DO YOU FEAR WHAT I FEAR?

Ellen
Season 3 (1995)

I like a touch of darkness mixed in with the sticky sweetness of Christmas, whether it’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, a sonorous rendition of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” (the most somber of carols) or a Christmas-themed Fear Street horror novel.  This Season 3 episode of Ellen fits the bill, perfectly mixing the brightness of the holiday with comedy and a good dose of the macabre.

Ellen is preparing for another Christmas with her parents and she convinces her cousin Spence to join her, warning him of the many annoying family traditions that await them.  Her parents, however, announce that they spontaneously booked a cruise for the holiday and so they’ll have to celebrate prior to their departure.  When Ellen and Spence arrive Ellen’s parents are already in their cruising clothes and rushing out the door, as their flight is overbooked and they have to hurry to depart.  They decide to have Christmas in the car on the way to the airport.

A very automotive Christmas

Despite her earlier protestations Ellen is miffed over the harried version of her family’s traditions (which includes carols, ambrosia and the opening of gifts).  Things take even more of a turn when she unwraps her big gift from her parents: a cemetery plot.  With her parents gone and a saddled with her final resting place she falls into a morbid mood, despite her friends’ efforts to cheer her up, which includes a visit from Spence dressed as a half-assed Santa. In one of the episode’s best scenes Ellen chases her bookstore’s customers away by throwing candy canes at them and reminding them of their imminent deaths.

"Ho Ho Ho! Santa says cheer up!"

En route to a party on Christmas Eve with her friends Ellen requests a detour, which ends up being the cemetery.  She finds her plot and then refuses to leave; her friends rally around her.  After convincing Ellen that her life is meaningful and sharing some egg nog and pfeffernusse the group decides to decorate the cemetery to the strains of “Linus & Lucy.”  The episode ends with a series of snapshots showing the cast goofing off amid the bedecked tombstones and memorials.

I've always loved this shot of Joely Fischer--gives me a Tim Burton vibe

This is a hilarious and clever episode that makes good work of Ellen DeGeneres' comedic skills, first via her attempts to downplay the weirdness of her Christmas gift and then later her holiday funk.  The supporting cast is great as well, especially Clea Lewis as ever-perky Audrey, who sports first an amazing gift-wrap dress and then later a sexy Santa ensemble over the course of the episode. 

If only all women dressed liked Audrey Penney! 

A young Jamie Kennedy (remember him?) also appears in this episode as Tad, the dimwitted extra holiday help at the bookstore This is the perfect episode for anyone who both loves Christmas but also likes a hint of bitterness to balance out the yuletide sweet.

Recurring Themes: Ellen does some Yelling at Carolers.

Christmas Quotient: 5

See It, Skip It or Own It?
Add this one to your permanent collection!

THE BABY-SITTERS SPECIAL CHRISTMAS

The Baby-Sitters Club
Season 1 (1990)

I teased this Christmas episode of The Baby-Sitters Club back in my very first Halloween post and I’ve just been itching to re-watch and write about it.  So let us now delve into this very special (you know it’s special because “special” is in the title) Christmas episode.

We begin with a perfect opening scene, set to the show’s insanely catchy theme song, featuring the members of the Baby-Sitters Club first gazing at  one of those awesome Christmas store windows seen in TV shows and then shopping at said store.  The store reminds of me of a now-defunct retailer from my childhood that was called simply The Store.  It was a sort of all-in-one drug store we used to go to during summer vacations at Lake Tahoe.  It was less than a department store but more than your average CVS or Duane Reade.  It had tchotchkes galore and, like my childhood self, the babysitters are loving it. Even better, the store seen in the show is decked out in a major way for Christmas.  

Not only Green Berets wear green berets

While at The Store Kristy falls in love with an expensive baseball glove, so expensive no one dares utter how much it actually costs throughout the episode.  They just say things like “very expensive” when asked and at one point Kristy whispers the price into her mother’s ear.  Seriously, how fucking expensive is this thing?  It’s like the Voldemort of baseball gloves: The Price That Shall Not Be Named.  Kristy’s mom says if she does chores to pay for some of it she might get the glove, so we see her doing chores throughout the episode.  A lot of chores, because that baseball glove is very expensive.

That’s just the B-plot, though.  The main story involves Stacey, who can’t stop eating holiday sweets despite her diabetes.  Dawn is extremely distressed by this and is all over Stacey every time she freakin’ takes a bite of something.  At one point they get into an argument and Stacey says something about “knowing her own body.”  It’s intense!  But Dawn is ultimately justified by staying on Stacey’s ass because Stacey has zero self control and can’t stop nibbling on cookies and fudge until she starts acting like instead of having high blood sugar she’s wasting away from some subtropical influenza.  Seriously, she acts so sedated she can’t muster the strength to read a Rudolph picture book aloud to one of her babysitting charges. 

Too tired for carols. So. Very. Tired. 

The day before Christmas the friends gather at a diner for their Secret Santa exchange.  This reminded me so much of many similar gift-swap lunches I attended during junior high and high school, at pizza joints and a local sushi restaurant.  Much jewelry from Claires, scented lotions from Bath & Body Works and those candy-cane plastic tubes filled with M&Ms were exchanged over the years.  Anyhoo, the red-headed babysitter, who barely speaks in this episode, is totally shafted at the gift exchange.  One girl gets earrings; another bath stuff.  And the redhead gets a round orange plastic figurine that we earlier saw one of the girls playing with at The Store.  “It squirts water,” says someone amidst the gift-opening flurry.  Someone gave her a squirt toy?!  There’s always at least one dud in every Secret Santa exchange.

Anyhoo, Stacey eats fudge and dies.  No, but she does end up at the hospital on Christmas Day, the same hospital her friends are conveniently at for a children’s ward party.  She gives a surprisingly well-written speech about how it sucks being sick all the time and ends up attending the party in her pajamas.  Kristy ends up giving her new, very expensive baseball glove to Ned, a really gloomy kid in a wheelchair whose parents we are told earlier are too poor to afford gas to drive to the hospital to see him.  Everyone is happy.  And oh yeah, baby Danny Tamberelli, in his pre-Adventures of Pete & Pete days, is in this episode as one of the kids the girls babysit for!

You're never too sick to smile

As if you couldn't tell, I love this episode.  The weird 90s fashions make it worth the watch alone, but it’s also very Christmasy and melodramatic.  There are a ton of Christmas decorations in every scene and I want to live in The Store.  But I do feel bad for the redhead who doesn’t get any lines AND gets stuck with a squirt toy.

Recurring Themes: Our first instance of Giving Up the Gift, in which a character really wants a specific present, receives it, and then gives it away to someone in need.  We also get a Group Sing Finale and a Children's Hospital.

Christmas Quotient: 5

See It, Skip It, Own It?
If only this was available to own and treasure for all time!  For now content yourself with seeing it and give thanks to Netflix for making it happen!

DWIGHT CHRISTMAS

The Office
Season 9 (2012)

The first Christmas episode of The Office is a real gem, and while the show offered up quite a few holiday episodes the quality dwindled with each subsequent season.  Dwight Christmas is from the final season of the show so my expectations were low, though apparently not quite low enough.  

My lack of knowledge of the later seasons’ storylines and characters also interfered with my ability to enjoy this episode.  Where is Kelly? Where is Andy?  Who is this random guy flirting with Erin?  I love you, Catherine Tate, but what are you doing here? Why is Jim leaving for a job in Philadelphia?  Angela was engaged and Oscar slept with her fiancé?!    Oh, Office Season 9, you disappoint me so.

We start with the staff of Dunder Mifflin suddenly realizing that today is the day for their office Christmas party, which apparently everyone forgot about.  I was instantly confused by this opening scene, as we get a shot of a paper turkey, so at first I thought it was November and the party was meant to be happening early.  But no, I guess it’s December and they just didn’t bother taking down the Thanksgiving decorations?  As a sort of parting gift for Jim (who is leaving for the aforementioned job in Philadelphia), Pam convinces the party planning committee to let Dwight take the lead and host a “traditional Pennsylvania Dutch Christmas.”

Hark! Belsnickel draws nigh

Pam and Jim have fully morphed here from likeable underdogs to sneering cool kids, treating Dwight’s heartfelt efforts and traditions as fodder for their mockery.  They even rush to make fun of him when they spot him holding a candle and reading aloud.  Maybe he has it coming after 9 seasons of annoyance but really? Dwight, normally the antagonist, comes across as the bullied do-gooder in this episode.  His traditions, rooted in obscure-but-real German holiday festivities, involve serving pig stomach and dressing as Belsnickel, a sort of anti-Claus.  As Belsnickel he judges each co-worker either “admirable” or “impish,” respectively resulting in either a gift or a thrashing with a bundle of sticks.  Upset when Jim leaves the party early, Dwight gives him a hard thrashing in one of the episode’s standout moments.

Yeah, I'm not really feeling this party either.

After Dwight loses his shit the rest of the staff reclaims the party, transforming it into a more familiar office Christmas party (and a somewhat melancholy reminder of the show’s former Christmas glory).  There are like three other subplots also going on; like the current season of Parks & Recreation this episode suffers from subplot overload, with way too many characters running around doing way too many inconsequential things. Overall, it’s a mixed bag.  Belsnickel adds some spark and there are a few funny moments but overall it just isn’t very festive—and that can’t be blamed on the pig stomach but rather a show that didn’t know when to bow out gracefully.

Christmas Quotient: Not even the final scenes, which harken back to the Christmas Office episodes of old, can elevate this past a 2.

See It, Skip It, Own It?
December is flying by and there are lots of quality episodes to watch so skip this one.

NEW YEAR'S EVE

Louie
Season 3 (2012)

I’ve already written about discovering and loving Louie a couple of months ago; as much as I’m trying to slow down and savor December part of me can’t wait for the new year, when I’ll have time to sit and watch this show from start to finish.  In the meantime I watched the last episode of Season 3, a combo Christmas/New Year’s head-trip.  

The episode begins with a close, lingering shot of Louie huddled on the couch, clutching a mug, wrapped in a blanket, a dazed look on his face.  Does he have the flu?  Has he undergone some traumatic event?  The camera then pans back to reveal that it’s Christmas morning and Louie’s two adorable daughters are happily ripping open their gifts.  As each present is joyfully revealed there’s a quick flashback to the various ordeals Louie went through getting them. 

I am totally adding wrapping paper nap to my list of annual Christmas traditions!

One of his daughters opens a beautiful doll and we get a long, darkly funny scene showing Louie desperately trying to fix the doll’s broken eyes prior to wrapping it.  It’s a comedy of errors with a significant creep factor given the doll’s eyeless face.  It involves Louie drilling through the doll's head, disassembling its body, scrubbing it in the toilet, painting its face and, ultimately, weeping.  In typical Louie fashion these scenes are equal parts tenderhearted, comedic and a bit stressful.

Doll Surgery

After Louie’s daughters depart with his ex-wife he quickly dismantles the tree, shaking the ornaments off and throwing it out the window, before crawling into bed in a funk.  His sister (surprise Amy Poehler cameo!) calls and invites him to Mexico for New Year’s.  Louie then has a dream about his grown-up daughters and his own, wretched future self.   Upon waking (or does he?) he hallucinate/dreams that the newscasters on TV are telling him to kill himself.  One cold shower later and he’s off to the airport to meet his sister’s family in Mexico.

I’m not going to spoil what follows but if you thought any of the above sounded weird or dark you have no idea!  The rest of the episode takes the viewer, and Louie himself, to places you would never expect, especially for a Christmas episode (such as it is).  The real mystery here is what’s real and what isn’t.  Is Louie dreaming the whole time?  The rapidity and bizarre nature of what unfolds suggests it’s a fever dream but certain details root the whole thing in reality.  And then it simply ends, offering up no explanation.  After watching I started to search online to see if any interviews or anything shed any light on this surreal episode but then stopped, deciding that the ambiguity is part of the art.

And art it undeniably is.  The episode begins with a creative, albeit familiar, take on a parent’s holiday stress and then literally ends up on the other side of the world.  Like every episode of Louie I’ve seen it feels like a brilliant short film and manages to cram more emotion and impact into one half hour of TV than most series manage in their entire runs.  As a Christmas episode this may fall short but in every other way it soars.

Christmas Quotient: A 3 for the first 1/3 and then a 1 for the rest—but remember this is only indicative of how Christmasy the episode is, not the quality of the episode itself!

See It, Skip It, Own It?
It might not be everyone’s cup of tea but it’s definitely worth seeing (and discussing and contemplating).

THE TOASTER

Everybody Loves Raymond
Season 3 (1998)

There are certain favorite holiday episodes that every year I am tempted to keep in reserve and watch closer to Christmas as a sort of reward.  I've learned from years previous, however, of the danger of the "best for last" method as sometimes December flies by and I haven't gotten to many of my favorites.  In keeping with this last night we watched Everybody Loves Raymond's "The Toaster," which ranks in my Top 100 Christmas Episodes of All Time list.  I've watched it countless times and it never grows old.

Awkward bro hug

In "The Toaster" Ray is obsessing over the gift he's selected for his friends and family, an engraved toaster bearing a holiday message and the family's names.  Ray, Debra and the kids spend Christmas with Debra's parents (which I believe is the only peek at their chic, art gallery-esque house that the series ever offered) and the gift goes over well.  Robert is equally pleased, leading to an awkwardly touching moment and hug between the two brothers.  But the elder Barones, Frank and Marie, have a total non-reaction.  By December 26th Ray can't stand their silence any longer and confronts them, only to learn that they exchanged the gift for a coffee maker without ever noticing the engraving. 

What ensues is one of the show's best scenes between a befuddled and increasingly maddened Ray and his equally befuddled parents, who don't understand his emotional reaction.  They try to convince him of the benefits of their new coffee maker while he tries, equally unsuccessfully, to show them why their brutally honest reactions to gifts are hurtful.  Every family has bad gift-givers but also at least one (or two) bad gift-receivers, who can't or won't mask their nonplussed reactions to unwanted presents.  Marie's irrationally disgusted response to the fruit-of-the-month club, a previous gift from Ray, is laugh out loud funny, as is her obtuse response of "we're the ones who have to get these presents."  

"And why are we lying today?"

Finally clueing in, Frank and Marie go back to Bloomingdales and attempt to retrieve the returned toaster.  They have a hilarious encounter with a sales associate (they forget to remove the coffee grounds from the coffee maker and wish the Jewish sales associate the blessings of "our Lord and saviour").  Things just go from bad to worse but the kerfluffle, ultimately involving a security guard and sneaking into the stock room, proves to Ray that they really do care.

Holy Crap!

As I wrote earlier, I just can't get enough of this episode, which, like so much of Raymond, hits very close to home.  The show would further mine the politics of gift-giving in later Christmas episodes but none so ably as "The Toaster."  The character of Ray, who I normally find annoying, comes across as rather sweet and sympathetic in this episode.  But the show-stealers (and aren't they always?) are Frank and Marie, first via their stubborn resistance to the gift and later their hapless efforts to make amends.  You get the sense that they never quite get it but go the distance anyway, and their interactions with both each other and the store staff can't be beat.  I also appreciate that a lot of this episode takes place on the day after Christmas, offering up a rare look at the aftermath of the holiday-- and anyone who's ever attempted to return something the day after Christmas knows these particular horrors all too well.

Christmas Quotient: 5

See It, Skip It, Own It?
Is there any doubt?  Own it along with the rest of the series and you won’t be disappointed.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, MRS. MOSKOWITZ

Frasier
Season 6 (1998)

Hanukkah episodes can be hard to find, and the few that are out there I don’t own yet on DVD, but I didn’t want the holiday to slip by without acknowledging it.  My compromise is reviewing this Christmas episode of Frasier, which hinges on a menorah and  a case of mistaken identity.

Frasier was one big comedy of manners but this episode displays some of the classic elements of the genre better than most: wordplay, mistaken identities, and hasty entrances and exits abound.  The episode begins in a department store when Roz stumbles upon Frasier as he’s in the midst of buying her a sweater fro Christmas.  He’s saved by a fellow shopper, the eponymous Helen Moskowitz, who pretends the sweater is for her daughter.  The delightfully pushy Mrs. Moskowitz then gets an indebted Frasier to agree to a blind date with her daughter.

Despite his apprehension Frasier ends up hitting it off with Faye (played by Amy Brennan, if there are Judging Amy fans still out there).  All is going well with their budding relationship until Faye and her mother, en route to the airport, stop by Frasier’s apartment on Christmas Eve.  Spotting a wreath on his mantle, Faye is surprised to learn that Frasier isn’t Jewish, as she and her mother presumed (while shopping he was also buying a menorah as a present for his half-Jewish son, hence the assumption).  To save her from her mother’s disapproval Frasier agrees to pretend to be Jewish—on Christmas Eve.

Everything that then happens naturally threatens to expose the truth.  Frasier’s brother and father have to be convinced to play along on the spot. Mrs. Moskowitz must be convinced that a cooking ham is really brisket.  A Christmas tree gets delivered and then stuffed into a bathroom.  It all leads to a disastrous conclusion, which involves Niles, dressed as Jesus for a Christmas pageant, being discovered in the bathroom with the aforementioned Christmas tree.

Jesus!

It’s laugh out funny, bolstered by guest performers Amy Brennan but especially Carole Shelley as Helen.  She’s a character and voice actress of the highest order (she played one half of the Cuckoo Pigeon sisters in the original Odd Couple movie).  The whole episode (and indeed the entire run of the show) harkens back to the great screwball comedies of the 40s.  Obviously because of the nature of the plot the scenery can’t be fully decked out with holiday décor; the one tree we get to see is extremely cheap and shoddy looking, which is weird since it’s supposed to be a designer tree Frasier specially ordered.  But as a Christmas episode this satisfies and offers up an original, hilarious story and admirable performances.

Christmas Quotient: Despite all of my praise I’m prevented from giving this a 5 just because it’s a bit shy on Christmas visuals, but it still ranks a solid 4.

See It, Skip It, Own It?
Worth owning for repeat Christmas viewings, and it even kinda sorta works as a Hanukkah episode!

SEASON'S READINGS: TINSEL

Every now and then you encounter a book that feels like it was written just for you.  When I discovered Hank Stuever’s Tinsel: A Search for America’s Christmas Present I knew it would become part of my annual Christmas reading list.  As the subtitle promises, the book is a thorough examination of the modern American Christmas experience at both the micro and macro levels.  Stuever, a journalist, spent three Christmas seasons in Frisco, Texas, a booming suburb outside of Dallas.  He focuses on three different families and follows them as they celebrate the holiday, delving into countless Christmas-related topics along the way.  Stuever happened to write the book during the economic downturn so it also becomes a chronicle of the haves, have-nots and everyone caught somwhere in the middle.

The book is exhaustive without being exhausting; the author maintains an easy, lightly comedic tone throughout while managing to cram in a lot of facts and figures.  He includes just enough of his personality without it becoming all about him, something I find fault with in a lot of non-fiction books of this type.  Instead the focus remains firmly on his subjects.  First up there’s Tammie, my favorite of the three, the affluent super-mom and wife with a side business decorating the homes of her fellow desperate housewives.  Next we have married couple Bridgette and Jeff, who have one of those “seen from space” Christmas light displays.  And finally there’s everywoman Carol (and her extremely bratty daughter), a church-going, lower middle class single mom just doing her best.

Via these three families Stuever tackles every aspect of Christmas that you can imagine.  He follows Carol’s role in a pageant at an obnoxious mega-church, attends craft fairs with Tammie and examines Christmas lights, decorations, charities, malls and everything in-between.  There is an emphasis on the retail side of the holiday, with chapters named after chain stores and a lot of time spent in malls, which is fine by mall-loving me.  When first reading the book I was especially thrilled to reach the section about Department 56’s light-up Christmas villages and the devoted “village idiots” who obsessively collect them (count me firmly among their number-- no surprise, I know).  No gaudily-decorated stone is left unturned and emotional heft is added via the trials and tribulations of the real people involved in all of the holiday hoopla.

Original Hardcover Edition 

The book appeals to me on many levels: the obsessive level of detail, the voyeuristic look into people’s lives and homes and of course Christmas, Christmas, Christmas!  Like the author, I straddle the line between cringing at people’s manhandling of the true spirit of the holiday and genuinely wanting to join in on the overkill fun.  Tammie best embodies this attract and repel dynamic:  her energy and enthusiasm is enviable but she also lives in a privileged, white-washed bubble world plagued by gossip and materialism.  One thing I’ve always found vaguely unsatisfying about Tinsel is that the author never reveals how the many conservative Texans he surrounded himself with reacted to him as a gay man. Perhaps the absence of this in the book suggests they simply ignored his sexuality altogether.  Glossing over things seems to be a shared skill in the city of Frisco.

I always make Tinsel the kick-off to my holiday season.  I like to start reading it on the plane ride as we go to visit family for Thanksgiving, for the book itself begins on Black Friday and unfolds over the course of the holiday season.  It gets me excited for the coming torrent of Christmas but also serves as a cautionary tale, a reminder to not behave like some of the more craven or clueless individuals that Stuever profiles.  And it also makes me laugh—a scene in which Tammie hires a professional elf-actor to surprise her kids with a ski trip announcement is delightfully awkward.  Tinsel really is the entire modern Christmas experience compressed into a single, highly readable book.