#seriously debating tagging zell miller in case anyone has that snl clip

[lastweeksshirttonight]

Hey uh remember when I did retrospectives of Last Week Tonight episodes? Let's bring it back to 140.

Last Lee Tonight (wherein I'm definitely showing United Passions at my next bad movie night) Season One, Episode Six

(original air date: 6/8/2014) Major topics covered: FIFA, Bashar al-Assad's incredible iTunes library

"And speaking of Germans losing things, it was the 70th anniversary of D-Day this week."

It's really nice to throw this show back on again, on a note unrelated to the purpose of this project. I don't talk much about myself but it's been a rough few months with work scheduling, my chronic illnesses, and my mental health. For every "I'm taking a very spontaneous and ill-thought-out trip to New York to see John Oliver WOOO!" moment, there's been at least five "why can't I catch a break"s. When I'm not being beaten down by the collective forces of capitalism, I genuinely haven't been watching much John at all, mainly in an effort to play the large backlog of video games and read the large pile of books lying around my house. I've been moderately successful there (hey y'all should give Cassette Beasts a go, it's delightful), but there's nothing like going back home, so to speak. (I hesitate to call LWT a comfort show for me, given that it's basically A Record of the Decline of the United States in Real Time, but it kinda serves that function to some degree. I am a psychopath.)

Where we last left off in... May, Jesus Christ, I'm so bad at scheduling and writing and content creation - when we last left off in May at Episode 5, things were finally starting to coalesce into the modern LWT experience. We had our first viral segment on Net Neutrality, the first time a segment was uploaded in full to the LWT YouTube, and an opening news roundup that was starting to feel more thoughtful and themed. This episode continues that theme and gives us our second big viral topic.

There is a variant on the desk-slapping here, where John doesn't do it to open the show, but does a milder version of it to get the audience to shut up so he can move on with doing the show. One of my favorite things about him is his constant desire to barrel through clapping or any audience praise of anything he's done at a given moment in time and this opener is a pretty good example of that.

We open on John calling the week disappointing because California Chrome, a horse competing for the Triple Crown, did not win the Triple Crown. You can tell this is an early episode of LWT because there is no prerequisite horse-fucking/bestiality joke, just John angrily saying "fuck that horse" about Tonalist, the horse that defeated California Chrome. All of these horses sound like indie bands from my college years. I feel like Tonalist opened when I saw MGMT live.

We then move into German Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. This gives John an opportunity to plumb one of his favorite comedic depths, making fun of the musicality, smoothness, and romanticism of the German language. A German man used his lifeline to call Chancellor Merkle, who, thankfully, did not answer, as she was busy running Germany.

This transitions into China hiding the events of Tiananmen Square from their populace, including by censoring the Internet.

Attempts by protestors to use different trending words - and to put facts about Tiananmen Square in a sex tape - to get around that were also clamped down on, leading to this absolutely glorious screenshot of John's hypothetical romance novel:

I feel like someone on Reddit probably wrote When Spring Turns to Summer recently.

We also learn that Friends is incredibly popular with Chinese youth. I'm not really shocked by this, Friends has a weird international reach. I know multiple Korean idols who learned English partially through watching Friends. The fact that there's a Chinese replica of Central Perk? That's wild. The show edits a Friends clip to include historical facts about the massacre, and then we move to our central story.

I'm a big fan of whenever John talks about FIFA and football in general. Recently in one of her "posts relevant to my interests", @tellthemeerkatsitsfine noted that there's a strain with John and his contemporaries with them being nerds who really wanted to be jocks, and I think that dichotomy really helps John come off credibly when he talks about the deep-rooted corruption in this particular organization. The sport is something that is literally rooted into him, hardwired as something he deeply cares about... but there's the rest of it to consider.

In my opinion, someone who deeply loves something can really be the best at describing everything wrong with it. You don't really find the grime if you're only on the surface of something. I know that critical observation of a fandom while in said fandom is in short supply these days, but I wish it was more common.

Anyways. I think FIFA's corruption and grotesqueries are pretty known in 2023, but at the time, knowledge of their fuckery wasn't as widespread. Socially, we've definitely spoken a lot more about the cost-benefit analysis of the Olympics and taxpayer-funded stadiums, which is comparative to John's opening about the issues with FIFA and claims that World Cups bring money to the areas hosting them. (Not true!) Other items I'd completely forgotten about, like FIFA Court and their boardroom looking like something out of Dr. Strangelove.

The "And Now This" is "Chris Matthews Reminds Everyone Who He Used to Work For". (Answer: Tip O'Neill.) My abiding memory of Chris Matthews is Zell Miller accusing him of beating a woman and challenging him to a duel at the 2004 Republican National Convention.

SNL had a pretty great sketch of this where Will Forte played Miller that I can't find right now. PISTOLS AT DAAAAAAAAWN MATTHEWS!!!!

The final segment is on Bashar al-Assad's campaign of terror against Syria, rigged electioneering, and chemical warfare. More importantly, al-Assad's life history and iTunes library are discussed.

This was also the subject of the classic Bugle episode 187, which has a chance to go far more in depth about his favorite music, like "Sexy and I Know It". (Andy Zaltzman describing Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes as a doubles tennis group is one of my favorite Bugle moments of all time incidentally.)

Right Said Fred coming out to perform an anti-Assad version of "I'm Too Sexy" gives us the first time John has had a celebrity come out basically to troll one single person, and thus almost the cornerstones of modern LWT have been established. Eagerly awaiting the first bestiality joke. Also, really love the changed lyrics, they put a hell of a lot of effort into this one. I wanna see Right Said Fred live now.

Random notes:

Lee will continue sexualizing one (1) older man damn it: light blue and dark blue checked shirt, black tie, and black jacket? I know I've said red is John's color but light blue is a very close second, 10/10

I feel like I made up for not doing these for two months by writing about five year's worth of unnecessary analysis of this damn episode. Hopefully you enjoyed it!

It was amazing seeing an ESPN ad for something not handegg-related. -groan-

LWT YouTube is still a bit confused, as we did get the two major topics as their own videos... and then 1 minute of the FIFA section as its own minisode. I really would love to know the logic behind why there specific jokes were isolated like this in the beginning of the show's airing.

My sausage, if anyone cares, is the Korean idol industry. It's an absolute cataclysmic nightmare and yet there's a lot there personally that changed me and a lot that I love out of it. It's complicated. Fuck SM Entertainment.

A reminder that John's LMFAO fandom has endured for a decade longer than the band itself lasted: