Hank Stuever at the Washington Post:

There’s no way to judge a brand new “Daily Show” on the strength or weakness of a single episode, especially since we’re talking about 20 minutes of material (subtract all of the commercials for “The Walk”). But after watching new host Trevor Noah’s seemingly smooth debut Monday night, I just have to ask: What were we all so afraid of?

“The Daily Show” doesn’t exactly write itself (or perform itself), but there’s plenty about it that’s a well-oiled operation, with or without Jon Stewart. When he signed off in August, Stewart left behind a more-than-capable crew. All that really has to happen is for the news cycle to bring the funny, and in this regard, Noah got pretty lucky, able to make John Boehner jokes (future jobs for the weepy former speaker: onion slicer, seat-filler at a funeral, Claire Danes impersonator), Pope Francis jokes (“He’s like a young Bernie Sanders”), pope penis jokes (oh, yes, he did make a pope penis joke) and water-on-Mars jokes with aplomb. (“Don’t worry, California, they’ll find water on you too, someday.”) Even his edgiest jokes (a little Whitney Houston/crack joke there; an AIDS/aides joke there) seemed well within the expected tenor of “The Daily Show.”

Monday’s “Daily Show” arrived looking more or less (and reassuringly) like itself: Same theme song, same desk arrangement; some light housekeeping, such as sprucing up of fonts and colors that make the show look a tad more Indecision 2016 instead of Indecision 2004. The host is a little spiffier too; as he grows more comfortable, he might even learn to laugh less at his own jokes.

James Poniewoziksept at the NYT:

The post-Jon Stewart version of “The Daily Show” that Trevor Noah and Comedy Central unveiled on Monday night was a bit like a new iPhone. It was sleeker, fresher and redesigned. There were tweaks here and there—look, even a new font! But it still does essentially the same thing.

Sure, the 31-year-old, South African-born Mr. Noah is a new face and voice. Likening Mr. Stewart to a comedic father, he joked: “Now it feels like the family has a new stepdad. And he’s black.” Assured, handsome and crisp-spoken, Mr. Noah was a smoother presenter than Mr. Stewart, who made an art form of sputtering and exasperated facepalming.

But if Mr. Noah’s debut was largely successful, it was also because of the operating system—the show’s writing—running under the surface. That algorithm, capable of processing a day’s media inputs into a satirically argued package, is what makes “The Daily Show” “The Daily Show.” This first outing was about proving that he could run the software without crashing.

The haters at Blightbart, predictably enough, hated Noah:

An awkward, ever-shifting-in-his-chair comedian took the reins of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” Monday night, and had no idea what to do with them or even where to put his hands. At times it was painful to watch Trevor Noah. For all of Stewart’s fascist, bullying tendencies, he did possess some talent. Noah is undoubtedly talented enough to land this gig, but he is unquestionably in over his head.

Noah might grow into the gig. He might not. It won’t matter. He is politically correct and a left-wing extremist, so the media will undoubtedly prop him up regardless. They’ve certainly had practice. Although fewer than 1% of the population ever watched Stewart, the media still managed to turn him into a Potemkin Phenom.

When you’re a leftist, talent and popularity are not required.

Breitbart particularly hated the jokes about the pope’s penis. (No doubt Bill Donohue is hard at work on a furious press release this morning.) I thought the pope’s penis joke was funny and I thought Trevor Noah did a good job. And I concur with the critical consensus: Same “Daily Show,” new host. Nothing much has changed—they even kept the same theme music, which was both comforting and jarring. (We have an almost pavlovian response to the music—we hear it and expect to see Stewart.) Certainly my relationship to the “Daily Show” hasn’t changed: I watched the opening monologue, I stuck around for the toss to the correspondent in the second segment, and then I turned off the TV when thirty seconds into the softball celebrity interview. (Kevin Hart as the first guest. Um… why?) I’ll stick around for the third segment on Wednesday night, when Noah interviews Chris Christie.