Strangers with Candy: Old Habits, New Beginnings

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(S01E01) It is clear, right from the opening scene of this first episode of Strangers with Candy, that the people behind the show knew exactly which notes they wanted to strike and exactly the kind of world they wanted to create around Jerri Blank, the forty year old self-described 'boozer, user, and loser' who is trying to get back on track by starting high school all over again. The opening sequence -- a school assembly in which a swaggering policeman warns kids against the danger of drugs while somehow making the drugs seem appealing -- has a great meta moment when the educational filmstrip starts, and shows the policeman making the exact same introduction and then showing a film within a film. Tiny surreal moments like this pop up throughout the rest of the show's run, which is just one reason some of us latched onto the series while it remained largely ignored by most television viewers.

In this episode, Jerri wants nothing more than to be accepted by the popular kids, most notably Poppy Downes, a blonde bombshell who is first introduced to us reading her history report in Mr. Noblet's (Stephen Colbert) class, which ends with this line: "...and meanwhile our cousins from the east were eating bowls of rice, safely nestled in their internment camps." Jerri decides to go with what she knows and mixes up a batch of an obscure street drug called "glint" to impress Poppy. The glint does get Poppy high, but a little too much, and she ends up killing herself by trying to run through a keyhole (she thought she was a bee). Since Jerri was responsible for the death of the most popular girl in school, she knows exactly what she must do. She keeps her mouth shut and invites everyone over to a memorial party at her house to honor Poppy. The party eventually culminates in the death of Jerri's pet turtle Shelly, and she realizes that whether it's your dead daughter or a dead turtle, having people pity you is a really great thing.

Some other random things in this episode I enjoyed:

• Jerri's mom telling Jerri not to wipe her feces on the lampshade
• Jerri's vague recollection of a "donkey show" she used to do in Tijuana
• Both Mr. Noblet and Mr. Jellineck's ominous requests that their doors be kept locked

Best line: "Stoney and I would go over to Buckles, and Puff would turn us on to a hot load of mescaline crumbled into a tumbler of ether with a float of Percocet jimmies. I'd wake up with blood on my ass and then we'd get high."