If the workday has been feeling a little long lately, that might be because there haven’t been any YouTube uploads of John Oliver segments to kill 15 minutes in the interminable stretch of time between lunch and the end of the day. HBO’s popular news program Last Week Tonight has been on hiatus since mid-November and, growing desperate for smart-alecky, but well-researched takes on timely issues presented in an easily digestible manner, the people demand more. Even in the weeks since Oliver and Co. closed up shop for the holidays, plenty of new targets for the program’s trademark erudite mockery have surfaced. How did we even make it this far without a segment about Sean Penn’s interview with El Chapo?
Fortunately, the trailer for Last Week Tonight‘s third season has arrived to settle our under-informed nerves. As to be expected from an advertisement for a program as irreverent as this, it lightly parodies the usual news-show promo aesthetic with its constantly-rotating camerawork that gradually speeds up until it threatens to completely throw John Oliver from the desk entirely. But the real gems are the quotes from the many enemies that Oliver has amassed in his two seasons on the air. Some of his nemeses are pretty typical — Donald Trump seems to hate everyone, and the higher-ups at FIFA probably didn’t appreciate the highly public flogging Oliver and his team of writers gave them — but one comes as a marked surprise. Why Academy Award-winning actress and iconic musician Cher would say that Oliver has a “wee [rat emoji] face” is unclear. Seems like a pretty low blow for someone of Cher’s stature to make, but then again, Cher’s Twitter account is batsh*t insane. She’s liable to post anything.
