Walter Kirn: So if John Oliver didn’t have an accent, you would not know at all who was talking on that thing. It’s shocking how similar the modulation and register of their voices is. I’ve listened to Strike Force 5 so that you don’t have to, and most of the suspense of the show is figuring out how to ID the speaker and then finding out that you did it wrong or right. And they not only know they sound alike, they’re making jokes about their interchangeability with that Jimmy joke at the beginning.
Matt Taibbi: Inadvertently, I don’t think they recognize the humor in it exactly.
Walter Kirn: And at one point on one of their shows, they talk about late night hosts as though it’s a class of Americans, like auto mechanics or it’s a profession. And when they do their repartee, there’s never any disagreement. They always laugh at each others’ jokes. You get the sense that they’ve completely forgotten there’s an audience whatsoever. It’s a very revealing artifact, Strike Force 5, because it shows you how long it’s been since they’ve heard adversarial voices or had to react to them.