Funny / Last Week Tonight With John Oliver Season Ten

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• Psychedelic Assisted Therapy:
  • The segment opens with a video of a British reporter attempting to film a take while literally tons of psychedelic drugs are being burnt behind him. Emphasis on attempting.
  • When discussing the campaign against psychedelics, John can't help but pay close attention to how the couple in the 1967 commercial are impeccably dressed.
    John: "Honey, they'll be hauling Jimmy's body to its final stop before Hippie Hell. Quick, where's my tie clip? Helen, tie clip! The neighbors may see, they're gonna think we're poor! Get it together Helen and find my tie clip! The boy is dead!"
  • The journal Science had conducted a study alleging that one use of MDMA (ecstasy in common circles) in monkeys caused permanent brain damage. The scientists in the study eventually retracted their findings because they somehow overlooked that monkeys were accidentally given meth^note According to The Guardian article detailing the incident, it stated that the supplier somehow mislabeled the vials used in the study.
    John: Any study's result is gonna change if the independent variable is suddenly and unexpectedly fucking meth! "We've studied the vaccine for COVID and the participants are going apeshit for it!"
• Artificial Intelligence:
  • During a story about James O'Keefe being fired from Project Veritas, clips are played of conservative news anchors' commenting on it, with Steve Bannon calling O'Keefe a "national treasure". John responds by stating that America's national treasures are actually Dolly Parton, Pedro Pascal, and Cocaine Bear.
    John: And I'm just saying now — threesome when?
  • John shows a snippet of video where the YouTuber Grandayy wrote the prompt "Write an Eminem rap song about cats" into ChatGPT. The results are glorious.
  • In an interview, an AI researcher uses the term "pale male data" to refer to how AI developers have an unfortunate habit of mostly using white men and men with lighter skin tones as examples for teaching AI, making them more likely to misinterpret women and people with darker skin tones. John says "pale male data" is probably how an AI would describe the show.
• Ron DeSantis:
  • While introducing DeSantis and his new book "The Courage to Be Free", John tells his studio audience to look under their seats for a gift; the absence of the book so they don't have to read it.
    • Later, John calls out a woman for submitting book challenges and accuses her of just skimming the books and declaring that no one should read it, which he admits is how he feels about "The Courage to Be Free".
  • After DeSantis misgenders transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and signs a proclamation claiming that the runner-up was the actual winner of the 2022 NCAA Division 1 Women's 500-yard Freestyle (which he has no actual power to affect), John decides to sign a paper retroactively declaring that DeSantis' Little League team never made it to the Little League World Series and that they would be replaced by the Season 6 cast of Rupaul's Drag Race.
• Homeowners Associations:
  • John acknowledges that the segment won't mean anything to anyone under 35, since they aren't economically likely to ever be able to afford home ownership, and invites anyone in that age bracket to go online and watch a segment about the history of Chuck E. Cheese instead. The Chuck E. Cheese segment is real, and in it John admits that it "officially got out of hand" as they were researching the subject, and expanded from its intended 5-6 minute runtime to actually being longer than the HOA segment.
    John: You can stop watching this at any time if you like, but this studio audience cannot leave.
• October 1, 2023: How do they start the first show since the end of the 2023 WGA Strike? Showing the clip of Louisiana senator John Kennedy reading the text from a book being banned.
  • Later during the recap, John tries to brush over how Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert got kicked out of a performance of Beetlejuice for inappropriate behavior and move onto a more serious story about Italy's financial problems, only to be unable to resist going back to Boebert's story for more details. This happens multiple times.
• The segment on the Israel-Hamas war is a pretty grim one, and as such, John has little footage to show of the attacks on Gaza that aren't utter misery. However, he does find one amusing clip of a young Palestinian boy succinctly describing the situation on Al Jazeera.
  Reporter: How have the past few days been, Abdulaziz?
  Abdulaziz (translated): Like shit.
  Reporter: It's OK, we can cut it out. Tell me, how have the last few days been, Abdulaziz? Explain to us.
  Abdulaziz: You mean about the war?
  Reporter: Yes, how has it been with the war?
  Abdulaziz: Like shit.
  John: Yeah, of course it feel like shit. There is no other way to put it, and I'm honestly glad that he didn't even try there. I also appreciate him asking asking for clarification when the reporter started over. "Sorry, just to be clear, you're asking what it's like to live through this war, right? OK, I got it; my answer remains like shit. Next question, please."
• Solitary Confinement:
  • John takes some time to discuss the fashion choices of a group of guys in a "man on the street" interview about solitary confinement (where they all took longer than John would have expected to confirm that, yes, solitary confinement means only one person per cell), referring to them as "human red solo cups."
  • John plays an excerpt from a Frontline video of the banging and screaming one constantly hears in solitary confinement. As horrifying as it is, there's some levity when John compares it to "the soundtrack to STOMP."
• Freight Trains:
  • Before seguing into the very serious problems in the frieght train industry, John quickly discusses the rather dark Thomas and Friends episode, "The Sad Story of Henry", where the titular train gets his rails taken away and becomes imprisoned in the tunnel he refused to get out of.
    Narrator: But I think he deserved his punishment. Don't you? (roll end credits)
    John: Look here are children's shows, and there are British children's shows. And that is why I am, and this is true, like this.
  • The segment ends with LWT's own Thomas and Friends parody of the episode, where Henry is a freight train. In true Last Week Tonight fashion, it Crosses the Line Twice many times.
    • One scene has Henry stopping in the middle of town, blockading all of the people and a fire engine trying to get through ^note A common issue with freight trains is sudden stops and blockades, which potentially prevents emergency services from getting through. Henry explains that he's physically unable to move due to exhaustion and not having enough room:
    Narrator: So they both just sat there. And watched the children's hospital burn.
    • Henry the Freight Train's... questionable contents:
    Narrator: He carried all sorts of things people needed, like medical bandages. Corn. Vinyl chloride. Fireworks. A mysterious red substance. Question mark. Question mark? Hand grenades. Question mark? Plugged in space heaters. And all sorts of zoo animals.
• Elon Musk:
  • John's opening remark, that Musk could pull off the "any bad guy in a movie" look, including:
    • Lex Luthor posing for the cover of Metropolis Maniacs Monthly
    • "Why no, Mr. Bond, I and my child bride expect you to die.
    • "I just bought your media company and I'm about to strip you for parts."
    • Space's first racist sheriff.
    • The less fuckable reimagining of Billy Zane's character in Titanic.
  • John's response to Musk's admission that his company performed "A bit of a Bait-and-Switch" on customers:
    John: Yeah, you could see how baiting customers with one price and switching it for another might be considered a "bait and switch"! There's actually a great econ book on the subject entitled "Words Mean What Words Mean".
  • John's description of the Cyber-Truck as "a seven-thousand pound smushed up refrigerator moving at 60 miles an hour, being driven by — odds are — a real piece of shit".
  • John also admits that getting called up to Musk's hotel room to unlock a safe containing his phone must be a relatively pleasant surprise, as opposed to the usual happenings...
    John: When the average security guard is called up to a billionaire's hotel room at 3 AM, they have a list of things to expect and it begins and ends with "Dead Body".