MickeyIsn't That Special
Thanksgiving Day is past, the relatives are out of the house and even now are cursing the airline clerk who had to tell them their flight was canceled, you're trying to invent five new recipes for leftover turkey and the pets are eyeing the garbage can just daring the primates to go to bed and turn off the lights...
Once we awaken from the tryptophan coma the Holiday season starts- okay, so technically we started seeing Christmas-oriented ads on TV back when school started at the end of Summer. Now however, pretty much every night you can depend on some holiday-oriented programming.
The Christmas specials are coming out in force. With cable reruns it is now possible to catch A Charlie Brown Christmas more often that we used to see It's A Wonderful Life on broadcast TV twenty years ago. The Grinch steals Christmas, the Scooby-Doo gang solves the Christmas mystery, Gamera flies children's Christmas lists to Santa's North Pole workshop... no doubt somewhere a producer is pitching A Freddy Krueger Christmas On Elm Street holiday special, with Very Special Guest Andy Williams.
Of course the specials alone can't carry the burden of reminding us that we need to get new calendars. Count on at least half of all regular series to air Very Special Episodes with a Yuletide theme- usually involving a trio of ghosts and a regular character being bullied into accepting the True Meaning Of Going Into Debt For The Holidays. Or maybe insuring the future financial stability of the therapy market by convincing a gullible-enough tyke that Santa really does exist, despite the Cigarette Man's vast government conspiracy to conceal the existence of Kris Kringle.
Far too many Christmas episodes trot out the predictable retreading of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Even if you haven't already seen a half-dozen such in the past week, it can still be a bit unsettling to see established characters acting out of character just so the Message that It's The Giving, Stupid can be sledgehammered into the audience... or for a fuzzy, heart-warming scene where a kid is conned into thinking that Santa is real.
So the Christmas episodes combine the re-telling of stories you've already seen umpteen times this month already, plus their tendency to get the characters to play Dickens' characters, just dressed like the ones they usually play on the show. Very occasionally we get a series where the producers take enough pride in their characters and writing staff that they manage a Christmas show that doesn't require the cast to step wildly out of character. WKRP and Buffy the Vampire Slayer made their Christmas shows far more compelling by simply keeping their characters IN character. This made for a much better show in general since it was happening to the characters we had come to know and love.
The Ghosts of Christmas Specials past, present and future are coming, but don't worry. Every time a show re-uses Dickens, an Angel gets basic cable.
Once we awaken from the tryptophan coma the Holiday season starts- okay, so technically we started seeing Christmas-oriented ads on TV back when school started at the end of Summer. Now however, pretty much every night you can depend on some holiday-oriented programming.
The Christmas specials are coming out in force. With cable reruns it is now possible to catch A Charlie Brown Christmas more often that we used to see It's A Wonderful Life on broadcast TV twenty years ago. The Grinch steals Christmas, the Scooby-Doo gang solves the Christmas mystery, Gamera flies children's Christmas lists to Santa's North Pole workshop... no doubt somewhere a producer is pitching A Freddy Krueger Christmas On Elm Street holiday special, with Very Special Guest Andy Williams.
Of course the specials alone can't carry the burden of reminding us that we need to get new calendars. Count on at least half of all regular series to air Very Special Episodes with a Yuletide theme- usually involving a trio of ghosts and a regular character being bullied into accepting the True Meaning Of Going Into Debt For The Holidays. Or maybe insuring the future financial stability of the therapy market by convincing a gullible-enough tyke that Santa really does exist, despite the Cigarette Man's vast government conspiracy to conceal the existence of Kris Kringle.
Far too many Christmas episodes trot out the predictable retreading of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Even if you haven't already seen a half-dozen such in the past week, it can still be a bit unsettling to see established characters acting out of character just so the Message that It's The Giving, Stupid can be sledgehammered into the audience... or for a fuzzy, heart-warming scene where a kid is conned into thinking that Santa is real.
So the Christmas episodes combine the re-telling of stories you've already seen umpteen times this month already, plus their tendency to get the characters to play Dickens' characters, just dressed like the ones they usually play on the show. Very occasionally we get a series where the producers take enough pride in their characters and writing staff that they manage a Christmas show that doesn't require the cast to step wildly out of character. WKRP and Buffy the Vampire Slayer made their Christmas shows far more compelling by simply keeping their characters IN character. This made for a much better show in general since it was happening to the characters we had come to know and love.
The Ghosts of Christmas Specials past, present and future are coming, but don't worry. Every time a show re-uses Dickens, an Angel gets basic cable.
