httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJR9QjezRGg
Really, most wouldn’t bother trying to mine such things for comedy-but that’s precisely what John Oliver has always done best on Last Week Tonight.
“I guess the happiest I get is when we do something really irredeemably stupid,” Oliver said at a press roundtable ahead of his show’s return to HBO for its fourth season Sunday night.
As Oliver put it, “Sometimes, one of the most fun things is just seeing a group of adults do a really silly, spectacular waste of HBO’s resources.”
The finished product, Oliver said, “Felt like a really spectacular version of the thing that we had in our heads. Probably even bigger than the idea that we had in our heads. I guess that’s when I’m so proud of our staff, is when we can do something that is beyond how I saw it… You think, ‘Holy shit, what happened to this idea? When did this get good?'”.
In total, Oliver noted that only eight out of last season’s 22 episodes covered the election in any capacity during their long takes.
Going into a Trump presidency, Oliver emphasized his eagerness to avoid his show getting mired in Trump pieces.
“Even if someone asked, t’s no real point in spending a month working on something that he said if we can’t work out what the consequences of that are going to be,” Oliver explained.