“Full Frontal With Samantha Bee” debuted on TBS on Monday, breaking up the longstanding boys’ club that is late night with an impressive 2.2 million viewers (across its multinetwork simulcast).

What’s more, Bee did it by applying laser focus to a subject routinely overlooked by Trevor Noah, John Oliver and the rest of late night hosts: women’s issues. Bee’s an avowed feminist, and some of the best, most original bits in her first episode were aimed directly at presidential candidates’ misogynistic policies (like appealing to Iowa evangelicals with attacks on Planned Parenthood).

Bee’s assured, unapologetically feminist voice is a refreshing antidote to the often-fratty humor of late night — she’s also the only one with a 50 percent female writing staff — and this was never clearer than in the contrast between her show’s jokes about the GOP debate in New Hampshire, and those of “The Daily Show,” where she spent 12 years as a correspondent.

In covering the section of the debate in which Chris Christie laid into Marco Rubio for endlessly repeating a rote bit about how “Barack Obama knows exactly what he’s doing,” Noah gleefully (and somewhat cringe-inducingly) joked that “Marco Rubio got f - - ked so hard, he had to take Chris Christie to Red Lobster.”

Whereas Bee — who also dug into that skirmish — pointed to a section of the debate most media didn’t even bother to report on: Rubio stating that Hillary Clinton “believes all abortions should be legal — even on the due date of that child.” With her trademark withering wit, Bee smacked him down: “That is literally the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said. “Removing a baby on the due date isn’t an abortion. It’s called a caesarean.”

It’s too soon to tell whether Bee’s numbers will hold up (of the 2.2 million viewers, 629,000 were on home network TBS). When “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” premiered back in September, it averaged 3.4 million viewers in its own multinetwork simulcast. On Monday it drew 882,000 viewers on Comedy Central.

But while Noah has proven a genial but bland host of “The Daily Show,” the razor-sharp satire chops of Bee make it look a lot like Comedy Central may have made a big, big mistake back when Jon Stewart announced he was leaving.

In the run-up to the premiere of “Full Frontal,” it was revealed that Bee — who regularly turned in some of the “The Daily Show”s best pieces — was never even offered a shot at replacing Stewart. (Whether or not she’d have wanted the gig, “the fact that she wasn’t approached was a little shocking, to say the least,” her husband, fellow “Daily Show” correspondent Jason Jones, said).

You’d think the network might have spied an opportunity to differentiate the next phase of its show with a female host — particularly one so obviously well-prepared for the job. But its failure to value Bee is TBS’s gain, and if the inaugural episode of her weekly show is any indication, “The Daily Show” is going to struggle to seem relevant next to Bee’s masterful, modern skewering of the news.

Sure, she’s got more time to work on her show, as it’s weekly instead of daily — but her energy and feminist perspective make “Full Frontal” feel like something newer and better than the diminished “Daily Show,” chugging along with Noah’s passable, familiar humor. It’s no surprise that Bee comes off like the obvious successor to Stewart as the ruler of American political commentary — she’s the one who worked with him for 12 years.

Correction, Feb. 17: An earlier version of this article erroneously compared the ratings of “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” and “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.” It has been updated to reflect the premiere ratings of each show.