Review: Triumph’s Election Watch 2016 Finale

One….more….Trump….joke….

Spoilers Below

I’ll be honest, when I first heard that we were getting ANOTHER Triumph Election Watch special on Hulu, I was a little on the fence. While the first one was definitely deserving of an Emmy nod, the episodes to follow just simply weren’t as strong, though a lot of that had to do with my own personal exhaustion with political comedy as a whole.

Between Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert, and Seth Meyers anti-Trump jokes were covered enough, but when you throw in stand-up specials from David Cross and Lewis Black, and a constant peppering on Twitter, the subject can get a bit overdone.

The Triumph specials would  do material that was similar, but maybe a bit more poignant because of the character’s patented “Man-on-the-Street” interviews which are by far the Insult Comic’s best stuff. That continues to be the case for the finale, but the producers did a great job of spicing things up a bit and even visiting an old Triumph haunt from the Conan days.

The special opened up with Triumph all over the Trump and Clinton election gatherings on the night of a win for the Republicans much to the delight of bystanders everywhere. As we traversed through the near-hour special, we also made a political stop in Philly where Triumph hired the make-up crew for White Chicks to help pass on minority voters as white Americans. Triumph’s last stop was in Chicago in a non-election fervor with fans at Game 7 of the World Series where his Cubs won. The celebratory after party?? The Wiener’s Circle!

Between bits, we visited Triumph and his panel of deliberates whom from a political point of view were probably a little quieter this episode, but when you’ve got one of OJ Simpson’s defense attorneys, perhaps silence is golden. Deepak Chopra eventually joined the fray and provided some of the more insightful anecdotes probably said about this election so far probably only challenged by the half-asleep mumblings of Blackwolf the Dragonmaster. As a matter of fact. Blackwolf was put into quite a few more bits this time around, but without subtitles turned on you’re not gonna know what the fuck he’s talking about. One of those bits was the coup-de-gras of the special entitled:

TrumpTV. Yes, remember all that hoopla about Donald Trump’s own TV network coming post-election? Welp, that was put together by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog which will officially go down as one of the single greatest pranks that have ever conceived and should go right up there with one of Triumph’s best-written ideas next to the Star Wars: The Phantom Menace red carpet. Watch in horror as a start-up TV network takes auditions for political news shows, original programming, and a whole lot more. The bit was so exhilarating that the Dragonmaster fell asleep during the auditions!

Overall, the Triumph Election Watch finale is by far the second best of all the episodes streaming this year besides the Emmy-nominated one produced in February and was a great way to end things. And while these election specials pale in comparison to the brilliant Jack and Triumph Show, it helps heal the wounds a bit and aids us through a rough election cycle. Where Triumph goes from here is anyone’s guess, but I hope we get more from the Robert Smigel-puppet in 2017.