Late Night Last Week: Jon Stewart Still Hates Dick Cheney

Late Night Last Week is a column highlighting some of the more notable segments from the previous week of late night television. Today’s installment features a heartfelt moment from John Oliver, furniture adventures with Taylor Tomlinson, Jon Stewart’s enduring hatred for Dick Cheney, and more.

Late night hosts relished the chance to preview and then react to the first presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump last week—easy content, baby! Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart went live on their respective programs immediately following the action. In fact, the Stewart-hosted live episode on September 10 reportedly gave The Daily Show its highest ratings in seven years. Not too shabby.

I was one of the many hundreds of thousands of people who tuned into The Daily Show immediately following the debate. Stewart was good, but I was left thinking about the live audience. Do they watch the debate live from their seats? Are screens brought in? Snacks? Or does the show want the audience to be experiencing the debate for the first time through Stewart? If anyone from The Daily Show is reading this, please email me/invite me to the next live thing.

Anyway, the best part of the live broadcast came from a presumably pre-scripted bit, when Stewart reacted to the news that former Vice President Dick Cheney (bad!) had endorsed current Vice President Harris, a fact she touted during the debate. Stewart, who rose to prominence in part as the nation’s premier critic of the Bush Administration and of the Cheney-championed invasion of Iraq (bad!), responded to the news by playing a clip from Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life, featuring, naturally, Mr. Creosote vomiting. He then had this to say: “Fuck that guy.” (Good!)

Taylor Tomlinson Gets A Couch

While other late night shows are busy trying to figure out how to make more jokes about JD Vance’s having sex with couches, Taylor Tomlinson went ahead and got one. After Midnight returned for a second season at the beginning of the month. Since then, the show has been in experimentation mode, changing up its usual comedy game show format. The most notable addition to After Midnight has been a segment Tomlinson has called “Talk Show Portion,” during which the three guests sit on a couch in the middle of the stage and chat with the host.

Tomlinson addressed the show’s experimentation directly in the episode immediately following the debate. She said Trump actually gave a helpful tip for responding to criticism. “Currently, here on After Midnight, we’re making lots of changes to the show,” Tomlinson said. “Now, when people ask me, ‘Hey Taylor, why is there a big random couch on the show? Do you have any control? What’s the plan?’ I can just say…” Tomlinson then played a clip of Trump talking about how he had “concepts of a plan” when asked about healthcare.

Thus far, the “Talk Show Portion” of the show has been a welcome addition to After Midnight. On the September 9 broadcast, for example, Tomlinson spent the entire segment chatting with her guests. But then later in the week, she asked just one “serious” talk show question before pivoting to a game. She asked Bob the Drag Queen on the September 10 show, “Where do you stand on the NATO treaty?” The following evening, she asked Pod Save America co-host Jon Lovett why he decided to appear on the most recent season of Survivor. Geopolitics and product plugs—what could be more serious than that?

The game on the September 10 broadcast featured Bob, Caitlin Reilly, and Rickey Thompson playing a game, “Is it a Slut?” Tomlinson showed the trio a number of household objects and asked the panel whether they would qualify—qualifying in her own introduction to the game that “we love a slut.” Thompson was adamant that electrical outlets are sluts: “Especially if you’ve ever had, like, a loose outlet too.”

Nore Davis Dissects Prayer Cards

On The Sopranos, Junior Soprano once wondered why no one ever collected prayer cards like they did baseball cards: “Thousands of bucks for Honus Wagner, and jack shit for Jesus.” It seems Junior was not alone in that thought. On the September 12 episode of The Tonight Show, Nore Davis gave his own take on the oddity of prayer cards. (Okay, kind of a random comparison. But Davis was on fellow HBO prestige dramas Succession and Boardwalk Empire. Give me that.)

Davis, who was there to promote his new special, Elemental, got very personal in his set, talking about the experience of reading his mother’s own obituary card. “Then I had to go clean out her house and I found out she had a whole bunch of other obituary cards,” he said. “What am I supposed to do with all these obituary cards? Is there a Pokemon funeral home tournament I’m supposed to attend?”

Jokes Seth Can’t Tell

One of the most consistently funny and fresh recurring segments on late night television comes from the Late Night with Seth Meyers team. In “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell,” Late Night writers Amber Ruffin and Jenny Hagel take over punchline duty from the show’s straight-white-male host. Meyers sits in between the two, playing the … straight man.

On the September 12 episode, Meyers shared news about a Boston Red Sox player calling a fan a gay slur. “Who does he think he is,” Meyers asked, “the Pope?” Meyers then read a headline about a surge in Black farmers across the country. “And this time,” Ruffin said, “it’s by choice.”

John Oliver Loves His Dog

The team over at Last Week Tonight took a break yesterday, September 22, in order to focus on the Emmy Awards, where they took home the top prize for Scripted Variety Series. Obviously, well-deserved. John Oliver accepted the award for his team, ending his speech by thanking an unsung hero of the enterprise: his recently deceased dog, who, he said, was a consummate companion for his family.

But as Oliver was speaking, music began to play him off. “I feel like Sarah McLaughlin right now,” he said, before shouting “fuck you” to whoever was getting in the way of his truly touching tribute. He then dedicated the win to all dogs. “You are all very good girls. You are very good boys. You all deserve a treat,” he said. “ Play me off now!”

Will DiGravio is a Brooklyn-based critic and researcher, who first contributed to Paste in 2022. He is an assistant editor at Cineaste, a GALECA member, and since 2019 has hosted The Video Essay Podcast. You can follow and/or unfollow him on Twitter and learn more about him via his website.