Full Frontal returns, with Samantha Bee promising to go “fucking nut-nut”

Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Thursday, January 20. All times are Eastern.

Top pick

Full Frontal With Samantha Bee (TBS, 10 p.m.): Forgive Samantha Bee if she’s feeling a little reckless coming into this seventh-season premiere of Full Frontal. After all, the series began right after Donald Trump’s election (to the actual presidency, even) in 2016, and she’s put in 200 episodes’ worth of increasingly strenuous effort in trying to turn that festering shitshow into a functional comedy show. Still as Bee noted on Twitter (and confirmed to fellow Daily Show alum Stephen Colbert), she and her show are fully prepared to go “fucking nut-nut” for its seventh season of furiously topical rants and the occasional visit to a Brooklyn cat café. (She arrived to The Late Show on Tuesday swimming in cat dander.) “We will tell the story of the collapse of civilization with style and panache, Bee promised Colbert.

Explaining the Kendall Roy Succession reference that formed her prediction for this season, Bee told Colbert that, essentially, she’s prepared to hurl herself all around the place in search of theoretically illuminating settings for stories about, for example, anti-vaccine misinformation. (Apparently, having 40 cats crawl all over her at a trendy theme café while mocking people who still won’t get a damn shot is, as she put it, her “living her best life.”)

Look for the intrepid Bee to still find plenty to humorously mock the living crap out of in this mercifully Trump-less world, though. You know, since that guy is still out there holding super-spreader Big Lie events, he and his kids are being subpoenaed over their long history of sketchy tax fraud (allegedly), and there’s still a Trump-worshipping political party going full-court press on suppressing voting rights and undermining local election apparatuses to re-install their farcical cult leader back in the White House. It’s enough to make an award-winning political comedian seek out a roomful of cuddly cats.

Regular Coverage

And Just Like That… (HBO Max, 3 a.m.)
Peacemaker (HBO Max, 3 a.m.)

Wild Card

Single Drunk Female (Freeform, 10 p.m.): In reviewing this sitcom starring Your Honor’s Sofia Black-D’Elia, Leila Latif praises its star for mastering the ever-difficult task of drunk acting. As a barely functional alcoholic who finds herself moving back in with her mom (Ally Sheedy), Black-D’Elia, according to the pre-air review, “delivers a phenomenal performance across every episode and obstacle—from the insecurities of writing without alcohol, to the exhaustion of sobriety-induced insomnia, to the frustration of being incredibly horny and in the presence of [hunky co-star] Garrick Bernard’s abs.” Perhaps drawing inspiration from the hilariously terrible example of her The Mick co-star Kaitlin Olson, Black-D’Elia’s character unsteadily navigates temptation, her overbearing mother, and the past she’s been trying to drink away, all while showing off some impressive comic chops. Oh, and perhaps drawing inspiration from the real-life phenomenon of media outlets treating their writers like disposable garbage, since having to deal with the toxic, money-driven nature of her writing job is partly what drove the central character to drink. Make of that what you will.