Trevor Noah pulled a page out of the Orson Welles playbook for Monday’s Halloween episode of The Daily Show, dedicated to showing a future where Donald Trump becomes president and our world is turned upside down. Instead of the audience and the typical Daily Show experience, we’re greeted by a burned out world where Trevor Noah is putting together a desperate pirate broadcast, the news team is spread around the globe in different positions — poor Desi Lydic by the way, forced to eat a rat.
But it’s basically a “what If” Twilight Zone version of The Daily Show that raided Harry Turtledove’s trashcan and then let a writer from Jerry Springer punch it up. There’s a Trump News Network, the revelation that CNN themselves had stolen that missing Malaysian Airlines flight, and that Steve Harvey and Kevin Hart are still beloved. I also like how John Oliver gets arrested during a thrilling segment on eggs.
Now the joke that Trump will destroy the nation is a bit old at this point, but it’s admirable that The Daily Show would devote an entire show to this concept and do something interesting for Halloween. They could’ve easily put up some fake cobwebs, joked that Trump looks like a pumpkin given life, and then made some jokes about Anthony Weiner’s penis for a half hour. But that didn’t happen and it’s nice to see Noah’s version of the show take a few risks that Jon Stewart didn’t do all the time. That Glenn Beck episode was pretty damn funny, though.
(Via The Daily Show)