John Oliver Showcases ‘Last Week Tonight’s Absurd Unused Graphics
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver was off this Memorial Day Weekend, but, like a fourth hot dog eaten long after the BBQ has ended, the show satiated fans’ cravings with a bonus web clip featuring selections from its trove of unused graphics.
While striking images, such as Paul Giamatti dressed as a mango, have appeared on Last Week Tonight, Oliver showcased a slew of nixed graphics without noting their accompanying jokes. To start, he trotted out a parade of arbitrary animal images such as a panda king, a blind bunny and a whale with a toupee, “Otherwise known as,” Oliver added, “a ‘Piven of the Sea,’ or, indeed, an ‘Aqua Trump.'”
Elsewhere, Oliver showed off the specific, yet bizarre, scenes the Last Week Tonight graphics crew had created — though he still couldn’t believe there wasn’t an actual photograph of Kid Rock driving a monster truck through a Dairy Queen.
Last Week Tonight also often taps its staff and their families to pose for graphics, though it’s awkward telling the producer who sat in a car with a sex doll or the editor who defecated in someone’s garden that they’ve been cut. Even more difficult, breaking the bad news to the young son of a producer who has posed for numerous graphics that never made it to air.
But the host didn’t spare himself. Oliver ended the segment with an image deemed too vile for TV, but reasonable enough for the Internet: A discomforting shot of him getting a mohawk. “Of course it required computer effects, because my real hair is un-mohawkable,” Oliver said. “I’m only qualified for this haircut, which I call, The Business Judi Dench. Ask your barber.”