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Natalie Zea as Samantha Bee? Uh, Yes Times Infinity. TBS launches 'The Detour'

By Lord Castleton | TV | April 8, 2016 |

By Lord Castleton | TV | April 8, 2016 |


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Anyone who has tuned in to Samantha Bee’s new TBS show Full Frontal knows that there’s a new sheriff in town and she’s kicking down walls in the boys club.

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They may also see that numbers for Comedy Central’s The Daily Show With Trevor Noah are a wee bit down after Jon Stewart hit the dusty trail. Word on the street is that former Daily Show correspondent Bee and her equally notorious husband Jason Jones both wanted their own shows but with small kids at home, they didn’t want the rigors of a nightly recording schedule. And, one imagines they would be daunted by trying to follow Stewart’s legacy (as Noah seems to be finding out the hard way).

Side note: I’ve tried with Trevor Noah, and I like him, but it feels like the writers are still writing for Stewart’s sensibilities or perhaps for a certain way they want the show to be rather than writing to Noah’s strengths. I can’t honestly tell what his strengths are yet. But something feels off a bit and I can’t quite put my finger on it…

Anyway, enter TBS, handing out platters of wishes and dreams to the Jones/Bees’z. Sam gets her own punch-em-in-the-cock half hour of weekly joy. Jason Jones gets to be Jason Jones and be paid for it.

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The Detour is about a family road trip, ostensibly, where Jason Jones is pretty much himself. It was created and penned by Jones and his real life wife, Sam Bee. But since she was tied up elsewhere, we don’t get the dreamcasting of this:

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This is what I want to see, but if we can’t get Sam, how about we settle for little old this:

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Of course, being married to Jason Jones on the show rapidly turns her into this:

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Man I love Natalie Zea. She first came into my consciousness on The Shield and Hung and then of course Justified but you may have seen her in a bunch of other things, too. She inhabits an odd tier for me where probably only Tea Leoni exists. Yes, they’re beautiful, but there’s something hard to place about them that’s kind of captivating. The Detour signifies a departure of sorts for Zea, who is trying on her comedy chops in a lead role for the first time. From what I’ve seen so far, she’s gonna kill it.

And dear god I love me some Jason Jones.

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As a dyed-in-the-wool channel snob, when people I admire and appreciate are given shows on networks like TBS and Starz and TVLand I have to sit back and appreciate the amount of great content out there. There’s always room for more comedy in this platinum age of TV comedy. And maaaaaaaaybe there’s also room for me to reevaluate my Pfff’ing of lesser channels as well.

Will The Detour be good? That remains to be seen, but based on the sneak peak one hour I’ve seen so far, we might just have ourselves a winner.

The Detour premieres Monday 4/11 at 9/8c on TBS.