Last month, John Oliver, of Last Week Tonight, utterly nailed many aspects of the current the state of the patent system.

Once you get through the opening jokes about Shark Tank (which unfortunately do have a certain demonstration of another, smaller, set of real issues), there are incredibly clear and concise explanations.

He addresses the explosion of software patents, the egregious quantity of cease-and-desist letters and absurdly broad claims to protection of inventions that never existed, frivolous lawsuits, the emergence of singular-purpose IP-holding patent trolls, and the Innovation act. 
Bravo.