What A Cartoon! - A Charlie Brown Christmas

Have you considered a WAC anti death jingle?

Boomer Spacely

Bob, you asked why 'Christmas Time Is Here' sounds so melancholy, and if it's in a minor key. It's not in a minor key, although there is a line of descending minor chords under the "Fun for all that children call" part. But more than the minor chords what makes the song sound so melancholy is the very jazzy chord progression and chord choices. The melody and underlying chords use intervals that, outside of jazz, are pretty uncommon. I won't go too deep into jazz harmony, but I'll explain a little. All chords either build tension or relieve tension ("resolve") relative to the root key. Same goes for the melody. The melody can land on notes that increase tension, or increase a sense of resolution. This song has crazy amounts of tension in the harmony, and very little (traditional) resolution. The "here" in "christmas time is here" lands on a tritone in relation to the bass note, and the tritone is a very tense interval that you don't normally hear emphasized in popular melodies. Also, the song uses "modal interchange," or "borrowing chords" from a scale other than the one you're in. There's even more I could talk about, but I wouldn't know where to stop. So, in short, this song is very "jazzy" and jazz uses a lot of tension notes in the chords and melody.

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Angel

Talking Trees was in your "In Marge We Trust" episode (I remember because I brought up the topic)

nina matsumoto

The pacing is definitely odd and some of the voice acting leaves something to be desired (though in general I love the unprofessional way it sounds since it's like actual children), but it's always amazing revisiting Charlie Brown and seeing how well it holds up compared to other (regularly-produced) cartoons of the 1960s.

Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag

Speaking of aged card bubble gum, back in Feb of 1990 a friend got two big gifts for his birthday - Mario 3 and some packs of unopened baseball cards from the 60s. Being an outgoing child I jumped to try the gum. For a moment it was the taste of gum distilled into a moment, then just gray awful death.

Mat Segal

These Christmas specials really bring out a special kind of nostalgia in me. When I was very little my grandfather (an otherwise no nonsense man) collected the Charlie Brown Christmas specials from the Shell gas station the next town over. Probably because he himself was a Charlie & a child of the great depression. They were the only VHS tapes at my grandparents house growing up so needless to say I watched them backwards and forward. They were a great insight to me about my grandfather, who died when I was nine. Watching them with me was the only time I ever saw him laugh. I can still remember taking note of the "real estate" joke because I didn't get it at the time but it made him laugh harder than anything. I credit him & Charlie Brown for my appreciation of that dry sense of humor as an adult. Though I refuse to acknowledge the new CG Charlie Brown, these Christmas specials will always have a place in my heart.

I appreciate Charles Schultz more and more the older I get. As a stupid kid I didn't get the actual message of either the Christmas or Halloween special, but watching them as a more mature adult(ish) there's a lot more being said than just 'good grief! And' blockhead '.

John Harrison

I can see people detesting Christmas lights for being tacky, or for being annoying if you have a neighbor blasting colored lights through your living room window. Mostly though, practical folks probably hated Christmas lights because of the cost. Those old bulbs guzzled electricity and gave off considerable heat leading to obnoxious electric bills when you probably least need an added expense. I put a few lights out for Christmas each year and notice a spike in my utilities even with the lights being minimal, LED, and on a timer so they're not running all night long. I loved this special as a kid and still enjoy it as an adult, but is it wrong to like The Great Pumpkin more? I still don't know why I liked this as a kid since it's so slow. The music helped and some of the little jokes, like everything involving Snoopy and Lucy, definitely worked on me. Mostly it was probably just repetition. I watched a Christmas VHS my mom made so many times that I had to like everything, even if this one was the last thing standing between me and The Grinch, the greatest holiday special ever created. It never fails to amuse me though how I just associate this thing with commercials as a result of that tape. And if you're curious, Oreo, York Peppermint Patties, and McDonald's were the big sponsors of 1987. It was a good time, for the great taste, of McDonald's.

Joe Hodgson

An absolute classic and a Christmas tradition in my family for as far back as I can remember. Christmas Time is Here is a favorite, especially the instrumental version.

Frank Grimes

Just watched on Hulu, and Good Grief! Had forgotten my ad-free subscription had lapsed and had no idea how absurd the ad breaks were...upwards of four minutes or more in the brief time of the show. Ad breaks of 30-90 seconds are tolerable when watching Bob's Burgers or The Connors, but when I saw the little ad wheel start spinning at 300+ seconds, really? Guess they get the most out of the season but never would it have been so bad on a network back in the halcyon (😉😉) 20th Century. That being said it's been decades since I revisited the show, and enjoyed far more as a cranky middle aged man that I did as a cranky ass punk. And very much anticipating your review, as always. See you at PianoFight next month!

Timothy Burleson