Despite being one of the most important characters in Peanuts, Lucy has long gotten the short shrift in the specials. While she has played important supporting roles in any number of Peanuts productions, from A Charlie Brown Christmas on, she had never had a special center on her. Even in Play It Again, Charlie Brown, a special devoted to the Schroeder/Lucy relationship, it almost exclusively focused on the piano player. Part of the reason might be because Peppermint Patty emerged in the strip around the time the specials began appearing regularly on TV, and her character proved to be more fascinating and dynamic than Lucy's, who tends to be either crabby or ridiculously naïve. The first characteristic can make for some humorous moments, but it's hard to build a 30-minute special around Lucy being perpetually annoyed, and the latter already is covered by Marcie, Linus, and Sally, so Lucy also being guileless can seem like overkill.
It's hard to argue that Lucy is the central figure in Lucy Must Be Traded, Charlie Brown, as even though she's one of the two title characters, the other title character has a much bigger part. Still, Lucy does get considerably more screen time in this than we've seen in a while, though she doesn't really come off all that well. Then again, neither does Charlie Brown. And for that matter, neither does this special, which feels mostly warmed over.
Indeed, it's hard not to notice that this special kicks off almost identically to the last special centered around Charlie Brown's baseball team, It's Spring Training, Charlie Brown, which premiered less than a decade earlier. Once again, we have Charlie Brown visiting his snow-covered pitcher's mound, wondering about the upcoming season. Somewhat improbably, he concludes that the entire problem with this team is his right fielder, Lucy. Make no mistake, Lucy is incompetent, but she's not much worse than any other player on the team (with the exception of Snoopy)--particularly Charlie Brown, who in heaping all of his ire on her fails to notice that his rather woeful pitching and his team's lack of both offence and defense might have more to do with their constant failure than Lucy does.
Once spring arrives and the season begins, things progress in an expected manner, with Charlie Brown's team getting blown out in every game, including multiple incidents when batted balls knock Charlie Brown out of most of his clothes. As the special seems to be adapted from numerous unconnected strips revolving around baseball, there's not much plot around this time, except that Charlie Brown's team keeps losing, and losing, and losing.
In the back end of the special, there are a couple of whisps of plot, one involving Charlie Brown arranging to trade his best player--namely Snoopy--to Peppermint Patty's team in exchange for five of her players. This is met with extreme opposition from Snoopy, as well as Schroeder and Linus. Later on, after that deal falls through, we finally get the titular storyline, as Peppermint Patty agrees to take Lucy off of his hands in exchange for Marcie. As it turns out, Marcie is possibly even worse. She is much nicer than Lucy is, of course, but she prefers to hang out on the pitcher's mound with "Charles" rather than actually play (indeed, she proclaims multiple times that she hates baseball). Of course, the special ends where it much, with status quo restored. It should be mentioned that this seems to take place in a different continuity than It's Spring Training, as the uniforms and sponsorship the team earned in that special are now gone, and the team is back to having never won a game (it should be noted that Peppermint Patty's team also doesn't have uniforms). There is a nice nod to the very first Peanuts baseball special, Charlie Brown's All-Stars, on the field's scoreboard.
The voice cast from Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales returns for this one, though it is the last Peanuts outing for Wesley Singleman, Serena Berman, Megan Taylor Harvey, and Chrystopher Ryan Johnson. Only Corey Padnos, the voice of Linus, would stick around for one more special. Joining the cast for one Peanuts special only is Daniel Hansen as Peppermint Patty and Melissa Montoya as Marcie. Hansen and Singleman would be reunited a few years later when they would voice the two lead characters in the Disney film Meet the Robinsons.
Technical credits mostly stayed the same from last time as well, except that Bill Melendez co-directs the special with Larry Leichliter, who solo directed Christmas Tales. Oddly, there is no writing credit at all. The opening credits credit Charles Schulz with "created by", but give no indication who actually put pen to paper (or, more likely put fingers to keyboard) to write it.
While it is great to see that ABC was (at least for a short time) willing to finance new specials, the lack of real creative direction after the death of Schulz is clearly starting to take its toll, somewhat ironically as the specials had creatively stagnated well before Schulz passed away. Lucy Must Be Traded, Charlie Brown is very watchable, and mildly amusing, but it also feels warmed over and unnecessary. In other words, its pretty much a typical Peanuts special at this point in time.
Next week: Rerun--yes, Rerun--gets a special centered around him, specifically the second holiday special in two years, in I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown.
No comments:
Post a Comment