The 4 Most Feminist Moments Of Samantha Bee's Late-Night Debut

"It's true, we're all witches."

Late night television finally got a much-needed breath of fresh air on Monday night, in the form of Samantha Bee's new weekly show, "Full Frontal With Samantha Bee." What's exciting about Bee is that her gender is not the only thing that sets her apart from the likes of Trevor Noah, Jimmy Fallon, and Stephen Colbert. Rather, Bee is injecting late night with some interesting and inspired changes.

For one thing, there wasn't any banal chit-chat with celeb guests, nor any sign of the usual late night desk for her to sit behind -- she delivered her biting and hilarious commentary while standing, directly to the camera, directly to the audience, effortlessly commanding our attention and our laughs. Of course, so much of the buzz of around Bee's new show has hinged on the fact that she's a woman in the notoriously all-male late night lineup, and while she didn't lean on this as a shtick, Bee was unafraid to call out sexism in late night and beyond last night.

Below are the four moments that made her late night debut the most feminist late night show on TV:

When she called out Marco Rubio's claims that Hillary Clinton supports abortions on babies' due dates.
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“That is literally the stupidest thing I have every heard. Removing the baby on the due date isn’t an abortion, it’s a cesarean... Keep telling your cabal of fetus fanatics that Hillary Clinton wants us to carry to term and then deliver our babies directly into a Vitamix, so Planned Parenthood can sell it to Whole Foods.” Brilliant.
When she answered every variation of those "What's it like to be a woman in late night?" questions.
Bee opened her show by getting the questions about her gender out of the way in one witty segment where, at a press conference, she's asked "Is it hard breaking into the boys club?" "What's it like being a woman in late night?" ad "What's it like being a female woman?"

Bee answers the cliché questions with grace and aplomb, admitting, "Yes, we're all witches."
When she named Mitch Holmes her "Elected Paperweight Of The Month."
In this segment, Bee goes in on Kansas State Senator Mitch Holmes, who wrote a dress code for the state capitol targeted only at women, because "men already know how to dress professionally."

Bee's on point response: "No wonder your state had to raid a billion dollars from the highway fund just to keep the lights on. How can senators balance a budget when all the blood is rushing from their heads to their engorged ding dongs because Shelley wore skinny jeans on Arbor Day?"
When she came for both Bernie Sanders *and* Hillary Clinton.
The theme of Bee's debut show was the presidential race, and she wasted no time in skewering Republican nominees including Marco Rubio, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. She also came for the Dems, and was unafraid to poke a little fun at Hillary Clinton's humility in running for president. Bee's response, "Oh, f**k off!" Basically, this sets an important tone: Bee's commentary will go beyond gender, proving that she's just as funny -- if not funnier -- than her male counterparts.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misstated which candidate Bee criticized for his abortion rhetoric. The candidate was actually Marco Rubio, not Ted Cruz.

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