By Frazier Moore
1999
Original Article

Jerri Blank has much to teach the nation's youth.

Keep them away from her!

Then sit back and share some twisted wisdom with this self-described "boozer, user and loser" -- and laugh helplessly.

Jerri is the hard-knocks heroine of "Strangers With Candy," a weekly morality play meant to echo, in all the worst ways, TV's youngster-targeted "Afternoon Specials." You remember the drill: A complex problem reduced to rite-of-passage melodrama and, at hour's end, a pat resolution.

No wonder "Strangers" is on Comedy Central, where it airs at 10:30 p.m. Wednesdays.


Jerri, our prototypical troubled teen, is actually 46 years old. A runaway for 32 years (some spent in the slammer), she is now picking up where she left off: as a freshman at Flatpoint High.


"This time," declares Jerri, "when I make the wrong choices, I'm doing it for all the right reasons."


Recent "Strangers" episodes have found her grappling with drug abuse, teen-age pregnancy and alcoholism -- and gaining from each experience clearly stated (if preposterous) life lessons.


Her issue this week is prejudice. The shiny new braces on Jerri's teeth make her a social pariah at Flatpoint. She's shunned by everyone. Everyone, that is, but Jerri's loyal, lovely locker pal -- whom the principal, for no sane reason, suspects is mentally retarded.


The principal pressures Jerri to expose the girl.


"Why me?" asks Jerri, and the principal replies, "You've got those braces." Retarded people, he states absurdly, "tend to be drawn to shiny objects."


Will Jerri, herself a victim of prejudice, betray her only defender? Or will she stand up to her principal's mindless, groundless bigotry?


Jerri muses: "I thought she was dangerous and different. Then I found out, she's just like you and me."


Never mind. Since permission for Jerri to go on a class trip hangs in the balance, her locker buddy plainly must be sacrificed. Jerri has learned a valuable lesson.


"She completely lives in the moment," says Amy Sedaris, who, with a "fatty suit" supplementing her pixieish frame, plays Jerri. "For her, no choice is informed by anything but immediate need."


Then, switching in and out of character as Jerri (complete with the overbite and plaintive look), Sedaris enacts a telling exchange:


"Jerri, what do you hope to do with your life?"
"Uh ... go to my locker."
"No, no! I mean, what are you gonna do, wa-a-y down the line?"
"Open it."


Stephen Colbert, who plays the reptilian teacher Mr. Noblet, bursts out laughing.


"For all the terrible things Jerri's been through, and all the terrible things she's done, she's actually very innocent," he says. "She's learned nothing from life. She has swum downstream, and not a single barnacle on her."


If there's something discomfiting about Jerri (especially since she's meant to be a role model), that's where the humor originates. So says Paul Dinello, who plays art teacher Mr. Jellineck.


"Uncomfortableness makes other people weep, but it makes us laugh," he explains. "If someone on a TV show said, 'I lost the baby,' we would probably start giggling."


"That's why I like Lifetime movies," says Sedaris.


A bit giddy from fatigue, she has joined the equally sleep-deprived Colbert and Dinello for an interview at their Greenwich Village office. Right now, the trio goes virtually around the clock. Not only do they star in "Strangers With Candy," which they created, but they also write each episode.


How do they keep up? "It helps that we have an improvisational background," Dinello observes.


The three met a decade ago as members of Chicago's Second City improv troupe. Ever since, they have been close friends and eager collaborators, including a stretch as members of the Exit 57 sketch-comedy ensemble for its Comedy Central series.


Along the way, they've done other projects individually. Dinello acted in several films. Colbert is a correspondent on Comedy Central's "Daily Show." And besides winning awards for her stage work, Sedaris has held on to her gig as a waitress at an East Village diner, where currently she schedules other people to cover her shifts.


On "Strangers," meanwhile, it's collegial comic bliss.


"We get to work together and say whatever we want," Dinello sums up.


"You even forget this is actually gonna be on TV," says Sedaris. " 'Omigod, people are gonna watch it this week!' I mean, you just forget."


Forget that, maybe. But no one could forget the bracing moral of the story: You CAN have your cake and eat it, too ... and Amy will be happy to serve it.