Hey, it’s summer! Who wants to put on some shorts and smack some tetherballs around? That’ll be awesome, right? We can totally go camping outside and everything!
That didn’t sound natural, did it? That’s because some of us can’t handle that volleyball and deep-sea fishing that is expected of us in summer. Some of us are still sunburned from that time we went out to the mailbox without sunscreen. Rather than risk it again, we’re going to be holed up with Strangers with Candy: The Complete Series.
Sometimes it seems like Stephen Colbert burst fully formed from the head of Jon Stewart, like Athena and Zeus. But no, it turns out that Colbert was writing and performing on Comedy Central before his run on The Daily Show began. Back in 1999, he was one of the creative forces behind the cult hit, Strangers with Candy.
SwC, as I like to call it, was a parody of the Afterschool Specials that we grew up with, where we learned an important and carefully telegraphed lesson about social issues that were important to teens and pre-teens. Drugs are bad, premarital sex is bad, studying hard is good, and role-playing games will make you murder your parents in their sleep. (Starring a young Tom Hanks.) You know the ones. They convinced you that smoking pot will make you think you can fly and then you’ll jump out a second-story window. (Starring a young Helen Hunt.)
The lead character is Jerri Blank (played by Amy “David’s Sister” Sedaris), a 46-year-old high school freshman. Jerri dropped out decades back and spent the intervening time as a “junkie whore”. After her release from prison, she returns to her hometown of Flatpoint to start over again. So, she picks up right where she left off.
The plots come straight from the Afterschool Special library, only, you know, disturbing. In the first episode, Jerri tries to make friends by supplying the popular girls with drugs. In another, Jerri learns about responsibility in Health Class by caring for a “baby” for a week. Only instead of a bag of sugar or an egg, it’s an actual human baby. Yes, the teacher hands out babies to the students. Jerri falls in with a cult, falls in love with a blind boy, comes down with syphilis, and is tasked by the Principal to spy on a classmate for signs of retardation. (“They can be wily.”) Jerri learns valuable lessons, like how anorexia is a perfectly good way to get people to pay attention to you and “violence isn’t the only way to resolve a conflict, but it’s the only way to win it.”
Sedaris’ co-writers also star in the series. Stephen Colbert plays Chuck Noblet, the history teacher, whose lectures include facts like “Following his violent revolution, Gandhi was devoured by his followers” and “Fidel Castro impersonated Marilyn Monroe and gave President Kennedy a case of syphilis so severe that eventually it blew the back of his head off”. Despite being sometimes married (the continuity is a little sketchy), he’s in a secret relationship with the art teacher, Geoffrey Jellineck (Paul Dinello). Jellineck is a terrible artist who turns most of his lessons into self-aggrandizing screeds.
The only regulars include Principal Onyx Blackman (hee!) who covers the school with his own images and has a habit of walking around naked, sometimes in the Staff Sauna, sometimes not. Jerri’s stepmother, Sara, is a bitter alcoholic who openly hates Jerri, as does her half-brother, Derrick. (“Let’s go watch some gay porn so we can get our hate back!”) Her father, Guy, is the only family member that Jerri is close to, and he’s the focus of one of the show’s weirdest running jokes. For his entire stint on the series, we never see Guy move. Whenever he’s on camera, he’s always frozen in a ridiculous pose, usually with his mouth wide open.
Jerri is a hideous creation. Sedaris dons fake teeth, an awful frosted wig, and fat pants. Her makeup makes her skin look like leather, and the overall effect is grotesque. Anybody who’s read her brother’s essays about her will know that’s exactly what plays to her strengths. She consistently goes the extra mile in a performance that’s exactly the opposite of vanity. If there’s a way to make Jerri look worse, she’ll do it.
I admire the writing philosophy of Strangers with Candy, where they add as many jokes as they can to any given scene. In a way, it’s like a live-action version of The Simpsons, stuffed with visual gags. One episode features a school dance in the gym, and every single student is wearing golf cleats, and absolutely destroying the floor. It’s never mentioned, and never takes the focus of any shot, but once you notice it, it’s pure hilarity. And sometimes in a scene that’s already funny, a character will just use the wrong word or mangle their grammar beyond recognition. “You did better than good… you did gooder” or “Is this not what you don’t want me to not do?” And, in a bit that Colbert still uses on The Colbert Report, whenever Noblet uses a phone or calculator, he simply paws at the keyboard with an open palm.
The three seasons are available as separate season sets, but The Complete Series not only includes additional bonus material and come packaged in a tiny Trapper Keeper. Bonus material includes nine commentary tracks with Sedaris, Colbert, and Dinello. They provide some real insight into the making of the series, as well as a bunch of mean jokes about people they used to work with. There’s also a 1970 Public Service Announcement, The Trip Back, featuring Florrie Fisher, the real-life version of Jerri Blank, the original unaired pilot – “Retardation: A Celebration”, Bloopers, interviews with the cast, a presentation at the Museum of Television and Radio, and a dance sequence compilation. Yes, every episode featured a dance number over the end credits.
If you’re not quite ready to take the leap, at least check out the 2006 movie version, which took the basic premise of the series and turned it into a single story. Despite some changes (Noblet’s now a science teacher, Guy Blank is comatose rather than selectively immobile), it gives you a good taste of the series. It’s not for the easily offended, but it is for those who like things that are funny and vaguely uncomfortable.
And one more of Jerri’s valuable live lessons for the road:
