By MARK KENNEDY, AP Entertainment Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Twenty-five years ago, a little girl with a bob haircut appeared on our TVs, speaking a mix of English and Spanish, with a spunky, can-do spirit. She had an adventure planned, a backpack, a monkey friend and upbeat songs.

“Hi, I’m Dora. What’s your name?” she asked.

This was, of course, “Dora the Explorer,” the first Latina to lead a major cartoon series and the girl who helped spearhead the rise of multicultural children’s programming in the U.S. on her way to becoming a cultural phenomenon.

“The show allowed Latinos to be depicted on TV as educators, teaching viewers how to speak our language, and yet at the same time, just teaching ordinary things that children need to learn,” said Brenda Victoria Castillo, president and CEO of the National Hispanic Media Coalition.

Nickelodeon is celebrating Dora’s 25th anniversary with the feature-length live-action movie “Dora and the Search of Sol Dorado,” a third season of the rebooted animated series “Dora,” the podcast Dora’s Mermaid Adventures, an album of songs and plenty of toys and apparel.

“The great thing about Dora is that, yes, she celebrates Latin culture through every aspect — language, food, dress and music,” says Ramsey Naito, president of animation at Paramount and Nickelodeon. “But she also empowers everybody to be their true self and to be brave. She’s not exclusive. She’s inclusive.”

The original voice

Kathleen Herles had a special vantage point to see Dora’s influence: She was the original voice of the pint-size heroine, cast in the role when she was 7 and staying until she was 18 and off to college.

“It has been the longest journey and the greatest adventure of my life — no pun intended,” said Herles, who grew up in New York City to parents of Peruvian descent.

On the convention circuit, Herles would see firsthand the power of Dora. “I remember I would make kids cry, not intentionally,” she says. “Their mind goes to a memory, to a moment, it’s just incredible. It’s so special, it’s magical.”

Herles has lately been the voice actor for Dora’s mom on “Dora,” the reboot that started in 2024. It’s a full-circle moment for the actor and singer: “It changed my life forever, twice.”

“Dora the Explorer” led to what Herles laughingly calls the “Dora-verse” — the spinoff series “Go, Diego, Go!,” a sequel series “Dora and Friends: Into the City!” and the 2019 live-action feature film “Dora and the Lost City of Gold,” starring Isabela Merced, Eva Longoria and Michael Peña.

“Dora” co-creator Chris Gifford has watched his creation age up and down and take human form. “She has been older and she has been younger and she has a hair clip now,” he says. “Her essence, her positive spirit, her I-can-do-anything-with-your-help attitude has stuck through.”

Dora is firmly part of the culture, as big as her Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. There’s a reference to her in “Inside Out 2,” she’s been mocked on “Saturday Night Live” and if you look carefully at the PBS show “Alma’s Way,” you can see a Dora doll in that heroine’s bedroom. TikTok users have embraced the “Backpack Song.”

“Those kids coming of age now — the ones who 25 years ago were just watching it as little preschoolers — they’re out there and they’re remembering,” says Valerie Walsh Valdes, co-creator of the original series and an executive producer on the new series and movie.

Creating a problem solver

Valdes and Gifford originally had the idea for a show about a little girl who was a problem solver. Like “Blue’s Clues,” it would reward kids for figuring out answers posed by the host.

“Preschoolers are the least powerful people in our world,” says Gifford. “They’re not able to button their sweater and not able to tie their shoes, but if they’re able to help Dora get to the City of Lost Toys and really feel like they helped, that’s something special.”

Nickelodeon suggested the girl be Latina and the creators ran with it, making her pan-Latina so no one would feel excluded. Latin representation on TV — then and now — has been a struggle.

The Latino Donor Collaborative’s 2024 Latinos in Media report found that Latino actors made up 9.8% of the main cast in lead, co-lead and ensemble roles in scripted shows. In non-scripted television, Latino hosts made up only 5% of host roles. That’s despite Latin people making up nearly 20% of the country.

“There were few programs at the time that featured Latina protagonists with Dora’s skin tone or features, so from that perspective, the representation is valuable,” says Erynn Masi de Casanova, head of the sociology department at the University of Cincinnati.

Dora was put in an animated world inside a computer, and the creators asked kids to help make the show better. They hired education consultants to tease out the skills Dora teaches, like spatial understanding and interpersonal. They brought in language and culture experts.

“We did it!” became her signature song.

Bilingual heroine

The series is seen in more than 150 countries and territories and translated in 32 languages on Nickelodeon channels and Paramount+. In English-speaking countries such as the United States and Australia, Dora teaches Spanish; in other markets — including the Hispanic U.S. markets — she teaches English.

Samantha Lorraine, 18, who grew up in Miami of Cuban heritage, had the Dora T-shirts and backpack. She laughs that she once even had the Dora bob.

In July, she’s starring as Dora in “Dora and the Search of Sol Dorado,” which was filmed in Colombia. “I’ve been doing my audition since day one,” she says.

“It’s an honor to be stepping into Dora’s shoes. It’s such a huge legacy,” she adds. “It’s really nice to be able to be a part of representation where it counts. And Dora is the epitome of that.”

Castillo, of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, puts Dora up there with Mickey Mouse in terms of an instantly recognized cultural character and says she’s relevant more than ever.

“We need more Doras,” she says. “If people were just open to being educated in other people’s languages and cultures and beliefs and not see it as a threat, we wouldn’t be in the situation that we’re in this country and the world.”

Someone was recently telling me about a vacation they took with their partner, and when they mentioned some moments of friction that came up, my mind immediately went to “Couples Therapy.” Everyone experiences conflict in life, even with those closest to you, and it can be tricky to work through that. But the show’s psychoanalyst Orna Guralnik is wonderfully perceptive when it comes to helping people talk about what’s really going on.

The unscripted series returns on Showtime for the second half of Season 4, which premiered last year. Featuring all new couples, it’s functionally a new season. (I’m unclear why Showtime makes this confusing distinction, but if I were to guess, it’s related to money and maybe results in a cheaper deal on the network’s end.)

Sometimes people just aren’t compatible. But in many cases, the bickering and fights in these relationships are about something deeper. Picking at one another endlessly or obsessing over something that doesn’t really matter is a way to fill the space between two people who are trying to make some kind of connection, Guralnik says. But it’s all noise and you’re “nowhere real.” The reason analysts might be able to help is that they are trained to “listen for that and to find a way to move from noise to signal.”

Four couples are featured. Rod and Alison have been married for nearly 20 years and they have a dynamic we’ve seen on the series before: She comes across as a harpy, whereas he is passive-aggressive and then retreats into himself. At one point, the energy feels so contentious that Guralnik stops to ask: Are you fighting right now? No, you’ll know when that happens, Alison tells her. To which Guralnik says: “I’m just curious about the tone.” Alison doesn’t deny it: “Oh, I have a tone.” I couldn’t help but laugh because Alison is brusque and abrasive — at least she’s self-aware! “This is how it’s always been,” she says of her marriage. “We have no patience for each other.”

Another couple, Boris and Jessica, have been together about half as long, but the tension between them is just as intense. They’ve recently relocated to New York City. She is thriving, but he hates everything about their new life, even though they’ve finally achieved some stability. “We are just aliens to each other,” he tells Guralnik.

(Boris is the novelist Boris Fishman, and this raises some questions about when the season was filmed; according to his Wikipedia page, in 2024 he began teaching at the University of Austin “where he lives with his wife and daughter.” Presumably they moved. Presumably they are still together. This is important, considering where they live is a primary source of discord between them.)

Kyle and Mondo have been together for six years. The former is deaf and immigrated to the U.S. from Poland as a child. Sometimes he feels smothered by his partner. At other times, because of his disability, he feels left out of things or prefers to spend time with his deaf friends. Kyle also wants an open relationship and Mondo is unenthusiastic about this, while also dealing with other issues, including grief for a mother who died from COVID. Despite their problems, they come across as the couple who seem to have most retained the feelings of affection that first drew them together.

Finally, there’s Nick and Katherine. “We’re on our own islands,” one of them says. “We take care of things, the bills are paid. But there isn’t love.” He’s still working through a difficult experience he had in college that he is initially reluctant to reveal. She has some lingering issues with disordered eating. Both avoid talking about the feelings of insecurity they feel individually, lest those emotions explode beyond their control.

I generally find “Couples Therapy” to be free of the usual gimmicks and tricks that are used to juice most reality TV. But at least one moment gave me pause. A couple is sniping at each other in the waiting area outside Guralnik’s office and she can hear them — or so we’re led to believe. Whether that’s actually the case or a trick of editing, I don’t know. We see Guralnik gently stroking her sweet dog Nico, an Alaskan Klee Kai who often accompanies her to work, and it’s almost as if she’s trying to calm herself before opening the door and inviting them in. But again, this was a rare moment when I questioned if there was some manipulation happening in how that moment is portrayed. Also, the female half of one couple consistently wears an assortment of sweatshirts that have sleeves covered in sequins. It’s a distinctive look, so much so that my cynical side wondered if she had a line of sweatshirts she was covertly promoting by wearing them to each and every session.

I’ve always wondered why people agree to bare their lives and messy relationships on the show. It’s a question that probably applies to all reality TV, but this one especially requires a vulnerability about one’s sexual behaviors, embarrassing flaws and personal history (and what can feel like shameful remnants of long-ago trauma) in ways that seem unique. The participants are not just revealing this to strangers who make up the bulk of the show’s viewership, but also, by default, to potentially gossipy friends, neighbors, colleagues and professional acquaintances. Even if your relationship is hanging on by a thread, this feels like a deterrent. Then again, there is no fee paid by the couples here. Guralnik typically charges $700 per session. And she’s really good. Maybe, if you’re feeling desperate enough — and also exhibitionist enough — it’s worth the tradeoff.

Whatever the factors compelling people to take part, I’m grateful they’re willing to let us see inside the most private moments of their relationships, because with Guralnik’s guidance, I always feel smarter and more compassionate about humans in general. The idea that conflict doesn’t have to be intractable is so profound as to be easily overlooked.

“I think it’s very frightening for people to have a raw, honest experience — in real time — with their partner,” Guralnik says, and as a result, “there are many ways people avoid real communication.”

“Couples Therapy” is a look at what it means to break down those walls and see what’s really behind them.

“Couples Therapy” — 4 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: 8 p.m. Fridays on Showtime (streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime)

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.

NEW YORK (AP) — Pharrell Williams has high hopes for the Met Gala, the first to focus exclusively on Black designers, and the first in more than 20 years to have a menswear theme.

“I want it to feel like the most epic night of power, a reflection of Black resiliency in a world that continues to be colonized, by which I mean policies and legislation that are nothing short of that,” he recently told Vogue.

“It’s our turn.”

Indeed. And welcome to the first Monday in May.

How to watch the 2025 Met Gala

Vogue will livestream the gala starting at 6 p.m. Eastern on Vogue.com, its YouTube channel and across its other digital platforms. Teyana Taylor, La La Anthony and Ego Nwodim will host the stream. Emma Chamberlain will also do interviews on the carpet.

The Associated Press will stream the gala carpet on delay beginning at 6:30 p.m. The feeds will be available on YouTube and APNews.com.

E! will begin live coverage at 6 p.m. on TV. The livestream will be available on Peacock, E! Online and YouTube, along with the network’s other social media feeds.