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.

COMMERCIAL BREAK: CHRISTMAS!

It’s here!  The Christmas season is happily upon us at last!  Everyone’s got their favorite holiday but I seriously LIVE for Christmas.  And now that we’ve eaten the sacrificial turkey it's time for the Big Show (to borrow a turn-of-phrase from Elf).  Since today is Black Friday and the official kick-off of the gift-giving season I thought it would be appropriate to begin with a Commercial Break.

Christmas commercials have always been a real treat.  Along with our family-favorite holiday episodes there were the commercials, taped to VHS and immortalized for repeat viewings.  Like the holiday itself Christmas commercials can be exuberant or melancholy; energizing or heartwarming.  For this first round-up I’ve selected a mix of some classics and new additions that run the gamut of yuletide emotions.

First up we have this Coke commercial.  Nothing but nothing gets me in the holiday mood more than that familiar chant: “The holidays are coming/the holidays are coming/the holidays are coming…”  I also always sort of associated Coke with Christmas since it’s one of the few times a year we had it growing up, served in fancy crystal glasses alongside our parent’s wine and the ubiquitous Martinelli’s sparkling cider at Christmas dinner.   And don’t even get me started on the Christmas they had a special limited edition Vanilla Coke…

Now that we’re in a festive mood, I’ve been dying to share this British advert since I first watched it a month ago when it made the rounds of the interwebs.  It’s for department store John Lewis and those Brits have really made an art of annual Christmas ads.  Yes, anything with animated forest animals is automatically calculated for maximum emotional effect but I don’t care: this commercial kills me with feelings.  Kills me.  

Now, wasn’t that beautiful?  As we wipe the tears from the corner of our eyes let’s move on to something vintage.  This 1980s 7-Up commercial was one of the many on the aforementioned VHS tapes of my youth.  I feel like present-day commercials aren’t nearly as elaborate as those of my childhood but this is pure 80s goodness.

Finally, I’m choosing to wrap things up with a somewhat innocuous Folger’s commercial that nevertheless sums up everything that’s great about vintage Christmas commercials.  Undeniably cheesy, it tells a story about a college-age kid coming home for the holidays (just like 90% of all other holiday commercials).  There’s just something about it that screams Christmas to me, maybe because I drink twice as much coffee when I’m home for the holidays than I do on a normal basis (blame a need to stay energized and my mom's own coffee habit).
  

Have I whetted your appetite for the Christmas TV joys that await us?  Hopefully you had a great Thanksgiving and are sane and therefore not out shopping with the masses but rather snuggled up at home, eating microwaved leftover mashed potatoes and gravy and delving in to all of that glorious Christmas TV!

AN AMERICAN FAMILY

The Bob Newhart Show

Season 3 (1974)

When I was on the phone with my mom recently she asked, with genuine concern in her voice, “You are going to write about Bob Newhart for the blog, right?”  Clearly holiday TV mania springs from somewhere.  Along with the Catholic trinity in my childhood household there was the Classic TV Quartet: Lucy, Mary, Dick & Bob.  We were on a first name basis with all of them, especially around the holidays when we watched and re-watched episodes of I Love Lucy, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Bob Newhart Show.

When it came to Thanksgiving The Bob Newhart Show was definitely on top.  Bob Newhart brought us one of TV’s most famous Thanksgiving episodes “Over the River and Through the Woods,” aka “Moo-Goo-Gai-Pan.”  But rather than sing the praises of this already beloved episode I decided to feature my personal favorite of the show’s several Thanksgiving offerings, “An American Family.”

Beware in-laws bearing turkeys

In this lesser known but even more Thanksgiving-centric episode Bob’s parents are coming to spend the holiday with the Hartleys.  Bob’s mother Martha is a Type-A perfectionist who has Emily in a cleaning frenzy and everyone running around making sure all of the Hartley family Thanksgiving traditions are carried out (including coffee with eggshells?!).  When Emily’s boisterous father Junior and her mother show up announced, with a giant turkey with them, Martha wages passive-aggressive war.  It doesn’t help that Junior snatches an apple and thereby ruins her cornucopia.   Which in hindsight sounds sort of euphemistic but I’m really just talking an actual cornucopia.  

Photographic evidence of the cornucopia

On Thanksgiving Day both sets of parents are no-shows but end up colliding anyway when they stop by for dessert.  Bob’s father helps make peace by acknowledging both Martha and Junior’s faults and everyone sits down to a second meal.

Like her descendant Emily Gilmore, Martha is the type of tireless, bitchy, Miss Manners that I can really get behind.  Her not-so-subtle quips are a joy throughout the episode as are hearing about the Hartley family traditions, including Pilgrims made from “cranberries damp from the bog,” Indian corn on the door and an “H” carved from butter.  And I’ve always loved the tried-but-true sitcom trope of clashing traditions.  Which kind of stuffing your family prefers and when you open your Christmas presents are to me essential indicators of your truest nature.

We miss you, Marcia

I also have to swing the spotlight on Marcia Wallace, who of course played Carol, and passed away just last month.  She has only a small role in this episode: she brings a spinach soufflé that ends up spilled inside her car and also wears a really fabulous coat.  But even with a small role she manages to be warm and funny and this Thanksgiving I'm grateful for the years of television goodness she provided us with.

So never fear Mom; you raised me well!  It just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without good ole’ Bob.

The Menu: Two Turkeys, Chestnut & Oyster Stuffing, Spinach Soufflé, Mincemeat Pie & Coffee with Eggshells

Thanksgiving Quotient: We’re ending on a high note with a solid 5!

See It, Skip It, Own It?

Run out and buy all of the available seasons of The Bob Newhart Show on DVD in the hopes that the boost in sales will get them to release the last few seasons!

A DEEP-FRIED KOREAN THANKSGIVING

Gilmore Girls
Season 3 (2002)

I have to give credit where credit is due: my mom and sister discovered and loved Gilmore Girls long before I did.  I didn’t get their obsessive love of the show, which involved lots of heated discussions about characters and at least one Gilmore Girls-themed party.  I very slowly warmed up to it, however, watching it piecemeal until Nick and I took the plunge and watched the entire show in order.  I’m a full convert now and spend my days wishing I could escape to Stars Hollow.  And the character of Emily Gilmore has been canonized in my personal house of worship and is also currently my desktop image on my work computer.

This Thanksgiving episode embodies what makes the show so fun, namely a lot of quirky characters, sharp dialogue and an idyllic setting.  In typical Gilmore Girls fashion Lorelai and Rory have committed to three Thanksgiving dinners.  When Emily literally sneaks up on Lorelai (a very funny scene in which Lorelai, not realizing her mother is standing directly behind her, compares her to Stalin) they add a fourth meal to their roster.  

A decapitated chocolate turkey & Mrs. Kim

First up is the religious Kim household, where the menu is vegetarian and Mrs. Kim is her awesomely curt self.  Then it’s off to Luke’s diner for a home-cooked meal with Luke and Rory’s surly boyfriend Jess (I'm Team Logan all the way). After that they head to friend Sookie’s front yard, where Sookie is dismayed at her husband and his rowdy family's plan to deep-fry a turkey.  She eventually gets drunk to cope as they deep-fry whatever they can get their hands on, including but not limited to cake and a napkin.  Never forget that Melissa McCarthy, who plays Sookie, was doing a kick-ass job on Gilmore Girls before her major modern-day fame!

Man vs. Turkey

The final meal is with the senior Gilmores, Emily and Richard, and some of their typically pompous friends (one of whom only speaks French).   It includes a ceremonial turkey carving, during which Richard slices off just one piece of meat before the turkey is ushered back in to the kitchen by a team of maids.  Ugh, Richard!  During the course of that ill-fated dinner it’s revealed that Rory applied to schools other than Harvard, causing Lorelai to flip out and blame her parents for manipulating her daughter away from her lifelong dream.  Lorelai’s over-the-top reaction is irrational and irritating.  Who doesn’t apply to multiple colleges?  Besides, I automatically side with Emily on everything.  Emily knows best!

Emily rings my bell

It’s a very enjoyable episode; while screen capping images for this post I pretty much wanted to screen cap the whole thing.  I love the contrast between the different meals (how many Seventh Day Adventist Thanksgiving dinners do we get to see portrayed on TV?).  The subplots, such as Paris being annoyed at not being able to secure a soup kitchen volunteer spot and Kirk being terrorized by his cat (also named Kirk) add a lot of humor as well.  Plus, despite her emotional faux pas, at least Lorelai knows enough to know that chocolate turkeys make the best Thanksgiving hostess gifts.

The aftermath: deep-fried turkey carcass and drunk Sookie

Recurring Themes: Another case of Multiple Meals.

The Menu: Chocolate Turkeys, Tofurkey, Deep-Fried Turkey, Regular Turkey, Canned Cranberry Sauce, Stuffing, All the Trimmings, Margaritas & Lots of Rolls

Thanksgiving Quotient: It would be a 5 on the basis of just the episode itself but as  Thanksgiving is a bit overshadowed by several running storylines it earns a 4.

See It, Skip It, Own It?
Own it and enjoy it every year!