Today is Election Day. I would say that if you didn’t know that, you’ve been living under a rock, but I’ve been known to be completely oblivious to the goings-on in the world that do not include my job, online role playing games, and watching old movies and tv shows.
Therefore, I understand if I am the first person to tell you that today is Super Tuesday. That’s what they call it, right?
Before I get into this particular “holiday special”, I want to note that this is about as political as ffdc is ever gonna get. Like everyone, I have my own political and social beliefs about our culture, but as they are personal, and have nothing to do with fitness, Dragon*Con, or the general nerdery that this blog has grown to be about, they will stay off these virtual pages.
On with the show!
I want to say that I don’t really know the history of this cartoon, and only became aware of its existence because it is the B-side of “the Great Pumpkin” dvd. I never caught this one on tv and as my friend J.C. pointed out on the facebook page, I assume there are loads of Peanuts animated shows out there that I have never seen (or have never seen the “real” version of).
I guess my childhood experience with Peanuts was mostly limited to the Christmas and Halloween specials, though I distinctly remember there being a Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show on Saturday mornings for, at least, a little while. I also remember several Peanuts cartoons making me cry like the little kid that I was. One had a little girl with cancer, and I think the other one involved Snoopy getting lost away from home. I have no doubt that someone will be gracious enough to point out what these two shows were. In fact, there is almost surely definitely a whole blog post somewhere out there on the internet that focuses solely on one or the other, or both, of these episodes.
This one is not even really a holiday, so I’m wondering if they aired it every four years or not, which would have been a huge bummer in the days before home video.
Anyway, the title is fairly self-explanatory (If you click on the first pic, it will make them big and you can just scroll through them, complete with the comments. That is what I recommend. New formatting and shizz):
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- You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown. Although this title could be misleading. It would seem to say that Charlie Brown is going to run for some sort of office, but in typical Charlie Brown fashion, lose spectacularly.
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- “I’ve had it with school!” Sally comes home from school, mad because her locker won’t open. It is common knowledge that Sally isn’t as smart as Charlie Brown. But then again, Charlie Brown falls for the football trick every time.
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- Charlie tries to wake Sally up so she’ll go to school. “I’m not going to school again.”
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- As always, the kids are left to fend for themselves. The adults in Peanuts world don’t even speak English, much less fix their kids’ breakfast.
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- Up until this moment, the entire cartoon has been nothing but Sally and Charlie Brown. Is Brown their last name? Is Sally a Sally Brown? It makes me wonder if the song “Charlie Brown” came out before the comic strip or not. Like, if Charlie Brown is just a nickname, or not.
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- The Snoopy whips up a fine breakfast for himself, like the mom in Friday. I think I realized at this point in the show that, obvious as it may be, Snoopy is the best character in Peanuts. Charlie Brown is the Seinfeld of the bunch, the everyday guy that all these weird characters are in orbit around.
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- Snoopy also makes the lunches and sends the kids to school. I guess when you have a dog that can make lunches and breakfast, you don’t need a babysitter. Or parents, apparently. But really, this shot is all about that Chef hat.
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- Sally: “I just figured out what this sign means! It means 50 kids can fit on the bus!” In case you are too lazy to blow it up where you can read it, the sign says, “School Bus, 100 feet”.
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- “Today for Show & Tell, I brought my brother.”
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- School elections coming up!
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- “You would make a great Class President, Charlie Brown!” Maybe he would. If you are going by the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s qualifications for leadership.
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- These Peanuts specials almost always seem to have some weird little song and side story about Snoopy. In the Great Pumpkin, we get that strange little short about Snoopy sneaking behind enemy lines and singing along with the piano and stuff. In the Christmas one, there’s the side story of Snoopy entering the “lights and display contest”. This one has Joe Cool. Joe Cool has snuck into school and, as the song says, is “playin’ it cool”.
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- Joe Cool gets his finger caught in his binder. Interesting that he has his own seat in class, or a binder of his own. How cool is that, Joe? Looks like it hurts.
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- Joe Cool gets thrown out of school. Big whoop, he’ll just go hang out and smoke somewhere.
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- At some point, Lucy takes a poll and decides that Charlie Brown would never win the office of Class President. However, they all feel that a representative from the Peanuts gang should run for office, so they nominate Linus, the usual delegate from the Peanuts Party. Here, Lucy is gently polling the constituency, to see if they would vote for her brother.
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- Our first gljmpse of the competition. It’s never mentioned which Party he is with, but he tells Lucy that he wouldn’t vote for Linus because he’s the one running against him.
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- “I nominate Linus for Class President!” At the Peanuts gang school, they apparently hold nominations for President. At my school, if you wanted to run, you’d be on the ballot. I am assuming this school is huge.
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- Lucy: “As Linus’s Campaign Manager, I am making you my assistant. It is up to you to put together your own staff.” Lucy makes Chuck the Assistant Campaign Manager. There’s numerous shots like this in this one: no background. Somebody didn’t pay the bill, I guess, but I always love the nice watercolor backgrounds in these Peanuts specials.
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- Chucky B: “Snoopy, I am making you the assistant to the Assistant Campaign Manager, you are responsible for putting together your own staff.”
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- Same thing here. Woodstock gets in on the action. That said, there are several perennial Peanuts characters that never show up in this episode ever: most notably Peppermint Patty and Marcy. I guess they didn’t wanna touch the LGBT demographic back when this was made. 1972. I looked it up. Charlie Brown is older than me. I guess he’s probably in his fifties now. Geez. I guess Snoopy is long gone, then.
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- The Assistants paint campaign signs, back before you’d print them out on a computer, or however it is that people make those things.
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- This made me laugh out loud. Woodstock paints a sign in his own bird language. That is funny on many levels. Appreciate the complexity of this humor, I do.
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- This is apparently one of those schools that had tv and radio, as Lucy brings Linus on a talk show, with Snoopy as the Producer. They take a bunch of stupid calls, which makes fun of people who call in to talk radio.
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- The first debate. Packed house.
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- Charlie Brown introduces the candidates to the school.
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- The first guy says something like, “I’ll do my best” and sits down. Linus delivers a fiery speech about what all he will do if he gets elected and how he will tear down the system and etc etc.
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- He also says that any dog who wanders onto the playground will be duly played with, and not run off. Snoopy loves it, although unless Joe Cool is enrolled at Peanuts Elementary School, he doesn’t get a vote. I guess they are in Elementary school, which seems really young to be having school elections.
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- We get a quick photo op with the popular kid before the next debate.
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- “Now this is the last debate before the election, Linus. DON’T BLOW IT.”
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- “We got it in the bag, Charlie Brown.” The Campaign Manager and her Assistant think they’ve got it on auto-pilot from here on out. Linus is way ahead in the polls.
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- …until he completely blows it. He has the kids in the palm of his hand for a minute or two.
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- These kids love it, anyway. It’s like Night at the Apollo in here. Until he mentions…
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- “The Great Pumpkin!”
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- Linus gets laughed off the stage because of his outlandish beliefs.
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- Linus: “Please give me another chance, Lucy! I’m sorry!”
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- Election Day! Schroeder and that black-haired little bitch (Violet, maybe?) are counting the votes. A full auditorium and only like 100 votes. A record low turnout here today at Peanut Elementary, folks. And Linus’s last name is “Van Pelt”. Like the band, if you remember them. I guess the band was probably named after the characters though, not the other way around.
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- It all comes down to the last vote, and it is the other candidate… and he casts his vote for Linus! Why? “I just think he would make a better President than me.” That is his answer. I think Lucy “persuaded” him a little.
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- Sally: “Now it’s time to do all those things you promised! Go in there and show that Principal who’s boss! Get our lockers fixed! Make today a school holiday! Give out sodas to everyone!”
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- Linus, on coming out of the Principal’s office: “Yes sir, I won’t do anything without consulting you first, sir!” Bureaucracy is a motherfucker.
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- “Stupid locker!”
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- Haha! All it needed was a good kick! But is this Sally’s locker? I don’t think she would have books or baseball bat, or a really weird looking jacket in there. Some random student is bout to get his ass robbed.
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- The End.
I tried a new format today, obviously. It didn’t save me any time, which is what I was hoping for. Oh well. At this point, I’d have to do the whole thing over, and I don’t really want to do that. Apologies if it is hard to read. You can blow up the pictures if you want, to make them way big.
Fit for Dragon*Con 
I always forget I have this. It’s pretty good, but I never watch the B-sides on the holiday DVDs. I’ve upgraded them to Blu-Ray now, and they don’t have this one anymore. It now qualifies for its own disc.
I know the other cartoons you are referring to. One is one of the few feature-length movies they made, “Snoopy, Come Home.” The other I’ve never actually seen, but it’s called “Why, Charlie Brown, Why?” Wikipedia says it first aired on TV in 1990 so it’s likely I saw it and just don’t remember it. I was seven then, and I loved Peanuts. I only had four channels, and if one of them was showing a Snoopy cartoon there’s no way I would have missed it.
You are the man, Brandon. “Snoopy, Come Home”!!!! I definitely remember that title. I need to find that one. The other one, “Why, Charlie Brown, Why?”, I taped off of tv, and I had it for years, but couldn’t quite remember what it was called. A little girl gets cancer, but I can’t remember if she makes it or not.
Is it worth it to upgrade the holiday specials to blu ray? I’ve considered it, but I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like the sound and picture would really need to be much better. That said, I’m pretty sure that I don’t own any movies on both dvd and blu ray.
Not really. I only upgraded because Amazon had a really good lightning deal on the Holiday Trilogy box set last year. I got them all for $12 or something like that. The picture quality isn’t vastly improved. There are a few new bonus features, but nothing spectacular. They’ve also changed some of the B-sides. As long as you’ve got them on DVD and don’t have to watch the edited (more and more each year it seems) versions they air on TV these days, I wouldn’t bother. At least not at full price.
I wouldn’t mind having some new B-sides, though. As I mentioned, I’m sure there are loads of Peanuts cartoons out there that I have yet to discover.
I’m definitely going to keep an eye out for them on sale. Thanks!!!