It would be less scary if it weren’t all true, but John Oliver put a darkly comic spin on the dilapidated state of the US air traffic control system Sunday night with the help of a quartet of familiar comic actors.
Coming at the end of a harrowing episode of Last Week Tonight outlining the various policy decisions dating back to the Reagan Administration that have led to the country’s current crisis in the skies, the show’s parody of an actual FAA recruitment video sees a group of severely understaffed air traffic control workers offering testimonials as they struggle to do their jobs with outdated equipment in suboptimal facilities.
“You never know what’s coming your way,” an earnest H. Jon Benjamin (Bob’s Burgers, Archer) explains in the video. “Whether it’s an emergency landing, a radio failure, or your 40 year-old tower is out of service and you have to climb 15 flights of stairs which is chock-full of bees for some reason.”
It’s like a video game,” adds Keyla Monterroso Mejia (The Studio, Curb Your Enthusiasm). “Except we can never hit pause, no extra lives, and instead of NPC’s it’s you and your loved ones”
“All I’ll say it is 95% boring and routine, 3% exciting and routine, and 2% holy f*ck,” says Lil Rel Howery (Rel, The Carmichael Show), who then spots a plane the window behind him. “No seriously, holy f*ck! Flight 269, that is not your runway. Get out of there!”
“You can be an air traffic controller too,” Lauren Adams (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) tells viewers. “All you need to qualify is 20/20 vision, perfect health, and up to date on your rabies shots. Because of bats.” (As Oliver noted earlier in the episode, a tower in St. Louis reportedly has challenges with bats.)
Watch the complete clip at the top of this post.
