[imagesource: The Daily Show with Trevor Noah]
Trevor Noah has officially bowed out from his seven-year run as host of The Daily Show.
The comedian bid a low-key farewell to a small studio audience that gathered Thursday for the final broadcast of the long-running Comedy Central show, and he did so with a lot more thinking than laughs.
He reflected on his surreal seven-year journey, beginning with the moment he was plucked from near-obscurity in the US and asked to succeed Jon Stewart, who hosted for 16 years prior.
Variety notes that the last show featured appearances by many of the show’s correspondents – including the breakout stars Jaboukie Young-White, Jordan Klepper and Michelle Wolf, and Noah’s longtime friend, comedian Neal Brennan – who all weighed in on his decision to leave in their own segment:
Trevor rose to fame for his unique comments on US politics, satirising the red and blue divisions with the perspective of an ‘outsider’, and he used the last episode to make one final point, per The New York Times:
Among the lessons he learned as the “Daily Show” host, Noah said, are “context matters,” and “issues are real, but politics are just an invented way to solve those issues.”
“I, in the very beginning, also got sucked into the whole Republican, Democrat, this is the way it should be — yet, it is not actually the way it should be. It’s not even the way it is. It’s not a binary. There are not just two ways to solve any problem; there are not just two ways to be.”
He urged his audience to rise above the red-versus-blue positioning when trying to solve problems and to think more creatively:
“Please don’t forget the world is a friendlier place than the Internet or the news would make you think,” Noah said.
At the end of the day, Noah wanted the last episode to be “a celebration” while cracking some jokes about why he needed to leave:
“When I started the show, I had three clear goals. I was like, I’m going to make sure Hillary gets elected, I’m going to make sure that I prevent a global pandemic from starting and I’m going to become best friends with Kanye West,” Noah said. “So I think it’s time to move on.”
He even managed a quip about African leaders:
Then our boy Trevor took the time to acknowledge Black women with a “special shoutout”, tearily calling them “a lot of the reason I am here”:
Noah announced his departure from the show during a taping in September, shocking the people he works with and the people who love watching him with the news, citing his call to stand-up comedy as a reason to move on.
While Comedy Central should be sad to be losing Noah, who brought much-needed diversity to the daypart, his run on the show was “the wildest journey,” Noah said.
