Strangers With Candy: The Complete Series (2006)
Paramount Home Video

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This mentally ill goof on after-school specials stars Amy Sedaris -- sister of humorist David Sedaris and perennial late-night guest of David Letterman -- as a 46-year-old teen runaway re-entering her freshman year of high school. With manners and survival skills gleaned from decades at truck stops, shooting galleries and the joint, Jerri Blank navigates the treacherous waters of suburban high school.

But it's not easy for a grotesque with frosted hair, manky teeth, thunder thighs and a pronounced FUPA. With the guidance of her fey art teacher Geoffrey Jellineck (Paul Dinello), revisionist history teacher Chuck Noblet (Stephen Colbert) and self-involved principal Onyx Blackman (Greg Hollimon), the pear-shaped Jerri learns a valuable lesson by the end of each episode -- e.g. selling drugs is a great way to make new friends. This is as demented and beautiful as cable television gets.

Previously sold individually one season at a time, all three seasons of the 1999-2000 Comedy Central series are now bundled into one complete six-disk set, bound in a plastic school binder with a Velcro flap.

DVD bonuses include the never-aired pilot, on-the-set interviews and cast commentaries by series writers Sedaris, Dinello and Colbert on nine of the 30 episodes. In the too-short bloopers reel, we catch glimpses of rubber-faced Sedaris snapping in and out of character, giving us a rare perspective of her real-life beauty and her uncanny ability to transform herself into someone else with the furrow of her brow, the shift of her eyes and the bucking of her teeth.

by Rob. Walton