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Someone behind me said this: "Sam Bee looks sad."

Indeed, she did look sad; a little worn, a little tired and she cut a wan, wee figure as she came, with her creative team, to talk to a gathering of TV critics to promote new episodes of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (Wednesdays, Comedy Network).

Sad is not her thing. Honourable, righteous anger is her thing. There are all manner of U.S. comedy shows covering politics big and small these days. There is a lot to mock as Donald Trump went from rogue candidate to winner. But Bee doesn't really do funny. She does enraged. Outrage is what drives her engine.

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"Well, there's plenty to be outraged about," Bee said. "It's a thoughtful experience. The only thing we really wanted from the show is that it come from a very gut place, a very visceral place. For those 21 minutes [the show minus commercials], it's a very cleansing and cathartic experience for me, which permits me to live my life as I want to live it outside of the show."

That's a key thing about Bee, the show and its audience. The show and Bee's colourful, eloquent, ranting attacks on Trump, Republican lawmakers and, sometimes, the media, give voice to those who simply sit at home, appalled by the rise and triumph of Trump. It's a lot of weight to put on Bee's slight frame.

In introducing her, a Turner Broadcasting System executive quoted the Boston Globe: "Late night's sharpest, funniest takedowns of the 2016 political clown show." And The Daily Beast: "The torchbearer for sanity and common sense, like [Jon] Stewart before her."

It's an interesting framing of Samantha Bee's show and her role. The Jon Stewart-era Daily Show is much missed by progressives. But Stewart aired four nights a week for most weeks of the year. Bee's show is once a week, has a much smaller staff and isn't really in the late-night slot, at 10:30 p.m. Stewart also anchored much of his satire in savage lampooning of the media, especially cable news. Samantha Bee isn't doing that.

When asked if, like Stewart, she would "take MSNBC and CNN and Fox News to task for certain ways they presented news," Bee demurred. "I certainly think that we watched people, some news outlets, abdicate their responsibility during the election season. But, I mean, I do think at this juncture there is a feeling that they're really coming for all of us. So it does behoove us to support one another, I think, moving forward."

Well, the media-savaging is out, then. But other kinds of media antics do stir a reaction from Bee and her team. Bee and producers were also asked about New York Times columnist Ross Douthat's September column, called "Clinton's Samantha Bee Problem," in which Douthat argued that political-comedy shows such as Bee's polarize the electorate and alienate potential voters. Essentially, he said, the majority of Americans were not as progressive as Bee and all she represents and Bee's take muddied the waters.

Executive producer and showrunner of Bee's show, Jo Miller, responded with sarcasm. "We were excited to be given attention by a celebrity like Ross whatsisname," Miller said. "That really put us in the national spotlight. I've got two words, The Apprentice. And we're the problem with our six viewers?"

Bee added to the derision of the piece with, "I was so excited to be called a bluestocking feminist, quite honestly."

And yet, that New York Times piece had a valid point – not that Bee ruined Hillary Clinton's chances, but that what Bee articulates doesn't represent the majority of Americans. Not all of them are fuelled by outrage, as she is. What's happening is both peculiar and fraught. As the inauguration of Trump approaches, Samantha Bee is being designated as a sort of official opposition. And it is a poisoned chalice. She does, as she acknowledges, just 21 minutes of comedy a week. (There are no plans to move the show to nightly, she and her team confirmed.)

Her anger and outrage for that sliver of time allows her to live in peace outside of the show. It's the same experience for viewers who worship her – they get their outrage fix from watching Bee and then carry on as usual.

In reality, Bee is not the inheritor of Jon Stewart's role and she isn't a one-woman movement of opposition to Trump and his plans and policies.

However, she's in showbiz and the marketing of Bee as an important oppositional figure matters for her stature, the show's ratings and the selling of Full Frontal as must-see weekly TV. Maybe too much is expected of her.

Bee is Canadian, but you'd never know that. She never refers to it. She is, however, ostentatiously polite. "Hi," she says when someone asks her a question. 'Nice meeting and talking to you," she says at the end of a one-on-one interview. The politeness is rare in showbiz.

Me, I once got an angry e-mail from a woman who was a representative of Bee. It wasn't a complaint about something I'd written about her client. The complaint was that I'd written about somebody else – "a nobody"– instead of the rising star Samantha Bee. It was a telling reminder that what Bee does is about fame and attention as much as it is her comedy of honourable, righteous anger.

Since the election here, Bee has given many interviews. There was a long lineup of TV critics waiting to talk personally with her here at the press tour. And no wonder. Bee is an important figure because she's the lone female voice in a very male arena. But projecting a national mood of sadness onto her is a mistake; it's part of a vogue for seeking out figures that represent solace, a vogue that's a pop-culture fad.

Bee is in showbiz, not politics and 21 minutes of anger, no matter how cathartic, is just that – a very few minutes that are not tenable as serious opposition in the Trump era. Sad it has come to this, mind you.

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