Review: Sacha Baron Cohen is back. Should we care

This time Sacha Baron Cohen has all ambushed us. His new Showtime series, "Who Is America?" – his first TV show since "Da Ali G Show" was aired in 2004 – was announced last week and debuted Sunday night, on a short but intense wave of

It takes time to realize the disappointments Mr. Cohen's elaborate and rebademble enough to succeed a series of seven episodes, but Showtime said, "Who is America?" has been "under construction" for a year. And that may have something to do with why the first episode is lukewarm and inconsequential. Over the course of this year, we have become so accustomed to people saying crazy and hurtful things of their own free will in public that seeing them trapped does not have the value of entertainment that they had previously.

While Mr. Cohen's methods remain largely the same, his new show is framed differently, with less obvious emphasis on maneuvering profile victims into gotcha moments. (A segment with Sarah Palin, already highly publicized, is not in the first episode, the only one that Showtime has provided to critics.) An introductory montage announces that "four unique voices will reveal who America is ", and that the echo of a new documentary unit is certainly destined to be parodic," Who is America? " do not always transcend badociation. Instead of the rough, anarchic joy of "Ali G" and masterpiece of Mr. Cohen, the feature film "Borat", the humor in the new show has more than the studied texture, calculated common to late-night bend shows that took topical comedy in his absence.

The four characters that Mr. Cohen created for the series are seated at different cultural poles. As Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr., a right-wing opponent of the mainstream media, he discusses Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont about Obamacare and states that he "would prefer to be violated" rather than giving "bad bad". one more dollar to the Treasury. "(Mr. Sanders, a Democrat, is either on the prank or too smart to fall, and the Segment suffers as a result.) Like Dr. Nira Cain-N Degeocello," a heterobadual white man cisgender, for "M . Cohen wears an NPR T-shirt and treats a politically active Republican couple with stories of how his wife took a dolphin as a lover.

Cohen remains a strong performer and writer, and although these new characters are not as ferociously funny as Ali G or Borat, they still have their moments. The smallest of the four, an Israeli "anti-terrorist expert" named Colonel Erran Morad, is capturing some of the old danger, convincing various gun rights activists to sign his weapons training program for children. preschool age. Mr. Cohen is at his best here (even though the fool of those true believers is like the gunner in a barrel), staying firmly in his character as he talks about fighting the liberal program "anti-tragedy" and baderting the importance of arming "The segment of Morad built in the great end of the episode, in which a series of Republican politicians, including Trent Lott, the former Mississippi senator and Dana Rohrabacher, a current representative from California, offer testimonials to the fictional KinderGuardians program.The quotient obtained from their statements varies, but watching a congressman (Joe Wilson of South Carolina) say, "A child of 3 years can not defend an badault rifle by throwing a holster Hello Kitty "is right there

In general, however, the comedy of" Who is America? "is the less shocking but the more nauseating Mr. Cohen exploits the courtesy and the credulity of his subjects to create a surreal disconnect between what he tells them and how they react (or do not) – making them seem idiots in the process. As an ex-prisoner trying to sell his jail art – created from feces and other bodily fluids – he completely jokes an apparently gullible Californian gallerist, leading to the most purely comical moment of the episode. The United States may be politicians and selfish lobbyists, but it is also an art lover who will pull out one of his own pubic hair in front of a camera for an artist she believes.