Two episodes of Hasan Minaj’s “Patriot Act” have dropped. Although he’s a fairly recent defector from “The Daily Show,” it most closely resembles John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight.” But Minaj seems to be targeting south Asians and Muslims with the show. Also, targeting an especially young audience. In the first episode. Minaj spends the whole episode talking about affirmative action. In the second episode, he talks mostly about Saudi Arabia before switching topics, finally closing with a taped bit that has kids dropping F bombs. They attempt a different look with the show. The audience is close to the stage. But in the first episode especially, they sound like a laugh track. In the second episode he calls attention to all the brown faces in the crowd. The other issue is instead of a green screen or a large TV monitor behind him, they build a wall of a monitors, Minaj calls it a wall of iPads. They seem to be working out the kinks. Letterman’s new Netflix shows were plagued with odd camera angles and cuts for the first few episodes. “Patriot Act” caught the same bug. There’s odd profile shots that almost seem to be shooting him from behind. In the Saudia Arabia presentation, the monitor goes dark, Minaj walks to his spot and then the photo of MBS fades in behind Minaj. Somehow it looked too rehearsed and lacked impact.
[image: minajmbs.jpg] The director is Richard A. Preuss. IMDB lists some impressive credits. I think he needs to smooth it out. Conan O’Brien had a rough start and it took months for him to figure it out. A bigger problem is that Minaj doesn’t seem to have the charisma or comic stamina or something to carry a whole half hour. Sometimes his jokes seem good but he steps on the punchline. It makes your appreciate a John Oliver, Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, who can keep up the pace for a full half hour. The latter two benefit from commercial breaks. Minaj is also making references to south Asian and Muslim cultural items. Like some kind of test I guess Indian kids take, and some sort of toiletry tactic he feels is superior to toilet paper alone and to Saudis not owning dogs. He notes the Saudis have invested heavily in Wag.com, the dog-walking web site, and said Saudis don’t own dogs. I did a mental search of the four Arab families I know. Two own dogs. One, in fact, own a dog as a substitute for falconry, a sport they are too poor to pursue. (The dogs point and flush and they shoot). On the other hand, of the south Asian families I know, none own any pets. New episodes drop weekly. Out of the chute Minaj’s show doesn’t seem to be as solid as Michelle Wolf’s, but perhaps targeting a different audience will make it more desirable to Netflix. I will watch one or two more, but I don’t seem to be in the target audience. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
