Mainlining Christmas

At first glance, this seems to be the type of historical melodrama that the BBC does so well. At second glance, it's still that, but includes a ghost. The show is based on a series of semi-autobiographical novels about a teenager who moves from a very small village (Lark Rise) to the nearby larger town (Candleford) to work at the post office near the turn of the century. It seems to be notable because it's a microcosm of the changing cultures and economy of the time. This extra-long Christmas special features at least five plots involving a talented ensemble cast. Laura (the teen referred to above) is thriving in Candleford, under the wing of her mother's cousin, Dorcas, who is educated and independent. It seems that Dorcas will be alone for Christmas, and Laura feels guilty and wants to keep her company. Laura's mother, meanwhile, is worried that Dorcas is replacing her in Laura's heart. Attempts to be polite ("No, it's fine!") on all sides ma

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

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

If the Fates Allow Edited by Annie Harper, 2017 New Release! I received a copy of this book from NetGalley for the purpose of review. Premise: Five stories of love, hope, and forgiveness at the holidays. Do you need some warm and fuzzy holiday cheer? Do you love love? This new collection features five LGBTQ holiday romances that make your heart feel full of sugarplums. I smiled and sighed and giggled. It's seriously sweet, without being too sweet. The first author, Killian Brewer, starts off strong with "Gracious Living Magazine Says It Must Be a Live Tree." Marcus wants his first Christmas with his boyfriend to be perfect, and his grandmother's friends are there to help. "True North" by Pene Henson follows a WNBA star who goes home for the holidays with a friend, only to navigate her family's misguided assumptions and her high school crush. Erin Finnegan brings us "Last Call at the Casa Blanca Bar & Grill," in which a y

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&#

It's time for some new installments in my periodic series on Novelty Character Albums ! (Oh gosh, I last did these back in year two?) You can cleanly break this album into two halves, and, in fact, the first half was initially released alone. Part one is mostly versions of traditional Christmas music, and part two is music from the 2016 holiday episode . There's one track that straddles the divide, but we'll get there. Let's remember one thing up front: ponies do not celebrate Christmas. They celebrate Hearth's Warming. (In fact, the composer clarified this point on his Facebook page .) So it's a little odd to listen to pony voice actresses singing about Christmas. However, these are some of the sweetest, most fun Christmas songs I've heard in a while, so I'll easily let that go. Many of them are unique or special rewrites of classic Christmas tunes. They aren't written to be Hearth's Warming songs, but they are otherwise completely tweak

Murder, She Wrote: Manhattans and Murder (1994) and Murder, She Wrote: A Little Yuletide Murder (1998) By Donald Bain The Christmas episode of the show was fairly lackluster , so I suppose it's fair that the novels match. These two brief books are part of a long-running spin-off series that apparently someone will continue to write until society crumbles. (Seriously, Book 47 is available for preorder.) The two books have a few things in common. The author can write passable lines of dialogue and narration, but there's no build from scene to scene and the story as a whole is utterly forgettable. Both books seem determined to raise but refuse to sensitively address social issues (drug addiction and teenage pregnancy, respectively). Most bizarrely, both books feature a minor subplot about someone asking Jessica to write a true-crime novel about the events going on. Unless this was a running gag in all the books, it seems strange not to reference the first event, given

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

I suppose you could argue that these are winter-themed more than Christmas, but I'm not sure what else you associate gingerbread with. The bar itself, despite being rather sticky, did not have as much visible icing as the box cover might lead you to believe. The taste is somewhat gingerbread-ish, with a strong sense of synthetic spices. I suppose it's reminiscent of gingerbread, if gingerbread were liquefied and used along with corn syrup to glue together a bunch of oats and rice crisp-ish things. I generally like this brand of granola bars, but there's something about this that doesn't really work for me. Too much "natural flavor," not enough actual flavor. At least the package is very sparkly and has some dumb jokes on it.

Here's what I knew about this show going into the first Christmas episode: It's a sitcom about a Taiwanese family in America, and it's based loosely on an autobiography. I had read this piece about the author's...let's say complicated... feelings about Hollywood back when it came out . Here's what I know now: It's about a family with three young sons, the dad owns a restaurant, they're friends with their neighbors, and on a certain level it's nice to see that today a sitcom that doesn't star white people no longer has to be exceptional to succeed. Apparently the first season of this show was more Wonder Years-esque and focused on Eddie (the young version of the chef whose autobiography I mentioned above), but there wasn't a Christmas episode in that season. Both these episodes are more about the youngest brother, Evan, and his relationship with his mom, Jessica. The Real Santa (2015) There was a lot of decent humor in this episode.

I have never seen the Dreamworks animated movie Spirit - Stallion of the Cimarron, but Wikipedia tells me that the point was that it was about a horse whose rightful place was running free, untamed by man. So I'm not sure why the Netflix spin-off series follows a girl who befriends a wild horse (also named Spirit) such that he follows her around and hangs out in town all the time. Seems... wrong. But hey, there's money in dolls that ride horses. We also couldn't figure out when this takes place. The lack of cars, one-room schoolhouse, and prevalence of farming seems to imply a vague "frontier" time, but the clothing and the writing seemed plausibly modern. Based on this episode, we decided that it could take place anytime between the 1880s and the 1980s, but if someone pulled out a cell phone, we wouldn't be that surprised. The episodes seems to follow the lead girl, her friends, Spirit, and the friends' horses as they go on inoffensive Babysitters

The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holidays Spirits Les Standiford, 2008 Premise: The story behind the story of A Christmas Carol. This historical Christmas book included both some really interesting parts and a few things that I've read a dozen times by now. Overall it was pretty enjoyable. If you are a literary type and you want to read only one Christmas history, this would be a great choice. The best parts were Dickens' personal and professional history, including the details of the development of the story and the publication business of the time. There are some details about attempted plagiarism that were especially entertaining. I enjoyed the portrayal of Dickens' attitudes about Christmas and the impact of A Christmas Carol. The author's affection for both the book and the history is very clear, and the writing maintains a good balance between compelling writing and educatio

The things we do for your amusement. Seriously, I have a soft spot for Hostess Cupcakes and will occasionally treat myself. These special holiday pastries are... less of a treat. Do you like sugar? I mean, REALLY like sugar? These are at least a cheap source. The boxes were both fine, if generic. Both adequately conveyed the "holiday" aesthetic, although I'm still trying to scrub the cupcake mascot from my brain. The Twinkies are pretty - a nice dark red color. They look moist and sweet, and I was intrigued by the promise of peppermint. Unfortunately, the peppermint was more of a hint than a full flavor. Mostly the cake still just tasted of the corn syrup/imitation vanilla that is characteristic of mass-produced cake. I also found it slightly disturbing that the case felt slightly greasy in my fingers, yet dry in my mouth. I mean, I still ate it, but it concerned me. The cupcakes were even more of a straight sugar-shot to the arteries. The ca

Sometimes the best way to tell where you stand with someone is the quality of the gift they give. Is is thoughtful? Is it well-chosen? For the holiday, this pile of garbage got you a clip show. The episode opens with the castaways listening to a little Christmas music on the radio. Gilligan makes a wish that they would be rescued for the holiday. Just then, an announcement breaks into a broadcast. A rescue ship is heading for the island to save them! (Why this is on the general radio is sort of unclear, although there's some hand-waving about it being a holiday-timed human interest story.) They bustle about to create a signal fire, and, as they are expecting to be rescued any minute, begin reminiscing about their first day on the island. Cue the flashbacks. To be fair, my internet research indicates that some of this was footage from the pilot and some was reshot because the cast changed after the initial pilot was filmed. Apparently the pilot was never aired during the ori

Why Him? is a raunchy farcical version of a story the movie industry loves to tell over and over: father disapproves of daughter's boyfriend, shenanigans ensue. In this case, the father is played by Bryan Cranston, and he's the owner of a now-struggling printing business, while the boyfriend, played by James Franco, is an eccentric self-made app-store mogul. The daughter (Zoey Deutch) gets her family to visit her and the boyfriend in California for Christmas, and awkwardness follows. Franco's character swears unstoppably and is emotionally needy, relentlessly sexual, and socially clueless. Once the father finds out that the boyfriend intends to propose and the daughter is contemplating dropping out of school to run a nonprofit the boyfriend will supposedly fund, he goes into a progressive freakout where his attempts to undermine and find evidence against the younger man provoke an all-out breakdown. All this between jokes about complex high-tech toilets, too-realistic

We covered Frozen back when it came out , despite some disagreement on whether it should count as a Christmas movie. (We've since decided it should be classified as Christmas in July.) But with this new special there's no room for disagreement or confusion. It's Christmas in Arendelle. The premise is that it's the first holiday season since the events of the movie, and so it's the first opportunity that royal sisters Anna and Elsa have for a holiday celebration both in public and together. They decide to throw a party, but after a public ceremony, the local folks all have their family traditions to get back to. The sisters realize that their lives have been so circumscribed by hiding Elsa's powers that they don't really have any traditions of their own. Olaf sets out to save the day by collecting traditions from the townspeople. Naturally, complications ensue. I loved this. I sat through it with a big stupid grin on my face the whole time. I liked

If you haven't tried the new episodes of MST3K, available on Netflix, you should. They are a lot of fun, they keep what worked about the original formula while adding new twists, and you'll know what I'm talking about when I say that one of my life goals is now to have as much fun as Felicia Day is having every second she's on screen. The cast features a who's who of the geek-culture parts of the internet, with Day and Patton Oswalt as the recurring villains and brief guest appearances including folks like Neil Patrick Harris, Mark Hamill, and Wil Wheaton. I've watched 12 episodes and I'm still amused by the inclusion of commercial bumpers as if the show were made to have commercial breaks. These episodes have more ongoing plot in the scenes that break up the movies than I remember from the original show, but I probably never saw more than one episode in a row before. This episode in particular is building toward the season finale. So make some popco

Between the unrelenting anguish of current events and the exhaustion of moving into a new house, this has been a sparse year here at Mainlining Christmas. I still wanted to take a moment to thank you for sharing the season with us. This year we looked at more than 70 movies, episodes, and specials that spanned 69 years. They included everything from lesser-known classics, to shows we had watched in years past, to new specials and episodes that were just released. We'll continue to post sporadic updates about holiday-ish media in the off-season, so make sure you're following us on Facebook or RSS to keep updated. And we'll be back next year, so long as civilization doesn't collapse. If it does, you're welcome at our fireside for some post-apocalyptic carol singing. In the meantime, I wish for all of you health and strength in the face of dark times, and may you each have love to keep you warm.

A Christmas Party (originally published as Envious Casca) Georgette Heyer, 1941 Premise: When the far-flung Herriard clan comes together for Christmas, sparks fly. It's a classic locked-room mystery with the death of a wealthy patriarch and a house full of suspects. Even though this felt like deja vu, (how many times have I read/seen this plot?) I enjoyed it thoroughly, mostly because the characters were so interesting. The characters are more colorful and complex than I've found in many mysteries of this style. Joseph the affable aging actor who's masterminding the party, his stolid wife Maud and her obsession with reading biographies, Paula and the aspiring playwright she drags to the party. We spend the most time shadowing cousin Mathilde who's stylish and practical, down-to-earth and gently sardonic in the face of ludicrous situations. I spotted the murderer right away, (seriously, have I read this story before?) but there was enough fun in watching the

This new special based on the classic children’s book is a sweet, simple celebration of multiculturalism. It’s really targeted at young kids and those patient enough to watch with them, but it was pleasant enough for us to watch sans children. It follows Peter through his adventures on a snow-filled afternoon. He wakes up to discover the huge piles of snow, and after snowman pancakes for breakfast (a new tradition, his mother points out) he heads out on a quest down the block to his grandmother’s apartment. He encounters many denizens of the block, including shopkeepers and shoppers, friends and relations. Everyone is kind and friendly, even if some of them don’t have time to play in the snow. Erin pointed out that this feels like it comes from the same place as some earlier Sesame Street: it’s an idealized version of New York City, where every nationality, race, religion, age, etc. lives together in harmony. After Peter and his friend Layla chase off a cookie-eating dragon a