4x05 American Health Care Act

[6.8/10] It's not like this was a bad episode, but here's the thing. One of the things I've always liked about LWT is that Oliver feels like an honest broker. Sure, he has a certain slant, and always has, but it felt like he was spotlighting things that received too little attention to have political spin, or that he'd wade into more mainstream politics but try to approach the topics even-handedly.

That hasn't really been the case lately. Don't get me wrong, I can 100% understand not being able to keep your journalistic objectivity when you're talking about Donald Trump and the things happening in his wake, but it makes Last Week Tonight a more run of the mill program to me, just part and parcel with the scores of shows out there pointing to how terrible this stuff is with an admittedly amusing brand of snark. Sure, when Oliver talks about the new Republican health care plan, he's more informative about what's in it than most, but it comes off like doing the same thing everyone else is doing.

The best thing to say is that he does find a unique angle on it at the end, essentially saying that whatever you think of the bill, it's not the bill Trump promised, and it's likely to be the best he can do. But even that isn't a sterling or especially novel insight into it. There's some dada-ist glory to the show's "Catheter Cowboy" repeatedly asking Trump is he "gets it" but otherwise it becomes part of the din. And bits like making fun of local news anchors for their responses to International Women's Day or a MadTV level gag reel about Samsung products exploding doesn't do much to distinguish the show either.

Again, it's not bad. It's all sound enough and true enough and funny enough, but for a while there, it felt like Oliver had brought a different tack and a different energy to the political comedy show, and it's starting to feel like everything else.