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, Sarah's neighbors and friends, who are a gay couple. Sarah, Laura, Brian, and Steve all hang out in a group and frequently eat in a coffee house named Joseph's together. The four seem to be close friends. 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. 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. Since he began dating Laura, Jay has seemed to have joined the group of friends and he often spends time with them in the coffee house. All of the main characters live in Valley Village, California, a district in the San Fernando Valley portion of Los Angeles, which is portrayed as an autonomous city within the show.
The show features Sarah Silverman performing comedic songs in between some scenes. Sarah's comedy usually revolves around ethnic stereotypes and similar taboo humor about modern life (this mirrors Sarah's real-life standup act). Adding to the humor is Sarah's seemingly cute and harmless exterior, which belies her vast destructive capacities. Each episode begins with Sarah presenting a brief slideshow overview of her life and the various people in her life, and each episode ends with Sarah, back in bed at her apartment, comically explaining (to her dog) what she has learned from the episode's events.
Characters
Sarah Silverman (Sarah Silverman) - The main character who is extremely childish and self-centered. She often acts immaturely and 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. Sarah becomes very 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 at all costs. 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 very young. In the episode "Positively Negative", Sarah says that her mom was a "bitch" and that her dad was an "ass-munch." 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 nextdoor 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 asked "Get that thing out of me". Her description of the abortion suggests that she actually gave birth to a daughter and abandoned the baby, who was to be incidentally also named Sarah, by climbing out the window.
Laura Silverman (Laura Silverman) - Sarah's older sister, who is a registered nurse. Their parents died when they were really 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 (Brian Posehn) - Sarah's gay neighbor and friend, who is dating Steve. In the first episode, he lies to Steve about being bisexual, which causes some strain. 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. He attended Valley Village High School with Sarah and Laura.
Steve (Steve Agee) - Sarah's gay neighbor and friend, who is dating Brian. In the first episode, the sight of women in lingerie made him physically ill due to the fact that Brian had pasted his face on all the women in the magazine. 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 so gay.
Officer Jay McPherson (Jay Johnston) - A police officer who pulls Sarah over at a playground for a DUI after she had too much cough syrup. 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" (She said this while parked in the middle of a playground). Jay later lets her go when he begins dating Laura. He dislikes Sarah but still frequently goes out of his way to be nice to her, 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. Jay thinks that Sarah is crazy and he refers to Sarah as "the cuckoo clown" in the episode "Positively Negative." Jay never celebrated his birthday because his mother would tell him that everyday was his birthday, but she only told him this to cover up her beer and cake addiction. Her addiction killed 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 season finale, God turned Jay into a bag of Bugles, which Sarah immediately ate.
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" [3] 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."
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The show also instantly drew overwhelming 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."[5] Daniel Fierman of Entertainment Weekly called it "totally hilarious."[6]Tad Friend of The New Yorker called the show "The meanest sitcom in years — and one of the funniest."[7]Doug Elfman of The Chicago Sun-Times called the show "a live-action comedy as funny as Chappelle's Show."[8]
On February 12, 2007, only eleven days after the show's premiere, it was announced that Comedy Central had "ordered 14 new episodes for air this fall and next spring." The network's reasoning for the early pickup was that, 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."[9]
Trivia
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 full names, although Laura Silverman, who is in real life Sarah Silverman's older sister, plays her younger sister on the show.
According to God in the episode "Batteries," Sarah's full name is Sarah Jane Anastasia Silverman.
Three of the shows 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.
Silverman's boyfriend, Jimmy Kimmel, appeared as a transsexual police officer in the third episode, "Positively Negative", and his brother, actor/writer Jonathan Kimmel guest stars as a pageant host in "Not Without My Daughter"." Kimmel's cousin, Sal Iacano, appeared in the episode Humanitarian of the Year as a neighbor who punches Steve in the face.
Brian wears a 'Titannica' T-Shirt in "Humanitarian of the Year" during his karate fight. Titannica was a fake band resembling Metallica in which Brian Posehn played as one of the members in the sketch comedy show Mr. Show
Brian and Steve's apartment contains many pop-culture reference favorites as placed there by the Executive Producer, Rob Schrab:
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