All this week, Esquire.com is pitting canceled-too-soon TV shows against one another in a head-to-head, winner-takes-all bracket. It's the TV Reboot Tournament and the ball is in your court: Scope out the competition, pick your favorites, and track the winners to see which show comes out on top. (Quick! Vote in round two now!) Along the way, we'll revisit some of our favorite unjustly defunct gems through interviews with showrunners and performers. Here, Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello, part of the impressive braintrust responsible for the 1999-2000 Comedy Central series Strangers with Candy, discuss whether their oddball show should ever come back and what overbiting protagonist Jerri Blank would even be up to now anyway.

Amy Sedaris, the actress and comedienne who gave life to the inimitably Jerri Blank, has likened her Strangers with Candy alter ego to a rash that keeps popping up. If so, that rash has also spread and rubbed off elsewhere. Since wrapping its original run at the turn of the millennium, Jerri Blank has become a sort of perverse deity in the comedy world, with fans dressing up as her and reenacting her catchphrases ("Goodtiiiimes" she would say, perhaps while reminiscing about one of her illicit Mexican donkey shows). Sedaris, along with co-creators Dinello, Stephen Colbert, and Mitch Rouse, reimagined ABC Afterschool Specials, only with a subject who made all the wrong choices and proved all the more valuable for it.

Jerri Blank and her Strangers with Candy crew may not have made it out of the first round of our TV Reboot Tournament, but, as Sedaris and Dinello explained in a recent interview with Esquire, that's for the best. They also discussed what they learned from the show and what Jerri Blank would be up to right about now (hint: It's something to do with nunchucks and having erotic dreams about President Obama).

When Strangers with Candy first aired on Comedy Central, my friend and I thought it was about the funniest thing ever, but we couldn't believe it was on TV.

PAUL DINELLO: We couldn't believe it either.

You got three seasons and a movie!

AMY SEDARIS: Thirty Sundays. We used to make fun. The funny thing is Comedy Central never really got behind it, but that's what made the show work. I always like the audience for Strangers with Candy because you really had to look hard to find it, you know? The hours were bad. People felt like they discovered it and I think that's important. That's what makes it such a cult show. We didn't know we had an audience for Strangers until we did the book Wigfield [in 2003]. And then we saw all these ugly people and we were like, "Oh my God, who are all these people?" God, we had an audience for Strangers and we had no idea.

It definitely pushed lines in ways that were rare even for Comedy Central at the time.

DINELLO: I think in those days nobody was watching the store. There weren't a lot of grown-ups around.

SEDARIS: We were literally out in the woods. Paul and Stephen would talk to the folks—the censors. They would literally go there in person and talk to the people. And be like, "Well, no. This isn't a racist joke. What this is is..."

If a network or some streaming service approached you about doing a limited revival of Strangers, would you consider that?

SEDARIS: I wouldn't. I mean, I wouldn't want to. I like that we did what we did and we moved on. I mean, I don't even know if I could play her now. It would just be so different. I kind of like what it was and I would like it to stay that way. For me personally. I don't know about you, Paul, but...

DINELLO: No, I think I feel the same way. Even doing the movie was—I don't know. I like the mystery of her. I don't think you want too much information about her.

Amy, do you ever find yourself slipping into Jerri?

SEDARIS: Oh, all the time. My brother David and I wrote a lot of plays together, and I always did a character like Jerri Blank but with a different background, but it was the same look. Like the overbite, but then I'd wear a different wig or I'd have a different character description of her. You know, the background of Jerri came from Paul and Stephen making her a junkie whore... Like any character, [it was] playing around. You know, I'm big on mugging, making different faces, putting a wig on, creating a character. So I have a repertoire of characters. I'm very limited. It's like I've got six characters in my back pocket and I just keep reinventing them.

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When you re-watch Strangers, the thing about Jerri is that she's absolutely horrible, but you can't help but love her.

SEDARIS: Loveable tramp.

I think it has something to do with the fact that she doesn't know any better, and she's just kind of sad and pathetic.

DINELLO: We always thought of her as, like, just a wild animal.

SEDARIS: Right.

DINELLO: You kind of have to sympathize. Her intentions were good. Her instincts were awful.

She's kind of feral.

SEDARIS: Feral. And you liked her because she's very childlike. The important thing, for me anyways, is I like playing likable characters. I like Jerri, therefore you're going to like Jerri. That's the way I always looked at it, you know? No matter what. She was kind of an innocent in so many ways.

When I watch Jerri, I don't even see you, Amy. It's just Jerri.

SEDARIS: Oh, that's flattering. That's a good thing, right? That's a good thing. It was fun just watching, Paul and Stephen and us, whatever we laughed at went in the script. That's what I learned from working on Strangers. If you're not laughing, how do you expect anyone else to laugh? It was really fun to have a character that all three of us were in on. You know what I mean? That's what made it so much fun. And really it was the three of us. We tried getting outside writers. Maybe a couple people gave us some, you know, what Paul? Like Tom Lennon with the illiteracy episode? But you guys pretty much hammered out all the scripts. That made it so personal and tidy. It was like the three of us were out in the woods making each other laugh.

How much improvising was there?

DINELLO: We'd come up with an overlying outline and then we would improvise all these other scenes we need to get—where we were going to start and we'd know where we were going to end and we'd build these other scenes we need to get there and then we would sit in a room and improvise. And then we'd take down what made us laugh.

SEDARIS: The monologues were always too long. Or we were always two steps behind. If I see the show now I can see myself reading a monologue off the wall because we just wrote it. Or we just realize, "Oh, we have to hack this down." I'm talking to my daddy when he's in the bathroom or something, that always makes me laugh. 'Cause they were always like, "Where are the scripts? Where are the scripts?" But as the show went on and on and on I guess we got more used to it.

Did you try to one-up each other as you went?

DINELLO: Yeah, in the writing process. Not when we were shooting. And not one-up. It's just, you know, our background is you just heighten, not for the purpose of being the winner. But you just naturally try to heighten whatever somebody else is saying.

SEDARIS: When we would do commentary for the series, the guy who was directing or whatever had to knock on the glass to be like, "Guys, you need to actually say something here." 'Cause we were all just staring at the TV. We didn't know what to say. We were all lost in it like we had no idea. And I would watch the show with the volume turned down to see if a deaf person could follow. 'Cause that's the school I come from. Paul and Stephen were great with words and jokes and stuff, but for me, I'm very clownish. So I like to watch the series and be like, "Okay, if I couldn't hear or understand anything, could I still find the show entertaining?" And I did. 'Cause everyone was so interesting to look at.

I want to run through some questions about what you imagine has happened in Jerri's life since the show ended. Did she finally graduate high school?

SEDARIS: I don't think so. I mean, if she did, they let her—

DINELLO: Or they made her, like, a student emeritus or something where, you know, after eight or nine years they just said, "Jerri Blank, you've graduated." Just to get rid of her. Give her some sort of honorary—like the same kind of degree that Bill Cosby has. She's an honorary graduate.

"We'll let you walk just to get you out of here."

DINELLO: Yeah. "We'll give you this piece of paper if you never come back."

In the last episode she ran off with the administration after they blew up the high school. Do you think she's still on the run?

DINELLO: I don't know. They probably lived on the street for a while, where they put her in a leadership position 'cause probably nobody survived on the street better than her. But then I bet she folded back into society at some point. I don't know, maybe she's working at a sporting goods store. I don't know.

SEDARIS: That would be funny. Or the original Florrie Fisher. Originally when we came up with the idea of an afterschool special, Paul had the idea of playing her with this background, which is based on this old film strip he found about Florrie Fisher, and Colbert had the idea of her learning the wrong lesson. But I thought, well maybe she ended up going to the high school and giving a straight talk. Maybe she thought maybe she could do that.

So she's like a really inappropriate motivational speaker?

SEDARIS: Maybe. And still shady and still lying and still needy and she's still that. But maybe someone thought, "Hey, why don't you do this?" And she thought she could do it.

DINELLO: Yeah, trying to command large fees for her public service.

SEDARIS: Right.

DINELLO: Where she goes into high school—

SEDARIS: —to swindle, yeah.

She doesn't seem to have any career goals.

DINELLO: She lives like an animal. She lives in the moment. She's only worried about where her next meal is going to come from and maybe her next sexual conquest.

SEDARIS: Yeah, she's a survivor.

DINELLO: She literally doesn't think about—she doesn't have a bank account. She doesn't know to save for tomorrow.

Do you think she's held on to a boyfriend?

SEDARIS: Oh my God, no way. No way.

DINELLO: No way. But I don't think she wants a long-term boyfriend.

SEDARIS: Yeah, this wolf gotta roam.

So she's been through a series of guys.

SEDARIS: Yeah, guys and girls.

DINELLO: A series of everything.

SEDARIS: 'Til they wake up and they see what happened and they're running for the hills.

Do you think she made it out of Flat Point?

SEDARIS: Maybe. I like that she was from Ft. Lauderdale. We made a reference to Florida once, which we created our own world, but we said Florida. We mentioned Mexico, but maybe she went back to Florida. You know, pick up broken glass.

Florida's a good place to be a drifter.

SEDARIS: Yes. It's warm, it's peaty.

And there are lots of crazy people.

SEDARIS: Or maybe Albuquerque.

What would she think of Obama?

SEDARIS: She wouldn't wrap her head around having a black president. I mean, there's enough for a movie spinoff on that. I can't see her liking that idea.

DINELLO: She would think of him as Shaft. She would find him sort of attractive and sexy and dangerous in that '70s way. She would think of him like a Black Panther. And my guess is she'd probably spent some time with the Black Panthers. He's sort of sexy and dangerous and kind of a criminal element but exciting to be around.

SEDARIS: Yeah. I'd get all up in that. Right.

Jerri was around in that sort of fashionless early-2000s moment, but she had a very unique look. Do you think those outfits might fare better now?

SEDARIS: Oh yeah. Vicki Farrell did the wardrobe for her, and the only thing I can think of that I told Vicki was, "I want to look like I own a snake." And she just nailed it. She was very put-together, just like Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City. She had a really distinct style. I like opposites. I like it when unattractive people try to be attractive. You know, with the makeup and the hair off the neck and coordinated outfits. She always looked presentable.

DINELLO: Again, she made choices. It's just her instincts were wrong. Like she thought that pleats were attractive.

SEDARIS: You see people out there dressed like Jerri Blank. I see Jerri Blank clothes all the time. When I'm shopping I'm like, "Oh my God, that would be so perfect for Jerri Blank."

Some perfect Jerri Blank high-waisted pants.

SEDARIS: High-waisted pants and the ankle boots, the snakeskin boots, the turtlenecks. I wore turtlenecks because Comedy Central didn't want to show track marks or tattoos. So that's why I was always in a turtleneck. They didn't want it to go too far. And then the fatty suit I had made for this joke I played on my dad, which my brother wrote about, but I just wanted a different body. I wanted the kind of body where, you know, you could stand behind a bar and pick up a guy 'cause he can see you from the waist up and you look like, "Oh my God, she's pretty hot." And then you walk from around the bar and now he's like, "Oh my God!" Four inches and you run for the hills. And also it was just fun to play sexy when you felt like you weren't. For me personally it was fun to have a fatty suit 'cause I would do things I wouldn't be able to do without it. The wig wasn't enough, I guess. The wig and the lashes weren't enough. I needed a fatty suit.

Do you think Jerri could make it in high school today?

DINELLO: Like any con man, she knows who to sidle up to. She knows who's exploitable and who's not. I think those people are always around and she could just sniff them out.

Any pop star she'd be into now?

DINELLO: If you said, "Who's a pop star?" she would say, like, "I like that Buffy Sainte-Marie." I don't think she's that aware of pop-culture.

SEDARIS: Just the noise. She just wants noise.

What would Jerri do to keep her spirits up in the cold weather?

SEDARIS: Eat hot dogs. It made me think of when I had the hot dog episode and the weather that day.

DINELLO: I bet she lights lots of fires.

SEDARIS: Oh, sure. She would either be out causing trouble, like the weather's not going to affect her, or she'd be inside tossing throwing stars and nunchucks. Who knows?

Or make one of her drug concoctions.

SEDARIS: Oh yeah, definitely. Who wouldn't? Some glint.

...which killed a girl in the first episode.

SEDARIS: Oopsidaisy.

What do you take away from Jerri and the show now in your career?

SEDARIS: If I want to do another TV show, it would have to be a character not like Jerri, but a character. I mean, that's what I like to do. So it's hard for me to fit in lots of times. Like, me as Amy Sedaris performing, I'm not that great of an actress, I'm not a comedian. When I see myself play myself or characters that look like me, it's not as fun as having a character like Jerri Blank. Someone that big. And it's hard to find a place that will accept a character like that.

DINELLO: I felt like there was a certain standard that we held Strangers to, so I think about that whenever I work on something. Like is it as funny? I want everything to be as funny, to be as good. We worked hard on the show and it made us laugh. So I use that as sort of a tent post whenever I work on something else.

Do you feel lucky that you were able to do something just how you envisioned it?

SEDARIS: Nothing feels better than that. I hope that can happen again. But it sure was nice having it. We had all the freedom in the world. People kept saying, "This doesn't happen. This isn't how it works on TV." But we didn't know the rules, so we made them up and we made it work. And it was perfect for us in that environment.

Any final lessons from Jerri? You must be glad to be nothing like her, Amy.

SEDARIS: Trust me, I'm a lot like Jerri Blank, aren't I, Paul?

DINELLO: Yep.

SEDARIS: I am a lot like Jerri Blank. I mean, a lot. It's kind of scary how much I'm like her. That's why I could play her so well.

In what way specifically?

SEDARIS: I can be really simple-minded. I can be like a survivor. I can be the person to go day-by-day. I live very much in the moment. I'm not one to be like, "Oh, this is my goal. This is what I'm going to do." I don't really have a plan. I like to be like, "Okay, I'm going to make X amount of money," and just take—I live my life.

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