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

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.