Created by: Sacha Baron Cohen
Comedy
28min
Give a man enough rope and he will hang himself.
Sacha Baron Cohen, the master of uncomfortable improv and worm-on-a-hook humor, brings plenty of rope to his new Showtime series, Who Is America?
Cohen plays several characters, each designed to reflect extreme views found across the United States:
- Billy Wayne Ruddick – Billy pilots a Hoveround scooter, complains endlessly about Obamacare, and has an absurdly simple solution to wealth inequality.
- Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello – A white cisgender heteronormative male. He’s sorry about that.
- Ricky Sherman – Released from jail after twenty-one years, Ricky is here to leave a stain on the art world.
- Erran Morad – Did you know that some American politicians support arming children with hand grenades? I’ve always had my suspicions, but now we know it’s true. Morad is a terrorism expert specializing in protecting and humiliating elected officials.
Once these fictional characters sit down with their real-life subjects / victims, the awkwardness intensifies. You will laugh, you will cringe, you will weep for the nation.
Of course not every segment of the series is newsworthy. The Ricky Sherman art gallery bit is particularly pointless. And as wild as the segments can get, it feels like some of this comes from an already well-worn path—partly because Cohen has walked the same route so many times as Ali-G, Borat, and Brüno.
But some of Who Is America? is newsworthy. A Georgia state representative, Jason Spencer, is already under scrutiny for his unforgivable behavior on the show.
The NSFW clip below reveals what happened when Sacha Baron Cohen gave Rep. Spencer enough rope.
Sundays on Showtime.
