Every year I dread the end of the fall season. All the first-run shows wrap it up until sometime in the spring, and suddenly network television is nothing but stale seasonal fare, peppered by “Makes a Great Holiday Gift” commercials and health care enrollment reminders.
I would like to see one network that would have the guts to designate itself a Holiday Free Zone, with no sitcoms trying to pull off a December-centric episode, no jingle bells in the background of every soundtrack and no deadpan readings of season’s greetings by the station staff (many of whom would probably rather stay on the non-lens side of the camera).
As it is, I’m binge-watching Game of Thrones with somebody, and we just realized that we will be caught up in three weeks and have to wait until sometime in spring for the sixth season.
Some networks, like Hallmark Channel, have produced so many holiday movies, they probably have 365 of them and could run one a night. They could call themselves the Hallmark Holiday Channel.
Sure, some holiday movies are classics we don’t want to miss and those old Rankin-Bass stop motion animated specials with Rudolph, Frosty and company are not going away anytime soon. But when do we really see the shows we want? Why don’t they bring back some of the classic cheesy specials like the Star Wars special? What about the best special ever, featuring John Denver and the Muppets? Oh, don’t get me started on that one. That has to be one of the most mysterious missing Christmas specials in modern history, with no plans ever having been–or to be–made to release it on DVD or broadcast it again, for reasons unknown.
That’s one of the problems with the holidays: we get a lot of stuff thrown at us, but most of it we don’t really need.
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