One year ago tonight, on February 8th, 2016, Full Frontal With Samantha Bee starring Canadian-born Daily Show alumnus Samantha Bee officially debuted on TBS. The show has been a beacon of facts, truth, and side dish of humor in these troubled times in our nation. It is a must-see show for me every week.
The show began on Monday nights at 10:30PM ET/9:30PM CT/7:30PM PT, before Conan. When the show began its second season in January 2017, it was moved to Wednesday nights at the same timeslot it held previously.
Bee is going to host an alternative to Nerd Prom known as the Not The White House Correspondents’ Dinner on the same night as the real WHCD.
This is the inaugural segment of her show.
Here are some of the show’s highlights over the show’s past year: On the February 15th, 2016 edition of the show, she heavily criticized the GOP’s stonewalling of whoever President Obama was going to appoint in the hopes of letting their party fill that seat. Turns out that Trump got that chance, and he picked Neil Gorsuch to fill it, as McConnell and the Evil Elephant gang denied Obama’s pick Merrick Garland a hearing, let alone a vote.
On the February 22nd, 2016 edition of the show, she laid into faux “moderate” Ohio Governor John Kasich (R). He only won Ohio in the GOP primaries, and ended up 3rd in the delegate count behind Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
On the April 11th, 2016 episode of Full Frontal, she dressed in the NRA mascot Eddie Eagle’s costume in a demonstration showing that it’s easier to get a gun without a background check than rent the costume.
On the April 25th, 2016 episode of Full Frontal, she exposes the conservative media’s meltdown of the proposed removal of Genocidal President Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill in favor of slave liberator Harriet Tubman.
On the May 9th, 2016 edition of the show, Bee focuses on the harmful and deceptive effects that crisis pregnancy centers have on women who are considering an abortion.
Later on the same show, guest Michelle Branch sung a song in honor of Cruz dropping out the race.
On the May 16th, 2016 edition of the show, she accurately explained the real reason why the modern-day Religious Right started up, and it’s not due to Roe v. Wade or Reagan’s election, as commonly believed. In fact, it was formed as a backlash to integration in the schools.
Later on that same night’s edition of the show, she brilliantly took down sexist sports fans who attacked the female Seattle City Council members in a derogatory way over stadium funding with a hilarious basketball team name called the Seattle Seawards.
One week later, on the May 23rd, 2016 edition of the show, Bee exposes the real reason why evangelicals/fundamentalists joined the anti-abortion movement. The movement was primarily Catholic at the outset of Roe being decided, and the Southern Baptist Convention (this was prior to that denomination’s fundamentalist takeover in the 1980s and 1990s) came out in defense of Roe. A few years later, it began to change, when Jerry Falwell got his way, and evangelicals largely fell in line ever since.
On the June 27th, 2016 edition of the show, just a few days after the Leave side won the Brexit referendum in the UK, she criticized the outcome and pro-Brexit Trump’s obsession with Remain-heavy Scotland.
On July 18th, 2016, the first night of the RNC in Cleveland, Ohio, Bee hammered Trump VP pick Mike Pence’s dangerous record on reproductive justice and LGBTQ rights, to name a few.
One week later, on the first night of the DNC in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Bee slammed the now-departed pervert Roger Ailes’s role in the creation of what Fox “News” is known for: misleading right-wing propaganda, the “sex sells” philosophy (eg. leg chair), and good old racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia.
On October 5th, 2016’s edition of Full Frontal, one day before Officer Blake Snyder was killed in St. Louis County, Missouri, and two before the infamous “grab her by the pussy” tape was leaked, Bee lambasted Trump clone Paul LePage (R), who is currently the Governor of Maine.
Just five days later on her show, she correctly noted that the infamous 2005 Access Hollywood“grab her by the pussy” tape was a promotion of sexual assault and rape culture from Trump. His defenders played the “What about Bill Clinton?” and “it’s just locker room talk” to defend him.
On the October 24th, 2016 edition of the show, she correctly explained that the term “partial-birth abortion” doesn’t exist, and is used by anti-choicers to imperil a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion.
On the Halloween night episode, Been slammed Trump’s ties to the white nationalist, anti-Semitic, racist, sexist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic movement known as the “alt-right.”
Later on that same show, she interviewed former President Barack Obama.
On November 9th, the night after Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the votes that really mattered in the Electoral College to Donald Trump, Bee was upset about the outcome and rightfully so.
On the November 14th, 2016 edition of the show, she slammed “President” Trump’s cabinet picks, especially Stephen Bannon, Steven Mnuchin, and Ben Carson.
On the December 5th, 2016 edition of the show, Bee took the so-called “President” to task over his baseless “voter fraud” conspiracies.
On December 19th, 2016, the last regular Monday airing of Full Frontal, she interviewed TheBlaze founder Glenn Beck, a #NeverTrump voice during the elections.
On January 11th, 2017, the first regular Wednesday Full Frontal edition, she focused on the Trump/Russia “Golden Shower” dossier and slammed the so-called “President” for being disrespectful to CNN reporter Jim Acosta.
Later in that same episode, she tore Trump’s Attorney General pick Jeff Sessions to shreds.
One week later, two days before President Obama left office and Trump succeeded him, she slammed Trump puppeteer Kellyanne Conway good.
On February 1st, 2017’s show, on the same night that Trump picked Gorsuch to fill the vacancy caused by Scalia’s death and just a few days before the Cheatriots pulled off the history Super Bowl comeback over the Falcons, Bee took our “President” to task for his reckless handling of his unconstitutional and Islamophobic Muslim Ban (aka Executive Order 13769) banning people from seven nations (Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan) coming to the United States that caused massive protests at airports across the nation.
So let’s hope for this and more successful seasons for Full Frontal With Samantha Bee on TBS. Her show is a much-needed voice on TV.