A MarkInTexas Made-For-TV Christmas 2018

Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas (1977)

By Christmas 1977, Jim Henson was near the top of the entertainment world.  Sesame Street had already reached iconic status, and the ancillary sales of books and toys helped make Henson very rich.  Meanwhile, The Muppet Show, which had been turned down by all three networks, had become a worldwide smash in syndication.  That's why it's so surprising that Henson's new Christmas special was broadcast nationwide--in Canada.  American audiences wouldn't get to see it until the following year, and then only if they got HBO, at a time when only a small percentage of homes had cable, and only a small percentage of cable homes subscribed to the premium network.  It wouldn't be until 1980 that Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas would receive its broadcast network debut, when ABC picked it up.

To be fair, its at least somewhat understandable why it took three years for Emmet and company to make its way to American broadcast television.  Other than a cameo at the beginning and end by Kermit the Frog (which, depending on which version you watch, might not even be there anymore), all the characters are original to the special.  And even though the music by Paul Williams is all new, the songs have a deliberate old-fashioned bent, which I'm sure some network execs were worried would alienate disco-loving kids.  Then again, given that the networks had cost themselves a ton of money by first passing on Sesame Street and then on The Muppet Show, you'd think they'd be reluctant to repeat the mistake a third time.


Set at some indeterminate time in the past, the special concerns the dirt-poor Emmet and his widowed mother, as they struggle to get by in the wake of his father's passing.  A Christmas Eve talent show with a top prize of $50 prompts them both to independently enter, in the hopes of snagging the prize money to create a merry Christmas for the other, making a large sacrifice in the process.  However, they are not the only competitors, and perhaps the awful gang that's been driving around from out of town has some musical talent of its own.

Compared to the more manic energy of The Muppet Show, Emmet Otter is much more deliberately paced.  But that doesn't mean its slow or boring.  In the years since The Great Santa Claus Switch, Henson had gotten a handle on the pacing requirements, so while the special isn't in a hurry, at no point does it feel like things are happening just to stretch out the running time.  In other words, Emmet Otter earns its length.  It helps that Williams's songs, which takes up a big chunk of the show, are all pretty terrific.  The more handcrafted aspects of the special, which eschews the slicker look of The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, also lends the special a great deal of charm.  

One interesting thing about the special, especially considering its mid-70s roots, is that the bad guys don't receive any sort of comeuppance.  This actually helps lend the show about clothes-wearing animals playing country music a touch of realism, as justice and happy endings are not guaranteed.  This special ultimately does have a happy ending, but it comes after some surprising darkness and despair as participation in the contest could have truly destroyed the Otter family.

Between Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, and The Muppet Movie, Jim Henson was firing on all cylinders by the late 70s.  Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas is just more proof that, at that point in his career, pretty much everything he touched turned to gold--or at least $50.

Next time: One final Henson special, one that makes the darker moments in this look positively sunny.

Red Skelton's Christmas Dinner (1981)

Richard "Red" Skelton got his start in vaudeville before moving on to movie stardom in a series of comedies in the 1940s.  He then switched effortlessly to television, and The Red Skelton Show became a staple on CBS until 1970, when it was cancelled because the network had begun to purge its older programming to make room for more modern shows.  After a year-long run at NBC, Skelton had to go back to live shows and the occasional guest appearance and special.

It's a sign of how far his stock had fallen that his 1981 special, Red Skelton's Christmas Dinner, was broadcast on HBO.  As I've said before, HBO in the early '80s wasn't anywhere near the behemoth it is today, and while someone with Skelton's fame and career doing a show for HBO was a coup for the network, it was a long way from the Big Three broadcast networks that still dominated broadcasting in the US at the time.  And watching the show, it's easy to see why all three passed.  Both Skelton and the show are charming, but the whole thing is painfully old-fashioned, and Skelton's antics didn't make me laugh even once.

Skelton plays arguably his most famous character, Freddie the Freeloader, a hobo who, despite his name, is far more giving than taking.  The special, which seems to take place either on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day (its never made clear) follows Freddie around the town, starting his ramshackle shed in a junkyard, where he entertains a dog that has wandered over from the right side of the tracks, primarily by singing a slow ballad.  Indeed, Skelton sings a few songs, none of which are particularly comedic or fast-paced.  It looks like there might be some dramatic stakes when the dog's owner accuses Freddie of dognapping, but that moment is over almost before it begins.

After that, he has an encounter with Imogene Coca, playing a fellow hobo, who also delivers a monologue filled with more pathos than comedy, followed by a visit to a hospital where he uses mime to entertain a group of sick kids, and then tried to convince a drunk Santa selling Christmas trees to give up the drink.  Finally, he meets up with Vincent Price, playing a so-called professor, for Christmas dinner, which thanks to a case of mistaken identity, is held at the most expensive restaurant in town.  All of this is amusing.  None of this is remotely funny, despite what the laugh track seems to think.

It is clear that Skelton is an excellent performer, and has all the moves and jokes and songs and miming down pat.  And that's the problem.  Other than the fact it was in color, there is nothing about this special that would have been out of place in 1951.  There's a lot to be said about nostalgia and the old-fashioned way of doing things, and one can modernize to their detriment (I think of Wicked Witch of the West Margaret Hamilton introducing KISS on Paul Lynde's Halloween special), but this is living completely in the past.  It's hard to imagine this really appealing to anyone who actually shelled out the money for HBO back then.

After Red Skelton's Christmas Dinner, Skelton would appear in a few more specials and more stage shows before retiring in the early 90s.  He passed away in 1997.  There is little doubt that he was an extremely talented performer.  His talents, however, were utterly out of date by 1981, and time has not improved the product.

Next time:  A computer animated special, just two years after Toy Story

Santa vs. the Snowman (1997)

Computer animation had been around in some form since the 1960s.  Primitive versions of it were utilized in such 70s films as Westworld and Star Wars, and more photo-realistic computer-generated effects were used to acclaim in The Abyss, Terminator 2, and Jurassic Park.  1993, the year of Jurassic Park's release, saw the first release of the popular straight-to-video computer animated kid's series VeggieTales (which had new episodes still coming out as late as last year), and in 1994, ABC added the first weekly computer animated series, ReBoot, to its Saturday morning lineup.  All that paled in comparison to the Thanksgiving 1995 release of Toy Story, which was not only the first entirely computer animated feature, it featured graphics far ahead of anything else that the general public had seen.  Indeed, 23 years later, Toy Story's animation still holds up very well, even if the human characters only look slightly less plastic than the toys.

For Toy Story's animation to look as good as it did, it took tens of millions of dollars and perhaps the finest team of computer animators around.  Those were luxuries that smaller animation houses couldn't afford, so most of them would still with traditional cell animation for a number of years longer.  But there was still a demand for computer animation, which is probably one of the reasons Santa vs. the Snowman got picked up by ABC.  Another reason is it was produced by Steve Oedekerk, who had gotten some success thanks to directing Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls and writing the remake of The Nutty Professor.

The animation in Santa vs. the Snowman looks primitive in 2018, of course, but I doubt it even looked all that good in 1997.  The characters are basically mildly expressive face blobs on top of body blobs, and at no point do any characters actually interact with their surroundings.  Forget Toy Story.  The various VeggieTales videos coming out at this time looked far better.  Heck, the Pixar short Tin Toy from 1988 looks better (at least the toys, not the horrifying baby).  

The storyline is deeply weird.  The titular snowman, who is both nameless and mute (an interesting choice given the animation quality) has his beloved flute broken when Santa, on a test run, flies by too closely.  So, he sets out for Santa's Village to get a new one, only to discover that Santa has invested deeply in security.  After failing to get away with a new flute, he decides that he should be Santa, and eventually creates an army of mini-snowmen to attack.  However, Santa has also invested in a bunch of Christmas-themed weapons, leading to an all-out war.  The show takes the "Vs." part of the title seriously.

ABC clearly didn't have much faith in the special, as they scheduled it on a Saturday night, along with another new, instantly dated special (and possible future entry, if I can find a copy), The Online Adventures of Ozzie the Elf.  It ended up finishing 4th in its timeslot, and the network didn't repeat it the following year.  Under normal circumstances, that would have been it as it faded into obscurity, but it ended up having a most unexpected afterlife.

Oedekerk and John A. Davis, who directed the special, went on to create the Nickelodeon show The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.  In 2001, the pilot movie got a theatrical release, and ended up being among the first films nominated for the Animated Feature Oscar (it lost to Shrek).  IMAX theaters were looking for a holiday-themed animated short, and somehow, the duo convinced IMAX owners that a 3D, slightly longer version of their largely forgotten special would be the perfect attraction.  It worked, as Santa vs. the Snowman 3D would pop up at IMAX theaters every holiday season for years.

At this point, finding the original special isn't particularly easy. The one version I found, on YouTube, has washed-out colors, a timecode bar on the screen at all times, and no sound effects, though the vocal and music tracks are complete.  As a comparison, I also watched the expanded version in 2D, which is now widely available on DVD.  The only major differences I could tell between the two versions is that the theatrical version has an wraparound prologue and epilogue, and that the anonymous-sounding narrator from the original special is replaced by Don LaFontaine, best known for the hundreds of movie trailers he voiced.  In terms of animation quality, I couldn't really tell any difference, even though computer animation had made great strides forward over the five years between the TV broadcast and the initial theatrical release.

Still, despite the sub-par animation and odd story, I have a certain bit of affection for Santa vs. the Snowman.  It's certainly not a great special, but its fun, and I did like the world-building of the North Pole society.  It's not a classic, but it's cute.

Next time: Another computer animated special that debuted in 2002, one that makes the animation in Santa vs. the Snowman look like Incredibles 2.

Believe in Santa (2002)

All is forgiven, Santa vs. the Snowman.  In the last entry, I wrote about the subpar computer animation in that 1997 special.  That was before I saw today's entry, better known as Rapsittie Street Kids Believe in Santa (the first half is missing from the official on-screen title).  Given that the reason this otherwise forgettable special has become such a cult object the last three years since it resurfaced was because of the hideousness of the animation, I was expecting something awful.  I wasn't prepared for graphics that, a year after Monsters, Inc. and six months before Finding Nemo, looked like it had come straight out of a screensaver program circa 1988.

Characters glide across the screen using weird walking strides, yet never seen to actually touch the ground, or their feet seem to somehow sink under the ground.  Objects aren't actually held, but sort of float awkwardly near characters' hands.  When characters throw things (and a lot of characters throw a lot of things), arms bend back and release the objects being thrown in ways that never occurs in nature.  And once the objects leave the hands, they float languidly to whatever their targets happen to be.  Whenever a character talks, their entire head bounces back and forth, apparently to distract us from how the characters' lips don't really match the words they're supposedly speaking.  Plus one character, an elderly woman voiced by Debra Wilson, had a corrupted audio file, so with one exception late in the special, every single bit of her dialogue is garbled.  

So many questions surround this special's existence, only a few of which have been answered.  Why didn't the producers just use traditional cell animation, which was still the primary animation medium at the time?  Why did station managers put this on the air?  Wouldn't an hour of infomercials be less embarrassing then this thing?

However, once you get past the awful, awful animation (admittedly, not an easy task), the special is...well, it's not good, but the script isn't nearly as inept as I had heard it would be.  The plot at first follows sweet but klutzy kid Rick E. (Walter Jones) who decides to give his beloved teddy bear, given to him by his late mother, to Nicole (Paige O'Hara), the class's richest and snottiest girl, who thinks that anything that wasn't outrageously expensive isn't worth her time.  Naturally, she despises the bear, and tosses it into a dumpster at the first opportunity.  After that, the special follows her, as she sings a song about how wonderful she is, and then discovers Rick's letter to Santa, which of course prompts her to do a 180.  So she and friends Lenee (Jodi Benson) and Smithy (Eddie Driscoll) search first the dumpster and then the junkyard for it, staying one step ahead of a gang of bullies led by Todd (Nancy Cartwright, using her Todd Flanders voice).

Again, this isn't a good script.  But it's not an unspeakably horrible script.  I've seen specials with worse scripts then this before.  Plus, the various original songs aren't really all that bad, especially the closing credits duet between O'Hara and Peabo Bryson.  It doesn't deserve a Grammy or anything, but it would definitely not be out of place on any of the all-Christmas radio stations running right now (whether that's a good thing or a bad thing I'll leave for you to determine).  So the special was, to some extent, salvageable.  Just not with that animation.

And, in a very weird way, that's the best possible thing that could have happened to Believe in Santa.  Had the animation been of acceptable quality, it might have aired once or twice, but then joined dozens of other specials in the forgotten pile, never to be resurrected.  If it went missing (as this did for a number of years) no one would have noticed.  But because the animation is so atrocious, so unbelievably awful, it remained lodged in people's minds for years, and received an enthusiastic response when it was re-discovered.  The promised sequel at the end of the special never materialized, and the world never again heard from the Rapsittie Street Kids.  But people will always remember their one and only special.  In its way, it's now as immortal as A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Next time: One special, two different voice casts

Little Spirit: Christmas in New York (2008)

Imagine, for a moment, that you're a retail company, and not just any retail company.  You're one of the biggest and best known retailers in the United States.  And the primary reason the company is so big and so well-known is because of the holidays.  The company sponsors a massive holiday parade that is seen nationwide every year.  In addition, it is prominently featured in a beloved Christmas movie.  However, by the mid-aughts, the company's pop culture connection with Christmas is beginning to fade.  The parade is still a big deal, but it's more associated with Thanksgiving than Christmas, and the movie was released in 1947 and is in black and white (a newer version, from 1994, completely replaces the retailer with a fictitious store).  Perhaps, executives, it's time for a new Christmas classic, one that kids will love for generations, and one that will cement the retailer as the Christmas store in people's minds.

That, I suspect, is the thought process that resulted in Little Spirit: Christmas in New York, a 2008 Macy's-produced computer-animated special that reveals its true purpose only 7 minutes in, when a news reporter voiced by Brian Williams (but not Brian Williams) uses the words "shockingly wonderful" to describe "the most magical, mesmerizing Macy's holiday event ever!", followed immediately by characters expressing their enthusiasm to go to Macy's.  Throughout the special, Macy's is featured, and of course, the climax is set on 34th Street directly in front of the store.

I also suspect, as the title suggests, that the special was intended as a love letter to Macy's hometown, as, with only a few exceptions, every New Yorker is presented as nothing less than kind and concerned, and even the city's flaws (such as slow traffic caused by construction) are lovely laughed off.  Yes, this was the perfect way for Macy's to ensure that it would be in the hearts (and wallets and purses) of America at Christmastime.  The one slight problem is that Macy's is kind of the villain of the show--that and the rest of the special doesn't have one iota of the magic that allows Miracle on 34th Street to continue to resonate all these years later.

The special stars Danny DeVito as a cabbie who is transporting two girls--one glued to her phone, the other a cynical know-it-all--through Manhattan.  Once caught in the inevitable traffic jam, it turns out that this is just the framing device, and the real story is about a boy named Leo (Michael Hall D'Addario, who grew up to found the band The Lemon Twigs with his brother), who very reluctantly moves from what looks like a farmhouse in the middle of the country somewhere to New York, where his mom has a new job.  Also making the trip is Leo's beloved tiny dog Ramona, who, on their first excursion to Central Park, promptly gets lost.

Leo is naturally despondent, but things get better once the titular Little Spirit, a gold-colored, alien-looking creature who talks like Stitch, emerges from a snow globe and introduces Leo to the magical portals that open in Christmas trees.  Spirit, unfortunately, isn't omniscient, and has no idea where the dog is, and even manages to get separated from Leo as they're hoping from Christmas tree to Christmas tree all over Manhattan.  No matter, because Ramona has managed to wander into--you guessed it--Macy's, where the few people who notice her think she's part of the window display.

Eventually, she is chased by two bumbling security guards onto the second floor ledge, where she attempts to cross the pole attaching the giant tree above the entrance to the building.  Here's where Macy's ends up the villain, since they didn't bother to use a pole strong enough to withstand the pressure of a dog that can't weigh more than 20 pounds, plus a man lightly holding onto it.  If the store had invested in a stronger pole, the tree wouldn't have fallen over, traffic wouldn't have been backed up, and Macy's wouldn't have had to fly in a fully decorated replacement tree via helicopter in the middle of the night.

There's a lot of goofy stuff in the special, such as when Spirit has a conversation with dead fish for sale in Chinatown, enough to really make me wish it was more clever.  But alas, cleverness probably won't convince you to do your Christmas shopping at Macy's.  As for the animation, it looks like low-budget computer animation from that era.  It's OK for its time, but nowhere near the quality of theatrical computer animation, such as that of Bolt and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, which was on display at multiplexes nationwide that holiday season.  Ten years later, it looks downright awful, especially any closeups of Ramona the dog (and for whatever reason, there are a lot of closeups of Ramona the dog).

Macy's may have hoped that this special would be a timeless classic.  But instead, it aired one time in 2008, and then disappeared off the airwaves.  In 2009, Macy's decided to center its Christmas campaign around the story behind the Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus editorial, and produced a half-hour special, Yes Virginia.  That show isn't an all-time classic or anything, but it never once uses the word "Macy's" in its dialogue, and is pretty charming.  Yes Virginia reran for several years after that.  Effectively, it replaced Little Spirit: Christmas in New York, and we're probably all better off because of it.

Next time: Yet another attempt to create a lasting special.  Like so many others, it crashed and burned.

I'm going to guess that this will be "The Homecoming" from the early 70's, but a small, dark, twisted part of my soul wants this to somehow be a forgotten Adult Swim special called "Christmas with the Manson's"

Donny and Marie Christmas Special (1979)

In the 70s, it seemed like any musical act that was even half-famous got their own variety show.  How else to explain how the likes of the Starland Vocal Band, the Brady Bunch, and even Howard Cosell got weekly series?  Compared to that crew, Donny and Marie Osmond, who had each had multiple hit songs, seem like legends, even if both of them were still teenagers.  And for a while, Donny & Marie was a Friday night hit for ABC.  But in 1978, Donny did the one thing that teen heartthrobs shouldn't do--get married.  With their dreams of one day being Mrs. Donny Osmond shattered, millions of teenage girls stop watching, and the show is cancelled in early 1979.

But the two remained popular, and ABC had time slots to fill, so less than a year after their show's cancellation, Donny and Marie were back in their old time slot in December, 1979, for the one-off Donny and Marie Christmas Special.  And to be fair, if you didn't know it was a special and not simply the Christmas episode of their series, you'd never know the difference.

The special, as the opening narration informs us, was shot at the Osmond Entertainment Center in Provo, Utah, and the audience at the Osmond Entertainment Center seems primed to laugh at anything remotely resembling a joke.  An early scene of Donny and Marie having coats tossed at them while breaking into "We Need a Little Christmas" gets titters, and for some reason, Marie saying that Donny's baby son was getting his diaper changed backstage also got giggles out of the audience.  With an audience that is that eager to be entertained, the writers can get away with some awfully weak material, which is why Special Guest Star Erik Estrada gets laughs when he makes a CHiPs joke, and 11-year-old Special Guest Star Adam Rich gets laughs when he makes an Eight is Enough joke (though, admittedly, that actually pays off later in the special, during an actually amusing performance of "The Twelve Days of Christmas", during which, due to the limitations of the prop department, wacky items that vaguely rhyme with the originals are substituted for the partridge in the pear tree and two turtledoves).  Special Guest Star Cindy Williams doesn't really get to work a Laverne & Shirley joke into the proceedings, but does get to star in a comedy sketch that seems rather disturbing in the #MeToo era, where a big guy physically restrains her from leaving while he prattles on and on about how much he loves Laverne (the "joke" being that Williams played Shirley).  Later, while Estrada gets to duet with Marie on "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow" (a version that noticeably changes "When we finally kiss goodnight" to "When we finally say goodnight"), Williams gets stuck more or less babysitting the very young Osmond pre-school aged kids.  Meanwhile, Special Guest Star Dorothy Hamill doesn't have to show off her comedy chops, other than another "joke" about baby Donny Jr's diaper, during her few seconds of banter with Donny and Marie and Estrada, but does get to ice skate while Marie croons "Blue Christmas".

This being the Osmond special shot at the Osmond Entertainment Center in Provo, Utah, members of the Osmond family get a lot more screen time than any of the Special Guest Stars.  Jay gets to pretend to have a broken leg, Wayne helps Rich find props, and 16-year-old Jimmy, who had had his own run of hit songs, gets several scenes of dialogue as well as a solo number during the big family sing-along halfway through the show.  Indeed, by the 40-minute mark, the show seems to completely forget they even have Special Guest Stars, as the family gathers on a set that I guess is meant to resemble the Osmond family living room to have a Osmond-only pageant.  In other words, this is the special to watch if you really, really, really like the Osmonds, or at least really like their late-70's incarnation.

As silly and cheesy as it undeniably is, I kind of liked Donny and Marie Christmas Special.  The family did have a lot of legitimately talented members, and both the titular stars have genuine charisma.  It's nice that the entire family could still gather together in a TV studio once a year to make a special, or at least could for a few years.  And even today, nearly 40 years after their heyday, Donny and Marie are still performing together, touring casinos, and having a show-in-residence in Vegas.  There may not be any further specials in their future, but many performers would kill for that kind of longevity.

Next time: A family Christmas, circa 2018.

That's not fair to Chrissy Teigen who random internet "news" sources have led me to believe  is best know for "clapbacking" on twitter...whatever that means.