{"id":14358,"date":"2014-05-03T21:35:09","date_gmt":"2014-05-03T11:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=14358"},"modified":"2014-05-03T21:35:39","modified_gmt":"2014-05-03T11:35:39","slug":"last-week-tonight-with-john-oliver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=14358","title":{"rendered":"Last Week Tonight With John Oliver"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tagtelevision\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"lastweektonight\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s been a big twelve months in the career of John Oliver.\u00a0 The Daily Show<\/em> regular was a welcome and successful stand-in for host Jon Stewart when he went on sabbatical to shoot a documentary in Iran.\u00a0 For the two months that he had hosting duties, Oliver handled the role with aplomb.\u00a0 Ratings stayed steady and the critics were satisfied that he had the presence and the popularity to anchor his own show.\u00a0 It didn’t take long for that opportunity to come knocking.\u00a0 HBO signed up John Oliver to host a half hour current events comedy show called Last Week Tonight<\/em>.\u00a0 Last week was their pilot episode.<\/p>\n

So how was it?<\/p>\n

Although its still finding its own feet, the show is more or less a weekly version of The Daily Show<\/em> format with a couple of caveats.\u00a0 Being on HBO allows for Oliver to swear uncensored.\u00a0 While this doesn’t really sound like a big deal, I find that Oliver is actually one of those comedians who can really make me laugh with his creatively worded cussing so being able to drop in a few ‘fucks’ and ‘bullshits’ will go a long way.<\/p>\n

The show also isn’t constrained by ad breaks and interviews with celebrities shilling their latest film which gives Oliver the luxury of more time to go into more detail with each segment that he does.\u00a0 Its interesting to see material such as consumer affairs and international elections pop up in the pilot which certainly isn’t typical Daily Show<\/em> fare.<\/p>\n

\"lastweektonight2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ratings not withstanding, I think Oliver should be primed for success with Last Week Tonight <\/em>if the pilot is anything to be judged by.\u00a0 I find Oliver to be consistently funny and engaging on his weekly podcast The Bugle<\/em> and I can’t see why he shouldn’t be able to translate the best aspects of\u00a0The Bugle<\/em> and his routine from The Daily Show <\/em>into Last Week Tonight<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What will be interesting to see as the show evolves is which elements stick and which fall by the wayside.\u00a0 The first episode had an unexpected musical cameo in the form of Lisa Loeb and an interview with an ex-NSA director that could have been lifted almost directly from The Daily Show<\/em>.\u00a0 Although ‘More Daily Show’ is still a probable path to success for the show’s longevity, I’m hopeful that Last Week Tonight<\/em> becomes something more than that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Weekly Show With Jon Oliver or something completely new?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":14362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,4],"tags":[968,1925,1926],"class_list":["post-14358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-tv","tag-hbo","tag-john-oliver","tag-the-daily-show"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14358"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14363,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14358\/revisions\/14363"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}