Who Is America?

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.