She’s the queen of late night TV!
After all, Samantha Bee‘s hilarious show Full Frontal With Samantha Bee is nominated at the E! People’s Choice Awards! The series, which is now in its fourth season, nabbed a nod for The Nighttime Talk Show of 2019 and anyone who has caught her series on TBS can confirm it’s well deserved.
Bee became a household name as a correspondent for The Daily Show, where she spent 12 years working under then-host John Stewart. When Stewart announced he would be departing from The Daily Show, many wondered who would get the reigns and, seeing as she was the show’s senior correspondent before departing, many were rooting for Bee.
While the job ended up going to South African comic Trevor Noah, fans were still thrilled when it was announced Bee land her own program.
The past four seasons of Full Frontal have been full of hilarious sketches, segments and interviews that are must-see TV. Bee has also been the rare female voice in late night television, at one point this year even being the only female voice in the format that has long been dominated by men.
Thankfully, Lilly Singh‘s show premiered recently, adding more much-needed female perspectives to the landscape.
While we wait for more and more women to get the opportunity to grab the mic in late night, we’re celebrating the best Full Frontal moments of the year!
To see if Bee takes home the PCAs trophy, tune into the live show on Nov. 10.
Roast Queen
Full Frontal With Samanta Bee saw the host deliver a searing roast about President Donald Trump in March when she held her Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner event running opposite of the real White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Her event was a response to Trump’s refusal to attend the WHCD and the organization’s decision to stop the long-standing tradition of having comedians host the dinner following Michelle Wolf‘s monologue the previous year.
In her roast, Bee went hard with jokes surrounding the Mueller report, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and how celebrities like Justin Bieber are braver than Trump since they don’t shy away from a roast.
Sex Education for Senators
Following the wave of legislative bills various states were considering (or even passing) that greatly reduced women’s access and right to reproductive health, Bee decided to take it upon herself to create a sex education video for senators.
In May, the host delivered a hilarious, scathing series of lessons that disputed false or uninformed claims by the same legislators that were looking to pass these laws.
Bee’s point: if a representative doesn’t even understand how a woman’s body works, then they should really stop trying to pass laws about it.
A Crowded Field
With 24 Democrats (or maybe even more, we lost count) that announced they were running for the 2020 presidential election, can you remember everyone that was on the debate stage?
In this funny clip, Full Frontal producer Mike Rubens asks Bee and various other members of her staff if they can draw one of the candidates from memory and it’s clear that some of the names had them scratching their heads.
The helpful hint that kept coming up? “Middle-aged, with brown-ish gray hair.” Sorry to these men, but yeah, we don’t really remember them either!
Candidate Sweep
Remember Supermarket Sweep? First off, it’s being rebooted. Secondly, Bee’s team creatively dealt with the packed Democratic candidate field in this segment where they found two New Yorkers who hadn’t decided on who they were supporting in the upcoming primary.
They brought the duo to a supermarket packed with products that represented each of the candidates, such as a soda bottle called “Diet Obama” for Cory Booker. The two contestants raced through the aisle and snatched up as many products as possible, but only got to keep one at the end that would showcase who they picked as their front-runner.
The segment was hosted by John Michael Higgins and made us laugh, then cry, at the current state of politics.
Multi-Level Marketing
Anyone who has gotten a “Hey girl!” Facebook message out of the blue from their former high school bully knows that what’s coming next is the sales pitch for Mary Kay, LuLaRoe or some other MLM scheme that your former classmate has gotten wrapped up in.
Bee explores the growing trend of these MLM companies in a funny segment that also empathizes with the fact that many of the women who end up a part of these organizations are vulnerable, especially to messaging about being able to work from home and set their own hours.
She also showcases some of the worst legging designs that the LuLaRoe corporation sent its consultants, including a pair whose bumblee print had unfortunate placement on the crotch.
CATS!
In a lighter pop culture segment, Bee revealed her disappointment that she was not cast in the upcoming CATS movie given all her hard work to act just like feline, thankfully showcased in a faux-audition that showed the host “peeing” in a cat litter box, retrieving a mouse and purring.
“What is important? The answer is a movie about a bunch of trash cats getting to compete for who gets to die,” the host expresses over the hilarious footage.
In case you didn’t go to theater camp, CATS centers around the Lloyd Weber musical in which a crew of cats called the Jellicles essentially have a sing-off for who will get chosen to go to the Heaviside Layer for their new life. It’s, uh, pretty out there but we’re still hyped to see the movie adaptation starring James Corden, Taylor Swift and more when it hits theaters in December.
Watch the 2019 People’s Choice Awards Sunday, Nov. 10 at 9 p.m., only on E!