Review: Our Cartoon President “First Pitch”

Can the midseason finale save Colbert’s Our Cartoon President?

Overview:

President Trump has been invited to throw the first pitch at a Washington Nationals game.  The honour is a tradition that presidents have long upheld since baseball became an all-American sport.  So clearly, Trump doesn’t want to do it.  But, when Trump’s masculinity comes into question, he adopts a whole new lifestyle as the manliest man and promises to throw the fastest pitch ever.  However, the president forgot that he is not a manly man, but an out of shape gossiper who wears too much make-up.

As well, Ivanka Trump has become inspired by women’s rights activist and Nobel Peace prize winner Malala Yousafzai.  Following Yousafzai’s lead, Ivanka opens her own school for uneducated girls in Africa.  However, there is one major flaw in Ivanka’s school- it’s not a school, it’s a sweatshop. Ivanka realizes her weakness is that she has not faced adversity in life, so she does the natural thing and announces her intentions to run for the presidency.

Our Take:

How can Trump be expected to throw a baseball with his bone spurs?  I mean, if you can’t go to war to defend your country when you are a healthy young man, how can you be expected to do any sort of physical activity as an out-of-shape old grease-ball.  This episode through some serious shade at the president’s health and draft-dodging, most of it was right on the nose.

The same could be said for the Ivanka storyline.  Trump’s daughter has never gained a thing for herself taking everything her father has handed her.  I would not be surprised in the least if this episode came to fruition and it was discovered that Ivanka was covering up a sweatshop under the guise of a charity.

Geez, this show kind of makes you sad with how close it resembles reality.

Aside from being dangerously close to the truth, overall this inaugural season of Our Cartoon President has disappointed me.  Much like this episode, there was lots of room to make some outrageous jokes at the president’s expense. Instead, they try to fit as many political leaders as they can into each episode.  Political caricatures are funny; sure, The New Yorker has been doing them forever.  But, it is not, and should not, be enough to carry an entire animated series.  The animated Trump was funny at first, just for the sake of who he is; I did expect this show to take the humour to a new and different level.  Ten episodes later, Our Cartoon President never delivered on anything more than the same Trump jokes we’ve been making for a couple of years now.

Score
3.5/10