"Hello, I'm Jerri Blank, and I'm a 47 year-old freshman. Again. I just got out of jail. Again. And I'm starting my life all over again. Again. But this time I'm going to be a proper girl, doing things the proper way, properly." - Amy Sedaris as Jerri Blank
Strangers with Candy: Season 2 DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
Deranged sitcom Strangers with Candy returned to Comedy Central for its second season in January of 2000. Amy Sedaris again stars as Jerri Blank, a 47 year-old former drug addicted hooker who has tenuously cleaned up her act and has now re-entered the high school she dropped out of decades ago in an attempt to earn her diploma. Providing "help" to the wayward not-quite-youth are self-absorbed teachers (and secret lovers) Chuck Noblet (Stephen Colbert) and Geoffery Jellineck (Paul Dinello), dictatorial Principal Blackman (Greg Hollimon), Jerri's statuesque dad (Roberto Gari), her disdainful stepmother (Deborah Rush), and her mean half-brother Derrick (Larc Spies).
As in the previous season, each week Jerri becomes involved in situations typically dealt with in After School Specials and educational films. In "Behind Blank Eyes," for example, Jerri befriends the new guy at Flatpoint High, a sweet young man who is ridiculed by other students because he is blind. And because he wants to play on the football team. In "The Virgin Jerri," she proclaims herself a "born again virgin" so that she can hang out with the school's cool virginal girls, only to face temptation in the form of a date with a fast-moving stud. Jerri faces tragedy in "The Goodbye Guy" with the sudden death of her beloved father who is mauled to death by the rabid dog mascots of a rival school.
Season two's episodes are more consistently funny than those in season one. The writers and performers have, by this point, settled on the show's feel and tone. Almost every episode contains two or three roaringly funny belly-laugh moments - scenes and lines that will have some viewers reaching for the remote to replay them again and again.
Strangers with Candy has the high joke density normally associated with animated shows like Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends or The Simpsons. In addition to its outrageously funny dialogue and situations, almost every frame of the series is filled with humorous visual gags, from the omnipresent images of Principal Blackmon to the amusingly plot-specific signs that grace Flatpoint High's hallways.
The series would probably be much less funny without Sedaris as Jerri Blank. She is able to provide even the most innocuous lines of dialogue with vocal twists that turn them into comic masterpieces. She has several especially funny moments in "The Blank Page." In this episode, Jerri wants more than anything to become a cheerleader, but during tryouts, an awful secret is revealed: she is illiterate. Her delivery of the answer to the question "What does V-I-C-T-O-R-Y spell?" is priceless.
Fans of this series from its Comedy Central run will notice that this set actually includes three episodes from what was originally billed as the show's third season. This includes parts one and two of the season three opener "The Blank Stare," episodes in which Jerri is recruited by a cult and becomes their "guest" at Safe Trap House. No explanation is given as to why these episodes are included here, but one possibility is that the producers wished to more evenly spread the episodes throughout the boxed sets. (Otherwise, season two would have only seven episodes while season three would have thirteen). The only problem is that while these three episodes are funny, they also feel slightly toned down from those originally broadcast in season two.
The ten episodes in this set are divided onto two DVDs. The packaging is similar to that found in Season 1. The menu designs feature Flatpoint High's school newspaper. Viewers can play all of the discs' episodes or choose an individual one. The menus include brief synopses of the episodes, but the type is much too small to comfortably read. There are no chapter stops.
Season two also marks the first season in which the Ward Sutton designed animated title sequences are used.
