Late Night Last Week: NBC Honors Joan Rivers, John Oliver Reacts to HBO Max Name Change, and More

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, NBC pays tribute to Joan Rivers, John Oliver reacts to the HBO Max news, Desi Lydic makes her Tonight Show debut, and Ronny Chieng explores the limits of effective altruism. 

The case for organization was made no greater than on Joan Rivers: A Dead Funny All-Star Tribute. The one-hour tribute show, which aired May 13 on NBC, was fueled by some of Rivers’ 70,000 jokes, all of which, as Patton Oswalt informed the audience at the outset, were meticulously documented by the artist on neatly filed and sorted index cards. What a gift for the program’s producers.

Not only did the special feature comics like Nikki Glaser and Sarah Silverman sharing their favorite Rivers jokes, but a litany of comedians who came out to deliver some of Rivers’ best lines, playing off the material in their own way. For example, Rivers’ old E! co-worker Joel McHale shared jokes that related to societal events that Rivers had missed since her death in 2014. On the 2015 legalization of gay marriage:

“I’m against gay marriage,” McHale said, quoting Rivers, whose joke also appeared as a giant, electronic index card behind him. “All my friends are gay, it’ll cost me a fortune in wedding gifts.” A sign of a comedian’s true greatness is when others kill with their material.

Similarly, Aubrey Plaza hosted an “In Memoriam” segment, featuring Rivers’ jokes that have not aged well and thus, should be sent into the night. Such jokes included: “My Mexican maid is great, but I wish she’d stop rimming my toilet bowl with salt.” And: “A hint while playing blackjack: never say ‘hit me’ if the dealer is Italian.”

The special made relatively little mention of Rivers’ role in the history of late night television. Her work in that regard began on NBC, where she became the permanent fill-in host for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. She famously later left the network for her own show on Fox, leading to a falling out with Carson and a decades-long absence from the network, which ended with her return to The Tonight Show in 2014.

Instead, the show focused on the jokes and was perhaps better for it. Like a Rivers one-liner, the special itself benefited tremendously from its precision. No over-the-top tributes or too-long monologues. It carried forward at the perfect pace, keeping at the center Rivers and her prolific craftsmanship as a writer and performer.

The full, extended special is now available to stream on Peacock. 

John Oliver

Meanwhile, on Last Week Tonight, John Oliver centered his monologue on the Trump Administration’s hostile relationship with the press, such as the White House banning the Associated Press over refusing to name the body of water to our nation’s south the “Gulf of America.” He also discussed the decision by many news organizations and their parent companies to more or less capitulate to frivolous demands and lawsuits, like the recent settlement with Trump by ABC and the ongoing turmoil at 60 Minutes. As always, the entire monologue is an essential watch.

But Oliver also gave a patient nation what it wanted: his take on the recent decision for Max to, once again, become HBO Max. In fact, in announcing the news, the folks at his parent company,  Warner Bros. Discovery, even said they would be waiting for his take, thinking that it would be “pretty hot.” Oliver was not pleased.

“Please, look me in the eyes when I say this: Fuck, you don’t tell me what to do!” Oliver said into the camera. “I’m not going to do it if you want it. Unless, wait, you thought baiting me like that would be a good way to stop me from doing it.”