Sacha Baron Cohen‘s comedy tends to exist in only two extremes. It’s either something morally purposeful where he uses his position as a seemingly-sympathetic interviewer to have awful people plainly spell out their terrible beliefs, or it’s just him in a thin disguise being a shit to some people who are being surprisingly tolerant of it. In the latest episode of Who Is America?, Baron Cohen managed to fall somewhere in the middle in a pitch-perfect interview with former Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore.
Roy Moore’s Senate bid was primarily defined by the allegations from numerous women that he had either attempted to or had engaged in sexual misconduct with teen girls. The New Yorker reported that Moore had allegedly been banned from the mall in his hometown thanks to him “repeatedly badgered teen-age girls“. This is an important preamble, because it makes the exquisitely excruciating build-up to Baron Cohen dinging Moore with a pedophile detector a deeply engaging ride.
In his prosthesis-heavy disguise as Israeli anti-terrorism expert Erran Morad, Baron Cohen describes a device that detects an enzyme sweated out by rapists and child molesters. After the spiel, Baron Cohen brings it out and demonstrates that it doesn’t work on any of them because they are not child molesters – except, of course, it goes off for Moore.
It can be described quickly but its execution is perfect and simply must be watched:
A quiet highlight is definitely Baron Cohen getting Moore to agree to the ridiculous suggestion that Alabama has always promoted equality and freedom regardless of race.
Who Is America? is available for streaming in Australia exclusively on Stan.
