Christmas 2021: December 15th

Lady Gaga & The Muppets' Holiday Spectacular (2013)

This year's holiday journey has taken me to some unexpected places. If it isn't obvious by now, I've been determined to catch-up with every remaining Muppet Christmas special I haven't seen this December. This journey comes to an end tonight as I watch what is, as of this writing, the latest holiday special to star Jim Henson's beloved felt creations. And it's a variety special with Lady Gaga. “Lady Gaga & The Muppets' Holiday Spectacular” was supposedly born out of Miss Stefani Germanotta being a fan of the Muppets. This is what she says in the intro but I suspect that corporate synergy was the real reason. The special was aired before the release of both Gaga's third album, “Artpop,” and the most recent Muppets movie, “Muppets' Most Wanted.” Even knowing this, it feels like a particularly bizarre crossover. Do these two performers really appeal to the same audience? Regardless, ABC went ahead with the plan and it aired on Thanksgiving of 2013.

“Lady Gaga & The Muppets' Holiday Spectacular” harkens back to the variety show format of the seventies series. In fact, this special has less plot than your typical episode of “The Muppet Show.” There's a thin thread running through some of the gags, in which The Lady Gaga and Kermit the Frog have some romantic chemistry, spurning jealousy in Miss Piggy. However, that really only occupies one or two sequences. Instead, this “Holiday Spectacular” will feature a song from Gaga and then a short sketch from the Muppets. The pop star and the puppets don't even interact that much, Kermit and the gang usually dancing around her a few times. They are mostly confined to their own skits. This is all the more baffling, as the couple of sketches where Gaga and the Muppets directly interact, such as when she asks them for suggestions for the finale, are actually pretty funny.

I guess now is the time when I admit I'm not really a fan of Lady Gaga's music. I don't think she has a bad voice, though I find some of her vocal inflections grating. This style of glammy pop music is, to my ears, incredibly overproduced. She sings six songs from “Artpop” and they all sound nearly identical to me. Most of them all have one word titles – like “Applause,” “Gypsy,” “Manicure,” or “Fashion” – and build their choruses around repeating those words. The shallowness of Gaga's music can only make her focus on outrageous costumes and stage antics, which we get a peek at here, feel like overcompensating. But this isn't really my genre, so what do you expect me to say? Gaga fans would probably find the shit I love totally tedious. 

With this being my opinion, it's perhaps unsurprising that the most memorable songs are those featuring special guests. Elton John joins her for a duet of “Bennie and the Jets,” that is blended with one of her songs. RuPaul comes onstage for a number, which I found to be the least boring song here. Joseph Gordon Levvitt joins her for a performance of “Baby, It's Cold Outside” that switches the male and female parts. (A far more amusing reinvention of that song than some I've heard.) I don't know if Gaga's vocal stylings work for that number but it's an amusing bit. By the way, that's one of the few explicitly Christmas-related musical numbers here. Later, Miss Piggy does a version of “Santa Baby,” that turns into a decent comedy bit. I was really expecting a lot more holiday songs from this holiday special. 

A few years before airing this special, Disney had success making the Muppets stars of a series of Youtube videos. The Muppet segments here feel a lot like those internet videos. The majority of them involve the puppety stars telling jokes or doing simple routine directly to the audience. The characters react to questions, about holiday travel or New Years resolutions. One or two of these got a laugh out of me but they are fairly basic, as far as these things go. Kristen Bell, for whatever reason, stops by for a few skits with Bobo the Bear that are inessential, to say the least. Like I said, I really don't understand the logic behind building this entire special around the juxtaposition between the pop star and these characters and only really having them play off each other a couple times. (And one of those has Pepe the Prawn sexually harassing Gaga.) 

Ultimately, “Lady Gaga and the Muppets' Holiday Spectacular” falls far short of spectacular. The muppet content feels half-assed, as if it was written hastily in the days leading up to the special. While the Gaga stuff is just her promoting her new record, performing songs she was probably going to perform on television anyway. The special was not a rating's success, suggesting I was not the only one who thought this was a bizarre pairing. By the way, IMDb lists the special with a 103 minute run time but the longest version I can find online falls a little short of an hour. I can't imagine commercials added that much to the run time but I also can't imagine watching a longer version of this particular presentation. [5/10]

Frosty Returns (1992)

Rankin/Bass wasn't producing new programs by 1992, and was more-or-less defunct, but their holiday specials remained perennial favorites. “Rudolph” and “Frosty” still air on network television every year. Obviously, these brands were still profitable. This is when Broadway Video, otherwise known as Lorne Michaels' production company, got the rights to the original song... Not, it would seem, the classic Rankin/Bass holiday special. This did not stop Michaels and CBS selling “Frosty Returns” as a sequel to the original holiday special. In fact, to this day, the network almost always airs “Frosty Returns” right after the 1969 cartoon that ostensibly inspired it. 

“Frosty Returns” is set in a small town called Beansboro, which is currently blanketed in snow. The kids are overjoyed by the snow day and a chance to play outside. Their parents are annoyed by the bad weather. On that day, aspiring magician Holly DeCarlo attempts to perform a magic trick on her friend, before a gust of wind blows her top hat out the window. She runs outside to retrieve it, to find that Frosty the Snowman has grabbed the hat instead. Frosty and Holly become fast friends. That's when a grumpy businessman named Mr. Twitchell introduces a new product: Summer Wheeze, an aerosol product that can instantly remove snow. Frosty, of course, sees this as an existential threat to his very existence. Frosty and Holly set out to convince the world that snow is good actually.

For everything that's unmistakably dated about it, the original Rankin/Bass “Frosty the Snowman” is also strangely timeless. “Frosty Returns,” meanwhile, feels very much like a product of its time. John Goodman, a hot property at the time thanks to the success of “Rosanne,” voices Frosty. Goodman's Frosty is definitely snarkier than Jackie Vernon's original. He doesn't even seem to be brought to life by the hat! Lorne Michaels being the producer insures that the cast is full of “Saturday Night Live”-adjacent performers. Jan Hooks voices Holly's mom. Andrea Martin is her mean old teacher. Brian Doyle-Murray – otherwise known as Bill Murray's brother and Mr. Vanderhoff from “Wayne's World” – is the bad guy. Another factor linking this special to its specific time and place is Mark Mothersbaugh's score, which sounds exactly like his background music for “Rugrats.” 

None of this stuff is bad on its own. In fact, I'm a fan of most of these people. Yet where the original “Frosty” is charming and cute, “Frosty Returns” is generic and forgettable. The animation style is also very much of its time, with slightly squiggly character design that look like they'd be at home on greeting cards. The same company that worked on this did some of the latter day “Peanuts” special and this is a bit like “Peanuts,” but stripped of all the eccentricities of Charles Schaulz. None of the jokes hit. There's only one song, “Let There Be Snow,” and it's totally forgettable. I think John Goodman is an okay singer but his work here is totally tuneless. Murray's villain is just horribly annoying too.

It doesn't help that the moral of “Frosty Returns” is kind of weird. Watching as an adult, I actually relate to the parents here. Traveling in bad weather is nerve-wracking and grown-ups don't get snow days most of the time. The most interesting thing about “Frosty Returns” is that Holly is voiced by a young Elisabeth Moss, which is kind of funny. As a kid, I hated “Frosty Returns” because it was such a pale imitation of the original. In addition to always airing alongside the 1969 special, it's also always packaged with it on DVD. I may now understand that it's not actually a sequel, despite the clearly misleading marketing. It's still pretty mediocre though. I think I would actually rather watch “Frosty's Winter Wonderland” before this. [5/10]