You like drama? Stories with strong female voices? Shade in spades? Then Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings are the show for you—oh, also because they’ll directly, and significantly, affect your life. Unfortunately, this bit of must-see TV airs when most everyone’s working or watching their kids—so we’re here to recap each day of these monumentally important proceedings.

There’s a chance—if you were in your office, or at a doctor’s appointment, or on a treadmill—that you spotted some of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings on mute. If you did, then you saw a lot of white guys. And so perhaps you assumed that it was them who stole the show.

Not so. A chorus of women’s voices—those of the senators on the dais, and those of the protestors in the gallery—became the soundtrack of the day. Women spoke when they were called upon, and frequently when they were not.

That unfamiliar audio—the sound of women interrupting men—gave Day One of Kavanaugh’s grilling on Capitol Hill an unexpected vibe. An event that could have felt (and sometimes did feel, what with a group of Offred-themed protestors in the halls) like one step closer to life inside the Handmaid’s Tale, delivered occasional moments of triumph. Brave women delivered a flat-out, top-of-their-lungs refusal to let one more man bent on legislating their bodies breeze into power without a fight.

The battle began just seconds into the hearing. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the committee chairman, had barely finished clearing his throat when Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) jumped in.

“Mr. Chairman,” she said, “I’d like to be recognized for a question before we proceed.”

Harris went on to ask for a delay based on the late release of 42,000 pages of documentation related to Kavanaugh’s job in the administration of President George W. Bush. A lawyer for Bush released the papers to the judicial committee just last night. Yes, last night—as in the tail end of #ldw, as in 12 hours before the start of the hearings, as in barely enough time for these senators to digest their hot dogs and aloe their sunburns, let alone read the equivalent of the entire Lord of the Rings series 27 times. Harris’s peers on the Judiciary Committee (the Democratic ones, at least)—Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI)—picked up her lead, demanding that Sen. Grassley adjourn the session until they could review the material.

Meanwhile, Kavanaugh sat at his table, quiet and alone, playing a game of How much water can I drink without having to excuse myself to pee during this broadcast? I must not pee during this broadcast. The boss hates when people take bathroom breaks during event television!

Sen. Grassley steadfastly denied the Democrats’ motions, but he couldn’t thwart the momentum of the women on the committee. There was the quiet swagger of ranking member, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), slyly rocking Planned Parenthood pink and giving Kavanaugh a taste of how she plans to come for him on his record on reproductive freedom. “The impact of overturning Roe [v. Wade] is much broader than a woman’s right to choose,” she said to him. “It’s about protecting the most personal decisions we all make from government intrusion.”

There was Sen. Klobuchar, who achieved the burn of the day while discussing Kavanaugh’s assertion that sitting presidents can’t be prosecuted. The question the hearings must answer, she said, is “whether this judge, at this time in our history, will administer the law with equal justice as it applies to all citizens, regardless of whether they live… in a small house or the White House.”

There was Sen. Harris, making her opening statement late in the afternoon, and commenting bluntly on the way the Supreme Court—Brown v. Board of Education, to be exact—has affected the arc of her own life. Without it, she said, “I most certainly would not be sitting here as a member of the United States Senate… So, for me, a Supreme Court seat is not only about academic issues of legal precedent or judicial philosophy. It is personal.”

And, every minute or so for much of the morning proceedings, there were the largely female protestors, each of them exacting their own tiny revenge against civilization’s long tradition of men talking over women. You know whom life did not prepare for this gender bender? One Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT). He was visibly rattled as protestor after protestor screwed up his what-a-good-man speech about Kavanaugh.

(Side note: Don’t ask Orrin Hatch to be your best man unless you like such pillow-soft jokes such as: “You also apparently like to eat pasta with ketchup, but nobody’s perfect.” As far as I’m concerned, it’s marinara and bodily autonomy, or bust. That’s just a simple matter of good taste.)

After one too many ladies made themselves known, chin trembling, Sen. Hatch gathered himself and said, “I don’t know that the committee should have to put up with this type of insolence.”

Insolence—yes, that’s the word you were looking for, if you think that women concerned for their own liberty and mortality are just being brats. That’s the word you were looking for, if you think women exercising their right to free speech are the same as toddlers who refuse to hold your hand in the parking lot. That’s the word you were looking for if, despite your literal seat of power, you can’t help but feel—as Sen. Hatch so clearly seemed to—like you’ve never been closer to losing control.

So there’s the big takeaway from today’s episode of Who Wants to Revoke Reproductive Freedom? But there are little ones we need to discuss, too. A few distinctions from the day’s events:

Least effective prop: Big quotes.

Some poor staffer was at the FedEx store all weekend, getting these big quotes just right, and it’s on his or her behalf that I beseech you, senators: For whom are the big quotes? For whom! They’re behind the rest of the people on the committee, and we at home can’t see them at all. Down with big quotes.

Best athletic performance: The aide behind Sen. Chuck Grassley. During the chaotic first hour of the hearing, this poor guy was out of his chair and squatting to whisper into his boss’s ear every 15 seconds. His quads had to be on fire.

Most sympathetic onlookers: Kavanaugh’s family.

“My daughters, Margaret and Liza, thank the committee for arranging a day off of school today,” Kavanaugh quipped early into the proceedings. Good thing he made it clear that was a joke; otherwise I’d nail him for perjury. Nothing underscores how poorly this man understands women than the assertion that these two would rather be sitting here listening to politicians drone than be at school during the crucial week in which summer makeovers are revealed and fall alliances are formed. (And they still had to hear about Marbury v. Madison multiple times.) Also, my heart goes out to the aunts, uncles, and cousins Kavanaugh says are sitting behind him. This day was like, six and a half baptisms, except worse, because Ted Cruz talked.

Least sympathetic onlooker: The woman in navy just over Kavanaugh’s shoulder.

She smirked. She rolled her eyes. She laughed. She seemed, generally, to think that she was at a talk show taping, and I bet she’s still wondering why there wasn’t a prize beneath her chair.

Best Law & Order antics: Sen. Richard Blumenthal. After lunch, when the Democrats resumed their complaints about the previous night’s document dump, Sen. Grassley snapped, exasperated, that his staff was able to read them all by 11 p.m. Then Blumenthal was all, like, But the documents weren’t even fully uploaded by 11 p.m.! You got a time machine or what, Chuck?

Dumbest theory: Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE). Sen. Sasse took some shots at the protestors, calling them “people trying to get on TV.” Yeah. For sure, in 2018, when we have Instagram, YouTube, and near-constant editions of Bachelor franchise programming, the easiest way to earn fame is to hike to D.C., sit through government proceedings, and yell about fundamental rights, all in hopes of being the roughly one in 25 protestors you can partially see on camera for exactly one second. Nailed it, Sasse.

Most worthy of further exploration: Hold on—ketchup on spaghetti? Is that some sort of sick joke?

Megan Angelo is a TV critic; catch her Kavanaugh recaps here all week.

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