The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974)
Of all the Rankin/Bass specials I've seen this year, I think I like this one least. Oh, it's not all bad by a long stretch. The Snow Miser and Heat Miser are fantastic, inventive characters: hell, they're the reason everyone remembers this as fondly as they do. The thing is, those two are just about the only aspects of this special that are any good. The rest of it is an incoherent mess. There's no real rhyme or reason for anything that occurs, and the vast majority of characters are just bizarre and random. There's a song that emotionally blackmails a kid into believing in Santa Claus I find particularly disturbing. I'm all for encouraging kids to hold on to imagination and fantasy, but that doesn't mean it's okay to suppress rational thought and skepticism. I like the idea of giving Mrs. Claus a chance to shine, but she mostly comes off as incompetent here (not to mention reckless: she almost gets a couple elves and a reindeer killed, then