What the hell took so long?

After nine years, three presidents and no hit television show, Jon Stewart returned to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. And it’s glorious. 

Sure, Stewart took a pummeling for “bothsidesism” on his official return last week, and I’ll admit: Watching Stewart skewer Biden for his senior moments was almost too painful to watch (especially given Trump’s own run of them lately). Critics even suggested that he take another nine years off. 

They are, to the last, blithering slackwits. Perhaps they forget what it’s like to watch someone read from a teleprompter. They stutter, misread, misspeak, and otherwise clod over prepped lines. Don’t believe it? Watch any Oscar show. 

But Stewart does not read like a normal human. He seems so aware of his words that he doesn’t read them: he tells them, as if recalling a vivid story.

Watch him skewer newswhore Tucker Carlson for his interview with Vladimir Putin. Stewart blasts him not only for softball questions, but for Tuck’s larger slobbering over lifestyles in Russia, where average family incomes routinely run $200 a week. The cherry on top was Stewart’s trademark “Moment of Zen,” a Russian outlet’s subsequent interview of Putin, who called Tuck a feeble mouse. 

At least one of them was accurate.

And unlike, say, Trevor Noah, The Daily Show replacement, Stewart knows American politics inside and out, sometimes better than stumping politicians. No one interviews on-camera as seamless as he.

Stewart ended his sophomore return show with a simple, devastating rebuke of Carlson and his conservative douchebag fans: a picture of Alexei Navalny, the Putin critic killed in Siberia. That, Stewart said, was the true motive behind Tucker’s constipated visage and mission: To put a shiny happy face on tyranny. 

Welcome home, Jon. Make yourself comfortable.