Mainlining Christmas

Malcolm in the Middle probably owes its existence to The Simpsons. While the characters and premise aren't the same, there's a notable similarity in the show's energy, humor, and tone. The characters on Malcolm in the Middle feel animated, in a similar way. That's not to say they're shallow - I don't think that's the case for either series - merely that their emotions are exaggerated to the same degree. This isn't the first live-action show I've seen try and capture this kind of tone. The recipe for success seems to be pretty straightforward - good writing and a commitment to the premise. Shows that try to wink at the audience while building a surreal world usually come off hokey; ones that explore their world and characters honestly have a chance to create something great. Malcolm in the Middle revolves around a family of four (eventually five) sons, their irresponsible father, and their very angry mother. The series started airing in 2000, wh

In case you're not a cartoon aficionado, Teen Titans Go! is a wacky comedy starring highly stylized versions of the characters from the original Teen Titans show. It's much, much sillier, and has no or next-to-no continuity. It is not connected to the previous shows Young Justice (a serious action show about young superheroes) or Batman: The Brave and the Bold (a mix between wacky tropes and serious superhero action), or the current show Justice League Action (mostly comedic superhero action). Erin covered some of the mixed feelings we, and many fans, have about this show. I'll only add that I am personally inclined to give this a good deal of leeway. I loved the original Teen Titans, but I also like having the option of complete zaniness. Anything that punctures the self-important grimdark that has recently been a big part of DC comics is a good thing. Okay, on to the episodes! Second Christmas (2013) The Titans are celebrating Christmas with enthusiasm: food

Fanilow (2003) The season six Christmas episode begins at Grace's company holiday party. (Since it's just her and Karen, does it really count as a company party?) Will doesn't show, claiming some sort of charitable appointment, but really he's in line for tickets for a special Barry Manilow Christmas concert. Grace discovers him there and holds his spot while he goes to use a restroom. Then she spots her mother having dinner with Jack, after telling Grace she wasn't coming into town for their Hanukkah dinner. Grace deals...poorly with this, first making a scene about how she's glad her mother isn't taking up her time, and then breaking down over missing their traditions. Meanwhile, Will is in line at Subway to use the restroom and a man flirts with him awkwardly. Will brushes him off, only to discover later that he's Manilow's road manager. He tries to strike the flirtation back up, and the guy basically blackmails him into a date. This epi

Sometimes the best way to start a review is with words of wisdom from my Mainlining Christmas partner. Erin’s take: “These are all good comic actors wasting their time. These scripts really wish the show was Seinfeld.” Will and Grace was notable at the time as one of many forces that helped some people understand that gay people are just like everyone else. Now anyone can be featured in mediocre, dated sitcoms, but it was (sadly) a big deal then. Jingle Balls (2001) The first Christmas episode is in season four. Grace has found out that Will is dating a mysterious man named Robert, but he refuses to arrange for them to meet, claiming that it’s too early in the relationship. Sometime later, when Will picks up Robert for lunch, he finds out that Grace has invited him for dinner. He’s concerned, but decides it’s no big deal. When Robert comes, though, Will is incredibly self-conscious. Robert is a dancer, and he's demonstrative, flashy, and sensitive/artsy as can be. Rober

WordGirl is my go-to example when I want to argue good superhero stories can be told at any level of maturity. The series is unequivocally targeted at young kids - it's edutaiment, through and through, complete with vocabulary lessons repeated multiple times to the viewer. It's the kind of show you'd expect to be tedious and pedantic. Instead, it's ridiculous fun. The reason WordGirl works is it understands its genres. The writers clearly understand the conventions of both kids television and superheroes, and they're eager to play with both. They're willing to mock PBS conventions in a good-natured way, and they're more than happy to embrace comic book tropes. The result is a series that plays like a pureed homage to Sesame Street, Powerpuff Girls, and Superman. The holiday episode is a fine example. After the narrator introduces the episode's special words (curmudgeon and festivity, in case you were interested), the episode shifts to a brief b

I've long championed the theory that any premise, regardless of how seemingly juvenile or misguided, can be elevated to greatness if the core concept is simply taken seriously and complex emotion is added. Movies like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and shows such as My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic lend credence to this idea. It is a good theory, or - more accurately - it was  a good theory. In the space of 44 minutes, this idea was tested and soundly, undeniably refuted by a corporate cash grab so cloying, the very core is beyond salvation. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you about the show, Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures. This is a CG science-fiction/superhero adventure based on the characters from the 1980 arcade game. This isn't the first time someone's attempted to adapt Pac-Man into a television series , but it might be the first time someone tried giving it a relatively serious tone. Note I said relatively serious - this is still

The Real Ghostbusters has been largely forgotten, which is kind of a shame. The series started in 1986 and serves as something of a missing link between the comical, kid-friendly cartoons of the 80's and the more adult story-driven adventure shows of the 90's. This certainly isn't Batman: The Animated Series, but it's not Scooby-Doo, either. There were some creepy villains and monsters in this show, along with some cool concepts. The story editor was J. Michael Straczynski, who also wrote a vast number of episodes, including this one. "X-Mas Marks the Spot" was the last episode of the first season. It's set on Christmas Eve, or more accurately on two Christmas Eves. After bungling a job in upstate New York, the Ghostbusters wander through a time portal and find themselves in Victorian London. Not realizing what they're doing, they help Ebeneezer Scrooge with a haunting and wind up capturing the three Christmas ghosts. Still unaware where they are

Cutthroat Kitchen is a cooking competition show about invention, adversity, and screwing over your opponents. We really enjoy it. Like many competition shows, one contestant leaves after each round. Each round consists of a challenge and a set of sabotages. Each contestant starts with $25,000 that they can use to bid on these sabotages and disadvantage other contestants. The winner gets bragging rights and whatever money he or she has left. Winning (or doing well) is usually a combination of bidding strategy, luck, and the inventive skill to change your plan on the fly and MacGyver weird foodstuffs into something that's both edible and fancy-looking. This special Christmas episode features Chefs Keith, Kelley, Angelo, and Phillip. The set is decorated, and the challenges and sabotages all follow the holiday theme. In round one, the challenge is "ham dinner." Angelo spends a good amount of his starting cash to win all the sabotages (sold together as a set). This mean

The Golden Girls was influential, remembered, and - in some ways - fairly progressive, but that doesn't mean it holds up all that well. We found two Christmas episodes (there could be more - sometimes sitcoms set episodes over the holidays without calling it out in the title). Neither was especially bad (the first was fairly funny), but there wasn't much of significance, either. A lot of 80's sitcoms went for a sort of vapid inoffensive tone, even when they approached social issues (more on that in a moment). That was definitely the case here. The problems were minor, the stakes were low, and there was never a hint of suspense, even when the leads were being held at gunpoint. Sorry - getting ahead of myself. Twas the Nightmare Before Christmas (1986) The first holiday episode, Twas the Nightmare Before Christmas (seven years before the stop-motion classic), is sort of a disjointed comedy of errors. Ostensibly, there's a story tying this together, but really it

Every so often, I run across something that reminds me that despite a lot of overlap, Britain and America do not actually share one culture. After sitting through this incomprehensible mess, I discovered that the show went on for some 30-ish years... I can't even imagine. So far as Wikipedia and I were able to put together, this show follows three elderly men through a kind of second childhood. (I had sort of hoped it was just this episode, but from the premise description online, that seems to be the show.) In this episode, they use Christmas as an excuse to try to reclaim their youth by playing pranks, doing various implausible physical feats, and reconnecting with old school chums. They reminisce about the old days, walk on their hands (obviously fake), jump off a (slowly) moving bus, and visit a few other men who aren't exactly pleased to see them. The actors aren't terrible, but the characters haven't aged well, so to speak. It was especially repulsive this

I've been enjoying the show Ore Monogatari!, released in English as My Love Story! The show follows Takeo, a high school student navigating love, friendship, and life. He's a huge person with a lot of physical ability, but that means girls generally think he's "weird" or "scary." In the first episode, that changes, as he and Yamato fall for each other immediately. The series follows the ups and downs of their relationship and their friendships in a way that's sweet, sensitive, and surprisingly complicated for two characters who are so good-hearted. In this episode, it's Christmastime, and Yamato suggests having a party with her friends from her all-girls school and Takeo's friends. This isn't the first time they have all gotten together, and Takeo's friend Kurihara confesses to Takeo that he wants to date Yamato's friend Nanako. At the same time, Nanako confides in Yamato that she and Kurihara have been out together, but she&#

This is a weird holiday episode, even for this show. The premise is that global warming, driven by Aukerman's burning of styrofoam cups, causes the sea levels to rise until a beach literally bursts through the wall of the Comedy Bang! Bang! set. A bunch of teenagers dressed and acting like they're out of the 1960s spill in and proceed to start celebrating the holidays. Scott starts trying to shut them down, but he has a change of heart when he falls madly in love with Ahoop, one of the teenagers. But he's not her only admirer - the episode's secondary guest, a fake British rock star named "The Beetle, acts as a romantic rival. The character's actually played by Aukerman, too, making for some odd sequences. If you're a little shaky on the references, you aren't alone - I spent the episode trying to figure out what, exactly, they were parodying. Lindsay, fortunately, is enough of a Disney nerd to connect "Ahoop" back to Annette Funicello.

Comedy Bang! Bang!'s second Christmas episode is a big improvement over their first. Having already tried the "kitchen sink" approach, this one picks a reference and focuses in on it. Even better, that reference is Die Hard. The episode opens just before Christmas. Scott is depressed, because he feels like the holidays are too commercial. Making matters worse, the air conditioner is out of order, causing the set to be extremely hot. Xenophobic ex-marine Ray Starksy (played by Alan Tudyk) climbs into the air ducts to fix it minutes before a group of international terrorists break in and take the show hostage. Their demand: they want a hard-to-find toy to give to their daughters as a Christmas present. And if they don't get them, they'll kill everyone. The terrorists are a constant presence, though their disruptions are fairly minimal, aside from one bit when the leader (James Urbaniak doing a decent impression of a generic Die Hard villain) takes over as ho

Comedy Bang! Bang! is a bizarre program, even by skit show standards. The show is ostensibly a mock talk show (mock show?), though that barely begins to describe it. Episodes can feature bizarre twists, character death, or reality warping premises. Stylistically, the twists are reminiscent of Monty Python, albeit in a far more controlled environment. Other elements, such as talking furniture, evoke Pee Wee’s Playhouse. Every episode’s title is a mundane description of the main guest’s outfit. The Christmas Episode breaks a bit in this convention by having Zach Galifianakis play Santa Claus – usually the titular guests play themselves, leaving the fictional guests to famous comedians. This one actually has a slightly more coherent plot than most episodes, though that’s really not saying much – telling a coherent story is not the series’s primary goal. The Christmas episode starts with Reggie Watts, the show’s band leader (and sole member), bringing Scott Aukerman, the host, a ba

After watching a handful of episodes of Boy Meets World, I'm a little confused how the series lasted as long as it did (seven seasons) and why anyone remembers it at all. It's more unremarkable than awful. The series mainly seemed to revolve around five characters. The title references Corey, played by Ben Savage (Fred's little brother), who feels like a poor man's Shia LaBeouf. His best friend, Shawn, fills in as the requisite "bad boy with a heart of gold", and Topanga serves as Corey's childhood friend/eventual love interest (hell, they get married in the last season). Corey's brother, Eric, is mostly interesting because he's played by Will Friedle, who voiced Terry McGinnis on Batman Beyond (we got far more laughs spotting accidentally ambiguous Batman lines from him than anything intentionally scripted). Finally, there's Mr. Feeny, their mentor who inexplicably winds up teaching at every school and/or college they attend. The show'

The past seven years have seen a renaissance in TV animation, largely thanks to the success of Adventure Time and its peers. Nostalgia for 60s, 70s, and 80s science-fiction and fantasy lies at the core of most of this wave. We Bare Bears differs in that respect. It's far closer to Yogi Bear, Winnie the Pooh, and perhaps even the Berenstain Bears. Sometimes, it even reminds me of old edutainment shows; as though the characters are about to teach us about geography or math. They don't, incidentally. When the show does communicate a point, it's usually about subtle cases of systemic racism, the difficulty of interacting with a society that views you as an outsider, or - in at least one case - the toxic nature of male entitlement in perceived romantic situations. If all of that sounds a little heavy, rest assured the show mixes in three or four parts comedy to one part moral. Throw in some surprisingly affecting drama, and you wind up with something that feels like a kid&

Sid the Science Kid is an animated show for preschoolers, so there are specific questions you might need to ask before judging it. Question 1: Is it at all interesting for adults without kids? I enjoy a lot of children's television, but this is not a show that holds any value for adults who don't deal with children, except on a technical artistry level. The show is produced by the Jim Henson Company, and the animation is actually generated in real time from motion capture and digital "puppeteering." This allows them to film fast and give the characters a lot of physicality. On the other hand, it doesn't always translate to fine control. for example, I noticed one secondary character manipulating a prop in a particularly clunky way. Question 2: Is it interesting for the target group? I haven't polled anyone, but it's won some awards. I was rather struck with how real the kid characters' dialogue seems: the kids respond too literally or somew

MacGyver has achieved a sort of immortality, though it's fairly limited in scope. The show revolves around the title character's skill for whipping up solutions to his problems using scientific know-how and odd combinations of everyday objects. His name has become synonymous with this trait. As far as I can tell, that's all the who is remembered for. If this episode's any indication, that's probably for the best. To be fair, this almost certainly isn't a typical episode of the series, which sounds like it changed quite a bit from season to season. This one's from the latter half of the show, after budgets were cut. And even then, it's less bad than ridiculous. If you've seen other action shows from this era, you've got an idea what you're in for. The show is ostensibly serious, but it's family-friendly to the point of absurdity. Moralizing and inoffensive social commentary permeated the episode from beginning to end, all wit