The 8 Thanksgiving Specials No One Is Thankful For
Posted at 5:05 AM Nov 25, 2008
By Teague BohlenAh, holiday TV specials. Since the 1960s, kids have looked forward to these as a serious part of each season. What's Halloween without fruitlessly waiting for the Great Pumpkin? What's Christmas without Grinch threatening to steal the whole thing, or Rudolph befriending an obviously gay elf with a tooth fetish?
But Thanksgiving specials? Yeah, sort of suck. They never really caught on, which at first might seem weird, considering that Thanksgiving is a lot about watching TV. Eating too, of course, but the TV is always on in most Turkey-Day homes--football, Macy's Parade, or the Dog Show that NBC keeps claiming is a holiday tradition (it's not). But if you look at the specials that were made for the November holiday, it starts to make more sense, since as I said above, they just suck. Better, perhaps, to track down the Turkey-Drop episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, perhaps the only true Thanksgiving television worth watching, than any of these eight that follow.
8) A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
I know, I know: heresy! But seriously, this is the worst of a very good set of early Peanuts specials. And it wasn't even all that early; it ran in 1973, and was the tenth special in less than eight years, so maybe the mileage was beginning to show. The worst part of the special is sadly the very thing that made the Christmas and Halloween specials so memorable: the moral. And the moral of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is basically this: that Peppermint Patty is an obtrusive bitch. She supposedly learns her lesson, thanks in part to a Pilgrim quote by walking religious-reference Linus, but if you followed Patty as a character, you know: she so didn't.
7) Garfield's Thanksgiving
Only those who still have a Garfield wastebasket or an Odie and Nermal poster on their cubicle wall would possibly enjoy this cartoon. For those of us who can only enjoy Garfield now by omitting Garfield completely (in the inspired web-comic Garfield Minus Garfield), it's a discomfiting reminder that the fat cat's years of success isn't so much a triumph of cartooning artistry, but rather a triumph of marketing over substance. Garfield is, to put it simply, the anti-Calvin and Hobbes. The one saving grace of this 1989 Garfield special is that it doesn't threaten to lower our opinion of Bill Murray any further.
6) Winnie the Pooh Thanksgiving
This whole 1998 special is about the usually benevolent creatures of the Hundred Acre Wood talking about preparing Thanksgiving Dinner, which comes off as sort of dark, since these are personified animals in a world where most animals are personified, talking about catching and eating another animal. I mean come on--given the Pooh-world, there's probably a turkey named Gobbles who's paranoid all the time. And for good reason, because every November his friends talk about hunting him down, cutting off his head, stuffing his ass full of bread crumbs and thistles, slathering his naked carcass with honey, and baking him in Rabbit's oven. What's next, slaughtering Piglet for an Easter ham?
5) Thanksgiving in the Land of Oz
The what in the what now? Oz? Thanksgiving in Oz? If you're thinking this sounds like a terrible idea, you're right, but withhold judgment on how many "terribles" you might want to use until you hear the concept: Dorothy returns to Oz in a turkey balloon on the final Thanksgiving she's to spend with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry before they move to a retirement home (and apparently never have Thanksgiving again). No, that's not a wizard you see behind the curtain; that's the ghost of Frank Baum haunting the shit out of everyone responsible for this terrible 1980 travesty.
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Comments
Here in Canada, Thanksgiving specials are rendered even more uninteresting by the fact that ours is in October, when kids are getting excited about Halloween. I mean, what did you care more about as a kid: monsters and candy, or pilgrims and turkeys?
Posted 11/25/2008 at 06:21:48 AMYou realized you used the clip for #2 twice, right?
Posted 11/25/2008 at 06:34:34 AMAnd the moral of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is basically this: that Peppermint Patty is an obtrusive bitch.
THANK YOU. I've hated Peppermint Patty ever since "Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown" and the infamous "why aren't you making me bacon and eggs instead of cold cereal" scene. Ol' Chuck shouldn've thrown her out as bear food.
Posted 11/25/2008 at 06:42:21 AMThanks, DJ Maniak. I posted this while I was pre-drinking for Heroes last night, so I'm surprised there aren't more errors.
Posted 11/25/2008 at 06:54:49 AMI've never seen it but I assume you're right on the money with B.C. as #1. God, I hate that comic. Sometimes it manages to be even more annoying than Family Circus. If there's one thing worse than someone trying to shove cute kids down your throat it's someone trying to shove Jesus down your throat.
This is coming from someone who is a fairly devote christian as well.
Comics should be used to make people laugh and sometimes think like Calvin & Hobbes. They shouldn't be used as a damned soapbox.
Posted 11/25/2008 at 09:49:19 AMWhy would Winnie-the-Pooh celebrate Thanksgiving? He lives in Sussex. Where there aren't any turkeys.
Posted 11/25/2008 at 11:08:57 AMTrue enough, Ann, but then there aren't any Kangaroos either.
This list begs the question; are there any good Thanksgiving specials?
Posted 11/25/2008 at 11:13:15 AMI seem to remeber a Thanksgiving special that I loved as a kid that featured a bear and fox who ran around dressed as pilgrims.
Then again, I remember liking The Worst Witch movie (insert pun here) and it features Mrs. Garrett and her eveil twin with pink hair. ...and musical numbers - what was I thinking when I ordered that from Amazon?
Posted 11/25/2008 at 11:21:05 AMThis won't count as a Thanksgiving special, but Friends always had really good Turkey day episodes. They are actually some of my favorites.
Posted 11/25/2008 at 12:11:01 PMBill Murray did NOT do the voice of Garfield in the cartoons. It was Alonzo Morning, who did a Bill Murray impression, for Garfield, as well as voicing Murray's Peter Venkman character on the Ghostbusters cartoon series
Posted 11/25/2008 at 12:14:02 PMBAM: Alonzo Morning? Alonzo Mourning is a basketball player. You mean Lorenzo Music, who also voiced Carlton, Your Doorman, on "Rhoda". And he definitely wasn't doing a Bill Murray impression.
What the article is referring to is the fact that Bill Murray voiced Garfield in the movies. Which I agree is sort of sad for Bill Murray. A paycheck's a paycheck, I guess.
Posted 11/25/2008 at 12:24:40 PMWhich is quite ironic given that Lorenzo Music ALSO voiced Peter Venkman (i.e. The Bill Murray character) in The Real Ghostbusters cartoon and that he was reportedly replaced by Dave Coulier (and his horrible Bill Murray impression) because Murray was shown the cartoon and asked "Why the hell do I sound like Garfield?" or some such.
Posted 11/25/2008 at 12:54:12 PMWhy haven't Thanksgiving films/TV specials caught on? They pretty much all seem to suck with the exception of Eli Roth's "Thanksgiving" trailer.
Posted 11/25/2008 at 01:43:55 PMWhat, no Home Improvement thanksgiving special, with its "The writers were on acid when they wrote this" stop-motion wood puppet dream sequence?
Posted 11/25/2008 at 03:54:54 PM...Thanks for pointing out the inaity and retardedness of posting a clip to YouTube and then not allowing it to be embedded. I recommend that anyone coming across any idiot who does this that you leave negative comments as to their decision and their parentage, and then notify them you've downloaded the clip anyway using YouTube Downloader or some other plugin, so their disabling imbeds is useless anyway. If you've got the time, and the clip is worth it, repost it under a new account, and let the "embedding disabled" chumps go frack themselves.
Dumbest thing YouTube ever did was letting embeds be togglable.
Posted 11/25/2008 at 05:03:43 PMThis is too weird. I lost my virginity to the girl who did the "Dorthy" vocals in the Oz special. In 1982 she used to stayed with her grand parents next door, while Mischa's mom did dinner theater in Cleavland.
Posted 11/25/2008 at 05:25:04 PMThe B.C. special had the main character's voice more like Bill Cosby imitating Jack Benny. Or maybe Fred Travalina imitating Bill Cosby imitating Jack Benny.
Posted 11/26/2008 at 03:26:18 PM