I was walking the baby around and noticed "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" was on. I am, and always have been, a total sucker for holiday kids movies on TV. All the Charlie Browns, Rudolph, Fat Albert Santa Claus is Coming to Town...you name it, I've seen it 36 times. Except for anything newer than 1990...and the Garfield ones. So naturally I turned the baby away from the evil screen and zoned out to Snoopy making dinner for Peppermint Patty, Marcy, Linus, Lucy and (surprise surprise) Franklin who Charlie gave a high-5 to in a really sad, latently racist move. He didn't slap skin with any of his other friends...just the "other" friend. But as usual, I digress.
What struck me this year was how frigging rude Peppermint Patty is to Snoopy and Charlie Brown. I mean sure, toast, popcorn, pretzel sticks and jelly beans are shitty components for a Thanksgiving Day feast. But...hello....you're a guest you grouchy beeotch! You don't diss someones food when you invited yourself over because you have no parents. What really annoyed me further was Charlie Brown feels bad about it and soon allows his freeloading friends to go with him to his grandmas house for a "real" dinner. I wonder if all these years, Charlie Brown was more of a pushover/cuckold than a "loser?" I'll be looking closer this holiday season.
After the Thanksgiving show, a newer Charlie Brown special called "He's a Bully Charlie Brown" came on. It was all revitalized (or trying to be) and had Snoopy and Charlie Brown on a halfpipe skateboarding in the opening credits. Neat. They also had some glossy looking computer type animation that really sucked as well. It was basically a pumped up Peanuts and it lacked any and all charm of the originals.
Oh! The "acting" was horrible! They were like Peanuts Robots. "Hello, Chuck. How. Are. You? Going. To. Summer. Camp?" You get the idea. But what really made my night was the fact that we can no longer question or make sly innuendoes about Marcy and Peppermint Patty. See, in "Bully," Marcy and Charlie Brown get to go to summer camp but P. Patty has to stay behind and attend summer school. Torn apart by jealousy over Marcy and Chuck having fun while she is in school, she calls Marcy each night to see what she's missing.
Soon, while on the phone, Marcy starts doing things like, "Oh, hold on sir, I can't hear you because Chuck is nibbling my ear" (I'm not kidding...that really happens) and during one phone call she says, "Oh Chuck....quit squeezing my hand so hard." It all makes Peppermint Patty incredibly jealous and she comes unglued and she sneaks off to the camp to see what's really going on.
Once there Patty begins to look everywhere for Chuck with Marcy attached at her hip....where she is usually found. Now, simpletons would believe the company line that Peppermint Patty is jealous because Marcy is picking up on her man. However closer inspection reveals that Patty never actually states who she's jealous of. If you took some of her statements at face value and "in" the scene, you could easily easily argue she's mad that Marcy is straying from her and in fact, I think the lack of clearness speaks to the fact Peppermint Patty is a lesbian. Not that there's anything wrong with that and hell, since Dumbledore got outed it's only a matter of time before a classic cartoon character comes out of the animated closet. I do have to say my money was always on Goofy though...
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