Top Five Season 4 Stories: Last Week Tonight

Compared to previous seasons, quite a few of Last Week Tonight’s main stories this year looked at high-profile issues of immediate concern.  While there were still a good number of “You’ve probably never given any thought to this issue before, but here’s why it’s super important!!” stories, more and more weeks were devoted to subjects currently in the headlines, including instances where the week’s planned story had to be scrapped in favor of something in the news.  Here’s hoping the show doesn’t find itself with as many pressing needs for stories next season.

Season 4, Episode 5 – “American Health Care Act”

Here’s a subject so crucial it’s the focus of two main stories in the span of three weeks.  This is the one put out after the details of the GOP plan were officially released, so it has more of the solid details, the numbers to reflect how many would lose their health insurance and how the plan skews to benefit the people who need it least, and the quotes from its advocates to show how little they care about whether poor people survive.

Season 4, Episode 16 – “Coal”

I like John’s tactic here.  Rather than spending time debating whether it makes sense to pursue coal instead of cleaner forms of energy, he devotes the entire story to the differences between coal miners, coal companies, and the coal industry, and how Trump’s repeated promises to revitalize coal country only seem to help the latter at the expense of the former.  Plus, there’s a giant squirrel costume, and the story earned the show a high-profile lawsuit from a thin-skinned, litigious coal executive – not bad for a day’s work.

Season 4, Episode 21 – “North Korea”

This was an excellent piece.  It can be easy to get caught up in Kim Jong-un and “the threat of North Korea,” but it’s also a country filled with people who’ve suffered a lot and been lied to for a long time, and in thinking about the conflicts, those people and their lives can get lost in the shuffle.  This story, however, focuses on them and separating the myths we’ve heard about them from the truth.

Season 4, Episode 26 – “Confederacy”

I love the many beautiful, succinct ways John refutes the idea that Confederate statues are about “celebrating heritage” (or that the Civil War was about “states’ rights”) in this story.  He comes at these racist myths hard, giving them no ground to go to, and ends with a great handful of options for alternate statues in Southern states, including the actual Stephen Colbert standing on a pedestal and telling you facts about Georgia.

Season 4, Episode 30 – “Presidency of Donald Trump”

This was a good deep dive into particular aspects of Trump’s use of language and delegitimizing the truth.  I appreciate pieces like this, because I still can’t fully get a handle on what he does with words.  Clearly, he says/does all kind of stupid stuff, but he’s not just a blundering oaf, either.  He’s capable of being very savvy when the situation calls for it.  The problem is, I can never quite tell what the balance is between calculating and idiotic, and that scares me.  John does a great job here explaining what Trump does and why that has such dangerous implications for the truth.