John Oliver Got Michael Bolton to Help You Care About the IRS

I’ve written time and again that perhaps John Oliver’s greatest strength is taking otherwise boring and mind-numbingly complicated issues and making them fun and easy to learn about. He used the tropes of the Hollywood blockbuster to help viewers care about infrastructure, and he exploited concerns about dick pics to help them care about government surveillance.

Now Last Week Tonight has taken on what is otherwise the most infamously boring subject of them all—the IRS—and to make it appealing he’s recruited the sexiest man of all: Michael Bolton. The result isn’t exactly The Pale King, but I have to admit that for 18 minutes I had a pretty great time learning about why I should share about the ongoing struggles of this most-loathed government agency.