TVSquad

The web has really opened the doors to the possibilities for what the networks can do. Some haven't done that much, and even the ones that do took a long time to actually harness the power of the web (and if I ever use the phrase "harness the power of the web" again you can punch me in the groin). I like it when cast members of the shows do something online that's in character but isn't just a promotion for the show.

Case in point, this video from NBC. It shows 30 Rock's Kenneth the Page in a Santa hat all excited about Christmas (and the anniversary of the "Parcell Massacre"), dancing around the 30 Rock hallways with a chair. If you're not in the Christmas mood already, this might put you over the top. McBrayer is great because he seems to be up for anything, including being knocked over by Conan O'Brien.

I'd rather watch video sketches like this than those special "webisodes" that some shows have now. More please!

It's funny how Mad Men has become such a pop culture and social phenomenon. It's on a niche cable channel, but it's still one of those shows that has infiltrated the world in so many different ways: fashion, advertising, music, other TV shows. Maybe it's the fact that it's the best show on television or maybe people want to be hip or maybe people want a return to a different time and place, but you can see influences from the show everywhere, even if you're not a regular viewer.

There has been an onslaught of advertising-related Mad Men homages, some of them lame, some of them clever. This one falls in the latter category. It's a holiday e-card from the advertising/marketing staffing agency Markinekt. It's a takeoff on the opening sequence from the show, but instead of Don Draper it features a snowman falling from the building. On the way down he passes giant cartons of Baxter Egg Nog and a woman wearing snow boots.

I wonder if this snowman has been cheating on his wife?

Before we get to this month's videos, two observations about Christmas commercials that are currently running.

The new Lexus ad where the guy remembers being a kid and getting a new Atari for Christmas and how that used to be his best gift ever until his wife said to hell with the economy I'm going to buy my husband a ridiculously audacious gift: is that Roger from Swingtown?

Second, the candle commercial where the woman buys a candle that smells like gingerbread men and then tries to trick her friends into thinking that it's not the candle but it's the gingerbread men that she just cooked even though she bought them at the store: why does she leave the candle approximately one inch from the gingerbread men? Does she think her friends wouldn't notice it?

Anyway, on to the classics...

Family Circus is widely considered to be one of the more lame comic strips. I've always found it more innocuous than irritating, though I will admit I don't think I've ever even cracked a smile after reading one of them. Some people downright hate the thing. I just can't muster the energy to care that much about it.

But that doesn't mean I can't enjoy this, A Family Circus Christmas. I don't remember the special at all (it was first shown in 1979 but I don't remember seeing it then or since then), but thankfully we have the cool folks over at X-Entertainment to guide us through it scene by scene. The reviewer (Matt) says it's a lot more heavy-handed than most Xmas shows, and deals with "death and loss and God and big pointy momma tits." It also has an invisible Santa Claus.

At the end of the review are four videos from the special.

Who would have thought that something mentioned in an episode of a sitcom nine years ago would become such a phenomenon?

Today's Boston Globe has a piece about the holiday of Festivus, the holiday-alternative first mentioned on an episode of Seinfeld in 1997. Show writer Daniel O'Keefe's family celebrated it in his home when he was a kid, and he still celebrates it today. But he's not the only one. More and more fans of the show are holding Festivus celebrations every year. O'Keefe wrote a book about it, as did Allen Salkin, and the name has become not just a pop culture craze but a real, solid holiday like any other. OK, maybe not like any other, but it's something that people are really starting to celebrate. (I can sense morons like Bill O'Reilly and John Gibson cringing - Festivus is just another war on Christmas!)

Even TV Squad celebrates it every year (the official Festivus day is December 23). Don't forget to enter our contest by midnight tonight!

CBS will air the beloved Christmas specials Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman on the same night, Friday, December 8.

Wait a second. December 8? Isn't that a little eary for a classic Christmas special? I know that every company starts to celebrate and advertise Christmas earlier and earlier every single year (this year all the stores in my area had Christmas decorations for sale right next to Halloween candy in October), but shouldn't shows this classic be aired closer to December 25, or at least repeated later in December after the December 8th airing?