Since “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee” premiered in February, Bee has quickly become TV’s much-needed voice of anger and reason, calling out the extreme foolishness in our current political conversation. She has been providing the vicarious catharsis that the so many disgusted Americans need in the middle of such a relentlessly personal, petty, and fact-impaired race. She has become the torch-bearer for sanity and common sense, like Stewart before her, helping to save us from a terminal slough of despond.

There has to be an awful lot of upper-echelon weeping at the home of “The Daily Show,” which let correspondent Samantha Bee leave last year to start her own TBS series while hiring Trevor Noah to replace Jon Stewart. At this point, as doomy, gloomy Election 2016 closes in, Bee’s wit is the raging bonfire to Noah’s flicker. Her razor-sharp show is not to be missed; his show, fangless and safe, is easily forgotten.

Is it possible that Comedy Central has doubled its Kleenex order, to keep up with the executive demand?

More: Watch some of Samantha Bee’s best political segments


Recently, TBS has given “Full Frontal,” which usually airs Mondays at 10:30 p.m., a few special Wednesday slots. The goal has been to let Bee weigh in on the debates with a more timely punch. And she has taken full advantage of the opportunities, with episodes that go there and beyond. Looking at the first Clinton-Trump debate, she unleashed a rush of fury at Donald Trump for his interruptions and sexism. “To be president of this country, you need tremendous stamina,” Trump says in one clip. Bee’s reaction: “Oh just say ‘penis,’ Don. Three-syllable words don’t suit you.”

Another slice-and-dice, this time at the expense of those who focus on Hillary Clinton’s facial expressions: After showing a montage of pundits urging the Democratic nominee to smile in the debate, Bee cuts to morning-after analysis complaining about Clinton’s “fake smile.” As the only female late-night host doing politics in an election with the first female major-party nominee, Bee’s perspective sets her apart. She is fully aware, for example, of the history of criticizing women for not smiling — code for not being passive and nice. Months ago, after

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough urged Clinton to smile more, Bee launched the popular Twitter hashtag

#SmileForJoe.


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Bee is always good, even when she turns her laser focus to something other than the election; please, go online and look up her recent takedown of the “beta version of Trump,” Maine Governor Paul LePage. It’s thorough, and thoroughly damning. But her election-related material has been particularly penetrating, partly because it is particularly needed right now. While Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers deliver clever political jokes, they’re limited by their late-night variety format. And while John Oliver remains a bastion of levelheadedness on HBO, he is now going deep on diverse topics and making his own news. Bee, however, remains as unfettered as she is impassioned. Now if we can only convince TBS to run “Full Frontal” every weeknight.

We do see a lot of Bee’s kind of snark-making, fact-checking, purging, and debunking elsewhere these days, particularly online, where GIFs and memes instantly emerge to ridicule and rebuff. They pour down through our Twitter and Facebook feeds. I love to track some of it, but there’s nothing quite like watching a real, live human being delivering the goods, conveying her responses with full affect and a tightly written script. It’s far more persuasive to me, more powerful than disembodied ideas and jokes.


One of Bee’s smart moves on “Full Frontal” is that she delivers all of her irony and pity from a standing, “full frontal” position. She’s unblocked physically and emotionally, as she uses her body language to make her points. She is refreshingly direct.

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Bee is proving that she’s committed enough to burn some bridges. First, she tore a hole in NBC for normalizing Trump’s racism and sexism. She pointed out that, before Trump’s presidential run, but during his birther conspiracy nonsense, the network continued to promote him. And despite NBC’s cutting of ties with Trump after his derogatory comments about Mexicans, the network brought him on “Saturday Night Live” and “The Tonight Show,” where Jimmy Fallon mussed his hair. “Sure, he’s making life palpably dangerous for Muslims and immigrants,” Bee said in her rant, “but hey, he’s good entertainment. Here’s a thought: When Holocaust survivors are telling you, ‘Hey, this guy gives me deja vu,’ maybe don’t invite him up into your house to play with your adorable children.”

Likewise, Bee attacked her own network for a tweet making fun of Clinton’s laugh. The offending tweet read, “Move over Donkey! There’s a new mascot in town. #ImWithHyena,” and it paired clips of Clinton laughing with clips of hyenas. After Bee tweeted to TBS, “Delete your account,” the network deleted the tweet and apologized.


Bee recently paid a visit to “The Late Show” and her former “Daily Show” colleague Colbert, and she recalled a gift he gave her when she started “Full Frontal.” It was a notecard with a phrase they used when they’d worked together: “Go get those bastards.” I’m glad she’s still taking that motto seriously.

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Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewGilbert.