John Oliver and the team at Last Week Tonight has a solid solution for at least one crisis in this country that we can manage.
FYI, be on the lookout for which camp is mentioned when there’s a camp joke since Last Week Tonight segments have their own so-called ‘easter eggs’.
While it’s not part of the long segment that’s normally posted to the Last Week Tonight YouTube channel, it’s a rare moment in TV where a well spoken, intelligent, respected voice in media and comedy gets to unleash as much justified, uncensored fury as he can muster.
Most TV programs, when addressing tragedies, do so by a moment of silence or a simple, short message of support.
John Oliver, however, decided to go much a different route thanks to HBO’s anything goes M.O. Let’s just say that during the opening of the show, Oliver taps into that NSFW voice in us all.
There’s a clip (that might get taken down) here as well as a transcript on Deadline.
Like Jon Stewart before him, John Oliver has to now explain to the rest of media that he is a comedian over anything else.
While most political ads that trash the opposition often seem juvenile, John Oliver and Last Week Tonight put a damning, well-documented case against incumbent Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper.
Oliver chose the Canadian election, which happens today, for his main segment on Last Week Tonight last night and really pinpointed why Harper shouldn’t be in office anymore.
Apparently, doing so during an election in Canada is against Canadian law and Oliver could face a moderately hefty fine or even jail time.
Yet, John Oliver pushed on anyway and had the help of one of Canada’s biggest household names, Mike Myers.
As a crowd as a live comedy show might say in response, “How bad is the Syrian Refugee Crisis?”
Let the jokes of John Oliver and Last Week Tonight clue you in as their main segment focuses on the crisis as well as many European countries mishandling of it and using soap operas to put a nice hopeful bow on the whole piece.
Our church is shutting down. Please do not send any further donations. For more information visit http://t.co/2OHLkgd7i3.
Well, we guess some people, probably those being ripped off by televangelists, didn’t appreciate John Oliver’s pointed report on how they’re being ripped off.
Thus, actions were taken which resulted in John Oliver posting this letter at OurLadyofPerpetualExemption.com:
It is I, Megareverend and C.E.O. of Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption Church, Pastor John Oliver.
We thank you for all your kind donations, but I’m sorry to report that we have closed down the church. And let me take a moment to explain why – it’s certainly not because we have to.
We have still, miraculously, not broken any laws by promising you untold riches in return for sending us money. We’re also not closing down because you all kept sending us actual seeds, even though we explicitly told you not to. We’re closing because multiple people sent us sperm through the mail. And when someone sends you jizz through the mail, it’s time to stop whatever you’re doing.
So we are shutting this s**t down. Praise be!
P.S. All previous monetary donations have been forwarded to Doctors Without Borders. We did not send the sperm.
While it’s unfortunate that this great bit of satire got shut down, we’d like to think Oliver and his team at Last Week Tonight will get onto something even way better than Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption very soon.
Last Week Tonight taking two weeks off is as close to a summer break as many adults will get and, honestly, it’s not nearly as fun as the summer breaks from childhood.
Luckily, that’s all over and John Oliver has returned with his routine great insight, sharp, left-field jokes, and a perfectly crafted sketch at the end to hammer his point home.
So, Last Week Tonight 101 is back in session and today’s segment/lesson is about public defenders and how thinly spread they are nowadays.
As summer vacation draws to a close, John Oliver is going to leave no child behind by giving them a heads up on what to expect when returning to school this year.
The good majority of you that have since passed high school awhile ago will probably agree that Oliver’s tips cover a lot of ground very quickly.
John Oliver and the Last Week Tonight team had the week off and thus left a web exclusive to tide us over their break.
In the segment, Oliver channels Orson Welles’ F for Fake in presenting historical lies and that’s all we’ll say and just let you watch and enjoy the rest.
Now that the bans on gay marriage have been overturned nationwide, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver turned their focus to the other bastions of discrimination that the keep the LGBT people of the country from having their full fledged civil rights.
The more that Oliver and his team keep this sort of thing up, the more likely that there could be some sort of class in high school or college where someone just turns on episodes of Last Week Tonight and the class just watches it.
As Stephen Colbert once showed how unregulated political action committees can be in raising money for their own agenda with the Colbert Super PAC, John Oliver is now showing how unregulated televangelists are with raising money with vague promises of spiritual fulfillment that ultimately end up serving their own agenda.
In his main segment on Last Week Tonight, Oliver ran down the abuses of such televangelists, similar to the sale of indulgences by corrupt church officials hundreds of years ago, that are given so many passes by the IRS for tax-free money often used to buy jets.
After that, Oliver announced the creation of his own church, Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption, which he has made sure, through plenty of legal counsel, is legally a religion.
You can actually donate to Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption by sending money in the mail to:
Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption
P.O. Box 1954
New York, New York 10113
In the televangelist spirit, you can call 1-800-844-7475 to hear a “nice” message where Oliver asks again for money.
Even though it’s been over a decade since Girl Next Door, a popular film that had criticism of our education system for not having up-to-date sex education, came out, many sex ed programs in schools around the country are still very much behind the times.
Luckily, John Oliver and the team at Last Week Tonight (as well as some extra help from Nick Offerman, Kristen Schaal, Laverne Cox, Kumail Nanjiani, Jack McBrayer, Megan Mullally, Aisha Tyler, and Jonathan Banks in an updated sex ed video) have got us all covered.
Watch it all here.
This week, John Oliver pushes forward as the leader in edutainment in taking his main segment at Last Week Tonight to discuss the sheer absurdity of the length of some mandatory minimum prison sentences for crimes where the person was really just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Watch, learn, laugh, and think here.
At this point, it’s a reasonable comparison to make that Last Week Tonight is like Schoolhouse Rock for adults that replaces a catchy song with spot on jokes about Channing Tatum and Donald Trump.
So, with that in mind, here’s your weekly deep, exploratory segment from John Oliver and co. that explores, this time, exactly how much food we’re wasting.
By now, you’re used to long 15-20 min. segments on Last Week Tonight that delve into incredibly thorough detail on a broad very relevant topic.
Well, since every show took the week off for the 4th of July, Last Week Tonight decided to leave us a quick hit, speed round version of the show where John Oliver races through 15 topics with 15 or so corresponding jokes in a minute.
Apparently, John Oliver issued a challenge to Stephen Colbert to do push-ups in dedication to the troops.
Though we’re not sure exactly how that works, it made for this great video of Colbert showing us all how to do a “flawless” 20 push-ups.
In addition to a day being added to the calendar once very four years, there is also a leap second that’s added to also keep us all on the correct time.
While we all know how to kill an entire day, not many of us know how to kill one second, which leaves John Oliver to come up with the perfect solution: johnoliversecstapes.com.
Oliver gave us all further details on last night’s Last Week Tonight.
The big target of Last Week Tonight was the rampant and horrifying nature of online harassment of women from doxxing to outright death and rape threats to revenge porn.
Per usual, Oliver managed to wrap it up with great jokes and a clever thing they shot, which, for this week, is an update of the original AOL ad from 2015′s perspective with the talents of Rob Huebel and Colin Hanks.
Per usual, Oliver put his main segment on Last Week Tonight to good use by talking torture and its real life ineffectiveness. It’s especially timely as an amendment that would effectively put President Obama’s executive order regarding torture into law is up for a vote soon.
Of course, with the a reference to Mel Gibson movies and the use of Dame Helen Mirren’s lovely voice, Oliver makes it quite enjoyable and not at all like his subject matter.
Learn the unnerving truth from last night’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver about how bail really works when you’re up for a trial and what happens to the many people that can’t post bail as well as a sick Crosby, Stills, and Nash joke, awful bail bonds ads, and Last Week Tonight’s own “promo” for a pre-trial service “reality show”.
Jill Soloway’s Transparent is really rolling with the latest set of TV awards.
It got 4 nominations out of six categories that comedies were being considered for the TCA Awards.
Jane The Virgin, Inside Amy Schumer, and Last Week Tonight also continue to be the new favorites when it comes to comedy and TV awards.
The full list of comedy nominees for this year’s TCA Awards are:
Individual Achievement in Comedy
Julia Louis-Dreyfus-Veep
Gina Rodriguez-Jane The Virgin
Amy Schumer-Inside Amy Schumer
Jeffrey Tambor-Transparent
Constance Wu-Fresh Off the Boat
Outstanding Achievement in News and Information
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
and other non-satirical news nominees
Outstanding New Program
Jane the Virgin
Transparent
and other drama nominees
Outstanding Achievement in Comedy
The Big Bang Theory
Inside Amy Schumer
Jane the Virgin
Transparent
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Heritage Award
Friends
Late Show/Late Night with David Letterman
and other drama nominees
Program of the Year
Transparent
and other drama nominees
Get the full list of nominees here and note that winners will be announced on Aug. 8th.
Last year, John Oliver did a great takedown on Last Week Tonight of FIFA and its handling of the most recent World Cup as well as its history of corruption over the last several years.
As there arrests of several high ranking officials at FIFA by the U.S. and the re-election of FIFA President Sep Blatter, now on his fifth term, just came about only a few days ago, you knew that Oliver and his team were going to say something about it.
Of course, Oliver pulled no punches and even promised a stunt with FIFA sponsors to urge Blatter’s removal from office.
Given the trend of metaphor/simile jokes on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, there are plenty of jokes and their accompanying graphics that get cut.
Oliver and company joined in with the Memorial Day Weekend spirit by taking a break, but offered to share some of the images that got cut, sans context, in place of an episode.
Watch, enjoy, and make your own jokes to go with the ridiculous graphics the Last Week Tonight team comes up with.
Here’s one of the best parts of your balanced weekly TV diet.
Last night’s Last Week Tonight closely examined standardized testing in America and found, probably much to the righteous delight of many, that there are several major flaws in the system. While the goal is to assess the quality of teachers as well as bring students nationwide to a higher education level, Oliver and his team find that the inner workings of the current system fall short of the mark.
Watch, laugh, and learn here.
Now that The Deep Webbys are taken care of, you move on back to normal society with the winners of this year’s Webby Awards.
Chelsea Peretti, Ellie Kemper, Tituss Burgess, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Funny or Die, Cracked.com, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, If Google Was a Guy, Kid President, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Kids React, Too Many Cooks, Weird Al Yankovic, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Honest Trailers, Epic Rap Battle, Grumpy Cat, Last Week Tonight, and The Onion will all receive the Internet’s high honor of a Webby Award for their excellence online this year among dozens of categories and hundreds of nominees.
We’re curious if every comedy winner will be part of a bit on the Webby Awards ceremony with Hannibal next month.