Technology marches on, which means any scene built around the wonders of then-modern technology is going to look incredibly dated a few years later. Think of the scene in an episode of Friends where Matthew Perry gushes about his new computer with a 500mb hard drive and a 28.8 modem. Or the scene in Clueless where Alicia Silverstone and Stacey Dash end their cell phone call because they've met up in person.
In the mid-90s, America On-Line was the biggest internet provider in America, and one of the things the company ran for its subscriber base was a home page for Santa, hosted by an elf named Ozzie. Brandon Tartikoff, who had been NBC's whiz kid president in the 80s, but whose career was floundering, saw a TV special, and he teamed up with Will Vinton, the Oscar-and-Emmy-winning Claymation specialist, to bring Ozzie to life.
The Online Adventures of Ozzie the Elf was the hippist, most happening special of 1997. One of the very first words out of the mouth of the title character, who has just arrived at the North Pole for the first time is "Is there a place in here where I can plug in my modem?". You see, Ozzie isn't like the other elves, content to just keep doing things the same way they've been doing things for centuries (or at least since the reasonably modern machinery that's already installed in the workshop came online). Nope, Ozzie is a modern elf, and he's going to use the powers of the Internet and modern technology to revolutionize Santa's entire operation! He also uses modern slang that seemed to come straight from Wayne's World--which had come out nearly 6 years earlier (and the SNL skits were even older).
Other than the already-outdated slang, there are several ironic things about this special, starting with the fact that it's Claymation, which is essentially old-fashioned stop-motion animation, a technique that has been around since the early days of cinema. Even more ironically, this hip, modern special retells one of the oldest stories out there, where the young whippersnapper comes in with his revolutionary ideas but learns that the old-fashioned way is the best.
To be fair, some of the improvements that Ozzie makes are a net positive, such as modernizing Santa's mail and list. Others, not so much, such as the new assembly line machine that reduces all the elves to mere observers of the toymaking. His supervisor, Clover, who took an instant dislike to Ozzie, complains that the new toys "have no heart", another old-fashioned cliche.
The special does have some nice animation, but the storyline is stuff you've seen a million times before, which is why, even without the special being dazzled by the very concept of The Internet, this likely would have fallen into obscurity pretty fast. Desptie being all about the new and now, The Online Adventures of Ozzie the Elf was already antiquated by the time it premiered.
Next time: An obnoxious novelty Christmas song becomes an obnoxious Christmas special.
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