IMDb rating: 9.1 out of 10
For the past four years, I've attempted to post as many Christmas movie reviews as I can during December. The first year, it was easy to find material. Everybody remembers The Santa Clause and Home Alone. But every year it gets a little bit harder. Yes, there are plenty more out there, but the effort required has increased.
So, this holiday season, rather than shovel ever deeper into the garbage heap of obscure Hallmark Channel Christmas movies, I've decided to do something a little different. I'm going to review all the world's most important Yuletide-themed TV episodes. Next year, it's back to the shovel.
Doug was a pillar of American culture during my childhood. Douglas Yancey Funnie was a kid everyone could relate to: conscientious, friendly, imaginative, bald, lacking in self-assurance but always willing and able to do the right thing. And like most children, he wore a green sweater vest and khaki short pants every day of his life. The show is obviously fondly remembered, as the IMDb rating for this episode attests.
Aside from the Funnie family, the town of Bluffington was peopled by a memorable cast of multi-colored characters: Doug's gadget-loving, spendthrift neighbor Mr. Dink and his long-suffering wife Tippy; blue-blooded Beebe Bluff and her doting father Bill; no-nonsense assistant principal (and Don Knotts impersonator) Lamar Bone; oddballs Al and Moo Sleech and their dad the doughnut maestro. And of course there were Doug's schoolmates, including Patti, Roger Klotz, and Skeeter.
But the focus of the Christmas episode was Doug's best friend (non-human, that is), Pork Chop the Dog. During a game of pine cone hockey on a frozen lake, Pork Chop rushes to the rescue to prevent Beebe Bluff from falling through thin ice. Beebe doesn't understand the danger, and Pork Chop can't talk, so he has to resort to the emergency measure of biting Beebe on the ankle and dragging her to safety.
Oblivious to Pork Chop's benign motivations, Bill Bluff presses charges against him, and Doug's cries for due process fall on deaf ears, as the apathetic Bluffingtonians refuse to lend any support. The outlook is grim for poor Pork Chop, who faces a hanging judge and a crusade by radio host and former mayor Robert "Bob" White, who makes the trial his cause célèbre, seeking to win back City Hall by clamoring for the death penalty. The prosecutor is likewise out for blood, and she calls an expert in canine psychiatry to paint Pork Chop as a slavering brute.
This is all pretty intense for a Christmas episode of a kids' show. I'm not kidding about the death penalty—there's even a fantasy sequence where Doug pictures Pork Chop's headstone. It's especially disturbing since Pork Chop is basically a human being: his dog house has a refrigerator and a television; he clearly understands English and knows how to read and write; he once held down a summer job doing yard work; and in one episode he even manages to say "hello" over the phone. But one bite on the ankle and he's headed for death row. And he doesn't even have benefit of counsel, human or otherwise.
Fortunately, Doug musters up his inner Clarence Darrow and persuades the judge not to pass sentence until visiting the scene of the crime. There, remarkably, history repeats itself when Beebe tries to reenact the events of the fateful day. Pork Chop has to save her for a second time, this time going so far as to plunge into the Stygian lake after her. The tide of fickle public opinion turns at once, and the townspeople who moments ago wanted his head now cheer for Pork Chop. "The greatest hero Bluffington has ever known," Bill Bluff calls him.
A giant and a saint walked in that four-legged body. And we, who tread in his pawprints, are the richer for it, and the better, and the wiser.
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