YMMV / The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

• Broken Base:
  • Trevor Noah broke the fanbase. Part of it thinks that he'll never live up to Jon Stewart (some of whom also believe that he got the position largely in an effort to have a non-white host), others firmly believe he's funny and a great fit for the job as his humor is already fairly politically charged. A third, quieter portion of the fandom thinks he's alright, nothing special but is willing to give him time, saying that since the legacy Jon Stewart left behind is one he built over the course of 16 years, it would be unreasonable to expect a brand new host to hit quite the same stride in his first.
  • Trevor's interview with Tomi Lahren caused a major divide between those who loved the bit and enjoyed Trevor taking her and her stances on and those who felt that all Trevor did was give her a bigger platform to espouse her views and by treating them this way he validated them regardless of his intent. The critics of the interview felt the whole thing was tone-deaf and just played into giving Lahren more publicity while fans felt that equating him challenging and mocking her views with supporting them is a bad false-equivalence with Noah himself finding it silly on account of Lahren already having millions of viewers.
• Critical Dissonance: While Trevor Noah taking over the show infamously caused complaints during the beginning of his run, by the the time Trevor left the show at the end of 2022, The Daily Show has more YouTube subscribers than Late Night with Seth Meyers, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and even Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, leading with over 10 million subscribers, while Late Night has over 4 million and the others hover over the 9 million mark.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Trevor's response to Donald Trump's (who was drowning in accusations of sexual assault at the time) "No, you're the puppet!" line at the 3rd 2016 presidential debate drew more than a few 'oooohhhh's from the crowd.
    Trevor Noah: You know, to be fair, Donald Trump thinks all women are puppets. That's why he's always trying to stick his hand up them.
  • Trevor compares having Anthony Kennedy (a vital swing vote on the Supreme Court who was responsible for getting gay marriage legalized nationwide) retire at the end of Pride Month in 2018 (in the middle of Donald Trump's presidency, who would go on to replace him with conservative judge Brett Kavanaugh) is a bit like having a cancer doctor pop out of a cake at a birthday party.
    Trevor Noah: Surprise! Happy last birthday to you....
  • One segment ends with a fictional phone call between Michael Bloomberg and Jeff Bezos, where they discuss how the masses only focus on their wealth while also constantly mentioning their riches. It ends with these lines:
    Bezos: Okay, I gotta go schedule a funeral for a worker at my Amazon warehouse.
    Bloomberg: Who died?
    Bezos: I haven't decided yet.
    Both: (Maniacal laughter)
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Of all the correspondents, Jessica Williams invariably gets the loudest cheers every time she's introduced. After her departure, it's usually a tie between Roy Wood Jr. and Jordan Klepper, to the point there were cheers when Trevor announced that Jordan would return to the show to do his Trump rally coverages in 2020 (like he did in 2016) after Jordan's show was cancelled.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • After the October 1, 2015 Oregon shooting, Jessica Williams "revealed" that she pre-tapes her segments covering tragedies because she's too worn out to cover them regularly, and advises that Trevor do the same since the United States will have another mass shooting by Thanksgiving. The following week, on October 9, two mass shootings occurred in different states.
  • On February 11, 2016 Trevor joked that the Supreme Court, which had issued an unprecedented stay on regulations before a lower court, probably wouldn't be around to witness the global climate change that many scientists have predicted will happen over the next few decades. That was the last show before Antonin Scalia, one of the justices who issued that stay, died that weekend.
    Trevor Noah: Global warming could catastrophically change the world in just a few decades, and you might not care because you're not going to be around - I understand that. Yeah, yeah, these guys might not even be around for Season 7 of Game of Thrones. I mean, hell, they might not even make it through the credits.
  • One November 2018 episode had a Lewis Black segment about Flat Earthers, which ended by showing an interview of a man who was planning to launch himself on a self-made rocket to prove the theory. Black, clearly amused at the levels of Schmuck Bait involved, said, "Listen, you may not learn whether the Earth is round, but I have a feeling you're about to learn a lot about gravity." The man in the video, Mike Hughes, did indeed die on February 22, 2020 when his self-built rocked crash-landed.
  • The May 2018 interview with Chadwick Boseman had Trevor greeting him with the Wakanda salute, quipping that "you're going to be greeted with that for the rest of your life!", which he replies with "You're not lying.". Funny at the time, bitterly ironic when he died on August 28, 2020, only two years later and with Black Panther still fresh on everybody's minds, as demonstrated when the salute was used on many tributes.
  • On August 24, 2020, Trevor joked that conspiracy theories about high-profile celebrities ritualistically eating children to live longer was "horrifying"... on the grounds that that didn't leave any magic blood for Ruth Bader Ginsberg and she should be highest-priority to be kept alive. Less than a month later, Ruth Bader Ginsberg died in real life.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • During the election night coverage, after Hillary Clinton won Virginia, Roy gets a laugh by pointing out how she "grabbed Trump by the Virginia." Later that night, Trump's victory was cemented when he won Pennsylvania ("grabbed Clinton by the Pennsylvania"?).
  • After the White House announced that Anthony Scaramucci would be their next communications director, Trevor joked that "Since he's going to be around for at least a month, we might at least get know him". Not only was Scaramucci fired mere 10 days after accepting the job, it happened before his official starting date.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Desi Lydic smothering Trevor with a Vorpal Pillow while he's recovering from an appendectomy.
  • As Trevor introduces the Moment of Zen at the end of the October 6th episode, the camera pans slightly to his left to reveal a clown silently standing there in the wings behind him, a reference to the spate of creepy clown sightings in the news. The clown also reappears in their Twitter.
  • The 2016 Halloween Episode, in which the show imagines a horrifying Crapsack World after Donald Trump becomes president.
• Older Than They Think: One of Trevor's first segments after Donald Trump declared his presidential candidacy compared him to African dictators. In 2011, Lewis Black also did a segment where he compared Donald Trump to various dictators, particularly Saddam Hussein.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Trevor Noah got hit with this both as a correspondent and as host:
    • After entering the show as a correspondent, some people saw Trevor as a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for John Oliver (foreign comedian offering insights on absurdities in American culture).
    • Upon being named the new host, Trevor received this reaction from a very vocal portion of the fandom. They claim that A. he's a very new correspondent who's been chosen over all the other, longer serving ones (partly because a lot of them have left the show and many were also developing their own projects), B. some finding his humor to be a little too reliant on race jokes, and C. some people just thinking he's not that funny, or at least not funny enough to succeed Jon.
    • Many of the fans who wanted a female host, like Samantha Bee or Jessica Williams, were also angry that he was chosen as it was perceived that late-night television is still a boys' club. While Bee later said that she was never asked to host the show (which she admittedly felt was "awful"), in response to an article claiming that she should have been chosen, Jessica Williams replied that she had actually zero desire to host the show because she felt it was out of her range.
  • To some, Hasan Minaj for Aasif Mandvi, mostly due to Aasif reporting on a wide range of topics while simply happening to be a Muslim and of Indian ancestry, while Hasan rarely if ever has a solo bit that doesn't revolve around his religion or race. His "Brown in Town" segments have started to rectify this, however. His own short-lived Spiritual Successor show, Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, was well-received by critics and audiences, as was his own appearance guest hosting The Daily Show in 2023, with many saying he'd make an excellent successor to Trevor Noah.
• Seasonal Rot: A portion of the fanbase disliked Trevor Noah's initial take on the show as they felt that he wasn't as clever or as funny as Jon Stewart was, and he seemed to be more biased towards not making fun of of the political left while trashing everyone else. His coverage of the 2016 election and the subsequent Trump presidency seems to have rectified this, however.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Much of the backlash against Trevor Noah's tenure occurred before he started and could be summarized by the phrase "it's different." Lampooned by a Jordan Klepper freaking out during Trevor's first episode, complaining about how the desk and font are different and no one told him.
• The Scrappy: Michelle Wolf, for a lot of fans. Her voice is considered annoying and she isn't particularly funny. She'd later be Rescued from the Scrappy Heap when she hosted her own parodic news program, The Break with Michelle Wolf.
• Values Dissonance: The show earned some back-and-forth controversy for Trevor Noah's quip that Africa won the 2018 World Cup, in reference to a majority of the French national team being made up of players with African origins. From Trevor's point of view, he was celebrating the achievements of immigrant communities and their culture, something that does match with progressive views about race in the Anglosphere. Within France however, a nation that places a great premium on 'fraternité', it was instead seen as an insinuation that those players can never be considered 'French' because of their ethnic background, something that is uncomfortably close to far-right talking points on race.
• The Woobie:
  • Ronny Chieng, especially given that he's been the subject of several skits that involve him losing limbs.
  • Trevor is getting increasingly disillusioned as he faces the realities of American culture.
  • Also Trevor points out that President Obama has become this, especially when talking about mass shootings for eight years and not being able to introduce necessary legislation. Obama looks visibly stressed about the results of the 2016 election, and having to welcome the president-elect to the White House.

---