The New York Times - USA (2020-10-26)

C6 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2020

Monday

ESSENTIAL HEROES: A MOMENTO LATINO EVENT
9 p.m. on CBS.This one-hour, star-studded
special aims to raise awareness and joy in
the Latino community, which has been
disproportionately affected by the corona-
virus pandemic. Hosted by Eva Longoria,
Gloria Estefan and Ricky Martin, the
event will feature musical performances,
comedy sketches and documentary shorts
from Lin-Manuel Miranda, Pitbull, Rita
Moreno and others.

HALLOWEEN BAKING CHAMPIONSHIP9 p.m. on
Food Network.After creating devilish
desserts in the shape of haunted houses,
demon dolls and Halloween costumes, the
four remaining bakers in this competition
show will face off for the championship
title on the season finale. Their task?
Create cakes that look like severed limbs,
as well as cakes that appear to float in thin
air. The judges Carla Hall, Stephanie
Boswell and Zac Young will decide who
will win the $25,000 prize.

Tuesday

2020 BET HIP HOP AWARDS9 p.m. on BET.
Snoop Dogg, T.I. and Monica will present
this year’s BET Hip Hop awards, with
performances from Lil
Wayne, Cordae, 2 Chainz,
City Girls and Ty Dolla
$ign. This year,
DaBaby, right, is up
for 12 awards, includ-
ing hip-hop album of
the year, followed by
Roddy Ricch with 11
nominations. Megan
Thee Stallion and
Drake were each nomi-
nated for eight awards.

THE SOUL OF AMERICA9 p.m. on HBO.This
documentary examines U.S. history as it
pertains to the current political climate.
The writer and historian Jon Meacham
looks back at some of the nation’s biggest
challenges — including the women’s suf-
frage movement, the incarceration of
Japanese-Americans during World War II,
McCarthyism and the Civil Rights move-
ment — to understand how it has come up
against forces of hatred and division. In
addition to Meacham, the film features
insights from Lisa Tetrault, George Takei
and Representative John Lewis, who
passed away in July.

THIS IS US9 p.m. on NBC.The Pearson
family returns for the fifth season of this
drama, catching up with siblings Kevin
(Justin Hartley), Kate (Chrissy Metz) and
Randall (Sterling K. Brown), and revisit-
ing moments in their past as they search
for fulfillment in the present day. On the
premiere, the trio celebrates their 40th
birthday.

Wednesday

BURNING OJAI: OUR FIRE STORY7 p.m. on HBO.

In December 2017, the Thomas Fire raged

through the California town of Ojai, de-

stroying nearly 282,000 acres of land and

devastating the area’s homes and busi-

nesses. In this documentary, the film-

maker and Ojai resident Michael Milano

follows residents who were directly im-

pacted by the wildfire, as well as the

town’s repair efforts.

THE BEST MAN(1964) 8 p.m. on TCM. This

film adaptation of the 1960 play chronicles

a contentious political battle for the presi-

dential nomination. Directed by Franklin

J. Schaffner and written by Gore Vidal, the

film follows William Russell (Henry

Fonda), the intellectual former secretary

of state, and Senator Joe Cantwell (Cliff

Robertson), a populist and ruthless oppor-

tunist, as they try to win over voters and

secure endorsements. “Mr. Vidal shows us

how a dirty political fight can destroy our

best presidential aspirants,” Bosley Crow-

ther wrote in his New York Times review

at the time. “It’s something to think

about.”

Thursday

SUPERSTORE8 p.m. on NBC.This workplace

comedy — which follows the employees of

the fictional megastore Cloud 9 — returns

for a new season. On the premiere, Amy

(America Ferrera) tries to instill some

order among the store’s employees as they

grapple with how the coronavirus pandemic

will shift their duties and work culture.

BEFORE DAWN(1933) 8:30 p.m. on TCM.

This thriller follows a clairvoyant, a police

detective and an Austrian psychologist as

they hunt for $1 million hidden by a re-

cently deceased gangster. After an old

woman mysteriously dies in the house

where the loot is said to be hidden, a de-

tective, Dwight Wilson (Stuart Erwin),

enlists the help of a clairvoyant woman,

Patricia Merrick (Dorothy Wilson), to

solve the murder and find the money

before anyone else does. In his New York

Times review, Mordaunt Hall wrote,

“There are enough killings and accidental

deaths to satisfy the most ardent enthusi-

asts of such thrillers.”

Friday

CITIZEN BIO9 p.m. on Showtime.This docu-

mentary, directed by Trish Dolman, takes

a deep dive into the world of biohacking —

embraced by a community that believes

advances in gene-editing technology make

it possible for people for perform genetic

experiments at home, often augmenting

their own bodies to create experimental

drug therapies and treatments for dis-

eases. The film also looks into the life and

work of Aaron Traywick, a self-proclaimed

biohacker who was mysteriously found

dead at the age of 28.

Saturday

THE HAUNTING(1963) 6 p.m. on TCM. In

honor of Halloween, Turner Classic Mov-

ies has an all-day spooky-movie lineup

that includes this horror film, with Julie

Harris, below, that was directed by Robert

Wise. It follows an anthropol-

ogist who conducts an

experiment at a decrep-

it mansion in New

England said to have

supernatural powers.

Once there, he and

his team begin to

experience terrifying,

unexplained phenom-

ena. The movie was

based on Shirley Jack-

son’s 1959 novella, “The

Haunting of Hill House,” which

also influenced the Netflix series of the

same name.

Earlier in the day, you can catch

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE(1932) at 7:15 a.m.,

and THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY(1945) at

2:45 p.m. The Stanley Kubrick classic

DR. STRANGELOVE(1964), follows at 8 p.m.

Sunday

ROADKILL9 p.m. PBS. Hugh Laurie stars in

this new political drama as Peter Lau-

rence, a conservative British government

minister whose career becomes threat-

ened by various personal scandals. Sarah

Greene, Helen McCrory and Sidse Babett

Knudsen also star.

THE COMEDY STORE10 p.m. on Showtime.

This five-part series, which looks back at

the history and legacy of the Los Angeles

comedy venue the Comedy Store, comes

to an end.

From left, Justin Hartley, Chrissy Metz and Sterling K. Brown in the NBC drama “This Is Us.”

NBC

GREG GAYNE/NBC

From left, Ben Feldman, America Ferrera and

Nico Santos star in “Superstore.”

This Week on TV

A SELECTION OF SHOWS, SPECIALS AND MOVIES. BY LAUREN MESSMAN

Dates, details and times are

subject to change.

was he who had been the victim of abuse at
the hands of Ms. Waterbury. He accuses her
of hitting him multiple times during their re-
lationship and of unlawfully viewing and
taking screenshots of communications on
his computer, which ultimately became the
basis of her case against him.
“Plaintiff’s emotional instability resulted
in extraordinary fits of jealousy that would
evolve into paroxysmal, violent rages and
repeated physical attacks upon Mr. Finlay,”
the court filing said, “and efforts, furtive or
otherwise, to monitor his online communi-
cations.”
Mr. Finlay left the company in the sum-
mer of 2018 and has not danced profession-
ally since.
Ms. Waterbury — a former student at the

School of American Ballet, City Ballet’s af-
filiated academy, and a college student and
model — asserted that the problems at the
ballet company were much deeper than iso-
lated exchanges of explicit images of female
dancers. She charged that City Ballet fos-
tered an atmosphere that allowed demean-
ing behavior toward women to occur and
contended that the company had shirked its
responsibility to protect her.
Last month, though, 19 of her 20 legal
claims against the company and the men
who had exchanged messages and photos
with Mr. Finlay were dismissed in court. A
judge with the State Supreme Court in Man-
hattan found that neither City Ballet nor the
School of American Ballet had been negli-

gent in its handling of the situation and did

not have a duty to protect Ms. Waterbury

because she was not their student at the

time.

Ms. Waterbury’s lawyer said that they

plan to appeal the judge’s decision. Mr. Fin-

lay has already filed his own appeal in the

hope that an appellate court will decide that

the remaining claim against him should not

stand.

That claim, as of now, asserts that Mr.

Finlay’s dissemination of the photos and

videos of her was unlawful.

Mr. Finlay’s counterclaims, filed on Oct.

16, seek to undermine Ms. Waterbury’s

case. In court papers, his lawyers argue

that she had consented to the images of her

being taken. The papers cite a text message

conversation between the two of them from

2017 in which they discussed intimate pic-

tures of her.

Ms. Waterbury’s lawyer, Jordan K. Mer-

son, has said in court papers that, while Ms.

Waterbury knew of the intimate photos tak-

en early in their relationship, she had asked

Mr. Finlay to delete them. Mr. Merson said

in a statement that the photos and videos at

the center of the lawsuit are different than

the ones Ms. Waterbury believes Mr. Finlay

is referring to in the new court filing. The

photos that are the subject of her complaint

were taken without her consent, Mr. Mer-

son said.

Mr. Finlay’s court papers present Ms.

Waterbury as a person who acted out of

jealousy to unlawfully access and capture

material on his computer, some of which

was unrelated to her. The material included

evidence that he had shared her images

with others. Ms. Waterbury said in court pa-

pers that Mr. Finlay’s text messages and

emails popped up on his computer when

she logged on to check her email — as, she

said, he had allowed her to do in the past.

Mr. Finlay’s papers further accused her

of engaging in a “public relations cam-

paign” around the photo-sharing scandal

that allowed her to “financially profit and

promote herself,” including plans for a

clothing company called Waterbury Wear.

Mr. Finlay’s lawyer declined an interview

request on his behalf.

A lawyer for Ms. Waterbury did not make

her available for an interview but said in a

statement that the counterclaims are “cate-

gorically false, retaliatory and designed to

try to discredit the victim and to try to dis-

tract from Mr. Finlay’s conduct.”

Ms. Waterbury’s remaining claim stems

from a law passed by the New York City

Council in 2017; it is often referred to as a

“revenge porn law” because it bars the

sharing of intimate images with an inten-

tion to cause harm.

At the core of Mr. Finlay’s defense is the

argument that he never meant to cause Ms.

Waterbury harm by sending the images to

others; the law requires defendants to have

intended to cause “economic, physical or

substantial emotional harm.”

Mr. Finlay’s sole intent in sending the

photos, the court filing says, was to “titil-

late” or to “brag” to his friends.

“Mr. Finlay was frequently under the in-

fluence of alcohol or a controlled substance

when he sent the photographs but the dis-

semination was never done with malice,”

the court papers say.

In the decision last month that narrowed

the case, the judge also dropped from Ms.

Waterbury’s lawsuit two City Ballet princi-

pal dancers who participated in lewd text

exchanges with Mr. Finlay that Ms. Water-

bury discovered on his computer.

Amar Ramasar was accused of sending

Mr. Finlay explicit photos of a corps de bal-

let dancer and encouraging Mr. Finlay to

send him images of Ms. Waterbury. Zach-

ary Catazaro was accused of sending Mr.

Finlay intimate photos of a former School of

American Ballet student.

Mr. Ramasar and Mr. Catazaro were fired

from City Ballet as a result of the photo-

sharing scandal, but the company was later

ordered by an arbitrator to reverse the ter-

minations, a decision that several women in

the company described as upsetting. Mr.

Ramasar returned as a principal dancer, but

Mr. Catazaro decided not to rejoin the com-

pany.

After he left City Ballet, Mr. Catazaro

moved back to his home state of Ohio and is

pursuing his pilot’s license. He has not giv-

en up dance entirely. A representative for

Mr. Catazaro said that he danced with the

Rome Opera earlier this year and had other

gigs lined up in Europe that were canceled

because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. Finlay’s lawyer, Matthew Brief, de-

clined to say what his client was doing for

work after he left the company.

Because Mr. Ramasar remains a City Bal-

let dancer and performs on prominent

stages in the United States, he has been the

subject of much of the public debate, some-

thing that his supporters see as unfair con-

sidering he was never accused of circulat-

ing Ms. Waterbury’s intimate photos. (The

subject of the photos that Mr. Ramasar did

share, his girlfriend, Alexa Maxwell, said

that she had forgiven him for his actions.)

Criticism resurfaced earlier this year

when Mr. Ramasar debuted as Bernardo,

the leader of the Sharks, in the Broadway

revival of “West Side Story.” For several

nights during the show’s previews and into

its official run, protesters showed up at the

theater on Broadway to demand Mr. Ra-

masar’s removal from the show.

But the Broadway show’s producer, Scott

Rudin, stood by Mr. Ramasar (as did many

ballet fans, some of whom greeted Mr. Ra-

masar with applause when he first returned

to the City Ballet stage in May 2019).

Photo-Sharing Scandal Among Dancers at City Ballet Takes a Twist

CONTINUED FROM PAGE C1

Right, Chase Finlay at a

City Ballet gala in 2017. He

admitted sharing intimate

photos of a fellow dancer,

Alexandra Waterbury. Left,

protesters in January

objected to the casting of

another dancer who had

shared intimate photos

(though he had not shared

any of Ms. Waterbury).

JARED SISKIN/PATRICK MCMULLAN, VIA GETTY IMAGES

NINA WESTERVELT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A legal battle continues,

but only one defendant

remains in the case.

.