John Oliver couldn’t have been happier to be back in front of a live studio audience as Last Week Tonight returned from a brief hiatus. He also couldn’t resist a chance to swing at Jeopardy!‘s ongoing hosting conundrum, after previously kicking Mike Richards on his way out the door. The game show, however, appears to be in a difficult spot while selecting a new permanent host. Producers would obviously love to avoid selecting anyone with a lick of controversy in their past, and perhaps Mayim Bialik’s resurfaced vaccine remarks might prevent her from receiving the full-on hosting gig, for which she’s expressed her intent to score.
It’s all a freaking mess. Even Ken Jennings (who will serve as one of two temporary hosts, the other being Bialik, for the rest of the year) had those controversial tweets to reportedly muck up the selection process. TMZ previously reported that producers wanted Bialik to be the permanent host before the Richards disaster, but who knows how this will all shake out in the future.
Last Week Tonight is here to pass some judgment while using the show as a comparison to the U.S.-Mexico border situation. Oliver slammed the Biden administration’s approach to Haitian migrants with “no clear rationale. And yep, Oliver is aware of Bialik’s air of controversy, as this went down early on in the broadcast:
“It’s not great when our process for deciding who gets released and who gets expelled is as haphazard for finding a new host for Jeopardy!. And by the way, great job so far, guys. You dodged giving that guy the job permanently, and right now, we’ve got somebody absolutely free of controversy, Mayim Bialik, a person I think is great because I don’t have Google.”
To get real, yep, it’s also not great when the border situation has no unified perspective from the Biden administration. The president has condemned the treatment of Haitians at the border, even as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has defended the deportation of Haitians due to Covid. That’s the case even though no one is really doing anything about the U.S. citizens who won’t take the pandemic seriously and, as a result, clogging up hospitals because of “freedom.” Comparing the situation to Jeopardy! might ultimately seem out context, but both situations veered into fiasco territory due to the people in charge completely neglecting to prepare. The digging-out phase of these disasters will now happen in full public view, and Last Week Tonight will be watching.
