Nine times before, I’ve reeled off a series of movie and TV moments referencing our very own New Haven.
Here’s part 10, which, like the 10th and final season of Friends, kicks off with a shaky central romance.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941), 5:46: The opening scene here proves “master of suspense” Alfred Hitchcock could build it in seconds—even in a comedy, and even over a cheerful score. We open on a rumpled man on the floor of a bedroom surrounded by days’ worth of dishes. A woman snoozes in the nearby bed. A housekeeper brings a fresh round of dishes, then quickly departs. Neither the man nor the woman say a word for three minutes, and neither speaks to the other for more than four. When they do, the woman finally exposits what’s keeping them there: a stabilizing rule of their soon-to-be-destabilized marriage. “You are not allowed to leave the bedroom after a quarrel unless you’ve made up.” She begins to reminisce about the other times they’ve abided. “Remember the eight-day session?” she asks. “And the six?” “Well,” he replies, “there were two sixes… One Christmas week, and, uh, the other one the weekend of the Yale game.” “That was really five and a half,” she quips. “We started in the afternoon.”
Paul Anka: His Way (2024), 8:09: “One of the first records I bought was by The Five Satins,” legendary crooner Paul Anka tells us before revealing how significantly the New Haven doo-wop group influenced him. That record’s timeless hit, “In the Still of the Night,” helped show Anka what he liked—and inspired the very first song Anka wrote, “Don’t Gamble with Love,” released in 1957 as the B side to his own first hit, “Diana.” “Gamble” is based on the “same sequences” as 1956’s “Still,” Anka says, which he demonstrates using his studio keyboard.
Holiday Baking Championship (2025), S12E1, 51:45: On the latest and noticeably more contentious season of this perennial bundle of holiday joy (shored up by some of the more consistent and credible judging in the cooking competition space), Tarek Al Husseini is the youngest and only amateur competitor. He’s also a current undergraduate at Yale. A picture showing him decked out in school pride appears to confirm as much, though the photo location, quite possibly somewhere in New Haven, is hard to decipher.
Parks & Recreation (2015), S7E7, 9:44: Pawnee Parks Department employee-turned-high-rolling realtor Donna Meagle is getting married, but her extended family’s extended petty grudges pose a threat to the occasion. Maid of honor April Ludgate is tasked with keeping the squabblers in line, which begins with a sidebar talking-to during the rehearsal dinner. “Meagles! I am not screwing around, okay? Lauren, no more discussion of Majorca. Majorca is off-limits. Brian and Gloria, stop making Horatio feel bad that your daughter went to Yale. No one gives a shit.”
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2022), S4E3, 14:42: As his family sits down to dinner, prickly patriarch Abe Weissman, recently fallen from tenured Columbia math professor to alt-weekly writer, has “a fun piece of news for everyone… I’ve been—” He interrupts himself, after noticing Zelda, their housekeeper, weeping into a dish. “Why is Zelda crying?” “I didn’t make enough squash,” she squeaks out. Abe’s daughter, Miriam, tells her to take a break. “So,” Abe continues, “the Village Voice has assigned me, its chief theater critic, to review a new Broadway musical by our own Buzz Goldberg.” The table perks up: “Buzz has a show? Like a real show?” “Yeah, that musical he’s been workshopping at Steiner”—the summer camp the family’s been attending for decades—“for, what, eight years now.” Abe continues: “It’s a real success story. Did very well in New Haven. Has a lot of good buzz, pardon the pun. And, there’s an opening night ticket for each and every one of you.” The table erupts: “Opening night!” “Fun!” “Abe, what a score!” “I already don’t have anything to wear!” “I’m so proud of Buzz. He never gave up on the show.” “We must have seen it at the resort about 20 times.” The conversation turns to a characteristically critical discussion of Miriam’s performances in that play one summer. As she fends off claims that she was “dropped” midway for lack of talent, her mother chimes in with a subtler insult. “Please, people. She’s no Judy Garland, but she gave it her best shot.” “I wasn’t fired from the show, okay?” Miriam insists, just before Abe, paying as much attention as he had to Zelda’s explanation of why she was crying, asks, “Is this all the squash?”, prompting a distant wail from the kitchen.
Written by Dan Mims. Image features Zelda starting to serve the squash in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
