The host\u2019s biweekly issues-comedy show has good intentions, and sometimes good jokes.<\/b>
\nCalling your new public-affairs-comedy show \u201cThe Problem With Jon Stewart\u201d is a provocation and a pre-emption. It sounds like the title of a think-piece that could have been written at any point over the last two decades, accusing the one-time \u201cDaily Show\u201d host of false equivalence, or partisanship, or na\u00efvet\u00e9. Jon Stewart knows all this, the title says; he has even teed up your hack joke for you. You are free to title your review \u201cThe Problem With \u2018The Problem With Jon Stewart,\u2019\u201d hit \u201cPublish\u201d and call it a day. This kind of defensive self-deprecation can be, well, another problem with Jon Stewart. Even as he was reinventing political and media criticism on Comedy Central\u2019s fake newscast (before \u201cfake news\u201d was rebranded), he had a ready deflection for both critiques and praise: We\u2019re just a comedy show. As he told Tucker Carlson on CNN\u2019s \u201cCrossfire\u201d in 2004 \u2014 a confrontation that only burnished his reputation as a 21st-century Howard Beale \u2014 \u201cThe show that leads into me is puppets making prank phone calls.\u201d With \u201cThe Problem,\u201d appearing every other Thursday on Apple TV+, this is no longer true, and not just in the literal sense that on streaming TV there are no lead-ins. In stature and in the new show\u2019s spirit, he is now a pie thrower with a purpose. Stewart has joined the ranks of personages like David Letterman, Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama, creating high-minded programming for streaming TV. He is an \u00e9minence grise, though he makes his scruffy grise-iness a punchline. \u201cThis is what I look like now,\u201d he tells his audience. \u201cI don\u2019t like it either.\u201d \u201cThe Problem\u201d is his attempt to step up to that status and make a serious difference, albeit with one hand on the seltzer spritzer just in case. In its first two episodes, his show is \u201cThe Daily Show\u201d but longer (around 45 minutes), more sustained and passionate in its attention and less funny \u2014 often intentionally, sometimes not. The structure, Stewart says in the first episode, was inspired by a 2010 \u201cDaily Show\u201d in which a panel of 9\/11 responders talked about their lingering health problems and Congress\u2019s failure to approve help for them. Stewart became an advocate, on air and in Washington, for the James Zadroga 9\/11 Health and Compensation Act. \u201cThe Problem\u201d teams up the satirist Stewart with the advocate Stewart. There are comic rants, taped sketches and the occasional off-color joke about the snake on the far-right symbol the Gadsden flag. But there\u2019s also more room for other voices. Each episode centers on one issue \u2014 veterans\u2019 health, gun violence, threats to democracy \u2014 and brings on panels of \u201cstakeholders\u201d affected by it. The deep-dive approach is new for Stewart but not for the world of TV advocomedy he\u2019s rejoining, shaped in part by \u201cDaily Show\u201d alums like John Oliver, Hasan Minhaj and Wyatt Cenac. (The resemblance to Cenac\u2019s former HBO series \u201cProblem Areas\u201d was not lost on its host, who tweeted a clip of himself saying, \u201cIf you want somebody to take a Black guy saying something meaningful on TV seriously, you really need to have a white guy say basically the same thing right after.\u201d) The biggest value-add Jon Stewart brings, honestly, is Jon Stewart \u2014 his fame and ability to direct a spotlight. The panels are the most distinctive part of \u201cThe Problem,\u201d drawing on the host\u2019s later-era curiosity and empathy. The first episode concentrates on veterans whose health-coverage claims are being denied by the government after their exposure to \u201cburn pits,\u201d in which troops incinerated toxic waste using jet fuel. It\u2019s agonizing to hear vets (whom, Stewart notes, politicians love to pay lip service to) talk of lung scarring and suicide attempts, saying they feel ignored and disposed. \u201cOnce you\u2019re out, they do not care,\u201d says the retired Army Sgt. Isiah James. An interview with Denis McDonough, the secretary of veterans affairs, shows an engaged, pressing interrogation style that took Stewart years to evolve. Surprisingly, the comedy is the shakiest part early on. The first monologue hits air pockets of wan laughter \u2014 maybe the audience was unsure what to expect, maybe it was jarred by the contrast between the grim subject matter and the punch lines. Either way, it throws the momentum off. \u201cI thought you people liked me!\u201d Stewart jokes. They clearly do, but the feeling that a crowd is working to enjoy a monologue never makes for a great show. The second episode is more caustically funny but also more scattershot. The topic is \u201cfreedom,\u201d which means a tirade, \u00e0 la vintage \u201cDaily Show,\u201d on anti-vaccinators who are prolonging the pandemic in the name of liberty, followed by a lengthy panel on the rise of authoritarianism in the United States and abroad. It\u2019s more wide net than deep dive. In both episodes, the comedy seems to be working on a parallel track to the journalism rather than building with it to a climax, as on Oliver\u2019s \u201cLast Week Tonight.\u201d But the satire in the second episode hits harder, including a bit in which the actress Jenifer Lewis lambastes the protesters who have likened mask mandates to slavery: \u201cThey picked cotton. You just have to wear it.\u201d Did I like this better because it was closer to what I was used to from \u201cThe Daily Show\u201d? Or because, like all viewers fist-pumping as their favorite late-night comic \u201cdestroys\u201d somebody, I just like hearing someone acerbically agree with me? Stewart, to his credit, seems uncomfortable with preaching to the like-minded, joking at one point that his audience is \u201ca very broad-based selection of Upper West Side Jews.\u201d There\u2019s a recurring self-consciousness about the limitations of comedy here, which comes up during an earnest discussion in the writers\u2019 room. (These behind-the-scenes segments show a more diverse staff than on the old \u201cDaily Show,\u201d another oft-cited Problem With Jon Stewart.) The host gestures to a list on the whiteboard and cracks: \u201cThis is the problem with the comedy hybrid shows. The whole time we\u2019re talking about this, I\u2019m just looking at: No.1 with an asterisk, \u2018Snake penis.\u2019\u201d On the other hand: Snake penis! It has always been a mistake for people, critics like me included, to treat Stewart\u2019s serious aims and his jokes as if they were separate. Good comedy comes out of caring about something enough to think creatively about it. \u201cThe Daily Show\u201d may not have set out to fix problems, but it gave viewers a toolbox, teaching them media literacy and bringing them the news with incision and analysis. Of course, that only went so far. Stewart and Stephen Colbert\u2019s \u201cRally for Sanity\u201d before the 2010 midterms presaged an era of politics that rewarded demagogy and bad faith. (\u201cWe won,\u201d he quips, when a guest references the rally on \u201cThe Problem.\u201d) His last \u201cDaily Show,\u201d which included a valediction urging viewers to see through bluster and lies, aired the same night as the first presidential-primary debate of Donald Trump. I can understand the pull of trying to proactively make a difference, to do something more than mere comedy. But for now \u2014 and talk shows need a long breaking-in period \u2014 maybe the best thing Stewart and \u201cThe Problem\u201d can do is refine an entertainment sharp enough to draw the attention that he wants to redirect. This, too, is a contribution. If \u201cThe Problem\u201d results in a new equivalent of the Zadroga bill someday, great. But they also serve who only sit and mock.<\/p>\n