#one of the most tragic characters in television i'll tell you

[hackedhearts]

Looking back into the whole “There is no bottom here, no bottom at all, I'm the goddamn Mariana Trench!”...That was one of the saddest things Klaus ever said. Everyone else has a rock bottom because they wake up one day and decide they don’t want to die like that. But Klaus can’t say the same because to him death is as meaningless as life because he believes there's nothing good for him on either side.

[rynnthefangirl]

My Top 10 Favorite Breaking Bad Universe Characters

1. Howard Hamlin - this one is kinda silly bc he is much less developed than other characters, but I can’t help it. His tragedy hits so hard, it took a character whom I didn’t really care about and made him my absolute #1 fave. Rest in peace Howard you deserved better🥺💔

2. Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman - Gilligould really took a look at their whacky comic relief lawyer in Breaking Bad, and said “hmm, what if we made him the absolute most complex and fascinating character in our entire fictional universe”. And then they did.🙌

3. Jesse Pinkman - God his story hurts. He had one of the best hearts in the whole show, yet he suffered more than ANY other character. His character goes from loveably silly to absolutely heart shattering. I hope he found some peace in Alaska.❤️

4. Walter White - I just can’t help but love this horrible horrible man. He’s goofy and ridiculous, but also insane and egotistical in the most entertaining way. What a great protagonist, he’s compelling when I am rooting for him and compelling when I am praying for his downfall.

5. Chuck McGill - IMO, the best antagonist in the whole BrBa universe. The Jimmy vs Chuck storyline was TOP TIER, Chicanery was a masterpiece of an episode, Lantern and Winner are just dripping with tragedy and sorrow and what-if's. And it's all because of Chuck. Rip Chuck, you may have been a prick but damn if you didn’t make this show the brilliant piece of television that it was.

6. Kim Wexler - no character gives me more mixed feelings than Kim. I always liked her in the early seasons, then I despised her in s6a, then my heart broke for her in s6b, and now I retroactively have so much more love and sorrow for her earlier self because there was so much good there and she could have been so much better and GOD Kim is such a tragic, amazing, well written character.

7. Skyler White - oh my god, my poor wife. You deserved so much better than what the audience gave you all those years. You were a queen, and so right about everything, and I am so sorry I didn’t see it before but now I will defend you until my dying day❤️❤️❤️

8. Lalo Salamanca - he’s just so insane and silly and entertaining. He steals every scene he’s in, and in my opinion added some desperately needed charm and charisma to the cartel side of the show. Legit was rooting for him against Gus, even though he killed my boy Howie and I knew he was doomed to fail.

8. Nacho Varga - Like Jesse, he went through so much despite having one of the most decent hearts on the show, and it all culminated in such a tragic yet powerful death scene. And I love love love the idea of the curse of Nacho Varga dooming Gus, the Salamancas, and the Cartel for their sins. His ghost looms over Breaking Bad, and makes both shows much richer as a result.

9. Cheryl Hamlin - she fascinates me, we see very little of her and yet I loved her scenes and want to know more. I'll also not tolerate Cheryl slander, we don't know what was going on in her and Howard’s marriage, and in the end she stood up for him when nobody else did.

10. Mike Ehrmantraut - to be honest, I'm not the biggest Mike fan. Not because there is anything wrong with his character per se, but I find it a bit annoying how the fandom idolizes him as a loveable grandpa/moral criminal when he actually is kind of horrible and not all that different from Walter. That being said, I do love what they were going for in BCS, showing his slow corruption as he keeps going back into the world of crime to avoid dealing with his grief for his son's death, culminating in that amazing scene where the show calls him on his hypocrisy and Manual Varga tells him 'you gangsters and your justice, you are all the same'. I just wish it was explored more explicitly in the narrative and fandom the way that Walt and Jimmy's moral corruptions are.

[nellie-elizabeth]

Barry: wow (4x08)

I mean... "wow" seems like a pretty good word for it.

Cons:

Footage not found, honestly? This was more or less perfect television. The only shot I didn't like was the fade up on the clapping audience towards the end with Sally directing a high school production of Our Town. I think because we'd had a few very iconic, in-your-face shots leading up to it, and that one felt like it pushed over the edge for me, in openly acknowledging, I guess, the theatre of the whole thing? But that's the tiniest of nitpicks.

Pros:

Where to even begin? I think what I'll do is just run down the ultimate fates of the characters we most care about.

Fuches does this final act of services for Barry, absolving him of any wrongdoing in their relationship while doing the most redeeming thing he can in terms of his own role in the man Barry turns out to be. He rescues John for him. It's so interesting that they don't talk, they don't have any sort of final words with each other, and Fuches's final actions are to shoot and kill Hank, and then to pass Barry's son back off to him, a man that he has every reason to believe will just continue a cycle of violence. It's a gift that Fuches gives to Barry, but it's also a pretty bittersweet idea, if you think about it. But Fuches arguably gets the best ending of any character, in terms of escaping off into the dark of night to do who knows what else with the rest of his life. He doesn't seem to play a role in the film adaptation that we see, so he seems to have escaped his consequences.

Hank... I mean, watching him break down as he admits that he killed Cristobal, that final shot of him and the statue... Jesus Christ. Hank has been walking around without his heart for the past eight years, and Fuches forces him to admit the truth of that, then shoots him directly in his literal heart... it's just, it's horrifyingly beautiful. I was really fucked up by it if we're being honest. Hank also made only a very brief cameo appearance in what we saw of the movie, which just emphasizes how pointlessly tragic this story is (in a good way). Everything that Hank went through, all the pain of it, and it ultimately didn't even make the cut for the story of Barry and Cousineau. I love that we are thwarted from seeing any sort of final showdown between Barry and Hank, any final moment of reckoning. Because the truth is, Barry never gave a shit about Hank. Hank gave a shit about Barry for a while, but in the end, he only lured Barry to Sally and John in order to appease Fuches. I love how ultimately they were not really central to each other's stories.

Cousineau serving life in prison, being blamed for Janice's death, is the worse fate anybody in the entire show suffers, I think. It's poignantly pointless and terrible. His ego, his constant grasping for relevance, and at the end of the day he gets a movie made about him that paints him as the villain. He kills Barry not for attention but for pure and simple vengeance. But in doing so he kills the only chance he had to clear his own name, and for true justice for Janice to be found. Janice's father is never going to know or believe the full truth, and Cousineau is going to be remembered forever more as a murderer of not only a cop, but also a vulnerable, traumatized young man who asked him for his help.

Sally's ending is grim in a quieter sort of way. The fact that she never wanted to have a kid, that she didn't want the life she ended up with, has been clear to us these past few episodes. We start this one off with Sally just laying it all out there for John. Telling him they're fugitives, that Barry is a murderer, that Sally is too. She breaks into tears as she confesses that she's not a good person and she hasn't been a good mom. But after the shootout between Hank and Fuches's men, Sally calls for John, looking for him. And once she and Barry talk and she realizes that Barry isn't going to turn himself in, she leaves. And she takes her son with her.

We see her in a teaching role, working at a high school. It's unclear if she still yearns for glory, if she still feels herself reaching for something she'll never attain. The moment when John gets permission to have a sleepover at a friend's house really stuck out to me, because John says "I love you" to his mother, and she doesn't say it back, instead responding to ask him how the play was, seeking external validation for her talents. It paints the picture of a woman who is doing what she can to protect her child, but who never actually wanted motherhood, never mind single motherhood, to be thrust upon her.

And Barry...

Barry won, but he's dead so he doesn't know. Barry got that fantasy reputation, he got absolved of his sins as he requested from God, he got buried with full honors, he got lionized and glorified in film. He wanted to be an actor so he could shape the story of himself, and now somebody else has shaped it quite conveniently for him. That scene we saw of him sitting on the porch swing telling his son about his heroism in the war, that's what Barry was after. He was after someone, somewhere, telling him that he wasn't to blame for his own actions. The whole damn show, he ran from people who tried to tell him to own up. He tried to buy Cousineau's forgiveness, he exploited Sally's own shit to get what he wanted, which was a role as a family man with a wife and son.

And then Sally leaves him, taking John with him, and Barry has a moment where he says he'll turn himself in. It seems like he means it. We've seen him on the cusp of feeling full guilt and responsibility for what he's done in the past, but this is the real deal. And then he gets shot and killed by Gene Cousineau. He's remembered the way he wants to be remembered, but what does it matter?

God, the shot of Cousineau sitting down on his couch while dead Barry sits in the armchair... that was chilling. That's going to stick with me for a long time.

We get our final dose of... can you call it comedy? At the very end, as we watch John getting to see snippets of the movie made about his father's heroic life and tragic death at the hand of the villainous Gene Cousineau. It's a terrible, wooden movie full of god-awful writing and cheesy performances, bizarre and ridiculous and telling a story that bears no resemblance to reality, while using almost identical scene setups and scenarios in certain key spots, to drive home how the narrative was able to get twisted in such a way.

The best part, the most on-the-nose thing, was having Barry give the MacBeth speech in the movie. "Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." INDEED. That's indeed the whole damn thing, isn't it???

That shot of John smiling at the movie before it cuts to black is also going to haunt me. He is reassured by this. By his father the hero, his father the victim. Never the bad guy. Barry is immortalized in the very lack of accountability that he always sought, and now we have to wonder what John is walking away from this movie with. A belief that everything his father did was actually okay, because Hollywood tells him so? Potential future alienation from his mother, if Sally dares try to be honest about their past, as she was during that brief moment in which they were Hank's hostages? Ultimately, Barry leaving a son behind in his death was such an important thematic element in this show, because it makes us question which cycles might possibly be broken, and which will continue from here.

This is a brilliant episode of a brilliant show. I'm astounded.

10/10

And to wrap up my over-all feelings on Barry... honestly, this show doesn't really have any major missteps. The things I didn't love about it where personal preference things, mostly around the actual treatment of Hollywood, which sometimes felt like the Whole Point and I was missing something, and other times felt like set dressing I couldn't quite understand. This is a show about the narrative, about how we shape the stories (and lies) we tell to ourselves and to others. I think it succeeds on every possible front when it comes to exploring that theme, and the writing is incredible, the performances brilliant. This gets pretty damn close to a perfect score from me, y'all.

9.5/10

[thegeminisage]

tng update for "elementary dear data" spoilers it's fucking garbage:

this episode is going to make me enter my television to kill dr pulaski. as noted previously, her interrupting geordi and data in the bar just to dunk on data was FUCKING AWFUL enough already but the premise of this entire episode is that she thinks data is a machine and not alive and she's gonna laugh at him when/if he fails to meet her standards

and instead of picard SHUTTING ANY OF THIS DOWN...

look. i get it. beverly was kind of annoying and Womanly and so they wanted a tough love no-nonsense bones 2.0 whose gender didn't have a bearing on her character. and it doesn't! pulaski has not uttered a single word about female and only one time has a bad guy pointed out that she has boobs. however there are a few SHARP differences between this woman and leonard mccoy

firstly, when bones is racist to spock, he's doing it as part of the little game they play. evidence that it's a game is 1. spock always fires back and often draws blood himself and 2. when spock was faced with real bigotry kirk shut it down immediately. since he doesn't tell bones to cram it, one can assume he has either correctly intuited that they're both consenting to, uh, whatever they've got going on, or he had a talk with one or both of them and got the green light. on the other hand, this lady has given data shit on the bridge in front of EVERYONE and picard gave her only the most minor of corrections. data NEVER insults her back and doesn't even always defend himself.

secondly, bones's respect for spock has always been clear. before they became more at ease with one another it was a more professional respect for a fellow coworker and after it was respect for spock's abilities, but there was always respect. bones never doubts spock's ability to do his job unless spock is having an emotion, and even then, what he will tend to cast doubts on is spock's JUDGMENT IN THE MOMENT, not his overall ability based on who he is. bones would never, for example, suggest spock wasn't loyal (like that one ensign did before kirk tore him a new one, or like multiple people suggested in the menagerie) or that he was incapable ("best first officer in the fleet"). meanwhile, pulaski asked "does it even know how to do that" the first time she told data to use the magnifier.

finally, bones is Like That about everyone and everything. he does nothing but complain like his life depends on it. on the other hand, pulaski seems to be picking on data specifically, though to be fair i am only 3 episodes in

like, this is not fond antagonism. it's not even MUTUAL antagonism. she's just fucking being horrible to him as a cheap way to invoke the old/spock energy and it is simply not it

the tragic thing is that i liked BOTH of her characters in tos and i really like her as an actress, she's got a great delivery. and i would have loved a tough love no-nonsense doctor lady whose gender didn't matter re: her character, especially after beverly. i mean let a woman complain! but so far she's had no real complaints about anyone or anything except data!!!!! i want to like her SO BAD and i just can't because she's SO HORRIBLE.

anyway, the premise of this episode is stupid. absolutely let data engage in his special interests but the idea of a holodeck person canonically becoming sentient and then using the ships' computer to endanger the entire ship is ?????

once again, why do you have a holodeck on your ship. also, why are there CHILDREN with this kind of danger...

it also sucks that data IS making all these original cool deductions and That Bitch is not even here to see it. the absolute outrage i am experiencing...

ALSO LMAO. WHEN THEY CUT TO HER TALKING TO MORIARTY. the way she is like. sooo perfectly civil to and impressed by THIS computer simulation but my god get her in a room with data and she immediately starts shitting on him. I'LL KILL HER!!!

and then it's SO STUPID that data doesnt even get to "defeat" moriarty which was the whole point of DOING a godforsaken holodeck ep. picard has to go in to have HIS moment in DATA'S episode???

in fact the final scene is with...picard and geordi so he call tell geordi not to worry about the screwup? instead of data and pulaski talking? instead of data and ANYONE talking?? the whole point was "can data solve a mystery" AND THEN HE DID BUT NO ONE SAW IT. we never got to see pulaski go oops i was wrong! or no that doesn't count i'm still right! i will MURDER. whoever wrote this episode

anyway i fucking hated it. four more to go before we watch 2.08 together............

[popculturebuffet]

A Special Named Charlie Brown: It's Flashbeagle Charlie Brown!: LISTEN TO THE SOUND OF HIS NAMEEEEE (Patreon Review For Emma Fici)

Hello all you happy blockheads, and welcome to a new feature on this blog: A Special Named Charlie Brown, where I occasionally take a look at the wonderful and ridiculous world of Peanuts specials.

I absolutely love Peanuts. Not a huge shocker at the time of this review given my avatar is Snoopy's Awkward Teenage Nephew, a character who I assure you I did not make up as while I think i'm pretty funny, i'm nowhere near Charles Schultz level...

I mean that last panel alone shows the man's brilliance: Snoopy's awkard expression, bell's adorable mommy pride, and of course Snoopy's Awkward Teenage Nephew himself in all his gawky glory. He's still missed.

Peanuts impact and brillance cannot be overstated: As a strip it's inspired or influenced practically every comic strip that's existed since Peanut's hit it's stride in the 60's. When reading behind the scenes commentary for any given comic strip it's almost a guarantee for Peanuts to come up for damn good reason. It's also endlessly creative: I mean off the top of my head he's had Snoopy run an airline as the WWI flying ace, Charlie Brown get a baseball themed rash and have to wear a sack on his head and thus become popular for once in his life, Sally befriend her actual school building, Linus get ostracized for patting birds on the head, Woodstock sue Snoopy for a broken heart after he accidently chats up Woodstock's crush, Peppermint Patty attending Obedience School thinking it's private school, Snoopy having his house, Van Gough and all tragically burn down and the timeless classic where Marcy punches a sexist annoyance in the face

It's can make you laugh, make you cheer.. and make you cry quite a bit like the time Peppermint Patty outlined how seeing the Little Red Haired Girl made her feel

It's a remarkable work, one that from what I can tell really changed comics and without it most strips today wouldn't exist. The strip has long stood the test of time

While the strip could easily rest on it's impact on the medium and sheer quality, what made it the cultural juggernaught that everyone regardless of generation knows and has at least seen something of happened in the late 60's: Producer Lee Mendelson wanted to do a documentary on Schultz, with animator Bill Melendez doing a short bit for it. When no advitisers wanted the doc, Lee agreed to the first person who agreed.. only to find out they wanted a full animated special. Schultz was more than happy to do it and had a fountain of ideas, unsuprisingly, and while it was apparently a hectic, 6 month rush to get it done, one i'll look into and cover more when I review A Charlie Brown Christmas itself, the result was a giant hit and an all time classic that STILL reairs to this day. It kickstarted the idea of animated holiday specials, is one of the most iconic pieces of television out there and still holds up today.

So naturally there were others and this is where this project comes in. See most know the big holiday ones that get replayed quite a bit: A Charlie Brown Christmas, It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, along with smaller ones related to certain other holidays that still get played once in a while: It's The Easter Beagle Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Valentine and You're Not Elected Charlie Brown. But even from childhood I got hints there was more having a copy of a book adaptation of "Its' A Mystery Charlie Brown" that I accidently lost from my school library, and a vhs of "It's Christmastime Again Charlie Brown", not really thinking anything of it till the pieces came together via wikipedia as a teen. I'd only seen a FOURTH of the specials at most. There were a grand total of 39 peanuts specials produced before Schultz Died. Yes 39. And oh it gets better. At the time of this writing there's 49 specials and I wouldn't be shocked if we finally hit 50, with a few produced in the early 2000's, one in the 2010's (Written by Pearls Before Swine maestro Stephan Pastis no less), and recently making a comeback via AppleTV+, with Apple having produced four specials so far under the "Snoopy Presents" banner with more undoubtly to come.

Since i've wanted to be a reviewer this is a project i've been wanting to tackle, reviewing ALL of these. Even realizing there's a whopping 49 specials to cover hasn't really detered me. These specials are both intresting time capusles of when their produced and neat adaptations of one of the greatest strips ever, all made with some heart and effort. With 49 specials and more to come they run the gammut from iconic to truly baffling and I plan to hopefully cover them all at some point, along with all 5 movies. TV Series are gonna have to wait because... well 49 specials. I don't know when i'll finish this and will be taking my time with it but damn if this won't be fun.

As for why start HERE of all places, with a bizzarely wonderful 80's as heck special it's simple: I brought it up to my friend Emma once because I like talking about stuff like this, I have also told her the virtues of Snoopy's Awkward Nephew, and when needing to pick something for her monthly patreon, she picked this. And while I COULD have said no and started this elsewhere.. I thought this review would be too fun to pass up.

So now all the pomp and circumstance is out of the way i'm sure most of you are aksing the big question: What the heck is a Flashbeagle? Why is Snoopy dressed like the late great Olivia Newton John? If this is based on flashdance is snoopy also a steel town girl on a saturday night looking for the fight of her life? These are valid questions, and part of why I was delighted to stumble into this special on the dvd for Snoopy's Reunion (Which I also used for this very review), though if your curious about this special you can also find it on the excellent Emmy Honored Collection I intend to buy at some point. Either option works since for whatever reason, AppleTV+ hasn't added it. The cowards.

As for what the heck a flashbeagle is, you have to remember that as timeless as he is, Charles wasn't immune to commenting on the culture of the time, such as with Tapioca Pudding, a little girl who claims to have her own merchandising line and what not, a parody of the merch heavy 80s. So while I didn't know it till I did the wikipedia research for this review that this special came out of a strip parodying flashdance, I wasn't suprised

Is this strip a tad dated? Sure. Is it objectively funny to see Snoopy in the outfit from flashdance, thus still working today?

It WAS a suprise to find out this one silly gag tickled Bill Melendez so much he built an entire musical special, complete with tie in album, around it.

I'm so pleased he did for. While Flashbeagle is one of the more dated Peanuts adventures, it's cheesy 80's quality, odder quirks, and genuine banger of a main song mean it stands out quite a bit and as someone who enjoys some good 80's cheese feels like it's made for me. So let's put on our head bands, get into our sweats, and listen to the sound of his name. It's Flashbeagle Charlie Brown!

Flashbeagle is weird in that

Unlike most peanuts specials which have a story it follows pretty well, if with the ocasoinal dip into some bits from the comic or for the special itself, Flashbeagle is three seperate not connected at all stories, two of which barely involve Snoopy. My best edudcated guesses are either they had to fill the plot with the musical numbers elswhere on the album, which we'll get to in a moment, or they simply reealized Snoopy's story only covered half the special and had to create some other songs and segments to cover.

As a result the first half is not the best. The first bit after the title is funny, Charlie Brown needling Snoopy over not following him to school and what follows is right up my ally: A fe wbits about Peppermint Patty sleeping in class taken from the strip. I've always had a special place in my heart for Peppermint Patty's antics and felt her and Marcy's adventuers are some of Schutlz best work, so this wasn't bad... but it DEFINTELY feels like Padding. It's very loosley connected to the rest of the special, Peppermint Patty doing an exercise class for the rest of the gang, and is ionly tolerable because well .. it's various good peanuts strips adapted. It just feels like other specials do a better job implimenting them and making the bits feel organic. Not the worst offender at just putting in bits from the strip to stall for time, but still noticable.

The actual musical number she gets, I'm In Shape.. is not my faviorite. It's mildly adorable: Not only did Schultz apparently base Peppermint Patty's movements in this bit , her doing her own exercise class, on his own daughter, but it is nice to see her just genuinely happy for once without it crashing down on her due to her own foibles. Which really can qualifiy for any time we see the peanuts gang happy without it either being smug exculsion or said joy being squashed soon enough.

I'm In Shape is just not a good song. They do sing talking more than actually singing which is fine, it can be used well and Peppermint Patty's VA here , Gigi Holtzman is likely not a trained singer. But the song itself is just a boring ra ra go team style song about fitness that's not really funny or intresting I get their trying lightly to goof on both Olivia Newton John's Physical and Tony Basil's Mickey, with the fitness theme and the chrous of "Hey (Insert Peanuts Kid Here) Get in Shape Come on Your doing Great Hey (Insert Peanuts Kid Her) Hey (insert peanuts kid here)", but it dosen't land. As the king of all song parodies himself, Weird Al, has shown us, this kind of thing works better when it sounds as good as what your making fun of. Physical freaking slaps and Mickey is an earworm for a reason. This is just nothing.

The next bit has Charlie Brown and Snoopy goin to a party at Lucy's. Some kid with a VERY 70's haircut tries to get everyone to do Simon Sez.

Now having some random character we never see again is nothing that unusual for animation. Peanuts itself has done this before. What makes it feel weird is with Peanuts having a deep bench for it's main cast and frequently having characters like Shermy, Violet and Patty show up as extras long after they disappeared into the void in the strip proper, why go to all the effort of creating a new character design or reusing one from another special? Just have it be Shermy Lucy shoves aside. Shermy needs this he hasn't fed his children in weeks. Their skeletons Lucy, Skeletons!

The song that ensues though is suprisingly catch. It's Lucy Says, a groovy ditty about Lucy's verison of simpon says "I I didn't say lucy says". Her singing voice, Jessica Lee Smith does a REALLY fantastic job. Is it as good as what's to come musically? Eh probably not but is it still really fun and catchy? Yeah> Do we get to see Snoopy being too cool for school in a red leather jacket and play Lucy Says? Yeah.

The next song is The Pigpen Hoedown. It's.. forgetable. It's generic hoedown music. I mean if you needed a generic country song Peanuts Crew just go forward in time and use this

I will, no joke, give a free review to ANYONE who sets Pigpen Hoedown to this song in a video. I may be kind of messed up.

So with that we get snoopy getting dolled up for a night on the town to the absolute bop, Snoopy. It sounds like his TGIF theme song and it is every bit as catchy and amazing as that sounds. It's by the duo of Desiree Goyette and Joey Scarbary Scurbury and it's just fun.

It does highlight one of this specials problems though: Ther'es no real cohesion. As I said it's

The stories don't connect which would be fine but unlike say an anthology film none of these stories seem to go together. Peppermint Patty has sleepy shenanigans in a classroom, Lucy throws a party, Snoopy goes out on the town and fucking kills it while hanging out with Franklin which is implied to be something they just.. do every night.

There's nothing tha treally makes them feel like they should be in the same special. It feels more like an episode of the Charlie Brown and Snoopy show, which ran at the same time and used a lot of the voice actors, and frankly most peanuts show which works fine for those, it's a tv show specifically split up into a buncho f vingettes adapting the strip. It dosen't here because it's just a bunch of stories. The classic specials had asides too but each at least linked somehow back to the main narrative and tone of the special, like Snoopy's WWI Flying Ace dream thing in IT's the Great Pumpkin is set up and being it's halloween it's treated as a costume instead of the lifestyle that it is. Here it's just some random segments that don't feel like they belong in a special about Flashdance Snoopy.

You can't.. name the special after something and not clearly lead up to it. The Easter Beagle didn't show up till the clmax of "I'ts the Easter Beagle Charlie Brown", but it's clearly an easter story. Here if you hadn't seen the title carrrd or weren't going into this knowing what it was, you'd wonder what the heck this special was about. It's also a shame as its another peanuts musical but one that really dsoen't take advantage of that. If your going to do something this 80s then go all out. Have Charlie Brown Breakdance Dammit!

Thankfully my blood pressure can go down, as we get to the main event and it. Is. Glorious. As mediocre as this special's first half is the Flashbeagle sequence is every bit as cheesy, ridiculous, and glorious as it sounds. It's helped most of all by it's song. You can tell most of the musical effort went into this song by the way it moves it's feat. It's a champion, it's the best, impossible to tame. People say it's obessed, listen to the sound of it's name!

It is shockingly epic and perfectly gets the dance style of the time, feeling like it would fit perfectly in Flashdance 2: Enter the Flashbeagle. This one GETS what it was mildly parodying while also being geninely good. A song called Flashbeagle shoudln't be this friggin epic, but Desiree Goyette (Who did a lot of the music for the garfield specails) and Joey Scarbury (Who did the Greatest American Hero theme and looks it...)

Who together create vocal dynamite, paticuarlly Scarbury who does most of the singing (With Goyette still bringing it with the iconic chorus)

And the visuals could've let thigns down.. but despite just being snoopy in flashdance gear dancing while a crowd of teens look on across a technicolor disco floor, that is enough. The dancing is beautifulyl rotoscoped, energtic and looks cool as heck awhil ethe setting perfectly compliments the music. This special may be rediculous but it's the GOOD kind, the kind you tel lyour grandkids about and this one sequel is worth it.

Two more things to note. The first is this is one of the rare times we see teens. Apparently Snoopy and Franklin are just cool enough to get in. IT feels VERY werid seeing these big characters as most peanuts characters are child size, except of course snoopy's gawky teenage nephew...

Also just real quick love the detail that Snoopy WROTE in print that his Nephew is a disapointment. Fantastic.

So while ti's weird the characters are well drawn enough and only on screen so limitedly it dose'nt throw you off too bad. Still weird but still works.

The second is that Charlie Brown's reaction to Flashbeagle is abject embarassment. Bud, Snoopy has had enough weird alter egos at this point you just gotta accept it at some time.

At this point hitting the club in a bit tee and headband is just a normal day.

So Snoopy's tired from killing it at the club and also possibly trying cocaine for the first time but the climax is both classic peanuts and fun as Sally forgot show and tell so just kidnaps snoopy for it. Sally gets mocked by Five for how sleepy he is. I mean granted Five has a chameleon's Cameleons' rule, patcuarlyl my adopted god child here

But still. Also if your wondering who the heck five is which, fair.. oh boy oh boy are you in for a street. See I first found my boy 5 in a beaten up copy of The Peanuts Treasury (An oft reprinted pile of peanuts strips) I found at goodwill, luckily still have it if boxed up for the eventual move. He is.. a lot but in the best way possible.. i'll let the strip field this one.

He wasn't incredibly long lived, as the gag, as brilliant as it was , could only go so far but he's still this nice little blip in peanuts history and still shows up a lot in backgrounds along with his sisters

He ends up being Sally's salvation as he plays his music, because I guess the teacher was asleep, and it get ssnoopy going. Everybody boogies, Sally gets an A and she tells Charlie Brown to lay off his "I want a normal dog" rants for a day. Seriously you have a dog that can spin lik ea top and can never top. Be happy dang it!

So yeah Flashbeagle is terribly uneven, and i'd recommend either just watching the flashbeagle sequence or the second half. It's still worth watching those, the animation is amazing for the clubs sequence and it's nice to see Sally get a W, but the first half is just shockingly boring. Overal i'ts passible but only because it has one heck of a scene to help prop up a pretty mediocre special. Thanks for reading, consider joining my patreon and sees ya next time.

[wrennotrobin]

i think i broke my sense of self so here is a list of quizzes i took, and the results, in an attempt to figure myself out

(i like some of these answers?)

if you were a deity, what would you be the god of?

desire and sexuality: you’re mysterious and alluring. when lovers seek a magnetic connection, they pray to you. you’re particularly associated with eros, erotic love, and mania, obsessive love. you exude intense magnetism and your voice is like a siren call, luring anyone and everyone you desire.

what kind of weather are you? - by @morepeachyogurt

foggy: you've never felt as alone as you do now, but maybe you've always felt like this. it doesn't matter if you're with a group or by yourself, the loneliness stays with you always, it's seeped into your bones. or has it? are you as alone as you think or are you clinging on to this pit inside you like it has the answers? it doesn't, know that. it's okay to feel joy again, it's okay to feel okay.

which marauders era friend group do you belong to?

regulus, remus, lily: the smart softies, everyone loves you

i will assign you one of my favourite songs and also analyze you

liquid smooth, mitsk: you are pretty fucked up. you have a lot of insecurities and worry you might not deserve love. you have a tendency to base a lot of your self worth on your looks. you might rely too much on male validation, or any type of validation from other people because you have no confidence in yourself.

what type of villain are you? (brutal answers)

mentally ill non-villain villain: you're the type of villain that people will relate to. (and be very worried about it.) you don't even mean any harm, you've just been wronged so early on in life that you have a warped perception of the things going on around you. you've been so on edge this entire series that you end up being the villain without even realizing it. you're trying so hard to just hang on, but you don't realize how much harder you've made it for everyone else. people can't hate you, they pity you. you are by far the most redeemable type of villain. maybe the hero will help save you, maybe the hero wronged you without realizing and you'll have to save yourself. either way, you will made audiences far and wide ball their eyes out.

walk through a homoerotic duel and i'll tell you how it would end

you kiss in the original cut but the homophobic producers cut it: you give the most passionate speech after the most passionate duel and everyone can see the way you cant towards each other just before the scene fades away. they all know what happened. but alas that beauty never sees the face of day

how do strangers perceive you?

they say sharks never stop moving: paint-stained skin. spontaneity. leaving an amusement park with a won stuffed animal bigger than you. messy hair and dancing in the kitchen. you have the soul of an artist. you're creative and your mind never really stops working. your best feature is probably your sense of style. you feel things very intensely, and may feel a lack of emotional permanence. you have a restless energy. you are always growing, always improving, always adapting. you may feel a lack of a sense of identity, but you don't have to know who you are all at once. you can find yourself in new ways every day.

what tragic horror character trope are you?

frankenstein's monster: this plight is the simplest of them all: you did not ask for this. you were never given a choice. no part of yourself feels human, just a collection of traits you've picked up from mirroring anyone you could, even the people you meet through a television screen. it's alienating to live that way- yet someone has called you the alienating one. maybe too many people to count. maybe they treated you so uncomfortably inhuman that it's all you can understand now, or you've dug yourself into such a deep hole in an attempt to keep safe that you can't remember a person living in the home of your body at all. being alive is confusing and painful and lonely and loud but living is all there is to being human- you're already there. just take air into your lungs and breathe. close your eyes and picture a beautiful sky. you made that. you painted that yourself.

which of taylor's albums are you ❤

1989: I was born in NINETEEN EIGHTY NINE miss taylor declared every night of her 2015 world tour. 1989, you are tragically beautiful. a hopeless romantic, people may assume you only admire the kisses and golden starlight of a true love, but you find a certain draw and excitement in all of the yearning and heartache and drama that comes with being that enamored with someone, and that enamored with the world. you are the first friend people turn to, the one with vintage flair, the one who seems to know a little about everything. your essence is that of the bright lights of new york city, a group of friends running in the rain, reading poetry on the beach. you find good in the grand and in the demure - YOU are good. you are insightful and poetic and funny and brave in the way you use up the last piece of polaroid film when you know it's not going to turn out the most lovely in the name of spontaneity. side note: her 1989 tour was the first concert i ever went to?? so this was super sweet for me to get <3

your heartstopper big three

elle sun, nick moon, darcy rising: what’s it like being the hottest person in the room

pick some men & i'll tell you why you aren't the main character

ur the antagonist: you are a menace to society & for no reason too. you are not only praying on the main character's downfall, but are single-handedly orchestrating it

let me psycho analyze u while i assign u poetry

abandonment issues: am i really so hard to love? you watch your friends fall in love and watch yourself fall for someone who doesn't like you back. you wait for a familiar feeling only to find out it wasn't familiar at all. codependency. you get left out of things and you get left by people and you don't know why. "its not me, its them." let them go. be your own person. you don't need them you only need you.

which one of my fav songs r u rn?

La seine: unproblematic sweetheart. yes. i love you. marry me please. have my kids. Underrated song that i could ingest every second of every day. u r queer or a cool straight. honestly you probally have a god complex, and im here for it. you deserve to be a god with how hot you are. although... some of your music taste and personality is annoying because you think your so much better than others and constantly rub it in others faces. just because your music taste is different doesnt mean your better than basic bitches music taste, even if it is. humble yourself queen.