The most recent episode of Last Week Tonight focused on Trump and the press. Namely, how Trump will denigrate any reporter or institution who dares ask a legitimate question. It’s part of the authoritarian playbook, but in the baby-fisted hands of a man emotionally stunted in toddlerhood. One of the most asinine instances of this was Trump blocking the AP’s media access to the White House, all because they didn’t go along with Trump’s presto chango renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Like I said, toddler tactics at play, here. So John Oliver made us laugh (but really cry inside) as he dug deeper into the legally dubious shenanigans this administration is enacting against the press. But critically, Sunday’s show was also the first episode to air since Max, the artist fka HBO Max, announced they would be reverting back to their name of two years ago (making it HBO Max fka Max fka HBO Max). All that to say, Oliver masterfully razzed his business daddy by comparing the year’s two dumbest name changes:

On Sunday’s episode of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” — which is streaming on, um, Max/HBO Max — the host was discussing President Trump’s antagonism toward the press, and Oliver brought up the White House’s move to block access to the AP for continuing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as such instead of calling it the Gulf of America as Trump has declared.

“It can take time for people to adjust to a stupid name change,” Oliver observed.

That teed up Oliver’s next rant: “Sometimes, hypothetically, before we can get used to one dumb name” — here the HBO Go logo appeared on the screen — “some genius comes along and only makes it dumber” (HBO Now). “Then, somehow it gets dumber still” (HBO Max) “and againstall the odds it becomes even worse” (Max) “before inexplicably going back to the stupid thing it was before” (HBO Max).

Oliver also noted that Warner Bros. Discovery execs anticipated a response from him — indeed, they spun it as a sort of tune-in moment. “We just cannot wait for his hot take on this whole rebrand. We think it’s going to be pretty hot,” WBD streaming marketing chief Shauna Spenley joked at the media conglomerate’s May 14 upfront, splashing an image of Oliver with his head face-down on a desk on the theater’s big screen.

Oliver responded with mock outrage: “Please look me in the eyes when I tell you this: F–k you, don’t tell me what to do! I’m not going to do it if you want.”

“Unless, wait, hold on, maybe you thought baiting me like that would be a good way to stop me from doing it. But on the other hand, how could a company be that smart when they’re the same people that came up with so many stupid f–king names?” Oliver said.

[From Variety]

Perfectly done. No notes. I didn’t think I could love an HBO rebrand dig more than what Oliver did in 2019 — that was HBO Max 1.0, to which Oliver said, “It’s not HBO. It’s just TV,” making a deft play on the network’s classic slogan. But this new one totally meets the moment. Likening Warner Bros. Discovery’s brand name backtracking to Trump’s dumb Gulf of America is just the kind of comparison WBD CEO David Zaslav deserves, that despicable Looney Tune hater. I hope Oliver and his writers win another Emmy for this episode specifically! Though determining which episodes to submit for awards must be quite the task for that crew; there are so many gems to choose from. Which brings us to an update: two weeks ago, Last Week Tonight covered the wild and wacky world of minor league baseball. Oliver highlighted some ingenious team mascots as well as a few epic fails, and ended the episode by offering to rebrand one team’s mascot on the condition of total surrender (of creative control). Well, Oliver ended this Sunday’s episode with the update that after 47 teams wrote in, the lucky winners determined to be the most lackluster mascot in desperate need of a revamp goes to… The Erie SeaWolves of Pennsylvania! Among the reasons they were chosen: “The SeaWolves play baseball nowhere near the sea.” Now we wait for Oliver & Co. to do their research and work their magic. In the meantime, congratulations to the team fka The Erie SeaWolves!

Wow, “rebrand” really is the word of the month. Can we please do that with the presidency but in an accurate way?

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