Conner O’Malley informed us on the last episode of his “Bike Talk Show” that that the network talk show brass were “trying to put a bullet in [his] head,” but that hasn’t stopped the mad genius—who you can currently see in Hulu’s Palm Springs—from taking his berserk brand of rage comedy to the streets. Also not stopping him? The threat of getting shoved in an unmarked van. O’Malley’s latest episode finds him (sans bike) navigating a protest in Portland, where his mangled jokes about the “Cheeto-In-Chief” mingle with the “spicy pepperoni gas” in the air. “Federal police do be poppin’ off,” he declares, firmly in character. “Basically this is like Coachella, but with tear gas.”
Streamed live on Sunday night, the chaotic dispatch simultaneously offers an unvarnished look at the protests as it satirizes the concept of mining easy punchlines from our current climate. O’Malley rattles off his “monologue” as protestors stream by on all sides, often stopping himself to lavish praise on HBO Max’s Looney Tunes reboot and Amazon, who he hopes will greenlight his female-focused Jack Ryan spin-off, Jackie Ryan. All the staples of his recent work are there—the raging masculinity, the 2015-era neoliberalism, the frothing devotion to brands—and each is exacerbated by the madness unfolding behind him.
As has become customary, O’Malley doesn’t sign off before taking a more direct dig at the subjects of his satire. “Thank all the hard-working talk show hosts that are making insane content right now,” he says near the stream’s conclusion. “All you guys are in your beautiful, beautiful, beautiful attics in your second homes, churning out the most insane ‘covfefe’ jokes I’ve ever seen in my entire life. You’re really pushing the needle. I wanna say that you guys are really pushing comedy forward and you’re able to accurately satirize what’s going on in this moment instead of just wishing and hoping it was 2006 all over again.”
Watch it in full below.
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