...all I got was a rock.

I know it's the day after Halloween and most people are in a post candy-pocolypse stupor, but I feel that I need to point some things out about one of the most popular cartoons ever: It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.

My wife and I came home from dinner at a friends house and decided to have a glass of wine and watch the Great Pumpkin that we had on Tivo before going to bed. Neither of us had seen the special in a few years, it was not exactly as either one of us remembered. As we watched, we realized a few things that are a bit, well, insane about the Peanuts gang in this show.

1: What kind of fucked up town do the Peanuts kids live in? When the gang goes out trick or treating Charlie Brown is repeatedly give ROCKS as his treat. This brings up some disturbing questions. Do the parents in town have both rocks and candy waiting at the door, just waiting to pass judgment on the children that come knocking? Or even more disturbing, do all the parents have just one rock, waiting to give it to Charlie Brown. The implications are not pretty.

2: Why the hell is more that a quarter of this Halloween Special devoted to a completely Halloween-less premise of Snoopy fighting the Red Barron? There is a good 3 minute sequence where Snoopy, dressed as a WWI flying ace flies his dog house against the evil Barron. Weird? Yes. Acceptable? Borderline. We then get a 2 minute sequence of Snoopy sneaking around war torn France behind enemy lines. Ummm, what? A bit later on, we get another, nearly 2 minute sequence of Snoopy, still in WWI flying ace mode, alternately dancing and sobbing to the music that Schroeder is playing on his magic piano. This bit is excruciating and goes on for what seems like forever. WTF?

3: Lucy and Linus have the worst parents in the world. They allow their son to go sit in a pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to appear. Fine. They then go to bed and totally forget that their son is outside freezing his ass off in a field. Lucy is forced to wake up at 4 in the morning and go drag the nearly dead Linus inside and put him to bed. Maybe this is why Lucy is such a bitch all the time. She is basically raising Linus all by herself.

All in all, this show is stranger than I ever remembered. Check it out in the vid above.