[7.5/10] Not a bad episode. For the opening news roundup, Oliver didn’t say much about Trump and North Korea that the other late night comedians hadn’t already gotten to by now. The Turkey story was done a little better, if only because of the contrast between his genuine compliment for Spicer taking a measured response to Turkey’s victory only to show Trump stomping all over that complexity as per usual. The interstitial bit featuring a growing number of cable news talking heads, true to form, talking over one another was a very amusing feat of editing.
The main story, about Trump advisors and family members Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, was thought-provoking. A lot of his evidence that Ivanka and Kushner were bad or ineffectual was pretty circumstantial or featured grasping at straws. Still, that worked to Oliver’s advantage when he essentially said that even if you don’t buy that assessment, the point is that as much as we may want to think about the pair as a calming, sobering influence on Donald, the only evidence that they offer that, or anything really, is equally second hand and circumstantial, and that independent of who’s President, that lack of information and lack of qualifications makes their presence less than reassuring, even if their best claim to worth is that they’re not Steve Bannon. I wish Oliver had gone for more substance himself in digging into their backgrounds, but the point about the two as ciphers is valid.
And the closing montage of Bill O’Reilly’s various sexist or hypocritical moments was another amusing précis of his career right from the editing bay.
Overall, I appreciate the show digging into these topics in depth and having a clear thesis, even if it’s peppering that thesis with the unpleasant image of a naked Donald Trump.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-04-25T01:38:10Z
[7.5/10] Not a bad episode. For the opening news roundup, Oliver didn’t say much about Trump and North Korea that the other late night comedians hadn’t already gotten to by now. The Turkey story was done a little better, if only because of the contrast between his genuine compliment for Spicer taking a measured response to Turkey’s victory only to show Trump stomping all over that complexity as per usual. The interstitial bit featuring a growing number of cable news talking heads, true to form, talking over one another was a very amusing feat of editing.
The main story, about Trump advisors and family members Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, was thought-provoking. A lot of his evidence that Ivanka and Kushner were bad or ineffectual was pretty circumstantial or featured grasping at straws. Still, that worked to Oliver’s advantage when he essentially said that even if you don’t buy that assessment, the point is that as much as we may want to think about the pair as a calming, sobering influence on Donald, the only evidence that they offer that, or anything really, is equally second hand and circumstantial, and that independent of who’s President, that lack of information and lack of qualifications makes their presence less than reassuring, even if their best claim to worth is that they’re not Steve Bannon. I wish Oliver had gone for more substance himself in digging into their backgrounds, but the point about the two as ciphers is valid.
And the closing montage of Bill O’Reilly’s various sexist or hypocritical moments was another amusing précis of his career right from the editing bay.
Overall, I appreciate the show digging into these topics in depth and having a clear thesis, even if it’s peppering that thesis with the unpleasant image of a naked Donald Trump.