The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper: A Christmas Peril/Fright Before Christmas

Last month, when I looked at Casper The Friendly Ghost's 1995 foray into theatrical feature stardom, I mentioned that the film later received a spin-off cartoon series, The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper, which, much like the film itself, I consider to be criminally underrated. In lieu of an actual theatrical sequel, I think that Casper fans got a pretty sweet deal with this series - it was developed by Sherri Stoner and Deanna Oliver, who also wrote the screenplay for the 1995 movie, and a number of the original cast returned to reprise their roles (see below). Stoner and Oliver had previously worked on such other Amblin Television shows as Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures, and The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper plays recognisably like a cartoon within that same vein, in that it's every bit as smartly-written and subversive. So if you're wondering why it doesn't get half the publicity that those series do, it's because it aired on Fox Kids, which was something of a burial ground as far as zeitgeist was concerned. The series had a fairly decent run of it throughout the late 1990s, with a total of four seasons and fifty-two episodes under its belt, but it's fair to say that they haven't really seen the light of day much since. There were a handful of VHS releases in the 1990s, each with two episodes a piece, and the complete first season was distributed on two single-disc DVD releases in 2007, but the series in its entirety has never been made available on home media or streaming. Shame that, because as I say, I think it's a really fantastic cartoon and I wish it was better appreciated (much like the movie it's based on). In the meantime, I'm only too happy to step up and be its cheerleader.

The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper takes place after the events of the 1995 feature film. Following the disappearance of owner Carrigan Crittenden, Whipstaff Manor has become the full-time domicile of necromantic shrink Dr James Harvey and his teenage daughter Kat, who have learned to co-exist with the manor's resident wraiths, the amiable young Casper and his aggressive poltergeist "uncles", Stretch, Stinkie and Fatso (otherwise known as The Ghostly Trio). Casper is still struggling with the stigma of being living impaired, Kat is still struggling with the ignominy of being a less-than-ordinary kid, while Harvey is still struggling with the trials of being a single parent AND therapist to three disobedient poltergeists - he's given up trying to convince the Trio to "cross over" but still works with them in an effort to rein in their natural haunting tendencies, with as little success. The Trio are on loving terms with Harvey (although they really do love to wind him up) but are still inclined to scorn and subjugate Casper, and they do not get along with Kat (then again, few characters within the series do).

Here are a few notes regarding the series in general:

• All four of the main ghosts are voiced by their original voice actors from the 1995 film - Malachi Pearson (Casper), Joe Nipote (Stretch), Brad Garrett (Fatso) and Joe Alaskey (Stinkie), although Jess Harnell took over as Fatso's voice in later seasons. Harnell, best known as the voice of Wakko Warner on Animaniacs, was also movie alumni, having previously supplied Casper's Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation in the feature film.
• The A-list talent from the 1995 film, unsurprisingly, did not return. Kat and Harvey were played by Christina Ricci and Bill Pullman in the original movie, but here Kat is voiced by Kath Soucie, who also voiced Phil and Lil in Rugrats, while Harvey is voiced by Dan Castellaneta, who never did anything else of note.
• Casper now attends a school for young ghosts, where his classmates are Spooky (Rob Paulsen) and Poil (Miriam Flynn), two established characters from earlier incarnations of Casper who were not in the 1995 film. Spooky is a brash young wraith who is always keen to demonstrate his scaring prowess and enjoys showing up Casper, while Poil is an air-headed ghoul who is besotted with Spooky. Another addition is Casper's teacher, Ms Banshee (Tress MacNeille). She is a...banshee, strangely enough, meaning that she tends to raise her voice a lot, and she is greatly admired by the Ghostly Trio, who are constantly trying to impress her. Anyway, the concept of a school for young ghosts becomes hella depressing the instant you contemplate that these are all dead children who had their lives cut mercilessly short and are never actually going to grow up.* Worse still is the episode where Casper meets a family of 1960s hippie ghosts with two ghost babies, and you just know there is such a tragic backstory there.
• Amelia, Carrigan and Dibs do not appear in the series (presumably because they all "crossed over").
• A couple of characters who do return from the movie are Amber and Vic, the local popular kids and respective rivals of Kat and Casper. In the movie, they were played by Jessica Wesson and Garette Ratcliff Henson, and were low-level antagonists - Amber took a disliking to Kat and conspired to sabotage her Halloween party, while Vic feigned an interest in being Kat's date (much to Casper's chagrin) but was actually working in league with Amber. Their spiteful scheme was foiled by the Ghostly Trio, who scared them away from the manor. In the series, Amber (now voiced by Sherry Lynn) still looks down on Kat (and has three minions, all named Jennifer), and Kat is apparently still interested in Vic (again, to Casper's chagrin), despite him standing her up in the movie. Also, Kat's teacher is voiced by Ben Stein (grrr....). In the movie, Kat had another teacher named Mr Curtis, who was played by Wesley Thompson. Doesn't it just figure that they would get rid of their only African American character and replace him with Ben Stein?
• Curiously, the series doesn't have an opening title sequence. In lieu of an actual intro, we dive right into the episode as the Casper logo flashes across the screen. With the end credits it varies - some episodes have an outro sequence set in a graveyard with Amusing Tombstones (not unlike those from the early Treehouse of Horror installments of The Simpsons - my favourite is Glen and Glenda occupying the same burial plot) while the "Casper The Friendly Ghost" theme plays, whereas in others the end credits are rolled out across the bottom of the screen during the final minute of the episode. The lack of intro really baffles me, given that they had an established theme song ready to go; all they had to do was throw some clips together and be done with it.
• This shouldn't be too surprising given the Animaniacs kinship, but there is a LOT of fourth wall breaking in the series, compared to the movie, where the fourth wall breaking was fairly minimal (Stinkie looks at the camera twice, Casper winks at the camera at the end). Some of the more colourful elements of the film have been toned down a notch for television consumption, so that Stretch now says "heck" instead of "hell" and the Ghostly Trio no longer sing about beer. An awful lot of adult humour worms its way in regardless.

Given that we're already this far into the festive season, we may as well start with the series' Xmas episode, which first aired on December 21st 1996 and was released on VHS in 1997 by Universal Entertainment, alongside the episode "Three Ghosts and A Baby/Leave It To Casper". Each episode of The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper was divided into two main stories, with one or two smaller skits falling in between, and in this case the headline act is a segment called A Christmas Peril, in which the Ghostly Trio put an avaricious businessman in touch with his hidden vulnerabilities.

I have a theory that everything everywhere, provided it goes for on long enough, gets round to doing their variation on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol sooner or later. Disney did it, The Muppets did it, Animaniacs did it, Blackadder did it, and heck, there's even an official Animals of Farthing Wood version out there, somewhere, although you'll never find it. In addition, the studios seem to keep on cranking out new self-contained versions of the story to some capacity every year, whether we get Bill Murray, Kelsey Grammer or Guy Pearce donning Scrooge's nightcap. Why go to all the trouble of concocting a completely fresh and original Christmas story when the world clearly can't get enough of this seeing this exact same story regurgitated over and over? It may not surprise you to learn that Casper's seasonal episode was also a Christmas Carol variation, but if that strikes you as being a trite and overly cookie cutter route to travel, keep in mind that A Christmas Carol is a story about a man who turns over a new leaf following a series of overnight haunting from four ghosts, and Casper is a series all about the adventures of four ghosts, so in this case they were really only doing what the logic of their premise demanded. And this isn't your typical take on the Dickens classic either; when you have the Ghostly Trio spooking you along the path to redemption, you know you're going to have a particularly ghoulish time of it. That's another thing - not only is it a dead cert for Casper to pay homage to A Christmas Carol, but it's also a total slam-dunk in terms of which roles get allocated to which ghosts. It follows that Stinkie would be the Ghost of Christmas Past, as he's all about leaving offensive, lingering odors on whatever he touches. The imposing, indulgent Fatso is obviously our Ghost of Christmas Present, and finally Stretch, the scariest of the three, is a natural lock for Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. Note that Jacob Marley does not figure here, although he does show up in another episode, "The Boo-Muda Triangle", in which Casper, Kat and Harvey get lost in the Bermuda Triangle with the ghost of Bob Marley, who reveals Jacob to have been one of his ancestors (are you still not convinced that you were sleeping on one of the greatest animated shows of all time?). Ignorance and Want also don't come up, which isn't terribly surprising, given that most kid-orientated retellings (and many adult versions) tend to avoid them like the plague, on account of their being one of the more disturbing aspects of Dickens' story**, although personally I think they missed a trick in not using Poil and Spooky in the roles. Finally, the Ebeneezer expy's redemption arc takes us to an outcome so bitterly ingenious that I'm amazed that it had never been used before (or maybe it had - like I say, the variations on this story are so innumerable that I suspect I've only actually seen a tiny percentile).

"A Christmas Peril" opens by establishing that the Ghostly Trio aren't all that hot on the Christmas spirit. Aside from offering the occasional opportunity to spook carolers naive enough to linger outside the manor, the holiday as a whole is too gaudy and mawkish for their discriminating tastes. Ordinarily they'd be able to conceal themselves from the season within the cold, dark corridors of Whipstaff Manor, only now that they share the manor with a couple of tinsel-loving bone-bags, there isn't much refuge to be found in there either. Things are shaken up when the residents of Whipstaff are unexpectedly joined by another trio of ghosts seeking a slightly different kind of refuge from the outside festivities. They are the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, and, having tired of their seasonal gig of scaring money-grubbing misers into changing their ways, are hoping that they can lie low and bunk off on this particular Yuletide.

Kat: You're the guys who turned round Ebeneezer Scrooge? Please...

Past: We are! But he was easy compared to some of the others.

Future: There was that Nixon guy...three times we turned him around but it just wouldn't take!

To Stretch, Stinkie and Fatso, the notion of spending their Christmas scaring some fleshie fat cats sounds mighty enticing, and so they offer to fill in for their Dickensian house guests by converting whichever unsuspecting skinflint they were scheduled to go after this year. It transpires to be a greedy toy mogul named Ezra Hazard (guess that's a Hasbro reference), who purposely manufactures shoddy toys that fall apart when children play with them (so that parents will keep on having to shell out for replacements) and treats his employees like total refuse on the side. Yeah, Hazard's a baddun, but even for a man of his callousness, being spooked by the Ghostly Trio instead of the regular Christmas spirits is a disproportionately cruel twist of fate.

One of the reasons for A Christmas Carol's enduring popularity, I'll wager, is due to its timeless meditations on the nature of redemption, the potential for good in the very coldest of individuals, the inevitable discrepancy between the people we once were, the people we are now, and where we might be headed, and the tremendous difference a single person can make (when you think about it, the other enduring and much-parodied Christmas classic, It's A Wonderful Life, is basically a tweak on the very same formula). If you're hoping for such meditations here, then you're fresh out of luck. "A Christmas Peril" bears the unmistakable stamp of a Dickensian reworking written for jaded minds who don't really care for Dickensian reworkings, and the only tears shed therein are in response to getting a mouthful of raw onion rind blasted in one's eyeballs. "A Christmas Peril" is a very knowing take on the Dickens classic, one that trades on the viewer's (over) familiarity with the narrative in question. It knows that this is a story you've played out countless time before and possibly don't care to see again, and it repeatedly flags up whatever motions it goes through before desecrating them with joyous abandon. Hazard himself has a better grasp on the story he figures he's supposed to be getting than do the Trio, who have zero interest in the human element and are in it purely for the shits and giggles. Hazard deduces independently why his unscrupulous manufacturing policies might be having a detrimental effect on children's emotional well-being, as Stinkie distorts his childhood memory and makes it doubly traumatic by giving the young Ezra an angry skunk instead of a puppy, Fatso skips over his portion of the story completely, insisting that he's just there for the eats, and finally Stretch gives him the ultimate incentive to change by hitting him with the horrifying threat that when he dies and becomes a ghost, they'll make a point of hanging out with him for all eternity. This terrifies Hazard so much that, the following morning, he races to his workplace and declares that from now on, all Hazard toys will be made to last and all of his employees are in for generous Christmas bonuses. It sounds all well and good, except that he gets arrested, because security refuse to believe that the actual Ezra Hazard would say such things and assume that he's an imposter. Oh well, I'm sure his identity will be verified eventually. It's kind of a mean-spirited punchline and you've got to feel bad for Hazard, although it does raise an interesting point that most Carol adaptations brush over - what if the world isn't ready for this munificent new you? Sometimes people prefer the cold embrace of familiarity, rotten though it may be, over something as frightening as genuine change.

(Here's a hidden gag you might have missed - Hazard's tombstone in the future reads Admission: $25, Children: $26. Sounds like a steal by today's standards.)

In conclusion, "A Christmas Peril" is a lot of fun, although probably not the place to go for your fix of seasonal fuzzies (despite Stinkie's heartfelt declaration at the end that this is the best Christmas he ever had). But in that regard it's balanced out by its sister segment, Fright Before Christmas, which goes more sincerely for the emotional factor and has a positive message about forgiveness and tolerance. Just as every franchise everywhere eventually ends up doing a Christmas Carol variation, so too it's inevitable that they end up doing their variation on "A Visit From St. Nicholas". Here, Kat regales us with her account of how she and Casper kept watch on the night before Christmas in order to thwart the Ghostly Trio's scheme to scare Santa. Despite their best efforts, the instant he sets foot at Whipstaff Manor, Santa is abducted and terrorised by the Trio, but Kat and Casper  manage to locate and rescue him, whereupon he rewards them with a bounty of presents. When the Trio sees this, they suddenly regret their actions and implore Santa to share some of the seasonal joy with them. Kat and Casper urge Santa not to, but he forgives the Trio and gives them their share, reminding Kat and Casper that it's better to rise above one's petty grudges and be kind and magnanimous wherever possible. Also, Casper gets to do his Schwarzenegger impression again, which I assume is Harnell.

In addition, there are two supporting skits sandwiched in between:

Ms Banshee's Holiday Hits: A faux TV commercial advertising a seasonal record album performed by Ms Banshee in her ear-bleeding banshee voice. "Not since those singing chipmunks has there been a Christmas album so unpleasant!" Eh, still sounds better to me than Band Aid.

Another Spooky and Poil Moment: And now for a real head-scratcher. In its original broadcast form, this episode contained a different skit, "Good Morning, Dr Harvey", a musical sequence reminiscent of "Gee, Officer Krupke" from West Side Story, in which Casper grows suspicious when Harvey tries to persuade him to go scaring with his uncles. For some reason, on the VHS release this was swapped out with "Another Spooky and Poil Moment", which was originally included as the supporting skit to the episode "Paranormal Press/Deadstock" (this must have been a last minute rearrangement, as the trailer at the front of the tape does indeed list "Good Morning, Dr Harvey" as part of the package). One of Poil's recurring shticks is that she takes everything that's said to her super literally, so when Spooky suggests they soothe things over with an irate Ms Banshee by "taking her something pretty", Poil responds by taking Ms Banshee's pretty negligee. Guess which one of them takes the blame? It does feel distinctly out of place amid the rest of this line-up, in that it doesn't have anything to do with the festive season. But then, neither did "Good Morning, Dr Harvey".

The episode ends with an epilogue to the "Christmas Peril" segment, in which the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future finally get over their seasonal fatigue and regret that they didn't rise to the challenge of spooking the bejesus from a deserving victim. They decide that there's still time, and check out who their fallback option was. Turns out, it's some guy in Washington named Newt. Bless you, festive spirits! Bless us, every one!


* Having said that, there is an episode where we flash back to Stretch, Stinkie and Fatso's school days, and they are visibly younger. Which by all rights doesn't make any sense. The Ghostly Trio definitely didn't enter the world in spectral form; they make reference to the fact that they're dead in virtually every episode. So...don't ask me how it works. 

** Back when I was six, my class watched the 1984 adaptation with George C. Scott as Scrooge, and the Ignorance and Want scene was the one moment that genuinely scared me. A couple of years later, when I saw The Muppet Christmas Carol for the first time, I remember being really apprehensive toward the end of the Present segment, as I kept thinking, "Oh god, we're almost at the bit where he's going to open up his robes and reveal those horrible children!" I don't remember if I felt relieved or cheated that he didn't.

Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire (aka Slightly Irregular...$45)

You're going to be hearing an awful lot about this episode today, on the 30th anniversary of what is arguably the most important Simpsons episode of all-time - the one that started it all (albeit more by chance than intention). So, I'll start by bringing up the one thing that nobody ever acknowledges about this episode - it has one heck of a horrifying title. I'm aware that it's a reference to the "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire" lyrics of "The Christmas Song", a seasonal favourite penned by Robert Welles and Mel Tormé, and first recorded by Nat King Cole in 1945. It sounds positively gruesome when taken out of context, however. When this episode was released to home video in the early 90s (for a long time, I believe this was the only Simpsons episode available on VHS in the US, although more episodes were released to international markets), it bore the more generic but less threatening title of "The Simpsons Christmas Special" (which also appears onscreen in the episode itself). This was the title by which I knew it for years, and so when I finally learned of its official moniker I was more than a little taken back (not least because I wasn't overly familiar with the title's origins at the time). It's a peculiar choice of title, because it simultaneously conjures up images of warmth and homeyness but also pain and disturbance, which is perhaps entirely befitting for an episode that offers such a genial introduction to the Simpsons' world while forcing the characters to undergo all kinds of humiliating discomfort before they earn their feel-good ending.

Unless you fell off your own proverbial Christmas tree yesterday, then I'm guessing you already know the story of how this unassuming seasonal episode came to shoulder the burden and the honor of launching one of the most celebrated shows in television history, so I will keep this brief. "Some Enchanted Evening" was originally intended to kick-start the series, but the staff were so dismayed with how the animation turned out for that one that they sent it back to South Korean animation studio AKOM for an extensive revamping. The production delays meant that the series missed its intended fall premiere and was held back for a number of months, and the holiday-themed "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" was a beneficiary of this, being bumped to the front of the queue so that it could keep its obligatory December spot. Had "Some Enchanted Evening" not endured its infamous hiccup and the episodes aired in their production order, then "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" would have been the eighth episode of the series, although it does play convincingly like it was written to be the series opener, with Marge's Christmas letter deftly establishing who each of the family were for anyone who might have missed out on the Tracy Ullman shorts. I mean, if you're a particularly astute Simpsons viewer, then I think you easily could figure out it belongs slightly later on in the season, even without glancing at production codes or reading up on the series' history. The animation is notably sleeker and more refined than the next three or four episodes that succeed it, and what little Lisa gets to contribute conforms better to her post-"Moaning Lisa" characterisation than to the early stages of the season, where she still retained some of her Ullman rowdiness. We also get a mild continuity problem, in that Homer is already the plant's safety inspector, a position he would not acquire until two further episodes down the line, and there are one or two characters who show up casually over the course of the story who would have received more dramatic, personalised introductions had the episodes played in their correct production order (I am somewhat sorry that Skinner missed out on his intended debut moment in "Bart The Genius", which was so meticulously constructed). But otherwise it's a perfect transition into longer-form Simpsons.

On that note, it's worth pondering how things might have turned out if the initial animation for "Some Enchanted Evening" hadn't been such a far cry from the producers' visions, and it had opened the series the fall of '89 as intended? Would the show still have been such a runaway smash from the go? I have to admit that I'm not so sure. On the surface, it might seem like a no-brainer, given that it's still the exact same material, but then to quote some one-off character who wouldn't show up until Season 7, that's the problem with first impressions - you only get to make one. The obvious advantage that "Enchanted" would have boasted over "Roasting" as a debut episode is that, there, all five family members have important and functional roles to play in how the narrative pans out. It feels like it was purposely written to showcase how the Simpsons operated as a family unit, as opposed to just focusing on any one character and having the others support them. By contrast, "Roasting" is very much a Homer and Bart affair, with the female Simpsons being regulated to the sidelines, particularly during the second half, where they literally stay in the living room waiting for the boys to return from their long, dark journey into the desolate December night. And yet, in all other regards, "Roasting" does feel like a more appropriate starting point for the series, not least because it's a much warmer, gentler Simpsons offering than "Enchanted", which leaps head-first into surprisingly mean and cynical territory. "Roasting" may be the most consistently downbeat installment out of the original thirteen, but it's grounded by a tenderness to which "Enchanted", by comparison, appears to be allergic. There, things take a hair-raising turn when Homer and Marge go out and unwittingly leave the children in the care of master criminal Ms Botz (voice of the wonderful and much-missed Penny Marshall), a fraudulent babysitter who doesn't exactly radiate goodness even prior to dropping her ruse. But even before we get that far, we have a despairing Marge already at the point where she's prepared to dump her negligent husband, who sheepishly attempts to remedy the situation with a measly rose and a night at a seedy motel (complete with queasy-looking waterbed). From its would-be opener, the series wasn't making any bones about how fundamentally derelict the relationship was between Homer and Marge, nor just how repugnant their children were to anyone who didn't have the privilege of bearing them from their own loins (even if their rambunctiousness occasionally proved useful in apprehending dangerous home intruders). Although the show's brutal honesty about the family's flaws would go a long way in endearing them to legions of viewers, "Enchanted" has a particularly sour, sardonic tone to it that some might have found alienating straight off the bat. It feels as if the writers were still figuring out how to make the Simpsons dysfunctional without making them seem like the family from Hell.

"Roasting" already seems worlds apart from "Enchanted", in that it has a greater sense of emotional charity toward its characters. It's an all-round cosier slice of Simpsons life...to the point that some viewers are inclined to brand it as cute in the pejorative sense. Notably, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood of I Can't Believe It's An Unofficial Simpsons Guide don't dish out a whole lot of positives on this one, slating the opening pageant sequence in particular as "cutesy and all-American", while whole-heartedly praising the episode it displaced as series opener as "the perfect template". Nathan Rabin of The AV Club is more positive about "Roasting", but acknowledges that its status as a seasonal special does obligate it to be "unusually sentimental and nakedly emotional." I wouldn't deny that "Roasting" pushes for the heartwarming factor more forcefully than any its brethren, but it's no sugar-fest either; in fact, being a seasonal special also permits a certain level of drawn-out emotional despair that's also not matched elsewhere in the season. Oh sure, we'd see Homer pushed to a much lower point than this just two episodes down the line, when "Homer's Odyssey" sees him so overwhelmed by self-loathing that at one point he seriously contemplates hurling himself into a river with a rock affixed to his waist, but "Roasting" examines his feelings of personal failure and inadequacy from a quieter, less melodramatic stance that seems all the more convincing. The "realism of the first season" with which Martyn and Wood seem to have a problem is one of the episode's greatest assets, for "Roasting" revolves around a small, yet very relatable kind of festive crisis - the gloomy realisation that your Christmas is a far cry from the glitzy corporate ideal (epitomised here by Ned Flanders, who outdoes Homer's pathetic attempt at a light display with his blaring animatronic monstrosity, which now seems hilariously secular in light of the direction that his characterisation would go - can you imagine today's Ned favouring a display that says "Xmas" over "Christmas"?). This isn't the kind of crisis that could potentially break the family, as in "Homer's Odyssey", "Life on The Fast Lane", "Homer's Night Out" and the first act of "Some Enchanted Evening" - we sense here that the family do have Homer's backs and aren't going to begrudge him if he's unable to shower them with material luxuries - but it nevertheless carries a bitter sting that's sustained right up until the inevitable happy ending. "Roasting" is cruel and packed with suffering in the way that the most evergreen of seasonal stories always are - so long as there's light at the end of the tunnel, the world loves nothing more than a generous helping of human misery at Yuletide to remind us that there is hope in the darkest hour. To that end, Homer is pretty much the George Bailey of this particular story - the luckless guy who can't catch a break, despite his earnest efforts to provide for those around him. It also helps that it keeps a firm handle on that characteristic Simpsons wit, which prevents it from becoming overly sappy - for example, in a scene where Bart, having learned what Homer is putting himself through, makes a heartfelt profession of admiration for his father, which takes the form of a backhanded compliment. "You must really love us to sink so low."

"Roasting" sees an unexpected financial problem threaten the family's prospects of an opulent Christmas - Marge is forced to blow the full Christmas funds on having an unfinished tattoo removed from Bart's arm, while Homer doesn't get the holiday bonus he was anticipating (through no fault of his own either; none of the blue collar workers at the plant received their Christmas bonuses because Burns chose to prioritise the wallets of the upper management. Now there's a man begging to be beleaguered by three ghosts during the night). Rather than break the news of his failure and risk disappointing his family, Homer chooses to shoulder the burden alone, in the dim hope that he can still turn things around in the meagre time he has. "Roasting" finds Homer in a wholly altruistic mood - in fact, I'm not sure if there's another episode where he's quite this completely and utterly selfless from beginning to end. Which is not to say that he's without his faults - at one point, Homer is so wounded by the observation that he's failed even to supply the customary tree for the living room that he drives out to a private reserve and steals one, nearly getting himself gunned down in the process. And yet, his basic motives are so pure, and his struggles against the bum hand life insists on dealing him so unrelenting that he takes on a classic underdog status and retains the audience's sympathies throughout. Which is another reason why "Roasting" makes for a better starting episode than "Enchanted" - both of them cement Homer's status as the perpetual loser who couldn't, but "Roasting" casts him, and his relations with the rest of his family, in a much more favourable light than does "Enchanted". Both the humour and the anguish stem from the assorted indignities he's forced to endure to replenish the family's lost resources - the sequence preceding his aforementioned fir theft is a great example, with Homer driving past various tree vendors as "Winter Wonderland" plays, his (understandable) lack of festive cheer growing increasingly apparent with every unaffordable option on offer. It's a smart sequence for how wittily it undercuts the false merriment of a holiday centred around maximum spending. Of course, Homer is forced to serve that same consumerist culture when he takes a part-time job as a mall Santa, a gig that requires him to pretend to be jolly old Saint Nick and listen to the demands of gullible six-year-olds for numerous hours. The kids he meets on the job don't actually seem all that vile, but he also has to undertake a rigorous round of entirely superfluous Santa training, and finally when Christmas Eve comes he discovers that the corporate fat cats he expected to be his salvation have been bleeding him mercilessly dry the entire time - with a barrage of additional deductions applied to his paycheck, all he gets from his Santa gig is a piddling thirteen dollars.

Unlike "Enchanted", which gives us a preposterous, albeit genuinely threatening antagonist in the form of Ms Botz, "Roasting" doesn't have a traditional villain. The antagonism arises from the coldness of the world around and how painfully indifferent it is toward Homer's plight. His family are supportive, but not even the comfort of his own home provides much refuge. The modest exterior, stacked up against neighbour Ned Flanders' tastelessly extravagant display, is a reminder of his deficiencies as family patriarch, and the inside is later invaded by two of his least favourite individuals, who are intent on rubbing those deficiencies in his face in a more direct manner. "Roasting" sees the start of not one but two of the prevailing animosities of Homer's existence - his one-sided rivalry with Ned, and his mutual enmity with sister-in-laws Patty and Selma, who come to stay with the family for the holidays. Since Homer is so sympathetic here, neither of the opposing parties come across so well in their debut appearances. We don't get to spend a whole lot of time with Ned, but based on what little we have, Homer's resentment toward him here doesn't seem quite so unjustified - he's cheerful, honestly, to the point of smarm, and he doesn't seem to think anything of flaunting his material bounty where Homer can see it (Homer is possibly a bit hard on Todd, though). Ned would later transpire to be a miraculously lovely neighbour who didn't deserve Homer's ire, but in "Roasting" his single purpose is to make Homer look and feel inferior. Patty and Selma would likewise be better developed in the following season and would prove to be two of the series' more complicated characters, but throughout Season 1 their one defining characteristic was that they hated Homer and weren't willing to put up much of a front to the contrary. Unlike "Life on The Fast Lane", where they correctly predict that Homer will let Marge down on her birthday, the viewer knows that their criticisms here are uncalled for, since Homer really is putting his all into coping with difficult circumstances for the sake of his family. Still, their presence is a nice nod to one of the other bugbears of the holiday season - having to rub shoulders and exchange strained pleasantries with the relatives you would sooner give as wide a berth as possible.

"Roasting" acknowledges that the holiday season is esteemed as a time of sacred ideal, but that the reality is frequently quite different, particularly for jaded adults who've already downed one rancid mincemeat pie too many (and presumably, Homer isn't the only person in town facing such a crisis, since all of his colleagues at the plant were also denied their Christmas bonus). Amid Homer's woes as family breadwinner, we get sprinklings of the kids' eye view of the holiday, with Bart regarding the festive conventions with a mixture of healthy irreverence ("there's only one fat guy who brings us presents and his name ain't Santa") and wide-eyed awe, as evidenced in his words of encouragement to Homer: "If TV has taught me anything, it's that miracles always happen to poor kids at Christmas. It happened to the Smurfs, it happened to Charlie Brown, it happened to Tiny Tim, and it's going to happen to us." Bart is wary enough of adult authority to know that the whole Santa story they keep feeding him is a facade, but has far too much respect for the authority of the chattering cyclops to not believe in the intrinsic sanctity of the season. It's here that the episode tips over into its most openly self-conscious mode, with the reassurance that everything will be alright because the TV told us so. This is further underscored in the parallel moments involving the festive cartoon the rest of the family are watching in Homer and Bart's absence, in which the Happy Little Elves contemplate the possibility of becoming Sad Little Elves should Santa fail to find them through a blizzard of snow. The Happy Little Elves were one of these primitive staples of the Simpsons universe that were quickly discarded as the series proper began (a la Frosty Chocolate Milkshakes) - in the Ullman shorts and early episodes, the Simpsons would occasionally watch The Happy Little Elves, who were partly a homage to those Smurfs Bart mentioned earlier, but mainly a send-up of the kind of insipid, wholesome cartoon that The Simpsons itself decidedly was not. Itchy and Scratchy became the show's go-to whenever they wanted to make some meta observation about cartoon conventions or the animation industry in general, and references to the Elves became a lot more sparing after Season 1. Abe dismisses the cartoon as "unadulterated pap" as Lisa finds herself genuinely invested in the elves' hackneyed antics. As noted, Lisa isn't given a lot to do in this episode, but she does contribute my favourite moment, when she stands up for Homer against one of Patty's cutting asides, using that psychotherapist jargon that was her character's trademark at this point in the series. It's a wonderful Lisa bit, encapsulating her perceptiveness and sensitivity in a way that puts the adults' pettiness into perspective, and seeming doubly hilarious coming straight off her ingenuous reaction to the Elves cartoon, which Patty impassively directs her back to. "Roasting" does a nice job of showcasing the dual characterisation that Lisa had already developed over a relatively short space of time, after years of being something of an unknown in the Ullman shorts - hugely precocious, but still recognisably a child (it's not clear if Lisa buys into the whole Santa thing, but she's apparently naive enough to believe that sheer desire and restrained behaviour will get her something as fanciful as a pony).

Things work out for Lisa's favourite TV elves, of course, just as they eventually work out for our favourite TV family, but it seems a safe bet that the elves didn't have to attend a run-down dog track in order to obtain their Christmas miracle. On the episode's DVD commentary, there's some brief discussion of the producers' intentions to create a cartoon that was "full of trash", and that's another means by which "Roasting" manages to subvert the conventions of the seasonal cartoons it sends up - the latter half of the episode is characterised by a genuine air of squalor, which becomes more and more prominent as Homer and Bart's journey leads them ever deeper into the dingier side of Springfield's tracks. From the gaudy artifice of the mall's Christmas grotto to the cheerless grime of the employee reception to the dankness of the Springfield Downs, it really does feel like the drabbest possible backdrop against which to set a Christmas special (although there is a sweet exchange between a father and son who've made a tradition of not opening their presents until the eighth race). I acknowledged that we like our seasonal stories to have sufficient lashings of gloom (or what Bart describes as suspense before the miracle happens), but there are times when "Roasting" gets a little too knowingly dirty for comfort. By the time we get to the dog tracks, we find ourselves questioning if this is really the kind of place where Christmas miracles happen. As it turns out, no, at least not in the conventional sense. Homer is advised by Barney to put his thirteen hard-earned dollars on a betting favourite named Whirlwind, but instead backs Santa's Little Helper, a late addition with pitifully low odds because he sees something prophetic in the dog's ridiculous name. It all goes as disastrously as the odds would imply, leaving Homer deflated and Bart tasked with having to re-examine his entire world view ("It doesn't seem possible, but I guess TV has betrayed me"). The two are reduced to having to scavenge through the litter outside the tracks on the slim chance of finding a dropped winning ticket, where they find themselves in the company of none other than Santa's Little Helper, whose abysmal performance has prompted his owner to abandon him. Having to share the gutter with the failed racing dog who dashed their final prospect of redemption is the ultimate confirmation of their status as perpetual losers, and yet the empathy Bart and Homer muster for this outcast animal opens up a whole new avenue of redemption, for there is a common solution to both the Simpsons' and Santa's Little Helper's problems. Their simple act of solidarity reaps a handsome reward, for when Homer arrives home with Bart and the dog in tow and attempts to break the news about his Christmas bonus, the family are so delighted to meet Santa's Little Helper that they scarcely care. The episode ends, then, with a heartening message about how unity among losers can make winners of us all.

Of course, a dog is for life, not just for Christmas...which the problem that this episode does inadvertently set up. Having brought this lovable dog into the family household for the sake of facilitating a happy ending, the series then had to contend with the fact that they were stuck with him. This may be the most contentious Simpsons opinion I'll ever express (way more so than my views on Homer and Marge's marriage), but I actually don't think that Santa's Little Helper was that great an addition to the Simpsons household in the long-term. Unlike Snowball II the cat, who is basically harmless (if understatedly morbid - see below), the show does intermittently keep trying to make episodes with Santa's Little Helper as the focal point, and they never really worked for me, to the extent that I'd rank "Bart's Dog Gets an F", "Dog of Death", "Two Dozen and One Greyhounds" and "The Canine Mutiny" as the weakest episodes of their respective seasons. Whenever I watch "Bart Gets An Elephant" or "Lisa's Pony", I'm always amazed at just how much more invested I get in the relationships the family forms with these one-off critters we'll never see again than I do their regular pets, who are mostly just taken for granted. But why carp? For now, things are wonderful, and I've no desire to close this celebration of the 30th anniversary of the series' first episode on a negative note.

Instead, I'll close with something else that most retrospectives on this episode are unlikely to do, with a word of appreciation for the forgotten family member Snowball II, who also receives her formal introduction in this episode (but would have made a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo prior in "Moaning Lisa"). Whereas Santa's Little Helper represents seasonal miracles and the possibility of new beginnings, Snowball II is a haunting reminder of the tragedies that have already occurred, her very name constantly evoking the predecessor who had met a horrible end before the series even began, and whom the viewer only knew second-hand via her unassuming replacement. Marge states in her letter that life goes on, but inevitably the scars of yesteryear will ride along with us. I realise that this is probably sounding decidedly negative, but what I'm saying is that Snowball II had always had her unique niche within the household, even if she never received much glory for it. It's not a pretty job, but someone has to remind us that the shadow of mortality is forever hanging over us.

Beasts '76: What Big Eyes (aka Never Trust A Man Whose Eyebrows Meet In The Middle)

All six episodes of Nigel Kneales' Beasts deal with the common theme of the savagery that still endures in human nature, although none have a more literal interest than "What Big Eyes" in the nature of human DNA and the strange and uncomfortable truths it potentially conceals. The antagonist of the story is a man with some highly unorthodox views on human evolution - he believes that wolves are the true evolutionary ancestors of Man, and that with a little genetic tinkering it might even be possible to reverse the process. "What Big Eyes" is a werewolf story, although not really, and that's what frustrates a lot of viewers about it. I get the impression that it's is one of the less popular Beasts installments, which I suspect has to do with its climax - it spends much of its 53-minute running time ostensibly building toward a traditional horror outcome that it ultimately doesn't make good on, opting instead for something far more muted and low-key, but which, I would argue, manages to be even more unsettling, particularly in terms of the bitter lingering aftertaste it leaves behind. Here's a major spoiler straight off the bat - by the end of the story our aspiring lycanthrope is revealed to be a crackpot whose reckless experimentation on his own body ensures little more than his own destruction. He fails to turn himself into a wolf. But he certainly does succeed in bringing out the raging animal in the person closest to him.

"What Big Eyes" has a number of parallels with "During Barty's Party" - once again, the dramatic thrust of the story rests on the interplay between a male and a female who share the same domestic space, the unsettled nature of their relationship being revealed against their preoccupation with a (mostly) off-screen animal (unlike the rats in "During Barty's Party", we do get a couple of fleeting glimpses of a wolf in this one, although I suspect it's actually a German shepherd). But Roger and Angie's emotionally stunted relationship looks positively genteel compared to this particular dysfunctional couple - the elderly lupine obsessive Leo Raymount (Patrick Magee) and his sheepish middle-aged daughter Florence (Madge Ryan), who runs an outwardly prosaic pet shop while her father toils away in the back rooms with altogether more disturbing pursuits (she is a wolf in sheep's clothing, although not in the traditional sense). A crucial difference here is that we experience their relationship from the perspective of an outsider, who enters the situation innocently and only gradually comes to understand what he's up against. The hero of the story is Bob Curry (Michael Kitchen), a young RSPCA inspector who often struggles to exude authority, which proves a problem when he takes on dubious exotic pet dealer Duggie Jebb (Bill Dean), whom he suspects of running a dodgy trade in unquarantined timber wolves. Curry's investigation leads him to Florence's pet shop, which he assumes is being unwittingly used as a cover-up for Jebb's operations, only to discover that the smoke, in this case, stems from one hell of a fire. For Raymount has indeed purchased a quantity of wolves from Jebb, for purposes that, like Curry, we suspect are none too savoury, and Curry's persistent interest in the case takes him to a grisly outcome, albeit not the one the viewer is primed to expect for much of the episode. Telling the story from Curry's point of view is a clever tactic which ensures that its actual purpose remains at arms lengths for much of the time, so that, like Curry, we don't quite grasp what was lurking there in plain sight until the very last act. It's this sly subversion that tends to frustrate a lot of people about "What Big Eyes", but also what makes it such an effective and unsettling piece of horror television - the revelation that Raymount's efforts to transform himself into a werewolf were little more than a smokescreen to the real terror of this story, the more implicit narrative involving Raymount's abusive and controlling treatment of Florence. When Curry first arrives at Raymount's domain, he is assured that there is no cruelty there, although it becomes evident that that isn't the case. As it turns out, there is a tremendous amount of cruelty happening in this establishment, both of the kind that Curry deals with (the wolves and various other animals Raymount is revealed to have vivisected for his experiments) and the kind that he doesn't (Raymount has, perhaps unwittingly, made Florence a test subject all on her own terms).

"What Big Eyes" plays a classic diversion game, whereby Raymount's conspicuous eccentricities draw attention away from Florence's more subdued presence, to the extent that we hardly register her at all for much of the story. This is where Magee's feverish, wild-eyed scenery chewing really comes into play - he seems, for all the world, like a man who's already two-thirds of the way through the transformation process from civility to savagery, and is about to tip over into a snarling fury at any moment. What Chris Newton of The Spooky Isles describes as his "slightly odd Shakespearean B-Movie performance" only adds to the eerie unpleasantness he radiates - pay attention to the way he gnashes his teeth while explaining to Curry the basis of his "Grandma vaccine". By contrast, the docile Florence at first appears to serve no greater purpose than to further accentuate his feral qualities by providing an easy outlet for his brutality. I think the really crucial line in the story, however, lies in a remark that Raymount makes early on of Florence: "One's offspring are a distorting mirror; they mock one with themselves. I have to remember I'm not that." At first, this appears to be indicative purely of Raymount's disdain for his daughter, and of his desire to elevate himself above his perceived inferiors by proving his scientific brilliance, but it also points to the idea of Florence being a reflection of the man who has raised her, our first hint that she is the character who perhaps bears watching.

This is further insinuated in Raymount and Florence's dual obsession with the story of Little Red Riding Hood, which Raymount holds up as a precursor to his own lyncanthropic ambitions. It is, as he tells Curry, not a fairy story but a "folk memory", the implied subtext being that Grandma and the Big Bad Wolf were actually a single entity, two sides of the same coin, and the titular heroine was lured to a gruesome demise by her very own kin. The Grandma/Wolf analogy is itself double-edged - on the one hand, it acts as a warning that the most seemingly benign of characters might harbour more troublesome impulses (which in this case would point toward Florence and not Raymount), while also hinting at the darker nature of Raymount and Florence's relationship. Keep in mind that the tale of Little Red Riding Hood, a story dating as far back as 10th century Europe, is popularly interpreted as a rape/seduction analogy, with the wolf being a sexual predator who persuades the readily-manipulated heroine to wander off the beaten track. In the version that most people are familiar with today, both Red and her grandmother escape the clutches of the wolf, but earlier versions of the story had a far bleaker ending in which the wolf devours the heroine and no woodcutter ever arrives to save the day. Traditionally, the story serves as a warning against stranger danger, but Raymount's retelling contains a disturbing subversion, in which the real threat is revealed to have been lurking within the supposed safety of the heroine's family all along. Raymount acknowledges as such when he states (somewhat bizarrely) that no child could have been taken in by the flimsy disguise of a wolf in a nightcap - in actuality, Red was betrayed by the one she trusted; Grandma herself was always the disguise. As Raymount recounts the story to Curry (and Florence listens in with an eerily infantile reverence), he does so with a seething sensuality that becomes all the more chilling when viewed with the hindsight of Florence's final revelations.

Once you pick up on that subtext, then Raymount's "Grandma vaccine" takes on multiple meanings. There is the very literal sense in which Raymount has been injecting wolf blood and spinal fluid into his own body, in the hopes that it will enable him to undergo his own lycanthropic transformation  - a reckless endeavor which, ultimately, causes him to die of septicemia. But there is also the symbolic sense in which he has been poisoning Florence over the years, both in his implied sexual abuse and in the relentless psychological trauma he has inflicted on her, to the extent that quite the slavering beast has been swelling up inside her in the form of her repressed anger and desperation. When Curry asks Raymount who he has been using as a human subject in his experiments, Raymount responds, "Who is the most available?", by which he only ostensibly refers to himself. There is no evidence that Raymount has subjected Florence to any of his Grandma vaccines in the literal sense - certainly, he is a man far too obsessed with his own brilliance to be willing to share the honors of lycanthropic transformation with a being as far down the food chain as Florence - and yet the implication is that Florence has been his ultimate experiment, albeit inadvertently. It's here that we can draw parallels between Florence and the wolf Curry later discovers caged in Raymount's yard, which Raymount has forced to share in his fate by injecting with his own fluids. This is a link that Florence herself makes explicit at the end of the story when she likens her father's treatment of her to that of the animals he vivisected ("All my childhood, cut out of me and thrown away!") and in her description of their relationship, which resembles that of a master and dog than a parent and child ("I was faithful! I was submitted!").

The various other caged animals seen all throughout the story (both in Florence's pet shop and Jebb's yard) have their own duality, symbolising both Raymount's hypothesis about the untamed beasts that lies dormant in the human shell, and Florence's own domination and entrapment by her father. At the end of the story, when Curry returns to the pet shop for the final time, he finds the place in complete disarray, with all of the cages smashed and most of the animals absconded (save from a lone kitten which continues to linger on the shop floor). Clearly, there has been some kind of grisly new development in Curry's absence. The obvious assumption, of course, is that Raymount has returned from the dead in lupine form and wreaked the prophesied havoc, but the wreckage quickly transpires to have been Florence's doing; having finally seen her father for what he was, she has flown into a bestial rage of all her own, destroying his research tools and everything else in the vicinity. The cage doors have been opened and the animal is now unleashed, and it's here that we finally get the transformation we were promised earlier on in the plot, just not in the form we would have expected. The twist comes in the revelation that it was always Florence who had the capacity for real ferity, the result of having endured a lifetime of metaphorical Grandma vaccines from her father, and as the end-product of Raymount's body of work, she is effectively becoming the werewolf in his stead. The resulting rampage contains nothing as exotic or fantastical as actual lycanthropy, but it is every bit as gruesomely nightmarish. Ryan's performance throughout this sequence is both startling and authentically distressing, as we witness Florence bringing her howling anguish to the forefront for the very first time. As she leans over Raymount's concealed body, she slips into a recital of the "transformation" sequence from Little Red Riding Hood, much as her father had previously done with Curry, and her own facial features are seen to contort with a rabid frenzy that blows his own gnashing recital clean out of the water. A distorted mirror indeed, for Florence is now more of a wolf than Raymount could ever have hoped to have been.

"What Big Eyes" ends on a pessimistic note, suggesting that Florence will never be free of her father's influence, even after his death. In the final moments, she thinks she sees him stirring beneath the sheet covering his body, and her anger morphs into high elation, as she joyously proclaims that his promises were true after all. Curry pulls back the sheet to reveal Raymount's lifeless body underneath, whereupon Florence recognises that he is in fact dead, but chooses to cling to her delusions, insisting that, "Just for a moment, it was true," while continuing to stare adoringly at her father. The closing shot, which pans across the ravaged pet shop, shows the lone kitten from earlier atop the counter, freed from its cage but willfully confining itself to a plastic container, implying that Florence will ultimately remain indebted to her despicable father, opting for the comfort and familiarity of her veneration over the possibility of escape.

Oh yes, and in his review on The Spooky Isles, Newton does also point out a fairly glaring problem with this episode. After Raymount dies of septicemia, you can very visibly see him breathing right after. You would do well to ignore that.

Casper: Lucky Enough To Be A Ghost

Earlier this year I got very hung up on the topic of musical numbers that were at one point destined for big screen glory but were ultimately deemed luxuries and abandoned on the cutting room floor. Well, Casper also has one of those, and fortunately this one hasn't stayed sealed away inside a vault for the past quarter-century. The excised song, "Lucky Enough To Be A Ghost", was to have been performed by The Ghostly Trio about midway through the film, during one of Harvey's attempted therapy sessions. It looks as if it would have been an enjoyable sequence, but it wound up being jettisoned purely because the animation required would have been so complicated as to risk putting the film over-budget. The sequence was filmed, with Bill Pullman doing his bit, but animation for Stretch, Stinkie and Fatso was only created for the initial, non-musical portion, which director Brad Silberling had still hoped to incorporate into the final edit. In the end, everything within the sequence was given the axe - although, if you are particularly eagle-eyed, you can still pick out a couple of moments from it in the theatrical trailer. I'd note that there are also two call-backs to the sequence that survive in the final cut:

• During the scene where Kat goes outside to talk to Vic, she mentions that her dad "kind of hit the ceiling" when she asked him about the party. As it turns out, she meant that literally.
• Later, when Harvey is at the end of his tether, Stinkie observes that the situation "calls for drastic measures", to which Fatso responds, "You think we should break into a song?" (Of course, if you were unaware of the excised musical sequence, you might assume that this was a callback to an earlier moment where the Trio taunted Kat with a corrupted version of "It's My Party" by Lesley Gore).

The unfinished "Lucky Enough To Be A Ghost" sequence has since shown up as an extra on DVD releases of the film (where you can watch two different versions - one with just Pullman, the other an animators' reference with stand-ins for Stretch, Stinkie and Fatso), with Silberling explaining that it was eventually deemed that the movie could get by without it, as the Trio's penchant for pranking Harvey had already been established from the earlier moment where they pretend to have summoned Amelia. From a strictly narrative standpoint, this sequence is entirely dispensable, since it doesn't tell us anything important and/or that we don't already know. It's also not as though the Trio shed any light on their own personal backstories (something that goes untouched on in the film), they just make psychotherapy puns (among the most questionable of which is Fatso's claim to be bulimic - unless he is indeed getting at the fact that ghosts automatically lose whatever food they ingest), although obviously it saddens me that we missed out on a whole extra sequence with Harvey and the poltergeists. It isn't essential to the story, but it does further expand on our sense of the Trio coming around to Harvey (at this point, they are plainly tormenting him because they like him, and what a willful target he is for their shenanigans), while simultaneously grinding down his every last speck of resolve. Its greatest narrative function, though, is in foreshadowing Harvey's own encounter with the perks of being a ghost, and the release it potentially offers him from his living DEATH. After all, the Trio opens the song by turning Harvey's therapeutic posturing back on him ("Too bad about your wife!"), a reminder that the assumptions he makes about ghosts are all thinly-veiled expressions of his own deepest despairs. (Stretch, Stinkie and Fatso, meanwhile, couldn't give a toss about the judgements of the outside world.)

Although we'll never get to see the "Lucky Enough To Be A Ghost" sequence fully animated, the above version with only Pullman has value all of its own in that it provides insight into just how deranged the acting process was on this film - when you keep in mind that Pullman and Ricci spent much of their screen time interacting with non-existent co-stars. It's why I don't think the work in Casper is anything to be sniffed at - they had me willing to believe that the ghosts and humans were rubbing shoulders within the same physical space, and that takes more than just cutting edge technology. All of the flashiest visual trickery in the world wouldn't have meant anything if the human cast weren't willing to act their hearts out into the void.