Peanuts was never afraid to go a little dark. Charlie Brown was a lovable loser, but in numerous strips (and specials), the emphasis was on the "loser" part. Still, much of what made him such a washout was usually exaggerated. He didn't just lose baseball games. He lost them by triple digits. And of course, even the darkest strips usually had a punchline. The specials, meanwhile, would never end completely on a down note. Charlie Brown may be a loser, but he's also remarkably resilient, and would always remain optimistic. After all, Peanuts was ultimately a humorous strip. That makes it a rather unusual choice to be a vehicle for the discussion of childhood cancer.
The idea came from a nurse, who proposed that Charles Schulz lend his characters for a short video about cancer to be shown to patients and their families. The idea intrigued Schulz, and he eventually decided that, instead of being 5 minutes, the topic could take up a full half-hour, and managed to convince CBS that it was a good idea. The full special, I think, is indeed valuable for families and friends of cancer patients. As an entertainment special, however, Why, Charlie Brown, Why? is never quite able to break out of a being a full-length PSA.
Understandably, Schulz was interested in making one of his regular characters sick, so the victim is a one-off character, Janice. We are introduced to her at the bus stop one morning, where she's happily talking with Linus (it is strongly implied that the two have a mutual crush on each other). However, things start going wrong immediately. When she gets on the bus, Janice complains about how easily she gets bruised and how they don't clear up. Then, she's feeling so poorly that she doesn't want to play on the swings. Later, in the nurse's office, she learns she has a 103 fever. After that, she goes home, and it isn't for a few days until Linus and Charlie Brown learn she is in the hospital. Upon visiting her after school, they learn that she's been diagnosed with leukemia.
As I said, the decision to make a new character sick was understandable, but it also put a certain distance between the audience and the situation. That said, Schulz could have still written the character in such a way as to make us care about her, but she never really evolves past being a plot device. We learn exactly one thing about her before she starts getting sick, and most of her remaining screen time has her smiling pleasantly, while delivering batches of exposition. While Linus, Charlie Brown, Lucy, and everyone else gets to have normal human reactions, she mostly remains a serene angel.
She does get one moment of emotion, when she returns to school for the first time, wearing a cap to cover her now-bald head. When a bully cruelly rips the hat off and laughs at her lack of hair, she's mortified and starts to cry, while Linus goes into fury mode. Other than that, she seems disturbingly calm.
To be fair, after the hospital scene, she doesn't get that much more screentime. Instead, the special focuses mostly on Linus, as he goes through the emotional wringer regarding Janice's illness. In addition to standing up to the bully, he also confronts Lucy when she suggests that cancer is contagious and that Linus should avoid seeing her. In a nice scene that I wish had been a lot longer, he's able to provide a bit of comfort to Janice's older sister, even after she has an outburst about how mad she is that Janice is getting all the attention.
Indeed, even though Linus and his emotions come across as a lot more realistic than Janice's even those are somewhat shallow, as he always seems to have the right reaction in any given moment. I'd much prefer more moments like the one with Janice's sister, or another one in the hospital, when, upon learning her diagnosis, Charlie Brown blurts out "Are you going to die?" The question is grossly insensitive, and Linus rightly calls him out for asking it, but it is the question that naturally springs to mind first, particularly from an elementary school kid.
This might be a funny thing to say after both Snoopy! The Musical and It's the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown squandered their extended, one-hour runtimes, but I found myself really wishing this one was twice as long. That might have led to us getting to know Janice a bit better, and allowing her to have the emotional reaction that a 3rd grader diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease that, at the very least, is going to make her very sick should have. It could have extended that sequence with her sisters, and fully explored the idea that it is OK for the siblings of patients to have extremely conflicting emotions, not just of being scared and sad, but also of jealously and anger, not just towards the cancer, but towards their sibling and parents.
Sam Jaimes would again provide solid direction. Kaleb Henry voiced Charlie Brown for the first and only time (his only other IMDB credit is a small role in Back to the Future III). Brandon Stewart, who had voiced Linus on multiple episodes of This is America, Charlie Brown, would voice him for the only time in a special. The more interesting credits come from the guest cast. Olivia Burnette, who voiced Janice, was already a much-in-demand child actress, who would appear regularly, mostly in TV shows and made-for-TV movies, until the mid-aughts. This would mark the professional debut of Lindsey Sloane, who played Janice's sister. She would go on to have a long career, including co-starring roles on sitcoms Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and The Odd Couple.
This would be the final Peanuts special to date nominated for Animated Program (though the Apple+ series Snoopy in Space did get a Daytime Emmy nomination). Its nomination would be symbolic as to how primetime TV--and that category--was changing. Long dominated by specials, as most animated series were regulated to Saturday mornings and late afternoons, this would lose to the first season of The Simpsons. Outside of the holidays, primetime animated specials were becoming rarer (an aspect that would affect Peanuts in just a couple of years), and the medium was beginning to be dominated by series not strictly aimed at kids. This would be also nominated for The Humanitas Prize, the only Peanuts special to be so nominated until this last year, when one of the new Apple+ specials was nominated. A spin-off book was also released, with the forward being written by Paul Newman.
Why, Charlie Brown, Why was made with the best intentions, and it is considerably better than the last two specials. But good intentions do not a satisfying special make. I feel like a lot of potential went unrealized in the version we got. A more realistic emotional response from Janice and from Linus might have turned this one from merely OK to one of the all-time greats.
Next time: We've met Spike, now it's time to meet the rest of the litter in Snoopy's Reunion.
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