John Oliver Manages a Brilliant Comic Take on the Death Penalty

By Madeleine Davies  |  May 6, 2014 | 4:10pm
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Last week in Oklahoma, the execution of two death row inmates was botched after Clayton Lockett, one of the men sentenced to die by lethal injection, was given a new drug combination that caused him to die of a brutal heart attack.

The incident has thrust the death penalty debate into the spotlight — even stealing valuable cable news time away from missing planes and Benghazi conspiracies for the sake of debating the issues of morality that surround capital punishment. As it turns out, the highly fraught issue isn’t the easiest one to discuss and it’s certainly not one to joke about.

…Unless you’re John Oliver, of course. In that case, you do a 12 minute segment on your new HBO show about it and — amazingly— you do it well.

Last Week Tonight manages to tackle the death penalty debate from all angles with grim, smart humor. And if that sounds too bleak for you, they break the tension at the end of the segment with a video of a tiny hamster eating a tiny burrito.

 
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