December 9th brings us perhaps the most eclectic part of the countdown yet. As I mentioned in an earlier entry, I tried to group similar specials together when it came to tone and audience. I didn’t want to create too much whiplash going from Mickey Mouse to Eric Cartman. That doesn’t mean I’d stick to that approach at all costs because the rankings are what they are. I’m not going to elevate a bad Christmas episode of a show just to slot it into a friendlier place on the list or do the opposite to a good special. Sometimes, there’s just no way around it. Today is one of those days, but I’m going to frontload it with the adult comedy specials before transitioning to the more general audience stuff. And sure, maybe I’m more likely to watch one of these adult cartoons over one from The Flintstones on a given day, but they’re so close together that the rankings are purely subjective. I could say that for any entry, if you want to reorder these ten I wouldn’t fight you on it, but let’s get to it.

146 – Family Guy – The Frist No L

Family Guy is making its first appearance on this list, but it has a few to contribute and plenty more I never covered. This episode is one of the more recent ones and it’s also the most recent episode from the show I took a look at. It appealed to me because the plot, a frustrated Lois ditches her family for Christmas, felt very similar to the show’s first Christmas episode which remains my favorite one it’s done. The main difference is in that episode Lois goes to great lengths to be a beacon of positive energy who wants her family to have a great Christmas and then she eventually snaps because her family just isn’t willing to help her at all. This one, being many years later, is more typical of modern Family Guy where there’s a mean-spirited energy throughout. Lois experiences basically the same thing, but rather than have a nervous breakdown she just leaves and hopes to watch her family fall apart without her. When that doesn’t happen, she returns to steal Christmas in a very Grinchy segment which ends up being the highlight. It’s all right, but it all has a feeling of “Haven’t we done this before?” Doing a Grinch parody in this day and age also doesn’t help. We somehow managed to go decades as a society with doing The Grinch before the floodgates just suddenly opened in the 2000s.

145 – The Futurama Holiday Spectacular

During its Fox run, Futurama gave us two excellent Xmas episodes centered around a murderous robot Santa. This one from the Comedy Central era decided not to go all-out on Xmas and instead gave us an anthology style episode with a segment on Xmas, Hannukah, and Kwanzaa. It’s…okay. None of the segments are really long enough to feel substantial, but they’re also not good enough to feel like we were deprived anything. Some of the jokes are too reliant on callbacks, a frequent problem for the show when it came back, and the Xmas segment in particular is rather weak. Recently, Futurama added another Xmas special to its bank of episodes and it’s a lot better than this one. I considered doing an entry on it this year, but decided against it. Maybe some other time. This is the Futurama holiday episode I usually skip.

144 – South Park – Merry Christmas, Charlie Manson

South Park‘s second season is somewhat maligned. It lacked the novelty the first season brought with it, but wasn’t quite the satirical force it would become in later seasons. “Merry Christmas, Charlie Manson” is pretty much emblematic of that. It’s not as shocking as the debut of Mr. Hankey in the first Christmas episode, and it’s not as brilliant as “A Very Crappy Christmas,” an episode I probably should have covered at some point. I only did this one because no one talks about it, but that is with good reason. Making Charlie Manson a central character in your Christmas special is certainly subversive and having the spirit of the holiday save him sounds like a decent South Park premise on paper, but they just don’t really pull it off. Maybe because it takes awhile to get Charlie into it? The payoff just isn’t all that funny and once the family of Cartmans runs its course the episode just limps to the finish line. If I’m throwing on the Christmas Time in South Park DVD I’m not skipping over this one, but I’m also not going out of my way to watch it annually.

143 – The Ren and Stimpy Show – A Scooter for Yaksmas

Ren and Stimpy feels like a good transition from the adult section of our countdown to the more family friendly stuff to come. I actually wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the show’s second holiday episode. I very much enjoy The Ren and Stimpy Show. For a long time it was my favorite Nicktoon, but I think now I’d rank Rocko’s Modern Life ahead of it. That’s still pretty good and the show is funny, but I don’t love their Christmas episodes. There are aspects of this one that I think work a little better than “Son of Stimpy,” and I considered ranking it ahead of that one, but ultimately settled on this spot. In this one, Stimpy really wants a scooter for Yaksmas and is not subtle about it. He always gets his buddy Ren thoughtful gifts, while Ren takes Stimpy for granted. That’s what happens here and it drives Stimpy crazy to the point where he basically steals the scooter and is on the run for a lot of the episode. It has its moments and it’s full of the Games era hallmarks of subversive jokes and misdirection, but it’s yet another episode that’s just brutal to Stimpy. He’s a sympathetic character and it’s just not fun to see him in so much distress and the jokes just aren’t frequent enough, or clever enough, to rescue this one.

142 – A Christmas Story

Nope, not the movie about the kid and the BB gun, but the Hanna-Barbera stand-alone Christmas special about a mouse and dog trying to get a letter to Santa. This special is mostly interesting to me because it must not have made much of an impact. I don’t know if I ever saw it as a kid. I definitely didn’t remember it when I returned to it for the blog, but I’m sure Cartoon Network would have aired this thing in the 90s. I conclude it made little to no impact because most of the original songs were lifted and repurposed for A Flintstone Christmas a few years later. It’s like if The Little Mermaid bombed so they had Aladdin sing “Part of Your World.” As for the actual special, it’s animated and produced competently enough and the story is a bit syrupy sweet. Daws Butler voicing another mouse is cute and it’s kind of amusing to hear Paul Winchell lend his Tigger voice to a dog. And it’s an original story for a stand-alone Christmas special so I’m giving it some bonus points for that. It’s not great, and I may be overrating it, but for whatever reason I just don’t hate this one and I think it’s more deserving of your time than a lot of what I ranked behind it.

141 – Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas

The character who put Dic on the map in the 1980s made a brief return in the early 90s for a proper Christmas finale. Inspector Gadget is the comically inept detective who is some sort of cyborg or something. He’s got lots of gadgets, as the name implies, and they’re built into his body. Are we sure he’s a cyborg and not just a robot? Anyway, he gets all the credit for thwarting Doctor Claw when in reality its his niece Penny and her super smart canine Brain getting the job done while also keeping Gadget out of harm’s way. In this one, Doctor Claw overtakes Santa’s workshop and Gadget is deployed to put a stop to it, but in the process assaults the real Santa Claus because he’s incredibly dumb. Dic was able to get the voice cast back for the most part and even spent a little money to make this thing look good. There’s some musical moments that don’t really work for me, but otherwise this is a pretty good episode of Inspector Gadget that also happens to be a Christmas episode. If you liked the show then you’ll probably enjoy this.

140 – The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries – Feather Christmas

When Warner Bros. (R.I.P.) had a new network to stock with children’s shows they turned to some old stars: Tweety and Sylvester. Joining the adversaries is Granny and the dog, Hector, who I don’t think ever had a name in the golden era, but maybe I’m mistaken. The plot then required this group to become a detective agency of sorts because why not? It worked for Hanna-Barbera all those years so why not a pair of Looney Tunes? The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries is a pretty mid-tier animated series. It’s well put together, but not very inventive, the kind of show you leave on if you can’t find anything better to watch (or can’t find the remote). “Feather Christmas” is also a fairly benign episode of the show. It occupies one segment, so roughly 11 minutes or so, but it also lacks what the title promises: a mystery. In this one, a bratty girl has a pet bird her parents hate so they snatch it in the middle of the night. They have their butler or something (they’re rich) return the bird, but come to regret it. Since the help is on vacation for Christmas, they need Granny and her animals to find the store the bird was returned to. Meanwhile, Sylvester is trying to be extra good so he gets something better than a rubber mouse for Christmas. There’s some slapstick, pee jokes, and Sylvester ultimately makes the right choice and the bratty little girl has a Merry Christmas while Sylvester gets…another rubber mouse. The cat can’t win.

139 – Future Worm! – Lost in the Mall

Future Worm! is a show I had never heard of until it popped up on Hulu one day as a recommend. I looked through the episodes, found a Christmas one, and then had to get acquainted with this interesting series. I’m not going to rehash the nonsensical plot and setup, but all most likely need to know about Future Worm! is that it’s Rick and Morty for babies. The look and tone is so similar to the more popular adult animated show that it kind of blew my mind. That had to have been the premise, right? As in, someone at Disney wondered if they could adapt a popular show like Rick and Morty for a more general audience. It’s the only explanation. And the crazy thing is it mostly works. This episode isn’t laugh out loud funny, but it’s clever. The main family gets lost in the mall, the patriarch (who is such a Gerry) falls in with some goths, and it turns out the villain is Mrs. Claus with a head made out of gingerbread. It’s weird, though maybe not as weird as it’s trying to be. If you ever wondered if Rick and Morty could work with a PG rating, then maybe give this show a look.

138 – A Flintstone Family Christmas

Yes, another 90s Flintstones holiday special. This one is much better than the franchise’s take on A Christmas Carol. This is a made-for-primetime television special so it has the production values and it’s also an original story. In this one, a juvenile delinquent comes into contact with the Flintstone family and it’s upon them to reform this Stony. He’s legitimately a bad seed at the start, but he’s also a product of neglect. The kid then tries to repay the Flintstones for their kindness, but he’s not equipped to do so and his bad decisions just create more problems for Fred and the family. It’s a very sitcom-type premise with the typical sitcom results. I confess that I’m still somewhat charmed by The Flintstones so this one probably works a little better for me than it would someone who doesn’t care about the show, but it’s a perfectly fine Christmas special.

137 – ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas

The Ranken/Bass animated special closes out our ten for today. Is this one a classic? It was in my house so I guess that’s all that matters for this countdown. And it was a favorite of mine as a kid. I naturally gravitated more towards the hand drawn stuff over the puppets so that probably played some role and I’m a sucker for the “Will Santa Claus come?” plot and the payoff always hits me. I feel like I frequently cite the songs in a lot of these things as being bad, but this one has some bangers. I think the big song, “Christmas Chimes are Calling (Santa, Santa)” is great and it’s kind of a shame it never made the jump to radio or something. I like the animation, I like the voice work. The special gets a little long and the plot is kind of goofy. Is Santa really so thin-skinned? If he’s omnipresent, how does he not know one editorial in the newspaper was the result of some kids? You can really pick this one apart if that’s your aim, or you can just be along for the ride. My kids don’t really like it, but it still charms me.