D’Angelo and the Power of Last Albums

The latest from the Ryan Murphy television fun house is an unquestionable hit. It’s also a ’90s nostalgia bomb. People are trying to eat, shop and dress like John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette. They’re obsessed. But with what, exactly? Because at first, “Love Story” has all the hallmarks of a ’90s sitcom — a young working woman in the city, enjoying her freedom till a meet-cute with the one. Only in Murphy’s version, that’s the moment this turns into another one of his American Horror stories.

Wesley Morris is an unabashed believer in the Oscars. That they genuinely matter. Every year, he has to re-convince his friend, Sasha Weiss, the culture editor for The New York Times Magazine. This year, of course, there’s the “One Battle After Another” versus “Sinners” of it all. And there’s a lot there. But also, what happened to “Marty Supreme” and poor Timothée Chalamet? And is it possible that “KPop Demon Hunters” took home Best Animated Feature Film and Best Original Song and still, somehow … got robbed?

This is one of those “who knows what’s going to happen” years at the Oscars. And maybe the biggest question of the night is which movie will dominate: “Sinners,” with its record 16 nominations, or “One Battle After Another,” which is right behind with 13. One is a vampire movie set in the Jim Crow South, featuring not one but two Michael B. Jordans. The other imagines a leftist revolutionary outfit led by Black women — Teyana Taylor! — facing off against a racist, sexist, authoritarian government. No matter what, we’re talking about a pretty exciting night — including for many Black people. But you know how it is with race and the Oscars. It is never that simple. Because there are some people who are not rooting for Paul Thomas Anderson’s version of Black feminist-driven revolution. And a lot of those people are Black feminists themselves. Including Wesley’s dear friend, the scholar Daphne A. Brooks. After leaving the theater, she sent him a text calling it “a Black feminist 911 emergency.” So before the biggest awards of the industry are handed out, Wesley invites Daphne on the show to ask her, “What’s the 911 situation here?”

Back in 2003, a new reality TV show hosted and co-created by Tyra Banks convinced an entire generation that they too might have what it takes to become America’s next top model. Now, a new Netflix docu-series wants us to know just how badly the contestants were treated — by the show and sometimes by Banks herself. To Wesley’s surprise, Tyra Banks agreed to be interviewed for the series, “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model,” and to revisit some of the show’s most cringe and painful moments. Was it a genuine attempt at accountability? And are we satisfied by what we're hearing? Wesley invites Michaela angela Davis, a writer, editor and stylist, to talk about it.

Seven years after Toni Morrison’s death, we’re experiencing what the critic Parul Sehgal describes as a “wave of Morrisonia.” Eleven of her novels are being reissued by her publisher. There’s a new book of criticism about her novels. You can feel the effort to shore up her legacy. It’s an understandable impulse. This is the woman who wrote “Beloved,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that, as Parul writes, “invented a language for unassimilable pain, for the horrors of the Middle Passage, of bondage and its systematized torture and sexual brutality.” The book can feel like a kind of miracle. And Morrison, therefore, like a kind of saint. But sanctification — both Parul and Wesley fear — has its own risks. It puts Morrison up in the sky, where we can’t quite reach her. Too far away to touch. So in this episode of Cannonball, that’s what Parul, Wesley and their editor, Sasha Weiss, set out to do. Touch Morrison’s work — as she wanted us to.