Strangers with Candy is<!--Do not change this to "was"; we continue using "is" after a TV show concludes.--> an American television sitcom created by Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello, Amy Sedaris, and Mitch Rouse that originally aired on Comedy Central from April 7, 1999, to October 2, 2000. Its timeslot was Sundays at 10:00 p.m. (ET). The series, inspired by after school specials, follows Jerri Blank (Sedaris) a 46-year-old woman who, after living as a prostitute and drug addict, decides to go back to high school and start doing things the right way. The series was produced by Comedy Partners, with Kent Alterman serving as executive producer and Colbert as co-producer.
Strangers with Candy episodes were produced in a single-camera setup and were filmed between upstate New York and New Jersey. The pilot episode premiered on April 7, 1999, and three seasons followed. The series stars Sedaris, Colbert, Dinello and Greg Hollimon with a supporting cast that includes Roberto Gari, Deborah Rush, Larc Spies, Maria Thayer, Orlando Patoboy, Sarah Thyre and David Pasquesi.
Tonally, Strangers with Candy uses surreal humor to satirize after school specials and the sanitized, saccharine advice those shows would give to kids. The show altered the lessons so the principal character would always do the wrong thing. It was Comedy Central's first ever live-action narrative series. The show struggled with low ratings during its initial broadcast run. Despite the lack of audience, it is now known as a cult classic, having influenced numerous contemporary comedians and screenwriters. A prequel film of the same name was released in 2005.
Plot
Set in the fictional city of Flatpoint, Strangers with Candy follows Geraldine Antonia "Jerri" Blank, a former prostitute and drug addict—referred to in the show as a "junkie whore"—who returns to high school as a 46-year-old freshman at Flatpoint High. Jerri ran away from home and became "a boozer, a user, and a loser" after dropping out of high school as a teenager, supporting her drug habits through prostitution, stripping, and larceny. She has been to prison several times, the last time because she "stole the TV".
Jerri tries to do things the right way but always ends up learning the wrong lesson. Her hijinks often involve, either directly or indirectly, history teacher Chuck Noblet and his secret lover art teacher Geoffrey Jellineck. Every episode features a warped theme or moral lesson and ends with the cast and other featured actors from the episode dancing. The last episode features Flatpoint High being turned into a strip mall, a development that reflected Comedy Central cancelling the show to make room for a TV show called Strip Mall.
Development
Conception
Sedaris, Dinello, Colbert and Rouse first created the sketch comedy show Exit 57, which debuted on Comedy Central in 1995 and aired through 1996. Although it lasted only 12 episodes, the show received favorable reviews and was nominated for five CableACE Awards in 1995, in categories including best writing, performance, and comedy series. After the show was cancelled, Colbert and Dinello were preparing a pitch for a show known as "Mysteries of the Insane Unknown" Simultaneously, Rouse and Sedaris had developed their own pitch, which Sedaris described as "something based on after-school specials" inspired by shows like The Brady Bunch. They presented it first to MTV, as Rouse knew someone there; while his friend loved it, they were told the channel would not go for it. Comedy Central was prepared to greenlight "Mysteries" but Dinello convinced Colbert to go help Sedaris with her pitch. Colbert was reticent after hearing her idea because he knew it was better than theirs; he was right, and Comedy Central's Kent Alterman chose her show instead.
At first, Sedaris wanted to do a straight after-school special: "We wanted to play it dead, dead serious. No laugh track, nothing. But Comedy Central didn't go for it." Rouse, Colbert, and Dinello went to the Museum Of Television and found several after-school specials starring Scott Baio, which they used as reference. Dinello later found a tape of Florrie Fisher's The Trip Back at Kim's video in the East Village; Fisher, a motivational speaker, recalled her days as a New York prostitute and heroin addict to a group of high-school students. After watching it, Dinello thought Fisher reminded him of Sedaris and promptly suggested doing a character—inspired by Fisher—who would go back to high school. Colbert added the idea of her learning the wrong lesson after every episode, and Sedaris said "Okay, she'll be a junkie whore this time." Rouse noted Strangers with Candy was a combination of Fisher's tape, the Baio specials, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, and Frederick Wiseman's Titicut Follies. They would also keep typos in. Sedaris recalled: "That's what I learned from working on Strangers. If you're not laughing, how do you expect anyone else to laugh?" Very occasionally they would write with a collaborator such as Cindy Caponera, Mitch Rouse, or Thomas Lennon. Much of Jerri's past is taken from anecdotes in The Trip Back, some of which are also in Fisher's autobiography, The Lonely Trip Back. Several lines of dialogue in the series were taken verbatim from Fisher's public-service film.
Comedy Central picked up the series in 1998 after Colbert had already begun working on The Daily Show. As a result, he accepted a reduced role, filming only around 20 Daily Show segments a year while he worked on the new series. but later was changed to Strangers With Candy, which was just a name they had come up with years earlier, and had been wanting to use for one of their projects. It came from the phrase "Don't take candy from strangers," which would probably be a lesson from an "Afterschool Special". Mostly, however, the writers were left alone to their own devices. It would take about 40 minutes for Sedaris to get into character.
Casting
When writing the pilot, the writers would perform the characters, and realized that they were imitating Greg Hollimon when they read Principal Blackman's lines. The creators, Hollimon, and many other stars of the series, were also alumni of Chicago's Second City. Roberto Gari was chosen for the role of Jerri's father Guy as he was the only actor who was able to do the character's poses and keep still for a long period of time. In 2016, Sedaris said, "We never knew we had an audience. We never knew what the ratings were—we still haven't been told we were canceled! But we were fine doing more or not doing more, either way." Pete Schulberg at The Oregonian, commented on the show's uncompromising humour, "In its own twisted and taboo-bashing way, the series proves to be as outrageous as anything you'll see on TV. The satire is heavy-duty, but more often than not, it works". The Washington Post's Richard Leiby commended Comedy Central for "giving these inventive comedians a showcase for their stoner humor".
The New York Post's Michelle Greppi, compared the show unfavourably to similar media, "Strangers With Candy" aspires to be the anti-after-school special. Instead, it's just a flat and unfunny rip-off of "South Park" refracted through a prison prism and executed in a style that makes cable access look Oscar-ready and all of the "Heathers" ready for sainthood". Ana Marie Cox of Feedmag, had similar thoughts, "So far, critics have mostly responded to the show's supposed "outrageousness," though anyone who still thinks drug references and abortion jokes are "outrageous" must have stopped watching TV when the real After School Specials went off the air." Further adding, "Yet for all the richness of its targets, the show is curiously flat -- a broad parody whose sharpest moments stem from social non-sequitors and squeamishly inappropriate one-liners, as when Jerri announces: "I have to leave class early -- I'm getting my uterus scraped." Perhaps flatness is to be expected, as the show's creators [...] are veterans of "alternative comedy," a genre whose distinguishing characteristic is that it is rarely, you know, funny." Caryn James of The New York Times said the show "is simply boring" and that it "doesn't fail on the grounds of bad taste, but of bad comedy".
In a review of the second season, Tom Conroy of US Weekly called the show, "A tart satiric confection with a hard center", and rated it three of four stars. The Badger Herald, praised it as: "One of the most intelligently written shows on TV today. [...] believe me, "Strangers with Candy" is a rose garden in the decomposing landscape of network programming." On another positive review, Kinney Littlefield of
The Orange County Register said, "Like great chocolate, Strangers With Candy has proved to be an addictive substance over its past two seasons".
On the show's cancellation, ABC News, commented: "Comedy Central might be canceling the sage, delightfully back-ass-wards Strangers With Candy show. If your response is "What's Strangers With Candy?" consider yourself part of the problem rather than the solution." Similarly, Melanie McFarland of The Seattle Times, lamented its demise: "The show regularly took viewers outside their comfort zone, and ardent fans kept "Strangers" a secret, taking the show's existence for granted. After all, it had a faithful core viewership that seemed to grow as more turned their friends on to it. As you can tell, "Strangers With Candy" is probably one of the most deliciously non-P.C. shows out there and certainly deserves more attention on TV than it's getting."
In 2007, Strangers with Candy was ranked number 30 on TV Guides Top Cult Shows Ever.