Fans of Amy Sedaris will be happy to hear the Strangers With Candy star is planning to make a return to weekly TV comedy. In a series currently being shopped around Sedaris is set to play a radio call in shrink and self help author with a bad attitude and poor judgement. The premise is that the main character is some one who has no business offering help; she’s pushy, self involved, and totally focussed on self promotion. Though she is a ‘real Dr’ her degree is honorary, and from “some school I paid off!” She frequently reminds listeners that “this is not a gimmick!”The result is that her advice is usually reckless & irresponsible. For instance one teenager with a weight issue is asked if she knows how to make herself throw up. A wife with a cheating husband is told that “no one wants to be around some whiny loser”, & find her own some one on the side. Callers are frequently told to solve their problems “with a few drinks”. Of course once or twice a year she embarrasses herself with an outrageous on air blurt, to which she usually responds by saying “I had no idea people would be so offended. Maybe they can’t take my outspoken honesty.” That results in attempts to redeem herself by entering rehab, or enrolling in sensitivity classes. A real transgression might end up with court ordered community service.
When she not misleading the confused & vulnerable, she‘s cutting off her callers mid sentence, talking over them, or making wise cracks about them to her producers on air while she chain smokes and knocks back cocktails. Her character, tentatively called Dr Kim “Kimbo” Limbo, does manage to get the bills paid with a series of dubious sponsors lined up to take advantage of the weak & needy, and who’s adds for self hypnosis tapes, tranquillizers, diet pills, surveillance equipment, firearms, and liquor, appear throughout her radio show. Then there’s the inappropriate bumper music, seemingly picked out by coincidence to rub salt in callers’ wounds. Dr Kim will be “saving a life from total catastrophe every 17 minutes!” - the amount of time between commercials breaks on the fictional radio show - if the series is picked up!
