Strangers with Candy - The Complete Series

Amy Sedaris is a very attractive woman but you would not know it until the final episode of the series "Stangers With Candy", which ran for three seasons on Comedy Central and is now collected on this DVD set. Sedaris plays Jerri Blank, a 46-year-old former teen-age runaway/junkie/whore/thief/jailbird who has come back to high school for another chance. Her face is covered with hideous-seeming makeup and her wardrobe is the truly appalling worst of 1970's chic (which is what she wore the first time around.) The creators of this remarkable show takes this unlikely premise and run with it, turning the series into a withering parody of every moralistic, melodramatic "afterschool special" you ever saw.

Fans of Comedy Central will want to see Stephen Colbert as Mr. Noblets, the nasty history teacher. He incarnates all the worst traits of every teacher who ever hated you: he's lazy, mistaken in his facts, mean and cowardly and Colbert makes him hilarious. He's so authentic that it's actually hard to watch him sometimes be spiteful to the stangely sympathetic Jerri. The regular cast is rounded out by series co-writer Paul Dinello as the wussy, self-absorbed art reacher Mr. Jellineck, and Greg Holliman as the Idi Amin-like Principal Blackman (that's his name--a good example of the series' bracing political incorrectness.)

My favorite episode is the series finale which features as a guest star the startlingly hot Winona Ryder as the high school queen mean girl. She learns her lesson in just the wrong way, as the school comes to an apocalyptic end. Check out the special features on these DVD's for some truly funny outtakes and compilations of the fabulous dance numbers which ended every episode. It looks like they had a lot of fun making this show, and you will thoroughly enjoy it too. It's like a smarter, extended, genuinely amusing John Waters project.

Let me start off by saying that 'Strangers With Candy' the TV series is one of my favorite, if not my all time favorite, television show ever. It is brilliant. The show itself gets 5 stars from me.

Now for 'The Complete Series' release. First of all, the packaging is almost unbelievably bad. BAD BAD BAD! Cheap PAPER, I don't know if I can even call it cardboard because it is so flimsy and fragile. I'll just call it thick paper. And the discs themselves are held to this PAPER only by a plastic hub glued on to the paper packaging, rubbing right against another disc on the next page. This makes it very easy for discs to fall out and become damaged. I can't stress enough how much I dislike the packaging. In one word: CHEAP.

Now moving on to the content. I haven't watched all of the content yet, but I have seen some of it and can compare it to the previous releases of all 3 seasons. I was really excited about this release in large part because of director's cuts that would appear on two episodes. I watched these director's cuts and wished the deleted scenes had instead been offered as a separate bonus. The editing of these director's cut episodes is so bad it really does take you out of the show. There will be music in one shot and it will abruptly stop when the next shot comes up. Many shots integrated into the footage are of much worse quality making it very noticeable when the transition takes place. The audio as well keeps changing so much that its really, really obvious, even in scenes that were in the original versions of the episodes. Someone will be talking from the front speaker, then suddenly you'll be hearing them talk from your rear speakers for NO REASON. Also, the video gets very bright, then very dark, from shot to shot, also occuring at points in the episode that were in the original version and looked FINE on the previous DVD releases. Then, in some scenes things were changed for NO REASON, like in "Is My Daddy Crazy" when she watches the slide show, it runs like a slow virus-infected computer powerpoint presentation and the voice of the narrator is completely changed from a guy that was PERFECT for it to some woman who SUCKS and is just NOT funny at all! I was really disappointed with the presentation of these director's cut episodes. They actually made these episodes (some of the best) a whole lot less funny. And to me, a huge SWC fan, that is a TRAGEDY.

And another thing, they changed the transition sequences where commercial breaks were to a different animation AND recording. The result is certainly inferior to the previous version.

Thank god I held on to the previous DVD releases.

This set is worth it for big collectors like me who will buy anything with extra features that I don't already have of the show, but for first time buyers just beware that some of these episodes have been altered and the result is DEFINATELY DEFINATELY inferior to the previous releases. Fans, hold on to your old copies. They are the originals, they are the cult classic. This is a nice bonus for fans, but really could easily have been mistaken for a bootleg bought on eBay.

I still look forward to the film and will love the show till I die. But I really hope one day it will get a worthy release with good packaging, remastered and clean looking episodes (the ORIGINAL versions), bonus features, and whatever else they've got to give us!

Nothing quite like this show for the writing and character talent. Every one of the major players in the series has a talent for overacting that even William Shatner would envy, and even without the writing the facial expressions and delivery are frequently close to hysterical. As anybody who has seen this show knows, the writing is very original and energetic but is able to transition seamlessly into double-entendre and innuendo with a cleverness usually reserved for British comedy. (Although, as "children" of the Three Stooges, Americans are, I think, accustomed to somewhat heavier-handed comedy.)

For those who don't know this series, it definitely is too bawdy to watch with kids (I wouldn't let mine watch with me until they are at least 20, by which time they will probably find this material boring). If you are assembling a comedy collection, however, this series fills a unique niche.

My only complaint is that the packaging is a bit second rate. It doesn't even come in a box, but rather in a little "accordion-folder" package which is neither aesthetic nor practical (can't stack) nor particularly protective. It is also hard to remove the disks from the center catches without damaging them (I chipped one first thing out of the box despite expecting trouble, but fixed with carefully trimmed packaging tape; works fine).

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