posted 12/14/04 07:01 PM Central Time (US)     no email address given

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Although the review isn't the most insightful, David Blum gave "The Christmas Special Special" a bad review in today's New York Sun - and even said perhaps it needs some more Bing!

A Jingle Bell Rip-Off
by David Blum
New York Sun, December 14, 2004

What has happened to Bravo? Ever since it lost, wait a minute, what did it have again? I'm thinking it's possible I never watched Bravo, except that I vaguely remember some "Larry Sanders" reruns in there somewhere, and a brief flirtation with "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" until I got bored with that repetitive premise and those wacky gay guys. I also seem to remember enjoying "Significant Others" in there somewhere, but maybe I only pretended to like it. In any case, Bravo recently became of the NBC family, which means that Jeff Zucker -- who, regular readers will recall, is an idiot -- now controls its programming direction from on high. Could Mr. Zucker have possibly signed off on the "Christmas Special Christmas Special" that airs tonight at 8 p.m. on Bravo? Hard to believe. I loved Christmas programming as a kid, almost as much as I enjoyed a good Ronco holiday infomercial about steak knives. ("But wait, there's more!" was a young boy's introduction to a faraway world where irony did not exist.) I seem to remember loving "Amahl and the Night Visitors" even though it was, as one commentator mentioned scornfully, "opera on television." I liked "The Grinch" and other cartoons, but it all paled before the mighty "Charlie Brown Christmas." That one always got to me, and probably just about everyone else of my generation, as the yarn about a group of young friends who taught each other the true meaning of Christmas. Great music, great dancing, and a wonderful message.

It was one of this special's few revelations that Charles Schulz, the creator of "Peanuts," had been warned against the use of scripture in the dialogue for the special, his first for television. But in the end, Schulz fought for and won the great sermon from Linus, which among other things quotes directly from the King James Bible (Luke 2: 8-14). I will never be able to erase from memory the mellifluous sound of Linus's voice as he read from memory this famous line: "for to you is born this day in the city of David a savior who is Christ the Lord." It turns out an uncredited actor named Christopher Shea voiced the Linus character; wouldn't he have made a better interview for this special than Tammy Faye Messner? They might also have mentioned the great jazz score from Vince Guaraldi. But that would have been way too interesting and ambitious for this documentary, which repeats only the most obvious insights and recollections of its commentators.

I've long feared in pop documentary what I call the "subtraction of knowledge," wherein you read or observe a piece of journalism that, by the end, causes you to feel less intelligent than you did when you started. It's scary and depressing, and it surfaced during the closing credits of this wasted hour of television. The producers sacrificed a chance to be insightful and witty about Christmas, and instead delivered a documentary devoid of ideas, with commentary from the likes of Loni Anderson and Lorna Luft. It was vaguely creepy to experience Paul Reubens, the former Pee-Wee Herman, as a social historian, and Simon Doonan's warped perspective was confused and unhelpful.

The main idea behind the special was to celebrate the television industry's continued infatuation with Christmas as a programming opportunity. Year after year came examples of shows that used the holiday as a gambit for viewers, and it always worked. I will admit to enjoying the special's one little glimpse of an outtake from a television classic, even though there should have been far more in an hour produced under the auspices of NBC -- the shot of Judy Garland as she flubbed a line from her phony-family Christmas special and declared, "Gosh darn it!" A rare moment of character insight in the "Christmas Special Christmas Special," it brought a moment briefly to life that might otherwise have been lost. But did we really need to see so many clips of Bob Hope in Vietnam? They paled in comparison to the more touching moment between Bing Crosby and David Bowie as they sang together one year. All out of order, all to no particular point. The narration by Carson Kressley (of "Queer Eye") contributed no insight except into the creative bankruptcy of Bravo.