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It has been a minute since I recommend a TV show to binge over the weekend. I got into recommending movies because, well, I had gotten through most of the shows I had to recommend. However, now Paramount+ exists. I was curious about what they had to offer on the TV series front, so I decided to poke my head into their world. I found stuff like Frasier and Daria, but I am quite certain I have recommended those before. Then again, it’s been so long I could have done it again and you might not have noticed. Fortunately, I care too much about my recommendation integrity to phone it in to that degree. Instead, I am going to recommend a cult classic from the early days of Comedy Central that is decidedly not for everybody: Strangers with Candy.
I will say right now this show might very much not be for you. It’s vulgar. It’s not “hard R” in the sense of an HBO show, because it is a Comedy Central program. They can’t say certain words and there is no full-frontal nudity. On the other hand, had it been an HBO show it definitely would have. Strangers with Candy goes into dark corners for humor, and they make some jokes that, to modern sensibilities, might rankle. It’s all coming out of the mouths of awful people and the show knows what they are doing is wrong. For some, that doesn’t make it any less uncomfortable, and that’s fair enough. I’m trying to avoid saying that Strangers with Candy is not “politically correct” because that phrase makes me reflexively roll my eyes, but it might be illustrative for my purposes.
OK, with all those caveats out of the way, Strangers with Candy is so damn funny. It’s the brain child of Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert, and Paul Dinello. Well before Colbert became a trusted statesman of television, he was a younger dude making an out-there comedy that bordered on nihilism at times. The show is basically a parody of the concept of a “Very Special Episode,” and was based on a real scared straight type special the trio had seen.
Sedaris plays Jerri Blank, a former “boozer, user, and loser” who returns to high school as a 46-year-old. She’s not exactly living clean, though, and Jerri is truly a depraved and awful person. And she’s our protagonist. And she’s far from the only horrible person at Flat Point. Colbert and Dinello play teachers Chuck Noblet and Geoffrey Jellineck, who don’t care about teaching at all. Basically every week, Jerri finds herself in a dilemma which could be used to teach a lesson in an after-school special. She always makes the wrong choice.
The show is raunchy, cynical, and often hilarious. Sometimes it is even too much for me, to be honest. I can’t call Strangers with Candy a great show because of this fact. It can be a little unsettling to watch, a little too grimy. Still, I would happy binge the entire show in a weekend. There are only 30 episodes, after all. And the show is now on Paramount+. Good times!
