"Workin' in a supermarket just like a mule"

In the spirit of the fact that "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" is on tonight, and since everyone is going to be watching it (or at least they should all be watching it), I am going to do another Peanuts-centric post. Then maybe another one once "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" is done. That post will probably look like "that was great... why didn't you watch it?" And then I'll cry.

Here are some reviews of some Peanuts episodes I've seen in the past few days, with links that'll allow you to watch them! Cool, huh? Well... sort of. The one that I used to watch the second one isn't working anymore, but I posted the link to it anyway.

Charlie Brown's All Stars

This episode is actually the 2nd Peanuts one ever made, right after "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and right before "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." It's also a pretty cruel episode, based around the fact that Charlie Brown's team hates him and how terrible he is at baseball. In all honesty, though... the game they show where they lose by 100+ seems to indicate that he just has crappy defense, rather than himself being amazingly incompetent. I mean, it looked apparent that he was a fly ball pitcher (at least for that day), and Lucy and Freida--while playing the outfield--aren't really even trying.

PLUS, when there's a pop up in between centerfield and short, where Linus and Lucy are ranging, they expect Charlie Brown--ALL THE WAY FROM THE PITCHER'S MOUND--to catch the f'n ball. Of course he drops it, you morons. If a dude is expected to be Superman and do crap he shouldn't be doing, he's going to end up failing. Thus it makes sense that Charlie Brown would try to steal home with their best batter coming up later on in the episode... if his mode of thinking is such that he perceives that everyone thinks he must win the game for the team, of course he's going to try to steal home. I'm trying to think of a real-life sports equivalent to this, but it'd be sort of like a basketball player trying to do everything because the rest of his team doesn't give a crap. Something like that.

Objectively, this probably isn't the best episode, since it does paint the ladies as relentlessly cruel (especially in comparison to the guys, who are equally as cruel in this episode--although in the comic strip they are much more friendly so it makes sense, I suppose), but it's got the sentimental value going for it, along with the cool jazz soundtrack. I think Vince Guaraldi increases my appreciation of the specials much greater than any other soundtrack might, and it always gets me to the point where I decide that I'm going to try to listen to more jazz. It never works out. But the moments in which I'm digging the laid back score from this are always nice.

There's No Time For Love, Charlie Brown

This one was my favorite growing up... and still might be as well. This is the one that we had a VHS copy of, and while we had a videotaped copy of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (and eventually... once Nickelodeon started showing Peanuts reruns, we had most of them... this wasn't for a while, though), you could only watch that one or two months out of the year. This you could watch whenever.

It's got kind of a loose plot, based around school and Charlie Brown's anxieties over a paper he has to write, along with a subplot about his relationship with Peppermint Patty. However, it's the scene where they go into the supermarket thinking that it is the art museum that wins me over. I mean, I was like six or so when I first watched this. And seeing the possibility of getting a good grade by writing a report on your trip to the art museum when you mistakenly went to the grocery store... well, it BLEW MY MIND. It introduced me to the world of BS, where you don't actually need to know what you're saying, but rather you just need to say it in an interesting way.

Could it be that this little special (which was produced in 1973 right before "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving", if I remember correctly) made me who I am today? I am going to say most definitely. Even though it's probably not true at all.

And in case you REALLY want to watch this episode... you can watch the first half in Japanese on YouTube.



It's not that hard to figure out what's going on.