After John Oliver’s first night hosting, Brett LoGiurato thinks the Daily Show “will be in good hands this summer”:
The John Oliver era started off with a bang, as he was on point in ripping the National Security Agency’s extensive surveillance operations. Oliver said that the NSA is surveilling “vastly more information than even George Orwell wet the bed over,” reassuring his viewers that NSA surveillance only affects people who “make calls or use the Internet.”
Esther Zuckerman likes the timing:
There’s an obviousness outsiderness to Oliver which works brilliantly when he’s commenting on America’s foolishness. Or really, anyone’s foolishness. Note for instance how his accent played a role as he called out Jon Stewart for not lampooning Anthony Weiner back in 2011. Even the way he uses his accent is a joke on us: according to The Guardian’s Oliver Burkeman, “most Americans… hear his distinctively Brummie accent as standard Posh English.” Or, as Kevin Fallon wrote in The Daily Beast, “By merely speaking with a British accent, he comes off as a superior know-it-all explaining American politics to us when, in fact, he’s talking out of his ass. Err … arse.”
But aside from the fact that Oliver gets to call America (and Stewart) out, the NSA scandal also fits into Oliver’s Daily Show oeuvre in other ways. Oliver has a knack for tackling complicated stories that deal with America’s role on an international scale. Surely, he if anyone can lend sensible humor to the hunt for Edward Snowden.
Laura Bennett believes that Oliver’s stint will be exactly what the “increasingly insidery, decreasingly funny Daily Show needs”:
[A]t first glance, Oliver seems like a somewhat surprising choice to take over a show that relies on the host’s highly personal outrage at the American political landscape. But as “The Daily Show” has become increasingly rooted in Stewart’s umbrage, it has also become less funny. So Oliver’s outsiderness might be just what the show needs. … In a sense, Oliver may be set to channel “The Daily Show”’s earliest instincts: the old David v. Goliath attitude that targeted large subjects with small-bore satirical marksmanship and a clear sense of fun. Those were the days when Stewart was animated by scrappy underdog enthusiasm, before he started to feel the weight of his own influence.
Meanwhile, Jaime Weinman takes the opportunity to wonder why the show “eliminated virtually all the recurring bits”:
There’s the perennial “Back in Black” for whenever Lewis Black appears, and more recently John Hodgman’s appearances were titled “You’re Welcome” after they hit on the idea of characterizing him as an entitled, bubble-dwelling rich person (which made his appearances much more consistently funny). But otherwise, almost everything is gone. Even “The Toss” between Stewart and Colbert is gone. Instead, the first act is almost always an extended version of what Kilborn and Stewart used to call “Headlines,” and the second act is often the same, unless it’s a pre-taped field piece. Free-form riffing on the day’s news, field pieces and interviews; that’s pretty much all she wrote.
The Dish 