"It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown" airs tonight on ABC, allowing us Americans to mark yet another holiday by laughing at Linus's refusal to accept reality. (If you want to hang on to your security blanket, fine. But believing in the Easter Beagle given your high IQ? That's pretty borderline, kid.)
As Peanuts cartoons go, "Easter Beagle" is a relatively decent one. I mean, Marcie's perpetual confusion about how to dye Easter eggs is a pure delight by itself. But as connoisseurs of all things Charlie Brown well know, those animated specials started to dip swiftly in quality not long after this one first aired in 1974.
So in order to help you and your little ones appreciate the finer nuances of "It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown" -- and to make "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" look even more genius than they already do -- I present the Five Peanuts TV Specials That Never Should Have Been.
5. "It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown" (First aired: 1976)
By this time, CB and the gang had already covered Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Election Day, Easter and Valentine's Day. I love trees as much as the next person, but when the Peanuts gang sinks to Arbor Day, you know Charles Schulz and co. are scraping the bottom of the holiday special barrel. To their credit, though, they never played the most desperate card in the holiday deck, thereby saving us all from "It's Flag Day, Charlie Brown."
4. "What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown!" (First aired: 1978)
Right out of the gate, the title is pretty terrible. But that aside, there's something a little odd about basing a Peanuts special on Jack London's "Call of the Wild." (And no, I'm not joking.) The fact that Snoopy gets into some vicious dog fights (see video) makes this cartoon potentially frightening for very young kids, but potentially entertaining to anyone who ever insisted that all "A Charlie Brown Christmas" needed was "more dog sled action."
3. "Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales" (First aired: 2002)
This one was invented solely to juice ratings for "A Charlie Brown Christmas," allowing the annual holiday classic to extend into an hour-long TV extravaganza. But "Christmas Tales" is clearly nothing but yuletide filler. To borrow from a question Lucy asks her blockheaded pageant director in "A Charlie Brown Christmas": "Can't you tell the difference between a good holiday special and a poor holiday special?" Yes, Lucy, we can.
2. "Snoopy's Getting Married, Charlie Brown" (First aired: 1985)
A wedding episode is always a blatant grab for ratings. But I think for everyone when I say that Charlie Brown should never, ever utter the following words: "Wake up, Snoopy ... it's time for the bachelor party."
1. "It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown" (First aired: 1984)
Wow, where to even begin with this one? How about with Peppermint Patty's attempt to imitate Jane Fonda's aerobics moves and sing her own version of Toni Basil's "Mickey," which, honestly, has to be seen to be believed? (And P.S.: What are Lucy and Schroeder doing to that pommel horse in the middle of this clip?)
Or does the utter ridiculousness that is "Flashbeagle" really start and finish with Snoopy busting out some hardcore '80s-era dance moves? It's hard to say. But I do know this much: the world is a better place when Snoopy stays perched on his doghouse and lays off the legwarmers.
