Strangers with Candy: A Burden's Burden

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(S01E02) In 1990, Alice actress Linda Lavin directed a CBS Schoolbreak Special called "Flour Babies" about a group of high school students given sacks of flour which they were assigned to care for as if they were actual babies. Strangers with Candy used a similar concept for this episode, but instead of flour, the students are given actual babies. Jerri tries to talk her way out of it, insisting she's already had plenty of babies, just none she's carried to full term. Reluctantly, she accepts the baby and soon nicknames it "Dizzy" because it fell off her dresser into a laundry basket. Before all of that, however, there's a great opening scene with Noblet and Jellineck where they roleplay in the bathroom, pretending to be widows and then suddenly tearing each other's clothes off for some hot gay sex.

Speaking of opening scenes, I must say I've always liked the opening credit sequence from this season better than the animated ones from the later seasons. I understand it was probably better to use the animated sequence as a means of explaining the premise of the show to newcomers, and it probably got tiring always having to have Jerri explain to the audience at home why she was in her forties and still going to high school, but the "live-action" opening had more of an authentic "After School Special" feel to it, which I think suited the show better. I'm not sure why they never called me about this.

While Jerri tries to care for Dizzy (i.e., leave him abandoned on the playground) her stepmother is busy torturing a Cambodian war criminal she ordered through the mail. Dizzy is found in the park by Noblet and Jellineck, who flee the principal's office before he can inquire why the two men were hanging out in the park at three in the morning. Jerri pleads to be unshackled from the child, but is instead teamed up with redheaded classmate Tammi Littlenut so they can "raise" the baby together. Jerri soon takes on the role of the "man" and soon begins to threaten and verbally abuse Tammi. Finally, Jerri enlists her mother's kidnapped Cambodian to sell the baby on the black market, but her plan is foiled. Not to worry, though, she pins the whole thing on Tammi. And, as usual, she learns an important lesson, which is that it's easier to be a single mother when you're neither single, nor the mother.