Yesterday’s installment of the countdown trended more adult. Lots of cartoons not for the kids, but today’s list definitely is more general audience. I like the spread today. It’s dominated by animation, as it so often is, but we also have a live-action, puppet, type show. We have weekend cartoons, and week day cartoons. There’s shows from Disney, shows from Warner Bros and it’s almost all entirely dominated by 90s properties. I haven’t really been keeping tabs on the decades as I go through this list, but it makes sense that the 90s would be heavily represented all throughout. That’s when cable really exploded and we had a whole bunch of cartoons with massive episode orders and throwing a Christmas one into that mass of stuff sure makes things a whole lot easier. Networks originally were said to dislike holiday episodes, but I think they changed their tune when they realized they could program an entire day, or even week, around a holiday like Christmas or Halloween. Even the prime time shows tended to do this sort of thing. Anyway, I feel like I’ve talked about all of this before so let’s cut the preamble and get to number 93:

93 – Dinosaurs – Refrigerator Day

Dinosaurs was a real treat to come back to when Disney+ launched a few years ago. I watched it as a kid when it was airing on ABC, but kind of lost track of it. I think it got shuffled around some, or maybe my family latched onto something else in the same timeslot. I don’t know. What I do know is the show is great. It holds up very well in basically all respects. The satire it went for is still biting and relevant today, which is both a good and bad thing. Dinosaurs never technically did air a Christmas episode, but instead we got “Refrigerator Day” which is basically their version of Christmas. Since there is apparently no dinosaur Jesus, they worship at the altar of the refrigerator which changed their lives so completely. It’s a society that’s very consumer-driven, if you couldn’t tell. Despite that, the plot is pretty conventional and, for some, may be a tad too much like The Simpsons since Earl’s horrible boss foregoes Christmas bonuses and things get tight for the Sinclair family. However, they stumble upon a million dollar idea, the concept of store returns, and in exchange for making a huge company even more wealthy they get a few measly gifts and their repossessed appliance is returned. It’s a bit dark, but pretty funny. If you haven’t checked out Dinosaurs in a long time then do yourself a favor and go back to it. I promise you, it’s not as dominated by the baby character as you may remember.

92 – The Looney Tunes Show – A Christmas Carol

The Looney Tunes Show is perhaps a more interesting concept than show, but the little I’ve seen is honestly not bad. It’s basically a sitcom starring the cast of Looney Tunes. Bugs Bunny is dating Lola Bunny and is roommates with Daffy. Foghorn Leghorn is the mayor, and Yosemite Sam is more like a rich Texas guy than an outlaw. This Christmas episode of the show involves Lola directing a play, the titular A Christmas Carol, while Foghorn and Daffy head to the North Pole to try and find a way to make their local climate cooler. Their adventure is a bit more madcap, while the story with the play is more grounded. Lola turns out to be a very interesting and funny character. She’s very self-confident without any reason to be and a lot of the characters in her orbit are too polite to tell her when she’s making a bad decision. The play is basically terrible and goes way off the rails, but also the real Santa shows up for it which I honestly didn’t expect. I can’t figure out what the audience was supposed to be for this show, but I do know I was entertained by this more than I was the conventional Looney Tunes Christmas specials and that sure surprised me. It’s still not the best Looney Tunes Christmas special though.

91 – The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries – It Happened One Night Before Christmas

Our second look at The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries is the stronger of the two Christmas episodes. It’s a sort-of parody of It’s a Wonderful Life, only instead of focusing on the George Bailey character it centers on a stand-in for his drunk uncle. If you’ve never seen the movie, what sets the plot in motion is George’s uncle Billy losing a deposit of money that their savings and loan business was to make that night. Essentially, they lost the money of a bunch of people and would have probably been arrested for theft or misappropriation or something. For this cartoon, Granny and her animals are going to help her brother find the money he lost by retracing his steps from the prior night. They do a solid job of tiptoeing around the whole alcoholic aspect of the Uncle Billy character to keep things PG, and we do get a Potter stand-in to act as the villain. There are some solid gags throughout and none of the characters really dominate the episode, which is a full-length one as opposed to the half-length one we looked at days ago. It will amuse you if you’re familiar with the movie, but also you don’t have to be in order to be entertained. And it even one-ups the movie by having the Potter stand-in actually face some consequences for his thievery.

90 – CatDog – A Very CatDog Christmas

The Nicktoons tended to have solid Christmas episodes, few great ones, but most of them are fine. CatDog was one I had ignored for a long time because I simply wasn’t watching Nickelodeon when it was airing. I knew it had a Christmas episode and it was on my list for years until I finally sat down and watched it just a year ago. And you know what? It’s fine. I liked it more than I expected and I’m even ranking it ahead of shows I did watch a ton of like Doug and The Ren & Stimpy Show. I’m not elevating it to the level of Rocko’s Modern Life or even Rugrats, but this episode is fun enough. It’s almost a little like Mickey’s Good Deed in that CatDog essentially sells itself to a wealthy family as a Christmas present, but then has second thoughts. It’s the Christmas special that taught us being a whore isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Everything works out though and even the bratty kid that bought them comes around. It has a pretty straight ending where everyone learns something, but it’s not too syrupy sweet or anything. If you’re like me and didn’t really give CatDog much of a chance then you may want to reconsider this Christmas.

89 – Bonkers – Miracle at the 34th Precinct

I still can’t believe I enjoyed an episode of Bonkers more than Darkwing Duck – and a Christmas one at that! Bonkers is the character no one wanted. He should have been Roger Rabbit, but that just wasn’t possible so we got this weird bobcat character. At least he’s better than Bubsy. This episode is a solid one though and it actually doesn’t feature a ton of the titular character. It’s centered more on his partner Lucky and an amnesiac Santa Claus. Poor Santa got knocked out of the sky and stuck with the character Fall Apart. Since no one can find him, the elves turn to the police and Lucky is chosen to basically be a stand-in. His motivation to help out is his daughter’s belief in Santa Claus. Pretty conventional stuff, but it all wraps up nicely. The animation is also gorgeous as it often is for the Disney Afternoon and the antics between Fall Apart and “Jim” are pretty funny. This also is just a fun world and the premise of the show is terrific, it just rarely came together to form a cohesive half hour of entertainment. For Christmas though, it nailed it.

88 – Batman – Christmas with the Joker

This Christmas episode of Batman: The Animated Series is fine. It’s funny, the Joker is a good villain for this type of thing, and I usually watch it every year. It’s also an episode that I just wish was better and that’s because of the show it hails from. Batman is the greatest superhero show to ever come around. I say that as a lover of X-Men, but the quality was just so much better. The writing was tighter and the budget greater so it looks terrific. It also helps that the cast was small and that’s one reason why I just can’t get into shows like Justice League following this one. This episode is a fairly standard Joker plot where he’s kidnapped some people and there’s a bomb or something. It just happens to be at Christmas so we get some Christmas puns and festive attire out of the Joker. It unfortunately doesn’t look as good as some episodes and there’s some awkward shots in here. Maybe it was rushed so there was no danger of missing the holiday? I don’t know, I just know it’s a pretty even episode of Batman, but not one of the show’s best.

87 – It’s a Wonderful Tiny Toons Christmas Special

Batman’s network-mates the Tiny Toons got to make a contribution to Christmas. Unlike the more seasoned Sylvester and Tweety, their It’s a Wonderful Life parody mostly plays it straight. In the role of George is Buster Bunny who is questioning his own worth. Not to the degree that George was, but maybe he’s just not cut out for the life he wants? Through the magic of his guardian rabbit, Harvey, Buster is going to see what life would be like had he never been on Tiny Toons. Plucky is the star, Montana Max owns the Looniversity, and Babs is a humorless solo act. Naturally, Buster has a revelation and has his life restored where he’s able to help the other toons put on an entertaining Christmas show. It doesn’t do anything to upend the framing device, but the humor of Tiny Toons is able to carry this one. Tiny Toon Adventures is a show I can only handle in small doses, but when done well it’s usually pretty rewarding. This one is animated well and there’s some easy Christmas special gags to be found as well which are real crowd pleasers. I tend to lose track of this one among the many other Warner Bros. Christmas episodes and specials, but it’s worth returning to.

86 – TaleSpin – Jolly Molly Christmas

TaleSpin, like Bonkers, is another Disney Afternoon show I didn’t really care for in the moment, but it has a good Christmas episode. This one centers around the child character Molly, who is the daughter of Baloo’s boss, Rebecca. She’s having a bit of a Christmas crisis where her belief in Santa Claus is in doubt and it’s mostly all because of Baloo. He, with the help of Louie, tries to stage a North Pole to trick Molly into believing, but when Louie’s bar is closed for way too long on Christmas Eve the local drunks overrun the place and blow the whole thing. Now, this episode does fly too close to the sun for me when it comes to whether or not Santa Claus is real. I don’t particularly like it when a show aimed at young children places too much doubt on his existence, but they do rectify it at the end (as if there was any doubt). And that’s really my only complaint with the episode. It otherwise is pretty entertaining and it’s very well animated and heartbroken Molly worked on me so when her moment of triumph came it also affected me in much the same way. TaleSpin isn’t reinventing the wheel when it comes to Christmas episodes, but it brings the feels.

85 – Life with Louie – Family Portrait

Life with Louie is one of those forgotten Fox Kids shows. The network never celebrated its works like a Disney or a Nickelodeon would. They kind of just paid for them for the moment, then sold them off when it no longer suited them. As such, I think this show is owned by Disney who bought most of Fox Kids if not all. The company kind of treated most of these shows the same way Fox did using them to pad out expanded, digital, cable channels until it was no longer profitable. Some shows saw DVD release, and many did not. Life with Louie was supposed to according to series creator Louie Anderson, but it never happened. It’s too bad because Life with Louie is a sweet coming of age cartoon. There’s not a ton of stuff like that, especially from the 90s, and it managed to be plenty funny too. In this Christmas episode, Louie basically finds out a kid he thinks is the greatest is actually an orphan and it forces him to reexamine his own relationship with his family. It’s all heartwarming stuff and we get to see Louie’s dad be forced to play Santa which is where a lot of the comedy comes from. I prefer the first Christmas episode from this show more, but this is a worthy (if unexpected) follow-up.

84 – Animaniacs – ‘Twas the Day Before Christmas

Sing it with me, “It’s time for Animaniacs!” Yes, the first of three entries for the series is “‘Twas the Day Before Christmas.” In 1993, Animaniacs did the odd thing of releasing two Christmas episodes. I guess when you’re a weekday afternoon program you can afford to do that. It also helps that Animaniacs was a pretty large ensemble so giving everyone their own Christmas arc was just not possible in a single half hour episode. Maybe they first envisioned an hour long prime time affair? I don’t know, but this is the lesser of the two despite the other one being a parody of A Christmas Carol. I know – shocking! And the main segment is basically designed to squeeze most of the cast into one short as Aunt Slappy relays the story about the day before Christmas on the Warner lot. It’s the strongest segment across both specials, but it’s not very substantial since its just Slappy reading a parody of A Visit From Saint Nicholas with some funny stuff animated to it. The second segment is Chicken Boo who is playing a mall Santa. One kid sees the character for what it is, a chicken, but no one else does and he freaks out. It’s pretty damn funny, but also brief. The third segment is just the Warners in a toy store after hours where the toys come to life. It’s pretty weak and drags this one down, but it’s not terrible. It’s still an entertaining 25 minutes and most of these characters work best in quick bursts anyway, but there’s better stuff ahead. Especially for a couple of laboratory mice.