For the second week in a row, John Oliver leads our recap of essential television. He’s a clever, astute comedian to be sure, but he practically resorted to cheat codes when he pulled the Right Said Fred revival card on Sunday. To that we say: Well played, Mr. Oliver. But even though he came in first, Seth Meyers came on strongest, having a banner recap week with three segments in the mix! Then again, he kind of pulled an Oliver and hit the easy button by inviting Sia, Natasha Lyonne, and Aidy Bryant onto the show. Yes, he’s friendly and welcoming, but these guests didn’t need anything more than an introduction to shine on stage. Still, we thank you for a killer line-up, Seth. Keep up the good work. Elsewhere, the elusive Dave Chappelle opened up on David Letterman, and Audra McDonald put another jewel in her Queen of Broadway crown. It was a good week for comediennes and comedians, which means it was a good week for the viewing public. Now fire up that Sia clip and immerse yourself in WIRED’s favorite finds.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver — iTunes, Assad, and Right Said Fred
John Oliver had HBO fly in Right Said Fred from England to perform their hit “I’m Too Sexy” as a political protest song against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. This is 100 percent not an elaborate joke set up.
Late Night With Seth Meyers — Sia Performance: “Chandelier” Feat. Lena Dunham
Singer and songwriter Sia Furler is famously, cripplingly shy. Last month, she performed her new track “Chandelier” on The Ellen Show with her back to the crowd the entire time, preferring instead to let the music video’s star, 11-year-old Maddie Ziegler, perform an interpretive dance. We’re not mad. The video and Ellenperformance were equally captivating and awesome. But the point is: This whole faceless stage show thing is no gimmick for Sia. It’s an act of protest she directly declared last October when she appeared on the cover of Billboard magazine with a bag over her head. Within that issue you will find an article by Furler entitled “My Anti-Fame Manifesto”. Fortunately for us, this unique stance on public exposure makes for some very interesting TV! Sia was “on” Late Night this week to perform “Chandeliers” again, and this time it was Lena Dunham donning the platinum bob and thrashing around the stage. Sia was on set, but she was facedown on the top level of a bunk bed the entire time. Whatever! The song is beautiful and if this means we get to see a dozen different performance variations while it blows up the network TV circuit, then consider us stoked on all the great weirdness yet to come.
Late Night With Seth Meyers — Natasha Lyonne Interview
Natasha Lyonne is way underappreciated. Yes, she’s a very talented actress, but she’s also a survivor. She’s survived child stardom, heroin addiction, and about 10 years of professional obscurity plopped right in the middle of her career. Lyonne has always been an indie darling and we get that staying under-the-radar is totally a cool-kid move. But unless you were keeping up with a Natasha Newsletter or saw that one episode of The New Girl in 2011, she was easy to lose track of betweenBlade: Trinity in 2004 and Season 1 of Orange Is the New Black last year. The weathered starlet even admits as much, telling Vulture last August that “I didn’t have a 28-day drug problem. I had a take-five-years-off drug problem … there was many years I couldn’t get work.” No longer, though! Of all the gifts bestowed upon us by OINTB—Kate Mulgrew as a Russian mobster, Laverne Cox, something that isn’t Weeds from Jenji Kohan—Natasha Lyonne may be the best of them all. Her hard-living, complex class clown character Nicky Nichols at times seems borrowed straight from a sure-to-be-riveting autobiography of Lyonne we didn’t know we needed until she came back to us. And to see her vibrant, healthy, and making jokes about stealing her friends dog and how people proposition her in Instagram comments makes us forget all about the Lost Years. If Nicky gets her own show, we’re totally following her to a new prison.
Game of Thrones — The Watchers on the Wall
This is where we wanted to put an interesting and plot-advancing scene from Game of Thrones‘s penultimate Season 4 episode. Instead, we went back to the Wall. The whole time.
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