Once again, we’ve compiled all of our Something Weird segments from last year.
In these clips, we discuss saying “Christmas gift,” K-mart’s Christmas programming, the science behind Rudolph’s red nose, Vic Berger’s Paula Deen Christmas edits, Christmas Movie Bot on Twitter, the Christmas sandwich, Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas, and Frosty the Slaw Man.
The segments here are not complete, so be sure to check out the episodes in Season Two to hear Something Weird in its entirety.
Early Edition is a show that I just started watching this summer. It originally aired from 1996 to 2000, which was college for me, and the only TV shows I watched during that time were Seinfeld, Wings, King of Queens, and Everybody Loves Raymond. But I’m a big Kyle Chandler fan (Clear eyes, full hearts!), and I also love the city of Chicago, so I finally made it a point to jump into this one recently.
If you aren’t familiar with the show, Chandler plays a guy named Gary, who gets the next day’s Chicago Sun-Times delivered to him each morning (by a creepy cat!) and spends each day deciding which people he will save based on the future news stories. It’s sort of a mix of Quantum Leap, Back to the Future, and 11.22.63. If you like all of those as much as I do, you may dig this.
I started watching this a couple of weeks ago with no real knowledge of what to expect throughout the four-season run, and when I clicked on episode 11 last night, I was pleasantly surprised to find it was a Christmas episode. In fact, “Christmas” is the title of the episode, which originally aired on December 21, 1996 (only six days after I saw Ash and Weezer in New Orleans on the Pinkerton tour).
Christmas aside, this is probably my least favorite episode of the series so far. But as a holiday episode, it’s not bad.
The show is set on Christmas Eve, and there are two main plots. In one storyline, Gary is helping the police track down the Teddy Bear Bomber, who will be setting off a bomb in a public place, according to Gary’s newspaper. However, the headlines change each time Gary and the cops arrive at the supposed scenes. In the other plot, Chuck gets thrown in jail for unpaid parking tickets, and his cellmate may or may not be Santa.
The two plots converge at the end, when the Teddy Bear Bomber finds Gary and Detective Crumb at McGinty’s Bar. Chuck and Santa soon enter the bar as well, looking for a place to hide from the police after breaking out of jail.
The episode has the typical decorations and music you would expect from a show that takes place on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, most of the music is pretty generic, but we do get Rosemary Clooney’s “White Christmas,” which is the first thing that really hit me with that true Christmas feeling this summer.
But the main thing that makes this a Christmas episode is the presence of Santa, played by the awesome M. Emmet Walsh, who we last saw as Walt Scheel in Christmas With the Kranks. His spin on Santa is a little different, and he certainly could just be a deranged lunatic. You just can’t tell.
In the end, Christmas comes after all, of course, and that’s really all you need. It’s worth a watch for Kyle Chandler, M. Emmet Walsh, Christmas, and the magic newspaper.
Snow in Southtown Christmas Podcast 