Its the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown
“It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” first aired on October 27th, 1966 on ABC and it has been running on TV ever since then. It was the third Peanuts special to air and the second one to be based on a holiday. Amongst the fans, critics, and even crew members who worked on the show it is often tied with the Christmas episode as the most popular special in the Peanuts canon. And I couldn’t agree with them more. There are so many things to love about the cartoon that I can’t get enough of it. Personally it is one of my absolute favorite Peanuts cartoons. Linus and Lucy Van Pelt have a special relationship as siblings in that they know each other very well. I love in the beginning how their motives are conveyed not through words but by their expressions. You can read their thoughts without hearing their voices to explain it. They know the rules of their dynamics and how to react to it. In one instance Lucy does not want to help Linus out because she thinks it won’t do him any good in the end, but Linus ignores her as he uses his blanket to get him to his needs. Later on Linus is willing to forgo trick or treating for a foolish calling much to his sisters’ very vocal outrage. In spite of all of that the ending shows that even though Lucy is clearly frustrated at what she views as Linus’ stupidity she retrieves him from the pumpkin patch to his bedroom as any sibling would do. Then there’s Linus and Sally, which the cartoon underscores that there is more to their romance than meets the eye. Sally may appear to be all innocent and fall head over heels for her sweet baboon, but she is not willing to stand by his foolishness…especially when it comes at her expense. As it turns out she is very spunky and independent minded. She will make it be known it if she has to as well. Linus, for all of his intellect and worldliness, is naïve when it comes to girls. He takes for granted Sally’s support because he thinks she would easily accept his message without a doubt. He does not realize the consequences of his ignorance as he is knee deep in the Great Pumpkin like a preacher is with the never ending talk on the end times or second comings.
The bond between Charlie Brown and Lucy gets explored through a series of iconic moments that illustrate how complicated and layered their friendship really is. In one scene Charlie is doing his happy dance because he actually got invited to Violet’s party. Lucy rains in on his parade by cruelly saying that he was simply put on the wrong list on those not to invite to the festivities. There Lucy expresses her cynicism on his invitation because she simply can’t believe it for her own sake and she would rather hurt his feelings than have a person like Violet, who is always a huge pain in the ass, crush him easily. But Charlie doesn’t see it immediately because his happiness instantly overshadows the negative. Yet sure enough at the party he is humiliated by being used as a model for a pumpkin, with Violet drawing it on his head and Lucy looking on knowing she was right along with taking advantage of the moment. The episode is the first one in the series to introduce the immortal football gag sequence from the comic strips. Here Charlie understands Lucy’s mind games and refuses to kick the football because he knows she is going to pull it away as usual. But not so fast, Lucy shows she has a binding legal document stating she won’t pull it away. Charlie buys into her reasoning believing she would go by the book. Yet he is wrong as she does take the ball away, clarifying that the document was never notarized. The football gag shows the cat and mouse game between the two as Lucy does not want to give Charlie the one thing he absolutely craves for…confidence. This can be chalked up as either Lucy valuing her dominance over him or that deep down she really does care for him in her own very unique way.
As all of this is playing out there is a subplot with Snoopy being dressed up for Halloween as the WWII flying ace. At the time this was Snoopy’s biggest role yet in the animated specials as he was previously more or less in the background like the other characters. The subplot provides a nice change of pace from the main plot as the Snoopy story line is quieter and relies less on the visual gags of the former. There is a level of seriousness and personal recollection running throughout the WWII angle because it was based on creator Charles Schultz’s experience as an American Sargent serving in France during the War.
The art direction really shines through in the story with the autumn inspired, moody, and atmospheric backgrounds...particularly in the subplot. The splotches of paint and overlapping colors add to the beauty of the backgrounds themselves. The background and layout artists really had a field day with the colors for the evening and nighttime skies as they take you away to another time and faraway place from the present. The jazz music by Vince Guaraldi is introspective for the sequence which allows the viewer to take it all in while analyzing what is happening in the picture. There are some other funny and subtle observations in the special that stand out to me. In a cool Easter egg you will find Lucy reading about herself on the TV Guide magazine in the beginning of the cartoon. I love the close ups of the characters’ faces whenever they speak to the camera. The ones that come to my mind are when Lucy is speaking angrily to Linus and when Charlie very awkwardly asks Linus who he is writing to. Those scenes always crack me up because of the manner of the voice and the poses they project. An ironic and not too subtle jab is spotted when Lucy, who is dressed up as a “witch” after all, remarks how a costume should always contrast with a person’s personality. Snoopy’s dance by the piano is a great example of pantomime animation as he expresses a wide array of emotions to Schroeder’s catalogue of music. Then there are the scenes where the entire Peanuts gang travel door to door in their iconic costumes that have since been paid homage by modern cartoons like “The Simpsons” in their Halloween episodes. I always feel bad for Charlie whenever he gets a rock. To this day I still try to figure out why in the world he gets a rock while the others don’t. Really what is it with these adults? Are they in a secret coven that conspires against the blockhead? Finally there’s Linus’ breakdown at the end where he fears his questioning of the Great Pumpkin’s appearance will cause him to be left behind by the creature. He yells out how next year will be the time when the Great Pumpkin shows up to him. And you know what, the cartoon was prophetic since 45 years have passed and he is STILL waiting in that pumpkin patch every Halloween night for the Great Pumpkin…
