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Sunday, November 5
· Recap of the Week – Ron DeSantis’s boot rumors
o Ron DeSantis had a lame response to Trump joining the pile-on accusing him of having hidden lifts in his boots – “You’re so bad at this! Even if you weren’t running against one of the world’s greatest bullies, it looks so pathetic that you thought that was a good comeback. Never before has a politician had such ‘kid with a rolling backpack wearing a tie to class’ energy.”
· Main Story – Abortion Rights
o While it is possible for pregnant people in states with abortion bans to travel to another state for care (if they can afford it,) John pointed out the problems with this – For one, “In states where abortion remains legal, it is not like they’ve had a sudden surge in providers to handle out-of-state patients, so there are now significant backlogs.”
o One legislator proudly declared his state safe “for little babies,” but was less confident when a reporter asked about women – “It is a pretty sad state of affairs when, ‘But what about women?’ genuinely counts as a gotcha question.”
o Since the Dobbs decision, many pregnant people have learned that even life-threatening health conditions won’t guarantee them access to needed abortions – After one doctor explained the frightening state of affairs, John said, “Holy shit. ‘We have to wait for legal to sign off,’ is not something you want to hear before receiving urgent medical care. That is something that we say when we want to show this photo [of Prince Andrew] while saying the sentence, ‘Sex crimes are bad,’ or playfully accuse a coal baron of being the Zodiac Killer.”
o Strong line – “The crushing thing is, that doctor isn’t even being overly cautious there. Because while these laws do have exceptions in instances where the life of the mother is in danger, there’s a huge difference between ‘life of the mother’ and ‘health of the mother.’”
o Just sit with this statistic – “Women in states with abortion bans are nearly three times more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after giving birth.”
o I appreciated this line – “So, what do we do now? Well first, do feel free to scream: into a pillow, out when you’re on a bus, on the kiss cam at a basketball game. There is no inappropriate time to be screaming about this.”
o Daniel Cameron, who’s running for governor of Kentucky, wants to redefine life in the state as beginning at fertilization – “How exactly does he intend to enforce life beginning at fertilization? Does everyone now have to fuck in front of him? No thank you very much, Daniel!”
· And Now This – It Was Halloween, and Local TV Hosts did What They Always Do
o A trio of anchor dressed as “Ice, Ice, Baby” was cute.
o One anchor asked her cohost, “How are you doing this Halloween?” – Her cohost, wearing a Chucky mask, simply replied, “I’m gonna be honest with you; I can’t breathe in this thing.”
· Finally – New Zealand’s Bird of the Century election
o Love! – “New Zealanders love birds. They’re famously known as Kiwis after the kiwi bird, and birds feature prominently on their currency. Which is, frankly, much better than what U.S. bills have on them, which is assorted racists and trace amounts of cocaine.”
o We covered some Bird of the Year scandals from recent years, such as when an “absolute goober” of a bat took home the prize – “Forget Bird of the Year. I wouldn’t even give that bat Bat of the Year!”
o When fraudulent votes were cast for the white heron in another election, the voting commission responded, “We’re not mad, just impressed that someone cares enough about New Zealand’s native birds to rig the competition.”
o Naturally, the show had to throw their hat in the ring for their preferred bird, the pūteketeke – They put up a “Lord of the Wings” campaign poster in New Zealand, naturally, but you don’t have to be a New Zealander to vote. So the campaign stretched across the world, including everything from a sexy poster “right next to Arc de Triomphe, which has never looked better,” to a plane flying a banner ad over a beach in Brazil.
Sarah Silverman was our first returning guest host. On her first night, she announced, “I’m Sarah Silverman, back by popular demand. ‘Popular’ was my nana’s name.”
Monday, November 6
· Headlines – New Trump vs. Biden poll, Trump testifies in civil fraud case, botched antisemitic hate crime, Mike Johnson’s “porn accountability” software
o I liked this line – “I’m gonna be honest, I like a scary poll number. Puts a little fire under your tuchus.”
o Fair – “What makes these poll numbers particularly shocking is that the man Biden is losing to is currently on trial in every jurisdiction in America.”
o Yikes! – The judge in Trump’s civil fraud case in New York told his lawyers, “I beseech you to control him if you can. If you can’t, I will.”
o I loved Sarah’s response to Trump having to be reminded in court that he wasn’t president in 2021 – “Honestly, I get why he’s confused. I also get confused because it feels like he was president for a f**king thousand years. I can’t even remember who was president before Trump! Like, was it Rutherford B. Hayes or something?”
o This made me laugh – “Like, of course Trump isn’t focused. He’s got like seventeen other court cases he’s dealing with. He probably doesn’t even know what he was in court for! I bet he was on the stand like, ‘Is this the insurrection one or the mushroom-dick porn star one?’”
o Great line – “Luckily, some of the people committing these hate crimes are not the brightest candle in the menorah.”
o A woman ran her car into what she thought was a Jewish school. In actuality, it was the headquarters of an antisemitic hate group – “Aww. She meant to crash into a building full of Jews but ended up crashing into a building full of people who hate Jews. Like, what a meetcute!”
o Sarah added a tagline for a fake romantic comedy called Hate Actually – “Coming soon: the enemy of my enemy is…my lover?”
o Loved it – “This woman’s troubles are just beginning. Wait until she meets her public defender, Joel Rabinowitz.”
o Covenant Eyes, the app Mike Johnson was touting in 2022, sends alerts and weekly reporters to an “accountability partner” to discourage people from looking at porn on their devices. In Johnson’s case, his accountability partner was his then-17-year-old son – “I am sorry, there is no way this app is gonna stop people from masturbating, especially 17-year-old boys! 17-year-olds don’t need porn. They can jerk off to anything! His dad must be like, ‘He really doesn’t look at porn at all. He just spends all his day browsing Ann Taylor Loft.’”
o Michael weighed in on whether this latest news spelled trouble for Johnson as House speaker – “Mike Johnson is the kind of guy you want holding the Speaker’s gavel. For one, he’s got two free hands, we know that.”
o Michael brushed off Sarah’s concerns that this app viewing all of Johnson’s data could pose a national security risk – “Sure, Russia could hack into Covenant Eyes and get access to our nuclear codes, but I sleep a little easier at night knowing Mike Johnson isn’t seeing what’s happening to our nation’s stepmoms.”
· Daily Show-ography – Rep. Mike Johnson
o This was the show’s take on Johnson in a nutshell – The GOP’s new speaker needed to be someone who was “crazy enough to win over the far right, but boring enough that he wouldn’t spook the slightly less-far right.”
o Great line! – “The GOP had found a man so bland he might put you to sleep, but so insane, he might murder you in it.”
o Johnson pushed a nationwide 6-week abortion ban, citing both his prolife views and a claim that abortion was the reason Social Security is in trouble – “Finally, somebody’s thinking of the ablebodied workers women should be pumping out against their will.”
· Interview – Musician/reality show host Joel Madden
o Madden was promoting his show Ink Master – Sarah asked, “As you assess [a contestant’s tattoo work] and criticize it and, like, do you feel bad talking shit about something that is gonna be on someone’s body forever?”
o He also promoted Veeps, his new streaming service for live concerts and standup comedy, which sounds great!
Tuesday, November 7
· Headlines – New RFK Jr. poll, orcas sink another yacht, wework files for bankruptcy
o Great line about RFK Jr.’s poll numbers – “If he gets 24% in the election, it would be the best showing for a third-party candidate since Teddy Roosevelt. And because RFK is anti-vaxx, it would be the best showing for polio since Franklin Roosevelt.”
o Loved this – “But give credit to the yacht owners. They put up a valiant defense against the orcas by yelling, ‘Do you know who my father is?’”
o I mean, she wasn’t wrong – “Holy shit. Wework went from a $47 billion company to bankruptcy. Somewhere out there, Elon Musk is going, ‘Ooh, challenge accepted!’”
o Ronny brought his trademark disdain to the wework story – “What a game changer, no one had ever thought of working in a building before. We were all just out in the rain, our laptops getting soaked.”
o Ronny had his own pitch for what to do with wework’s now-empty office properties, asking, “What do people in cities really need?” – When Sarah replied, “Affordable housing,” he said, “Okay, relax, MSNBC!”
· Host Piece – Marijuana dispensaries
o This made me smile – “Weed is so legal, they have stores! Stores with weed! I mean, what is this, 23 other states?”
o As she checked out a dispensary, Sarah reminisced about the old way of getting weed, sitting in a dealer’s smelly car and listening to his band’s demo – The dispensary owner assured her, “I’m not in a band,” to which she said, “Refreshing.”
· Interview – Author Cat Bohannon
o Bohannon’s new book was called Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution.
o For a good chunk of the interview, Bohannon and Sarah talked about medical research and how, for much of modern history, research was only done on cis male bodies – “Yeah. Yeah, it’s just dicks all the way down.”
o Bohannon explained why scientists decided not to study cis female bodies – “It’s basically because this thing we call a menstrual cycle, which a biologist would call an estrous cycle, is just so messy and complicated. Right, so you have this slope of hormones that’s doing all kinds of things in the female body if you’re studying mammals, so maybe just don’t then?”
Wednesday, November 8
· Headlines – 2023 election
o Sarah celebrated Yusef Salaam, one of the Exonerated Five, winning a city council seat in New York – “He went from having his life threatened by Trump to being an elected representative. He’s like a reverse Mike Pence!”
o One Newsmax anchor thought it was a dirty trick for Democrats to bring out young voters for “sexy” referendums on abortion or marijuana – “ ‘Sexy’ issues like abortion…what are his porn search words?”
o Nicely executed joke here! – “Some conservatives have reportedly decided the problem isn’t pro-life policies, but the phrase ‘pro-life.’ They’re looking to rebrand it, but personally, I think they should be forced to carry this phrase to term.”
o Grace came on to spitball some potential rebranding ideas, such as “pro-parents,” “pro-girl power,” and “pro-Zendaya” – “What else is popular? Oh, I know, pro-choice! People seem to love that term.”
o Grace also considered a more honest approach – “Their slogans can just straight-up be ‘Your Body, Our Choice.’ Or ‘Handmaid’s Tale: Let’s Try It?’”
· Long Story Short – AI in art
o We opened with a montage of different authors who are suing Open AI for training its AI on their books, without consent or compensation – When one of those books was Sarah’s memoir, she said, “That’s right, mother f**kers. Esteemed writing luminaries like myself and George R.R. Martin are are suing AI.”
o In Martin’s case, one guy had AI spit out a version of the final Song of Ice and Fire book – “A programmer generated his own shitty ending to Game of Thrones? Why waste your time? HBO already did that for you!”
o I liked how Sarah broke this down – “Here’s the thing. While AI has helped open many avenues for new works, there’s just one problem: they’re not new works. What these programs do is scrape text and images from existing works and feed it into their system in order to ‘create’ copycats.”
· Interview – Musician/author Margo Price
o Price was there to talk about her album Strays and her memoir Maybe We’ll Make It.
o On writing her memoir, Price said, “It was scary to put it all out there, you know? It’s everybody I’ve slept with, all the drugs I’ve ever done. So, sorry, Grandma!”
· Performance – “Lydia”
o During the interview, Price previewed the song, which is about a stripper contemplating an abortion – After adding that it didn’t rhyme and was six minutes long, she joked that it was “perfect” for performing on late night.
o I thought this was a simple, lovely line – “Halfway home is where the heart is, / And I’m halfway home.”
Thursday, November 9
· Headlines – Trump rally, Republican primary debate
o #Relatable – “The presidential election is less than a year away. Can you even believe it? I know. I’m so excited, I wish I was dead.”
o Sarah was impressed by the footage of Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy going at each other at the debate – “Wow, that was so many petty insults! Donald Trump may not have been there, but I believe he was looking down and saying, ‘I am so proud of you.’”
o Sarah pondered how Ramaswamy could use his “insufferable” demeanor for good if he ever became president – “Like, he’ll have one meeting with Vladimir Putin, and twenty minutes in, Putin will mysteriously kill himself. He’ll be like, ‘Excuse me, I must accidentally fall out window now.’”
o Good line, in response to all the candidates’ tireless warmongering – “Meanwhile, we need to fix shit here. Do we need to convince you that, like, Iran is putting potholes in the street for you to fix them? ‘Oh no, North Korea is aiming a missile at affordable healthcare!’”
o Some of the biggest news came at the very end of the debate, when the press finally got to see Tim Scott’s girlfriend – “He really should’ve proposed right there. Just got down on one knee like, ‘Mindy, will you make my campaign manager the happiest man alive?’”
o Desi came out for him post-debate analysis, and she declared Ramaswamy the winner – “To be that annoying onstage without getting punched in the face is a win.”
o Dulcé also weighed in – She thought Scott’s girlfriend should run from “a 58-year-old who’s never been married,” saying, “It’s like one of those couches that’s been left out on the curb. Like, it might look good, but you know he’s got bedbugs and all kinds of stuff in him. You gotta think twice before you sit on him!”
o Meanwhile, Desi didn’t think the debate benefited anyone’s campaign – “Their greatest hope would be to maybe get an awful nickname from Donald Trump, ‘cause that would prove he knows who they are.”
· Fake Trailer – Rosemary’s Co-Pay
o After seeing a sinister ritual performed over the newborn Antichrist, we got Sarah popping into the hospital room – “Before we go any further, who do we talk to about insurance?”
o She ran down the list of charges, including, “And we charge you for holding the baby. That’s actually something we do.”
· Interview – Filmmaker Judd Apatow
o Apatow was promoting the movie Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain, although he admitted he wasn’t the right person to promote it – “Because of the strike, you get the lame guest. You don’t get the star, you get the producer. No one wants the producer! No one wants Darryl Zanuck on their show.”
o He also brought along some photos for a book he’s creating from his scrapbooks, memorabilia, asking Sarah to help him decide which were “book-worthy.”
o Sarah was in a photo from his first directing job ever – Apatow said, “What’s interesting is that you look exactly the same now, and I look like Bernie Sanders.”
I liked Sarah a lot the first time she guest hosted, and she was just as good here. My only misgiving is that I would’ve rather seen Dulcé Sloan get a full week, since hers was cut short by the writers’ strike after her first night. (The same goes for Leslie Jones next week—I’m sure she’ll be hilarious, but I would’ve wanted to see Ronny get a week in the chair.)
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