You’re a
Good Sport Charlie Brown
This sports-themed special gives us a lot to offer, and when
you put everything together, you honestly get a pretty great performance from
the Peanuts characters. You don’t even
have to be a sports fan to enjoy it. For
one thing, the sports the special focuses on are new outlets for Peanuts to
explore. Usually, when it comes to
sports, the ones that get the focus are baseball or football. Here, we have two sports that are pretty out
of the ordinary. In the beginning of the
special, we’re treated to a lengthy sequence involving tennis. It includes memorable moments of fun with
Snoopy battling a tennis ball pitching machine, Linus and Sally lamenting about
how you can’t play tennis alone when they find the courts full, and Snoopy
doing a tennis tournament with an unseen player, getting overly mad when he
loses, and discovering that he lost to little Woodstock. However, it’s his performance that leads us
into the second prominent sport of the special, motocross. You see, Snoopy’s status as an athlete gets
the attention of Peppermint Patty who’s off recruiting kids to compete in a
motocross race, and that race ultimately dominates the focus of the rest of the
special. The racers who get the most
coverage are Peppermint Patty, who's majorly over-confident that she’ll be the
winner, Snoopy posing as the Masked Marvel who shows willingness to do just
about anything to win, including using the tennis ball pitching machine when he
loses his bike, and Charlie Brown, whose performance practically makes this
special. We all know that the prominent
aspect of Charlie Brown is that nothing can ever go right for him, so it’s easy
to predict that him competing in this motocross race will end in disaster. At first, the special never ceases to go out
of its way to majorly put the odds against Charlie Brown winning. He only has enough money to buy a ratty old
motor bike, he wipes out with the Masked Marvel causing him to lose his helmet,
forcing him to wear a pumpkin in its place, and has a lot more ground to cover
than the other racers. However, despite
everything that happens, Charlie Brown just keeps on running the race and gets
through all the other obstacles it comes with.
This strategy is especially effective when all the other racers,
including Peppermint Patty, run into obstacles that force them to drop
out. Snoopy does put up a good fight,
including going so far as to shoot tennis balls at the very kid who puts food
in his bowl, but even with that Charlie Brown never stops putting up a good
race. Everything that happens leads to a
big finish when the winner of the race turns out to be Charlie Brown. I’m not joking. Even after everything that stood in his way,
and even with his bad reputation, it’s Charlie Brown who’s the big winner. I, for one, feel that it’s just amazing that
someone as unlucky as Charlie Brown is given a well-deserved victory since it
goes on to show that even though it’s more likely to fail than succeed most of
the time, things can still work out on occasion. This message is especially apparent when the
special ends with Charlie Brown going on to another sport confident as a result
of his motocross win, even though an instance of the classic clothes-stripping
baseball pitch gag foreshadows the usual failure. Well, at least we have a reminder that even
Charlie Brown isn’t a “total” failure.
There’s a lot of fun sports-related gags and nice excitement from the
motocross race, and the fact that this is a rare instance where Charlie Brown
wins something make this special one worth seeing.
Highly Recommended
If you think I’m getting a little too nice with the Peanuts specials this decade, I just want to let you know that this is the last time you’ll be seeing this particular rating in this post.
The Ranking
- There’s No Time for Love Charlie Brown
- It’s the Easter Beagle Charlie Brown
- You’re Not Elected Charlie Brown
- You’re a Good Sport Charlie Brown
- A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
- Be My Valentine Charlie Brown
- Play it Again Charlie Brown
- It’s a Mystery Charlie Brown
Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next special, which is easily the most obscure of all Peanuts holiday specials and the last one to feature original music from Vince Guaraldi, "It's Arbor Day Charlie Brown."
If you would like to check out other Peanuts special reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.
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