Photo: United Feature Syndicate/ABC It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is a beloved holiday special that is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. It is also a 25-minute portrait of optimistic young people placing their faith in individuals and communities that consistently disappoint them.
Like the strip that inspired them, both TV specials deal with adult themes and have a melancholy tone that can sometimes be obscured by all the colorful, kid-friendly animation on their surfaces. A Charlie Brown Christmas, the more overtly religious and hopeful of the two, is essentially about a depressed boy who’s advised that he’ll feel better if he engages with his community and directs the Christmas play, but finds that everyone involved in the play is completely hostile toward him.
Then there’s poor Linus, the delusional elementary-schooler who expresses his unwavering dedication to a massive flying squash plant that will somehow, despite having no arms, legs, or animate qualities, deliver presents to good little children on Halloween night. What does Linus get in return for his devotion to this mythical orange figure? He gets to sleep outside alone, in a thoroughly sincere but totally empty pumpkin patch.
Linus’s insistence that the Great Pumpkin is real, which literally continues until the very end of this special, is indicative of his determination. Maybe that quality is what has made It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown persevere for 50 years. Schulz, who died in 2000, often said that Charlie Brown’s unwavering ability to bounce back from failure is what made readers and viewers root for him, and that applies to Linus in this case, too.
chaneyj Now you’re shitting on the peanuts gang? Nothing anti Trump to get the Dems to twist their nipples over?
chaneyj I don't know anyone that watches this.
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