Really excited for this. Got to watch some of it being filmed in May. Wes is one weird dude, but friendly.

Eek! The Cat is fantastic and really needs to show up on some sort of modern hard copy. It never occurred to me as a kid that most of the episodes were some sort of parody until we read 'Lord of the Flies' in school. I can still make my friend laugh with "Kill the beast with purple hair! He will make a lovely chair!"

"whittlin' and dying." Never die, O'Neal.

Great write-up. My favorite bit of Christmas. Everyone should play with this:

Good news, everyone!

And that was the only line I liked in all of the twenty-three episodes. Or five, or whatever. I feel like I've been watching this since third grade.

I. Give. Up. It's not even worth background noise. I've never been so bored watching an intriguing promise wall itself up in wooden dialog.

Don't forget the short where Goofy shows us how not to ski.

I re-watched this on youtube last year and it holds up. The backgrounds are gorgeous, Scrooge is wonderful - the whole thing is just *good,* in a way Christmas specials aren't any longer. And kudos for having the guts to give Scrooge a vision of hell - scared me as a kid; strikes me as daring on Disney's part now.

Embarrassingly I never realized John wrote 'Postcard.' He also wrote 'What Are We Doing Here,' a pretty maudlin bit about the loneliness of touring, and 'Cell Number 7' which I count as a road song heralding the dangers of touring with Keith Moon.

My absolute favorite Christmas special. Myles, you sum up nicely what's so great about this one - there are no crises of materialism, there's no artificial drama, no sick orphans; just a bunch of goofballs getting together for the holidays and having a wonderful time. I still tear up whenever Jim shows up to wash…

@avclub-23c97e9cb93576e45d2feaf00d0e8502:disqus , I've made exactly that argument against this song for years.

In my circle my hatred of that Paul McCartney song is legendary. My best friend moved to the West Coast last year. I miss her. She had this conversation with her husband in the car today when 'Wonderful Christmas Time' played:

I see your Muppet Christmas Carol and raise you the full-length Muppet Family Christmas, the Holy Grail of Christmas specials.

I heard John Entwistle saying, "He reminded me of a psychopathic Father Christmas."

I recently re-watched Caper and this exchange during the credits just about killed me:

Well, now my day REALLY sucks.

I'm almost ashamed to say I cracked up at "My hair is getting stronger."

I've loved him since seeing "Into the West" as a kid. Excellent modern fairy tale; kind of hard to find anyone who knows it without confusing it with that western miniseries.

I blame that short for my fear of snakes.