Busy Philipps carries Sam Bee through Full Frontal‘s abortion-themed escape room
If only defeating the GOP's woman-hating agenda were as easy as solving The Da Vinci Code
TV News Busy Philipps
When faced with a seemingly intractable problem requiring ingenuity, teamwork, and a can-do attitude, we could all do worse than to have Busy Philipps on our side. Luckily, Full Frontal host and, as it turns out, person who sucks at escape rooms, Samantha Bee, had the Girls5eva star in the house on Wednesday, as Full Frontal spent some of TBS’ cash on a reproductive rights-themed escape room.
Introducing her guest, Bee was clearly relieved to have herself some serious Busy, which makes sense. Apart from being a knowledgeable and committed abortion rights activist (who once testified in front of Congress about her own experience in having an abortion at 15), Philipps is also unsurprisingly kick-ass at the popular party game where a group of friends are locked in a room—for fun!—and attempt not to emerge as ex-friends.
Rechristened an “escape womb” for the occasion of Bee and Philipps’ illustrative visit, the room’s various hard-but-not-too-hard puzzles were all converted to abortion rights-themed quizzes for the edification of Bee’s audience. What are the number of seasons in which the choice of whether or not to have a child should be a pregnant person’s own goddamned business? Find the number of clocks with only four numbers on them. How many states have pre-Roe v. Wade anti-choice laws on the books that Republican legislatures are itching to reinstate should the Republican-gimmicked Supreme Court repeal that landmark women’s rights law? Eight. (Shit, eight?) Well, time to bust out both Bee and Philipps’ combined U.S. history and word jumble skills. And then comes the damned cryptex.
And while Bee and Busy finally managed to solve their own symbolic abortion rights labyrinth (with Philipps seriously carrying the team), the duo continued to remind viewers that things for women in America are about to get a whole lot trickier. When Philipps testified back in 2019 (when banning women’s rights to determine their own fucking medical choices was just a misogynistic gleam in Mitch McConnell’s eye), the formidable actress and podcaster notably stated, to a room filled with old white men smugly asserting their own right to control women’s bodies:
I am a human being that deserves autonomy in this country that calls itself free. And choices that a human being makes about their own bodies should not be legislated by strangers who can’t possibly know or understand each individual’s circumstances or beliefs.
Here, however, she and Bee merely had to navigate a designed-to-be-escaped mock dungeon, filled with Plan B and condoms (things the GOP is coming for next, don’t kid yourself), and get showered by an alarming explosion of celebratory confetti. And while it was no doubt a relief to get out of a place where every clue threatened yet another surprise glimpse of noted anti-choice creep Ted Cruz (R-TX), the too-chipper announcer noted that Bee and Philipps are, unfortunately, only escaping back into an America where their bodily autonomy is under imminent attack by a shrinking but disproportionately powerful cabal of right-wingers, hell-bent on throwing people seeking abortions into actual, inescapable prison cells.
Bee and Philipps’ escape room also serves as a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood, whose efforts to ensure women’s rights are more in need of your help than ever.
14 Comments
If Busy Philips married Sam Bee, her name would be Busy Bee.
This is the type of journalism I come here to see, people.AV Club, hire this spider immediately.
Sorry, I just bought a house. Re-locating to LA is not going to work for me.
And if the stars of Grease got married, she’d be Olivia Newton-John Travolta.
That’s a good one!
But this is NOT Busy Bee. This? Is a fish.
And then I asked myself “Is this my Busy Bee? Is this my beautiful fish?”
You’d almost think she’s adopt Samantha Bee’s last name or even marry Samantha Bee just to make the joke happen
I am a human being that deserves autonomy in this country that calls itself free. And choices that a human being makes about their own bodies should not be legislated by strangers who can’t possibly know or understand each individual’s circumstances or beliefs. I had this general idea in mind when I (a dude) “debated” my female evangelical cousin a few years ago about why she was pro-life, and instead of the expected “God told us to protect the little babies!!”, she basically implied that she must have had an abortion at some point and it was so traumatic that she wanted to save others from the trauma, and when I explained that that was a good intent but shouldn’t an adult woman be allowed to make that choice for themselves, she basically checked out of the “debate.” Then I remembered she has always been a doormat in both her marriages (as was her mother in both of her marriages, imagine that) and being told what to do was something she was totally fine with, but as an evangelical she felt she had the moral high ground sufficient to tell others what to do.
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I am a human being that deserves autonomy in this country that calls itself free
Unless youre a baby.
I was waiting for the room to fill saline during the video! As the conversation was unwanted.
This is the kind of concept that makes me wish Billy Eichner’s show was still around. He would have executed it 10 times better while screaming in the contestants’ ears