Late Night Last Week: Lucy Dacus & Zohran Mamdani Visit The Daily Show, and More

Late Night Last Week highlights some of the best late-night TV from the previous week. Today, we cover appearances by Lucy Dacus and Zohran Mamdani on The Daily Show, Jim Downey’s late night guest debut, and John Oliver’s latest monologue on police car chases. 

The Daily Show doesn’t always have live music. But when they do, it rocks. Oh, and they had one of the most influential politicians in America on the show last week, too. Let’s work in reverse. 

On October 28, Lucy Dacus stopped by to chat with Desi Lydic about life, art, politics, and the expansion of her latest album, Forever Is a Feeling: The Archives. Lydic asked Dacus about her childhood, especially the influence of her artist parents. 

“There was actually a rule in my house that I wasn’t allowed to say I was bored,” Dacus remembered. “It was treated as a bad word equal to the real bad ones, and my punishment was that I had to make a drawing and my dad would be like, ‘Oh, you said you’re bored? Five drawings.’”

But that isn’t always bad, especially when you’re doodling away. “Boredom is very fruitful,” Dacus added. “People should not be scared of that.”

Following the conversation, Dacus brought down the house with a beautiful rendition of “Modigliani.” Just watch.

The day before Dacus’ visit, the program’s Monday host, Jon Stewart, had a chat with the man expected to be the next mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani. The two had a long discussion about the race, Mamdani’s vision for the city, and the state of our politics in general. 

“One of the things that’s been so frustrating in our politics is so much of it has been defined over these last 10 years as the negative case against someone,” Stewart said. “And finally, and this is not blowing smoke, I think you’ve made an affirmative case for people.”

Mamdani agreed, tying the notion of optimism to the campaign’s wide-ranging support, including among young people. “After the presidential election, there were all of these obituaries written about the Democratic party’s ability to motivate young voters,” he said. “There’s just this condescension in the language that we use about young people, and I can tell you that what we found in this campaign is that young people have been at the heart of believing that something could be more than this.”

He went on to share a wonderful story from the campaign trail. Throughout the primary, Mamdani often quoted former NYC Mayor Ed Koch, who famously said, “If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.” The other day in Washington Square Park, Mamdani said, a guy walked past him and shouted, “12 out of 12, baby! Send me away!” How can you not heart NY? 

Over on The Tonight Show, we witnessed a bit of history. Jim Downey, the longtime Saturday Night Live writer and Letterman alumnus, made his first appearance on the couch of a late night program. The occasion was the release of the new documentary about his life and work, Downey Wrote That. He also has a part in the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie, One Battle After Another. 

In talking with Jimmy Fallon, Downey shared a wonderful story of the moment his mother first let him know about David Letterman in the summer of 1981. At this time, he was hosting The David Letterman Show, a morning talk show on NBC. “She was telling me, ‘Oh, Jim, it’s so much funnier than Saturday Night Live, sorry,’” Downey remembered. From there, Downey started watching. The rest was history, with Downey eventually becoming the head writer of Late Night with David Letterman. 

And finally, we end, as we so often do, with John Oliver. The beauty of Last Week Tonight is that you never quite know where Oliver is going to take his monologue, which this week centered on police car chases. 

Oliver begins by telling the history of this most American tradition, stretching from the origins of our obsession with these scenes during the O.J. Simpson murder case to the 24/7 police car chase channel that exists on Pluto TV today. As always, Oliver masterfully finds the humor here while pivoting to the serious core at the heart of the story: police chases are often unnecessary and fatal. 

“Look, to be fair, calling spinning a car out “so much fun” does make total sense if what you’re doing is playing Mario Kart,” Oliver said. “But in real life, it’s worth remembering there’s going to be an actual person in that bad guy’s car and not a cartoon sex criminal.” A picture of Waluigi then appeared.

He goes on to make a number of key points, including just how unnecessary police chases are for things like traffic violations, for example, and especially in the age of the surveillance state. 

“You don’t always need to chase someone, especially when the police have an absolute mountain of surveillance tech at their disposal — which is, spoiler alert, a future story we’ve got planned for this show,” Oliver said. “We’ve actually got a bunch of fun stories in the pipeline for you: police surveillance tech, Trump versus the Sun, and Graves: what they are, why they’re not what you think, and what the government can do to stop all the sex on top of them.”

Mr. Oliver, sir, we’ll be watching. 

 Will DiGravio is a Brooklyn-based critic, researcher, and late night comedy columnist, 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.

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