With three months to prepare, the third season premiere of John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” should have been full of original, clever material.
Unfortunately, Sunday’s episode fell disappointingly flat.
After a short introduction and a few mediocre lines about major events in the news over the past three months, the episode opened with a segment on the recent death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Oliver’s typical, but amusing, critique of CNN.
The segment was promising, with Oliver’s usual wit and knack for clever analogies still intact. It was, however, also littered with predictable jokes about Scalia and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s looks that rang hollow compared to the engaging arguments Oliver presented.
Oliver then moved on to a segment covering the recent health concerns and scrutiny of Chipotle.
With tired jokes about the food being equivalent to an “over-the-counter laxative” and Guy Fieri’s food standards, this segment was where the episode noticeably took a turn for the worse.
The dramatized Chipotle commercial that Oliver produced for the segment began well, with biting lines such as, “Welcome to Chipotle! Thank you for your bravery.” But within seconds, it became silly and over-done. The segment took stereotypical restaurant atrocities such as mystery meat and a mouse infestation and, instead, Oliver used the examples of “penguin meat” being added to the shredded pork and the presence of “a massive vole problem.” The added specificity and strategic randomness of the examples failed to add humor.
Oliver has used this tactic before, and it has lost its charm.
The brightest section of the show was Oliver’s discussion of frivolous voter ID laws, especially the ones imposed in Texas and Wisconsin. There were genuinely clever moments in the segment, including Oliver’s response to Wisconsin Rep. Joel Kleefisch’s argument that a recent bill requiring an ID to buy cold and sinus medicines like Sudafed was frivolous, and requiring an ID to be able to vote was more important.
“First, that bill was designed to curtail Wisconsin’s meth problem,” Oliver quipped. “And second, voting is a right. If you take it away, you ruin democracy. If you take away someone’s Sudafed, the only thing you’ll ruin is their sleeve.”
Oliver was also successful in pointing out the gross inconsistencies and contradictions put forth by proponents of voting ID laws, using footage of both Texas Rep. Debbie Riddle and Kleefisch casting votes for other absent representatives. This is voting impersonation — the very thing these representatives are supposedly fighting when they call for identification to be mandatory at the polls.
Oliver’s most compelling work comes out of political outrage. These segments are, for the most part, devoid of easy and superficial jokes and instead lean toward dry, disparaging humor.
Oliver is most effective when he is able to spark indignation with his humor rather than produce a few light chuckles over the suggestion that Chipotle’s head chef might just be a 6-foot cockroach.
The last five minutes of the show were devoted to the heavy-handed analysis of a protest in New Zealand. Steven Joyce, a cabinet minister for New Zealand, was smacked in the face with a large dildo thrown by a protester during an interview earlier this month. Joyce, who remarked on Twitter that Oliver should “just get it over with” and mock him on his show, became the centerpiece of a painfully stretched out ending to an already disappointing episode.
With weak transitions such as, “Step aside, ‘Citizen Kane,’ there is a new greatest film in town,” and, “New Zealand: Australia’s Chia Pet,” Oliver slipped into blatant banality, his clever turn of phrase and dark humor replaced with lame one-liners.
Even a brief cameo from Peter Jackson proudly waving a mock New Zealand flag emblazoned with Joyce’s face and the miscreant dildo couldn’t save the derailed season premiere.
An entire gospel choir singing about the incident to the tune of the “Hallelujah Chorus,” and two men dressed and bouncing around in giant phallic costumes added to the overall surreal, yet strained atmosphere.
This baffling ending to an unsatisfying episode will hopefully be the start of a more genuine and fresh season. In order for “Last Week Tonight” to succeed, the cheap jokes that pervaded throughout Sunday’s episode need to be scrapped, and the cutting political satire that John Oliver is so well known for must stay sharp.
