Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Daily Show’, Where Jon Stewart Returns To Skewer The 2024 Election, But Not In A Way Many People Might Want

After Trevor Noah abruptly left The Daily Show at the end of 2022, Comedy Central spent all of 2023 rotating through a roster of guest hosts that included all of the current correspondents, plus guest hosts like Chelsea Handler, Michelle Wolf, Charlamagne Tha God, Kal Penn, Leslie Jones, Sarah Silverman and others. Instead of settling on a new host — they were going to give the gig to Hasan Minhaj until that unfortunate New Yorker story on him came out — they decided to bring back Jon Stewart once a week, and make him an executive producer, as well. People who loved his original 1999-2015 tenure (us included) were happy to see it. Others, hoping for new blood or someone that can give it to the right on a daily basis, not so much. How was Stewart’s first night back behind the desk?

THE DAILY SHOW: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The Daily Show‘s traditional news-broadcast-esque opening, then we pan through the crowd and onto the set, where Jon Stewart is sitting behind the desk for the first time since 2015. “Now, where was I?” he says.

The Gist: As the entire country knows, Stewart has rejoined The Daily Show; he’ll be hosting the show every Monday from now through the 2024 presidential election (or maybe longer “based on the coup schedule,” he quips), and is also an executive producer for the show.

He jumps right in, after talking about Sunday’s Super Bowl for a few seconds; in trying to find a name for the show’s “Indecision 2024” coverage, he starts by saying, “We already know our candidates, it’s — drumroll please — these fuckin’ guys! Yaaay?” as the mugs of Joe Biden and Donald Trump appear over his shoulder.

Stewart starts going down the road of how both Biden and Trump are “objectively old,” citing Biden’s combative press conference after the report on his management of classified documents characterized him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.” Trump, of course, can be shown talking gibberish in any number of settings. To show what age can do, he turns to the other camera on him and encourages a closeup of his now-61-year-old face. “I’m 20 years younger than these motherfuckers. They wish!”, indicating that both candidates wished they looked as youthful as Stewart, who then compared his own wizened face to his relatively youthful look back in 2004.

He then goes to the “best fuckin’ news team going,” who all seem to be situated at the same random diner. Desi Lydic and Michael Kosta describe how their section of the diner has the most regular people voters there, and Dulcé Sloan complains that “we need more than the same show with an older, yet familiar face,” which Stewart correctly thinks is a shot at him. Ronny Cheing is just there to stuff his face with potato skins. Then Jordan Klepper sits at the desk and slams Stewart for his “both sidesism” before being informed that he will be hosting the rest of the week, which changes his tune.

The guest is Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor-in-chief of The Economist. We’ll discuss the interview a little bit more below.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Jon Stewart’s first day back behind the TDS desk brought back the show during his 1999-2015 tenure, especially the show’s peak years from about 2000-2007.

Our Take: What shocked us about Stewart’s first day back is that, aside from the wrinkles, white hair and equally white stubble on his face, it feels like his energy was at the same level as it was when he left the show nine years ago. It took him until about halfway through the first segment to shake off any rust he had, and then the big laughs started rolling, especially when he turned the joke on himself and acknowledged how poorly he’s aged since he left the show.

We thought Stewart was hilarious, and it emphasized just how different his old Apple show, The Problem With Jon Stewart, was from his TDS tenure. We watched that show wondering why we weren’t laughing; it was because Stewart tried to combine humor with a much more lecture-y message than the TDS format allows. He did give a bit of a lecture near the end of the first segment, citing that, no matter who wins the presidential election, he’s learned that the people getting things done at much lower levels are always what makes the country run.

But when Stewart gets rolling with using almost pure satire to point out hypocrisies on both sides of the aisle, there really isn’t anyone better. The “both sides” part is the rub, though. Stewart has never wavered at pointing out times when both the left and the right don’t practice what they preach, or talk in nonsense, or reverse course to further their political interests. Yes, his targets are more often on the right than the left, but he doesn’t spare the left at all. Starting out his first segment back behind the desk with a scathing look at Biden’s age and ability to lead for a second term shows that. He started the interview with Beddoes on the same topic, just to emphasize that point.

However, as many critics and social media spewers have pointed out in the weeks leading up to Stewart’s return, the media world, and the country’s mood in general, has changed in the last nine years. In their minds, humor that strikes at one side or the other — but let’s face it, what they mean by that is that humor that pounds away at the right all the time — is preferable to the “both sidesism” that Stewart employs.

To us, Stewart’s now-old-school centrism is refreshing; it’s a reminder of the days when Stewart could have Bill O’Reilly on TDS as a guest and banter with him, not seeing him as the enemy but just as a person whose views aren’t aligned with his. Stewart has always had this stubborn streak of hope in finding common ground with people on a human level, and we’re glad he is continuing to utilize that now.

Can Stewart get pedantic at times? Absolutely; his interview with Beddoes felt more like him telling her what he thinks about Biden, the change in the views of the right, and our wavering support of Ukraine than asking a top journalist some probing questions. Will he likely get a lot of criticism for making his weekly TDS hosting forays a commentary on both the right and the left instead of picking a side? Definitely. But, for anyone who still likes to decide for themselves who to support, and whose views may take from both sides of the aisle — still a vast majority of Americans — we hope that Stewart can cut through the noise every Monday for the next nine months.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: The “Moment of Zen” is a long, rambling screed by Trump about the woeful state of airlines these days. Of course, it only made partial sense.

Sleeper Star: Stewart inherits a group of correspondents (minus Roy Wood, Jr., who left during the show’s year-long host search) that has honed their styles and personas during most of Trevor Noah’s tenure as TDS host — Klepper is the only one who started when Stewart was still there. Stewart felt right at home with all of them, which bodes well for the coming months.

Most Pilot-y Line: None, really.

Our Call: STREAM IT. While Jon Stewart may not be everyone’s cup of tea anymore, given how divisive we’ve become as a society, his ability to look over the entire political landscape and find things to skewer on both sides is what made his original run on The Daily Show so effective. He looks like he’s in prime form in his return; we hope that the world hasn’t passed him by as much as pundits and screamers on X might think.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.