John Oliver won’t miss Mike Richards following his surprise resignation amid the ongoing Jeopardy! hosting fiasco. This was actually the second time that the Last Week Tonight host took aim at Richards with Oliver revealing that he wasn’t really impressed with the executive producer who reportedly helped select himself when other guest-hosts like Ken Jennings and LeVar Burton (and even those who didn’t get a shot, like Laura Coates) would have been more welcome additions following the beloved Alex Trebek’s passing.
Fast forward a week, and Richards pulled off a surprise-Friday resignation move after The Ringer’s report (by Claire McNear) that surfaced Richards’ history of troubling remarks after what was already known about his controversial past as a game show producer. It was a development that left people hoping that LeVar Burton’s cheery and innocuous tweet meant more than it actually did, but John Oliver did not hold back. Here’s how he began Sunday night’s episode:
“It’s been a busy week. There was a bomb threat in Washington, this smirking golf bag was demoted from hosting Jeopardy to merely running it…“
Ouch, Last Week Tonight does not tread lightly with its nicknames that it bestows upon pop culture figures. Yet what’s most notable about Oliver’s disdain for Mike Richards is that — coupled with last week’s swift take (“It is genuinely hard to imagine a five word phrase less welcome than ‘we know who you are,'” the host declared. “Aside from obviously ‘new Jeopardy! host Mike Richards'”) — Oliver doesn’t even see the need to spend too much time on a clearly ridiculous situation. With that said, you can watch Oliver’s deep dive into a fiasco with more devastating effects (Afghanistan) here.
