I saw this
not long after it first aired, but I’ve been sitting on my review for a while (goes
to show how rarely Last Week Tonight
and The Daily Show are both off on
the same week!) Although this special
shares a lot of material in common with the live show I saw Noah do in 2016, it
still makes for a good time, and there’s some good new stuff to go along with
it.
Honestly,
I’m glad the special includes routines I saw live, because it’s good to have a
place I can go back to and rewatch them to my heart’s content. What were, for me, the crowning jewels of
that live show – the riff on a hypothetical Black James Bond and imagining the
first time Obama met Nelson Mandela (with Mandela passing down the secret of
“first Black president voice” – are both preserved here, super funny and
energetic. Not to mention well-executed
– he carries on a long imaginary
conversation between Obama and Mandela, and the voices are perfect throughout.
While
those two stories are pretty much as I (so fondly) remember them, other
repeated routines have had new material added.
He throws in some extra jokes about his misadventures drinking in Scotland,
and his routine about how accents affect our perception of people – with
particular emphasis on the fear invoked by Russian accents – is given a lot
more dimension. It was a smart bit and
an excellent observation when I saw it last year, but Noah fleshes it out even
more in the special. Here, he examines
the difference between someone speaking English with a foreign accent and
speaking in their native language, pondering his different reactions to the
two. He also goes into a great routine
about his plan for women to combat harassment by learning to do a Russian
accent to strike fear into the hearts of creeps everywhere, not to mention his
tale about his own experience using a Russian accent to counteract his fear of
the dark (hence the title.)
There’s
other good material as well. The bit
about African traffic lights is fun, and the running theme of immigration,
xenophobia, and the fear of what we haven’t encountered/have only encountered
glancingly is much appreciated. On the
latter front, his talk of Brexit and anti-immigrant sentiment in Britain, with
a great riff on imperialism, is particularly good. And as usual, in the midst of the comedy,
even the pointed comedy that specifically uses the jokes to make his point, he
has to sprinkle in those little moments that are completely earnest and without
a hint of satire or cheek. Here, one of
my favorites is his declaration that travel is “the antidote to
ignorance.” Not to get all “in these
troubled times” about it, but that’s an antidote that’s sorely needed these
days.
Warnings
Thematic
elements, language, and references to sex/drinking/violence.
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