Compared to The Star Wars Holiday Special, this may as well be a holiday classic.
Here are a few things you should obviously know by now:
-Donuts are plentiful.
-Don’t whizz on the electric fence.
-Capcom originally put Chuck Norris in Street Fighter II, but removed him after beta testers discovered that every button caused him to do a roundhouse kick. When asked about this "glitch," Norris replied, "That's no glitch."
-The Star Wars Holiday Special sucks and isn’t worth watching.
If it was done right, the Star Wars Holiday Special would have been awesome. But on November 17, 1978, anyone who tuned into CBS at 8pm wound up seeing a huge turd.
First off, here’s the good... well, the “not so bad”
-The official debut of Boba Fett.
-That Jefferson Starship song was better than Carrie Fisher’s singing. And they didn’t go with the Bee Gees (it was 1978, after all).
-Since it was 1978, Jar Jar Binks is nowhere to be found.
-When the stormtroopers bust into the Wookie house, it almost seems like they heard there was a bad holiday special going on and went to put an end to it.
Now, let’s get into the suck. We’re introduced to Chewbacca’s family - his wife, his father, and his son. Long stretches of the show focus on the family talking in Wookie speak, and there aren’t enough visual cues for one to easily figure out what’s going on. I have to applaud whoever watched this long enough to write a proper synopsis on the special’s Wikipedia page, and I also wonder how masochistic they are.
Also, Chewbacca’s son is ANNOYING.
Less annoying than Chewbacca’s son.
Also less annoying.
I had to think about this for a few minutes, but he’s also less annoying. Which says a LOT.
A few lame attempts at comedy relief are thrown in every now and then. For example, Harvey Korman appears as a four-armed female chef. I kid you not.
Not pictured above: Harvey Korman in drag. Hope you don’t mind seeing Olivia Munn in Leia's slave bikini instead.
Since I didn’t include a photo, imagine a crude drawing of Mom from Futurama that’s worse than anything you’ll find on deviantart. Throw in some really poor Julia Child and Swedish Chef impressions, and that pretty much sums it up. Later on, Bea Arthur appears as a bartender in a cantina, where Korman is seen once again as an alien who consumes drinks by pouring them into a hole on the top of his head.
The biggest “WTF?“ moment in the special is when Chewbacca’s father uses an interactive virtual reality device to watch Diahann Caroll with a dress and hairstyle Lady Gaga would love. She talks about how she’s his “fantasy” before singing a song. Let’s just say it’s like walking in on someone while they’re watching a porn flick. The viewer even has the misfortune of seeing the Wookie’s grunts and facial expressions. I wish I was kidding. Did we really have to see a Wookie’s o-face?
There’s also an animated sequence of one of Chewbacca’s adventures. Here, any 1978 viewer who hadn’t flipped to another channel by this point got to see Boba Fett for the first time (which is like giving someone a single M&M after they got kicked in the crotch). It’s the only thing that comes somewhat close to being any bit as good as the worst part of Episode I.
No, this was not stolen from deviantart.
Also, there isn’t enough Darth Vader, Carrie Fisher sings (if you’ve ever wondered why she didn’t have a singing role in The Blues Brothers, there you go), none of the attempts at humor are the least bit funny, the whole thing goes on longer than it should, and.... wait, I just realized that I’m putting more effort into this than what was put into the special. Time to end this.
The POS only aired on television once and George Lucas has made it clear that he will NEVER release it on home video (which says a lot). He has even gone as far to say that he’d destroy every copy if he had the time and a sledgehammer. So if you’re morbidly curious (and/or masochistic) enough to check this out, you’re going to have to watch someone’s recording from 31 years ago.
As I said earlier, this could have been awesome. However, due to the execution...
Merry Christmas, everyone.
