Snoopy Presents: For Auld Lang Syne (2021)

Starring: Etienne Kellici and Isabella Leo
Grade: A

For the record, I had no idea what the title meant until they explained how it’s the song sung around New Year’s Day. The only reason I vaguely remember the tune is probably because we were forced to sing it as kids in elementary school for some holiday event. Other than that, I had no idea what the three words meant and didn’t know any of the lyrics to the song, much like Charlie Brown. It seems like a somewhat bad idea to title the special after a reference very few understand, but this does align with creator Charles M. Schulz’s penchant for pulling deep cut references for jokes or story content. With this in mind, he’d probably enjoy what they did here, so I can take solace in it as well.

Summary

It’s December 6th, and it snowed! The Peanuts gang are all out playing and enjoying the snowfall bright and early. Snoopy (Terry McGurrin) is making snow angels, Woodstock (Robert Tinkler) made a miniature snowman in his bird nest, Schroeder (Matthew Mucci) and Pig-Pen (Jacob Soley) launch snowballs at Peppermint Patty (Lexi Perri) and Marcie (Holly Gorski), and the girls are prepared and launch a bunch more back at them. Elsewhere, Franklin (Caleb Bellavance), Violet (Charlie Boyle), Patty (Natasha Nathan), and Frieda (Maya Misaljevic) build a snowman, and Charlie Brown (Kellici) drags Sally (Hattie Kragten) in a sled, only to fall onto it with her.

Humming “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” to herself, Lucy (Leo) decorates the inside of her home for Christmas. The last thing she does is place a pillow on the chair with stitching that reads, “Grandma Rules the Yule”. Immediately after, Linus (Wyatt White) goes to sit on it, but Lucy yells at him to get off because she just fluffed the pillow. He wonders what has gotten into her, and the excited Lucy explains it’s the holiday spirit. It’s the first weekend of December, which means Christmas and their grandmother will be there soon. Linus isn’t too hyped to see grandma though, as she is always trying to get Linus to give up his blanket. Lucy teases him by telling him to enjoy it while he can because he knows what will happen when grandma gets there. Hearing this, he runs out of the room to find his blanket a hiding place. Moving on to December 15th, Charlie Brown is eating popcorn on a beanbag chair watching Citizen Kane. Sally interrupts and asks why he’s watching a movie she sees as “boring”. With New Year’s right around the corner, Charlie Brown admits he hasn’t completed any of his New Year’s Resolutions from this past year. Since one of them was to view a great work of art, he decided to watch Citizen Kane. After she complains about not knowing what “Rosebud” means and him deflecting and saying he’ll tell her later, the doorbell rings. Being as useless as possible, Sally asks him to get the door knowing he’s trying to watch the film. He relents and answers the door and it’s Andy (Mark Edwards) and Olaf (Tinkler), two of Snoopy’s brothers. He greets them excitedly and talks about how happy Snoopy is to have them over for their holidays. Unfortunately, they pretty much ignore him, take their instruments, walk inside, take some food from the fridge, and go meet Snoopy out back. Sally is now sitting in Charlie Brown’s seat eating his popcorn, so Charlie Brown sits next to her. Just as he is about to get back into the movie, the doorbell rings again. Sally immediately says it’s for him. He asks how she would know it’s not for her, but she responds, “I’m indisposed”.

Snoopy’s other brother Marbles (Cory Doran) is at the door, and Charlie Brown greets him. Right away, Marbles hands him his heavy ass suitcase and walks in. Charlie Brown goes to sit back down, but the doorbell rings AGAIN. This time, it’s Snoopy’s sister Belle (Katie Griffin). After Charlie Brown alerts Snoopy of her arrival, Snoopy runs over and the two hug and dance around, and the energy sends Charlie Brown into the air and on top of the door. Once the two go out to see the others, Charlie Brown goes back to his movie, though the damn doorbell rings again. This time it’s Snoopy’s other brother Spike (Tinkler). Charlie Brown greets the plain-faced Spike and welcomes him to the family reunion Snoopy is hosting, as Spike is the last one to arrive. As is typical with Spike, he doesn’t seem happy or angry that he’s there. He’s just content, dragging his cactus on a platform dolly to the back to see the others. Finally, Charlie Brown is clear to watch his movie, but Sally is done with it and tells him “Rosebud was the sled”. After seeing Snoopy and his siblings hogging the TV and making a mess of the living room with popcorn, Charlie Brown realizes he lost out on yet another New Year’s Resolution. Moving on to December 17th, Lucy is at her five-cent psychiatric booth. Naturally, Charlie Brown shows up. After paying Lucy, Charlie Brown talks about how he made his New Year’s Resolution list and hasn’t accomplished a single one of them, feeling like a failure because of it. Once Lucy takes a look at his list, she sees the resolutions as completely unrealistic. Her suggestion is for Charlie Brown to adjust his expectations to match his abilities. For instance, his third resolution is to build the world’s tallest snowman. Crossing it off, she tells him instead to just build a snowman. His ninth resolution is to “paint a masterpiece”. Crossing it off, she wants him to settle by doing something remotely creative.

At first, Charlie Brown looks disappointed because it doesn’t seem very ambitious, but Lucy agrees with him. She wants him to complete one realistic resolution. In doing so, she sees him as being covered for the year. With this reasonable and attainable goal in mind, Charlie Brown’s spirits are uplifted. One realistic resolution is possible. In fact, “Anyone can do that, even me!”. After Charlie Brown exits happily, Lucy looks at her recipe book to figure out what type of gingerbread house her grandmother would like. Moving to December 20th, Snoopy and his siblings look through an old photobook and reminisce together. Once they land on a picture of when they were all babies, Spike takes the picture out to examine it and smiles. He grabs his camera and wants to set up a new version of the picture with all of them together in one area. They go outside, and Spike directs them to get into place. Next, he gives the camera to Woodstock, so he can get into the picture as well. Unfortunately, the camera is too big for Woodstock, and he falls off the doghouse while trying to take the picture. He tries to balance the weight as he flies and takes several accidental pictures over and over again as it happens. The dogs all try to run in different places to match where Woodstock is flying to, but it’s no use. There isn’t a single good picture out of the lot of them. They are all terrible. Instead of just getting someone else to do it, the dogs lose interest and ski off. Spike follows but is noticeably disappointed. Woodstock grabs the accidental selfie he took of himself, smiles, and walks away with it. Next is December 24th, and Lucy wakes up in a great mood as grandma is coming over. She sings and dances around the house, sets up some cookie cutters, hangs some stockings, and puts The Night Before Christmas on the chair next to grandma’s pillow.

She stops when she sees Linus lifting a couch cushion because she just made the place perfect and he’s ruining it. The reason he’s lifting the cushion is to hide his blanket from grandma, though Lucy thinks that’s the first place she’ll look because “No one outsmarts grandma”. Just then, the phone rings, so Lucy answers. It’s grandma, and Lucy is happy to talk to her. Sadly, grandma cancels for whatever reason and Lucy is absolutely devastated. Linus is cool with it though because he can hold his blanket in peace. The day goes by, and Lucy can’t get over the disappointment. The same goes with Christmas day. She’s just more miserable. As she lies in bed, she starts to wonder if grandma just didn’t want to come or maybe she didn’t want to come because of Lucy. Questioning her grandma’s love for her, she looks in the mirror and asks, “Am I not lovable?”. If her own grandma doesn’t love her, how does she know if anyone really loves her? Linus can’t help but hear her say these sad words, as he walks by in the middle of the night before softly closing her door. The next morning, Lucy tries to give herself a pep talk, reminding herself of her friends and how lovable she is. This leads to an idea to prove this theory of hers. Waking up Linus, she refers to Christmas as a letdown, but she has an idea on how to make New Year’s perfect. She’s going to throw an elegant party, and Linus is going to help. He agrees to, but it’s mostly because he’s still trying to sleep. Regardless, Lucy already has the title of the party, and it’s a mouthful. It’s “Lucy’s Gala: A New Year’s Eve Celebration of Elegant Perfection!”. She can’t wait for everyone to celebrate her, or with her, as she corrects herself. Basically, she wants to prove to herself that she is in fact lovable.

Not wanting to waste time, she rips Linus’s blanket off his bed to get him up. Now, he realizes he’s in trouble. Right away, the two get out of the house, and Linus is writing notes on a clipboard in an effort to catch the important things Lucy wants. Firstly, she wants everyone to dress up, be on time, and have good manners.

Does this mean she’s not inviting Pig-Pen? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Anyway, Lucy continues on about how she wants everyone at midnight to sing the famous song people sing at New Year’s, “Auld Lang Syne”, though she didn’t know the name until Linus told her. Either way, as he starts to sing it aloud, Lucy suggests he be the one to sing it at the party. However, the catch is that she wrote her own lyrics to the tune of the song and has him read it off. All the lyrics revolve around Lucy and how her party blew his mind. He can’t believe it, but she doesn’t see anything wrong with it. Furthermore, she made some calls and rented a ballroom. Unprompted, she mentions how she’s not even thinking about grandma anymore. On December 27th, Spike goes into the garage to meet with the rest of the family, and all the dogs have their instruments ready to play. Not long after, the dogs are playing a song straight out of New Orleans. In the middle of it, Spike sets up the camera to take a picture of them all, but the stand that the camera is on won’t stop messing up. As he tries to fix it, he still manages to not miss a single cue for his harmonica playing parts. By the time he finally gets the camera to stay still, after threatening it with a hammer, all the dogs exit the garage and go inside to have some hot chocolate. On December 28th, Lucy and Linus stand outside the ballroom she rented. It’s an old building that hasn’t been touched in years, and it’s a struggle to open the door, forcing both of them to work together to get it open. The inside of the place is a bit of a fixer-upper, but it’s doable. Linus still can’t believe she had the money to rent the place, but it wasn’t too big of an issue. She paid it all in nickels, attributing it all to Charlie Brown paying for a lot of psychiatric help from her five-cent booth.

Looking around, Linus doesn’t see the potential in the room that Lucy sees. She thinks all the room needs is some decorations, music, and a lot of elbow grease, though Linus comments that he doesn’t think he has enough elbows. Either way, she hands Linus a broom while talking about how great it’s going to be to have all her friends there to smile back at her, “their gracious and lovable host”. With this, she exits to prepare the invitations and to deliver the good news. On the 29th, Charlie Brown works on his resolution to build a snowman and is almost done. Tragically, he manages to fail at this too after falling in the snow over and over again trying to put the head on. Then, once he got it onto the body and put the top hat on, the head caved in. Out of frustration, Charlie Brown destroyed the whole snowman with a kick and fell. Showing up late, Sally gave him the carrot he asked for while he lies on the ground, so he just eats it. Lucy walks over and tells Charlie Brown it’s his lucky day because she has solved his resolution problem. She gives him an invitation to her New Year’s Eve party and makes him in charge of decorations, which he’s happy about. Sally wants an invite too, but Lucy wonders if she can even stay awake until midnight. Sally takes it as a challenge, so Lucy gives her an invitation as well and Sally runs off excited. Stressing the elegance of her event, Lucy tells Charlie Brown that she wants him to think about silver and gold, streamers, bows, centerpieces, and a ballon drop at midnight. Hearing all of this, Charlie Brown questions why decorating has to do with his resolutions, so Lucy reminds him of the ninth one on his list: do something remotely creative. Realizing she’s right, he wholeheartedly accepts.

Lucy goes around town and gives out invitations to all her friends, while giving a lot of them jobs. She gives Pig-Pen, Franklin, and some blonde girl a job to get snacks, adding that they need to think “elegant” and finger foods are the way to go. She gives Violet and Patty the job to get everyone up and dancing, and she gives Peppermint Patty and Marcie a job to make an ice sculpture of her. This sounds insane, but Peppermint Patty says it’s no problem. She heads over to Schroeder’s place and asks him to play something “significant” for the party. After she turns down some of his classical music, she instead wants something with a bouncy rhythm people can dance to. He plays a tune she likes, but he gets mad and leaves the room. On December 30th, Spike, Snoopy, and the other dogs are all playing their music outside and Lucy hears it while walking by. She offers them the gig of playing at her party because it’s something people can dance to, and they agree to perform after she offers to pay them in dog biscuits. In fact, Snoopy shakes her hand directly and kisses her on the nose, which she’s not a fan of. Spike cuts in and gives her the camera to take a picture of them all, so she agrees. Frustratingly enough, she uses the camera to take a picture of herself, hands it back to Spike, and leaves.

Now, it’s officially New Year’s Eve, and Lucy, Linus, and Charlie Brown are working on some last-minute preparation. This party looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun. This is of course unless Lucy unintentionally sabotages it by being Lucy.

Yeah, that’s more than a possibility.

My Thoughts:

Apple TV+ getting the rights to the Peanuts specials was heartbreaking news to get. For being such a staple of network television, it just feels unfair for such a beloved franchise to not be available to the public on free TV. However, this is the world we live in now. Though it’s hard to say if Apple TV+ will always hold the rights or another streaming service will get it after so many years, the fact of the matter is that this need for content is a worrisome one. You never know if they have the artists’ best interests in mind, or they are making content for the sake of making content, capitalizing off nostalgia by any means necessary while pushing studio wants over the creator’s wants. The first test came with Snoopy Presents: For Auld Lang Syne. Right off the bat as a Peanuts purist, I hate the “Snoopy Presents” banner prefacing the title. It should always have either “Charlie Brown” or “Peanuts” in the title. Sure, there have been exceptions over the years, but these exceptions were allowed when Charles M. Schulz was still around. Making it about the dog is disrespectful, no matter how marketable he might be. Now that we got this house cleaning out of the way, Apple TV+’s first original Peanuts special is actually really good. I walked into it with a frown but left tipping my hat. With the exception of the title, the team that was collected to bring this new story to life respected the background and established lore of the well-known characters and has helped usher in a new era of Peanuts content, officially bringing it into the modern era. If fans aren’t going to get a sequel to Blue Sky Studios’ The Peanuts Movie, Apple TV+ producing specials like this one might be the next best thing.

The initiative with Snoopy Presents: For Auld Lang Syne or possibly all of the Apple TV+ Peanuts content is to flesh out other characters in an attempt to explore undiscovered and more sophisticated topics, something Charles M. Schulz would surely be a fan of. Here, the focus is shifted to Lucy and the screenwriters work hard in giving her more depth than any special has allotted her previously. Considering there have been sixty years of specials, that’s saying something. To be fair, there are some specials and movies that have come close to giving us more insight into who Lucy is as a person, but For Auld Lang Syne might be the new winner. She starts off as the Lucy we all know very well. Actually, even in her darkest times, she doesn’t lose the traits that made her famous. However, the story doesn’t take shape until her grandma calls in to say she can’t come over for Christmas. With this, the excited, confident, and abrasive young girl falls apart. Two days go by, and she stands there, miserable and feeling awful about herself and her place in life. Since there wasn’t much of a reason given, Lucy can’t help but come to the conclusion that she is the problem. It continues during the party too. When the festivities are going on, she asks herself, “I don’t understand. This party’s the perfect reflection of me, but no one is having fun! Why don’t they love me?”. After Linus questions her statement, she has to fix the line to talking about her party with, “Why don’t they love my party“. This moment with her grandma shattered her self-belief. Since she was the one in her family happier than anyone else about her grandma’s visit and this was well known, her not coming over looks like a direct response to Lucy as a person, in her eyes. She looks in the mirror and hates what she sees. For the first time, she starts to reflect.

Am I unlovable? The facts as she witnessed it are there to seemingly confirm it.

It’s not unlike the thoughts and feelings of many children across the world when something goes wrong at home. Sometimes, they look within themselves. Seeing such a strong character like Lucy look as vulnerable as she is here, really sets the tone of the special. It’s not a dark story, but the content in these more emotional moments is serious enough for the viewer to give a double take and care about someone who has over the years bordered on “unlikable character” status. This is the biggest positive stemming from For Auld Lang Syne in that it still maintains the humor and simplicity of previous Peanuts endeavors, but it injects new life into it to help transition it into the modern era with a relevant and sophisticated story masked as a children’s TV special. For modern audiences to latch onto an animated special in this format, the storytelling needs to have a few more layers to it. Otherwise, it’s at risk of being considered boring. Remember, this is an animated franchise that stays grounded. It has endured and endeared over the years for being a simple, intelligent, smartly written, cute, at times heartwarming, and amusing series of specials and programs by sticking to its formula. Peanuts doesn’t do wacky comedy, action, or put their characters in unbelievable circumstances that force you to suspend your disbelief. It’s just a group of kids who struggle through the day, have fun, and try to understand themselves, each other, and life. It’s worked in the past, but to keep up with the times and maintain its popularity, something did need to change, as much as we may hate to admit it. If any franchise might be left behind going into the 2020s, it may have been Charlie Brown and the gang. Thankfully, they cracked the code just in time. Lucy’s layered story about insecurities and her trying to overcome deteriorating self-confidence is a breath of fresh air that sets the franchise’s journey on a new platform in the right direction.

Along with this, the animation and art design are keys to making this happen just as well. Watching a special 20 or 30 years ago and jumping into this one is sure to give you a jarring response, as there is a stark contrast between the two in regard to imagery. For Auld Lang Syne is brightly colored and noticeably digital, but it’s clean, warm, and feels fresher. For those used to the old specials, it takes some time to get used to, but the transition gets easier with each successive scene. Truthfully, this was another inevitable decision to push Peanuts into the modern era. Otherwise, the product would look old and wouldn’t catch the eye of younger viewers. Once again, the correct move was made. I hate to give anyone involved with Apple credit for anything, but it’s true. There are some shots of landscapes that are strikingly beautiful works of art like the scene at night where Lucy walks alone or when Charlie Brown and Linus talk outside in the snow after the party. If you want a scene drawn to perfectly encapsulate the New Year’s holiday, you could frame either of these scenes (along with countless others) and it would be legitimately pretty enough to hang in your home. The blues contrasted with the snow, along with the stars and fireworks in the sky was just magnificent work.

For a long time watcher and fan of Peanuts, it was great to see Lucy be developed more, but it was just as great to see her knocked down a peg, as a day of reckoning was sure to come at some point for all of her indiscretions involving Charlie Brown. It was deserved just as well here, as she still has a lot to learn. Though she’s going through a rough patch and is questioning everything about herself, her manipulative behavior with her brother Linus was typical Lucy. Constantly, she’s putting everything on him and trying to pressure him with comments like, “Do it for me dear brother”, “WE are not trying hard enough”, or reminding him how he promised to help when he resists on the costume change that makes him look like Elton John. Then, when he tried to respond, she just cuts him off and says, “I knew I could count on you”. She even has the audacity to say that the future of her party is dependent on him and that if he doesn’t wear this ridiculously unnecessary costume and sing this song that no one knows, the night will end in failure. Somehow, she doesn’t see the error in her ways. She’s just focused on proving to herself that she is lovable and how this party will prove it, forgetting all the people she’s has hurt along the way that have been nice enough to aide her. Even Linus can see what she’s doing, but he knows how much the party means to her after hearing her personal thoughts when walking by her bedroom door. As her brother, he feels an obligation to help her in any way he can and tolerates her bullshit just to make her feel better. It doesn’t have to be said, but anything less could result in her imploding completely, so he does what he can, even if the demands are unreasonable. Seriously, how can you ask for an ice sculpture from Peppermint Patty and Marcie and STILL not be happy when they produce one that actually isn’t that bad, considering the short notice and lack of talent?

You have to respect someone like Linus’s patience as a brother because very few would put up with such behavior. This is why the audience knows he’s been serious when he tells her he loves her.

The truth of the matter is that though they are able to conjure up sympathy for Lucy, they don’t lose who she is and has always been as a person. They’re not going to act like she was a saint, and everyone should feel bad for her automatically. She’s on a high and has to be taken down a few notches until she learns, as the trials and tribulations have to happen for a character like this. For Auld Lang Syne is about growth, understanding others close to you, and appreciating the people in life that you do have. As sad as it may look, a character like this needed the humbling experience to become a better person. Otherwise, she’d be going down a spiral pathway of misery. When her own brother gave up on her and she was faced with reality, she STILL refused to take the responsibility and blamed everyone that helped her. As you can see, this is a girl who needs this moment more than anyone. Lucy desperately needed this wake-up call. She is loved. She just needed to be reminded of the people that do love her, so she can appreciate them appropriately. At one point, she’s at her worst and considers giving up on the whole thing, literally quoting “Auld Lang Syne” and asking herself while she walks alone after the party is destroyed, “Should old acquaintance be forgot?”. On paper, it sounds corny, but in-context it comes off as almost Shakespearian. The journey of such an eventful 38-minute special was worth it. It got to the point where Lucy actually apologizes for being an unappreciative, condescending little bitch (paraphrasing of course). That is worth the watch alone. Can anyone tell me how many times Lucy has apologized in Peanuts history? You could probably count it on one hand. On a side note, her demands were ridiculous, but in her defense, I would’ve yelled at Franklin too. If anyone brings jellybeans to my party, they’re getting thrown down a flight of stairs.

And yes, Maynard deserves to be reamed for double dipping. You’re not at home, hillbilly.

As funny as the psychiatric help scene was, especially because the payoff to it all being that Charlie Brown’s frequent visits with Lucy helped her rent out the ballroom for the party (“Charlie Brown has a lot of problems”), I actually liked the message they sent in their conversation. In a way, it is “sensible mediocrity” like how Lucy says, but creating attainable goals is a good and useful message. People get caught up in making lofty expectations for their next year and get depressed when they don’t accomplish them. It happens to all of us, as it does Charlie Brown, but how many of us have taken that second look at the list of resolutions they made and realized that it could be extremely difficult to accomplish in a one-year span? It’s never impossible, but it could be damn close to it, especially if you have a lot of other goals to accomplish. Thinking about them all at once and still having the big one looming over your shoulder can stress you out. On the other hand, giving yourself a fair shot at achieving and accomplishing goals is much better for one’s mental health. It’s not about lowering the bar. It’s about creating a reachable one to where you don’t sike yourself out because it’s too far away. Rarely does Lucy offer a reasonable suggestion for a solution, but this is one that can actually stay with you. For a children’s special, it’s a perspective changer, and I like that. The same can be said about the conversation between Linus and Lucy following the party, when he tries to console her and tells her he loves her. She’s not necessarily buying what he’s saying because he’s her brother. He has to love her by default. It’s just how it is, but I enjoyed Linus refusing this notion. He’s honest in telling her that this isn’t necessarily true. He doesn’t have to love her. It’s an antiquated belief essentially, and I tend to agree. How many family members do detrimental things to other family members, but we conditioned to forgive and forget because we’re related? Hey, they’re family! You have to love them. How about no? If they hurt you, you shouldn’t feel the obligation to love them. If you love, you love with purpose.

That is one thing about the older generations that I will never understand. Why suck it up if they wronged you badly? You don’t owe anyone a damn thing. Do you see what I’m saying here? In just this small conversation between brother and sister, all of these feelings are felt and rightfully brought to the surface. When Linus finally adds on that he does love his sister and so do a lot of people, you feel the authenticity in the comment. Of course, this leads to a wonderfully sweet finale that makes sense of all the personal struggles Lucy had to go through to fully understand and change.

“I’m lovable?”. Yes, yes you are. You all are. Everybody is in their own little way.

Though his role was noticeably smaller, Charlie Brown still had his moments (“Linus, how are you with knots?”). I loved how determined he was in remembering his cue to pull the balloons down for the party and how he still managed to fuck it up. After all these years, Charlie Brown is still the Charlie Browniest motherfucker known to man. Nevertheless, I didn’t like him airing out Lucy’s personal business to the entire Peanuts crew to get them to show up to the house. That was a little intrusive Chuck. Do better. Spike’s nonverbal storyline of just wanting a picture to remember his family was a simple and effective one to fill in the cracks too. Also, Olaf playing the tuba and Spike playing the harmonica are both hilariously on brand. This is another new side of Spike that was cool to get to know. Usually, he doesn’t give a shit one way or another like when he shows up to the house for the family reunion and Charlie Brown struggles to say, “You’re looking…good” and Spike doesn’t change his expression for a bit. However, him secretly being the sentimental one out of the group was a nice touch. Snoopy and his family being the band and playing that sad music was an amusing moment too, especially because the kids were nice enough to try and make an effort to dance to it, leading to the hilarious quote of, “Dog music stinks!”.

There’s a small cutaway where Pig-Pen is putting on cologne in the bathroom. My dude, the bathtub was right there. USE IT!

On a minor note, the epilogue of Lucy’s phone call with grandma was overkill. They wrote such a great ending between her and Charlie Brown with the “Be a Friend” resolution covering his next year. How do you not end it right there? Also, I appreciate Lucy recognizing Charlie Brown’s ability to keep going despite life knocking him down on a consistent basis, but his response of him knowing he has friends to rely on didn’t seem right. Linus has snaked him on quite a few occasions, he rarely gets along with Lucy (with this special being an exception), he ignores Peppermint Patty’s advances, and he’s cool with Marcie but they’re not that close. Even Snoopy has a tendency to be a prick at times. Charlie Brown does have this knack for picking himself back up again, but him giving his “friends” the credit was the wrong answer. Years and years of these specials, films, shows, and comic strips will tell you that Charlie Brown just has that ability because his spirit is pure and stronger than what he’s given credit for. Obviously, that response wouldn’t fit the answer Lucy is looking for and it would take away from the message they’re trying to send For Auld Lang Syne, but they wrote themselves into a corner by giving Charlie Brown such an important emotional moment with Lucy. Once he said it, I tilted my head in confusion and I’m sure I’m not alone in this.

Common Sense Media said For Auld Lang Syne was “cut but not iconic”, but does anyone else think that’s a little unfair? This is an unreasonably high bar to set going into a TV special. Do they go into every Peanuts program with an expectation of “Classic” in mind? When you think about it, there are only 3-5 Peanuts specials that you can argue is on the level of icon status, and that’s out of fifty-one of them. More often than not, they don’t hit that high. At this stage of the franchise, especially post-Schulz, comparing everything they do to A Charlie Brown Christmas, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, or A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is doing a disservice to the new team put in place to try and recreate the magic and do something new with it. Now, for the sake of reviews, comparisons are welcomed. For something like For Auld Lang Syne, it’s okay to compare and contrast positives and negatives with the other Christmas specials they have done and Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! since this one is a bit of both. However, going into every special with the mindset that it needs to be compared to their all-time best work does seem like a negative and unhelpful practice for the most part. Going into For Auld Lang Syne, I wasn’t expecting to be blown away because the background was made well aware to me. This was the start of something new and a bit of a barometer of what’s to come in its Apple TV+ era. With this in mind, I was pleasantly surprised.

If you walk into Snoopy Presents: For Auld Lang Syne with an open mind as well, you will be too. It’s funny, it’s a lot more engaging than a lot of previous Peanuts specials, it doesn’t drag like some of them have a tendency to do, they spotlight Lucy and do a good job with it, and it still retains the heart of what made this series special. Though it pains me to say this, I look forward to seeing what Apple TV+ comes out with next. If this special is any indication, Charlie Brown and the gang are in good hands. Plus, now when I heard inklings of the famed New Year tune, I too will think of my friends and will remember the good times we’ve shared and hope they will do the same for me. I have Lucy and Linus to thank for that, though I admit I can’t say how often I’ll actually run into this song in real-life.