Hello, buglers! John Oliver has a weekly show, "Last Week Tonight"

Starts Apr 27th. Runs Sunday nights at 11pm on HBO in the U.S. Half-hour.

They started up a twitter feed, which is very, very, VERY Bugle-like in its headlines:

http://twitter.com/LastWeekTonight
http://www.iamjohnoliver.com

http://www.hbo.com/last-week-tonight-with-john-oliver

fuck you chris!

Found this interview, which unfortunately doesn't mention if Andy Zaltsman will be involved or not:

http://m.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/john-oliver-of-the-daily-show-gets-his-own-fake-news-program-on-hbo/2014/04/02/addd639a-ba63-11e3-9a05-c739f29ccb08_story.html

What's even more horrifying is that he's a year younger than me.

http://defamer.gawker.com/heres-the-first-episode-of-last-week-tonight-with-john-1568756065

HBO posted the first ep to youtube, but strangely won't allow embeds

Also geoblocked.

dude's killing it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPQ44RDOAx4

not in that clip but his Morrissey impression was amazing

The Inquiring Minds podcast had a nice little interview with him last week, where he points out that "This world will be a giant ball of fire before it stops being funny."

hate this guy

Finally catching up on eps; this show is great.

Bugle on hiatus until September--
Fuck you, HBO!

hate this guy

― conrad, Monday, May 19, 2014 5:31 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

0_0

this show is better than both colbert and jon stewart

^^^ truth

i wonder if that's because he only has to produce one episode a week?

never seen this prog

It's great. It manages to be both really funny and really angry, which is a difficult line to walk.

you can watch most of it via its youtube page, which is how I've been seeing it.

definitely better than daily show, tho it's probably on the level with what colbert and his writers could do for a once a week thing.

i think the lack of an interview helps this week tonight quite a lot in terms of momentum (plus - i don't remember oliver being a great interviewer from his stint hosting the daily show). i dig the compiled clips of stupid news tropes to transition between bits but i think it's the kinda thing that will seem played out pretty soon, akin to the "better know a district" series or other colbert bits

i think the lack of an interview helps

omg yes, so much. I never watch TDS or Colbert interviews any more. Really funny and really angry stops dead when Ben Affleck has a movie to promote.

With Colbert about to (presumably) shift towards ditching the character, Oliver's timing is even better.

i keep hoping he'll bring on his Bugle cohost Andy as a special guest & do 30 solid minutes of puns

love this so much

longform ranting oliver is the greatest gift to comedy-news, i am so happy he's getting so much love & has such a great team to enhance his talents.

colbert interviews are always entertaining some more than others obviously

I always skip Stewart/Colbert interviews

Andy should totally appear.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=RealAnimalsFakePaws

some of this is really fantastic

this guy is such an uninsightful bore

my wife is really into it but the pattern of dissect-workings-of-minor-issue-that-is-actually-result-of-much-bigger-issue and then turn it into some brief social media hashtag cause leaves me fairly uninspired

like yes predatory lending is a problem and this country totally fucks the poor I wonder why that is #capitalism

you two are lames

his jokes are funny, it's the polemical aspects of it that I find a bit pointless

liberal panic monster of the week as entertainment only goes so far for me anyway but oliver seems particularly insincere, i don't buy that he really cares about anything he talks about moreso than any other given buzzfeed reader

as far as Daily Show spinoffs go at this point I prefer Wilmore, which is at least a bit unpredictable and with a variety of voices

yeah, i'm down with wilmore. even just thinking about the two of them oliver seems like such a cranky fuck in comparison

he is very very funny and i admire how well researched his show is

oliver i mean

oliver is a slightly-retuned version of Jon Stewart with the energy he had ten years ago, so it's good to me.
i wanted wilmore to be better but finding it generally pretty boring and uneven, and the panel segments to be a chore. it's missing a spark somewhere.

i love oliver, tone of the show is v similar to the bugle

Oliver and Wilmore have two different aims imo, so it's hard to determine who's doing a better job. I like both. The fact that Oliver only airs once a week makes it seem like his show has higher stakes, though.

but oliver seems particularly insincere, i don't buy that he really cares about anything he talks about moreso than any other given buzzfeed reader

I totally do, based mainly on having listened to the Bugle for ages. There have been lots of moments when one or other of them edge close to being dead serious angry/upset. Oliver being married to a veteran (combat medic I think?) makes me pay attention to his show's pieces on the military.

sometimes the level of cynicism on ilx is just astounding

I don't think this latest rant was that good, and the hashtag was dumb and useless. In general, this season doesn't seem as good as the first, though that's probably rose-tinted glasses since it was a debut and all that. Some of the hashtag-stuff has been good, such as when it's used to counter the bullying behavious by the president of Ecaudor, or when it shines a light on Philip Morris trying to get away with treating poor countries horrendously without anyone noticing. Here, more exposure could conceivably make a difference. But this rant on municipal violations seemed much less pointed than it could have been, and because of Ferguson everyone has been sorta thinking about it recently anyway. Just doing a 'do you know that this exists?' on one of the biggest news stories recently is not LWTwJO at it's finest.

I only see the 20-minute videos that go on youtube, so I might be missing something, but I thought the NCAA one from last week was great. Nothing that anyone who pays attention to sports doesn't already know but it was nice to hear sharp jokes and criticism from someone in the media aside from, I dunno, Deadspin.

JFC you fucking idiots, John Oliver's show is foregrounding shit we've been ranting about for a fucking decade plus on here. Remember that this shit has to permeate a thick fecal slurry of constant, un-mute-able noise from a thousand media sphincters shitting out endless social clickbait distraction. There's a very narrow finite amount of socially or culturally acceptable topics to talk about in a week's amount of air-time, and this show can get a thing that's _rather_ important out there to the point where something can actually happen. Crashing the FCC's servers about net.neutrality is a great example.

Larry Wilmore's show is great and worthwhile, too. Once in a while, he'll play a deep-bench nerd ref card that tips the hand of either his or his writing staff's obsessions into nerdshit.

None of this shit is fucking perfect and will never be. At this point, enjoy what we can get of non-horrible cultural material being produced. This is mass entertainment blasted at millions of people on a nightly to weekly basis, and its in a digestible format that other worthy causes shared on social media don't reach. These guys can get previously unaddressed topics to get mentioned on either Headline News or take yer pick of breakfast chat shows, or at least are the closest methods to do so.

In other words, I agree with gr8080.

kingfish otm

sorry but obviously Oliver is a dead-souled cynical charlatan from some country that probably doesn't even exist anymore who came here to exploit America's obsessions with Net Neutrality and FIFA for $$$$ and proximity to Bill Mahar

er

lol

Well THAT happened.

I don't even regularly watch this show but caught it last night randomly, excellent interview.

surprisingly antagonistic!

yeah, that was really good. it made snowden seem a bit more human than citizenfour - i really liked that movie but it was great to see someone asking hard questions and him struggling to answer them.

he was surprisingly weak in his responses about the competence of some of the journalists he's working with, and whether he'd read the entire cache of documents. he seemed genuinely crestfallen when he was shown the video of people who didn't know who he was.

oliver is great at making complex subjects understandable and funny at the same time.

yeah i thought it was a good interview ! designed to leave audience asking at least some of the right questions

Snowden: "I did this to give the American people a chance to decide for themselves the kind of government they want to have. That is a conversation that the American people deserve to decide."
Oliver: "Is it a conversation that we have the capacity to have? Because it's so complicated."

Hah what? Is this even an argument? I understand Oliver is really running w the whole "Americans are idiots" motif but this is some hiding your head in the sand type bs.

did you watch the whole episode

I stopped pretty soon after he was showing him the laptop with random Times Square people not remembering his name. Should I finish it?

sounds like jokes to me

i don't know, i see where he's coming from. he's just alluding to the fact that Americans don't care (can't speak to the rest of the world). i guess he's implying that we don't care because it's beyond our capacity or it's too complicated, so that's worthy of criticism or debate. but the core point is that americans don't give a shit. the NSA/snowden/privacy stuff couldn't be any more clear. it's been documented relentlessly, and no one cares. no one talks about it.

the random idiots not knowing who snowden is is the tie-in to "are we capable of having this conversation." Snowden started the conversation and the majority of america responded with "..." Xps

my problem with that set-up is that you'd get the same response from Americans about almost anything political--"Who is John Boehner?" "Who is Harry Reid?"

I don't disagree with that -- it's basically a version of Jaywalking which is some low-hanging fruit -- put the further tying-in of that stuff to the dick pic thing was pretty solid as far as setting priorities.

the core point is that americans don't give a shit

The core point there is that they are confused about who Edward Snowden is, not that they don't give a shit about privacy. Spending most of the time available showing Oliver waiting for Snowden, conjecturing about him being late, looking out the window at the scary KGB, etc. is also a way to shift focus from an actual discussion to a media piece on a personality. Same thing w the laptop, I'm sure Snowden was there to talk about the real issues not if some randos know his name. It's not an entirely bad interview cos they do discuss real issues but they spend far more time w cult of personality/mis-direction they are pretending to be above.

Americans don't give a shit about privacy the same way they don't give a shit about torture. They figure as long as they aren't doing anything wrong (funding terrorists, looking at child porn, organizing protests) they have nothing to worry about so who cares.

Maybe they do give a shit and it's just in the system's interest to perpetuate the notion that they don't?

what evidence do you have that they give a shit

people can't even be bothered to change their passwords

"just give me the pr0n and the facebooks and the free music!" basically

the point of that question was leading to the other question he directed to people on the street, which was "if the government could see your dick, would you care?" and their asnwer to that was a unified "yes". So his point was: abstracting the discussion takes it over the heads of the populace.

what evidence do you have that they give a shit

Oliver points out that politicians from the left and the right are going on about it from Hillary Clinton to Ted Cruz. That's some evidence. The password thing you mentioned is evidence they are lazy not that they don't care about gov't surveillance.

I stopped pretty soon after he was showing him the laptop with random Times Square people not remembering his name. Should I finish it?

― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, April 7, 2015 12:36 PM (20 minutes ago)

by all means keep telling us how wrong john oliver is to focus on americans 'short attention spans

hahaha

yeah, watch the whole thing first, its literally only 33 minutes in toto

akm otm, snowden became much more compelling to listen to once he stopped trying to outsmart Oliver and just answered directly about whether or not the government can access your dick pics.

You guys are adding so much to this conversation. I mean I'm fine w it I guess, it is a comedy show, and it is fun to laugh at other people and how stupid they aren. Certainly more entertaining than discussing the implications of widespread acceptance of gov't surveillance. It is good for that gov't surveillance system to perpetuate the idea that most Americans don't care about it (and are stupider than you, too!) and it doesn't actually bring anything to the discussion is my point. This is Jay Leno-style key rattling for potential leftists.

But it's on HBO I'm watching it on google youtube, all these companies are tied into that system. They could have spent that time talking about proposed legislation or who the congresspeople were pushing for things to get better. Instead it is more divisive stuff. Rather than see John Oliver walk around an empty room for a few minutes and throwing pens at nothing they could have actual reported the news. Things that are being discussed among our elected representatives.

A good democracy requires an informed public. The media should be there to provide that service. This show is making the point that we have an uninformed public but it is itself wasting that opportunity.

we should vote this show out of office in three years

it is a comedy show, and it is fun to laugh at other people and how stupid they are

i don't think that was really the thrust? but i watched the whole thing so what do i know

Once corporations get religious rights does that mean they become immortal?

you are a clown

That's cool clowns are rad. People laugh at how i look anyways i am used to that.

why should a comedy show report the news, that is not the job. Oliver is a satirist not a reporter.

I live in the US, is this the most left thing on tv?

why dont you tell us; you seem pretty good at reviewing things you dont watch

Oh snap!

i thought oliver's willingness to take some shots at snowden was markedly NOT lefty, especially when compared to the daily shows more sycophantic hijinx and the fact that he and snowden share HBO as a media patron

for some reason I don't really think of Oliver as a lefty (tbf I feel the same way about Stewart. People call Maher a lefty too and I find that ridiculous)

anyway COPS is and will always be the most lefty thing on TV

I hadn't considered that the oliver/snowden interview might have been part of the Citizenfour distribution deal but that seems maybe possible?

it got snowden trending again so if that's the case it worked
i kinda assume it was more that oliver's team asked and hbo helped set it up

You guys were right Snowden talking at the end is great.

glad we were here to help you finish watching a television show

The dick pic stuff is comedy gold. Much satire. It was great when John Oliver interrupted what he was saying to make a new dick pic joke.

yeah it was

I'm sure Snowden was there to talk about the real issues not if some randos know his name.

i sympathize with wanting to hear more about the actual issues and less jokey stuff, but putting aside that it's a comedy show, the fact that americans just don't care at all about this IS part of the issue in this case. i mean, whoever upthread said that you could do a similar segment on all the other things that americans don't care about or are woefully uninformed or misinformed about (evolution, who the vice president is, the countries that are part of North America, who their political representatives are, etc etc). but the difference with the snowden/NSA stuff (imo) is that successful reform DEPENDS on americans giving a shit. most politicians certainly don't want to talk about it. google, amazon, facebook, silicon valley? they sure as fuck don't want to talk about it. they're not going to want to talk about it or change it until people actually care. so john oliver focusing his segment on the fact that no one cares isn't a total waste of time because it least it prompts the questions of WHY no one cares and if there's a better way of getting people to care.

Yeah but people have made that point before so many times. Maybe I just think it's a weak/easy joke.

also oliver found a way to show that that people do in fact care and can feel extremely violated by surveillance if you shed the right light on the issue, even if that light is their junk

more like adam BOOO! NOOOO! amirite

i agree that Oliver uses a lot of cheap comedy tropes that seem to undermine the seriousness of the subject matter

but ultimately it's Snowden's naivety that is on display. focusing on *how* Oliver achieved that seems dumb to me, when that's how most of his interviews go

idk.

god, you guys, I can't believe a comedian used comedy in his comedy show. this is an outrage!

(A) did x. WHICH, IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT, IS LIKE IF (B) DID Y!!! HAHAHA!

Yeah, starting to get incredibly sick of that joke! The millions of different versions of that joke are probably the weakest part of his show.

sometimes he dips too deep into the Family Guy well, yes.
I also tire of the "No [silly name], nobody wants to see your [odd referent]. I hate you [silly name]!" set up or the "That's just a fact!" punchline.
but he's generally funner by a factor of five than Stewart

how did u arrive at "five"

counted the number of episodes i can stomach Oliver's patter and preset approach vs Stewarts; about 5 to 1

alright, watched it. the opening bit before the interview is surprisingly annoying - I was never that bothered during any of the other videos I've watched. i think the writers were afraid they were going to lose the audience and threw in a bad punchline every 30 seconds

that said - i think the interview - and even the main part about the dick pics - was great. it actually was an effective, incredibly silly way to demonstrate the issue. yeah, most of us on this board probably already get the picture, but still

pelis have a small lead over the dubs w/ a minute to go btw

oops sorry wrong thread!

yeah the stuff where he has a stock photo or maybe a photo of someone from his staff and he says "No [silly name], nobody wants to see your [odd referent]. I hate you [silly name]!" is kind of like something colbert used to throw off but oliver guy does it with such regularity and invarying formulation leans on it so heavily with a pause for laughter after that it is v v unfunny

no it is v v funny u wrong

Cool if you like this dude, but I'm not that hip on him.

And every time I see some Buzzfeedy post on Facebook or somewhere that says something like John Oliver Just Explained in Two Minutes Why the Iran Treaty Matters followed by a screencap that looks like this:

http://i.imgur.com/p0XCEXp.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/4CtUW81.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/SueCVFA.jpg

It just kinda turns me off even more.

one thing in his favor is that he keep the pace up and doesn't mug for the camera
i really really like this show btw but after a full season some of the cliches are beginning to show and wear

xpost 60% of the audience for Oliver/Daily Show/Late Nights Shows/SNL seems to be aggregation servants looking for content

yeah, i think i've made the joke several times, but i wouldn't be surprised if someone starts aggregating all the daily show/john oliver aggregation articles on a weekly basis

I also tire of the "No [silly name], nobody wants to see your [odd referent]. I hate you [silly name]!" set up or the "That's just a fact!" punchline.

I haven't completely tired of these yet, only because there haven't been any outright duds. But I really wish he'd stop going on and on at the end of a joke, e.g., "You're a dingo! Yes you are! You are! You're a dingo! You are!" and he gets stuck in a loop that goes on longer than the laughter/applause, and I feel bad for him, but not really, because he should've known when to stop.

I'm not sure I fully understood the joke "The only people who should be excited about a Rod Stewart concert are those who want to have sex with Peter Gabriel". Does that just mean: people who are old enough to remember Peter Gabriel as a heartthrob?

i felt like they flubbed that joke by using a contemporary rod stewart pic but an old old old pic of Gabriel
maybe they thought no one would recognize nu-gabriel
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Music/Pix/pictures/2010/3/28/1269786651743/Peter-Gabriel-001.jpg

Oh yeah the young Peter Gabriel pic definitely confused me. A young, fit pic of Peter Gabriel doesn't really drive the point home...

I didn't get the joke--people who really wanted to date Peter Gabriel instead get the less attractive Rod Stewart?

The joke was something like: 'The only people who should be excited when the substituion is a night with Rod Stewart are people who wanted to have sex with Peter Gabriel'

strange joke

Well, the context was that Obama wasn't coming, but Rod Stewart was. So... Yeah, it's still weird.

i was mainly amazed that a show with a target demo of 18-35 would attempt a joke featuring either rod stewart or peter gabriel

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Music/Pix/pictures/2010/3/28/1269786651743/Peter-Gabriel-001.jpg

Hans plays with Lottie,
Lottie plays with Jane
Hemingway and Eichmann,
Richard Nixon coming back again

I really liked the ending of last night's show. Calling one representative a piece of shit, and accusing a bunch of others at being potential chicken-fuckers. Basically trying to bully laws through the chamber. Kinda ballsy.

they seem to have stopped allowing non-US people to see the youtube version of this. it used to take a few days (which is fair enough) but now there are things weeks old that are still blocked.

you can sometimes find third party recordings, often people just pointing a camera phone at a tv, but a lot of these are silent or still frames.

(actually, last week's Standardised Testing was available, but that was the first in a month)

It's on Sky Atlantic

but i don't have space tv.

That's as helpful as saying "it's on HBO"

I can watch the youtube from Denmark. Might it be HBO UK who are blocking?

Again, not for me.

john oliver says "mom"

he doesn't want to confuse the americans

UK seems un-regionblocked now, meaning i have 4 or 5 to catch up on.

The song on last weeks episode was gold. I've liked a lot of ranting, but this was the first time in a long while that the final sketch-thingy was top tier.

The DC/states one? That was good.

link?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z4j2CrJRn4

It's a pretty well written lyric, and the glee on Oliver's face really sells it.

that dc outrage was p dumb tho.. like the college basketball one.

I liked the bit this week when he had up a photo of some juggalos and turned to it and said "call your parents, sean, they don't know what's happening to you" and no one laughed

i liked the DC bit. and i didn't know about those weed/needle/gun control things, so it's educational

I recently noticed that Rory Albanese, who used to do the character "The American" on the Bugle, often appears on the Nightly Show now

Oh how I miss The American.

He is now Executive Producer of The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore.

he was something similar on the Daily Show for a long time, but rarely if ever appeared on-screen there

i hate john oliver

i'm sorry, but you're going to have to phrase your criticism in the form of a series of similes to get through to me

i hate john oliver the way pig pen from the peanuts hates taking a bath no, pig pen, you cannot come to school with circles of stink lines around you, pig pen! no, pig pen!

^not bad

yeah that's really good! i was working on a parody as well but all i could come up was the ending ("no, Jeremy, you are NOT allowed to have another ice cream cone, that is not allowed!!")

i had done most of the hard work but stopped just short of finishing. it was as if the tortoise had overtaken the sleeping hare but then decided to take a little snooze for himself, just short of the finish line. 'no, tortoise, this is the worst possible time for a snooze, it runs counter to the entire lesson we're trying to impart here!!'

there, that feels better. anyway, his endless similes are actually making me insane, but i still enjoy the show on weeks where he has a particularly interesting subject.

he's covering worthwhile news topics that don't get much coverage elsewhere and the "jon oliver effect" appears to have actual impact so i can forgive occasional (read: repetitive) hackneyed set up / payoff in his delivery

yah the john oliver effect is real.. about as viral as hpv at a yale frat party.. no, gavin, you cannot get rid of your warts with vinegar and a skull and bones ceremony. no, gavin!

he overuses that comic device alright. its still the best show on tv right now though and i certainly prefer him to jon stewart who i always found unwatchable.

don't forget the "which is funny, considering (A) looks like a beach ball with mustard smeared on it" or whatever

Oliver's bag of tricks isn't a very deep bag, yet I like him anyway.

the bag shows up better without Zaltzman's bag in contrast - but then it could be the choice of a head writer, not of Oliver anyway

I said GOOD DAY SIR!

And guess what: This isn't even John Oliver's bag of tricks. I showed you someone else's bag of tricks and you didn't even notice.

ha, yes!

I really hope it's Oliver's bag of tricks, because he so often laughs at his own jokes that I would hope he's just happy because he loves that kind of humor, rather than because he thinks he's some awesome joke-teller or something. Also, I do like most of the running jokes, though at times it seems they time his political rants and put in a joke at exactly the point it becomes boring, rather than where there was actually a good opportunity to say something funny.

I think you're right on that - they strive too hard to keep the viewer's attention - but I can't blame them too much for that, given the wonkness/boredom of a lot of the topics he covers

And guess what: This isn't even John Oliver's bag of tricks. I showed you someone else's bag of tricks and you didn't even notice.

Actual irl lolz at this.

x-post: Yeah, I'm fine with it also. Even when it isn't fun at all, it allows me to breathe. I actually really really like the show, and his stuff with the Church of Perpetual Exemption, though obviously inspired by Colbert's Super PAC, has been really funny.

never forget that, as great as the Colbert Report was, they would spend hours on stuff like air guitar battles against guys from the Decembrists

I'm sure that scenario makes up about .01% of the entirety of the Colbert Report.

never forget that, as great as the Colbert Report was,

or, wasn't,

Colbert had an unbelievable amount of shit material, comes with the territory of doing four shows a week for so many years. On the whole he was great though

that's kind of what I meant about Oliver--I don't get hung up on slight failures or annoying tics as long as he produces some very good material regularly

just watched the Sex Ed one from a few weeks ago, pretty funny

Reddit turns on Oliver:

https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/3mox89/last_week_tonight_with_john_oliver_migrants_and/

i don't think i care what reddit thinks tbh

Didn't mean to suggest it mattered what "reddit" thinks, more pointing to the individual arguments in the thread for possible discussion.

Very sad the Bugle is on hiatus during the Pig Mouthfucking story.

he covered it on the last episode, didn't he?

yeah, i'm not gonna google that.

yeah, he covered it, but the Bugle would have dedicated 4 episodes to it

just don't like Oliver as much w/o Andy

hahaha, wow, i'm woefully ignorant here. i didn't realize john oliver had a podcast called The Bugle. you might ask, "didn't you wonder what the title of this thread was referencing?", to which i would say "i dunno, i guess i assumed fans of john oliver were called Buglers and i didn't really think about it all too much"

I would have loved Oliver to have Andy as a special correspondent for Cameron Pigfucking

I resubscribed to the Bugle's feed just in case there was a pigfucking special edition.

i love quartz

so...The Bugle must be dead. Not even an episode during the LWT hiatus.

They're planning on coming back as a monthly this year. Or crossing their fingers and wishing, maybe.

i've ridden hard for this show as culture positive but man the last two weeks sure were unfunny.
they kinda need a writer room shakeup and a moratorium on the same joke they make eight times per episode

or not so much "unfunny" as "boring"

Agreed. Also John really needs to think of at least one other way to deliver a joke.

NO, forks, NO. You will NOT tell that writers room how to write a joke. You will NOT. BAD Forks. BAD.

lol

id forgotten this guy i hate exists

is samantha bee's prog any good? keep meaning to check it out

Yes, it is. I like JO but she really makes his shtick seem extra tired/weak-kneed.

yeah Sam is killing it

Sam is amazing.

I do like this show but yeah last two weeks have been pretty boring

The Detour (Samantha Bee / Jason Jones' TBS sitcom) is also great btw!

Oh man, totally forgot about the Detour, must check it out.

Looks like Oliver is leaving the Bugle and Andy continuing with a rotating set of co-hosts (including Wyatt Cenac)

John Oliver Buys https://consumerist.com/2016/06/06/john-oliver-buys-15m-in-medical-debt-then-forgives-it/5M In Medical Debt, Then Forgives It

Oops, I mean: John Oliver Buys https://consumerist.com/2016/06/06/john-oliver-buys-15m-in-medical-debt-then-forgives-it/5M In Medical Debt, Then Forgives It

le sigh

My dvr cut off the episode before it got to the big finale, so I had no idea that's what happened!

$15M in debt for a cost of $60K. Every tv show on every network with the budget should be doing this today and weekly from now on. You wanna make people watch tv again? Buy up their debt and forgive it!

i wish this show was funny. or at least not so exhausting to get through. they seem good for the culture!

the occupy wallstreet people would do this - buy up foreclosed peoples' debt for pennies and write it off, just hand them the deeds.

also, the prog, the main segment anyway, is on facebook video if you want to see the end - https://www.facebook.com/LastWeekTonight/videos

(which is handy because the official youtube version is always region blocked but facebook isn't)

$15M in debt for a cost of $60K. Every tv show on every network with the budget should be doing this today and weekly from now on. You wanna make people watch tv again? Buy up their debt and forgive it!

― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever)

this would be hilarious to watch because bad debt would immediately skyrocket in value, as the only reason it's so cheap right now is that nobody wants it. you'd have bidding wars between fallon's people and colbert's people for bad debt.

wish i could just buy my own old debt and forgive myself!

pretty good segment imo
i think they've been getting better, a little less reliance on their old joke formulas, and good to see them continue to focus on weird undiscuused bugaboos like this

the occupy wallstreet people would do this - buy up foreclosed peoples' debt for pennies and write it off, just hand them the deeds.

At the last minute Wilson told us LWT did not want to associate themselves with the work of the Rolling Jubilee due to its roots in Occupy Wall Street. Instead John Oliver framed the debt buy as his idea: a giveaway to compete with Oprah. The lead researcher who worked on this segment invoked the cover of journalism to justify distancing themselves from our project.

uff. that is disappointing.

on the plus side, anyone here CAN buy up old debt through Rolling Jubilee right now!
http://rollingjubilee.org/

Or not! But you _can_ support the Debt Collective which is lobbying for systemic overhaul of the system.
https://debtcollective.org/

What I don't get is that the debt he bought was beyond statute which would mean it's not recoverable, doesn't it? (And explains why it was so cheap) Or was the point that some dodgy debt collectors would still bully people into paying it? Possible through uncontested court cases?

Correct. And they could use state support to garnish wages, be legally entitled to harass people even though they were not legally bound to pay the dept, and so on...

That was the point the sneering guy at the conference was making: the debt collection company is legally required to say in their letter that the debt is beyond statute, but he reckons that their targets don't or can't read those letters properly, so they'd still be scared enough to pay up in enough cases to make it worthwhile.

ah, ok, i was watching at work and obviously missed some details.

americans, eh?

This joke has to have been made re the Al Smith dinner: 'Henry Kissinger thought Trump bombed horrifically, and Henry Kissinger is pretty much the world's leading authority on horrific bombings'

If not, then good job, LWT writers.

The Bugle is back, with American comedian/podcaster Hari Kondabolu being the recipient of Andy's puns from the other side of the pond:

https://soundcloud.com/the-bugle/bugle-4001-tony-the-tiger-rip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlHo-F1z_aw

kinda sums up the general media's complicity in this shitshow

hah yeah that clip was on his show last week. I know this whole thing is great for the comedy shows but I do believe John when he says he'd so much rather be talking about anything else.

I don't think you can blame Oliver or the media - we (almost) all thought it was a hahaomgtheynominatedhimWIN situation right up until 6pm CST Tuesday.

and for all the Monday morning quarterbacking about not seeing the possibility and understanding how a populist ideologue playing on fears could work or how people could ignore bad behavior it is still almost impossible to understand how it didn't bother 48 million people that he was a reality TV star and braggart. If you ran into a guy at the bar who couldn't go two sentences without talking about how amazing he is, you'd hate him. That's universal! No one likes or respects that guy.

You'd think so, but there are people who dig that kind of personality

we (almost) all thought it was a hahaomgtheynominatedhimWIN situation right up until 6pm CST Tuesday

well many people who lived in that bubble are still in it. it was a very well-constructed bubble.

Yeah that's the part that gets me too. Trump has always been about as well-liked as a Kardashian. He's a massive dick and proud of it. He was famous but I don't think you would ever want to meet him. When Schwarzenegger won governor I understood it, people love him for reasons they know has nothing to do with his ability to be a politician, but they wanted to give him a chance because of it. Who the hell loves Donald Trump? His merchandise sucks. He's a walking punchline.

I mean, I feel guilty in all this too. I shared the hell out of those Vic Berger videos where he rips Jeb apart and commented stuff like "Trump is such a savage, haha". I mean, I had no idea either. We all assumed he was going to drop out as soon as he got bored.

I never assumed that, but I figured he wouldn't be taken seriously.

Anyone know why the latest episode is being geoblocked?

they built a firewall, and cisco is gonna pay for it!

Shame that the series has come to an end. Hope the next series will happen and nothing is done to prevent satirical shows from happening under the new presidency.
Just discovered a lot less people seem to be torrenting Full Frontal this week. Would hope there would be even more of an appettite for this kind of show after the electi8on results.

Anyone know why the latest episode is being geoblocked?

― Manitobiloba (Kim)

he got sick of all the british people mercilessly making fun of him?

It's been geoblocked for about ten months from here. I assume for the most likely and obvious reason.

Not on Facebook. It's been fine there, until Sunday.

It's on YouTube. Although the one I watched claimed to be hd but was obviously done using a phone pointed at a TV.

(Here = UK)

It's usually worth searching out on YouTube for the bits that they don't put on Facebook, which is usually everything but the one main 'article'

Ah, first comment on Facebook says that last week's was posted using YouTube instead of Facebook because of some special promotion. And looking at it the Facebook post is just a link to YouTube, whereas previous week's are hosted on Facebook.

Did those fake commercials air during Morning Joe this morning?

that handshake montage was one of the laziest, least funny things i have ever seen

John Oliver is painfully unfunny IMO

did they steal those sound effects from Dave Coulier

I do wonder if he's always shaken hands this ineptly or if it's another signal of his rapidly decaying motor faculties. honestly probably the latter, which is less funny but more terrifying.

deport john oliver
deport trevor noah

I'm glad Oliver's back, I was missing these very perceptive takes on the quality of his show.

I still like the show's relative "deep dive" approach to specific topics but I've liked it less and less as it's increasingly become just one long Trump piece (a fatigue Oliver has himself expressed tbf)

it would be a bit odd for him to tackle anything else right now, understandably

Trump actually makes those deep dives even more vital considering how scattershot this administration has already been. 30 minutes on any one of the many topics that gets buried every day under the blizzard of bullshit could be essential.

I will admit it was really fucking stupid to act like the worst thing about Puzder is that his companies make commercials with models eating greasy cheeseburgers. and now it seems as though Congress has picked up the scent:

https://twitter.com/crushingbort/status/831945473669869568

Oliver's show seems easily distracted. one minute he's cowering under the desk in existential fear, the next introducing a wacky sound effects handshake montage like a snobby Jimmy Fallon.

maybe because i only watch the monologues posted online and not the full show, i'm not really sick of of schtick yet

I generally like the show but it often comes off like a really long Gawker article, with jokes that seem like they would've worked better printed rather than delivered through JO's rushed cadence.

I've been really impressed with John Oliver this season so far. He's been able to address the ongoing fuckery without always focusing on Trump himself, and I've found the slight change in perspective a salve of sorts. And his stuff about the zebras this week made me laugh harder than I have in months.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAMQHyjr4xA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzheZlnz9TU

yeah the zebras thing was funny. It reminde me of something Andy and he would go on about for 15 minutes on the old Bugle.

I can barely watch this show though, since it's so much less funny than the podcast was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg5Ui6JwoIs

what a great way to come down from the mueller report

Feel like he's been on a really good run lately, I really liked the WWE episode.

yeah, that was great. very well-timed too

i had mostly written this show off but been watching the youtubes lately and he seems improved

Aw, I feel like he never had a dip in quality.

I really appreciate that they use this platform to do some actual useful journalism, I find the main segments really informative (and usually depressing)

yeah I think the show actually kinda works best when its not trying to be funny

I still can't look at this thread and see "hello, burgers!" and not get hungry.

okay, i like john oliver again
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN8bJb8biZU

that ending was WONDERFUL

excellent.

We’ve gotten back into watching him again. It’s not as depressing as it was during the first two years of Trump.

my 15 yo kid- “cool, that’s the guy from _the love guru_, dick something-something, i like him. he made a live-action family guy skit.”

me- “it’s john oliver he does a mixture of news analysis and comedy.”

him- “ok boomer” *exits for school eating toast*

me toward closing door- “hey actually i’m not a boOMER!”

John Oliver as Richard "Dick" Pants

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2019 season is nominated in the 2019 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2019 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends January 31

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (4 minimum, 25 maximum, organized by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail by end of day today. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

just watched the most recent ep (the one with no audience that's just in front of a white background) and man is it weird to see this guy do his thing with no audience response whatsoever

i actually found him less annoying doing this for some reason.

the colbert episode without the audience kind of was reminding me of Eric Andre.

I enjoyed that one. but I think Colbert is often better than his material

its definitely odd and kinda fascinating to see these shows that are heavily dependent on audience response (see also: the WWE) just plow forward with the same sort of scripts.

Definitely been enjoying his work during the last month

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf4cea5oObY

phenomenal

Really want to see this but they fucking block it outside of the US and the copies Ive found on YT have evasive edits in play that make it hard to look at.

as ever, crazy condescending with an incoherent thesis, but some interesting information/research and uncovers some new targets for justified outrage, but there's always this feeling from John that "I know how to fix this" and, no. No you don't

Really want to see this but they fucking block it outside of the US and the copies Ive found on YT have evasive edits in play that make it hard to look at.

if I point vpn at France or Netherlands I can usually watch it.

but there's always this feeling from John that "I know how to fix this" and, no. No you don't

???? this sounds like projection

If anything I think one if his trademarks is that he constantly underscores that he often does not have a solution and wishes he does, because he is heartbroken or furious. And barring that, he'll bust out a squirrel suit.

I do like the show but I have reservations. First that he always says things are brilliant or hilarious when I don't find them to be so, Second that I'm used to him being an English person on The Bugle and find his references to American culture strange and disconcerting, I get that he is reading a script but it just sounds wrong. Like the "Drumpf" episode, it isn't a funny joke anyway, and the bit about "the word 'trump' sounds impressive" is annoying because he grew up in the West Midlands in the 80s and I can assure you that the word 'trump' meant "fart" among kids in the West Midlands in the 80s.

drumpf was bad

i think the show's writing has sharpened in the past 1-2 years though, and (possible controp) the jokes have worked better without an audience

I liked how he ended the show by turning it over to the very righteous anger of a black woman protestor. certainly not saying Oliver deserves a medal for that or anything, but it does seem like the opposite of "condescending."

I agree with you Brad on both those claims: the first couple of quarantine eps were rough and awkward but I think it is better when he's not pitching the jokes to the back row

I don't fuck you's and suck my dick's from a talking head as some sort of performative validation of my feelings (or as instruction how to feel). That's what I find condescending

I really don't read him as ever telling you how you should feel, but rather, particularly in episodes like this, that he works from a starting point of trying to focus his sadness and rage and working from a point of empathy. But I don't see condescension in him at all. If I think performative condescension, I think Maher and not Oliver.

If we can’t all come together over saying fuck you to tucker carlson then what do we even have left?

fuck you i won't feel how you tell me

honestly thought the "Drumpf" thing was a parody of Krassenstein shit

i much prefer his show without an audience (even the small one he has). This week's was one of his best.

honestly thought the "Drumpf" thing was a parody of Krassenstein shit

― frogbs, Wednesday, June 10, 2020 9:54 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Didn't it predate Krassensteins? I thought Drumpf was before he was elected president, like "this'll be the thing that ends his candidacy."

could be...I thought the joke was that none of the things that would've killed any other campaign had any effect on him, so the "this'll be the thing that ends his candidacy" thing was sort of a joke onto itself

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_(Last_Week_Tonight)#%22Make_Donald_Drumpf_Again%22

"Drumpf" was before Trump was elected. It was also the first time that show really addressed Donald Trump's campaign, having mostly set aside to talk about other issues at the time.

i agree about his quarantine episodes being better, and i think part of it is that it eliminates my least favorite part of the show: when it all develops into a big stage production at the end and there's music and props and costumes and fireworks etc

That was one of many reasons I tuned out for sure

The Police segment proves he's much more tolerable when he tones down the shtick by 75% or so

for as much as i complain about john oliver, i usually end up watching almost all the episodes each season.

Casting the Drumpf thing as a parody of tryhard #resistance shit is revisionism

that segment was tryhard without all that shit tbh
that said i think Oliver is far more good than bad, especially his work lately

idk y'all are probably right. maybe I just don't get British humor

that said yes the latest episode was very good and I think he works better now without the audience, unlike the other late night shows which just don't really work anymore

the facial recognition episode was terrifying. particularly the bit where it was able to find a 30-something news anchor's teenage photo

I've told this story in another thread but I was pretty alarmed when Facebook tried to tag me in someone's photo from the work Christmas party, despite the fact that A) I'm way in the background and B) we have no mutual friends. my 'hope' was that it's just using location data but even still that seems pretty questionable

i got locked out of facebook the other week and they 'needed' my phone number and a non-blurry photograph in order to 'verify my account'. i assume this was for stuff like the above.

(they should have my number because i had the app installed a few years ago. but they probably didn't have a photo, at least not one where i've been tagged)

my friend was in New Orleans for her 40th bday and kissed some random dude. that was the only contact they ever had. 5 years later FB popped up his profile asking if she knew him.

He's been searching for her on there

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2020 season is nominated in the 2020 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2020 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 29, 2021

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

don't think a single American TV journalist summed up the Israeli/Palestinian conflict better than John Oliver last night

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2021 season is nominated in the ILX TV poll, with voting ending this weekend:

ILX's Best Television of 2021 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 31, 2022

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

the episode last week on police interrogations was really good. actually brought back a memory of being 13 and getting "busted" for 2 counts of shoplifting even though I didn't steal anything the first time, and wasn't even there the second time. they used all the tactics in this episode, the whole "We have you dead to rights here" thing, the "I'm just trying to help you but I can't if you're gonna lie to me" line, the "how can you be sure you didn't block it out of your memory" argument, using my "confession" even though a minute later I said "no, I didn't do it, I want to see the video" (what do you know, they didn't have it, but if I wanted to challenge it they were going to slap on another charge of "lying to a police officer"), fucking wild to see it all laid out like this. nobody believed me that I didn't do it! my parents didn't trust me for months after that! I thought I was going insane!!

Racist idiots next door called teh police n me for trying to get them to leave a local paper I have delivered alone. I think that woman is a headcase. I 'd had the husband standing outside my door threatening me then 20 minutes later a cop is knocking on my door.
So have always wondered what their required result was. I think they are beyond belief. His behaviour has left a lot to be desired at other time.s
So I've had that running through my head when I watch things like that.
Am hearing that the Texas Death Row inmate who was interrogated when she was laready in extreme stress from her daughter dying mentioned as having a support/protest campaign talked about on a few podcasts I've heard thsi week. Think its teh same one.

& the night these idiots were trying that on with me I was actually trying to take part in a Human Rights campaign for First nations people in Canada. Unbelievable. White privileged morons.

those sketches they do at the end of episodes are kinda hit & miss but the Korean Subway drama had me laughing nonstop. I would totally watch that series.

that sort of episode is the show at its best, tackling the sort of questions that are on the back of everyone's mind but never get any "real" news coverage. I live in a town of 55,000 and we have 6 Subways. one of them is literally less than a quarter mile away from another. nobody is ever at any of them.

agreed, good topic selection and ending skit. almost unbelievable that the real thing exists

credit for incorporating it into the plot though, unlike this scene they showed from an actual #1 US TV show which still feels utterly unreal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQYwFND7rHE

lol we watched Happy Gilmore with my son this weekend. I hadn't seen it probably since it came out on VHS and had totally forgotten that it was also a 92 minute Subway commercial.

fun gimmick last week they did one episode about HOAs and then another for anyone under 35 (who will never own a house) about Chuck E Cheese. no surprise but the Chuck E Cheese episode was a lot funnier

yeah, it was... though i kinda wish it had a better point to make me sit through the 30 minutes of that. At least the HOA one had some coherent point to it

Oh my god I was wondering what was up with that billboard!! That’s a quarter mile away from where I used to live!

lol!!

first two eps this season have been solid, can't believe I hadn't heard of "pig butchering" before, I get those texts all the time and even respond to them sometimes. big yikes when it's revealed who's actually sending them though