The Sarah Silverman Program

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The Sarah Silverman Program
Pilot title screen
Format	Comedy
Created by	Sarah Silverman Rob Schrab Dan Harmon
Starring	Sarah Silverman Laura Silverman Brian Posehn Steve Agee Jay Johnston
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	12 (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Sarah Silverman Rob Schrab Dan Sterling Heidi Herzon
Running time	30 minutes (with commercials)
Broadcast
Original channel	Comedy Central
Original run	February 1, 2007 – present
External links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

The Sarah Silverman Program is a cable television comedy series starring comedienne and actress Sarah Silverman. The show premiered on February 1, 2007 on Comedy Central.^[1]

1 Overview
2 Characters
3 Episodes
4 Reception
5 DVD release
6 Production notes
7 Broadcast history
8 References
9 External links

[edit] Overview

The series stars Sarah Silverman, Laura Silverman, Brian Posehn, Steve Agee, and Jay Johnston. Silverman plays a fictionalized version of herself, an unemployed, immature woman who leads an irresponsible life. Her most notable trait is her undiluted, childlike self-absorption, which commonly leads to awkward situations in which she insults friends, family and total strangers indiscriminately. Laura Silverman plays her responsible sister of the same name, who takes care of Sarah, despite the chaos she brings down around them. Laura pays Sarah's rent and helps her out in most situations.

Posehn and Agee play Brian and Steve, a gay couple who are Sarah's neighbors and friends. Sarah, Laura, Brian, and Steve all hang out in a group and frequently eat together in a coffee house called Joseph's. Laura is dating Officer Jay (played by Johnston), a police officer, whom she meets in the show's first episode when Sarah is charged with a DUI, after which he joins the ensemble. Laura and Jay seem to be in love with each other, and Jay certainly makes an effort to be kind to Sarah whenever he can. However, Sarah is jealous of him because she fears that Laura is replacing her with Jay. Despite Jay's kindness, Sarah vows to destroy him. All of the main characters live in Valley Village, California, a district in the San Fernando Valley portion of Los Angeles.

The show features Sarah Silverman performing comedic songs in between some scenes. Silverman's comedy usually revolves around ethnic stereotypes, toilet humor, and similar taboo humor about modern life, which mirrors her real-life standup act. Adding to the humor is the cognitive dissonance between Sarah's apparently cute and harmless appearance and the character's vast destructive capacity. Each episode begins with Sarah presenting a brief slideshow overview of her life and the various people in her life. Most episodes end with Sarah, back in bed at her apartment, comically explaining (to her dog) what she has learned from the episode's events.

[edit] Characters

Sarah Jane Anastasia Silverman (Sarah Silverman) - The main character who is extremely childish, self-centered, and exhibits a lack of diplomacy or sensitivity to others. She often acts impulsively, completely oblivious to anyone or anything else. Sarah doesn't have a job and her sister Laura pays her rent. Sarah is very close to Laura, and she has a dog named Doug, "Chihuahua-pug mix",^[2] whom she found in the trash. Her favorite TV show is Cookie Party!, a show about cookies in which viewers vote for their favorite cookie. She enjoys watching the show with Laura as a weekly ritual, though going on Cookie Party! as contestants was not without its pitfalls for Laura and Sarah, as well as their mother's skeleton (episode "Doodie"). Sarah is jealous of Laura's relationship with Jay and assumes that Laura is replacing her by dating him. She retaliates by attempting to undermine their relationship. In the episode "Positively Negative", she expresses her unhappiness with Jay and Laura's relationship by sitting between them at brunch. In the first episode, her car is impounded after she drives under the influence of a cough syrup. She attended Valley Village High School with Brian and Laura. Sarah and Laura's parents, Max and Rose Silverman, died when they were young. In the episode "Positively Negative", Sarah says that her mom was a "bitch" and that her dad was an "ass-munch." She claims to have spent an extended period of time in Haiti, but is unsure exactly how long, as she was doing a lot of heroin at the time. In the episode "Not Without My Daughter", it is revealed that Sarah placed 2nd in the Little Miss Rainbow Pageant, and that she had tried out for the pageant every year since even though she was too old to compete. Sarah's next door neighbors are Patty and Jim Jenkins, a couple that is unable to conceive. It is also mentioned in the episode that Sarah got pregnant and had an "abortion" 10 years ago and that she was eight-and-a-half months pregnant when she went to the hospital and ordered, "Get that thing out of me!" Her description of the abortion strongly suggests that she actually gave birth and abandoned the baby by climbing out the window, and later watching the TV show In Living Color. Sarah's alarm clock wakes her up at 9:11 A.M.
Laura Jane Silverman III (Laura Silverman) - Sarah's younger sister (in real life, her older sister), who is a registered nurse. Their parents died when they were young, and Sarah is the only family that Laura has. Laura is very susceptible to guilt, making Sarah's manipulation of her remarkably easy. She is more responsible than Sarah and devotes most of her life to taking care of her. In the first episode, she brags to Jay that she can eat 30 hardboiled eggs in one sitting. She falls in love with Jay in the first episode. She attended Valley Village High School with Brian and Sarah. Laura pays Sarah's rent because Sarah is too lazy and immature to get a job or to support herself.
Brian Spukowski (Brian Posehn) - Sarah's gay neighbor and friend, who is dating Steve. He claims to be an enthusiastic metalhead but in fact only has one song on his five-year-old iPod, the Spin Doctors' "Two Princes." In the first episode, he claims to be bisexual, which causes some strain with Steve. Following a near-death experience, when Sarah crashes their car, Brian tells Steve that the event put things in perspective and that he remains gay. Brian takes karate lessons, but only uses his skills when he sees it is necessary (and not to defend Steve, episode "Humanitarian of the Year"). He attended Valley Village High School with Sarah and Laura.
Steve (Steve Agee) - Sarah's gay neighbor and friend, who is dating Brian. He makes wry comments on his partner's antics, or may even prompt them (such as by suggesting Tab could be a fine beverage). In the first episode, the sight of women in lingerie made him physically ill due to (or despite) the fact that Brian had pasted his face on all the women in the catalogue. Steve enjoys playing Halo 2 online. He is often assaulted by strangers, who claim that his face just makes them want to punch him. Despite knowing karate, Brian usually lacks the will to stop people from punching Steve. Although Sarah and Laura have two friends that are named Steve, they nicknamed Steve "Straight Steve" to be ironic because he is gay.
Officer Jay McPherson (Jay Johnston) - A police officer who is dating Laura, Sarah's sister. Jay met Laura when he arrested Sarah for driving her car into a playground sandbox after drinking too much cough syrup and passing out. (Jay asks her "Have you been drinking?" and Sarah replies "No, I got tired and thought this would be a good place to pull over.") Jay is also a closet performer, in the genre of sentimental "gentle comedy" character sketches. Jay dislikes Sarah and calls her the "the cuckoo clown" (in the episode "Positively Negative"), but he is so devoted to Laura that he will go out of his way to help Sarah, even when she vows to kill him. Jay wins a "Humanitarian of the Year" award for the work that he does reading to blind people. Growing up, he never celebrated his birthday because his mother told him that every day was his birthday. (She'd only told him that to cover up her beer and cake addiction, which ended up killing her on Jay's actual birthday.) Jay also has a brown moustache. In "Muffin' Man," Jay mentions that his partner, Officer Paul Tompkins, has been suspended for opening fire on a Hispanic youth who pulled a pellet gun on him, and that he had received a temporary new partner named Tig who is a lesbian. In the show's pilot, which was aired as the season finale, God turned Jay into a bag of Bugles, which Sarah immediately ate.

[edit] Episodes

Main article: List of The Sarah Silverman Program episodes

Season	Episodes	Premiere Date	End Date
Season 1	6	February 1, 2007	March 8, 2007
Season 2	TBA	October 3, 2007

The 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike put The Sarah Silverman Program on hiatus in November 2007.^[3] According to actor Brian Posehn in March 2008, "We go back to work the third week of April."^[4]

[edit] Reception

The show's premiere drew impressive ratings, 1.8 million total viewers and 1.3 with the 18-49 demographic, making it "cable's biggest audience of the night"^[5] The show had the single best debut ratings "for a Comedy Central original since the premiere of the animated series Drawn Together (2.2 million viewers) in 2004."^[6]

The show also drew some critical acclaim. Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle said that the show is "bursting with imagination, audacity, rude charm, and a relentlessly funny worldview" and called the show "an offbeat gem."^[7] Daniel Fierman of Entertainment Weekly called it "totally hilarious."^[8] Tad Friend of The New Yorker called the show "The meanest sitcom in years — and one of the funniest."^[9] Doug Elfman of The Chicago Sun-Times called the show "a live-action comedy as funny as Chappelle's Show."^[10]

The show has had its fair share of detractors. Metacritic rates the show at 4.8 out of 10 as of March 28, 2008.^[11] Matt Roush of TV Guide called the show "juvenile" saying that "Silverman reminds us how quickly the novelty can wear off while watching a pixie with a potty mouth." Roush went on to say that, "If there's such a thing as feminist frat-boy humor, Silverman has mastered it. Big deal."^[12] Salon.com gave the show a 3/10 in a review, elaborating that, "The Sarah Silverman Program has all of the charms of a joke with an audible fart as the punch line."^[13]

On February 12, 2007, eleven days after the show's premiere, Comedy Central announced that it had "ordered 16 new episodes for air this fall and next spring." The network's claimed the early pickup was because in its first two weeks "it was the most-watched cable show in primetime among all key demos." Comedy Central called it "its most successful primetime launch in three years."^[14]

Time magazine's James Poniewozik named it one of the Top 10 New TV Series of 2007, ranking it at #6.^[15]

[edit] DVD release

DVD name	Release date	Ep #	Additional information
Season One	October 2, 2007	6	Audio Commentary, Musical Performances, Karaoke Sing Along, Never Before Seen Extras. A Best Buy Exclusive, comes with bonus disc of Sarah's various Comedy Central material from Roasts and Crank Yankers.

[edit] Production notes

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

All of the main characters in the show are played by actors who have their same first names. Sarah and Laura Silverman play characters with their own last name, too, although Laura Silverman, who is in real life Sarah Silverman's older sister, plays her younger sister on the show. Also, Sarah's middle names on the show are Jane and Anastasia, while in real life her middle name is Kate.
Three of the show's main characters, Sarah, Laura, and Brian, also starred in Sarah's stand-up/concert film, Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic. Their characters in the film are similar to the characters they play on The Sarah Silverman Program, also named Sarah, Laura, and Brian. Also, Steve Agee appears in the movie but in a different role.
Thus far, nine actors from HBO's Mr. Show have appeared on episodes of The Sarah Silverman Program. Sarah Silverman, Brian Posehn, and Jay Johnston are series regulars. Jill Talley appeared in "Humanitarian of the Year" and "Not Without My Daughter". Doug Benson appeared in "Humanitarian of the Year". Scott Aukerman and Becky Thyre appeared in "Not Without My Daughter". Paul F. Tompkins appeared in "Doodie" and "Batteries". Bob Odenkirk appeared in "Maid to Border aka Brian's Song".
Actor Tucker Smallwood has played the role of God in the two episodes: "Batteries" and "Ah, Men".
Brian and Steve's apartment contains many pop-culture reference favorites as placed there by the Executive Producer, Rob Schrab:
- A Homestar Runner poster.
- A movie poster of Robot Bastard, a short subject sci-fi film by Rob Schrab.
- A framed copy of issue #1 of Scud: The Disposable Assassin is on the wall next to the entrance of the apartment (again, by Rob Schrab).
- A poster featuring the artwork of David Hartman.
- In Humanitarian of the Year, Brian wears a Titannica shirt, referencing a skit from Mr. Show which Brian wrote and appeared in.
In many episodes Brian wears a shirt depicting a zombie designed by artist Tony Moore, original artist on the comic book The Walking Dead. Both The Walking Dead and Brian's comic The Last Christmas were published by Image Comics.