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Saved by the Bell: Home for Christmas, parts 1 and 2 (1991)

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I place Saved by the Bell in a similar category with Full House. Both shows aired around the same time, and many in my generation - myself included - are growing nostalgic for the joy of hating them. Looking back, I'm not entirely sure how Saved by the Bell was green lit, produced, aired for multiple seasons, or made money. I don't think I've ever met anyone who unironically liked it. The series was truly and profoundly idiotic. It was aimed squarely at teenagers, but it talked down to its viewer, offering overly simplified solutions to watered-down problems. Take this two-parter from the show's third season, for example. As far as I can tell, this is the only Christmas episode produced for the main series. It centers around a Christmas play the kids are putting on in the mall and a homeless teenage girl Zack has a crush on. Laura is living out of a car with her father, who's unable to find work due to lacking a physical address. She works in the mall, but o

Dennis the Menace Christmas Episodes (1959 - 1961)

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I know I saw a few episodes of this as a child, but I really can't remember any specifics. My assumption when we turned this on was that it was going to be painful - things from this era usually are, and I've burned by quite a few family-friendly comedies in the past. However, this one left me pleasantly surprised for the most part: two of the three episodes were pretty good. The Christmas Story (1959) This episode from the series' first season revolves around Dennis's attempts to see his Christmas gifts early. Almost immediately, we're told that Dennis manages to find and examine his gifts early every year, which removes any sense of mystery. This year, his father's decided things will be different: rather than hiding Dennis's presents in their house, he brings them next door to Mr. Wilson's, who's more than happy to help thwart Dennis. But all this backfires when Dennis concocts a plan to locate his presents. Since his parents won't

Book Review: Jingle Belle - The Whole Package

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Jingle Belle - The Whole Package Paul Dini, et al., 2016 Premise: Santa’s got a daughter, and she’s been a rebellious teenager for longer than most humans live. Apparently Paul Dini has been writing short comic adventures starring Jingle Belle, Santa’s spoiled teenage daughter, off and on since 1999. This thick volume collects nearly all of them: 28 short pieces according to the credits pages. I was actually pleasantly surprised by some of the early stories - despite being very slapstick on the surface, Jingle’s mix of anger, mischief, caring and defiance often felt like a fairly honest representation of a teenage girl. Jingle’s been a teenager for a long time, too. Her mother is queen of the elves and her father is Santa, so she’s been “sixteen” for many years. She doesn’t have patience for holiday sappiness, and she’s usually lazy, thoughtless and out for herself. She’s eternally frustrated that no one in the world at large knows about her. When she does try to be “good,”

Unexpected Peppermint 2016: Andes Peppermint Crunch Thins

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A few years ago we chronicled some of the odd uses of peppermint that appear in stores around this time of year. Here’s another for the list. Andes Mints are, of course, already mint, but these are both explicitly peppermint and in shiny red packaging. Between this and the Peppermint Crunch Junior Mints (which are back this year, by the way), we've learned that the way you make something mint more Christmassy is by adding crunch .  I did not know Christmas was crunchy.  I assume that in both cases it's intended to be like bits of broken candy cane?  The candy wrappers definitely have a candy cane thing going on. The actual mints are... okay. They aren't as good as normal Andes Mints, the white chocolate-ish substance is okay, but the crunchy bits actually take away from the texture. This is actually my favorite part. The package has some extra cardboard on the sides to prevent the mints from getting crushed (I believe this is the case

Target: The Toycracker (2016)

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Depending on how generous you're feeling, The Toycracker can either be described as a live-action short film, an extended commercial, or the fourth seal of the apocalypse slowly peeling away to open the floodgates and usher in the end of days. It's not exactly bad, per se; it's more that it's something that should not be. Its very existence is an affront to the world we know and the already fractured boundary between entertainment and advertisement. It's the final stage in the unnatural evolution that started decades ago when toy companies infected Saturday morning cartoons. As the name sort of implies, The Toycracker is ostensibly a re-imagined Nutcracker. It starts out that way in a semi-clever scene where a modern Clara sings about losing WiFi on Christmas Eve to Waltz of the Flowers. Then she falls asleep and wakes in a version of the classic "giant Christmas tree" set, where she meets the Nutcracker, played by Chrissy Teigen, who starts singing

Trapped in Paradise (1994)

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We’ve had a lot of firsts here at Mainlining Christmas. Our first movie, our first book review, our first watch-all-the-holiday-episodes-in-a-series binge… but this one is special. This is our first Christmas movie starring Nicolas Cage. Trapped in Paradise is the story of how Erin and I were trapped in hell for a very long two hours. The movie follows Bill (Cage) and his two idiot brothers, who are getting out of prison early for Christmas. One brother (Alvin, Dana Carvey) is apparently a kleptomaniac and the other (Dave, Jon Lovitz) is a liar and schemer. Bill hates them, yet is too stupid too see through a series of pathetic ploys that send them all fleeing New York for Paradise, Pennsylvania. Ostensibly, they’re there on behalf of a fellow inmate, who asked Dave to intercede with his estranged daughter. In fact, they’re there to pull an easy bank job and steal the town’s Christmas fund. Or something. The explanation for what the money is and how the town functions is pret

Happy Endings: Grinches Be Crazy (2011) and No-Ho-Ho (2012)

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According to the internet, a lot of people were devastated when this series was cancelled after its third season. This knowledge leads me to one of three conclusions: 1. This is one of those shows you need to watch for a while before it gets good. 2. This is a case where some episodes are much stronger than others. 3. This show's fan are extremely generous viewers. We absolutely hated these two episodes. The characters felt two-dimensional and dull, the stories were absurdly idiotic, and the tone didn't gel with the writing. I kept thinking I was watching a live-action show set in the world of Family Guy. This is (yet another) circle-of-friends sitcom in the vein of, well, Friends. It goes for a farcical, over-the-top tone, like the far superior Community, but I didn't feel like it committed enough to sell it. As a result, it came off as unrealistic people behaving unrealistically. I knew intellectually that was supposed to be funny, but I just didn't enjoy it