Good grief! There are new, really great Peanuts specials!

You should watch them

Hey folks,

Preparations continue for next month’s sojourn to the UK for a tour of Beatles sites in London and Liverpool, but for now, I’d like to focus attention on a venue I don’t typically cover here - the small screen.

And by that, I don’t only mean movies that go directly to streaming. I mean television programming specifically. I’ve never been much of a television guy, even in this new so-called “golden age.” Yes, I watch series like Stranger Things and Mare of Easttown, but I will always be a movie guy first and foremost. However, there is a central tenet of my personality that was very much shaped by television, or more specifically, a group of television specials:

I can’t remember for sure how I first encountered the Peanuts gang, although it was most likely in the funny papers. On Sunday, it was the first strip on the front page above the fold. That said, it probably was television that cemented my interest in good ol’ Charlie Brown. I devoured those specials like many kids my age, but I had an audio aid too: a series of records of the soundtracks to those specials, complete with illustrations from the shows.

I couldn’t commit the shows to memory by watching them only once a year, before there was such a thing as affordable VCRs. But I could commit them to memory through incessant playing of those records. I had A Charlie Brown Christmas, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown; Charlie Brown’s All-Stars, and He’s Your Dog, Charlie Brown, the last of which came only with the record and not the pictures. To this day, I’ve still never actually seen that show.

I played these so often, I had them memorized, particularly the Christmas record. Even now, I can still recite Lucy’s list of phobias for Charlie Brown, after she extols “that beautiful sound of plinking nickels.”

Those specials spoke to me in a way that no other kid-friendly media did at the time - not even Disney animation. I saw a lot of myself in Charlie Brown and especially Linus, particularly with his advanced vocabulary leavened by raging insecurity. Even as far back as first grade, I got attention for saying “Well, actually” a lot, which sounds very Linus to me. Come to think of it, my use of the word “leavened” does too. It’s never left me.

While my interest in the comic strips never flagged, my interest in the specials did by the middle of the 80s, particularly after they started chasing modern trends, as in It’s Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown. (Although, funnily enough, I’ve actually still never seen Flashdance itself.) Too many of those later shows (and strips if I’m being honest) descended into cutesiness, with little of the soulfulness I found so meaningful.

When Apple announced they were going to make new Peanuts specials, the news didn’t really register to me. One, because Apple does not do a very good job of promoting its movies and shows that don’t have A-level casts and budgets, and two, because it had been a very long time since a Peanuts special meant something to me. I had very much enjoyed Blue Sky’s The Peanuts Movie when that came out theatrically in 2015, but I didn’t feel the need for new TV specials. Could they really matter anymore?

As it turns out, they very much could. They’re on Apple TV+, and you can identify the new ones because they’re under the banner “Snoopy presents…”

Two of my favorite critics, Alonso Duralde and his husband Dave White, discussed the specials on their Patreon podcast LKTV, and I thank them for doing so, because the two specials they covered, It’s the Small Things, Charlie Brown, and To Mom (and Dad) with Love, are the best Peanuts media since Schulz’s death - even more so than The Peanuts Movie.

The first thing I noticed about It’s the Small Things, Charlie Brown, was the striking animation style. The show opens with a baseball game, kinda/sorta a riff on the climax of The Natural. The animation is 2D, but with varied lighting and shading that were rarely in the specials or the movies - yet at the same time, it maintains Schulz’s flat, minimalist drawing style. It looks modern while still adhering to 1960s basics.

The story is a spiritual sequel to the 1976 special It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown - the one in which the gang turns the baseball field into a garden, complete with a tree on the pitcher’s mound, with predictably disastrous results. The new special also has a plant that’s unwanted on the pitcher’s mound - a dandelion, which Sally takes a fancy to. It even resembles her golden, puffy hair.

Her devotion to the dandelion becomes so intense that she stays on the mound for days on end, much to her big brother’s chagrin. Then game day arrives, and Charlie Brown decides that Sally and the dandelion must be moved. This does not go well, leaving Sally heartbroken and Charlie Brown stricken with guilt. This is the kind of pathos at which Schulz’s Peanuts excelled, and and it’s great to see how the gang can still tug at the heartstrings. The grief is good indeed.

On top of all that, there is a damn catchy song from Ben Folds and unobtrusive Easter eggs featuring brief appearances from obscure characters that have largely disappeared from the public imagination. This is how to make fun references without making your show seem like a loop of the meme with Leonardo DiCaprio pointing.

The newest special, To Mom (and Dad) with Love, is arguably even better. This one focuses on Mother’s Day and Peppermint Patty, but there’s a problem - Peppermint Patty doesn’t have a mother, having been raised by a single dad, who calls her a “rare gem.” So while the other kids are creating gifts for their moms, Peppermint Patty can’t help but feel left out. This dilemma is resonant largely because the other kids don’t mean to be hurtful - they’re simply going about their lives, yet Peppermint Patty still feels bereft. When she sheds real tears, I do too. And the comedy balances the sorrow well, particularly with a great gag involving a trombone, which, as Peanuts fans know, is the voice of the adults in this world.

This adult is grateful to see these kids represented so well, and if this team wants to make a new Peanuts movie, I would welcome that. For now, the bad news is there isn’t another new special for three months, when August will bring us the premiere of Lucy’s School. The good news is, there’s a third new special, For Auld Lang Syne, which came out late last year, and it may be the best of the new bunch.

For Auld Lang Syne also features Lucy as its central subject. She’s crestfallen when her blanket-hating grandma can’t visit for the holidays, so she decides to throw her own New Year’s Eve party, with a stringent list of rules for elegance. As you might imagine, the party devolves into inelegance, and Lucy is crushed even worse than before, convinced that nobody loves her.

But guess who helps turn things around? None other than her best psychiatric booth customer, Charlie Brown, whose steady supply of nickels funded the party in the first place. This moving special makes an ideal companion piece to the original classic Charlie Brown Christmas, and it reminded of an old refrain. To paraphrase:

“I never thought she was such a bad little fussbudget. She’s not bad at all, really. Maybe she just needs a little love.”

These specials are real in.