There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who think A Charlie Brown Christmas is the best Peanuts special of all time, and those who think that honor belongs to It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Well, okay, there is a third group that thinks It’s Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown is the ultimate accomplishment in the world of Peanuts shorts. Among this group are Charles Manson, half the people who take part in your average IMDB poll and George W. Bush. In other words, you’d have to be utterly clueless to think such a thing. There have been at least forty animated Charlie Brown specials and while generally speaking it can be said they’ve all gone downhill since the first four or five, it is not true that the nadir was necessarily reached with the final Peanuts special. So what are the best of the Charlie Brown specials?
A Charlie Brown Christmas
The first may still be the best. Or it may be only second best. Definitely a long way from the worst. Charlie Brown’s sweet, gentle, archaically religious message about the meaning of Christmas stands as a perfect counterpoint to the much rougher and hard-edged other great Christmas special about that Grinch fella. A Charlie Brown Christmas won not only an Emmy Award, but also the quite prestigious Peabody Award, which I do not think has anything to do with Bullwinkle. It doesn’t get much better than this; this special also proves that including a little spirituality in your cartoon need not be didactic and boring to adults. (Anybody remember Davy and Goliath?)
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.
Contrary to popular belief, Charlie Brown’s Halloween special was not the second Peanuts cartoon. It was preceded that summer by Charlie Brown’s All-Stars. This is my own choice for the greatest Charlie Brown cartoon of all time because it is edgier than the Christmas special and because it contains just so many great lines: “You didn’t tell me you were gonna kill it!”, “I could have gone to tricks-or-treats! Halloween is over and I missed it! Instead, I spend the night on a pumpkin patch and all that came was a beagle! You blockhead! I could have had apples and gum, and cookies and money and other things! I’ll sue! Trick-or-treats only come once a year, and instead I spent all night sitting in a pumpkin patch! What a fool I was! You owe me restitution!”, “Bleach! My lips touched dog lips! Bleach! Poison lips! Bleach!”, and of course, “I got a rock.” And it has so many memorable scenes: Snoopy dancing atop Schroeder’s piano, Linus and Sally in the pumpkin patch, and the moment that the Great Pumpkin finally rises in silhouette. It also contains one of the few (though very brief) moments where it appears Charlie Brown is experiencing sheer joy. The next time you watch it, take note of how much fun Chuck is having when he’s running at the Halloween party and Lucy grabs him to model for the Jack O’Lantern. It’s just quite simply perfect. Oh, and don’t forget to take note of who is on the cover of the TV Guide that Lucy is holding.
You’re in Love, Charlie Brown.
This one is the special that introduces Charlie’s great love, the Little Red-Haired Girl, but it is mostly memorable for the introduction of someone who would become a major character, Peppermint Patty. Alas, Marcy would not show up to call her sir until later. This one doesn’t contain many laugh out loud moments, but it is sweet and tender. And it does contain at least one truly memorable visual effect: Charlie Brown slithering up and over a chain link fence like Spiderman.
You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown.
Particularly relevant as I write this, the odd thing about this special is that Charlie Brown can’t get elected because he doesn’t even run. Maybe it is because I’m a political junkie, but I really get a kick out of You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown. We can only wish that things were like this in real life, where the smartest and most deserving kid even earns the vote of the guy who knows he’s second best. This was also the show that introduced Snoopy’s alter ego, Joe Cool. Those scenes feel like filler, but when Snoopy is your filler, who’s to complain?
Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales.
Actually, this is funnier than A Charlie Brown Christmas original, mostly because there is a surreal kind of quality to the many vignettes that make up this collection of Christmas-oriented shorts. Particularly funny is the story involving Linus’ run-in with a girl who changes her name every day. But the real highlight and must-see is the sequence in which Sally gets into a rumble with an ugly neighbor over a tree that she has to fall down. When Charlie Brown asks if she doesn’t mean cut down, her classic reply is “I don’t know how to cut down a Christmas tree. When I look at it, I hope that it just falls down.”
