nick offerman sat on three years of ben shapiro and then spent it all in one sentence

via TheWrap and The Daily Beast.

"Long, Long Time" is the third episode of The Last of Us and it is the one everybody's straight cousin cried at. Bill and Frank, two men alone in a fortified town at the end of the world, twenty years of a marriage nobody officiated, strawberries grown as a present, and an ending they choose together. Nick Offerman won the Emmy for it. Murray Bartlett played Frank.

what shapiro said in 2023

When it aired in 2023, Ben Shapiro reviewed it on his podcast by doing inventory. There were no zombies in it. There was no real threat in it. It was, in his telling, about "two gay dudes who meet and have a relationship, in which one grows strawberries for the other, and then they die." He also worked out that the man from Parks and Recreation was in it and settled on "gay Ron Swanson," a character who, in his summary, "likes to nail dudes."

three years later, one sentence

Offerman said nothing for three years. Then, on the episode of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso posted on Sunday, somebody put the clip on and let it play at him.

His first reaction was almost affectionate. "That's crazy," he said. "That's the most Ben Shapiro I've ever seen, and there's a very good reason for that."

Then he spent it. "I'm embarrassed for his reading comprehension. I think he got eight things wrong in his recap, besides his rampant homophobia."

Eight. He counted them. Somewhere there is a list.

The best detail is that Offerman has been quietly monetising the insult the entire time. He told Fragoso he wrote a song for his live show and introduced it every night the same way: "I was going to write a joke about this, but Ben Shapiro questioned my masculinity, and I can't write a better joke than that."

why the handling was right

That is the correct handling and it is worth naming why. The move Shapiro was making was not a bad review, it was an offer. Come and be insulted, get defensive about your manhood, argue that you are still straight enough for the cargo shorts crowd, and the fight becomes the content. Offerman did the one thing that does not feed it. He treated the man as a bad reader, took the punchline, and kept the Emmy.

He has been steady on this before. At the 2024 Spirit Awards he went after the homophobic backlash to the episode directly, on stage, with the trophy still warm.

Anyway. Two gay dudes meet, one grows strawberries for the other, and then they die. He says it like it is an accusation. It is the plot of most of the best things ever made.

Sources: TheWrap, The Daily Beast.