You’re in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown (1994)

Starring: Jimmy Guardino and John Christian Graas
Grade: C-

For fans of the Peanuts franchise, this is the first production that reveals the last names of Franklin and Marcie, which is Armstrong and Johnson respectively. As far as Pig-Pen, his real name will remain a mystery, as even the announcer during this special seemed confused when referring to him.

Summary

To open, Snoopy (Bill Melendez) is coaching a football team of birds who all look like Woodstock for a big game to determine the Eastern Division Champions of the AFL (Animal Football League). They are facing the Cats, which as you probably guessed, consists of a team full of large cats. For some reason, the game is packed with spectators in a small arena where apparently the Weevils squashed the Roaches back in ’78. Charlie Brown (Jimmy Guardino) and Linus (John Christian Graas) are sitting on the sidelines with the Birds. The Cats kickoff to the Birds, and the Birds run it back for a touchdown on the first play of the game. There isn’t a field goal attempt. They just automatically get 7 points. This time it’s the Cats turn, but they get pummeled by the Birds on the catch and fumble the ball. This allows for the Birds to run it back for another touchdown. After a few more plays where the Birds outwit the Cats, it leads to an eventual 38-0 blowout in favor of the Birds. The underdog Birds are now the Eastern Division Champs. Once the players douse Coach Snoopy with a barrel of “Chirpade”, we cut to the opening credits and the main story at hand.

In classic Lucy (Molly Dunham) fashion, she attempts to trick Charlie Brown into kicking the football she has set up for him. Aware of her usual bullshit, he refuses and admits he doesn’t trust her. To bring him in a little bit, Lucy says going through life not trusting anyone is no way to live. Realizing this is a pretty miserable outlook if he continues towards this path, Charlie Brown starts to reconsider. He sets up and attempts to go for the kick, but they are both interrupted by Peppermint Patty (Haley Peel), Marcie (Nicole Fisher), and Franklin. Patty tells them there is a local “Punt, Pass, and Kick” contest they can all enter. The winner gets a new bike and a trip to the Super Bowl. Right away, Marcie admits she can’t throw a football and doesn’t have a shot in hell. Linus reads the paper and becomes more excited than usual. Seeing how everyone is distracted, Charlie Brown goes to kick the football away from Lucy. However, as she reads the paper detailing the contest, she pulls the football away and Charlie Brown falls on his back again. As Marcie talks about how she’s not even sure she would want to go to the Super Bowl (even referring to it as the “Splendid Bowl” because she has no clue what it is), we cut to Charlie Brown and Linus practicing and playing with the football. Linus is confident in his and Charlie Brown’s chances in this contest, reminding him how they’re both good passers and kickers. After a kick sends the ball towards this red-haired girl that catches the eye of both guys, Linus goes back to Charlie Brown to ask if he knows her. Neither one does, but they both agree she is cute.

Charlie Brown and Linus go over to meet her and explain they’re practicing for the “Punt, Pass, and Kick” contest like she would give a shit. Melody-Melody (Crystal Kuns), which is apparently her real name, introduces herself and admits she’s been watching them. After some light flirting with Charlie Brown, they all go out to get hot fudge sundaes, with Linus having the audacity to ask if she is fan of the dessert. They reiterate to Melody-Meldoy that they want to win the contest, and she encourages both of them. Following this, Linus flat-out says to her she is the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen.

Ballsy move. Let’s see if it pays off.

Following this, another AFL game is shown as a transition, with the Birds taking on the Dogs for the East/West Conference Championship. After a few handoffs, the Birds score a touchdown off the kickoff again. When it’s the Dogs’ turn, they fumble the ball after the snap. The Birds recover it and run it back for another touchdown. Eventually, we see that the Birds win in a 56-0 shutout. They’re heading to the World Championship! Before they do though, they douse Coach Snoopy with some more Chirpade.

Now, back to the action. It’s halftime at the local football game, and its officially time for the “Punt, Pass, and Kick” contest. It will involve the entirety of the Peanuts gang, as they all want that bike and the trip to the Super Bowl. The competition is intense between Charlie Brown, Linus, and the others, but someone they didn’t account for may trump them all.

My Thoughts:

Peanuts has done a great job at making a TV special for almost every occasion, random holiday, or event. Some have the staying power of a lifetime like A Charlie Brown Christmas or A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Others are simply forgotten about for a variety of reasons. This is the category where You’re in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown fits in.

Just looking at the premise, you would think this special would get regular airtime on the day of the Super Bowl every year. After watching it though, we can see why it never garnered the same reaction and endearment of some other specials in the series. For starters, the football sequences should be the bread-and-butter of this special. When you center these transitions around Snoopy and Woodstock to liven up the usual love story problems of Charlie Brown and Linus, it seems like a good idea in making the pace flow smoothly. Sadly, they cheap out on the creative aspect of this as EVERY game in the AFL plays out in the exact same way, with the Birds blowing every team out by insurmountable numbers off of trick plays, laterals, general luck, and the other team sucking. Seriously, how the fuck does a team of bison lose to a group of birds in football? How do they not even make it a game? They couldn’t score a fucking point? The birds aren’t even using their ability to fly against them, which is their biggest asset. Who is coaching the Bison? Ed, Edd, n Eddy? Why they couldn’t make one of the games close to add a sliver of drama to these transitional sequences is beyond me. It’s really a missed opportunity and doesn’t make sense as doing so would only make the special better entertainment-wise. No one is asking for these games to go into overtime, but you couldn’t have a single team score against the Woodstock clones? What’s the point then? Why do this three times over, play out each sequence the exact same way, and finish things with the exact same joke of dumping a parody of Gatorade on Snoopy (and eventually Lucy) when it wasn’t that amusing to begin with?

Even if the payoff to the joke was Lucy’s inclusion in the final game as she berates Snoopy’s coaching ability, despite his team winning handily, to parody Chuck Dickerson’s comments on the Washington Redskins going into Super Bowl XXVI, there’s no reason why not a single other team could score a single fucking point.

The other missed opportunity is with the main story. The fighting over Melody-Melody between Charlie Brown and Linus was sorely underplayed, so the story never had the energy it needed. The jealousy or anger didn’t need to be on the level of Someday You’ll Find Her, Charlie Brown because that was a case of too much without a satisfying conclusion, but there needed to be more tension between the two over the girl here. It’s the whole point of the special, but when they both talk about how she is there to watch one of them, the point isn’t relied on enough to create the expected (and needed) schoolyard drama between the two best friends. When Linus goes on his spiel about her, Charlie Brown just looks minorly annoyed at best. When he loses to Linus, he celebrates with him too, which is totally out of character for the perpetually depressed, “Everything happens to me” star. It makes no sense for Charlie Brown to take the “L”, be happy for his friend who beat him, AND lose the girl all in one swift motion. Granted, she didn’t want Linus either, but in that moment, it looks like Charlie Brown is for some reason accepting of him losing on such a grand stage. Again, this is not the Charlie Brown we know, and it doesn’t make sense from a logic standpoint either because none of us would be cool in this moment. He lost to Linus by 4 inches!

The twist involving Melody-Melody was pretty good. You can tell something is going to happen because Charlie Brown and Linus almost never win anything of significance, but it was handled very well. The realism of seeing Linus be sick to his stomach after love screws him over again was a great moment for his development as a character too.

To add to the tie-in to the NFL, the characters dress up in NFL gear for the “Punt, Pass, and Kick” contest including the helmet, though no one is playing contact here because it’s a skills challenge, so this seems strange. It brings up the question as to why Peppermint Patty would wear a helmet to this contest but still wear her signature sandals when two parts of the contest involve your foot. Sure, she still kicked that motherfucker 70’8”, but considering how illogical her gear was going into this, maybe she should consider wearing the helmet on an everyday basis. When it came to the contest, I actually liked seeing how each character compared to one another, despite them wasting an exorbitant amount of time having the one kid shout out everyone’s measurements as it was clearly inserted to fill up the 25-minute time slot. It was especially satisfying seeing the always agitated Lucy, appropriately wearing Raiders gear I might add, fuck up the kick and somehow managing to lose yards on it. Also, she can only throw the ball 12’3”?

Just go home at that point.

Additional points are lost because of the winner wearing Cowboys gear. These Dallas fans are non-fucking-stop, aren’t they?

You’re in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown is a decent special, but it squanders its opportunity with laziness and a lack of depth compared to other Peanuts productions. There are some entertaining elements, but the boring and uneventful parts drag out the show much longer than it needs to be like with the measurements of each character in the skills challenge and the football sequences in the AFL. If these latter scenes were tightened up a bit and something different or intriguing happened when the spotlight was on them, the final product would have been so much more memorable. Sadly, it just doesn’t have the staying power, and it’s on them. Honestly, they even do the football-dedicated sequences better in It’s Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown. Maybe that should have been the special to show during the Super Bowl. This one was just decent at best.