Briefly Noted: Kominsky, Kremer, and Silverman

The second, 8-episode season of “The Kominsky Method,” the hit Netflix comedy series, begins streaming on Oct. 25. It stars MICHAEL DOUGLAS, 75, as Sandy Kominsky, a Hollywood acting coach. ALAN ARKIN, 85, co-stars as Norman, his best friend and agent. LISA EDELSTEIN, 53, has a supporting role as Norman’s drug-addled daughter.

At the end of the first season, Sandy started getting romantic with Lisa, an acting student (played by Nancy Travis, 58. Travis isn’t Jewish; but her two sons were raised in their father’s Jewish faith). Second season “new Jewish faces” include PAUL REISER, 63, as Martin, a teacher who is dating Sandy’s daughter, who is much younger than Martin, and JANE SEYMOUR, 68, as Madelyn, an old flame of Norman’s who runs into him at a funeral and lights a fire in this widower (Seymour was born Joyce Frankenberg, the daughter of a British Jewish father and a non-Jewish Dutch mother).

As I write this, I can’t find an item in the Jewish media about Harvard professor MICHAEL KREMER, 54, one of the three winners of the 2019 Economics Nobel. He is the only Jew to win a Nobel this year. Like his co-winners, he works in an interesting area: the examination of charitable giving to alleviate poverty---especially in 3rd world countries (i.e., what works and what doesn't.) His mother, S. LILLIAN KREMER (1939-2018), specialized in Jewish and Holocaust literature. A Fulbright scholar, she lectured around the world and taught at Kansas State University, where she held the title of “Distinguished Professor.”

The original Hulu program, “I Love You, America” starring SARAH SILVERMAN, was cancelled last January.  It was a critical hit, and an Emmy nominee, but it never found a big audience. Now, HBO, which hosted a hit Silverman stand-up special in 2013, is offering her a new home. She’ll do a new HBO stand-up special (date uncertain) and do a pilot for a late night talk show. She described her proposed talk show this way: [I’ll be] weighing in on the mishigas of the week and taking live video calls”...”Nothing's off the table and nothing's too high or low brow for me. I mean - look at my face - I'm literally all brow."