TVSquad

Like most people in the known universe, I grew up with Charlie Brown. In addition to watching all the TV specials, my family amassed a fairly large collection of the paperback Peanuts books and even a few nice hardcovers. Family friendly graphic novels, you might call them.

So I was pretty excited to learn that Warner Home Video was releasing a lot of the TV specials, both individually and in collections. On Oct. 20, the Peanuts 1970's Collection, Vol. 1 will hit store and cyber shelves in a 2-disc set. A nice publicist sent me an advance copy, so I'm happy to devote this week's Jane After Dark to this lovely set.

I'm always harping on all the sex and violence on TV right now -- often in shows that bill themselves as family friendly -- so it's really nice to have something you can watch with your kids that you know won't contain anything offensive or off-color. Not only that, the stories usually have a moral lesson, but they don't whack you over the head with it. It's more subtle, wrapped up in the humor and innocence of the stories and characters.

Running a very close second to A Charlie Brown Christmas as one of my favorite television specials of all time, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown will air on ABC October 27 at 8 pm. The special will be followed by a bonus cartoon in which Linus runs for class president. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Halloween special in which wise but naive Linus tries to tell everyone about The Great Pumpkin, a mystical creature who rises from the pumpkin patch to deliver toys to all the good children. Charles Schulz originally came up with the idea for the Peanuts comic strip as a gag in which Linus confuses Halloween with Christmas. Actually, the name "Charlie Brown" in the title is kind of misleading, since Linus is the real star of this special. You still gotta feel bad for ol' Chuck getting all those rocks in his treat bag, though.

I have a very deeply ingrained love for Charles Schulz and his Peanuts creation. If I were so inclined, I could bore you to tears right now with all the reasons I admire it so much, but I won't. I did want to let you know, however, that It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown will air on ABC this evening at 7p.m. CST. This particular Peanuts special doesn't quite stand up to It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and  A Charlie Brown Christmas, but it's still a fun special with lots of great gags, especially the one involving Marcie trying to make Easter eggs and having no idea how to do it. She tries frying them, boiling the yolks, and at one point cracks some eggs into the toaster. The plot is similar to Great Pumpkin, except this time Linus tries to convince everyone the Easter Beagle is coming to give eggs to all the children. There's also a subplot in which Snoopy tries to build a new home for Woodstock. Not as much of a "must see" as Pumpkin and Christmas, but still worth checking out if you're a fan of such specials.

I've been a great admirer of Charles Schulz and Peanuts for most of my life. The simplistic drawings, complex characters, not to mention the profound sadness and unrequited love that propelled the strip drew me in as a youngster and remain affecting even today. The existential humor of the strip, the core of which was Charlie Brown's Sisyphusian existence, also expanded to the early television specials, including A Charlie Brown Christmas, which turns 40 this year. I make a point of watching the show every year, and can become quite agitated if I miss it. While I still admire other classics like Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (Burl Ives' soothing, grandfatherly voice is one of those harbingers of Christmas I always look forward to) I will run several red lights and cause massive traffic accidents just to make it home in time to see A Charlie Brown Christmas. It's easy to forget after forty years just how groundbreaking the show was. When it was conceived, many thought an animated Christmas special with religious overtones centering on a chronically depressed child would fail, but the naysayers were proven wrong, and what might have been a gaudy, diluted version of the strip became an animated study in spirituality and human compassion that, years later, can still warm the heart of a secular person such as myself.