Samantha Bee stands out in her personal boys club because she has a comic super power that isn’t being a girl. You know the usual suspects of girlie comic powers. Talking about boys. Talking about tampons. Being bad at talking to boys. Worrying about how fat you are… Sammie Bee doesn’t bother with any of these. Instead, she has focused on the traditional feminist strategy of doing everything the boys can do, but doing it better and faster and in high heels. In the case of The Daily Show, that means being the bestest ever at helping the evil, the dumb and the inane to humiliate themselves on national television. All of The Daily Show correspondents are good at helping people look stupid. It’s what they do for a living, after all, but Samantha is the queen of leading stupid people down the garden path to utter self-emulation.
The best part is, she makes it look easy. Samantha Bee has one of the best, “Who me? Did I do that?” faces in the business. I mean, sure, girlfriend has an unfair advantage – she spends her days trading dry looks with Jon Stewart and her nights trading dry looks with Jason Jones… how could that much practice not make perfect?
But I’d put money on Sammie Bee getting having been that kid in pre-school who “helped” the class bully expose his bed-wetting issues in an emotional playground interview then “assisted” the teachers into confessing that homework is, in fact, for the birds. Those quick wits and that guileless face aren’t something you learn – they’re a part of who Samantha Bee is, and that’s the well from which a smart comedienne draws her comedy. A well called, “her own damn self.”
So who are you? What are you a genius at? What is wrong with you, on a level so fundamental to your being that you can’t fix it, you can only laugh at it? That is the well where your comedy lives, ladies and gents. Go forth and dig it up!
