On Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver observed that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a.k.a. ICE, seems a bit desperate. “You know, there’s an old saying in Hollywood: ‘If all you can get is Dean Cain, you are fucked,'” he joked. “Now, I’m not saying that ICE isn’t finding people. I’m just saying, when you are reduced to pinning a badge on the 59-year-old star of The Dog Who Saved Christmas, The Dog Who Saved Christmas Vacation, The Dog Who Saved the Holidays, The Dog Who Saved Halloween, The Dog Who Saved Easter and The Dog Who Saved Summer, maybe you are in trouble.”
Cain has lately taken advantage of a general interest in Superman (a character he played nearly 30 years ago) to claw his way back into the zeitgeist—or at least adjacent to the zeitgeist. He generated some headlines for calling the latest Supermantoo woke and capitalized on the attention by announcing he was going to join ICE, which some out there (not us, you understand, but some) are calling extreme loser behavior. “Although, on the plus side, no need for that guy to wear a mask because the chances of anyone recognizing him are fucking zero,” Oliver snarked on his show.
Dean Cain, who presented himself in an ICE recruitment video as a “sworn law enforcement officer as well as a filmmaker,” responded to the jabs on Twitter/X with a few crying-laughing emojis. “He stole that mask joke from the internet—and he also laughed hysterically when Trump said he was going to run for President. Case closed.” Unclear which case Cain was making or how he closed it, but okay. He also defended The Dog Who Saved… series by protesting that “those movies were sweet, by the way!”
Oliver had bigger fish to fry than a handful of B-movies. During the segment dedicated to immigration under Donald Trump’s administration, the comedian shared with his audience what to do if you’re approached by ICE agents. “Attorneys told us the only two things you should say to them are: ‘Am I free to leave?’ And ‘I want to speak to a lawyer.’ That’s it. You have the right to remain silent,” Oliver explained. “And I recognize that in some cases you may be unable to help yourself from saying, ‘Didn’t you used to be Superman?’ ‘I thought you died.’ ‘I can’t believe I’m meeting a filmmaker.’ But that really is it.” You can watch the full video below.
