Approximately half of late-night TV was off this week, which means Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, and Taylor Tomlinson were all spared from having to feign shock and dismay over the vandalism of Teslas. On multiple shows this week, hosts started a monologue segment about the … let’s call them “direct actions” at Tesla dealerships this week, which the audience applauded uproariously. Then the hosts had to do a legally obligated “Hey now, destruction of property isn’t cool, guys” preamble before going in harder on Elon Musk and what the The Daily Show termed his “Nazi cum.”
We saw this same disconnect between what the audience was braying for and what the hosts felt/were allowed to say on network television with the Luigi Mangione story. Sure, legally, NBC can’t condone murder — not with as many cop shows as it has. And destruction of property is also what many in the legal profession are calling “technically a crime.” But if one believes America is being taken over by fascists, then one will eventually have to endorse the crime of resisting fascism. It’s something late-night hosts of the ’60s and ’70s didn’t have to contend with, since they weren’t really trying to be anything other than the Establishment. Johnny Carson never had to contend with an audience whoo-ing the burning of draft cards. All these hosts (and their legal departments) will have to find the line they’re willing to walk. Or they can retreat into apolitical Carsonland; that is an option, too. Now for the funniest bits on late night this week.
5.
John Oliver’s “Screw the Audience” Joke
There’s a name for a joke based on misdirection, which I believe originated in The Simpsons fandom: a screw-the-audience joke. They were big in the David Mirkin era of the show (seasons five and six) and involve setting up a possibly cliché joke then subverting it at the last second. Last Week Tonight had a great one during its episode about online gambling. It’s at the very beginning of the segment: John Oliver says sports are the second-best activity you can do with balls, after … reading … pornography. It’s a double subversion, in that reading is far more tame than what you’re expecting, and then porno is, frankly, exactly what you were expecting. You dirty bird, you.
4.
The Weirdest Everybody’s Live Call Yet
Everybody’s Live is now, and probably forever shall be, a work in progress. The point is to keep it loosey-goosey, especially because that irks the tighty-whitey John Mulaney. He’s fighting against his nature with this show, and isn’t that one of the big nine plots? During the cruise-ship episode, Mulaney and crew (shout-out Ben Stiller for having the best follow-up questions) spoke to former boat worker Oren, who once stored a dead body in a state room. This was, by far, the best call Everybody’s Live has gotten. More corpse talk in the coming weeks, please. It immediately raises the stakes and keeps us locked the fuck in. And the logistics of death is one of the great subplots, so there’s that.
3.
Katt Williams and Jimmy Fallon Commune
It’s not as freewheeling as Club Shay Shay, but it’s still something. Any time Katt Williams goes on the record, it’s an event. This time, he was on The Tonight Show, explaining that he was nice to an up-and-coming Jimmy Fallon not out of the goodness in his soul but because Fallon had the energy of a guy who was going to rise to the top. Williams told a lot of crazy-yet-true tall tales about himself and explained how golf saved his life. It was a slightly wider-appeal Katt Williams than you’ll get on a podcast, but it’s still Katt.
2.
The Daily Show Kills a Bunch of Kids
You have to salute the sheer audacity of this bit between Jordan Klepper and Troy Iwata, which presupposes that being disappointed in Donald Trump is fatal to sick children. Let’s back up: Earlier in the week, Trump said Biden’s pardons weren’t legit because they used something called an autopen. Then he copped to using an autopen to write some bullshit to sick kids. The bit on TDS, then, suggests that the children are so heartbroken that Trump didn’t personally sign their “hang in there, kid” letters that they dropped dead. A whole hospital’s worth. One dead kid is a tragedy; an entire hospital’s worth is comedy gold.
1.
Selena and Benny Aren’t Big on Pop Culture
Every moment of this True Confessions segment on The Tonight Show is absurd and delightful. The premise of the segment is this: A celeb says a statement, and their famous acquaintances have to suss out whether that statement is a truth or a lie. The whole premise falls apart if the players are engaged to be wed and hopefully know quite a lot about each other. Benny Blanco immediately clocks that Selena Gomez is lying, and she doesn’t care enough to try and front. Then it’s Fallon’s turn to talk, and it’s truly delightful how little Belena know about anything. Benny doesn’t know who Millie Bobby Brown is, nobody knows she got married, and Selena doesn’t know about Fallon’s stand-up past. “Do you like the guitar?” she asks. “Are you known for that?” Asking the decade-plus host of The Tonight Show what they’re known for? An incredible boss move. You’ve always got to keep an eye out for Selener.
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