thecelebritycafe.com: TV Review - Strangers With Candy

Original Article

Politically extremely incorrect and absurdly hilarious – Strangers With Candy delivers.

How “out there” can you get? It seems like writers and actors Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello and Stephen Colbert (yes, that Stephen Colbert) were trying to explore this question while creating Strangers With Candy. Just take the basic plot: 46-year-old Jerri decides to return to high school after decades of living on the street, prostitution and drug abuse. So she continues exactly where she left off when running away 30 years earlier: As a freshman at Flatpoint High, a life full of annoying teachers, arguments with parents and other challenges.

Every episode, Jerri has to deal with an “issue” – a stab at after school specials, the programs that neatly resolve every problem in just under an hour, while teaching young people something essential about life. And so Jerri lives through everything your average teenager does – she joins a cult, battles drugs and an eating disorder, finds out what she wants to do with her life, falls in and out of love and learns how to deal with retarded people. Hilariously, she comes to a not-so-inspiring conclusion at the end of each episode, for example, that you sometimes have to give up your dream (quote, “If you're gonna reach for a star, reach for the lowest one you can.”), or that people simply like you more if you look better.

Just as absurdly comical as the outline is, as politically incorrect are the jokes. Try this on for size: “I cried when I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet – then I laughed really hard.” Sedaris, Dinello and Colbert succeeded in creating a hysterical show that will have you in fits of laughter if you have a weird sense of humor or in fits of rage if you’re too sensitive. One way or the other – Strangers With Candy will not leave you unaffected.

Now, you can relive all the love, tears, and lessons for life with the complete three seasons of the show in a trapper keeper-like box set.