6.5/10. Look, I love John Oliver's commentary on Donald Trump as much as the next guy, and lord knows that Trump keeps generating material, but at some point it becomes hard to wring the comedy from it and not just be exhausted and dismayed by it, and I think I've hit that point. Oliver's doing a yeoman's job with the material, but it's just too much at some point.
The same, more or less, goes for Oliver's look at Jill Stein and Gary Johnson. In some ways, I think it's an important public service given the groups that I surmise make up his target demographics, and I appreciate the thesis of the piece -- that there are no perfect candidates out there and each vote you cast involves a certain amount of nose-holding, but pointing out the flaws in the two third party candidates felt, to some degree, like hitting easy targets. The closing message of the piece kind of saves it, but there's a certain amount of a "look at this asshole" tone in the segment that I wish Oliver would leave for purity test partisans like Samantha Bee.
That said, the interstitial segments about the infinite patience and internal workings of the mind of the man who runs CSPAN's call-in show was sublime, and the sort of off-the-wall but enjoyable stuff this show does better than any other. Overall, this one was a step behind usual offerings, but it's LWT, so there's almost always still something worth watching.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2016-10-18T02:50:55Z
6.5/10. Look, I love John Oliver's commentary on Donald Trump as much as the next guy, and lord knows that Trump keeps generating material, but at some point it becomes hard to wring the comedy from it and not just be exhausted and dismayed by it, and I think I've hit that point. Oliver's doing a yeoman's job with the material, but it's just too much at some point.
The same, more or less, goes for Oliver's look at Jill Stein and Gary Johnson. In some ways, I think it's an important public service given the groups that I surmise make up his target demographics, and I appreciate the thesis of the piece -- that there are no perfect candidates out there and each vote you cast involves a certain amount of nose-holding, but pointing out the flaws in the two third party candidates felt, to some degree, like hitting easy targets. The closing message of the piece kind of saves it, but there's a certain amount of a "look at this asshole" tone in the segment that I wish Oliver would leave for purity test partisans like Samantha Bee.
That said, the interstitial segments about the infinite patience and internal workings of the mind of the man who runs CSPAN's call-in show was sublime, and the sort of off-the-wall but enjoyable stuff this show does better than any other. Overall, this one was a step behind usual offerings, but it's LWT, so there's almost always still something worth watching.