The Gobble Project : A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

This year is the 50th Anniversary of Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving special.  It's hard to believe it's been around that long.  Frani and I viewed it last night and it remains a classic, though it doesn't pack the thick holiday vibe and nostalgia that A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown do by a long shot. 

One of the things that I find odd about it is the lack of Lucy.  Outside of an opening segment, where she once again gets Charlie Brown to go flying through the air and land on his ass by yanking the football away on an attempted kick, she's nowhere to be found.  Maybe she acquired all the sadomasochistic ingredients she needed for Thanksgiving and moved on to start her Psychiatric Practice. As much of an annoying pain in the arse that Lucy is, her absence definitely feels like a missing piece. Her brother Linus, along with his blanket, wrinkly thumb, and old soul wisdom are present in spades as he spews bullshit about Miles Standish at a breakneck pace.  

Large portions of this special belong to Snoopy and Woodstock as they do most of the labor to prepare for an upcoming Thanksgiving Dinner that Charlie Brown allows himself to be bullied into. Yes, Peppermint Patty walks all over Chuck as she calls him and invites herself, and then Marcie and her creepy fucking eyeless glasses, and finally Franklin to a Thanksgiving Dinner she apparently is missing in her own life.  Loyal Snoopy and Woodstock then go to work.  To the tunes of Little Birdie and Linus and Lucy, they battle to set up an impromptu dinner.  This begins with a fight to get a ping pong table out of the Brown family garage.  This is harder than it needs to be as Charlie's parents are apparently fucking hoarders.  Snoopy fights sentient lawn furniture and then engages in a funky brouhaha with Woodstock that involves flopping into and out of a storage chest. 

Eventually popcorn, pretzel sticks, jelly beans and toast lead to the core definition of the episode, and like all Holiday specials, the true meaning of something is understood.

Again, this isn't the greatest holiday special ever made, but I could feel memories flooding back as I watched it, laughed at silliness that smacks of kid stuff, and then craved Dolly Madison pastries for some odd reason. 

It's this kind of stuff, added together over the years, that help make the holidays what they should be. 

Warm.