On December 15, 1999, less than ten months before the 50th anniversary of Peanuts, Charles Schulz made a stunning announcement. Because of his health issues, he had decided to retire and the strip would be coming to an end--not after the anniversary, but in a mere two weeks. Needless to say, the end of Peanuts set off a media firestorm in the midst of the holiday season, topped only by the approaching millennium and fears of the Y2K changeover. On New Year's Day 2000, the final narrative daily strip, in which Snoopy is disappointed he is unable to participate in a snowball fight with Charlie Brown, Linus, Peppermint Patty, and Marcie, ran. After a regular Sunday strip the next day, the final ever Peanuts daily strip ran on January 3, in which Schulz said goodbye next to a drawing of Snoopy on his doghouse. As the Sunday strips were produced ahead of the dailies, there were still several more weeks of them, but the last one, which repeated the final daily strip in color, and added a final drawing of Charlie Brown and a collage of the other characters from prior strips, would appear on February 13. In an especially poignant note, the planned front-page stories about the very last Peanuts strip was replaced that morning by front-page stories of the death of Schulz, who had succumbed to colin cancer the day before. Tributes poured in from around the globe, including from then-President Clinton, People Magazine put Schulz and the Peanuts characters on their cover, and in May, nearly every daily strip would honor him by referencing him, his strip, and his characters.
While his death and the end of the strip seemed to be the final chapter of his life and legacy, there was actually one more Schulz-written item left to be released. After a three-year hiatus after the straight-to-video release of It Was My Best Birthday Ever, Charlie Brown, a new half-hour special was also heading to video. Despite being the last story written by Schulz (and one that definitely did not draw heavily from adapting various strips of his), It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown didn't attract a lot of attention when it arrived on video and DVD that September, a few weeks before the 50th anniversary. That probably was for the best, though it is surprisingly an improvement over many of the previous specials.
Pied Piper broke the formula of the Peanuts specials in several ways. It was only the second one, after What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown, to primarily consist of a story-within-a-story, in this case, Charlie Brown reading Sally The Pied Piper of Hamelin, though with several modifications. For another, this special prominently featured adults onscreen, and even gave them prominent speaking roles. To be sure, this wasn't the first time we've seen adults onscreen, and wasn't even the first where they spoke in anything other than the usual trombone "wah-wahs". Adults had previously played a prominent role in several episodes of This is America, Charlie Brown. However, this is the first special where the primary villain was an adult.
After an odd cold opening which was nothing but Snoopy playing the accordion, the special starts with some sibling interaction between Charlie Brown and Sally, who is annoyed that he has yet to fulfill his promise of reading a book to her. After Charlie Brown gives her a choice of either The Pied Piper or War and Peace, she picks the former mainly because it weighed a lot less.
In Charlie Brown's interpretation of the story, the town is overrun by "sports mice" who happily scare off the inconvenient humans so they can play soccer, hockey, basketball or (in a sign this was made in the late 1990s) to break out in Irish dancing. With the townspeople demanding action, the mayor (who looks like a white-haired version of the mayor from the 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, which would occasionally serve as the lead-out special for A Charlie Brown Christmas in the 70s and 80s and which has a much more positive view of sentient mice) and the town council is helpless, at least until Charlie Brown shows up with Snoopy, dressed up like Peter Pan and playing...an accordion? Did they not read the name of their own special?
From here, the story more or less follows the outline of the original fairy tale, as Snoopy leads all the mice out of town, the mayor refuses to honor the contract he signed (calling for Snoopy to get a free year of dog food--a fairly cheap solution if you ask me), and Snoopy getting his revenge (albeit in a much more family-friendly way than the original story, though it was a twist seemingly inspired by The Music Man). The story over, we return to the real world, except for a final twist that seemingly all stories that revolve around a story-within-a-story or dream seem to contain.
For the most part, the voice cast were one-and-done with Peanuts specials, though Ashley Ender, who played Sally, has gone on to a solid career (most recently, she appeared in five episodes of Evil). The one exception is Corey Padnos, who for some reason went uncredited for voicing Linus and Schroeder. He would play Linus for the next few years. The adult voice cast was led by the legendary voice actor Frank Welker, who played the mayor. Also among the adults was another legendary voice actor, Neil Ross, and actress Joan Van Ark, most famous for Knots Landing, who had a small role as the mayor's secretary. Bill Melendez directed yet again, and in addition to providing the voice of Snoopy as he usually did, also voiced the various squawkings of the mice (it could also be argued that the mayor was intended to be a caricature of Melendez). The special looks very nice, appropriate for a cel-animated special from the early aughts.
Quality-wise, this is definitely one of the weirder Peanuts specials. That said, even if too much of the special seems like filler (Snoopy's accordion playing at the beginning, the rather drawn-out start before the story began, a lot of footage of the mice causing havoc), it is an improvement over Best Birthday as, even in the story-within-the-story format, this one actually had stakes, both in Snoopy ridding the town of the mice and his revenge when the mayor reneged on the deal. And even if its not really laugh-out-loud funny, it is frequently amusing. Indeed, this might be the best special since It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown. For whatever reason, it, like Best Birthday, does not appear to have ever been shown on TV in the United States, though like that one, it was clearly made with an eye to eventually appearing on TV.
There is, surprisingly, a lot to like in It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown. It's not a top-tier special by any means, but it is better than its reputation. This might not have been the ideal final word from one of the masters of both cartooning and animation, but it certainly better than it could have been. And in this case, that's enough.
Next time: Both the post-Schulz and the ABC era begins with A Charlie Brown Valentine.
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