Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Right at the top of her first monologue in the first episode of her new Hulu talk show, Sarah Silverman wants you to know that I Love You, America ain’t gonna be like all the other late night political shows. This one, she points out, is on a streaming service–and that means she doesn’t have to obey as many rules as her late night competition. Instead of having to picture her audience naked, she can show naked people in her audience. Cut to: Stella and Scott, two totally normal naked people in the front row! And bam, there it is, Scott’s totally normal yet still NSFW penis!
Ya ready for it?
“Great penis, Scott,” Silverman exclaims before explaining why she just cut to a dong. “We’ve all seen nudity, but it’s always sexualized. It’s funny because it’s jarring to see clinical nudity.”
That nudity up top (we also see Stella’s “full but manicured bush,” BTW) sets the standard for I Love You, America: you’re gonna see stuff on this show that you can’t see anywhere else, and it might just make you squirm for reasons you don’t quite understand.
Honestly, as much as I flinched over seeing that totally clinical nudity, the conversations that followed in I Love You, America’s inaugural episode were just as uncomfortable. Whereas the other late night shows remain confined within the safe space of their studio (aside from the occasional field piece by Samantha Bee), Silverman is gonna venture outside of her “liberal bubble” on the reg. I Love You, America’s whole mission statement, as evidenced by her musical intro, is to bridge the Grand Canyon-sized chasm currently dividing our nation. That means dropping Silverman in situations that I would find deeply uncomfortable–like having dinner with a family of crab fishermen in Chalmette, Louisiana. But Silverman isn’t me; she has her own weekly Hulu talk show that needs content, and that means broaching some uneasy topics with the Trump-voting Standers family.
In today’s political climate, we’re told that we have to listen to people whose viewpoints are different from ours. That’s very hard to do when those viewpoints are “I don’t think you deserve as many rights as I do” or “I voted for policies that threaten your life because I was tricked by cable news.” Silverman goes at it with gusto, and (at least the edited version of the dinner that we see) never goes for the jugular. After hearing the Standers’ family complain about Obama handouts (one of conservative media’s favorite baseless talking points), Silverman asks them about their health insurance. They’re all on Medicaid or the ACA–they’re all getting handouts from the government, some even benefitting the “handouts” Obama put in place. Silverman doesn’t call that hypocrisy out, a move that surely would have escalated the conversation into confrontation. She lets that truth sit there for a second, and moves on.
Silverman sums up the dinner like this: “Did we change each other’s minds? Um… fuck no. But we did learn that we don’t have to be divided to disagree. We can have fun. We can even love each other.”
Confessional time: I struggle with this. I would not be able to let that hypocrisy go unaddressed. I would not be able to keep my cool. Even when the Standers’ 26-year-old matriarch comes out as a staunch supporter of gay marriage (Silverman lets her know that that’s a liberal thing), I know I would instead be totally focused on the dude that’s anti-gay adoption. I’m not level-headed like Silverman, a no-holds-barred standup who has somehow evolved into a voice of reason. I also don’t know if it’s right to be so level-headed around Trump voters. I can’t get past the whole voting-to-blow-up-our-planet-ness of it all, and this stuff is so raw, so personal that I actually can’t decide if it was right for Silverman to leave that dinner saying she “loves” that family.
See what I mean by squirmy moments? I am fully aware that 2017 has made me angrier than ever and way less empathetic towards those that don’t show empathy. Heavy stuff for a Hulu talk show.
What Silverman does do, which the show doesn’t explicitly point out, is plant a seed of empathy in the Standers’ family garden. She’s one of the first, or in some cases the first, Jewish person any of them have met. And when she leaves, the family is kinda sad to see her go; they were happy to host her and even happier that she didn’t come at them swinging with liberal politics. She listened, they bonded, and now the Standers family’s Louisiana bubble includes one member of the “Hollywood liberal elite.” That’s a step towards actual change, and that’s a step that you hear more about in I Love You, America’s first interview.
Every episode will feature a talk with someone that has experienced change. First up? Granddaughter of Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps, Megan Phelps-Roper. This interview is enlightening, because liberals–as I’ve already demonstrated–have a tendency to write people off. When you feel like your very being is under life-threatening attack, it’s way easier to put on blinders and ignore haters. You convince yourself that change is impossible as a coping mechanism for the struggle. Phelps-Roper, and presumably, all of Silverman’s interviews, are there to remind us that change can happen–that there is hope. Even though she was raised to believe that protesting funerals with signs covered in slurs was an act of love (?), Phelps-Roper says her mind was changed after she got on social media and had extensive conversations with people outside her bubble. She left the church 5 years ago, losing contact with her entire family.
This interview coupled with Silverman’s trip down South is stealthily profound: we saw Silverman go and listen to Trump voters, people that she fundamentally disagrees with, and she just spoke honestly and calmly. She did the kinda thing that people online did for Phelps-Roper, the kinda stuff that eventually got her to leave her church. You can’t change someone’s mind in one sitting. It takes a while. In this episode, we saw the methodology of compassion and we saw the result.
All that’s a lot to digest in one half hour, and Silverman knows that. That’s why she has the comforting late night image of a white guy behind a desk to cut to when things get too intense, and she closes out the episode by literally falling asleep to Law & Order. I Love You, America doesn’t have the righteous fury of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, nor does it have the airtight arguments of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Instead, Sarah Silverman’s going for something unique in the political commentary world: genuine compassion. And, with her interviews, she seems eager to prove that compassion is the only thing that can really make change. I’m not ready to do this myself, the wounds are still too fresh, but I’m happy that Silverman is willing to do the hard work. And maybe, just maybe, a Hulu talk show can make me ready to listen again.
New episodes of I Love You, America arrive every Thursday night on Hulu
