Mainlining Christmas

Just to recap, this is the sequel to the spin-off of the Christmas-themed installment of the direct-to-video series that was spun-off of the direct-to-video sequels of two theatrical movies loosely based on a dog who played Comet on Full House. Got it? Good. You bet your ass there'll be a test later. This one's... complicated, actually. There are three credited writers on IMDB, which doesn't surprise me. Because, believe it or not, I think one of those writers might have been competent. That isn't to say the script or movie are good, per se. Most of the movie is utterly painful, there are astonishingly stupid plot decisions, the characters are vapid, and there are real reasons to think that the people who wrote this didn't even bother watching the prior films (not that I blame them). But, all that said, there were a handful of scenes where the quality of dialogue climbed substantially, and there were a few choices that were - dare I say - not idiotic in natu

Throw The A-Team and Ocean's Eleven into a blender and hit puree, and you get Leverage , a series about four semi-reformed thieves teaming up with a semi-unreformed insurance investigator in order to take on corrupt politicians, heartless corporations, and rich crime bosses to steal back what they've taken from "the little guy." If the concept sounds a touch sappy, rest assured the series itself is a lot of fun. A sentence or two of cheesy moralizing every episode is a small price to pay for great characters (any one of the show's five leads could hold down a series of their own), tightly-plotted stories, and hilarious situations. In other words, the series is definitely worth your time. The Christmas episodes are, as well, though they're not the best jumping-on points. "The Ho, Ho, Ho Job" starts like most episodes, with a guest star showing up with a sob story. This time, the wronged individual is a mall Santa Claus who's been framed fo

Do not make the same mistake we made: do not start with this episode. I've always kind of liked Scooby-Doo as a concept and as an early attempt at animated horror/comedy. But I've never actually seen an approach that worked. The originals had some cool designs on some of the monsters, but the stories were never interesting. Well, this is where that changes. Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated updates the concept and characters in a way that remains true to the show's original concept and history, while simultaneously offering extremely intelligent writing, complex character and relationship development, as well as multi-season plot arcs with satisfying payoffs along with way. I don't just mean "satisfying for a cartoon," either: this is the kind of in-depth, multi-dimensional story telling that's rare on live-action TV. We, of course, stumbled across it because of the Christmas episode. Only it's not really  a Christmas episode, at all. The hoo

If you're like most people who have seen Prometheus, you're likely wondering why I'm talking about it on a blog devoted to Christmas. Actually, if you're like most people who saw the movie, you're probably more interested in when you're going to get the two hours you wasted watching it back. Well, I can't help with the second question, but I can shed some light on the first: I'm talking about Prometheus here because it's a Christmas movie. No, really. The crew of the ship wake from cryo-sleep a few days before Christmas. One of them sets up a Christmas tree. There's some subtle Christmas music in at least one scene. The sole survivor flies away on New Years Day. Oh, and the movie is about Christmas. That last statement is 100% true and at least twice as meaningless. This is because Prometheus is about a lot of things. It's about faith as it pertains to God and the concept of God as it doesn't pertain to faith. It's about sacri

There are other Power Rangers Christmas episodes, but this is the one that Erin found on Netflix. It’s a humdinger. I knew something was drastically wrong after the Rangers defeated a monster in the first 5 minutes of the episode. Then their giant robot loses power and it becomes an excuse for a really crummy clip show. You can have no idea how terrible this was. The acting was beyond ridiculous. The ‘comic relief’ was horrible, and the action/drama was hilarious. There is tons of terrible, extraneous Christmas-pun flavored banter. Only it’s not banter when you’re just yelling ‘quips’ (using that term extremely loosely) at a red-and-green monster. Yes, the monster is red-and-green, and has what looks like a giant ear around one shoulder and a mouth on the other. I laughed a lot and very loudly while watching this episode, but it was not at anything that the creators intended to be funny. The kids say over and over how sad they are to be trapped in their giant robot on Christmas

Read Part One Symphony of Illumination (2011) Theres a nice punchline on the cold opening on this one and some pretty okay jokes about Christmas music. Unfortunately, the episode drags badly in the middle and the B plot is awful. Many of the characters drifted into over-caricaturization here, it was jarring and boring. The end of Robin’s plot has a really nice dark tone though. The Over-Correction (2012) There are three, count them three, episodes set at Christmas that ran back-to-back-to-back in 2012. Unfortunately, our early thought on this episode was: ‘Hey, we found where the show jumped the shark,’ There’s a lot of bad randomness in the early parts of this episode. (WHY IS COBIE SMULDERS CRAZY NOW? Also, the lack of coherency in the emotional arcs isn’t just me with no context:  AVClub gave this one a C+ .) Finally the plot of the episode comes together and it builds for a while into some honest laughs. Christmas ornaments featured heavily in the best running gag of the

Freakonomics did a 15-minute podcast on Christmas gifts last year . It features an extended interview with Steve Levitt, who offers some surprisingly sweet advice on gift-giving. In addition, you get a handful of clips with other economists on the subject, most of which serve as good reminders that economists are extremely intelligent creatures which shouldn't interact with humans. It's certainly worth a listen, but then Freakonomics usually is.

I haven’t been keeping up with Castle this season, so I don’t know whether this is normal now, but this was heavier on the melodrama than I really like. Now, there was also plenty of charm in this episode, particularly at the beginning. Castle and Beckett investigate a dead man in a Santa suit who, predictably, fell mysteriously out of the sky. The case is interesting, and the banter is fun, but all the little sad subplots about the various characters got a bit tedious. Not every named character needs angst! Plus, I am really tired of Beckett having only the one character trait for every occasion. (Best line of the night: after Beckett explained how the long-ago death of her mother keeps her from enjoying Christmas, Erin leaned over to me and whispered “So she became...a BAT.”) All of that said, I did still enjoy watching this. I don’t know how much fun it is in total for someone who isn’t familiar with the show, but Erin seemed to really enjoy the first half or so, although by

I was flipping through shows on Hulu (every year they compile a list of Christmas episodes and specials available ), and I saw an episode of Suburgatory titled "Krampus." Calling something "Krampus" is a good way to pique my interest, so I hit play. Keep in mind I don't remember ever hearing of "Suburgatory" before, so I was going in blind. It was certainly an odd thing to jump into. It seems to revolve around a teenage girl, Tessa, who's recently moved to "the suburbs" with her single father. The focus jumped around a lot, so a good portion of the episode was devoted to minor characters. Also, the show wasn't entirely episodic, so a lot the plot lines were continued from previous episodes (though, in Christmas tradition, it seemed to wrap most of them up). There was a lot going on here, but three plots seemed to be the most significant: Tess went to spend Christmas with her (newly discovered) mother. Her neighbor discovered

As everyone knows by now, the prophesied end of days is scheduled for today. The way I see it, anything that occurs in mid-to-late December is, by definition, part of Christmas, so I wanted to offer some insight into our world's horrible demise as it happens. Unfortunately, I've got some last-minute Christmas shopping to do, so I'm not going to be able to give the 2012 apocalypse as much attention as I was hoping to. Nevertheless, throughout the day I'll be updating this post, so you can follow along. Note : all times are Pacific Standard. 9:04 AM : So far, things are pretty quiet out here. Sky's are kind of blood-red, but it's still just raining. It's a little cold, I guess. 9:06 AM : Checking the morning news. Most news sites are reporting the East Coast was swallowed by the ocean. Fox News is claiming liberal bias. 9:08 AM : Small, fiery rock crashed through window. Gonna have to board that up later. Kind of reminds me of the movie "Armaged

We got a tip (thanks, Mom!) that this new special was going to be airing on network TV, so we sat down to check it out. Now, I’m only passing familiar with Spongebob, although that’s more than Erin is. My takeaway from this is mostly that I respect the attempt, but don’t think it fully came together. Maybe it’s funnier if you know the show better. This episode was entirely filmed in stop-motion, and the effort is appreciated, although it’s not an unusual choice these days when one wants to evoke the feeling of Christmas specials past. (See Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas for a better example.) However, I’m not sure all the character designs really make sense in three dimensions, particularly when they tried to replicate some visual tropes of the usual animation. The sets were neat, though, and while I didn’t ever think the voices completely matched the fuzzy little dolls, the aesthetic of the thing overall was kind of cool. The story follows the villain Plankton trying to get

Generation X Holiday Spectacular (1995) Scott Lobdell, Chris Bachalo, Mark Buckingham This little story about Generation X (Generation X is a team of teenage X-men, mostly second and third stringers I don’t know much about) intervening in a hostage situation in a Maine town isn’t terribly holiday related except for the snow. And the fact that the narration seems to be done by an elf hiding around the edges of the panels. That doesn’t have any bearing on the story, though. It’s okay, I guess, although the little snippets of characters unconnected to the story are more interesting than the story itself, and the villain seems awfully annoying. Generation X Holiday Special (1998) Joseph Harris, Adam Pollina, et.al. The same super-lame villains strike again, this time trying to kidnap a kid on Christmas Eve who’s only wish for Santa is to not be a mutant. The art is stronger in this one, and there’s some interesting snippets of character stuff early on when all the young mutants

About ten years ago I wrote a novel called For Love of Children  about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy teaming up to (among other things) fight the Bogeyman. I spent a lot of time trying to find an agent, but no was interested in something that out there. Three years ago I gave up and published it myself. At about the same time, Dreamworks started production on Rise of the Guardians, a movie about five characters (included the aforementioned 'big three') teaming up to fight the Bogeyman. I've been asked by several people if they stole the idea from me. The answer is no: they announced production had started a few weeks before  I released my book. So unless they had access to a time machine, they couldn't have heard about it beforehand (and, so far as I know, they still haven't). They based the movie on a series of books William Joyce was working on at the time (these started getting released last year). I keep meaning to check those out but ha