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Watch Larry Wilmore Kick Off The Nightly Show by Assessing “The State of the Black Protest”

The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore aired its first episode last night, and the veteran comedian and writer didn’t waste any time delivering on his pledge that he would deliver The Daily Show meets Politically Incorrect—all with his own unique point of view. Fittingly, in light of the continued protests against police brutality and the show’s premiere date on Martin Luther King Day, Wilmore’s first topic was “The State of the Black Protest.”

After starting off his opening monologue by jokingly lamenting the fact that he didn’t have his own show a year ago (“All of the good bad race stuff happened already”!), Wilmore dug right in with bits on the the Oscar snubs for Selma, Al Sharpton’s penchant for eagerly jumping on one racial controversy after another, and Florida police officers using images of young black men for target practice.

Wilmore delivered plenty of sharp points in his trademark, laid-back manner, and he also introduced a promising segment called “Keeping it 100,” in which the host asks each of his four panelists a personal question that they must answer in all truthfulness or face shame in the form of having “weak tea” bags thrown at them. (When he reached his final panelist, Sen. Cory Booker, Wilmore didn’t hold back: “Do you want to be president?”) Altogether it was a promising start, and you can check out more clips from the first episode over at Splitsider.*

Correction, Jan. 20, 2015: Due to an editing error, this post originally misidentified where to find more clips from the premiere episode of The Nightly Show. The post links to Splitsider, not Deadspin