I noticed
this last season during the campaign but appreciate that it has continued this
year. While I understand that what the
president and their administration does is inevitably going to be news, and
sorting out the facts from the BS on Trump is particularly important, I’m
grateful that Last Week Tonight doesn’t
spend most of its time every week talking about Trump. The fact that it’s a weekly show versus a
daily one probably helps it in this regard.
After all, The Daily Show
spends a good chunk of each episode dealing with the administration – even if Last Week Tonight devoted every minute
to the president, they couldn’t keep up with the average Week in Trump. As such, I’m glad that they don’t even
try. He often gets the lion’s share of each
week’s preliminary stories, but the show has maintained its normal format of a
main story focused on an important issue that’s not necessarily tied to current
events, giving us a nice reprieve.
Monday, May 1 – First up was the hacker holding
Netflix episodes for ransom, with Trevor musing on “bad guys” with Twitter
handles. In looking at Trump’s first 100 days, Trevor wondered if the presidency has changed Trump. Some news outlets/members of the
administration say yes, but Trevor used footage from Trump’s Day 100 campaign
rally – where he invoked the wall, draining the swamp, and other countries
stealing our jobs – as proof that it hasn’t.
Next was a story on the failure of Fyre Festival. Some good jokes here, especially the one
about white people loving camping “except when it’s a surprise.” Neil Brennan briefly got in on the story as
well. Meanwhile, the guests were
podcasters Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor. A couple of them were former speech writers
for Obama and had some interesting things to say about Clinton’s words during
the campaign and the coverage thereof.
Tuesday, May 2 – Pretty good story on
Clinton’s first big interview since the election. The show compiled an impressive montage of
the shade she threw Trump’s way, and Trevor’s point about how much he missed
politicians’ sentences having a beginning, middle, and end was great – serving as a perfect counterpoint to Trump’s
insane Face the Nation
interview. Ronny showed up to talk about
recent air travel fails, wondering whether flying has gotten more Lord of the Flies or if it just seems
that way because people can capture it on film now (for my money, the best
jokes were the ones about the scorpion in the overhead baggage
compartment.) I liked the interview
with W. Kamau Bell discussing his new book.
His comment about being relieved to have two daughters – even though he
knows how hard the world can be for Black women – because he dreads having to
have “the talk” (about police) with a son was very affecting.
Wednesday, May 3 – After opening on
what sort of lame “hacker” would access Melania Trump’s social media accounts
just to like unfavorable tweets, Trevor turned to FBI Director Comey’s “mild
nausea” over the thought of having possibly influenced the election – yeesh. A story on the climate march and Trump’s
penchant for rolling back environmental protections led into the first
interview with Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope.
Discussing their new book on climate change, they had reassuring words
that much of the country is doing its part to fight for a cleaner Earth even
without the president’s involvement. The
final segment was another interview, this time with actress Sanaa Lathan about
her show Shots Fired. Once Trevor got his fanboy fawning out of the
way, they talked seriously and with emotion about addressing police violence on
the show as we continue to see it happening in our country.
Thursday, May 4 – Obviously, the
starting point was the new healthcare bill passing in the House. It was one of those “it’s so terrible that
there’s nothing you can do but laugh right now” moments, never a good place to
be, but Trevor kept the gallows humor coming.
Next up was a story on Congress’s response to recent awful things
happening on planes, with a committee set up to address the heads of several
airlines about their concerns. It ended
up, however, becoming more of a story about how quick Congress was to act on
this issue, juxtaposed with so much inaction on police brutality; I was really
struck by Trevor’s remarks here. The
guest, Professor Robert Sapolsky, was there to talk about his book on human
behavior and the brain. He had some good
insights on the criminal justice system, and his discussion of non-political
trends found in the behavior of progressives and conservatives was really
interesting.
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