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Sunday, November 19
· Recap of the Week – Ethics report on Rep. George Santos, Fox Business interviews Fabio about Israel and Hamas, conflicts in Congress
o Among the quicks bits John mentioned in passing, he said, “[King] Charles celebrated his 75th birthday while looking at least 97.”
o Fabio very bizarrely argued that Hamas was worse than Nazi Germany because the Nazis were “quiet” in their genocide??? – “Hold on, Fabio. Far be it for me to contradict a noted geopolitical expert and former I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spokesperson.”
o Great bit about Sean O’Brien, the teamster leader that Sen. Mullin challenged to a fight during a Senate hearing – “Do you know who Sean O’Brien is? He’s a fourth generation Boston teamster. He basically came out of the womb wearing brass knuckles.”
o Also great – “O’Brien has got the demeanor of a mob boss, the body of a fire hydrant, and the insults of a 5-year-old.”
o Mullin has warned that, if he and O’Brien fight, he won’t rule out biting – “How is that tough-guy behavior? ‘Watch out, he bites,’ isn’t what you say about a senator everyone respects. It’s what you say about a three-year-old named Dylan after he’s had two Capri Suns.”
o Asked about the multiple fights/threats in Congress over the past week, a spokesperson for Mitch McConnell said, “Today is another example of why Congress shouldn’t be in session for 5 weeks straight. Weird things happen” – John replied, “Totally. But also, most people—and this is true—work ten times that many weeks in a row and manage not to physically or emotionally assault their colleagues.”
· And Now This – You’ll Never Guess Where Fox’s Pete Hegseth Went to College
o Spoiler alert: it was Princeton.
o After a lengthy montage of Hegseth name dropping his alma mater, we also got some of his colleagues ribbing him with remarks like, “He went to Princeton, guys, I don’t know if you know,” and “Let’s not forget, he went to Princeton.”
o Basketball
· Main Story – Dollar stores
o Apt summation of a business model that thrives in low-income communities – “It’s a store that tends to do better when its customers are doing worse.”
o John had this to say about video footage of aisles clogged with unshelved inventory due to inadequate staffing – “Those look less like functioning stores and more like American Ninja Warrior: Retail Edition. They look like someone picked up a dollar store, shook it, and dumped it out into another dollar store.”
o We also looked at the lax response to infestations of rodents and birds, including one store being told to wash bird poop off of soiled products and then return them to the shelves – “When that manager asked for help in removing the nests, he said he got the sense that he was being ignored ‘because the birds weren’t stealing anything.’”
o When he heard about how employees handle a dangerous lack of temperature control, John said, “That is not great! An ice pack down the pants is not how you imagine a day at work going” – An image popped up of Ember and Wade from Elemental, and John added, “It is, however, how I imagine that these two freaks fuck.”
o Excellent line – “At almost every turn, dollar stores seem to treat their workers with either stunning indifference or outright contempt.”
o We were treated to numerous handwritten closed-store signs, featuring messages such as, “Staff Quit! Y’all Be Easy”
o We ended on one of show’s “honest ads, with a dollar store exec touting great products like “this bag of Skittle” – When a nearby customer asked, “You mean Skittles?”, the exec cheerfully replied, “Nope!”
o He also informed an employee, “If we closed every time we got robbed, this store would never be open.”
o The slogan at the end of the ad? “Giving everyone less while we get more.”
· Finally – New Zealand’s Bird of the Century contest
o I’d thought the results had been announced last week, but I guess it wasn’t official then – the pūteketeke won New Zealand’s Bird of the Century competition, with over 290,000 votes coming in from 195 countries.
o John side eyed someone who was caught committing voter fraud on behalf of the rockhopper penguin – “Come on, this rockhopper penguin? You committed bird election fraud for the only penguin in the animal kingdom with frosted tips?”
o One of the other campaigns conceded the election with a video of a group of their birds, kakis, pecking a photo of John.
o Meanwhile a New Zealand basketball team’s kea parrot mascot delivered a concession speech through a spokeswoman – John loved “the reverent tone that she’s employing there, as if she’s genuinely worried there’s a chance of rioting in the streets over this result unless she can calm everyone down.”
This week was billed as “News Team Takeover.” It looks like we’ll be having a different correspondent hosting each night. First up was Dulcé Sloan.
Monday, November 20
· Headlines – Biden’s 81st birthday, Javier Milei elected as president of Argentina, stores phasing out self-checkouts, AI girlfriend service
o Loved this line – “All the polls are saying Biden’s too old. He’s like, ‘F**k that, I’m gonna get even older.’”
o I liked Dulcé’s response to Javier Milei listing entire government agencies he’d cut (and the list wasn’t short) – “Hold on, Evil Austin Powers wants to get rid of the environment, women, and culture? That’s everything you need to have a country.”
o I like self-checkouts—less social interaction, natch—but I still liked this line – “Thank God, I hate self-checkout lanes! Why am I doing the work? I don’t work here!”
o The online “adult chat” service with AI girlfriends was shut down after its founder was arrested (for unrelated reasons) – “This guy gets arrested and suddenly the AI girlfriends stop responding? Hmm, that’s suspicious. Alexas don’t stop when Jeff Bezos takes a nap.”
o Ronny reasoned that programming an AI girlfriend was tougher than people might think – “It has to be smart, but not too smart. It has to know everything about Star Wars but still listen when the guy explains Star Wars.”
· Host Piece – Period cramp simulator
o I’ve seen this machine used before, and I’ve consistently seen men shocked to discover what cramps feel like.
o Only one of the guys Dulcé tested it out on took her up on her “All Day Period Challenge,” which she quickly made a nightmare for him – When he collapsed on the stairs, asking, “Oh God, why twice [in a row]?”, Dulcé replied, “Ask your uterus!”
· Interview – Author/illustrator Vashti Harrison
o I knew Harrison’s name was familiar to me – She illustrated Lupita Nyong’o’s children’s book Sulwe.
o Here, she was promoting her new book Big – “I was thinking a lot about how we as adults use words with children when kids are young. We use ‘big’ as a word of affirmation. We say, ‘You’re such a big girl! You’re a big girl now!’, and that’s a good thing. But typically with girls, and all children, ‘big’ changes meaning. And I wanted to trace how that word can go from a word of affirmation into something different for a child’s life.”
o I loved this – “I wanted to clarify for this girl, and any kid who reads this book, you get to choose what’s important and real for you. And you don’t have to hold onto anything that doesn’t define you. You get to define that for yourself.”
o Dulcé pointed out that many adults struggle with the issues brought up in the book as well – “I’m just wondering, is there a grownup version of this book? Is there, like, Still Big?”
Next up, we got Ronny Chieng. He said, “I just wanna thank the network for believing in me for 23 minutes only.”
Tuesday, November 21
· Headlines – Negotiations for temporary truce between Israel and Hamas, staff revolt as OpenAI, the impact of weight-loss drugs on Thanksgiving
o Opening with the prospective Israel-Hamas temporary truce, Ronny said, “That’s right, I’ve accomplished what no other Daily Show host could. Sure, if they give me the job permanently, maybe I could solve this, but for now, here’s what you get.”
o Ronny had a messages for the hostages on track to be released – “I just want to say congratulations, and I want to prepare you: Andre 3000 has a flute album now.”
o Ronny couldn’t believe that, when OpenAI’s board ousted the company’s CEO, nearly every employee threatened to walk out in solidarity – “Who cares that much about their boss? I mean, Trevor quit right in front me and I didn’t do shit!”
o Excellent line – “It’s also ironic that the people creating technology that’s gonna destroy everyone’s jobs are also fighting so hard to save one guy’s job. It’s like seeing Ted Bundy perform CPR.”
o This made me laugh – “Finally, let’s talk about Thanksgiving, which I still can’t believe is a real holiday. I asked someone what happens on Thanksgiving, and he said, ‘Well, we all get together and eat.’ And I was like, ‘…So it’s dinner?’”
o I mean, he’s not wrong – “This is the most American story ever. Big Pharma created a drug to help Americans eat less, and now they’re having anxiety over what they’re gonna do on the eating holiday.”
· Sketch – Trump’s scheduler
o In this bit, Ronny played the guy who maintains Trump’s schedule to stay on top of all his indictments – Explaining his color-coding system, he said, “Purple is for time he spends with his kids, but I also use it for fraud charge cases, because they basically overlap.”
· Interview – Late night host John Oliver
o Note: I always use “John” when I write about Last Week Night, so I’m just going to stick with calling him John.
o Ronny shared about the meeting he had with John when he first joined the show, wanting advice from a former correspondent who was an immigrant like him – John said, “I remember you leaving and being like, ‘Oh, you’re going to be fine. Even though you don’t have the answers yet, all of your questions are right, so you’re gonna be fine.’”
o Nice insight from John – “The outsider perspective in comedy always works. The thing with being an immigrant here is you have to learn the exact ways that your outsider perspective can translate.”
o Ronny expanded on that point, saying, “It’s like, you can come here and you can joke about America on kind of a very surface level. And that would do well for you for, you know, if you have a 15-minute set, maybe 30-minute set. But I feel like, after nine months or a year in America, the audience can kind of smell the bullshit of like, ‘You’ve been here long enough. Like, guns shouldn’t be weird for you.’”
o Ronny asked John, “How do you answer the people who are like, ‘If you don’t like it here, leave’” – John’s first response was, “I guess now my answer would be, ‘I’m a citizen. You can’t do that.’”
o Another strong insight from John – “I felt at home here long before my legal status was solid; that’s the tricky thing as an immigrant. But the more I felt at home here, the more cognizant you are of the fact that it’s not up to you whether you get to stay or not.”
Last up, we got a guest hosting duo with Desi and Jordan. Jordan explained, “It is the night before Thanksgiving, so that could only mean one thing.” Desi replied, “Neither of us wanted to see our families,” and Jordan added, “Bingo!”
Wednesday, November 22
· Headlines – Binance crypto CEO pleads guilty to money laundering, Biden combats cord-cutting fees, Swedish engineers design female crash test dummies
o Desi expressed “shock” to discover that “the crypto guy was shady” – “That’s so weird! He was so nice when he sold me the weapons on the black market.”
o Valid, from Desi – “To be fair, if you’re a non-criminal who’s lost money on this, that’s on you. Because at this point, investing in crypto is like playing R. Kelly at your wedding. You should know it’s not a good choice!”
o Jordan agreed with her – “No thank you! I’m gonna leave my money in the real banks, where nothing bad ever happens.”
o Both Jordan and Desi were staunchly against Biden making it easier for people to quit cable – In a tag-team, the two Comedy Central employees argued, “Cable is about family, tradition…” “The Bible, the Constitution…” ”401Ks for the on-air hosts…”
o Hearing about the new female-design crash test dummy, Desi said, “Congrats on designing a mannequin that men won’t dream about having sex with” – Jordan was a little too emphatic in agreeing with her.
· Host Piece – The war on Christmas
o One of the folks Desi and Jordan talked to wasn’t concerned – He said, “I don’t think there’s a war on Christmas. And if there was a war on Christmas, I think Christmas would win.”
o Someone else, however, very much agreed with Fox News’s assessment on the war on Christmas, and that Christians are the most persecuted group in America – Mind you, this is weeks after Fox News host Jesse Watters declared “we’ve had it” with Arab Americans and Muslims.
· In My Opinion (John Leguizamo) – Univision’s interview with Trump
o It was fun to see John Leguizamo on the show again!
o An easy joke, but a good one – “I don’t know what’s more shocking: that Univision gave Trump a softball interview, or that Trump let a Latin guy into his house. How did that happen? What, did he think he was there to mow the lawn?”
o John was disgusted by the interviewers fawning “questions” about Trump’s approval rating with Latino voters – “I was expecting this guy’s follow-up question to be, like, ‘Is it true that, to look upon your penis, it would be like gazing into the very face of God?’”
o John argued that Univision has a responsibility to let their viewers know what Trump is saying about Latinos and migrants on the campaign trail – “Wait, wait, ‘Latino immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country’? Motherf**ker, what are you talking about? Your blood is 99% Big Mac!”
o Loved it – “Look, did he really say immigrants are coming from insane asylums? That’s not what ‘granted asylum’ means, moron!”
o Coincidentally, the new head of Univision is a close friend of Jared Kushner, “the only man with the skin of a flour tortilla.”
· Interview – Rep. Jeff Jackson
o Desi and Jordan asked Jackson about his popular TikToks, which he described as essentially, “Here’s the most interesting thing that happened to me in Congress this week” – Jackson replied, “I have been really surprised by the level of interest, in this political environment where everyone is yelling at each other all the time, to be able to speak in a normal tone of voice and try to convey some of the complexity and some of the nuance. That there would be broad interest for that, I think is very encouraging.”
o Jordan asked Jackson to name names about who he thinks is faking their outrage in Congress, and Desi added, “Does it rhyme with Shmarjorie Shmaylor Shmeene?” – Jackson said, “All I will say is this: it’s not George Santos. Never a false word from that gentleman!”
o He continued, “I’ve been in committees, and I have watched, when the camera turns on, people’s personalities change completely right before your eyes. It’s because they’re playing a very specific game trying to get the attention of a very specific group of people, and it’s awful and exhausting.”
I thought everybody did a great job, and it just reaffirmed for me that I wish both Dulcé and Ronny had been able to get a full week. In particular, I’m bummed that we didn’t get Long Story Short pieces from them. That said, I also liked John Leguizamo returning to talk about Trump’s interview with Univision—I hope this becomes a recurring segment, past guest hosts or other “friends of the show” occasionally popping up to comment on a story that’s important to them.
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