"Happy New Year, Charlie Brown" / "She's A Good Skate" Talkback

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Kunmui

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This year ABC ran Happy New Year, Charlie Brown uncut, as they've done with their other specials by expanding it to an hour and padding it with another special. They chose 1979's "She's A Good Skate, Charlie Brown," which is one I'd never seen before. Talkback on the night of airing wasn't possible for obvious reasons.

Certain parts of "Happy New Year" bother me, and I'm not alone. I'm fine with Charlie Brown getting assigned War and Peace for no reason -- he's gotta suffer somehow; a lot of the later specials go too easy on him. What I don't like is that they not only show the Little Red Haired Girl but give her a non-canonical name, contemporary for its time period ("Heather").

Also, a lot of the 80's Peanuts specials were made exclusively for little kids, as opposed to the layered ones of the 60's where words like "big Eastern syndicate" were thrown around. They pick the occasion of New Year's to sing about the game of musical chairs, which feels like it was done for a record and just worked into the special.

As for "She's A Good Skate," it's based on a really great strip sequence where Peppermint Patty enters a figure skating competition, but for some inexplicable reason they cut out a good chunk of it (and not just for time). In the strip, after Patty complains that her hair is "mousy-blah," Charlie Brown suggests that she go to his father, the barber, for a makeover. Later that day Patty comes screaming at Charlie Brown: "LOOK AT WHAT YOUR DAD DID TO MY HAIR! YOU FORGOT TO TELL HIM I'M A GIRL!!" It's become extremely short.

The fact that his dad mistook Patty for a boy is pretty funny, and it needed to be in there. To cover up the bad haircut just before the competition, Patty has to borrow a wig from Snoopy, which is where the giant orange afro is supposed to come from. In the cartoon, right after Patty complains about her hair, Snoopy runs off and comes back in a second with a fully-wrapped present. "Oh boy, Snoopy, you gave me a present! Oh boy!" The afro is inside. That just...doesn't flow as well.

There aren't any jokes in the last six minutes; it's played like an actual figure skating competition that just happens to be animated.
 
Did you completely miss the part where Snoopy wrestles with the cassette tape? It wasn't exactly ha ha funny, but it was a joke and it was there.
 
Hmmm. I did see "Good Skate" on iTunes before I knew that this special was scheduled to air. I thought it was fairly good, although according to many comments the series of strips was better. I don't think I read those in awhile, so that would be something to take a look at. I do notice that special had the adults speaking English rather than the famous 'wah wah wah' language. I wonder why that was.
 
If you can get Hulu on your computer, you can still watch it there.

I didn't watch "Happy New Year" since I had seen it before and didn't think it was too memorable. However, I did watch "She's A Good Skate" for the first time.

I thought it was kind of a mixed bag. On hand hand, there are hardly any real jokes, especially in the last act. And it's disappointing to see Charlie Brown and most of the other kids as only bit players. Still, it has its own charms. I don't know anything about figure skating, but it certainly looks like the animators did do research and put a lot of effort into the skating scenes. Woodstock doing the music for Peppermint Patty was sweet, though I kept wondering if the special would end with Peppermint Patty being disqualified anyway for using a bird. Not a great special, but it was an enjoyable way to spend a half hour. Hopefully ABC airs even more obscure Peanuts specials.
 
As soon as you said the scene with Snoopy and the tape player, I realized: I've seen this one. A very long time ago at my aunt's, I watched a bunch of Peanuts specials. I remember also seeing the spelling bee one and I think at least one other.
 
I believe this was the first special to give the adults actual dialogue (though Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown hit theatres in the same year). There were a few that followed which did the same, notably Snoopy's Reunion and It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown. Schulz wasn't as strict about the TV shows following his "rules" as he was about the comic strip (see also; the Little Red Haired Girl appearing a couple of times)
 
Yeah She appeared in It's your First Kiss Charlie Brown, another alright special. I actually have She's A Good Skate Charlie Brown on vhs along with Flash Beagle. Now I wonder how many people have seen that one.
 
Flashbeagle is also notable for being one of the few specials that show adults (though they could have been teens as well) in the dance club scene.
 
I remember/saw "Flashbeagle" when it was first-run (when "Flashdance" was a big hit in theaters). Yeah, so I'm old... ;-)

Re: Happy new Year/Good Skate: Not really watched either in years (missed their airing this year), though I think the "Charlie Brown's book report" plot was taken from a comic strip storyline, where he had to read the (more plausible for grade-schoolers) "Gulliver's Travels" (but kept procrastinating). Never really bought into "War and Piece" being the book assigned, even to hard-luck Chuck and his classmates (its length aside, wonder what teacher would remotely consider its content as being suitable for 8-year-olds?! Yeah, I know, the same adults who give an 8-year-old a bag full of rocks on Halloween/allow them to have a rather high degree of adult-less autonomy... :-p What "War and Piece" is about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_and_Peace ).

I recall reading the series of strips "Good Skate" is loosely based on, though all I can remember is something about Marcie making Patty a skating dress (and losing the pins in a shag rug---70s humor)...
 
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