Late Night Last Week: John Oliver on ICE, Amber Ruffin on the News, and Tony Hawk on Colbert

Every week,  ​​​​Late Night Last Week highlights some of the best late night TV from the previous week. In this week’s late night TV recap, John Oliver tackles ICE detention centers, Taylor Tomlinson welcomes sitcom royalty, Amber Ruffin catches you up on the week’s news, and Tony Hawk talks videogame soundtracks.

John Oliver came out hot on the March 9 episode of Last Week Tonight. The intrepid host tackled numerous topics before his main story, among them the general fecklessness of that group of Americans known as the Democratic Party. 

Following President Trump’s speech to Congress last week, Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin delivered the party’s official response, during which she praised Ronald Reagan’s “moral clarity,” specifically with regard to the Cold War. Our Late Night King was not pleased. 

“I will admit, there are some positive things you can say about Reagan,” Oliver said. “Like, he was our only president to make a movie with a chimp. Or, he’s dead.” 

He continued: “His ‘moral clarity’ might come as a surprise to any gay people who lived through the 1980s. If you brought Reagan back from the dead, and told him all the racist shit Trump’s managed to do in less than two months, he’d cum so hard he’d die again.” 

Oliver’s main monologue for the evening focused on ICE, specifically the bipartisan history of its detention camps. Oliver covers the horrific history to demonstrate how the worst is most likely to come under the news administration, which is already detaining individuals who have not only broken no laws, but are following proper procedures to apply for legal asylum. 

The monologue also tackled the inhumane detention practices at such facilities, even though they are supposed to be “non-punitive.” “As you’re about to see,” Oliver said, “that’s like claiming the ocean isn’t wet, or that the Wicked movie wasn’t 30 minutes too long.”

Oliver also shared audio from conference calls headed by private prison executives celebrating the new administration’s stance, claiming it has never been a time for their business. “Look, as a general rule, if something happens that causes private prisons to get really excited, that thing was bad,” Oliver smartly reasoned. “If you ever come home and your spouse tells you, Honey, I did something today and GEO Group is super excited about it, you are in a relationship-altering conversation.” 

The March 4 episode of After Midnight was a star-studded affair. Host Taylor Tomlinson welcomed on to the program sitcom legend Mary Elizabeth Ellis (best known as The Waitress on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Saturday Night Live alum Bobby Moynihan, and Thomas Lennon of Reno 911! fame. 

Tomlinson invited her guests to play a game by a simple name: “ME!” All of us chronically online folk are familiar with this phenomenon: we’re scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, only to stumble upon a video or image and mutter under one’s breath, “Ugh, that’s so me.” For this game, an image appeared in front of each guest, who then had to explain why it was, in fact, “Me.” 

For Ellis, an image of the Mona Lisa showed on the set’s big screen. “Why is that you?” Tomlinson asked. “Sometimes when I have a little secret, like, I murdered a man who used to be my boyfriend and I blamed it on the dog, and when my friends are like, you’re being kind of weird do you have a secret, I’m like,” she said, striking a pose with that famous Mona Lisa smile. 

Later, each of the guests had a chance to explain why a picture of Grimace at the Mets game awas, in fact, them. “I’m also a very swollen purple sack,” Lennon buzzed in. “That’s just a picture of me,” Moynihan replied, “except Grimace doesn’t have a beard.”

The trio then played one of the show’s best games, called “Lying Snitches.” The premise is simple enough. Tomlinson stands in front of a screen on which a silly image appears. Each contestant then takes a turn describing the image. They can lie or tell the truth. If Tomlinson believes them, they get points. No spoilers, just watch Elizabeth Ellis describe “a horrible, beast version of Danny DeVito. It’s like if he were Big Foot but Small Foot, running through the night.”

Seth Meyers is pretty good at recapping the news. But sometimes, he can’t get to everything. Well, thank goodness he has Amber Ruffin, who, in her recurring segment “Amber Says What,” filled in some of the Late Night gaps. 

For example, Ruffin covered the Trump Administration’s decision to ban the Associated Press from the White House after they refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” “I was like what,” Ruffin said, “now you care about deadnaming?” 

Ruffin said she was now going to start “renaming stuff too.” “You can’t do that,” Meyers chimed in from the side. “Shut-up Amber Jr.!” Ruffin replied. 

Ruffin also had some thoughts on the recent turmoil in our skies. A plane filled with smoke recently made an emergency landing in Atlanta. Another landed upside down in Toronto. And then there was the couple who had to spend four hours seated next to a person who had died mid-flight.  

“If I’m on a plane next to a dead body, that will not be the only dead body on that plane,” Ruffin said. “I will take her hand and I will pass along with her. We are already halfway to heaven, there’s no reason not to.” 

I’ll be honest: one of the only things I know about skateboarding is that it’s cool as hell. I love skate videos, I love watching skateboarders, and I love skateboard videogames. Ask me to name more than three tricks or figures, and I’m lost. But like most people, I know Tony Hawk, who joined The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on March 4. 

Colbert and Hawk talked about creating the soundtrack of the first Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, released in 1999 for the original PlayStation before eventually making its way to other consoles. Hawk said Activision gave him “free rein” over the soundtrack. He wanted to “keep [skate] culture alive” in the soundtrack, he said. As they brainstormed, Hawks said he just threw out bands he would hear at the skatepark, mostly 1980s punk rock, including the soundtrack’s first track, “Police Truck” by Dead Kennedys. 

“I didn’t realize that would be such an iconic part of the game,” Hawk said. “People really identified with the music. I think it really opened up people’s eyes to new bands and new genres.” 

To make clear the soundtrack’s impact on people, Colbert shared a story offered by one of his producers, Carlee Rasner, whose husband is obsessed with THPS. From behind the desk, he pulled out a hat the man often wears, one that simply says: “I’d Rather Be Listening To Any ofThe Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Soundtracks.” Who wouldn’t? 

Will DiGravio is a Brooklyn-based critic, researcher, and late night comedy columnist, who first contributed to Paste in 2022. He’s been writing Paste’s late night TV recaps since 2024. 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.