10x03 - Governorship of Ron DeSantis

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LAST WEEK TONIGHT
WITH JOHN OLIVER

Welcome to "Last Week Tonight".
I'm John Oliver.

Thank you so much for joining us.
It has been a busy week,

from Lori Lightfoot losing her
reelection bid in Chicago,

to Alec Murdaugh being found guilty
of two murders.

Of all the ill-advised
pieces of commentary

concerning this blockbuster trial,

perhaps none was less welcome
than this.

A whole lot of people asking me
what I think about this…

Alex Murdaugh trial.

I don't know
why they think I'm an expert on it.

I do!

I do, O.J. There are two things
you have expertise on in this life:

football and murdering wives.

No one's asking you for your take
on Alec Murdaugh's rushing average,

so I'm guessing
it's the second one there.

But we're going to start
with our main story tonight,

which concerns Ron DeSantis,
business Fred Flintstone.

DeSantis has been all over the news,
as he is seemingly every week.

He appointed his political backers
to a new Disney oversight board.

He released a new book
"The Courage to Be Free",

and by the way, I have a little gift
for our studio audience.

Look under your seats!
The gift is, it isn't there.

You don't have to read it.
You're welcome.

And he also put out
this eye-catching video.

Florida is proof positive

that we the people
are not destined for failure.

DeSantis wins. He has made a promise,
and he's making good on the promise.

Florida is leading the nation.
Decline is a choice.

Success is attainable.
And freedom is worth fighting for.

There is a lot there,

but "Florida's proof that we the people
are not destined for failure?"

I don't know about that, Ron.
Last year alone in Florida,

a man tried to steal a crossbow
by stuffing it down his pants,

a woman instigated a police chase

so she could cross "getting arrested"
off her bucket list,

and a man was charged with battery for
throwing a hot dog at a police officer.

We the people may not
be destined for failure,

but a lot of individuals down there
sure do seem drawn to it.

This all feels like part
of a coordinated rollout

of DeSantis's
inevitable presidential campaign.

Because even though he hasn't yet
officially announced he's running,

he's already many conservatives'
favorite candidate.

After his landslide reelection
as governor last November,

the New York Post
proclaimed him "DeFuture".

Which is depressing.

And he received this cringe-inducing
introduction from Kari Lake.

I don't know if you've heard of this,
but he's got BDE.

Anybody know
what that means?

Ask your kids about it later.

I call it Big DeSantis Energy.

Okay, that is obviously terrible,
but just to be clear:

if you don't know what BDE is,
please don't ask your kids later.

For the sake of those kids,
I'll just tell you right now:

it stands for Big d*ck Energy,
a kind of easy, magnetic confidence

that doesn't necessarily mean
you have a large penis,

or, indeed, a penis at all,
it's just the energy associated.

A list of those with BDE
would include Bryan Cranston,

Christine Baranski, the Pixar lamp,
Charles Darwin, and Snoopy.

Does that make sense?
Please come to me and not your kids

if you need any penis-related
slang explained in the future.

It is worth noting, in general,

you can't predict much about
a presidential race 20 months out.

Previous early frontrunners
include Jeb Bush…

The late Jeb Bush?
I don't know, it's unclear.

Howard Dean, and Rudy Giuliani,

who is wandering around Central Park
covered in Thousand Island dressing

and screaming about election fraud
to pigeons.

And DeSantis is eventually likely
to have to go up against Donald Tr*mp,

which history has shown
is no easy task.

While Tr*mp initially struggled to coin
a damaging nickname for DeSantis,

with his first attempt being the weak
"Ron DeSanctimonious",

he later unveiled
something with a lot more punch.

According to the Times,

Tr*mp has spent weeks
trying to goad DeSantis into a fight,

describing him in conversations
as "Meatball Ron".

Yeah. Apparently,
he was calling him Meatball Ron.

I hate to say it,
but Tr*mp's still got it!

It's perfectly stupid,
childish, and hurtful

in a way that's genuinely
difficult to articulate.

Also, it's a pretty good name
on its own.

If you asked me to describe
the perfect "Meatball Ron",

I'd say, I don't know,
maybe a round little hamster.

Or this smiley cartoon character.
Little arms and legs, little mustache,

maybe voiced by Chris Pratt
in a straight-to-streaming kids movie

with weirdly Christian undertones
that feels anti-Italian somehow.

But then, if you simply showed me
a picture of this guy,

I'd say,
"Forget everything that I just said,

that is my Meatball Ron right there,
that is my meatball".

But whatever Tr*mp
calls him in the future,

the fact is, Meatball Ron

remains a strong contender
for the Republican nomination.

And while many commentators
insist on framing him

solely in opposition to Tr*mp,

saying things like he's
"Donald Tr*mp with a brain",

that doesn't seem
particularly meaningful.

It's like saying, "That new restaurant
is better than this chicken pot pie

that fell on the sidewalk".

It is, but you're not really giving me
much useful information there.

If I may quote Tom Brady's publicist
while reviewing his old golf photos,

"Let's take Tr*mp
out of the picture".

And tonight, let's examine
DeSantis on his own merits,

and look at just some
of what he's done to

and for the over 20 million people
of Florida.

It's sometimes less than he claims,
sometimes less than his critics claim,

and sometimes
worse than you may know.

Let's skip over his early life.

He grew up in Florida,
was a standout baseball player,

got to the Little League World Series
with his local team.

He then went to Yale,
then Harvard Law School,

and subsequently joined the Navy
as an attorney.

Eventually,
he married his wife, Casey,

despite having the most bizarre
dating tactic I have ever heard.

According to a former classmate,
DeSantis would apparently tell dates

that he liked Thai food,
but pronounced it "thigh".

If they corrected him,
he would make up an excuse and leave,

because, quote, "He didn't want
a girlfriend who corrected him".

If that is true, wow!

Just imagine being on that date.
You're out at dinner,

and your date tells you
that he really likes "thigh" food.

And you think, "Wait, did he just call
Thai food 'thigh' food?"

But he goes on to say that he knows
a great "thigh" food restaurant,

all while staring very intently at you,
almost studying your reaction.

So, as politely as you can, you say,
"Thai food? From Thailand?"

And then suddenly,
his face drops, and he says,

"Sorry, I forgot I have
a doctor's appointment tonight",

and he leaves,
leaving you both with the check,

and the single greatest
first-date disaster story of all time.

Then, flashing forward, in 2012,
DeSantis was elected to Congress,

though while there,
a former colleague says

that he always had his earbuds in,
to keep people away.

And if you're picking up
on a theme of:

"Ron DeSantis doesn't like hearing
anyone's voice but his own",

you're on to something, because
since becoming Florida governor,

he's made shutting down dissenting
voices something of a feature.

Here is a campaign ad
from last year,

in which he shows off
his skill at battling the media.

Good morning.
This is your governor speaking.

Today's training evolution: dogfighting.
Taking on the corporate media.

Number one:
don't fire unless fired upon,

but when they fire,
you fire back with overwhelming force.

Does it say that in the bill?
I'm asking to tell me what's in the bill.

Number two:
never, ever back down from a fight.

- If I could complete the question…
- It is a speech or a question?

Number three:
don't accept their narrative.

It's wrong, it's a fake narrative,
I disabused you of the narrative,

and you don't care
about the facts.

Until around 40 seconds ago,

"Top g*n: Maverick"
was my favorite movie of last year,

but now, I'm sad to say, it's my least
favorite movie of all time,

tied with "Cats"
and the Zapruder film.

DeSantis is constantly complaining
the media is taking him out of context.

Although it is worth noting
that in that ad,

he's removing some pretty important
context from the media.

Take that clip where he said,

"Are you gonna give a speech
or ask a question?"

You'll notice that only one person
is doing the fighting there.

Governor, what has gone wrong
with the rollout of the vaccine

that we've seen phone lines jammed,
websites crashing…

It's a lot of demand.
I think at the end of the day…

- Excuse me!
- If I could finish my question…

You just said, "What has gone wrong?"
So, I'm answering the question.

- If I could complete the question.
- It is a speech or a question?

You asked a question.
I'm going to answer it.

- I'm trying to finish my question.
- No, you asked a question.

- I am trying to ask you the…
- You get three questions?

They only got one question.
Why do you get three?

- I'm asking if I could finish it.
- You finished the question.

No, she didn't!

And all she's asking you for
is some basic accountability.

When you see that in context,
that's a pretty gross case

of someone "meatball-splaining"
to a journalist

who's just trying to do
her f*cking job.

Though, to be clear,
DeSantis doesn't hate all media.

There is one notable exception.
It's the exact one you're thinking of.

DeSantis is on Fox News all the time,
morning, noon, and night.

Even by Republican standards,

the mutual affection between him
and Fox is pretty extreme.

In just one four-month stretch,

"the network asked him to appear
on its airwaves 113 times,

or nearly once a day,"

with one Fox producer even offering
to let him pick the subject matter

if he agreed to come on,
which is just pathetic.

If Fox News ever went on a date
with Ron DeSantis,

they definitely wouldn't correct him
when he called it "thigh" food.

But DeSantis
isn't just another Fox talking head,

he sells himself as someone
with a proven track record.

He has done some terrible stuff.
for instance, at his urging,

his state's medical board banned
gender-affirming care for minors.

And he signed
a 15-week abortion ban into law,

while recently suggesting he'd sign
a six-week one if it reached his desk.

Lots of Republican governors
have done things like that.

What makes DeSantis
extra popular on the right

is his willingness to wage
big, symbolic culture wars.

He's bragged that he's made Florida
"the freest state" in America,

while defending its residents
from the greatest scourge of our time.

Wokeism is really
a form of cultural Marxism.

The wokeism
is the new religion of the left.

We are not, and will never,
ever surrender to the woke mob.

Florida is where woke goes to die.

First, Florida is not
where woke goes to die.

It's where wealthy Upper East Side
New Yorkers go to die.

But second, DeSantis says "woke"
so often it begins to lose all meaning,

but if you're wondering
what he thinks it actually stands for,

his general counsel once helpfully
defined "woke" in court as,

"the view that there are systemic
injustices in American society

and the need to have policies
that address them."

Which is a hell of a thing

for someone to admit to everyone
that you are against.

DeSantis might really want to invest in a
lawyer more willing to lie for him.

I understand there's one currently
wandering around Central Park

who is available,
if you can catch him.

But you'll have to be careful.
He's slippy!

DeSantis expends a lot of energy

decrying wokeness
and empty virtue signaling,

although he also seems to spend
a huge amount of time

doing the right-wing
version of exactly that.

There was the time
that he waded in on Lia Thomas,

a trans woman who'd won an event
in an NCAA swimming championship.

The second-place finisher
happened to be from Florida,

which DeSantis then took as an excuse
to come out and do this sh*t.

If you look
at what the NCAA has done

by allowing basically men
to compete in women's athletics,

in this case, the swimming,

you had the number one woman
who finished was from Sarasota.

We're going
to be doing a proclamation

saying that Emma is the best female
swimmer in the 500-meter freestyle

because she earned that.

Okay, aside from being f*cking gross
and awful, to be very clear:

"DeSantis doesn't have the power

to declare or disqualify winners
in college sports,"

rendering that proclamation
completely pointless.

But since men in suits
seem to be using their platforms

to invalidate past athletic
achievements out of pure spite,

I hereby declare
that by signing this,

Ron DeSantis's Little League team,
the Swingin' Meatballs,

did not, in fact, ever make
the Little League World Series.

Instead, his team's place
will from henceforth

be taken by the season-six cast
of "RuPaul's Drag Race".

I declare it!
It is declared! It is done!

But it's gone way beyond
empty, hateful proclamations.

DeSantis has also signed
a bunch of attention-grabbing bills

that seem designed to delight
conservatives and enrage liberals.

And while the announcements
of these bills

tend to get a lot
of national media coverage,

the actual implementation of them
can get far less scrutiny.

Take DeSantis's
so-called "anti-riot law",

which he passed following the
Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

The law, among other things,
strengthens criminal penalties

for those deemed rioters
at demonstrations.

And he loves to brag
to conservative audiences

about just how mad
it's made people.

And I have to say,
brag a little bit.

Our anti-riot legislation was recently
criticized by the United Nations.

I wear that as a badge of honor.

Okay!

But being chastised by the UN
isn't innately positive.

What other admonitions

would fill DeSantis
with a misplaced sense of pride?

"I was also criticized
by the Holocaust Museum,

Lego called me a scumbag,
and Malala Yousafzai

said she'd punch me in the throat
if she ever got the chance.

I wear that as a badge of honor."

But it is not just the UN
that had a problem with that law.

A judge issued
a preliminary injunction

blocking the key part of it
from being enforced,

arguing that it could effectively
criminalize legal, protected speech,

and that it was "vague to the point
of unconstitutionality".

The same thing happened to his
"Stop Social Media Censorship Act",

which, again, got a huge amount
of attention when he first signed it.

It threatened social media platforms
with fines for banning candidates,

and he proposed it
shortly after a number of them

had removed Tr*mp
in the wake of January 6th.

'Cause of, you know, that thing.

But that law is also
under a preliminary injunction,

from a judge who at one point told
the DeSantis administration's lawyers,

"I won't put you on the spot and ask
you if you've ever dealt with a statute

that was more poorly drafted."

And look,
he is still fighting those lawsuits,

and future decisions
could wind up going his way.

These cases are going
through higher courts that range

from "fairly conservative" all the way
up to "overturned Roe v. Wade."

But even when DeSantis
has existing laws on his side,

his application of them
can be slapdash and gross.

Just last year,
he made a big show of announcing

his new "Elections Crime
and Security Office"

had spearheaded the arrests
of 20 people who'd voted illegally.

These were largely people who the
state had cleared to join the voter rolls,

so they assumed
they were eligible to vote,

despite the fact
that they technically weren't.

One way of dealing with that would've
been to simply contact those people,

explain the mistake,
and remove them from the rolls.

But instead, DeSantis chose to send
armed cops to conduct arrests,

with bodycam video later
revealing police, with g*ns drawn,

pulling people out of their houses.

If you listen to cops involved,
even they seem

annoyed and embarrassed
at what they're having to do.

They just dumped this sh*t on me.

I had to plan three operations
in four hours.

I ain't commit no fraud.

So that's the thing. I don't know
exactly what happened with it,

but you do have a warrant,
and that's what it's for.

Why is y'all doing this now,
and this happened years ago?

I have no idea, man.

Do you have any idea

how sketchy your order needs to be
for cops to enforce it reluctantly?

Enforcing laws on scared people
is one of their favorite things to do!

It's that, make siren go
"wee-woo, wee-woo, wee-woo",

and end of list.

Now, since then,
several of those cases,

including all those we just showed you,
have been dropped or dismissed.

But it really feels
like DeSantis's main aim there,

as in so many cases,
was just to instill fear.

To make people afraid to protest,
or to moderate content,

or even to vote.

Even his sloppily written laws
can end up doing real harm.

And maybe the clearest place
to see all of this in action

is in Florida's schools,
he has been very busy there.

You probably remember
last year's passage of HB 1557,

the Florida Parental Rights
in Education Act,

also known
as the Don't Say Gay bill.

Though DeSantis says that name
pushes a "false narrative",

and has claimed
that the bill simply says

no sexual instruction
to kids pre-K through three.

But the truth is, the bill
is not as narrow as that at all,

as this DeSantis supporter
openly acknowledges.

What this bill's trying to prevent
is indoctrination of our children.

But the bill is a sweeping,
general piece of legislation

that doesn't apply to young children,
it applies throughout the school age,

where it says "age-appropriate teaching
of gender identity and sexuality".

The bill targets
kindergarten to third grade

and it says
"or age appropriate".

So, when is it age appropriate
to talk about h*m*?

It varies by the individual.

You would sue a teacher if they
started talking to your daughter

about same-sex marriage
or LGBTQ issues at the age of 17?

If they don't have my consent
and I think it's not appropriate, yes.

I think a lot of people
would be quite shocked to hear that.

- It's kind of a mainstream…
- That is the law!

Exactly. I know that's rough to hear,
but he is technically right there.

Thanks to Ron DeSantis,
right now, it is the law in Florida.

And quick sidenote,

it's funny how it's always the people
who think h*m* as a concept

needs to be taught
at an "appropriate age"

that don't give a second thought

to when they teach their kids
what heterosexuality is.

I could be wrong. Maybe in that
guy's family, his kid asks every day

"Who are you people living
in my house?" and he responds:

"My name is Dad, that lady is Mom,
and we're friends.

Don't ask me any more questions
'til you're 18 or I will sue you!"

And it is not just sexuality
in DeSantis's crosshairs,

he's also passed an act
called the Stop WOKE Act,

which limits the ways concepts
related to systemic racism

and sex discrimination
can be discussed in schools.

And to hear him tell it,
laws like that are badly needed

because the wokeness in schools goes
way deeper than anyone might think.

I will have math books
sent to my department of education

for review, these textbooks,
and they will do things like woke math.

And I'm thinking to myself,
two plus two equals four.

It's not, "Two plus two. Let's have
a struggle session over that.

How do you feel about it?"
No. There's a right answer here.

Out of context,
he's completely right there.

Numbers don't have feelings.

If they did, this one would be sad,
this one would be giggly,

and this one would be exciting
for a few minutes,

but then the novelty wears off
and it mostly just gets tired and sore.

DeSantis has claimed that his state
had to reject math books

for containing "indoctrinating
concepts like race essentialism,

especially, bizarrely,
for elementary school students."

Now, that is a big claim.

If it sounds like bullshit to you,
that's because it absolutely is.

Reporters for these outlets
combed through thousands of pages

of elementary school textbooks
and their reviews,

and couldn't find
any such examples.

And when the DeSantis administration
eventually produced

just four tiny snippets of what they
claimed was objectionable material,

for the two that came
from grade-school books,

there is nothing about race,
although one does suggest students

"practice with empathizing
with classmates"

while they fulfill a lesson objective

of "identify numbers
from one to five in sequence".

So, his big claim of "woke math" and
"race essentialism" in grade schools

is regular math and trying to teach
kids not to be dicks to each other.

A kind of math education that DeSantis
frankly might've benefited from,

as his solution to figuring out the
difference between 1 and 3 questions

seems to be, "yell until
the other person stops talking".

And the most recent thing
you may have heard about

are books being pulled
from shelves in Florida schools,

with viral images like these
making the rounds online.

In classic fashion, DeSantis has
pushed back on those images hard.

They've tried to create
in Florida a narrative,

it's basically a book ban hoax,
it's a hoax, what they're doing.

And they're trying to say that
because we have parental rights

and because we have
curriculum transparency,

if you have a book
that has hardcore p*rn

in a library
that 10-year-olds can access,

and a parent objects to that,
that does not satisfy Florida standards,

it should not be in the library
with those young kids.

And I think 99 percent of parents
agree with that.

Okay, first, let's debunk
the most egregious claim there

because 99 percent of parents
don't agree on anything.

I'm pretty sure you can find
at least 10 percent of parents

who are against covering electrical
sockets in reach of toddlers.

They're called zap moms
and they're all about

letting kids discover
their own limits of electricity.

But I will give DeSantis this,

there has been some misinformation
floating around online.

This viral list of books
supposedly banned statewide in Florida,

circulated widely,
but it's nonsense.

Having said that, those images
of empty shelves are very real,

and are the direct result
of DeSantis's actions.

He signed legislation
mandating that only approved books

could be included in any school
or classroom library,

and that approval must come
from a certified media specialist.

That led some districts, including
the ones those photos are from,

to tell teachers
to remove or cover books.

Not because
they were pushing a false narrative,

but because they were trying
to comply with DeSantis's stupid law.

And while DeSantis might say,
"This is an overreaction

because those books
will return once they are approved",

not all of them.

Thanks to his new law,

as well as that Don't Say Gay bill
and his Stop WOKE Act,

he has turbocharged
a movement among conservatives

to get books removed from libraries
that they just don't like.

And this goes way beyond removing
hardcore p*rn

or the usual kind of give-and-take
between parents and school boards

that has been going on
for decades now.

What DeSantis has done
is make it so anyone in a community

can challenge these books.

Reporters tracked down
one woman

who submitted 21 book challenges
in one county,

only to find that she's a retiree
with no children

who fully admits
that she hasn't read all of them,

but "I've read them in partial".

So, she skimmed them and said,
"I'm sure nobody should read this".

Which is exactly how I feel
about Ron DeSantis's new book,

but I'm not trying to get it
taken out of libraries, am I?

This teacher
in Escambia County, Florida,

challenged around 115 books,
among them titles like

"And Tango Makes Three",
a picture book based on the true story

of two male penguins at the Zoo
who raised a baby chick together.

Apparently, one of her objections to it
is that a second grader could read it,

"and the idea
would pop into their mind

that these are two people
of the same sex that love each other".

And the problem is, schools are acting
on those sorts of complaints.

There was a recent school
board meeting in that county

to address the calls to ban three
of the books on that teacher's list,

including the penguin one.

Multiple community members
came to testify in favor of banning it,

and some made it abundantly clear
what law they felt empowered them.

I probably wouldn't even talk
about this book

except for right and wrong
as a clear line and it's not gray,

so it is black and white.

It's black and white with the law
when we talk about HB 1557.

I think we're talking
about indoctrination.

And when you look up this book
on Destiny Discover,

on the schools and county website

the book says this book is about
two male penguins that fall in love.

Jesus said, "Go and sin no more",
so this, this is against the law.

Thank you.

Just think about the work
he put into that.

That man had to shower,
put on a pair of pants,

decide what shirt to wear,

choose the light blue one
that's two sizes too big,

drive to the meeting,
park his car, walk into the building,

wait a while for his turn to speak,

all so that he could eventually
stand behind a podium

and say out loud, as an adult,
that he's mad about gay penguins.

You have to admire his dedication
to being such a f*cking idiot.

But the problem is,
that f*cking idiot won.

At that meeting,
the board voted to ban

"And Tango Makes Three"
from its schools.

When you take all of this together,
the books being removed,

the inane proclamations
to shame trans athletes,

the sloppy attempts
to criminalize protestors,

and you combine it
with everything else,

from the support
for restrictive abortion bans,

to the efforts
to stop gender-affirming care,

it really begins to feel like
"the freest state" in America

is only free to the extent
that anyone wants to behave

exactly the way that Ron DeSantis
thinks they should.

In the months to come,

you're gonna hear a lot
of DeSantis-versus-Tr*mp comparisons.

And the truth is, he'll probably
come out well in a lot of them,

more or less by default,
but that cannot be the bar here.

It is important
to consider DeSantis in his own right.

If Donald Tr*mp never existed,
and let's just all just pause

and enjoy that hypothetical,
just for a second.

If Donald Tr*mp never existed,

and you were forced
to learn about Ron DeSantis,

from scratch,
with no basis for comparison,

what you would see
would justifiably horrify you.

Because you would be discovering
a petty autocrat and a bully.

A man with no interest
in hearing dissent, questions,

or indeed the correct pronunciation
of "Thai food".

And all in all, a man who is,
and I do not use this term lightly,

just a f*cking meatball.

And now, this!

And Now…

Jerry O'Connell's Wife is a Scorpio,
and He Needs Help.

I have to tell you,
I did not believe in astrology either,

when I saw it, I didn't believe it,
and then I married a Scorpio.

- If you marry a Scorpio…
- You better know it.

A Scorpio, it's over,
just do what they say.

All Scorpios do is vent,
that's what they do.

You just can't ever get her mad
because Mama Bear is a Scorpio.

My wife is a Scorpio.

Scorpios, I can tell you
as someone who's married to one,

they're really good at fighting.

- I'm married to a Scorpio so…
- Yay!

We are like one drunken lunch away
from being, "That's it, I'm out!

I'm finished with you!"

My wife was breastfeeding and I
dropped a couple of bags on the floor.

And my wife is a Scorpio,

so you can only imagine
what I went through after that.

- Rebecca, who is a Scorpio…
- No, Jerry wouldn't do it!

My wife is a Scorpio,
sometimes my wife is, like,

"What's going on
with you and Jacqueline?"

I'm married to one.

You're married to a Scorpio as well?
We can talk after the show.

Moving on.

Before we go, I'd like to take a moment
to discuss advertising.

We're all constantly bombarded
by ads,

and it can be hard for a brand
to cut through the noise

unless they're using
a flashy celebrity endorsement

or making a massive f*ck-up.

Like when Volkswagen
Italy's Instagram account

combined the word "Volkswagen"
and the word "Italia",

to spell something very different.

It's like what Optimus Prime
looks for with safe search off.

But we discovered that a plumbing
company from Austin, Texas

had made a commercial so bold
it dared you not to pay attention.

There was a time
where homeowners

dealt with unruly ACs, toilets,
and water heaters.

No other team
could handle the fight.

But there remained a beacon of hope
in a group of superheroes

just one call away.

We'll take it from here.

Dispatch, I'm en route.

Just call Radiant.

Yeah. Exactly.

That "Avengers" parody is an ad
for a local plumbing company.

And honestly, I've got no notes.
Except, you know what, I do have one.

Who the f*ck is the guy
on the left supposed to be?

I'm not an "Avengers" buff,
but I'm pretty sure there's no dog guy.

But please,
tell me I'm wrong, internet.

I would love to get a thousand tweets
about this from you nerds,

"Actually, John, if you look closely
in the 'Avengers' issue 457,

the existence of a radioactive dog
is not in fact out of the question".

Tell me that! I'm lookin' at this guy
and I'm thinking there's no radioacti…

sh*t, it's the raccoon isn't it?

He's the raccoon with a dirty mouth
and a tree for a friend.

It's my mistake.
I take all of that back.

If all this company had made
was that one movie-themed ad,

that would have been
comfortably enough for me.

But it turns out,
Radiant Plumbing does this a lot.

Because last year, they also managed
to turn a certain transhumanist epic

about the dangers of messianic
prophecies into an ad as well.

The people ask us to bring peace
to the city of Austin.

House Radiant accepts!

I know you.

There's something
awakening in your mind.

You must face your fears.

Come with me.

COMING TO A HOME NEAR YOU

You need to be ready.

Holy sh*t!
That "Dune" parody is incredible.

The casting alone!
Look at this guy.

He's more of a Timothée Chalamet-type
than the real Timothée Chalamet.

He's got that signature
Chalamet air of mystery

where you're not sure
if he's about to white boy rap at you

or do whip-its
in your mom's basement.

And as for ending
with this giant toilet sandworm?

"Avatar: Way of Wet"
can go f*ck itself,

the Oscar for best visual effects
goes to Radiant Plumbing.

And the cherry
on top of all of that

is the title that they chose for it
on YouTube "Toilet Dune".

No need to think too hard on it.
It's toilet and it's "Dune".

It's "Toilet Dune".

And when you start diving
into Radiant's YouTube page,

you will quickly discover
just how versatile they are

in the medium of toilet cinema.

They've done "Star Wars",
in which R2-D2 is played by a toilet.

They've done a "Scream" parody
for Halloween,

and three years ago,
they even rolled out a series of ads

parodying "Napoleon Dynamite",

a movie that was, at that point,
a mere 16 years old.

I'm not even getting into their
movie-themed window displays,

which have included the Teenage
Mutant Ninja Toilets, Mary Poopins,

and, in the clearest example
of "we'll add toilet to anything",

Jurassic Toilet.

Look, let me be
very clear at this point.

I have no idea how good at plumbing
Radiant Plumbing is.

Given how much time
they spend making these ads,

they could very well be terrible,
but I couldn't care less.

They are now responsible for some of
my favorite commercials ever produced,

including this final one
that I'd like to show you.

It's a love letter to James Cameron's
least wet film, "The Terminator".

We must destroy the mother toilet.
We'll not stand for a toilet takeover!

We've got bowel movement.
Turn on all frequencies.

- Alpha team, status report.
- I can see the mother toilet now.

Go! Now!

The toilet has taken over
the squad commander.

Hasta la toilet, baby.
You forgot to wipe the seat.

For all your plumbing…
AC and drain needs…

Just call Radiant. What are you doing?
Pick up the phone, now!

That's just very good.
It's very good.

From making the choice

that there will be not
one Arnold Schwarzenegger, but eight,

to giving the evil toilet what I can
describe as disturbingly human teeth.

Honestly, you watch enough of these,
and you begin to wonder,

is there any movie that they
can't turn into a commercial?

And I guess, sadly,
there's just no way to find out.

Except for one.

Because you may remember,
a few years ago,

we offered local car dealers the chance
to film a commercial that we wrote,

with the catch being that they couldn't
look at the script before agreeing,

and one dealership,
Zumbrota Ford of Minnesota,

actually took us up on our offer.

I have a similar proposition tonight,
but with a crucial difference.

So, please, come with me.
Because Radiant Plumbing,

I need you to listen to me
very closely,

'cause I have
a very important proposal for you.

Unlike the last time,
I haven't written you a script.

Why would I,

when you are already swimming
in a veritable toilet bowl of ideas.

Instead, in this envelope,
I have the name of a film.

I won't say which one.

But I will say that if you agree
to some basic terms and conditions,

a key one being that you agree
to make your next movie commercial

inspired by the film in this envelope,
sight unseen,

we will debut your ad
on this show to millions of people,

and give a $10 000 donation
to the Central Texas Food Bank.

The movie in here
could be in your wheelhouse,

like an action film,
or a costume-heavy horror.

Or it could be something else.
So, it is a risk.

But as you might say,
"with great risk comes great toilet."

So, please, get in touch,
and let's make movie magic together!

You have exactly one week
to reply.

Thank you so much for watching.
We'll see you next week, good night!

Call us!