Is Samantha Bee’s new late-night series, Full Frontal, the best late- night show currently on TV? I think so. Or should I say it’s the best late-night show of its type in its time slot.
Late-night talk shows can be divided into two formats. Format one is the classic host, desk and celebrity guests show of Fallon, Kimmel, Conan. Format two involves a satirical look at the news, usually involving video clips and a liberal point of view à la Trevor Noah, Larry Wilmore, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver and, now, Samantha Bee.
Bee is a veteran of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, a groundbreaking act of revolutionary television that suggested there was a TV audience at least as smart as the host. After a decade’s worth of accolades and awards, Stewart walked away, leaving a satire vacuum in his wake. The stewardship of the show should have gone to Bee, but she was passed over for the unknown South African Noah.
He’s done a credible job, but Bee’s show really shows how it’s supposed to be done. This show has fangs and leaves marks.
And there’s not a long list of women in late-night TV. Joan Rivers in 1986 and Chelsea Handler in 2007 — that’s about it.
Bee has the advantage of doing a weekly show (rather than the more usual Monday-to-Thursday format) on Monday nights, which makes it easier to keep the quality high. And what a great year to launch a political satire show. Those Republicans practically write the material themselves!
But what sets her show apart from the others is the palpable sense of outrage she allows herself to express. Noah, Wilmore and the others come from a cooler sensibility, but Bee isn’t afraid to fulminate. Her stuff on Trump, Cruz and the rest of that pack makes me glad I’m not on the receiving end of her scope.
Hers is an outsider’s sensibility, and of course, as a Canadian, she’s earned it. In her early career as a sketch performer in Toronto with the Atomic Fireballs, an all-female troupe, she was incendiary. Her reputation was so strong that she got picked up for The Daily Show in 2003, appearing until 2015, becoming the longest running cast member.
She’s done her share of guesting on sitcoms, but Full Frontal is the platinum showcase of her talent and her nerve. When Trump tweeted a picture of himself eating a taco bowl and declaring, “I love Hispanics,” Bee tweeted, “The best taco bowls are made by immigrants who resent a rich prick calling them rapists.”
Strong stuff and even edgier than Stewart himself.
Bee is married to Jason Jones, also a former cast member of The Daily Show and also a Canadian.
Jones quit The Daily Show around the time Bee did, and now the two of them constitute a kind of comedy power couple. TBS, mindful of the Bee brand, gave her and Jones the green light to do a scripted, 10-episode series called Detour, about a family on vacation, loosely modelled on the duo’s experiences with their two kids.
The show is a darker, more modern version of those National Lampoon Chevy Chase movies.
But back to Full Frontal. With Trump the presumptive Republican nominee and Clinton also on track, this show has its finger on all the buttons. Bee’s unabashed liberalism and feminism (half her writing staff is female, a first in the talk-show business) puts her at ground zero of the satire wars, and I expect her to declare victory.
