It’s easy to forget, on the day of Trevor Noah’s final episode of The Daily Show, how difficult the road ahead of him was when he assumed the anchor chair more than seven years ago.
The South African comedian took on a near impossible task in September 2015: succeed Jon Stewart. Over the course of 16 years, Stewart helmed The Daily Show through its transformation from scrappy, fratty Comedy Central outsider to arguably the defining political comedy series of the 2000s, one that turned its satirical correspondents into stars (Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Samantha Bee and Ed Helms, among others) and its host into a world-weary moral authority. Or, as Noah put it on his first night as host, a collective “political dad”. (“And it’s weird, because dad has left,” he added. “And now it feels like the family has a new stepdad, and he’s Black.”)
