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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 5, 2020 19:46:37 GMT -5
The Mouse on the Mayflower (1968)
In past years, at the Old Country, in addition to reviewing old Christmas specials in December, I also would spend a week or two reviewing specials from another holiday. Past years, I've looked at Halloween and Easter specials, and this year, I'll be spending November taking a look at the surprising number of animated Thanksgiving specials that have aired over the years. We'll be starting off with holiday special-maker extraordinaire Rankin-Bass's sole Thanksgiving entry, The Mouse on the Mayflower.
While I don't have the time to research whether or not it was the first animated Thanksgiving special made for TV, if it wasn't it was certainly one of the first. Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, the first animated holiday special, had only debuted in 1962, and Rankin-Bass had only produced two Christmas specials themselves at this point (their third, The Little Drummer Boy, would debut about a month after this first aired). As the screencap shows, this was produced in traditional cell animation instead of the stop motion style of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Like most R-B specials, this is "told and sung" by a famous celebrity, in this case country music star Tennessee Ernie Ford. He voices William Mouse, Esq., the Pilgrim's official churchmouse, who accompanies them on their voyage across the Atlantic. Other voices included Eddie Albert, who voiced Captain Myles Standish, and voice artists Paul Frees and June Forey, who voiced several roles between them.
This is one of those specials that probably should be about half the length, as, honestly, not too much happens, at least not enough to justify the 45-minute running time. The Pilgrims sail across the ocean, run into awful storms, and William thwarts a scheme by a couple of evil sailors from stealing the box full of gold on board and figures out how to save the ship when the main beam threatens to break (a real incident, though I doubt a mouse was the one who figured out the solution).
That's all rather dull, but at least it's not racist. That part comes during the second half, when the Pilgrims land and encounter the local Native American tribe, who were colored bright red and shown shirtless and wearing war paint, even though they were presented as friendly and it was supposed to be the middle of November in Massachusetts. William meets a Native mouse, who, despite being able to speak a common mouse language, still speaks for us to hear in stilted English. There's also a comically evil tribe member who inexplicitly has a vest-wearing bear. The special makes a big deal as to how mean the bear is, but he seems to act like a loyal dog. It's weird. The only other major subplot involves maybe the most boring love story in history between Stanish's assistant and a young Pilgrim maiden.
The Mouse on the Mayflower is interesting as a historical curio, but unlike many of Rankin-Bass's Christmas specials, this one deserves to have slipped into obscurity. Hopefully, future specials will be better.
Next time: The most prolific maker of TV cartoons tries to play the Rankin-Bass game.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 6, 2020 15:41:27 GMT -5
The Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn't (1972)
William Hanna and Joseph Barbara rose to fame thanks to Tom and Jerry, the animated short series about the antagonistic relationship between a housecat and the mouse he was forever striving to get rid of. The shorts won seven Oscars, none of which Hanna nor Barbara won personally, as they all went to the series's producer, Fred Quimby (much to their chagrin). In 1957, MGM shut down their theatrical animated shorts department, and the duo moved to TV, where they became arguably the most prolific producers of animation of the new medium. They're responsible for introducing, among others, Yogi Bear, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, and Scooby-Doo to American airwaves, and during the 70s, seemed to be responsible for the majority of Saturday morning animation.
In 1972, however, the duo decided to move into another field--namely primetime holiday specials. The studio released a Thanksgiving special in November and a Christmas one in December. I have yet to see A Christmas Story (yes, that's the title), but will be reviewing it next month for A MarkInTexas Made-For-TV Christmas. However, if its anything like The Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn't, it will be a near copy of the formula of the then-reigning kings of animated holiday specials, Rankin-Bass.
Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn't didn't have a famous narrator to sing and tell the story, but virtually every other element seemed to be lifted from Rankin-Bass, and specifically, the then-four-year-old Mouse on the Mayflower. There's the setting among the Pilgrims and Native Americans at the first Thanksgiving. There's the (mostly) forgettable songs. And there's a furry animal character who is at the heart of the story, which is being told in flashback by a modern-day descendant of said animal.
That 1621 animal is a squirrel, named Jeremy, who befriends two boys, a Pilgrim named Johnny and a Native American named Little Bear, who bond over their supposed hunting abilities (why these two great hunters don't shoot the squirrel is not explained). The two boys decide to wander off to go hunting about five minutes before everyone was supposed to sit down for Thanksgiving, and promptly get hopelessly lost, even with Jeremy chasing after them. This causes the menfolk to decide to abandon their meal to go looking for the boys, who may be lost, but are having a jolly time wandering around the woods (in my favorite bit, they're happily singing about going home while completely failing to notice they've gotten themselves turned around and are going back the way they came). Of course, merely being lost in the woods isn't dangerous enough, so a hungry wolf who wants to make the boys his Thanksgiving dinner is introduced late in the special to provide some menace and to let Jeremy save the day.
While the special did spend a lot of time setting up the Thanksgiving setting (including a lengthy opening song about Thanksgiving, followed a bit later by an even longer version of the same song, complete with a repeat of the opening montage, and an modern-day set scene early on of a human family sitting down for Thanksgiving-a family that is never seen again once the focus switches to the squirrels), once the boys get lost, the Thanksgiving trappings are forgotten. There is no specific reason the boys needed to get lost during the first Thanksgiving meal. This turns out to be a rather common issue with Thanksgiving specials, which seem to frequently slap some roast turkeys and cornucopias on an otherwise generic story. We'll be reviewing plenty of similar specials in the coming weeks.
While Hanna-Barbara would make other holiday specials, after this pair from 1972, they always used their existing characters for them (such as a pair of Flintstone Christmas specials I wrote about last year). This and A Christmas Story, as far as I can tell, marked their only original specials. I'll have to watch Christmas to make a final judgement, but on the basis of The Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn't, they were probably wise to leave holiday special-making in the hands of Rankin-Bass.
Next time: Thanksgiving with cavemen, millennia before the Pilgrims.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 7, 2020 13:46:13 GMT -5
B.C.: The First Thanksgiving (1973)You'd probably never guess this, but back in the 60s, Johnny Hart's comic strip B.C. was both one of the most popular and most funny strips around. Taking place in a prehistoric world, the strip followed a group of cavemen and talking animals as they made their way through their primitive world, which was filled with numerous anachronisms. Well before Hart ran out of material and essentially turned the strip into a Christian tract, a pair of 30 minute holiday specials were produced 8 years apart, with different production teams and different voice casts. I reviewed the second special, 1981's B.C.: A Special Christmas, back in 2014 (it can be found in the comments on this page), and today, we'll take a look at 1973's B.C.: The First Thanksgiving. The plot (which takes a full ten minutes to get started, after an extended, mostly dialogue-less stretch in with the red-headed title character discovers fire, then sneezes a lot) has the menfolk attempting to kill a turkey for a stew being cooked by The Fat Broad, one of only two female characters in both the strip and the special (amazingly enough, it took until just last year for The Fat Broad and The Cute Chick to finally get actual names). Of course, it might help if the men actually knew what a turkey was. Once they figure it out, the turkey runs, the men chase them, the turkey outwits them for a bit, then the chase starts all over again. Since this is a talking turkey in a family cartoon, no one actually catches it, while meanwhile a dinosaur eats the rest of the stew, so everyone ends up dining on rocks. The special was directed by Abe Levitow, a veteran animated who worked for years on Looney Tunes, primarily for Chuck Jones. Unfortunately, this would be the final project he'd see to completion before his death in 1975. Among the animators was Phil Roman, who would go on to be in charge of the animation of the various Garfield specials during the 80s, as well as the animation for The Simpsons through much of the 90s. The voice cast included such vets as Daws Butler, who trotted out a Jack Benny impersonation a few times, and Don Messick. B.C.: The First Thanksgiving isn't any great shakes, but it's mildly entertaining. I can see why it took another 8 years for the next special to come along. It would be another, even more popular comic strip, whose Thanksgiving special would become a holiday staple. Next time: Thanksgiving from up north, and from outer space.
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Post by haysoos on Nov 9, 2020 17:49:30 GMT -5
Fun fact: There was a B.C. video game called "B.C. Quest for Tires". I remember playing it on the Commodore 64 at my friend's place, and that and the character of the Apteryx are pretty much all I can recall of the B.C. comic strip.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 10, 2020 13:56:12 GMT -5
Intergalactic Thanksgiving, or Please Don't Eat the Planet (1979)
In the late 1970s, a relatively new Canadian animation studio began producing half-hour specials for distribution on Canadian TV networks, followed by syndicated runs on U.S. stations. One fan of Nelvana's work was George Lucas, who commissioned the company to produce a short animated segment for The Star Wars Holiday Special that introduced Boba Fett, which is one of the very few things anyone has any praise for in that disaster. About a month and a half before Star Wars fans would sit utterly confused by ten minutes of Wookie grunting, the studio debuted its new special on CBC, just in time for Canadian Thanksgiving.
Intergalactic Thanksgiving, or Please Don't Eat the Planet focuses on a human pioneer family, the Spademinders, who left their home in search of a better life. As the title suggests, they were traveling through space before crash-landing on a random planet and deciding this was the place to make their home. Unbeknownst to them, the planet was already occupied by a thriving civilization, a group of green creature with a vague resemblance to Shrek, who were happy to make the acquaintance of the strange aliens that had landed on their world.
That plot description rather hides how goofy this special truly is, though. The planet's name is Laughalot, and the king is very much committed to being the funniest creature around. He doesn't take too kindly to realizing that his subjects think his material is tired and hacky, and that they think the no-nonsense Spandeminders are about the funniest people they've ever seen.
Tensions come to a head when the king's actions cause a giant fissure to open up in the ground, sending the Spandeminder's vaguely adolescent-aged daughter and the king's vaguely adolescent-aged son hurling toward the center of the planet, which they discover has been hollowed out by the society's food-mining technology and is in immediate danger of collapsing.
Last week, I complained that I thought The Mouse on the Mayflower should have been a half-hour special instead of a full hour. I have the opposite problem with this special. It feels far too rushed, with more story than time. I don't know if there was enough story to stretch to a full hour, but at least the surprise environmental story wouldn't feel like it was half-told, and the two kid characters, who were clearly meant to be the audience surrogates, might not have felt so bland.
Voice work is decent in the special. The big-named star at the time was Sid Caesar, who played the king. He was fine. Today, the other name that stands out on the cast list is Catherine O'Hara's. In 1979, she was best known for her work on SCTV, but had some side gigs doing voice acting for Canadian-produced specials. She played Ma Spandminder with a generic old woman voice. I wish I could say it was a distinctive performance, but it really isn't.
Like B.C.: The First Thanksgiving, this sort of stuffs its holiday references in toward the end, as if the writers needed something to justify the title. Intergalactic Thanksgiving, or Please Don't Eat the Planet is a cute special, but the best work from Nelvana still laid in the company's future.
Next time: Thanksgiving over the rainbow
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Post by haysoos on Nov 12, 2020 18:42:26 GMT -5
I thought I'd seen all of the 70s and 80s Nelvana specials, but Intergalactic Thanksgiving must have slipped past me somehow. Although watching it now, it's entirely possible I saw it and just completely forgot about it.
I'd just like to give a shout out to Chris Wiggins, the voice of Pa Spademinder. He was one of the classic "Hey, it's that guy!" actors of Canadian television, showing up in everything from The Forest Rangers and Swiss Family Robinson to Road to Avonlea, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, and Earth: Final Conflict to one of the lead roles on Friday the 13th: The Series.
He also did a lot of voice work, including Care Bears, Droids and Ewoks (also done by Nelvana) to one of the best roles ever: Infinata of Dementia Five!
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 12, 2020 23:31:15 GMT -5
Thanksgiving in the Land of Oz (1980)
The Wizard of Oz, the beloved 1939 musical, is under copyright protection until at least 2035. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum's original novel, has been in the public domain for over sixty years, and the rest of his numerous sequels are also there. That means that anyone who wants to make a "sequel" to the movie can legally do so, just as long as they avoid the specific copyrighted portions of the film (namely the music, costume, makeup, and design choices, and story elements specific the movie). And filmmakers have, from big-budget movies such as Return to Oz and Oz the Great and Powerful to cheap animated specials.
CBS, which for years presented the movie on an annual basis, was the original home of Thanksgiving in the Land of Oz, though I don't know if they specifically commissioned it or bought the project during or after completion. Either way, it takes the book's approach of presenting the events as really happening rather than all being a dream, like in the movie. It, like many of the other specials, seems to have very little to do with Thanksgiving.
The story starts with Dorothy encountering the Wizard at the Kansas farm, whose giant green turkey balloon quickly takes her, Toto, and a mince pie right back to Oz. There, they encounter Jack Pumpkinhead (an original Baum character, who first appeared in the second Oz book) and the evil Tyrone the Toy Tinker (created for the special), who has a plot to bring an army of giant tin solders to life and march on the Emerald City. Quickly stealing the Powder of Life Jack was guarding, Tyrone brings the turkey balloon to life, leaving Dorothy, Jack, and the pie (which also came to life) to chase after him. Along the way, they encounter two more Baum characters, the Hungry Tiger and Tik-Tok, a wind-up robot, as they make their way to the castle.
Like Intergalactic Thanksgiving, this special could probably have used a longer running time. It feels very rushed, and the journey to Tyrone's castle seems to hardly take any time at all, with most of it given over to the introduction of the Tiger. That said, I'm not sure if a longer version would have been better. An hour run time would have likely made it even more obvious that Jack, Tik-Tok, and the Tiger were simply stand-ins for the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion (the pie, on the other hand, is fine standing on its own). Plus, there isn't a doubt about the outcome from the beginning. Of course Dorothy will convince Tyrone to become good, via mediocre song.
As I said, the actual Thanksgiving content is minimal, so much so that the special was eventually renamed Dorothy in the Land of Oz, apparently to allow showings any time of the year. Thanksgiving is primarily mentioned only when the Wizard is discussing the turkey balloon, and the song that convinces Tyrone to reform keeps pointing out that Christmas was just around the corner. And that's it.
Speaking of Intergalactic Thanksgiving, this one also has the vocal talents of Sid Caesar, who played the Wizard (who was also the special's narrator) as well as the pie. Tyrone was voiced by veteran voice actor Robert Ridgeley, who achieved some live-action recognition late in his life thanks to roles in films such as Philadelphia and Boogie Nights.
All in all, Thanksgiving in the Land of Oz isn't terrible, but it's not exactly inspired either. This one might be primarily for young kids who love the movie and for Oz completists. Everyone else can look for a better special.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 16, 2020 16:57:39 GMT -5
The Berenstain Bears Meet Bigpaw (1980)
The Berenstain Bears have been around since 1962, providing young kids with easy-to-read storybooks chronicling the adventures of the titular bear family (who at no point seem to answer to the name "Berenstain"). There's intelligent and pragmatic Mama, silly and somewhat dim Papa, and the cubs, which, depending on when the particular book was written, could number from one to three. The popularity of the series eventually led to holiday specials, the first of which, naturally about Christmas, premiered in 1979. It was followed slightly less than a year later by the Thanksgiving special, The Berenstain Bears Meet Bigpaw.
Like most of the other specials so far, this takes a generic storyline and dresses it up in a Thanksgiving costume. As the special opens, Mama Bear, who is apparently a fortune teller, uses honey residue to predict the return of Bigpaw, a giant bear whose exact size seems to fluctuate from scene to scene. Legend has it that, if bears are selfish and greedy, he will return at Thanksgiving to devour everyone and everything, but Papa Bear, after expressing some concern, laughs it off. Of course, Mama Bear is right, and Bigpaw is returning. This knowledge naturally leads to panic in the local bear town, but having encountered him, Brother and Sister Bear realize he's friendly, but can't convince the townsbears until its almost too late.
Yes, this special is all about not judging a book by its cover and all that. We get a few comic scenes of the inept townspeople trying to prepare, a song from Mama Bear that is weirdly reminiscent of the closing song from Oh, Streetcar!, except sincere, right before a scene straight out of Frankenstein, with the townsbears arriving at Bigpaw's mountain and him planning to retaliate. Don't worry, though, as no one actually gets hurt.
This probably entertained young children (who also might have enjoyed the special's rhyming structure), but it's not a particularly well-made show. The script is predictable, and the message is heavy-handed. Still, the songs are surprisingly decent (even Mama's Streetcar song), and the lesson is a good one.
After The Berenstain Bears Meet Bigpaw, there was an Easter special (which I reviewed back in 2016) and a Valentine's special, before a CBS Saturday morning series began in 1985. Another series, produced by Canadian animation company Nelvana (the creators of Intergalactic Thanksgiving) premiered in 2003 on PBS. The books themselves continue to be published, though now that creators Stan and Jan Berenstain have both passed away, their sons continue on the legacy. No matter what you think of this special, the Berenstain Bears have a secure legacy.
Next time: Two specials that are essentially clip shows.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 17, 2020 18:11:48 GMT -5
Bugs Bunny's Thanksgiving Diet (1978)/Daffy Duck's Thanks-For-Giving Special (1980)
From the late 70s onward, for whatever reason, no one at the animation department of Warner Bros. seemed to be all that interested in coming up with a new Looney Tunes special that incorporated all-new footage to tell one half-hour story. The specials were either clip shows, with about five minutes of new footage and about twenty newly recorded lines from Mel Blanc to wrap around numerous clips from the classic theatrical releases from the 40s through the 60s, or presented three brand-new shorts, which would be inserted into the rotation of The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Show (and later, The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show).
The two Looney Tunes Thanksgiving specials, neither of which have much to do with Thanksgiving, are both clip shows, though the second, Daffy Duck's Thanks-For-Giving Special, also included the debut of a brand new short.
The first special to debut, Bugs Bunny's Thanksgiving Diet, was directed by David Detiege, an associate of Friz Freleng. The premise was that Bugs had, rather inexplicitly, become a diet doctor, and his new patient was Millicent, a large, yellow rabbit with an Eastern European accent who had previously appeared only in Robert McKimson's largely forgettable 1957 short "Rabbit Romeo". Twenty-one years later, she needs Bugs to help her lose weight. To accomplish this, he tells her stories that set up various clips.
While McKimson is represented by the Tasmanian Devil short "Bedeviled Rabbit", and Chuck Jones via clips of several Coyote/Roadrunner shorts, much of the special is made up of Freleng's output, most prominently via the Yosemite Sam short "Rabbit Every Monday" and the Sylvester short "Canned Feud". The special was fine for what it was, but like all clip shows, it was a bit pointless. After all, all the shorts shown would eventually pop up in the Saturday morning rotation, so why only show brief clips?
Two years later, Jones got to make his own Thanksgiving special, with the focus squarely on Daffy. If Thanksgiving Diet's connection to the holiday was rather tenuous, Daffy Duck's Thanks-For-Giving Special was almost non-existent. In the cold open, Daffy discusses how he wants to turn Thanksgiving into a day when people honor him, but that premise is all largely dumped after the first commercial.
The rest of the special has Daffy trying to convince the studio's boss to let him star in a dramatic role, specifically the one in the script he had brought, for "Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24 1/2th Century", a sequel to Jones's classic sci-fi spoof from 1953. We do eventually see the short in its entirety, of course, but first, we see clips from two other of Jones's Daffy films, 1958's classic "Robin Hood Daffy" and the nearly as classic 1951 Western spoof "Drip-Along Daffy". For some reason, we also have to sit though part of Freleng's rather misogynistic 1950 short "His Bitter Half", in which Daffy's dream of a life of leisure is shattered by his domineering new wife and her obnoxious brat of a son. The (at the time) new short is amusing enough, as Daffy's Duck Dodgers and Porky's space cadet encounter Marvin the Martian on a distant planet. I'd rather have watched the original short, though.
The odd thing about Thanks-For-Giving is, while the short is new, the wrap-around material is not. It's pretty much lifted whole from Jones's "The Scarlet Pumpernickel", with new dialogue recorded. Thanks to "Duck Dodgers", Thanks-For-Giving has more new footage than Thanksgiving Diet, but it employs it in odder ways.
To be honest, there's not really a good reason to watch either special. The clips are funny, but there are generally much easier ways these days to see the original shorts in whole. For Looney Tunes fans, that's what they should be doing, rather than seeing them parceled out in limited batches.
Next time: The most popular strip of the 80s closes out the decade with Thanksgiving.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 19, 2020 20:01:12 GMT -5
Garfield's Thanksgiving (1989)
When it comes to the popularity of Garfield, one of the odder disconnects has been the difference in the quality of the daily comic strip and the quality of the television shows spun off from it. To be sure, Garfield the comic strip was much better in the 80s than it is today, when it's largely a collection of lame punch lines. But even in its heyday, Garfield was mostly just a gag-a-day. The prime-time specials, however, as well as the Saturday morning series Garfield & Friends, were, for the most part, pretty terrific. As it turns out, Garfield worked better in the longer medium that TV can afford, though the talent involved in the TV production--musician Lou Rawls, who sang a number of memorable original songs, voice actor Lorenzo Music, whose wry tones breathed life into Garfield's words, and, probably most importantly, animator Phil Roman, who directed most of the early specials and produced the Saturday morning series before going on to work on some of the greatest seasons of The Simpsons--certainly didn't hurt the quality. While I don't want to oversell the Garfield TV output as unheralded gems, the shows were of consistently high quality, especially compared to most TV animation of the 1980s.
Garfield's Thanksgiving closed out the 80s in style, premiering only a few weeks before the end of the decade. It's probably one of the weaker Garfield specials, and definitely the least of the three holiday-based specials after Garfield's Halloween Adventure and A Garfield Christmas. Still, its a solid half-hour, and one, that unlike most of the Thanksgiving specials covered by this column, is actually about Thanksgiving.
For a show called Garfield's Thanksgiving, the focus is less on Garfield and more on his owner Jon, who finally convinced Garfield's vet, Liz, to go out with him, specifically to come over for homemade Thanksgiving dinner. The sequence where he asks her out has not aged well, as Jon refuses to take no for an answer, and ultimately resorts to holding his breath until Liz agrees. Her decision to accept the date is odd, given that she had already rejected Jon three times in that one short scene, and that was before he acted like a three-year-old, but hey, the story needs to be moved along.
Of course, Jon has no idea how to cook Thanksgiving dinner, which he doesn't realize until the still-frozen turkey is being put in the oven at 500 degrees. Luckily, Garfield convinced Jon to call his grandmother, played by Pat Carroll, whose late-in-the-show appearance livens things up considerably. Carroll, whose arguably most famous role, as Ursula the Sea Witch in The Little Mermaid, had opened the Friday before this originally aired, is a delight, though she doesn't get nearly enough screentime. Her character also helped highlight the special's touch of misogyny. Liz not only went out with a guy who held his breath until she said yes, but apparently, she had nothing better to do on Thanksgiving. Neither did Grandma, who was nearby and happy to drop whatever she had planned to bail her grandson out. Even worse, she slipped out before dinner. Why didn't she stay? And why wasn't Jon already spending Thanksgiving with her?
These flaws aside, at least Garfield's Thanksgiving actually involves the holiday. Yes, a story about Jon getting someone to prepare dinner for his date could have been done anytime of year, but the story still involves Thanksgiving traditions, and likely wouldn't have been as potent set on any average day. That gives it some extra points.
This was near the end of the line for Garfield's primetime specials. The Saturday morning series was already into its second season, and there would be only two more primetime specials over the next two years. This was also Carroll's final time as Grandma. While Garfield continues to be popular (Bill Murray, of course, voiced the cat in two live-action feature films during the aughts, and a CGI Garfield series aired from 2009 to 2016, with another one in development), he will certainly not have the cultural impact he had in the 1980s. Garfield's Thanksgiving served as a capper for that run.
Next time: Thanksgiving across the pond.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 22, 2020 21:27:25 GMT -5
A Winnie the Pooh Thanksgiving (1998)
There isn't really a reason in the world for there to be a Winnie the Pooh Thanksgiving special. The stories takes place in England, where Thanksgiving is not celebrated. But Disney, which has owned the rights to A.A. Milne's characters since the early 1960s, already had Christmas and Halloween specials involving them, so why not one involving a holiday that none of them were likely to celebrate?
To be fair, A Winnie the Pooh Thanksgiving is fairly delightful, as are most of Disney's productions involving the characters. And given that, other than Christopher Robin, none of the characters speak with British accents, its relatively easy to pretend that they're all proud American animals.
The plot involves Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Owl, Tigger, and Gopher coming together to celebrate the holiday, each bringing a contribution to the dinner, such as honey, acorns, and melted ice cream. This doesn't sit well with fussy Rabbit at all, who decides that what everyone needs is a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with traditional Thanksgiving foods, such as turkey and cranberry sauce. Taking charge, he divvies up responsibility to finding and preparing the new meal to the others, without actually making sure any of them know what they're doing. Of course, this can only lead to disaster.
Rabbit seems to have decided whose doing what on the basis of comedy, for example assigning Pooh and Piglet the task of catching a turkey, even though the two of them have no idea what a turkey looks like nor how to capture it.
Of course, the point of a special like this is not to present unexpected twists and turns (only small children will probably be surprised by the outcome). It's always nice to spend time with Pooh and Piglet and Tigger, and indeed the special suffers when it shifts its focus to the much less interesting character of Gopher and Owl (whose subplot is generally played more for slapstick laughs than even Tigger and Eeyore's). There's also a nice message at the end. The original songs are largely forgettable, though. This also marked one of the final times that Paul Witchell, one of only two original cast members (along with Piglet voice John Fiedler) still playing the characters at that point, would play Tigger.
A Winnie the Pooh Thanksgiving is a step down from the theatrical shorts, and even prior TV specials. But its sweet and has a good message, and given the affection we naturally have for the characters, that's enough.
Next time: The most famous--and most unconventional--animated Thanksgiving dinner ever.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 24, 2020 17:05:13 GMT -5
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973)
For the first nine entries of A MarkInTexas Made-For-TV Thanksgiving Dinner, I discussed the various specials in roughly chronological order of their debuts. So, by rights, this should have been the third or fourth entry, after The Mouse on the Mayflower and The Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn't, and either right before or right after B.C.: The First Thanksgiving, which also debuted in 1973. But it felt weird to put what is easily the most iconic Thanksgiving special in the middle of the pack like that, surrounded by shows that have long since been forgotten. Indeed, as the uproar over Apple purchasing the rights of the Peanuts specials for their fledgling streaming service showed, Charlie Brown and company remain evergreen, even though it's been over 20 years since Charles Schultz died.
Of the Big Three Peanuts holiday specials, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is the weakest, as it doesn't really have the heart or pathos of A Charlie Brown Christmas or It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. This one goes more for humor, and the moment when Peppermint Patty berates Charlie Brown for his Thanksgiving dinner doesn't come close to matching the emotional trauma of Charlie Brown's hope that his sad little tree being what saves the pageant being crushed by the derisive laughter of his so-called friends. But still, being more interested in laughs than emotions is not a sin, and the special is quite funny.
The plot is pretty simple. Charlie Brown finds himself with three unplanned-for Thanksgiving guests when Peppermint Patty invites herself, Marcie, and Franklin over for dinner, even though the Browns won't even be home, as they'll be at Charlie Brown's grandmother's condo for the big meal (naturally, Charlie Brown is so overwhelmed by the sheer force of Peppermint Patty that he can barely get a word in edgewise while on the phone with her). Linus comes up with an elegant solution--since his family doesn't have to be at his grandmother's until 4:30, they can serve their own dinner earlier in the afternoon. Of course, being kids who aren't exactly adept at cooking, they have no idea how to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner. It's Snoopy (and Woodstock) to the rescue, preparing a meal that is decidedly non-traditional. Given the number of people who are being forced, for the first time, to cook Thanksgiving dinner themselves this year, Snoopy's dinner of popcorn and toast and jelly beans might be more relatable than ever.
The special does limit the cast list, with Lucy being limited to the cold opening (where she once again yanks the football away from the ever-gullible Charlie Brown), and Sally being the only other major character. The decision to include Franklin as one of the guests was probably a political decision by Schultz and the producers, given that the civil rights movement was still going on and integration was still being resisted in large portions of the South. That said, it seems like the producers hedged their bets by giving Franklin one long side of the table to himself while crowding Charlie Brown, Sally, Peppermint Patty, and Snoopy onto the other side. Also, given the recent meme that Peppermint Patty and Marcie are lesbians, it seems obvious that both have a big crush on Charlie Brown, who remains utterly oblivious.
After briefly seeming like it would not air on broadcast TV for the first time in decades, Apple struck a deal with PBS, which aired it last weekend (PBS will also air A Charlie Brown Christmas in December). In this pandemic year, when every other Thanksgiving special over the years has been largely forgotten, it's good that some traditions will last. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving may not be the finest Peanuts special, but it's excellent annual comfort food and the best of the all the Thanksgiving specials.
Next time: This is it for A MarkInTexas Made-For-TV Thanksgiving Dinner. On Saturday, however, will be the first installment of this year's A MarkInTexas Made-For-TV Christmas, when I'll be taking a look at one of the most beloved of British Christmas specials.
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