegg’s conduct fell far short of what might be expected from any professional within the Prison Service, let alone one of such a senior grade as prison governor.
“She was clearly involved in an inappropriate relationship with Saunderson after he was released and the evidence points to this going back further, to a time when he was in jail.
“This relationship, and the fact that Pegg failed to disclose her debts to her employers, amount to a gross breach of trust and are therefore extremely damaging to public confidence.”
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Pegg started up the relationship while she was prison governor
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She was seen as a ‘rising star’ in the prison serviceCredit: PA
Just as Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Dina (Isabela Merced) find themselves cornered by numerous infected inside an abandoned warehouse in the latest episode of “The Last of Us,” their reliable friend Jesse arrives in the nick of time to save them.
But mutant fungal zombies are not the only roaming threat in the world in HBO’s postapocalyptic thriller, and the trio immediately find themselves trying to evade attacks from the local militia as well as a mysterious cult.
Over a couple of video calls — including one in which he was surrounded by what looked like the lush natural world of the show — actor Young Mazino discussed his character Jesse’s rescue mission to Seattle as well as how “The Last of Us” has further propelled his rising profile in Hollywood. As for what happens in Episode 5, Mazino sums up the usually laid-back Jesse’s feelings as Ellie and Dina pepper him with questions about his unexpected arrival: “He’s pissed.”
“He’s really pissed off that they’re there to begin with,” Mazino says in a video call. “He knows the stakes. He knows how serious it can get. There’s a lot of s— on his mind but … for him, it’s about getting everyone to safety, surviving and then the emotions come later. Then we can hash it out.”
A patrol coordinator in their Jackson, Wyo., settlement, Jesse has an on again, off again relationship with Dina — “a situationship,” as Mazino calls it. After the horde of infected attacked Jackson, he became a member of the council that leads the community.
Jesse has come to the rescue, but “he’s pissed,” says Young Mazino.
(Liane Hentscher / HBO)
Mazino describes Jesse as “a pretty happy-go-lucky guy” in the earlier episodes of the season, as well as “a bit of a Boy Scout.” But as audiences see in Episode 5, he’s also a capable fighter proficient in firearms and equipped with key survival skills. Mazino says co-star Gabriel Luna (who plays Tommy) joked that Jesse is a “gentle monster.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” says Mazino. “For these people to survive up to that point, you do have to have a bit of that savagery and be able to turn that on. It’s just a matter of being able to switch it back off.”
Much like Jesse, Mazino exudes a quiet, gentle spirit through the screen of a video call. He references the stories of Anton Chekhov, the artistic philosophy of Pablo Picasso and anime like “Jujutsu Kaisen.” (“If ‘Vinland Saga’ existed in this world, Jesse would really f— with that manga” because of its themes, Mazino says.) He’s as game to discuss a dream blunt rotation among the Jackson community members as he is to contemplate the Asian diaspora in a postapocalyptic world.
“He’s so chill and mellow,” Ramsey says of her castmate. “I got to know him quite well and he’s so perceptive and so thoughtful about everything. I feel really lucky to have gotten to know him more than just the chill, mellow guy that everyone sees on the surface.”
The respect is mutual. Mazino calls Ramsey “an extraordinary individual” whose work ethic is No. 1 on the call sheet. One vivid memory: standing underneath some PVC pipes with Ramsey on set and enjoying a moment in artificial rain together.
“I was soggy and wet every day for hours on end,” Mazino says of filming the show’s Seattle-set episodes. “And as soon as you’re about to dry, they wet you down again. What helps is having someone like Bella Ramsey, who maintains this levity. So despite being wet and soggy and miserable all day, being miserable with someone that’s just as miserable and wet as you really helps.”
“The Last of Us” marks Mazino’s highest-profile project yet. After years of trying to make it as an actor, Mazino got his breakout role in the 2023 limited series “Beef,” where he portrays a slacker who falls for his older brother’s road-rage nemesis. His performance earned him an Emmy nomination.
His familiarity with “The Last of Us” initially stemmed from watching YouTube videos of the game’s story scenes. But before meeting showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann for the project, Mazino bought a used PlayStation 4 to play through the key moments of Jesse’s story.
Young Mazino calls “The Last of Us” a rare opportunity.
(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
“When I told Craig I played through the game hoping he would be pleasantly surprised, he was like, ‘I wish you actually didn’t play the game at all,’” Mazino says.
Preparation for the role included going “crazy at the gym for a few months,” Mazino says. He also received weapons training and learned to ride a horse.
“I’ve been on many sets in the last 10 years and I’m aware of how rare this kind of opportunity is,” Mazino says. “My expectation for writing and storytelling became very high after ‘Beef,’ and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to find something to match that. But ‘The Last of Us’ came my way and I love getting to explore different facets of myself through character.”
Jesse has a soft spot for Ellie, whom he initially meets as a prickly outsider cut from similar cloth, Mazino says. Both are loners who’d rather avoid the spotlight — particularly at parties. But Jesse also recognizes Ellie’s inner fire and potential.
“Jesse finds Ellie so interesting and amusing and endearing,” Mazino says. “To be this small, petite girl and have so much vitriol and fire and angst. I think Jesse wants to help Ellie harness all that intense energy that she has and put it to good use.”
The pair also share an attraction to Dina, who is a bit more social and warm and seemingly carefree. And though Jesse did not seem to mind Ellie and Dina sharing a drunken kiss at a party in an earlier episode, the couple’s relationship has since grown more romantic and intimate.
Mazino believes Jesse has been fully aware that Ellie and Dina have been dancing around their feelings for each other.
“I think Jesse’s the type of person that understands that love is love, and it’s not something you can cage or latch on to,” Mazino says. “I think the healthy form of love is to allow it to flourish. .… Love is a spectrum … and maybe he recognizes that Dina is not somebody he may necessarily want to be exclusively with forever together. But there is love.”
Mazino insists that Jesse cares less about Ellie and Dina’s developing romance than he does the fact that Dina has followed her lover into a war zone.
“Love eludes common sense and rationality a lot so he’s just trying to be the level-headed one through and through,” says Mazino.
Jesse (Young Mazino) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) have different opinions about revenge.
(Liane Hentscher / HBO)
Jesse clearly opposes the Ellie revenge tour that has brought them to Seattle, and Mazino says their differing philosophies stem from Jesse’s appreciation for the community of Jackson. Because he was able to find a home in Jackson, Jesse’s response to loss is to grab onto what remains.
“I think he serves as a perfect reflector off of [Ellie for] how one copes with death and murder and violence,” Mazino says. “Some people, all they see is red and they want the revenge. But the other side of that choice is savoring what’s remaining and what’s precious to you.”
Ellie, he adds, is “all about revenge, revenge, revenge for someone she lost. But Jesse wants the opposite of that. He wants to maintain what they still have, knowing how fleeting it is to be alive in this world.”
While the world of “The Last of Us” is bleak, Mazino and his castmates found ways between takes to escape the heaviness. One form of relief: a shared love of music. Mazino, Luna, Merced and Ramsey all play guitar.
“We all brought a guitar without even telling each other,” Mazino says. “There was always a guitar on set or we would steal one from the set and get in trouble. We’d have jam sessions. Somebody would be playing some tune or a song, and if we knew it, we join in [or] we’d learn it.”
Mazino says that they all had eclectic tastes and traded songs “like Pokémon.” (Mazino’s contributions included Daniel Caesar, Frank Ocean and “some R&B stuff.”)
“It’s so difficult to maintain a heavy energy for 12 to 16 hours a day,” he says. “It really helps to have people that are able to laugh and crack jokes and be light and to play music … so a guitar is a lifesaver on a set like that.”
Young Mazino says Jesse is a “person that understands love is love.”
