Who Is America?

Like all of Baron Cohen’s work, Who Is America? has skirmishes with bro humor and punching down, but in sequences like the one mentioned above [Kinderguardians and as Nira Cain-N'Degeocello]--in which conservatives state the abhorrent things they truly believe because they think it’s safe--it justifies all of its inconsistency.

Ultimately, Who Is America? is a much-welcome return to form for Baron Cohen. ... Baron Cohen proves that he still has what it takes to get under the thin skins of the powerful people he clearly believes are making America worse. Watching them show their true colors to the world has never been more satisfying.

What a pleasant surprise, then, that Who Is America? feels both as richly comic as anything Baron Cohen has done in the decade-plus since “Borat” and urgently resonant with our own.

If only it were funnier. There’s plenty of laughs in the episode, but Baron Cohen has a habit of pursuing particular rabbit holes for far too long. ... Not weak, however, is Baron Cohen the performer, who’s clearly put some real time into these characters. His various accents, American and otherwise, are shockingly confident, and the precise.

By shooting so high, the unflinching performer behind Da Ali G and Borat hits a few big marks, and misses some, as well.

It’s funny, sad, invasive and unhinged.

Doing what Sacha Baron Cohen is trying to do in this fraught climate is really tricky, and my instinct tells me it won’t work more often than it does. Still, a I’m intrigued to watch how he navigates this minefield. ... When Who Is America? is on point, as it is in the “Kill or Be Killed” segment, it doesn’t just remind us that some of our emperors have no clothes. It exposes them for walking around naked with no sense of shame whatsoever.

But Who Is America? only presents its targets, both venal and sympathetic, with one real option: to be the butt of the show’s slippery humor.

Cohen's ability to adlib in character has always been his greatest gift, even if it's tempting to wince at times at his excesses, which can tend to place a higher priority on discomfort than comedy.

If the figure is guided by skepticism, as in the case of Sanders, the segment transforms into an endurance test of tried patience. When the subject reveals weakness and vanity, then the way forward is clear for Baron Cohen to agitate and produce savage satire.

There are some laughs in Who Is America?, but the most profound feeling you get from the show is weariness. Cohen’s haphazard comedy instincts feel topical in the worst way.

The world has changed significantly since 2006, and the ugliness that Cohen once got people to reveal is out in the open. So the service Cohen provides isn't as necessary as it once was, which makes his new fake interview show, Who Is America?, feel inessential and even a little out of touch.

The show is a mixed bag; some of it successful, some of it irritating, some of it funny when it is also irritating, some of it not irritating but not particularly funny either.

To giggle at and delight in Cohen’s pranks is to believe that you can have it both ways: that you can be horrified at the collapse of truth and democracy, and then laugh at a guy who seeks to undermine whatever remains of trust. As watchably galling as Cohen’s techniques may be, America in 2018 doesn’t really seem like the right time or place for it.

Little more than a Borat clone.

For now, the show doesn’t do enough to stand out among TV’s mostly flimsy class of political satirists.

Unfortunately, the segments of Who Is America? that aim more toward straight comedy than social surgery just aren’t funny enough to carry the show’s loftier goals. Much of it feels like underheated leftovers from Da Ali G Show.

Shame is the missing ingredient in Cohen's Who Is America? and, unfortunately, it's not an ingredient that proves merely incidental. It's the difference between shocking and not shocking, between hilarious and simply fleetingly funny.

The premiere episode feels tepid and inconsequential.

Three of the premiere’s four sketches are largely forgettable. ... On the whole all three skits seem less like fully fleshed-out comic ideas and more like excuses to establish each character’s archetypal traits for use in bits down the road.