Someday You’ll Find Her, Charlie Brown (1981)

Starring: Grant Wehr and Earl Reilly
Grade: F

If we learn anything from Someday You’ll Find Her, Charlie Brown, it’s that somehow and someway, life will fuck you. Sometimes, it can be your best friend too.

Summary

Charlie Brown (Wehr) and Linus (Reilly) are hanging out in the living room of the house. While Linus reads his book, Charlie Brown watches the football game and gets transfixed on a girl in the crowd he saw. The game ends right after, and Charlie Brown overreacts, saying he lost the only true love of his life and how he’ll never see her again. Linus points out that Charlie Brown falls in love seemingly every week, but Charlie Brown insists this time is different. He can’t go through life knowing there’s a girl out there who is meant for him and that he never got to meet her. Later, Linus walks towards Charlie Brown outside and doesn’t see Snoopy (Bill Melendez) and Woodstock jump on the back of his blanket as he drags it like a sled. Once Linus gets to him, he talks about how he doesn’t know why he was exhausted from doing this. Not in the mood for the bullshit, Charlie Brown tells Linus to stop wasting time because they need to find out where the girl in the crowd of the game sat. Despite Linus reminding him how he saw this girl on television for mere seconds, Charlie Brown is confident when he says this is all it takes to fall in love. Somehow, they are able to get into the football stadium where the game took place. Standing on the field, Charlie Brown is sure she was sitting on the seats near tunnel 13. He remembers because he considers this to be his lucky number. Considering he is one of the unluckiest cartoon characters ever, maybe he should consider changing this number, though I digress.

He has Linus sit in the row next to the tunnel to act as if he was her and Charlie Brown mimes as if he’s a cameraman to see if it reminds him of the moment he saw her. It does. This has to be the row she sat on. Snoopy and Woodstock play on the field for a bit but then go into the training room to mess around with the workout equipment.

Charlie Brown and Linus head to the ticket booth, with the shy Charlie Brown telling Linus to go inside to find out who the girl is. Apparently, the workers don’t know who it was. It could be a season ticket holder though. If it was, they have the records in the downtown office. Immediately, Charlie Brown has Linus come with him right away. They go to the stadium ticket office where Charlie Brown mentions that she had to be in seats G12-G22. Once they walk in though, he gets embarrassed and has Linus ask on his behalf again. Linus goes up to the desk and tells the worker that Charlie Brown is madly in love with this girl and all of the other details, embarrassing Charlie Brown to the point where he goes and hides behind a wall. Following this, Linus tells Charlie Brown they have the address of the family that have those seats. Since they live across town, Linus takes Charlie Brown outside to call them and see if everything matches up. Of course, Charlie Brown is too shy, so Linus has to call them from the payphone. Thankfully, Linus gets a confirmation that this family was there at the game and did use their tickets that day. Since they have the address, they go on a bus and head across town to meet them. Snoopy and Woodstock are left on the sidewalk, but they decide to walk instead, almost causing a few traffic accidents along the way.

Charlie Brown and Linus get to the apartment, but Charlie Brown wants Linus to do this for him too, asking him to speak on his behalf, talk about how he saw her at the game, and to give her his phone number if she asks for it. As he fantasizes about being invited in for cookies and how they can discuss his love of sports, Linus finally cuts him off and tells him to speak for himself. Charlie Brown insists he might faint, stutter, or make a complete fool of himself. He puts it all on Linus to be the ultimate wingman. As Charlie Brown hides at the bottom of the stairs, Linus goes to the door. After ringing the doorbell, this ugly ass girl answers and a shocked Linus looks over at Charlie Brown, who’s violently waving his arms to signal this is NOT the girl. For the record, this moment was hilarious. Anyway, for some reason, Linus doesn’t understand this very obvious negative gesture and goes on this spiel about how he has a friend who is madly in love with her, and he saw her at the game. She wants to meet him, so Linus loudly asks, “IS THIS THE GIRL CHARLIE BROWN?!”. Charlie Brown loudly retorts, “NO!”. She looks sad. Linus goes back down the stairs and tells Charlie Brown that she wasn’t at the game, and it was her cousin from out of town that went. Linus has this cousin’s address, but he doesn’t think they should continue this wild goose chase. Since Charlie Brown is still adamant on finding her, Linus agrees to call her at the address to make sure she’s home, but if she isn’t the one, he’s done.

They call and the girl on the other line did go to the game, but she chews them both out over the phone for bothering her, so Linus hangs up. Despite this bad interaction, Charlie Brown is determined to go to her house. If he sees her, he will definitely know if she was the girl he saw on TV. Though there will be a couple of more hiccups along the way (they run into another girl who sounds like Jennifer Tilly and is not happy to see them) and their patience with the matter will be tested, but they will find this girl. Even so, can he close?

My Thoughts:

Despite my frustrations with It’s Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown, there were some redeeming qualities about the special as a whole. However, Someday You’ll Find Her, Charlie Brown is irritating on a whole other level and almost completely ruins my opinion of one of the key characters of the Peanuts franchise in Linus.

The initial idea set up in the first act is an intriguing setup. For the first time in a while, Charlie Brown is obsessed with a girl other than the ever-elusive Little Red-Haired Girl. It’s actually someone he’s never met before. One shot on a television screen is all it took for him to focus is entire day on finding her. The problem is that everything following this regarding character development gets worse and worse. First of all, this might be the whiniest Charlie Brown has ever been up until this point. Okay, we understand he likes her, but at some point, he has to be the one to take the next step. He’s the driving force behind finding the girl but anytime there needs to be some actual asking of questions or calling someone, Charlie Brown pussies out and has Linus do it on the account of his shyness and uncomfortable demeanor. This makes sense within the school environment, but it can’t be relied upon this heavily in this special because it just makes him seem like an annoying little bitch. At one point does he prove he’s willing to take the next step himself? What the fuck was his plan if he did actually meet her? If he couldn’t muster up the courage to talk to the ticket office worker, how would he have acted when he actually met the girl? Usually, this would be a great question posed by Linus to wake our protagonist up, but it never comes. Linus just accepts his job of doing more of the actual detective work than him. My only reasoning for this decision is for us to feel okay with the ending, but with the way things turned out, this couldn’t be more wrong.

Now, fair is fair, but Linus’s actions are about as far away from the “Bro Code” as humanly possible. I’m not saying they followed the code in 1981, but Linus absolutely snaking Charlie Brown and taking the girl from under him is fucking bullshit. There is no other way to put it. We don’t care how much work Linus put in to help. It doesn’t give him the right to snatch the girl that Charlie Brown saw first. It’s not like Linus can’t have a chance eventually, because Charlie Brown would assuredly screw this up anyway, but it’s the disrespect of the action. The whole point of this special and this adventure the two go on is for Charlie Brown to meet this girl that Linus DIDN’T EVEN KNOW EXISTED had Charlie Brown not initiated the action of the day. In fact, Linus was down with giving up halfway through! Charlie Brown was the one who was adamant on doing anything he could to meet her, he confided in Linus on how this could be the love of his life, and how he needs to take the chance on meeting her in case she is. Linus is calmly along for the ride to help his friend out, but he’s nowhere near as invested and has doubts about the whole thing. This is why it’s infuriating that Linus, knowing everything Charlie Brown said about this girl and knowing his well-documented shyness and problems with girls, throws his wingman job to the side AS SOON as he meets her at the front door. He completely disregards the star, and everything the special built up towards was thrown out the window because Linus betrayed Charlie Brown right when they finally meet her. If anything, this shows his true colors in my book. It’s obnoxious, it’s disrespectful, and it’s enough for me to never look at Linus the same again.

There shouldn’t be a single fan of the Peanuts franchise that would disagree with Charlie Brown’s anger in the last ten minutes of the show. The lack of loyalty from Linus speaks volumes.

When he shouts, “Linus, she’s the one!” and it’s accompanied by these sad piano keys before he’s chased off by the girl’s pet bobcat, the heartbreak really starts to set in. It’s not even about her anymore. It’s about someone losing their friend in front of their very eyes. What’s even more upsetting is that he doesn’t believe it at first, or he doesn’t want to believe it. It’s like he tries to convince himself that Linus went inside to talk Charlie Brown up to make himself feel better about the situation. Even when it gets dark out and Linus has milk and cookies with Mary Jo inside, he wonders to the very last moment when he’s going to be let in to spit some game. He tries telling himself to have patience and gets excited about the possibility of having milk and cookies with her. Then, he wonders aloud, “What more can Linus say about me that would take so much time?”. The poor bastard still thought his best friend had his best interests at heart! It’s a damn shame. He put all his trust into the one guy who understands him, but Linus left as soon as he decided the girl was his. When you take into account that he was almost attacked by a bobcat, and Snoopy and Woodstock were invited in for food without Charlie Brown, all three principal characters can go fuck themselves. Charlie Brown has been shit on incessantly throughout the series, but this was just ridiculous in Someday You’ll Find Her, Charlie Brown.

To make our blood boil further, Linus’s dialogue upon leaving the house at the end of the night made me want to shut the whole thing off. Charlie Brown continues to ask direct questions that deserve answers like “What about me? Did you tell her about me?”. He was the whole reason they’re even there, but Linus completely ignores anything he has to say and happily says they should head home. Once more, Charlie Brown asks if he mentioned him, and Linus has the audacity to say, “Charlie Brown, you really would’ve liked her”. At that point, I’m punching him. There’s no way Charlie Brown should let Linus disrespect him to his face like that. This is outrageous behavior from a friend. The lack of self-awareness persists with Linus in these specials but none more than in this very moment, as well as consistently throughout this special like when Charlie Brown signaled to him that the ugly girl was very clearly not the one that he was talking about, and Linus still shouts the question at him like a fucking idiot. Anyway, the one-sided argument following Linus’s exit continues as Charlie Brown points out every problem that we the audience have with how things turned out like how he saw her first (again, Bro Code), but Linus continues to act deaf and talks about how they’re going to write each other and spend the holidays together. Once Charlie Brown leaves in a haste, Linus has the nerve to ask, “I wonder what’s a matter with him”. Again, he deserves an ass-kicking. If Charlie Brown can’t do it, he should’ve sent Peppermint Patty after his ass because you know she would.

Speaking of which, none of the other usual supporting Peanuts characters outside of Charlie Brown, Linus, Snoopy, and Woodstock make an appearance. This was a mistake because a third party felt needed once Mary Jo started to divide the two friends. This is why the third act was such a steep drop from the first and second act. There needed to be a voice of reason in-between them. Whoever it was would’ve helped the story depth and character development a lot more. Everything just falls apart towards the end and things conclude on a somber note with Charlie Brown going through a sad montage of him wishing for a girl he could fine one day, Linus bragging about going to a picnic/BBQ at Mary Jo’s in their final conversation, and Charlie Brown sadly reading, “Tis better to have lost and lost, then never to have loved at all”.

Is it really though?

Someday You’ll Find Her, Charlie Brown had a solid idea, but the execution of it trotted along disappointingly until it was capped off with an atrocious ending that made me hate one of the most important characters in the franchise. Without a doubt, this is a bottom tier Peanuts special that will not be revisited until I find something just as exasperating.