It’s mid-December, meaning it’s that time of year again, when our favorite television casts don awkwardly festive attire and amplify their usual character quirks. Domineering Dwight on The Office, for example, becomes the proponent of the Machiavellian Christmas game, Yankee Swap. I’ll never look at an oven mitt the same way.
Every series should strive to have a quotable Christmas episode. Part of what makes the specials so successful is the fact that they are the splicing, dicing, and editing of all our random family experiences, with the additional bonus that you can turn them off at the end. Akward moments are aplenty when you consider all that the holiday season entails: gift buying and giving, spiked eggnog, company parties, and, of course, mistletoe. Series take the holiday theme in one of two ways, producing either the darkest of episodes (e.g., someone decides to drop news of a terminal illness because everyone is together), or it spirals off into haywire hilarity (e.g., 30 Rock’s Ludachristmas … enough said).
We dug into the past to come up with a few episodes worth revisiting during this chilly December month, brought to you by pithy scripts and loads of fake snow.
Curb Your Enthusiasm
“There’s nothing worse than Jews with trees,” says affable schmuck Larry David to his Gentile wife Cheryl as she pulls out the Christmas decorations. So begins “Mary, Joseph, and Larry,” the Christmas episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Sort of a more perverse version of Christmas Vacation, the Curb episode spins from misunderstanding to mishap on misanthrope Larry’s behalf. At one point, mistaking them for animal crackers, Larry snacks on Cheryl’s nativity cookies, enraging all of Cheryl’s Christian family. To win them back, he hires a group of actors to pose as a manger scene in the front yard. But things go wrong with an incident involving pubic hair. For a tale that will warm your heart and regale your soul, watch Curb.
Extras
Ricky Gervais established himself as the reigning red-coated jester. Among the original members of The Office, the zany Ricky Gervais Show podcast on Guardian, this year’s comedy with Rob Lowe The Truth About Lying, and the celebrity cameo-festooned Extras, Gervais pervades all things whimsical and edgy in comedy today. But the Brit imp seizes his fans most swiftly in the rare moments he lets down his guard. The Extras hour-long Christmas special wins us over with celebrity cameos (including a lustful George Michael and a relentlessly misogynistic Clive Owen), and the charm of Gervais’ hapless giant sidekick Steve Merchant, but the episode pierces with its poignancy. One of the saddest Christmas specials ever aired, Extras wrestles with the superficiality of fame, the soul-deteriorating nature of greed, and the miscommunication of friendship, all captured through mesmerizing monologues by Gervais. It may get very depressing – we won’t give away the ending – but it ultimately stays true to the Christmas special tradition.
The O.C.
“So what’s it gonna be: a menorah or a candy cane?” asks Seth Cohen, beaming in a reindeer sweater, to a blank-faced Ryan Atwood to begin the episode. As it turns out, Seth has relieved Ryan’s need to choose, inventing the now infamous fusion holiday Chrismukkah, extracting the best of bushy-eyebrowed Sandy Cohen’s New York Judaism and waspy Kiersten Cohen’s Catholicism. Even though it has “twice the resistance of the normal holiday,” Chrismukkah cannot save these So-Cal drama queens. Crowded out by Marissa dealing with her overdose in Tijuana with kleptomania, Seth juggling Summer and Ana, and the domineering bald-headed patriarch Caleb Nichol threatening to ruin everything, “the super team of Jesus and Moses” feels absent for the majority of the episode. But fear not, there’s always a Chrismukkah miracle.
That ‘70s Show
Christmas doesn’t get much better than Red Forman as the mall’s resident bad Santa, telling wide-eyed children that they are stupid to ask for ponies and will get math flash cards instead. In the sixth season “Christmas” episode of That ‘70s Show, Kitty forces her disgruntled husband into a Santa suit, and Kelso tries to convince Brooke that he’ll make a good dad. She is less than convinced, though, when he proposes topless ornament-hanging.
30 Rock
Per usual, 30 Rock takes Christmas to new levels of hilarity in its second season holiday episode. Tracy has missed a court date and spends his time at the team’s “Ludachristmas” party sneaking alcohol, disregarding the ankle monitor he is now required to wear by law. Despite efforts to keep an eye on Tracy, Liz is bogged down in the task of watching her brother, who lost his memory and in a skiing accident and believes it is 1985. But just when Christmas seems to be slipping through the cracks, Kenneth brings a reverend to 30 Rock to remind the crew of the true meaning of Christmas.
South Park
A porcupine becomes the Virgin Mary of the forest, and it’s up to Stan, the squeaking red-hooded third-grader, to build a manger and then protect the baby porcupine from a predestined mountain lion attack. It must be Christmas in South Park. To Stan’s horror, though, the baby porcupine turns out to be the Antichrist, and through much deliberation, Kyle is assigned to be its human host. Fortunately, a sleigh-ridden Santa arrives to save the day. Even more fortunately, the entire episode turns out to be a figment of Cartman’s imagination.
Friends
The cross-religious mascot known as the Holiday Armadillo became an icon in the Friends episode “The One with the Holiday Armadillo,” which aired in 2000. St. Nick held a monopoly on holiday figures until this famous episode where Ross decides to dress up as the part-Jewish armadillo. He takes a stand for Jews everywhere and decides that he will not allow his son Ben to be deprived just because he celebrates Hanukkah (or, primarily, because Ross can’t find a Santa costume).
The Office
Tension is high at Dunder Mifflin when the Office Party Planning Committee is met with a new rival: the Committee for Planning Parties. In “A Benihana Christmas,” Angela struggles to keep her Nutcracker Christmas party afloat in the face of Pam and Karen’s margarita-karaoke theme, and Michael and Andy bring two high-school aged Benihana waitresses to the office. Michael spends most of the party trying to distinguish his date from Andy’s, eventually rectifying the problem by drawing a line on his date’s arm with a marker.
The Heights > Arts > The Scene
Candy Canes, Menorahs, Armadillos, And Porcupines
TV's Best Christmas Specials
Published: Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Updated: Wednesday, December 9, 2009
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