Strangers With Candy – Summer DVD Review – Bogie Nights

photo: comedy central

Strangers With Candy
Bogie Nights

Season 1, Episode 5

Theresa – Staff Writer
theresa@thetwocentscorp.com

The show opens with Jerri recapping the 46-year-old-in-high-school premise to a replanted ficus while wearing the most amazing stonewashed denim jumpsuit ever. Somehow, even in this outfit, complete with red beret, her friend Orlando still wants Jerri to ask him to this week’s Sadie Hawkins’ Day Dance. Since Jerri ignores Orlando’s hints and still hasn’t found someone available to ask, Principal Blackman approaches her about being a volunteer escort for the school’s violent special education students.

Luckily for Jerri, she seems to be saved when a new student named Ricky appears from underneath Mr. Noblet’s slideshow of himself on Greek nude beaches. Not luckily for Ricky, new students are apparently treated with the same suspicious contempt that the mentally retarded were in the last episode. But the violent students get escorts. Go figure.

Jerri decides to join the crowd even though there’s clearly a spark between her and Ricky – for some reason. Nevertheless, she slashes his tires and scrapes up his car to fit in. She sneaks him into the Violent Student Lounge so they can have a few minutes alone (though she has to release the restrained violent student into the halls). She presents Ricky with a friendship collage Orlando gave her, which has been retouched to include Ricky’s name instead of hers. They agree to go to the dance together.

To continue Flatpoint’s tradition of having the worst teachers in the world, Health Class focuses on bikini waxing to help the girls prepare for the dance, and Mr. Jellineck pulls Jerri aside to lecture her about spending time with the new kid. Why not one of the violent kids currently beating the crap out of the band’s instruments? he suggests.

Later that night, Ricky sneaks into Jerri’s room. He tells her that he never knew his mother, but gives her a description that sounds eerily similar to Jerri herself – though neither of them seem to realize this. He presents Jerri with the tooth his mother left him. Still, Jerri can’t admit in public that she wants to be with Ricky, so she covers by going to the dance with violent student Spike Jabber. Ricky comes by the dance anyway to say goodbye to Jerri, but Orlando leads an angry golf-club-wielding mob against him. Jerri stops the crowd with a soliloquy about how it’s okay to be new, and she and Ricky are named Master and Mistress of the dance.

They go to a make-out spot afterward, where they finally realize that Jerri has been missing a tooth for 15 years and Ricky’s mother tooth fits the spot perfectly. Turns out that around that time she traded a baby for a guitar (“and all these years, I’ve wondered what happened to that guitar”). Unfortunately, Ricky’s foster family is moving yet again, so there’ll be no time for bonding with his new mom. That he just made out with. At the end of the episode, Jerri recounts the lessons to her little ficus: that golf cleats don’t mix with gymnasiums, that violent people are good lovers, and that befriending new people leads to accidental sex with your long-lost offspring. And then she chops down the ficus.

Another brilliantly done episode, that even managed to tie in the throwaway line from the last episode of Jerri’s abandoned children. The only thing that would make it better would be more Colbert! So let me know your Two Cents! Next up is “Jerri is Only Skin Deep” where Jerri runs for Homecoming Queen.