His Prison Takedown With Muppets Is Pretty Great

Leave it to John Oliver to make a major issue that's plaguing society hilarious and shareable. In Oliver's takedown of the American prison system on Last Week Tonight , Oliver drives home the point it's pretty messed up. He shows us that we riff on prison like it's part of popular culture — be it on Sesame Street (a weirdly disturbing song about prison, he points out, is next to a song about numbers), or in children's cartoons — but we don't ever stop to recognize how messed up that is. Not only that, he goes on to say, but in all our jovial conversations about prison, we never pause to think about it critically.

In keeping with his style of riffing on serious stuff in a smart, funny, viral way (take his net neutrality segment, for instance), Oliver is here to perpetuate the conversation. But after about 14 minutes of pointing out all of the issues with our incarceration tendencies, he suggests that he needs someone else to help him explain what's going on. Who better to explain a social problem than... the Muppets! When one of the puppets asks if singing about it all would make Oliver feel better, you know you're in for something on-point and seriously amusing. The happy prison song is, perhaps, one of Oliver's best segments to date. Of course, he doesn't forget to tell a puppet reptile that no, a zoo is slightly different from a prison.

You can check it out below. Stay for the entire 17 plus minutes. It's definitely worth watching.