Today is a big day for our little Christmas special countdown for today we crest number 100. We are now past the halfway point on the road to the number one Christmas special and we’re also beginning a string of six consecutive days of countdown-style posts. That’s right, the next solo effort won’t be here until December 20th when we’re really close to Christmas. Basically, I have my work cut out for me to keep things lively and fresh for the next week so things don’t get too stale. Helping me out today is that we’re coming up on a day of mostly adult animation with a bit of teen animation mixed in. I try to keep the more adult stuff somewhat separated from the kid stuff when it makes sense and doesn’t throw off the rankings. And today works for that and after doing the very family friendly The Little Drummer Boy yesterday, it might be kind of nice to wallow in the misery of a horse man, but first we have something much closer to an all ages affair:

103 – Teen Titans Go! – Halloween vs Christmas

Teen Titans Go! is the little show that could. Seriously, it’s pretty crazy that it has outlasted basically every other DC animated superhero show. For awhile, it felt like “serious” Teen Titans fans looked down at it and blamed it for their preferred show no longer existing, but as it’s staying power has been proven time and again I think it’s starting to be properly recognized for what it is. And that’s just a good, solid, comedic, superhero show that has helped make household names out of some pretty D-list superheroes. During its run, the show has been able to establish some Christmas lore for itself and one of the most interesting takes the show has embarked on is with its depiction of Santa. Like American Dad!, the Santa here is a villain. He frequently refers to children as garbage, and in this episode he has decided that Halloween gets too much attention and he wants to dominate the calendar even longer. It’s an absurd premise for an absurd show so it works very well. The Titans end up on the side of Halloween and turn to a being that resembles Samhain from The Real Ghostbusters to do battle with Santa Claus. Things get pretty “Looney Tunes” in the battle for the soul of Halloween, but it’s never not entertaining. If you’re the sort of person who vastly prefers Halloween to Christmas then this is the one for you.

102 – Popeye the Sailor – Seasin’s Greetinks

The original Popeye Christmas short is still the best one. There’s not a lot to it as there’s really not a lot to a Popeye short from Fleischer Studios. They just create opportunities for Popeye to beat up Bluto and win Olive Oyl’s affection all while looking pretty damn fantastic in the process. In this short from 1933, Popeye brings his sweetheart some ice skates and the pair head over to a frozen river to give them a try. Olive isn’t very graceful, but it’s easily forgiven since it would appear she’s never skated before. Things are going well until Bluto shows up using a small dog to pull him along in his skates like a jackass. He and Popeye come to blows and we get a classic waterfall scenario where the ice ends and the water rushes over a ledge. Popeye has to take care of Bluto and save Olive at the same time. Is he up to the task? Naturally, for he’s Popeye the sailor man!

101 – Aqua Teen Hunger Force – A PE Christmas

Now here’s a special that has none of the Christmas feels. Aqua Teen Hunger Force is about as absurd a show as it gets considering our main characters are talking fast food items. In this one, the always scheming and all around bad person/cup Shake tries to steal the identity of Chuck D from Public Enemy in order to record a Christmas album which he thinks will make him rich. The scheme is entirely ridiculous as Shake basically just stole some mail and thinks that’s enough. Plus, his Christmas song is improvised on the spot and totals all of 12 seconds. He still manages to land some recording time on Christmas Eve to lay the track down, but a serious case of space eels basically ends his life. It’s surprisingly coherent for such a nonsensical plot and Shake is in good form as the asshole you can laugh at because he’s such an overconfident idiot. Chuck also gets to make a cameo at the end to compliment Meatwad on his recording of “Silent Night,” which is also set to the sound of Shake evacuating his bowels (yeah, lots of poop stuff in here). And if you think it’s really lacking in that Christmas atmosphere, this is one of the few specials to have a scene set in an actual church. Shake spouts a bunch of blasphemy and has to get dragged out by Frylock, but hey, it must count for something?

100 – The Ren & Stimpy Show – Son of Stimpy/Stimpy’s First Fart

I love me some Ren and Stimpy, but I’m not as big on their holiday episodes as some other fans might be. Placing the first Christmas special at number 100 feels like a great place for it. This one is pretty well known, but if you’re new to it this is an episode where Stimpy passes gas for the first time in his life and becomes obsessed with the result. The best part of the episode is right at the beginning when we bare witness to this momentous occasion and then watch Stimpy try to explain what happened to an unamused Ren. Following that, Stimpy becomes obsessed with finding this thing he created which he starts referring to as Stinky. Stimpy views his fart as his child and the fact that he can no longer smell him sends him into a deep depression. It seems the whole premise of the episode was to take a truly outrageous situation and play it straight. A father trying to reunite with his son at Christmas is a pretty conventional holiday plot, only here it’s a cat and his fart. Because the episode is so committed to playing it straight it suffers in the comedy department. We feel bad for Stimpy, but it can only go so far. And there’s plenty of gross throughout this one (as one can imagine) which really prevents the viewer from getting into the heart of the story. Is that the point? Did the writers and producers of The Ren & Stimpy Show want us to feel uncomfortable and confused for 24 minutes? It’s possible. There’s some funny stuff in here, but it went too far. The ending goes over like…well, like a wet fart.

99 – Robot Chicken’s ATM Christmas Special

Nonsensical sketch comedy made out of old toys with a Christmas theme – that’s a Robot Chicken Christmas special. It’s going to throw several bits at you, some good, some not so good, but the sum of the parts is usually a solid 11 minutes or so of entertainment. There are a few segments starring Santa that are pretty solid including one where he’s late for Christmas and another where he battles Jason Bourne for some reason. I also like the longer skit with the Christmas tree who is personified and feels at home with his new family, only to get thrown out on Christmas. The capper to this one though is the Robot Chicken Nerd character waking up on Christmas to find it’s all been stolen. There’s only one suspect: The Grinch, and the Nerd seeks vengeance for all who were wronged this Christmas. And it becomes a lot easier when the Nerd discovers that the Grinch responsible is that awful Jim Carrey one! It’s not the best Robot Chicken Christmas episode, but it’s hard to not at least be mildly amused with the short run time and I give a lot of deference to this show because I do like the stop-motion animation. Also, there’s a Larry Hama cameo!

98 – The Venture Bros. – A Very Venture Christmas

Another one from the land of Adult Swim, this episode of The Venture Bros. is the rare short subject and also the only Christmas episode. I was dismayed to learn that series co-creator Doc Hammer hates it, but it’s really not that bad. It’s just brief and not able to tell the sort of stories the show is accustomed to. It also devotes a large swath of the episode to a parody of Christmas specials at the beginning which is all the result of a drugged-out dream by Dr. Venture himself. The rest of the special takes place at a Christmas party at the Venture compound where the Monarch has infiltrated the festivities via a new agent: Tiny Joseph. This little guy has planted a bomb in a manger scene in the house of Venture that will go off at midnight when baby Jesus is put in place. Only the boys accidentally summon the Krampus and everything goes to Hell. It’s fine, there’s some good jokes in here, and the episode is basically all one big fake-out so it fits canonically. It was supposed to be part of a much larger block of animation dedicated to Christmas on Adult Swim, but it never came together and this was the only thing that came of it.

97 – TV Funhouse – Christmas Day

TV Funhouse was a short-lived Comedy Central show that was essentially a spoof on Saturday Morning variety shows for children. It had a host, live-action segments, puppets, animals, and cartoons only it was all intended for an adult audience. In this one, our affable host Doug has his spinal fluid stolen (because that’s where Christmas spirit dwells) by his animal companions who then go off and do a ton of drugs leaving Doug paralyzed in the studio to introduce segments. We get one about Christmas tension and another that’s a parody of the Harlem Globetrotters cartoon with this one featuring them dunking on Jesus. In between sketches, we just watch the “AniPals,” a collection of puppets and live animals, get high on the Christmas cheer they stole from Doug’s spine and attend church. It’s a lot of dark humor and the show is able to get obscene acts onto air, like one character sucking drugs off another character’s penis, because it’s all demonstrated through puppets. It basically comes down to two stuffed animals just smashing together. This is not a Christmas special for everyone and for me I have to be in the right mood for it. It’s all presented in a sincere manner, but it’s all farce.

96 – Robot Chicken’s Half-Assed Christmas Special

Yes, another from Robot Chicken and it’s quite close in proximity to the other one. That’s because they’re pretty hard to separate since we’re dealing with sketch comedy. I ranked this one ever so slightly higher because the bits stand out in my memory just a little bit more. That could have something to do with me seeing this episode more than the other one and less to do with the quality, but I’m sticking to this spot. This is the Christmas episode where Santa gets revenge on Coca-Cola, Frosty gets high, and we get a Godfather Part II parody starring Hermey from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It culminates with Christmas coming to Japan (sort of) as Santa enlists the help of Goku to takedown Composite Santa, the half Santa half Snowman monstrosity. This episode of Robot Chicken has a higher batting average when it comes to the sketches even if nothing lands as well as the other one’s Grinch sketch. It’s just more solid, stop-motion, entertainment.

95 – The Simpsons – ‘Tis the 15th Season

The most recent Christmas episode of The Simpsons we’ve looked at (recent as in we just did this one last year) is the lowest ranked of them all, but that’s not bad! “‘Tis the Fifteenth Season” comes from, what else, the 15th season of the show and features a plot about Homer being selfish. He learns from his mistake rather early on and tries to redeem himself which just puts him in competition with Flanders. When Flanders one ups him by giving everyone in town a Christmas present, Homer decides he can’t compete so he just steals them instead. This brings about a fourth act Grinch parody which I’m always down for. This is also the rare episode for this era of the show without much of a B plot as it just goes from one Homer situation to the next and it’s punctuated with a Moe suicide joke. It just wouldn’t be Christmas without a Moe suicide joke on The Simpsons now would it? What this one lacks in heart, it makes up for with laughs.

94 – BoJack Horseman – Sabrina’s Christmas Wish

Our last entry for today belongs to BoJack Horseman, the Netflix animated series about a has-been actor who lets his own depression and overall bad guy vibes take everyone down in his orbit. Or at least he tries to and ultimately fails in many respects. The Christmas episode is basically a stand-alone Christmas special that exists between seasons. In it, BoJack and his roommate Todd don’t have much going on because they don’t have a happy family life so they sit in BoJack’s bed and watch the Christmas episode of his old sitcom, Horsin’ Around. The premise of the show is that BoJack plays a horse who adopts some orphans. One of the orphans, Sabrina, learns about Christmas and Santa and thinks he has the power to bring her parents back to life, but when all she gets is a letter from Santa explaining why that isn’t possible she gets irate. Don’t worry though, because just like in an episode of Full House, BoJack and his adopted daughter have a talk and everything is fine. In fact, it’s better than fine as both confess they’re glad her parents are dead otherwise they’d never know each other! Most of the episode is dedicated to just watching what is essentially a sitcom parody and it’s done very well. The tropes are highlighted and some awkwardness is worked in when one of the kid characters can’t get his catchphrase over with the studio audience. And our framing device is BoJack, angry at Todd’s mere presence, but also extremely lonely and narcissistic enough to enjoy watching a bad TV show starring him. It’s hard to imagine the show doing a better Christmas episode as it perfectly captures why BoJack, the character, sucks so hard and presents a very believable Christmas for him. Like a lot of the programs we spotlighted today, it’s not a show that’s for everyone, but if you’re into dark humor and grew up on bad family sitcoms this one will probably amuse you.