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Review of “The Wanda Sykes Show”

On Saturday night’s premiere of The Wanda Sykes Show, Sykes skewered the conservative political agenda, introduced us to her favorite drag queen, appointed herself “the president’s Tell People Where To Go And What To Kiss Czar,” took us sex toy shopping and coaxed her guest panel into a drunken round of Inappropriate Games.

So much for all that worry that the Fox network was going to water her down!

For years networks have been courting Wanda Sykes, offering her a variety of talk show opportunities, but it wasn’t until Barack Obama won the presidency, Prop. 8 passed in California and Madtv vacated its Saturday slot that the the timing felt right to her.

Last week she told TV Guide:

There’s so much going on in the country: First black president, I’m married, I have kids. The opportunity to be out here every week, with my face out here, especially an African American woman and a lesbian, too. How many times do you get an opportunity to have a network show?

As soon as Fox began airing Wanda Sykes Show promos, both Sykes and her wife, Alex, trended on Twitter. In fact, “Wanda Sykes’ wife” was one of the top Google searches the last week of October.

Sykles won’t shy away from talking about Alex, or about their young twins, but she promised that she wasn’t going to do “that weird, strange Kathie Lee Gifford thing,” where she shares all of the minutiae about her family life.

Nor does she plan to turn her show into an LGBT soap box.

For people who don’t know anyone who’s gay or lesbian, they’ll go “yeah” and see that I love my family just like they love their family. That’s not my agenda, but when you have an opportunity to also bring that in there, yeah, of course.

Last night, she made one well-placed jab on behalf of the gay community. In her “Wandarama” segment, she addressed the recent midterm elections:

The Republicans were quick to claim on Tuesday that their victories were a repudiation of President Obama. The truth is, voters in Virginia, New Jersey and New York said their decisions had nothing to do with Obama. And voters in Maine, who voted down gay marriage, said their decisions had nothing to do with fairness or compassion.

It was one of the least subversive jokes of the night.

The show opened with an SNL-esque sketch called “Sykes vs. Coulter.” Sadly, it wasn’t the fisticuffs cage match the title implies – but it did end with Sykes wearing a pair of handmade, construction paper eyelashes: “Ooh, look at me: I’ve got big, floppy eyelashes to distract you from all the bulls–t I’m saying!”

Sykes’s monologue had the feel of one of her stand-up routines, with twice the political play and half the swearing.

What has Obama done to piss everybody off? Nothing. But people are going crazy. They keep calling him a “fascist.” These people don’t even know what a fascist is. When you say things like “We’re going to vote that fascist out of office!” you really sound dumb. When was the last time a fascist got voted out of office?

After commercials, Wanda grinned into the camera: “Hey, welcome back to The Wanda Sykes Show – we haven’t been canceled yet!”

In the “Strong But Wrong” segment, she and long-time pal Keith Robinson deconstructed a video of a lecherous texting teen at an Obama rally. After reading her lips on camera, they decided: “Three feet from the president, she’s texting: ‘Girl, turn on CNN; I’m about to rape the president.’ Have you ever seen anything so ignorant?”

Nope, and I’ve also never heard anyone use “rape” and “president” in the same sentence. Fifteen minutes into the show, and Sykes was as bawdy as ever.

The “Wandarama” segment followed, and it included the funniest bit of the night: In an attempt to go green (“recycle, reuse, reduce”) Wanda decided to dispose of her sex toys in an environmentally-friendly way, and then buy some new toys. (“Can’t I please Mother Nature and myself?”)

First up, she asked her New Adventures of Old Christine cast mate Julia Louis-Dreyfus where she could recycle a some used toys. Louis-Dreyfus gasped when Sykes showed them to her: “You take the stuff that’s in this box, and you just burn it. I wish I had never seen it.”

“What about the environment?” Sykes asked.

“F–k the environment!” Louis-Dreyfus replied.

“I thought about taking Julia’s advice,” Sykes voiced-over. “But then I thought about prison.”

After selling her old sex toys in a thrift store and deciding that new toys were too toxic, she tried to peddle some hand-crafted sex toys at an adult entertainment conference. She introduced a solar-powered vibrator (“Yeah, you might have some trouble on a cloudy day”), a dildo made from a stick (“I call it the woodchuck”), and some homemade lube (“Does it smell like bacon grease? That’s because it’s bacon grease”).

The final segment was a guest panel that included 24‘s Mary Lynn Rajskub, Brothers’ Daryl Mitchell, and Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan. Over drinks from the Wanda Bar, they discussed spanking kids and vacationing on the moon, and they played an Inappropriate Game called “Know Your Asians,” in which they guessed the nationality of various Asian celebrities.

Overall, Sykes pulled some big laughs last night, but it was obvious that it was the show’s premiere. There were some glaringly awkward moments; the banter didn’t flow as easily as it could have and even Sykes’s jokes felt a little over-rehearsed. But I’m sure those kinks will iron themselves out.

The Wanda Sykes Show has potential to set itself apart. Not only is Sykes the only person of color hosting her own late night gig (until George Lopez’s show premieres on TBS), her writing staff includes four women and four African Americans. It will be nice to see what kind of rhythm they settle into after a few weeks.

Sykes may not plan to use her show as a gay rights platform, but she’ll be the first to admit that coming out last year changed the way she entertains.

“Being out and just open: It’s very liberating,” she told USA Today. “Now I don’t have to dance around anything. I don’t have to think ‘Well, if I say that, they’re going to figure this out and that’s going to lead to this.’ Now, everything is out on the table. I don’t have anything to hide; I can be even bolder.”

The bolder, the better. If Sykes is selling, I’m buying.

Except for those handmade sex toys. The last thing Gay PR in America needs is another dildo wildfire.

The Wanda Sykes Show airs Saturday nights at 11 pm on Fox. Watch episodes online at Fox.com or Hulu.

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