AIRDATE: 10/24/77 (Or, one day after Virginia Benningfield allowed her final child passage into the world.)STORY: It's the big Homecoming Dance for pre-teens, ya bastards! That means a parade and a football game.
On one side is Peppermint Patty's squad, featuring among its ranks the freckled one herself, Charlie Brown, Linus, Franklin, Pig Pen, Schroeder, Lucy and several other of the "faceless-nameless". Opposing them are some ambulatory refrigerators with Scarlet Knights uniforms thrown over them. The game goes down to the frayed end, with the score 21-20 and P. Pat's bunch needing only a kick to win. Lamentably, this means the outcome depends on the foot of Charlie Brown...and the unfettered sadism of placeholder Lucy Van Pelt.
Despite his predictably colossal failure on the field, Charlie Brown dutifully attends the dance and proceeds to steal the show. As Linus explains the next morning, as both boys lean up against their trusty wall, Charlie Brown not only planted a lengthy smooch on the Homecoming Queen, he shimmied up a storm with her and all the other girls as well. "You did the Hustle, the Bump, the Chicken, and all those other new dances." Like the Aqua Velva, Dirty Dog and Shy Tuna.
However, a Boswell-like recollection of his heroic feats does not make Charlie Brown feel a lot better, huh. With a woeful moan as natural as a heartbeat, he begs the eternal question: "What good is it to do anything, Linus, if you can't remember what you did?"
A 7.5 may sound low. To which I say, read on.
MUSIC: It's the Ed Bogas/Judy Munsen period, which means you try and enjoy the show in spite of the music. They say you can't take it with you when you go, but Vince Guaraldi took a great deal with him. Namely, the heart and soul of music on children's television. 6
Thirteen years before its release, Snoopy hears Vision Creation Newsun in his head and reacts accordingly.ANIMATION: 9. If the music is on the decline, the look of the specials is tight and bright as ever, involving to the eye and friendly to the main characters. Distinction made for a reason. Any girl who is not of the regular gang has annoying blush circles on each cheek, and more than aesthetically offputting, it's just lazy.
VOICES: There are actually many things you can count on besides death and taxes. Like the University of Maryland campus rioting after a big win in any sport (including tiddlywinks? Oh, especially tiddlywinks). Or the President of the United States always turning out to be one of the rankest assholes alive at the time, regardless of party affiliation (including William Henry Harrison? Yes! The only word to describe someone who thinks so little of being appointed Commander-in-Chief that he allows his body to quit in the face of the common cold is "asshole".)
Another certainty is the awesomosity of whoever voices Peppermint Patty in Peanuts cartoons. They can't all be Linda Ercoli, but male or female, any child given the responsibility of bringing one of the world's greatest tomboys to vivid, butt-kicking life excels in the role. Laura Planting brings a touch of sinus infection to earn her 9.
The only other female speaking part is Michelle Muller's Lucy and well, I love alliteration in names. I truly do. But when you underperform, I'm gonna forget about the poetry of your handle and call you out on it. 7.5 Lucy's more action than talk here anyways.
The rest of the cast gets 8's. That's Daniel Anderson's remarkably faithful Linus, Ronald Hendrix's tentative Franklin and Arrin Skelley's mournful Chuck. (The last kid should consider himself touched by the hand of God to not lose a point based on having the worst name in the history of Peanuts voice actors.)
"THE STORM, THE STORM OF A KISS"
--How does Snoopy entertain thee? Let us screen capture the ways.
News chopper.
Impartial referee.
Trusted doctor.
Talented musician.
Male cheerleader.
Much more preferable to the wave as a form of crowd participation. (Is that Peppermint Patty in the crowd, just above the second square from top left?)
--Not that repeating things is bad.
Snoopy stands over a groggy kid and drinks a glass of water. As featured in A Boy Named Charlie Brown, the funniest moment in movie history. As featured here? Funniest moment in the special. It never gets old, and I still look forward to one day doing this in real life. Preferably over someone that I don't care for that much to begin with.
--Does anyone remember the stink that was raised by some parents and media watchdogs over Franklin being shown arm in arm with a white girl? Me neither. I think it went under the radar for several reasons, not least being it's a dumb fuckin' thing to be offended by.
--Peppermint Patty spends the pregame drawing out the gameplan on a trusty locker room chalkboard. This gives her team sufficient fuel to face their predetermined doom with passion and grit. All except Franklin, who asks his coach (and then Schroeder on the way to the field) "Are we the X's or the O's?" Of course, he gets no response.
At the end of the first half, Patty's bunch is down 21-6, thanks in no small part to missed field goals by Charlie Brown that were actually not his fault. Lucy pulled the ball away every time. Either no one saw this rather egregious trickery, or people are just addicted to beating up on the roundheaded kid, because at halftime, Peppermint Patty blurts out, To answer your earlier question, Franklin, about the X's and the zeroes, I think we found out who our zero is."
Ouch. Manhood going into hibernation in 1, 2....
--When Charlie Brown lays the (lip) smack down on the Queen, he immediately exits reality and floats up to and around the circumference of a fantastic otherworld, filled with hearts and clouds, a heaven beyond heaven, the type of paradise fit snug alongside one's whims rather than a Shangri-La one has to adapt to. To his eventual chagrin, this journey also includes a relaxing dip in the river Lethe. If true happiness can be found in sweet memory as the residue of sweeter action, it's difficult not to feel that even though Blockhead won, Blockhead still lost. Again.
"Hey, Chuck! Look out for the campy drawing of Queen Victoria!"
--"Hiya, Chuck. I bet'cha kinda like being bossed around by a girl who is superior to you in everything boys are supposed to excel at. You kinda like me, don't'cha, Chuck?"
When just earlier, at the beginning of the show...
One thing about women, we traffic in mixed messages alot. More out of boredom than malice, but still.
"IN A BLUSH, LOVE FINDS A BARRIER"
--Euripides once wrote, "A woman should always stand by a woman." So it is at the dance. Bunched up with the ever-evil Lucy and the smarmy Frieda, Peppermint Patty lets loose a previously-unrevealed side to her personality, berating Chuck for his athletic shortcomings (with the girl who actually blew the game standing right next to her unscathed and relishing every moment!) and flat-out telling him that no girl, much less the Homecoming Queen, will want to accept a kiss from him.At the risk of sounding like a Nohomers.net poster...Patty here seems out of character. Before, she reveled in teasing and taunting Chuck playfully before during and after those baseball games where her team inevitably crushed his. No matter what she said, her sly tone and slyer facial expressions made it clear that she had a soft spot in her heart for the lovable loser. Here, she's just tearing him apart. Sure, this time his incompetence led to her team taking the loss, but...it wasn't his fault!
--Yeah, let's get to that a little more now. Lucy is the villain of this piece, with absolutely no room for argument. The fact that she would sabotage Charlie Brown so relentlessly is hardly a shocker. What sends my eyeballs swimming into some cerebrospinal fluid is that everyone, without fail, does not call her out on it. Her noble brother Linus? "If only you hadn't missed that kick, Charlie Brown." Peppermint Patty you can almost forgive, because she has an established tendency towards dumbness (graduating dog obedience school and thinking her education was done, unable to see that Snoopy is a dog and not another neighborhood kid). But Linus quotes dead people and knows firsthand how devious his sister is. His ignorance just boggles.
Further evidence of Lucy's shady nature can be found in her team's comeback. At the half, the score is 21-6. Improbably, the kids score two touchdowns and hold the other team. When Lucy pulls away the ball for the final time, it's 21-20.
Now, touchdowns count for six points apiece, with a kick for the extra point. Clearly, although no kicks were shown, Peppermint Patty's team got 14 points on the board. How? They had no other kicker on the roster, so it had to be the Way Sinkable Charlie Brown booting 'em through the uprights. Doesn't make sense when you consider that all we've seen is him missing chance after chance thanks to his crabby nemesis.
But it does. Lucy has the reprobate blood of Bathory coursing through her veins, remember, and she's no numbskull. She allowed Charlie Brown to get those extra points that would bring the team tantalizingly close to victory, knowing all the while that if and when he was called upon to be the hero, she would revert to her old pigskin prankery and fit the ol' boy for horns.
Total...bitch. Gotta love her, though.
--I joked earlier about a non-controversy involving Franklin, but It's Your First Kiss actually stirred up some contentious feelings among viewers.
The first point I've already discussed: the inexplicable laying of blame at the feet of Charlie Brown. He was berated so senselessly that it made getting a rock in his trick or treat bag seem like an misunderstood adult act of humanitarian mercy. And while viewers loved seeing Chuck squirm in his own ineptitude, comforting as it is, apparently they didn't dig it when he was so innocent. Viewers flooded the network and the producers with protests over the unfair treatment their hero received, and apparently, they struck a nerve. If you watch It's Your First Kiss on DVD, you are not watching the show as it originally aired. Two comments that Peppermint Patty made after Charlie Brown failed to kick the ball were dubbed out by reversing the audio and decreasing the volume of said audio, so to watch it now is to wonder why Peppermint Patty is invoking Satan in such a hushed tone of voice.
"Chuck, you can't do anything right!" Available only on VHS.
Then we come to the Homecoming Queen. I forgot to mention earlier that she's a redhaired girl. No, she isn't referred to as such, but any Peanuts fan knows what that signifies, or is supposed to anyway. She's also given a name: Heather. The red-haired girl of the strip was never drawn or named, so to see this special threw many for a loop, as canon-fuckery has a tendency to do.
And did any fan of the strip imagine the Little Red-Haired Girl like this?
Not me; she's too "P.R. firm"--prim, proper, and pretty. I always envisioned the girl of Charlie Brown's dreams as country-beautiful, with short wavy red hair and a fuller face. Her personality leaned towards the detached side, but far from arrogant. She was intelligent and capable, approachable by anyone but the most neurotic kid in school. This "Heather", though...she brings to mind another shade of red--that of the pigs blood that landed on Carrie White. And oh man, Heather ain't gonna last long at that dance.
Charles Schulz would later express regret not only for allowing a redhaired girl to be animated, but also that she should be named. Lord knows how hard he actually took it.
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This is a very sweet story in the classic Peanuts sense. Meaning, parts of it make no sense but non-, and even the triumph is tempered. The various questionable decisions in music, story and animation indicate more of a desire to experiment than an overall, irrevocable dip in quality--as future shows would bear out.
I wonder if any of my older siblings watched this that Monday night, or if they were too busy at the hospital, pestering Mom about when their new baby sister could come home. Silly, if they were; babies are born every day.
Charlie Brown Snoopy Peanuts
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