The funniest and most memorable tv sitcom Christmas episode that comes to my mind is the Murphy Brown one where they make a pact to not buy presents for each other. Everyone ends up in the drug store at the last second to buy presents.
(Uh, if this thread actually belongs in the IMHO forum, please let me know. I put it here because it’s about tv shows, hence, entertainment.)
Isn’t this a little late (or very early) to start this topic again? It usually comes up around Christmas.
However.
Not really a sitcom, but the best Christmas episode of any TV show ever was “So-called Angel” from"My So-Called Life." Achingly beautiful.
Maybe. But since I didn’t know about this message board (Straight Dope) until a couple of days ago, I wasn’t around to ask this in December.
Anyway, some people like to keep the Christmas spirit year-round.
That reminds me. My neighbor still has his outdoor Christmas decorations up.
It’s not a Xmas episode per se, but a ‘holiday episode’.
My favorite is a Thanksgiving episode of the old Bob Newhart show. It has all the guys going to Bob’s while Emilee is out of town. They all get drunk and order chinese food.
It’s hilarious.
Two come to mind. There’s two Frasier episodes… one when the story is told from the points of view of the main characters, and we get to see how they perceived things differently, and then there’s Merry Christmas, Mrs Moscovitz, when Frasier and his family are forced to pretend to be Jewish on Christmas Eve. Everything related to the holiday is stuffed into the bathroom, until the hapless Jewish woman goes in there to find a Rudolph wreath, an eight-foot-tall Christmas tree and Niles dressed as Jesus Christ. Hysterical.
And it’s not quite so funny, but the very first Christmas MAS*H episode is wonderfully touching… Hawkeye is dressed as Santa for the kids, but gets called out to do field surgery on a wounded soldier, and we’re treated to the sight of what looks like the real Santa Claus descending from a chopper. One of the soldier’s comrades says something like, “I told you there was a Santa Claus!”
Wonderful.
sigh Suddenly I have a hankering for Christmas pudding…
BlackAdder’s Christmas Carol was a classic.
Really lame Christmas episodes:
the Christmas Carol twists on SANFORD & SON, DUKES OF HAZZARD, & several other shows
the GIFT OF THE MAGI episode of ALICE
Hampshire:
… and get something like 22 orders of moo goo gai pan.
:smack: How could I have forgotten that one? And I call myself a Blackadder fan. Shame on me.
** Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire **. Nuff said.
The ** Days of our Lives ** tradition of hanging all the ornaments with all the family names on them gets to me every time. Especially the episode for Xmas 2001, when they hung ornaments for the NYPD, NYFD, and EMT.
MAS*H was a classic. Night Court’s was great. The Monkee’s was a good one. (I’m showing my age. Davey Jones sings a song at the end, I would love to know what that song was. It was sung in another language which my wee mind [I was quite young] thought was latin.) The first Happy Days when Richie realizes that Fonzie will be alone. Those are the ones that spring to mind, but others will probably show up later.
There were several Christmas episodes on ALL IN THE FAMILY. In one, Archie invites his friend, a Vietnam era Gold Star father, and Mike invites his friend, a draft dodger, to the same family dinner. In another the family’s drag queen friend is murdered on C’mas Eve, causing Edith to re-examine her faith. In yet another, the Bunkers visit the Stivics in California. There were probably others.
And then there was ‘Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean’. Downright hilarious.
NutMagnet:
More goo to go!!!
The “Married With Children” show which parodied “It’s A Wonderful Life”. Al’s angel was Sam Kinison, and it turned out that Peg, Kelly and Bud would be better off if Al had never been born, so Al decided to come back to life just to spite them. It first aired during that period in the late 1980s when “It’s A Wonderful Life” was in the public domain and so every TV station was showing it round the clock (or at least it seemed that way). Married With Children was the perfect antidote.
I could’ve sworn Mickey Dolenz sang that song. But I saw it in reruns as a kid, so maybe my memory is fuzzy.
One of the NewsRadio Christmas episodes is hilarious. Jimmy gives everyone but Matthew a new Miata. Matthew gets “Fibber McGee and Molly.”
Dave-“When a billionaire gives you six convertibles for Christmas, I’m pretty sure it’s in bad form to ask for a seventh.”
Matthew-“It’s just a bunch of dead people making jokes about crap falling out of a closet.”
Always makes me smile.
Heh! I knew my Monkees video collection would come in handy one day! From the back of the tape,
“The traditional 16th century Spanish Christmas carol ‘Riu Chiu’ is performed accapella by the group”
I also wanted to point out that Butch Patrick (Eddie Munster) is the actor who plays the bratty rich kid in the episode.
Riu Chiu. Thanks, I’ve wondered that for a long time!
Perhaps someone can help me out here.
I recall a Redd Foxx skit about Christmastime that touched me deeply. He played a character similar to the grouchy old man he was on ‘Sanford and Son,’ but I’m almost certain this didn’t take place on ‘Sanford and Son’ (if you follow me).
In the skit, Foxx plays a poor old man who runs off carolers and generally behaves like Ebenezer Scrooge to a multitude of people. At the end, though, he puts a wooden costumer in the middle of his dingy house/apartment, drapes a sheet over it, and puts bowties on it for decoration, then sits back and looks at it wistfully. It was incredibly poignant and sad, and I can remember tearing up when I saw it.
So can anybody tell me if this happened on his variety show, or am I mis-remembering an old ‘Sanford and Son’ episode?
I liked the grinch parody done on “Just Shoot Me” where Kelsey Grammer narrated and David Spade’s Finch was the lead.