This is a list of characters from the Comedy Central original program Strangers with Candy.
The Blanks
Jerri Blank Geraldine Antonia "Jerri" Blank (Amy Sedaris) was born in 1953 to a drunken Aramapu woman, who traded her for a pitcher of beer. She was adopted by Guy Blank and his wife, whom she believes to be her real mother. In 1967, Jerri dropped out of high school and ran away from home. During her absence, her adoptive mother died and her father married a second wife, Sara, who is around Jerri's own age. Around 1984, Jerri was living in Florida, where she was beaten by a border guard and lost a tooth. That same year, she became pregnant by either an obese, harelipped bail bondsman or a Cuban. She gave birth to a child, Ricky (Fred Koehler), whom she traded for a guitar. She claims to have had several other pregnancies, all of which were aborted, or possibly miscarried, considering her drug addiction. She served several prison sentences, most recently because she, as worded in the introduction, “stoled [sic] the TV”. In 1999, Jerri returned to Flatpoint and re-enrolled in high school at the age of 46.
She is openly racist, though she appears to be completely oblivious to this fact. For example, she denied any racism to her friend Paul Cotton immediately before showing him her heavily stereotyped drawing of a "Chinaman". She often compares her Filipino friend Orlando to a monkey, although her remarks aren’t meant to cause offense (she thinks monkeys are adorable). She also makes randomly antisemitic remarks, which is curious because she doesn't know any Jewish people. At one point, she feels compelled to apologize to her diary for being antisemitic to it. Jerri's bigotry is always presented as an example of her stupidity and ignorance, and she has never been violent towards any of the minority groups she insults; however, in the twisted, valueless world of the show, her views are never really contradicted or punished, and she is inevitably allowed to carry on with her behavior. The show's storylines also provide her with many opportunities to be insensitive to other groups, such as the blind and the disabled.
Jerri is not very intelligent, but she is a shrewd thief and resourceful drug user (e.g., finding a vein, creating drugs from household cleaners, etc.). She was illiterate until the episode "The Blank Page", where she tried out for cheerleading and was shunned because she guessed that "V-I-C-T-O-R-Y" spelled "Win!" (or possibly "fandango" or "hobocamp"), but Mr. Noblet helped her learn to read. She is a violin prodigy, as seen in the episode "To Be Young, Gifted, and Blank". In that episode, she was also the timpanist for the school's orchestra. At the end of "Yes, You Can't", she is seen playing the drums for "Carry On Wayward Son", perhaps leading the viewer to believe that she is a talented drummer as well. In "Trail of Tears", Jerri proves herself to be an excellent "Indian": she's a great archer, scalper, and torch-thrower. She also does not seem to be above any form of inappropriate intercourse, once saying that she and a boy she had just discovered was her son could still make out, or continuing to have sex after being diagnosed with syphilis, gonorrhea, and crabs.
Jerri seems to have quite a collection of wigs (her hairstyle changes constantly, growing longer or shorter within a single episode) and wears an inordinate amount of makeup. Sedaris intended her to look "like somebody who owns snakes" (which she does in an early episode). She has a very large genital piercing (which she calls "The Liberty Bell") and sports tattoos across her knuckles (Hard on one hand, Luck on the other, a parody of Robert Mitchum’s tattoos in Night of the Hunter [though in some episodes, according to Amy Sedaris, the Luck sometimes becomes Fuck]). Despite all the effort she puts into her appearance and her own belief that she is quite sexy, over the course of the series she is frequently mistaken for an old man. She is desperate to be liked and accepted, even going so far as to join a cult with this purpose in mind.
In the series finale, "The Last Temptation of Blank", Jerri's big heart caused the most popular girl (Winona Ryder) in school to run off to become a junkie whore like her, and later she, Principal Blackman, Mr. Jellineck, and Mr. Noblet decide to become whores after they burn down the school, as they feel this life direction "beats teaching".
Guy Blank Guy Blank (Roberto Gari, Dan Hedaya in the film) is Jerri’s adoptive father, shown only in a voiceless, frozen state during mid-action (for example, carving a turkey, driving a car, or participating in a father–daughter sack race practice). Guy appeared in the pilot and in the episodes “Old Habits, New Beginnings”, “A Burden’s Burden”, “Who Wants Cake?”, “Bogie Nights”, “Feather in the Storm”, “Jerri is Only Skin Deep”, and finally “The Goodbye Guy”. In this episode, he is mauled to death by dogs, traumatizing Jerri but allowing her to learn the lesson that "you can never really lose your parents, unless of course they die, and then they're gone forever." Guy played the violin until the death of Jerri’s mother, after which he developed a seeming hatred for the instrument. Evidence points to Guy Blank as being a racist; he evidently calls Principal Blackman by “an ugly word,” requested that “no darkies” attend his funeral, and owned some Klan robes (Jerri discovered them in his closet after his death, although she was distracted and didn’t seem to notice them, or else didn't care) - this may also have contributed to Jerri's racism. Based on one picture Jerri finds after Guy’s death, it appears that in the continuity of the show, it was Guy and not Steve McMichael who joined the Four Horsemen professional wrestling stable in 1996.
Removed from the regular cast list after the first season, he is credited as guest star in later appearances.
Sara Blank Sara Blank (Deborah Rush) is Jerri’s alcoholic stepmother who favors her son over her stepdaughter and has an ongoing affair with Stew, the meat man. While she is generally quite prim, she is also openly racist. She was in every episode except “Yes, You Can’t” and “The Blank Page”. She is quite disdainful of Jerri (in the Strangers film, she told Stew, “I wouldn’t want you to think that that slithered out of my womb.”), but she delivers most of her lines with a sugary sweetness that hides much of her true venom. She makes no secret of wanting Jerri out of the house, but for some reason she goes along with the idea of Jerri as a high-school girl and treats Jerri more like an unwanted teenage daughter than a 40-something-year-old woman. Sara was an actress when she was young and played Peter Pan in a stage production; when Jerri got a role in A Raisin in the Sun, Sara became very bitter, drunkenly sobbing, “Peter Pan has gotten old!” On one occasion, though, Sara seemed almost caring toward Jerri, taking an interest in whom she was inviting to a dance and offering to reinforce the “trouble spots” on her dress if it turned out Jerri took one of the violent students (she was very worried that Jerri would take the “new kid”).
While Sara and Derrick seem to despise Jerri, when Jerri briefly vanished from their lives, they made a big show of being worried and consoling each other; of course, every time the phone rang (it was Jerri), they picked it up only to immediately hang it up again. Eventually, they cut the phone cord with a butcher knife and took no further action to find Jerri.
Removed from the regular cast list after the first season, in later appearances she is credited as guest star.
Derrick Blank Derrick Blank (Larc Spies, Joseph Cross in the film) is Jerri’s junior varsity jock half-brother who is suspected of being a closeted homosexual. In “Is My Daddy Crazy?”, when Jerri was hosting a sleepover, his mother urged him to hide in the closet and masturbate to the scene of high-school girls having a pillow fight, but he declined in favor of reading his “gladiator magazines.” He was, however, entranced by guest-star Winona Ryder in the series finale “The Last Temptation of Blank”. Another clue to his alleged homosexuality comes in “Is Freedom Free?” when Mr. Jellineck, sporting only a Speedo (because it’s “Freedom Week”), declares that he’s “going to see Derrick”. Jellineck, a closeted homosexual, would have little other reason to visit Derrick, especially in a Speedo.
Derrick typically refers to Jerri as “Plug” or “Troll”, and in several episodes he appears close to striking her, but something - a doorknob, his father's hand - always holds him back (in "The Trip Back", he perhaps came closest to the truth when he sneered, “You’re just lucky I’m a coward!”). Jerri's usual retort to his bullying is calling him a "faggot" (or getting creative about it, such as "Sir Fags-a-Lot"). He has a crew of jock friends, and they enjoy bullying blind kids and other unfortunates. They also have a garage band, from which one member (Mark Ibold) is ejected for being too talented and making the others look bad ("Behind Blank Eyes"). On one occasion, after one of their targets verbally shot them down, Derrick suggested to his friends that they “go watch some gay porn and get our hate back!” He was in every episode except “Yes, You Can't”, “The Blank Page”, “To Love, Honor, and Pretend”, and “Bully”.
Removed from the regular cast list after the first season, he is credited in later appearances as guest star.
Stew Stew (David Pasquesi) is the lover that Sara Blank took after Guy Blank’s death. He is married and has two children, Chuck and Patty. He is a “meat man,” a butcher and meat delivery man, which is used as a basis for puns and other running gags throughout the series. In “Is My Daddy Crazy?”, he went temporarily insane and coated the house with cheese before his reflection fired him, and he was cured by Jerri drilling a hole through his skull.
He appeared in many episodes of the first and second seasons before Guy’s death, in close relationship with Sara, leading many to strongly suspect they were having an affair. Even before Guy's death, he filled the role of father to Jerri, first by being unthoughtful and emotionally abusive like Sara, and then by being loving and attentive when he became completely insane.
Stew’s name is intentionally spelled like the food, as is confirmed by his work shirt which has S-T-E-W on the name tag (seen in the film and in episodes such as “Feather in the Storm”).
Flatpoint faculty Character Position Actor/Actress Onyx Blackman Principal Greg Hollimon Iris Puffybush Secretary Dolores Duffy Cassie Pines Student counselor Janeane Garofalo Chuck Noblet History / science Stephen Colbert Geoffrey Jellineck Art Paul Dinello Cherri Wolf Health / physical education Sarah Thyre Jazzy Music Larry Marshall Joe Liss Football coach Joe Liss
Chuck Noblet Charles "Chuck" Noblet (Stephen Colbert) is a bitter history (usually) teacher at Flatpoint High School. He seems to make up almost everything he teaches, stating that in light of the Japanese American internment, "it's important that we never forget the atrocities that the Japanese committed against our boys",Old Habits, New Beginnings that "following his violent revolution, Gandhi was devoured by his followers",Dreams on the Rocks that "the tragedy" of Martin Luther King Jr.'s life "is that all this footage is in black and white; imagine how powerful it would have been in color" (and adding that he is "not sure" what happened to King),Let Freedom Ring that "the tragic irony of the Trojan War" is that "though it was fought over Helen, who was young and beautiful, by the time they rescued her ten years later, she was old and ugly" (moral: "an ugly woman is never a reward"),Jerri Is Only Skin Deep and that "the Opium War was fought in 1840 to 1842 between the Chinese and the Mexicans".The Trip Back