Mainlining Christmas

This is the first of two ALF Christmas episodes. We actually did the second one, a double-length special , back in 2010 when we started this blog. For those of you who didn't just click on that link, let me sum up our feelings: we hated it. Despised it, in fact: it was sappy, cliche, and just plain idiotic. With those kinds of expectations, it shouldn't be a huge surprise to hear this episode from the series's first season was better than I anticipated. That's not to say it was good - but, compared to the show's more ambitious attempt, mediocre is a huge step up. It probably helped that this was earlier in the series. Just as shows with great premises and talented writers tend to get better as they go, those with uninspired concepts and weak writers have a tendency of burning through their one-note jokes almost immediately. No surprise, really. The premise of ALF is much more on display here. Gordon is an alien lacking in manners, common sense, and shame. The

If I were more charitable, I'd say this aged poorly, but I don't think that's the case. Instead, I suspect this was always boring. The series is about a successful New York attorney who moves away from the city to try and live a simpler existence as a farmer. He drags his wife along with him - she's a wealthy Hungarian immigrant who wanted to stay in New York. The show mainly uses her as comic relief, portraying her as a dimwitted fool, but at least she had the common sense to want to stay put. I've lived in New York, and it's far better than the dump they ended up in. This episode is about the husband, Oliver, wanting an old-fashioned Christmas. That's the title, premise, theme, and most of the plot synopsis. It opens with the couple shopping for a Christmas tree in New York a few years earlier. This is done mainly to establish that Oliver wants an old-fashioned Christmas, complete with a real, old-fashioned Christmas tree, unlike the flocked and/or

There's a lot of resentment in the air tonight. I resent the executives who decided to try to squeeze more money out of an existing property. I resent the people who spent months making this. I resent this cheap DVD for existing, and I resent this blog for making me sit through it when I absolutely have better things, even CHRISTMASSIER things, to do with my time. What I'm trying to be clear about is that there could have been a kinder, gentler version of me that would cut this special some slack. She is not here today. The worst thing, beyond the horrible plot and the terrible music (seriously, did they hire a committee of failed third-grade teachers to slap this together?), about sitting through this is that I like A Year Without a Santa Claus. Erin wasn't very nice to it in his review , but I'm fond of it. I like Mrs. Claus, I like the story, I love the music. This new special isn't fun, and it sucks most of the fun out of the world of the original.

At some point, Rankin-Bass must have had a committee pawing through lists of holiday songs: "Has anyone made a special out of this one? This one? Oh, how about Christmas in Killarney? What do you mean the song has no story? We'll write something. Ireland is all about leprechauns, right?" And so, we have this odd little half-hour of mediocre stop-motion. When a company famous for holiday specials has some you've never heard of, you know they’re going to be weirdly awesome or boring and dated. Guess which coin flip we lost today. The story starts with Dinty Doyle, a cabin boy on a ship bound home to Ireland, sent to a strange island to dig up a tree for the ship’s Christmas celebration. In doing so, he releases a trapped banshee, who causes a storm, stranding Dinty, and subjecting the rest of us to incoming backstory. Instead of having much of any plot in the present, much of the special is taken up with the patriarch of a leprechaun clan (Blarney Kilakilarney, ye

We're trying to get in a few short stories before the end of the season. This one's  my take on a murder mystery: The Society of the Worldly Mind By: Erin L. Snyder An hour and a half until I put a bullet through the target’s head. Two, tops. That’s how this night’s going to end. It’s the only way I can imagine, at least. I glance at my wrist watch. Seven fifty-five. It’s been ten hours since my plane touched down, eight since I paid three times market value for a handgun from some guy an associate put me in touch with, five and change since I arrived at the target’s house, and just an hour since I left. Oh, and four minutes since I stepped into a chalet sitting on top of a mountain in Oregon. In my hand is a folded piece of notebook paper. Not that cheap shit you buy at the drugstore. This is something else. Almost feels like cloth under your fingers, the lines are crisp and dark, and there’s this gold insignia in the top. Where the hell do you even order paper like th

Sometimes, you look around and realize you have too many dragons NOT to build a nerdtivity out of them.

This was a made-for-TV vehicle for Kelsey Grammer to play the reluctant heir to the Santa Claus dynasty, which of course means a large portion of the movie showcased him morphing into the role. We've been here before, of course. Call Me Claus and The Santa Clause both featured a character transforming into the archetype, and both Snow and Arthur Christmas did the same with the added caveat that the job stayed in the family. It's certainly not a unique idea. Of the movies I just mentioned, the one this feels most similar to is The Santa Clause, though there are quite a few differences. It's worth noting that the Santa Clause 2 came out the same year as Mr. St. Nick, and both movies involved the main character needing to find a Mrs. Claus. It's hard to look at Mr. St. Nick and not see it as a rip off of Tim Allen's franchise in some ways. But it's even harder to find an aspect that isn't superior. While Mr. St. Nick isn't a great movie by any stretch