You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1985)

Starring: Brad Kesten
Grade: C-

I loved it when Lucy asks Schroeder what he thinks is in the sky, and he guesses it’s a star, a planet, or a satellite in succession. What’s just wrong with saying you don’t know?

Summary

At lunch, Charlie Brown (Kesten) and Linus (David T. Wagner) sit down on a bench, and Linus assures him that he has nothing to worry about because science has shown that a person’s character isn’t really established until they are five years old. Charlie Brown reminds Linus that he is five. In fact, he’s more than five.

For the record, Charlie Brown never says the exact age he is.

Anyway, Schroeder (Jeremy Reinbolt) says aloud to the audience that Charlie Brown has never pitched a winning baseball game, has never been able to keep a kite in the air, never won a game of checkers, and never successfully punted a football, marveling at his consistency. For some reason, Linus follows this up with saying Charlie Brown has nice hands, which confuses Charlie Brown as much as it does us. Thinking to himself, Snoopy (Robert Towers) thinks the least Charlie Brown can do is start his day with “tea and toast”. Sometime after, Lucy (Jessica Lee Smith) tells Linus to study Charlie Brown’s “failure face” to see what a failure looks like at its peak. Naturally, Charlie Brown is pissed at Lucy’s words but says nothing. The next morning, Charlie Brown wakes up early to see the sun rise, something he does from time to time. It puts him in a positive mood. He goes outside after getting dressed and talks about the sky being clear and the sun being bright and wonders how anything could go wrong on a day like this. On cue, Snoopy leads Lucy, Sally (Tiffany Reinbolt), Linus, Schroeder, and a drum-playing Woodstock (Bill Melendez) in a marching band-like way to sing “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown”. Despite some lyrics being minor insults, it’s mostly positive, though there are a few cutaways that make Charlie Brown look bad like him putting a coat over a puddle so Patty can walk over it, only for Charlie Brown to attempt the same and slip and fall into the puddle. The others are him just being knocked down by the drum of their marching band.

Of course, the final lyric is Lucy adding, “If only you weren’t so wishy-washy”.

Schroeder plays Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” on his piano, and Lucy walks over to him. She starts singing loudly her own un-rhyming lyrics about how she likes his piano playing and how she’s always had dreams of marrying a guy who plays the piano. He starts to get mad, but she continues on about how it would be nice if he played at parties and for him to imagine a scenario where they are married. In this momentary dream sequence, she is pouring him coffee while wearing curlers and a robe and he’s freaking out wearing his shirt and tie until it goes back to normal. Finally, Schroeder completes the song and storms off, so Lucy gives her Aunt Marian credit for being right about never discussing marriage with a musician. Next, Schroeder is outside talking about how Beethoven loved the country and taking long strolls into the countryside. As he talks about the peace being an inspiration, he’s interrupted by an offscreen Lucy yelling at someone to give her a ball. Charlie Brown sings to himself as he tries to fly his kite. As he runs back with the line, it trips up Snoopy and Woodstock who fall off the doghouse. Charlie Brown continues running back and singing. After he almost hits a mole and Woodstock again, he finally gets the kite into the air. Sadly, it only lasts a bit before it comes crashing down. Sally writes a letter to Ann Flanders about how she sent 52 Valentines out and received 75. This year, she sent 58 and only received 61. She wonders if she’s correct in blaming the zip code. Charlie Brown walks with a Valentine for Lucy and practices on how to deliver it to her. Once he finally catches her, he excitedly tells Lucy that the envelope is for her, finishing with “Merry Christmas!” and is as embarrassed as you’d imagine. One day, Charlie Brown finds Marcie (Michael Dockery) outside of the school holding a bunch of letters and she drops one. He picks it up for her and asks what they are for. Marcie explains they are Valentines she’s ready to give out to all the boys she likes. He notices the “C.B.” initials on the one he picked up and slyly says she doesn’t want to lose that one.

She agrees saying, “No I guess not. Craig Bowerman will be very disappointed”.

Charlie Brown watches as Marcie goes over to a group and all the kids give each other Valentines, and he’s sad as he walks away because he sent everyone that he knew a Valentine but didn’t get a single one in return. He talks about how no one likes him, and he gets as many Valentines as a dog, though Snoopy shows up next to him sifting through a whole bunch of them. Schroeder is back playing his piano and Lucy brings up a hypothetical of what he would do if they were married, and he had to sell his piano to buy her saucepans because they were poor. He flips out and drops his head on the piano keys after she talks about how girls have to worry about these sorts of things and boys don’t. As Snoopy sleeps on top of his doghouse at night, he dreams of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Sally, and Linus greeting him. Charlie Brown mentions how good it is to see him now that they are home from school, Lucy calls him adorable, and Charlie Brown says he’ll be back with his supper dish. As Charlie Brown calls him the best dog there is, Snoopy wakes up from his dream after Woodstock and his bird friends fly onto him. Snoopy’s inner voice sings about how good life is and how his friends bring him bones (Charlie Brown) and scratch his ear (Linus). The mood changes when he starts to sing about Woodstock and the birds waking him up by flying onto his stomach and how it’s occasionally painful. He snaps and starts talking about wanting to fight someone. When he attempts to pounce on the birds, he chickens out because it’s too far a drop to the ground. He concludes the song by going back to the happier version of the song and then randomly wonders if it will snow tonight before closing his eyes again. Following this, the kids walk by, greet Snoopy, and keep going, and Snoopy questions why nobody calls him “Sugar Lips”.

Next, there’s a four-way musical sequence regarding homework between Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, and Schroeder. They are all writing a book report on Peter Rabbit, but they all have completely different processes in doing so. Lucy counts every word to get hers doing as soon as possible, Schroeder types his up and relates it to Robin Hood which is a story he knows a lot more about and talks more about in the report (“Peter Rabbit did sorta that kinda thing too”), Linus overthinks it by analyzing the sociological implications of family pressures and Mr. McGregor’s “conflicting” role of farmer and humanitarian, and Charlie Brown stalls because he’s too tired and wants to rest first. Actually, he goes and watches TV while saying he’ll get a fresh start tomorrow. This continues throughout the sequence as they sing about their respective situations. Charlie Brown makes food and sits down in front of the TV while still worrying, and Linus continues to take a deep dive by looking into a book on rabbit psychology. The song concludes with the others finishing, and Charlie Brown sitting down and beginning to write his. Following this, Lucy is taking an excited Linus around and teaching him, as she sees it as her duty as an older sister. Naturally, Charlie Brown is a bit confused by this. Lucy follows this up by singing her “facts” to Linus, but every single thing she says to him is wrong. She talks about a fur tree being used to make fur coats and wool, you can tell how old an elm tree is by counting its leaves, clouds make the wind blow, bugs make the grass grow by tugging all day on the blades to make them longer, fire hydrants grow out of thin air and no one knows how it has so much water, Woodstock is an eagle but they call it a sparrow when they are little, and they eat them on Christmas and Thanksgiving. Charlie Brown is walking with them and starts flipping out at how ridiculously wrong she is, but she cuts him off each time and continues to sing.

She sings about how the stars and planets make rain and snow comes up like flowers in the wintertime. Charlie Brown has enough with the last one, but Lucy is adamant that she’s right, so he just leaves and bangs his head on a tree offscreen. Linus asks Lucy why he’s doing this, and she calmly states that he’s trying to loosen the bark so the tree will go faster. Later, the Peanuts gang are at the baseball diamond, and some are sitting on the bench. Snoopy shows up and lays on the lap of Sally and Linus. Charlie Brown sighs but moves on to giving his team a pep talk before the game, encouraging them to go out and give it everything they got. Lucy interrupts because she has a new strategy for him. They tell the opposing team to meet them at a different location, so they can show up and win the game by forfeit. After Charlie Brown’s annoyed glance, she sits back and down and is confused why a manager wouldn’t want to use such a good strategy. Charlie Brown continues with his speech about teamwork and gritting your teeth, but Schroeder interrupts and threatens to quit if Lucy is pitching again because she constantly calls him up to the mound for a conference but kisses him on the nose. Charlie Brown tries to go back to his speech only for Linus to suggest he be a bench manager instead of a playing manager. Sally thinks this is a good idea, but she thinks the role entails more of deciding where the physical bench would go on the field. Lucy gets up and talks to the team and asks what the point of playing is if they know they’re going to lose. Charlie Brown shuts her down because he knows there’s still a chance they can do it. He has her sit down on the bench with the others again and has them spell out team, leading to them singing about being a team.

Charlie Brown writes to his pen pal in a letter and sings in his head what he writes. It’s about what happened at the baseball game. In the middle of his detailing of what happened, they intercut with the “Team” song the others sang. Next, it goes back to his letter, and he talks about how he was pitching. It was a full count with two outs, and the bases were loaded. He threw a curve, the kid hit it, it landed straight in Lucy’s glove on a pop fly, but she managed to drop it still because she looked away as it happened. He cried a little because of it. Snoopy bit a runner and caught a ball with his teeth, Linus caught a ball with his blanket from a third story window, and they only needed one run to win the game when Charlie Brown himself came up to bat. Two men were on with two outs and one strike to go. The pressure was on, and Lucy didn’t help by shouting words of encouragement overlaying the rest of the team singing that “Team” song. After seeing the Little Red-Haired Girl though, he struck out. He finishes his letter by asking his pen pal directions on how to get to their place and a tear falls onto the paper.

The special continues in this manner with each segment being different than the last.

My Thoughts:

In a TV special that’s longer than usual regarding the Peanuts gang, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown goes the musical route this time around. Adapted from the 1967 stage production, the program does its best to combine these elements of the show with what the television audience is expecting from the antics of the characters and the results are cute at times, but nothing too impressive.

For a musical, a lot of the musical sequences are fairly underwhelming. Other than the catchy title song and the fun and creative “Book Report” where the four talk over each other but are still in tune with the harmony, nothing else was really worth it. They attempt the same strategy of “Book Report” in the “Home on the Range” segment, as it was almost vaudeville-like (in a good way), but it only works for the first joke of Lucy asking for her pencil and Linus singing “Not on your life” as they get back into the tune. Other than that, it was substandard. Sally being offended by being called an enigma, but she doesn’t know what it means, wasn’t fully capitalized on either and it ends before it could get started. The humor involved in Lucy singing to Schroeder and ruining a Beethoven song was amusing but the music was bad and the closing song about anything and everything resulting in happiness was too hokey to buy into. One of the lyrics is Linus saying that TELLING THE TIME is happiness. At that point, you’re just cramming random shit into a song. The ultimate message is “Happiness is anyone and anything at all that’s loved by you” so it does make sense in a roundabout way, but who in the fuck gets genuine happiness from telling the time? Each lyric was random as hell anyway, but that one in particular stood out as if they’re saying, “Yeah, we’re just making it up as we go along”. Snoopy’s overly dramatic and at times Shakespearean “Supper Time” was jarring because of the dreadful decision to give Snoopy a voice. He doesn’t talk outright, but his inner voice is present to sing and speak his mind a little about his owner and the others, as we take a deep dive into the dog’s mind. As a big Peanuts fan, I need to reiterate what we’re all thinking. It was a horrible idea to give Snoopy a voice. I get that you need to evolve here and there to keep the franchise going, but all of Snoopy’s humor comes from his deadpan reactions and inexplicable adventures. Giving him a voice takes the imagination out of the character. Plus, the voice of Robert Towers was much too aggressive and somewhat slimy to coincide with the essence of the mischievous cartoon icon.

If the only way to make this special work was to give Snoopy a voice to make those musical sequences happen, someone else needed to be chosen to play the role. It just doesn’t sound like how anyone would imagine Snoopy to sound like, which is why it’s weird to hear him complain, threaten to not greet Charlie Brown when he gets home from school, and think about death when he doesn’t think he got his food on time. These problems wouldn’t exist if he didn’t have a voice in the first place. People love Snoopy and want more of him, which I understand, but he does need to stay in his lane a little. This is an example of giving a popular character too much and it backfiring. It’s just too late in the game to make such a drastic change and it should have never gotten to this stage. The only time the idea worked was when the kids were looking at the stars at night, and Snoopy makes sense of a dog’s most nonsensical action. He hallows at the moon during the scene and when the camera is on him, his inner voice calmly states, “In my opinion, that was exactly what was needed”. Besides this, you have more continuity problems thrown in just to make sense of the songs’ insertion into the special or just not fitting the lore of the characters. On top of Linus and Sally visibly holding hands during the “Happiness” sequence when Linus’s whole shtick with Sally is that he tries to avoid her at all costs, a major example is Charlie Brown being nervous about giving Lucy a Valentine and rehearsing what he’s going to say to her. When has our protagonist ever had a crush on the biggest bitch in school? Granted, him accidentally saying “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Valentine’s Day” was the best joke of the special, but him giving a Valentine to someone he historically does NOT fuck with is plain wrong. Another great example of this is Lucy’s “Little Known Facts” that she sings to Linus where she’s wrong about everything.

The usually headstrong and intelligent Linus, who at times is the most reasonable and well-read one of the group, acts as if he’s brainwashed in an almost science fiction-like manner and is inexplicably excited to learn from Lucy. I’ve watched a lot of specials in the Peanuts franchise and have even read some of the comic strips. Never have I seen Linus so gung-ho to learn from Lucy and take everything she says at face value. This didn’t fit the characters’ personalities whatsoever. Considering Sally being the youngest character in the group, how she sometimes hangs out with Lucy, and is incredibly naive, it would have made a lot more sense for her to be the one learning from Lucy’s idiotic “fact-telling” in this sequence. Plus, it would have incentivized Charlie Brown even more to intervene to protect his sister from such foolishness. With the way this segment was introduced, Charlie Brown came off as concerned at Linus’s near delirium in learning from Lucy. Truth be told, it was almost eerie at first because it’s so far off from who he is. Everyone knows Linus is one of the more intelligent kids in the franchise, which is why this was so out of character and didn’t fit. The inconsistencies continue later on during the segment where Lucy sits on her chair and talks about her goal of being queen. Linus has to explain to her that it’s an inherited title and shows off his intellect to her with, “A person can only become a queen by being born into a royal family of the correct lineage, so that she can assume the throne after the death of the reigning monarch”. Then, Linus looks at her like she’s a moron (because she is) when Lucy ironically states aloud, “Nobody should be kept from being queen if she wants to be one. It’s undemocratic!”. An exchange like this doesn’t match a character who believed wholeheartedly a few segments before that a fire hydrant appears out of thin air on account of Lucy’s confident words. Honestly, the whole segment of Lucy daydreaming about being queen was a waste of time. The only funny part was her abruptly stopping and deciding to devote her entire life instead to “cultivating my natural beauty”.

In-between the below average music, Charlie Brown is still the star of the show and makes it worth watching. Despite certain inconsistencies that ruin the overall grade, Charlie Brown is still as Charlie Brown as can be to cement this special as a worthy contributor to the series. When I say this, I’m speaking of the “Lunchtime” segment in particular. There are no musical bits here to ruin it. It’s just Charlie Brown at his peak. Sitting there alone with his peanut butter sandwich that are apparently eaten by those who are lonely according to some psychiatrists, our protagonist talks about how much he hates lunch because he has to sit there alone. After further deliberation however, he realizes mornings (“…Waking up and wondering if anyone would really miss me if I never got out of bed”), nights, and “all those hours in between” aren’t great either because it gives him time to think about all the stupid shit he does during the day, so he changes his stance on lunchtime to being among the worst times of the day. He follows this up by spotting the Little Red-Haired Girl and goes through an anxiety-riddled and relatable series of thoughts and actions as he considers going to sit with her but possibly getting laughed at (“It’s hard on a face when it gets laughed in”), calling himself a coward for not doing it, and then realizing she may not even notice his existence. Peanuts thrives on being relatable and at times, intellectually stimulating for children due to how they approach certain topics and themes. This scene is a great example of this. It gets to the point where Charlie Brown starts to get in his own head and gets angry, wondering why shouldn’t she look in his direction, only for him to panic and put his lunch bag over his head when she does look at him. After Lucy is done drawing on the top of the bag to describe a dress she wore to Sally, Charlie Brown’s follow-up monologue about thinking the Little Red-Haired Girl thinks he’s a fool while he ironically still has the bag on was genius, as was his overthinking of if its less embarrassing if he takes it off or not and ultimately being sad that she wasn’t looking when he does decide to take it off.

The feather in the cap is him walking away and saying to himself that there are only “2,863” more lunches to go.

Also, I loved the early sequence of Charlie Brown waking up and peering inside his closet to see what he’s going to wear. Everyone knows he’s grabbing the yellow shirt, but they tease us with different color varieties hanging up, and I have to say that the blue and green version of Charlie Brown’s signature striped shirt goes hard.

Though not without some solid humor, a number of great moments in certain segments, and a nice ending, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown has a lot of hiccups. Thankfully, the main star is protected despite the sea of inconsistencies, average music, and troubling decisions, with the main culprit of problems stemming from giving Snoopy a voice for the first time. Funnily enough, the Peanuts specials have a much better score in all the non-musical TV specials, which tell you a lot about this musical.