Child’s Play: Kid-Friendly Streaming Round Up

With only two weeks left of Skeleton Crew, you may be wondering what other great kid-friendly shows won’t bore you out of your mind while you watch with the core audience.  I thought I’d weigh in with a few family shows that you will actually enjoy watching.

Young Jedi Adventures (Disney+)

If you’ve been enjoying Skeleton Crew and you’re looking for more Star Wars to watch, Young Jedi Adventures would be a good first stop.  Set 300 years before the original trilogy, this adorable cartoon centers on three Jedi younglings who are sent to a Jedi Temple on an outer rim planet called Tenoo (finally, it’s not about a familiar desert planet or a facsimile thereof, though Tatooine does make an appearance at one point) for training and gaining a deeper understanding of the galaxy.  While it’s no Hilda on the storytelling level, one of the big things I look for in a kids’ show is whether it’s just mindless entertainment and bright colors or if it actually surreptitiously teaches kids lessons about the world.  And we’ve come a long way from the PSAs at the end of GI Joe and Inspector Gadget.  The show follows the headstrong and heroically named Kai Brightstar, animal lover Lys Solay, and a small blue teddy bear creature called Nubs, who is almost too cute and loves plants, as they go on low stakes missions throughout the galaxy. 

One of the most notable things about it is how much it stresses compassion, not only for others, but for yourself as well.  The younglings are praised for asking for help when they need it, they go out of their way to help anyone in need, even antagonists, and they approach every problem with an openness that adult-focused media often doesn’t have.  Yes, there’s swashbuckling adventure, but unlike Clone Wars and even Rebels, which toned down the violence considerably, it’s a completely bloodless affair, even when the lightsabers come out.  And the villains aren’t so evil most of the time, with the kids choosing to try to reason with them (with mixed results) before other options are considered.  One of the main antagonists of the show is a helmeted child pirate called Taborr (who is revealed to have a complicated backstory himself) and there have been many times where he and Kai not only go head to head, but have to cooperate in order to make it through shared adversity.  I know, in a world of pirates and warrior monks with mystical powers, a focus on children may seem off, but if we can suspend the disbelief enough to let Pokemon inhabit a world where 10 year olds wandering the wilderness on their own with magic animals are best suited to be heroes, then I think we can give Young Jedi Adventures a pass for putting its protagonists in peril.  I mean, if you’ve been paying attention, you already knew the Jedi had no problem using child soldiers.  But unlike much of Star Wars media, this takes place during a time of peace, where pirates and profiteers are the biggest nuisances, allowing these kids to be kids first—going out on adventures with their friends, exploring the galaxy the way kids on the boring planet we live on would explore their backyards or neighborhoods. 

One other thing that’s really remarkable about the show is how effortlessly diverse it is.  Their friend and local pilot (also a kid, named Nash Durango), has two moms, one of the younglings uses they/them pronouns, and the cast is full of different races and genders (as well as species), and it’s never a point of contention nor is it ever pointed out.  It’s just the way things are and it’s accepted and normal, which, frankly, is how it should be.  It’s a very sweet show that has some genuinely interesting storylines and some good things to say about the world.  This is one you can feel good about letting your kids watch and enjoy watching it with them as well.

Dragons: Race to the Edge (Netflix)

If you’re already familiar with the How to Train Your Dragon series, this one should be an easy sell.  Picking up the story between the first and second movies, Hiccup finds a device that is full of information about different dragon species, using specific triggers to allow him to see it.  It’s a very Uncharted style device that Hiccup calls the Dragon’s Eye.  This kickstarts a new quest to discover dragons, leading him and the other riders of Berk to find a suitable island to establish a forward operating base they call Dragon’s Edge.  This sets off a series of adventures and misadventures, with the dragon riders muddling their way through complicated issues without having the immediate safety net of Stoick and Gobber.  It also expands the lore and the world of the series in delightful and compelling ways. 

They come across new breeds, new allies, villains new and old, and Hiccup and company have to deal with them pretty much on their own.  It’s almost like the kids are off to college and have to be adults for the first time, only coming home on break to do some laundry and get a little advice now and then.  Much like the movies, which were a hit with children and adults alike, the show maintains the same level of depth of writing that will allow adults to properly enjoy the show with plenty of sight gags and goofs for the kids to be kept more than happy.  All the familiar characters are there with some substitute voice actors (Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse return, Kristen Wiig does not, sadly TJ Miller does, and Zack Pearlman seamlessly steps in as Snotlout), however none of the new voices are ever distracting.  The series ran for six seasons and much like Avatar: The Last Airbender, the show grows in depth and seriousness as it progresses, allowing its younger viewers to grow up with it and adult viewers to appreciate it even more.

The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (Disney+)

I don’t know if this show flew under the radar back when it came out in 2010, but I didn’t discover it until a few years later when it briefly streamed on Netflix, and with Marvel Rivals dominating my Twitch feed and game time, I’ve revisited this series myself.  Debuting as 20 micro-episodes on Disney XD, it was flying high on the popularity of 2008’s Iron Man and was way before MCU fatigue made everyone tired of Marvel movies.  Though the show takes inspiration from a lot of the original Stan Lee and Jack Kirby comics, it also integrates some later stories and even some MCU plot points and character designs.  What originally starts off with a very The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo premise, with a mass breakout from SHIELD’s supervillain prisons leading to the formation of the Avengers to catch them, it doesn’t adhere strictly to this formula and instead weaves in and out of more varied storylines.  But the writing is snappy, with some fun lines I quote to this day (to no one who recognizes them, because I’ve never met a single person who has seen the show), with good comedy and some serious stories as well.  The friction between Tony Stark and Hank Pym’s Ant-Man is palpable, with Pym being a staunch pacifist focused on villain rehabilitation and diplomatically ending conflict and Stark being an arrogant billionaire war profiteer turned arrogant superhero whose number one solution to every problem is to blast it with his repulsor beams. 

The heroes you know and love are here, but not always in the way you’d expect to see them if your main experience with Marvel characters is the MCU.  Hawkeye is on the run after Black Widow frames him as a Hydra agent.  Bruce Banner is hunted by General Ross and the Hulkbuster unit and haunted by The Hulk, wanting desperately to show himself not as a monster, but as a hero.  Captain America is struggling with the big thaw and doesn’t know whether he should trust SHIELD or not (as per usual, the answer with shadowy militarized government agencies is a resounding no).  It’s got a great deal of action as well, though the violence never gets turned up too high unless they’re going against robot enemies—at that point, all bets are off, and they hack, slash, smash, and blast with reckless abandon.  And since the licensing works out differently in this cartoon world than in the MCU films, characters like Spider-Man and Wolverine get to make an appearance as well and join in on the fun occasionally, which is nice.  I won’t go so far as to say Avengers: EMH is as good as Batman: The Animated Series, but it doesn’t lag too far behind, with an 8.3 IMDB rating compared to the (still underrated) 9.0 of Batman: TAS.  One area where it does fall behind though, is the opening sequence; the theme song is an ear worm, but after all these years, I’m still not sure if it’s in a good way or not, whereas the TAS opening is one of the best of all time.  Sadly, the show was cancelled after just two seasons, leaving some storylines unfinished, but what is there is well worth your time.

Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous/Chaos Theory (Netflix)

A few years ago, I wrote about how disappointing it was that one of the best blockbusters and indeed one of the best action/adventure movies of all time, Jurassic Park, never had a sequel that even came close to living up to its lofty standards.  In that post, I spoke briefly about Camp Cretaceous, the unlikely story of six young teens who were left behind in the events of Jurassic World, but since then, that story has concluded, in a way, and continued on in the form of Chaos Theory, a side story in the run up to Jurassic World: Dominion.  When Camp Cretaceous came out, the kinetic storytelling and cliffhanger endings of every episode kept you wanting more and Chaos Theory is no different.  Time jumping a few years ahead, the kids are older, now about college-aged, with the complications that come with that, as well as living in a world where they’re semi-famous for surviving the island (they’re known as the “Nublar Six”; and again, these are shows with great representation in media, which is always wonderful to see), oh, and also, there are dinosaurs roaming the Earth in the aftermath of Fallen Kingdom.  In addition to all that, it seems like someone is hunting them down one by one, which sucks, honestly.  I had a hard enough time making it to morning classes when I was in undergrad; add an assassination conspiracy to the mix and there’s no way in hell I’d have been sitting in Accounting 100 at 8AM three times a week. 

Now, unlike Young Jedi Adventures, this is not a strictly bloodless affair, as the shows rack up a considerable body count.  However, there is little to no onscreen gore—the camera always cuts away at the last moment, but it often takes the time to show the faces of the kids, traumatized and terrified, as they watch a nature documentary run amok right in front of them.  For the level of violence here—and the lack of separation from our own reality (I understand dinosaurs are extinct, but the shows and the movies take place in our world, not a different galaxy), I would recommend it more for older kids than Young Jedi Adventures and perhaps even older than viewers of EMH.  I certainly wouldn’t want to be responsible for explaining what that snapping sound is when the dinosaur has its sharp teeth around a protagonist’s father’s head and why his son looks so horrified.  Despite the TV-Y7 rating, this might be better suited for kids that are slightly older than that, maybe closer to 10.  But then again, I saw Jurassic Park in the theaters when I was 7 and that had a man being eaten while on the toilet.  I turned out okay, right?  But, despite that caveat, these two series manage to be more compelling, more interesting, and more fun to watch than the Jurassic World films, as they prepare to disappoint Jurassic Park fans for the fourth time with Rebirth (I want to be wrong about this one, but I’m not hopeful I will be).

Fear and Punching in Reno

Last week, I did something I haven’t done in years and went to the movies.  I missed it, I really have.  I used to love going to the movies, it was my refuge; I would wait for a film to be out for a few weeks, then try to find a weekday to go and watch an early showing in what would usually end up being a mostly private theater (when I went to see Wonder Woman in 2017, I was in the theater with a single other person; we both liked it).  I saw Sonic the Hedgehog 3, but that’s not what I’m writing about today—but spoiler alert, I thought it was great.  Easily the best of the three Sonic movies, and I did like all three, even though the first one was a confusing fusion of a road trip movie and an Olive Garden commercial.  But I’m not here to talk about that; I left my notebook in the car and just enjoyed the film as a regular moviegoer.  What it did was remind me of the Paramount+ series Knuckles, so I rewatched it, pen in hand.

On the surface, Knuckles doesn’t really make any sense.  It’s a strange concept from the get-go.  Even discounting all the strange decisions in the Sonic movies, focusing a six episode series on Knuckles and Adam Pally’s character Wade Whipple was a decision a cut above in strangeness over the others.  I couldn’t really understand who the show was for—the music ran older, lots of 70s, 80s, and 90s music make up the soundtrack, the pivotal challenge for Wade is a bowling tournament, and for Knuckles, it’s boredom.  At least at first.

Knuckles is having trouble adjusting to life after his purpose has been fulfilled following the events of Sonic 2 and the mundanity of the suburbs is kind of driving him insane (I know how he feels; once I leave the concrete comforts of the city and the sirens begin to fade, I start to slowly lose my mind).  Who among us hasn’t wanted to turn their surrogate parents’ living room into a gladiator pit for the family pet to finally go mano-a-doggo with his greatest nemesis, the mailman?  Too much time in even the most idyllic of scenery can drive a person—or echidna—mad, I tell you.

After the incident with the mailman, Knuckles is grounded and in a state of meditation, has a vision of a tribal elder Chief Pachacamac (Christopher Lloyd voicing a character whom I will be referring to as Chief Doc Brown from here on) from beyond the grave.  Chief Doc Brown tells Knuckles that his new purpose is to train Wade Whipple to become a true warrior and win the Tournament of Champions, the aforementioned bowling competition.  When we cut to Wade, he is indeed bowling with his best friend Jack Sinclair (played by Julian Barratt, from Mindhorn and one of my favorite, too short-lived series, Truth Seekers), a writer and bounty hunter who talks like a Baldur’s Gate character, against a Girl Scout who proceeds to beat Wade when he chokes on the final frame.  Jack kicks Wade off the team in favor of little Susie and he is humiliated.  Knuckles attempts to train him and they embark on a journey to what is apparently the heart of the bowling world, Reno, Nevada.  Why road trips are such a staple in a series about a little hedgehog who is best known for running really fast, I have no idea, but I can’t say that I mind it.  But, as the pair leaves Green Hills, things start to come into focus.  Two rogue GUN agents, Willoughby and Mason, whom you might know as Sassy from Ted Lasso and Kid Cudi from Westworld and being Kid Cudi, respectively, track him for an arms dealer in order to capture Knuckles so he can use his energy to create more weapons.  Similar to Vulture in the MCU Spider-Man films, cleaning up after the superheroes’ wake of destruction, he has been using the quills left behind by Sonic and Knuckles to supercharge futuristic weaponry.  The dealer is played by the always imposing Game of Thrones alum Rory McCann and known only as “The Buyer”.

As Wade and Knuckles bond over their shared loss—in this case, Knuckle’s dead echidna tribe, leaving him the last of the echidnas, and Wade’s father abandoning him as a child in a TJ Maxx, leaving him in a state of arrested development, bumbling man-child.  Wade takes Knuckles to a bowling alley so he can show the little red guy his battleground.  Agents Sassy and Kid Cudi show up using specialized quill-powered weapons The Buyer gave them and they capture Knuckles, leaving Wade as his only hope.  Wade has to decide to step up or let his friend fend for himself.  As you can imagine, he decides to step up, become the warrior Knuckles says he can be, and go save his furry friend.

But that doesn’t mean things go smoothly.

If you’re thinking that this is all weird, you’re not alone.  Many times while watching this show, I thought to myself “What am I watching?”, but I never quite wanted to look away.  As the story unfolds, Knuckles and Wade’s collective journey only worked to endear them both more to me.  Now, I’m an odd one when it comes to these franchise characters, it seems.  When I was a kid, I always preferred to play as Luigi to Mario and as Tails to Sonic.  And when Sonic & Knuckles came out, I was thrilled to play as Knuckles and played as him as much as I could and I was very happy with Idris Elba’s portrayal in Sonic 2, so he had a leg up in the endearment category.  Elba’s deadpan delivery almost always works for laughs and never feels forced, overdone, or cheap.  I could not have been happier with Knuckles, in both Sonic 2 and the Knuckles series.  But pairing him with and centering the story on Adam Pally’s Wade Whipple, the incompetent sheriff’s deputy who was equal parts Barney Fife and Launchpad McQuack?  Actually, when I put it that way, I can see why the character works for me.  But I never thought he’d make the jump from funny side character to properly endearing co-lead and I’m glad he did.  Because while I tried to peg down the reason why I enjoyed Knuckles so much, I kept getting the feeling that they made the show kind of for me.  The whole Sonic movie franchise is aimed pretty well at 90s kids, even including a gag in the new movie where someone has to blow on a USB drive to get it to work, and this is no different.  This wild fever dream of a show just felt like something they plucked out of my mind when I was a kid and put it directly on a streaming service.  The choice of music reminds me of the songs I heard growing up.  Not always ones that I sought out and listened to myself, like Real Life’s “Send Me An Angel” which features heavily in an episode, but ones that I heard around.  On the radio, in TV shows and movies, when parents of other kids would play music, etc.  When Knuckles and Wade roll down the street on a motorcycle to “Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta” by Geto Boys (censored, obviously), it took me back to the first time I heard it in Office Space and immediately went to Napster to find a copy to listen to in Winamp.  Now, if you don’t know what any of those words mean, I don’t blame you.  But you may not connect with this show the same way I did.

The series has many ups and downs, with characters being placed in peril and rescued in a game of hostage-taking musical chairs (in addition to Knuckles being pursued by the rogue GUN agents, a bounty is placed on Wade’s head, and you may remember that his friend who kicked him off the bowling team has a whiff of Boba Fett about him), which keeps it from getting stale episode to episode.  There are a lot of quick payoffs that keep the story moving; it’s not trying to be Twin Peaks where one central conflict drives the whole show and red herrings and dead ends act as barriers to resolving it.  It’s fluid, it’s dynamic, it jumps genres sometimes—in one episode Wade has a vision of Chief Doc Brown culminating in a full on, properly epic stage rock opera which tells Knuckles’s backstory with the help of Michael Bolton’s singing.  I may not have been a theater kid, but it was one of the most entertaining pieces of television I’ve seen all year.

But the show isn’t all silliness and nostalgia, there are some genuinely touching moments as well, like when Wade goes to ground at his mother’s house just in time for Shabbat dinner and Knuckles shares his story with her and she relates it to the story of Moses, with the two of them fighting side by side to keep the Shabbat candles lit.  Some of it is played for comedy effectively, but there’s a heart to the show that’s undeniable.  And to do something that can move you in the midst of such a preposterous story is, frankly, impressive.  Seeing Wade’s journey, seeing Knuckles find a new way through life, it mirrors what regular people struggle through when faced with everyday adversity and how they get through it.  It’s surprisingly relatable storytelling and I really commend that.  It could have been off the wall insanity constantly, Aqua Teen Hunger Force style, and that would have been fine, I probably would have enjoyed that too.  But that they went just that bit further and wrote in parts that could easily have been cheesy but are actually nice instead, well, that’s really great.  It’s, again, a kind-hearted, joyful show in a time when that’s needed.  It just clicked with me and I seriously doubt this will be the last time that I watch it.

Now, I can’t promise you that you’ll like it, I don’t think it’s for everyone.  It’s not like it’s a masterpiece like The Penguin or a perfectly crafted comedy-thriller like Bad Monkey, but it is a truly surprising delight that I enjoyed more than I ever thought I would.  If you enjoyed the Sonic movies, Knuckles is well worth your time, or even if your kids just like them and want to watch, you have pretty good reason to stick around and watch it with them.  Plus, cameos from Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer in a reference to Dodgeball, what more could you want?

As this is the last post of the year, I want to let you know that I won’t be doing a Game of the Year post this year because I basically only played Astro Bot, which I positively adored, older games like Forza Horizon 5, and games that infuriate me on the reg, like EA Sports FC 25 (or whatever it’s called, we all know it’s FIFA by any other name).  In addition to that little housekeeping, I would like to wish you all a truly Happy New Year and all the best once the calendar ticks over.  What happens between now and then isn’t on me, you’re on your own until the 1st.  Thank you all for being here, thank you all for coming back week after week, thank you for sharing this blog with your friends.  After a long unplanned hiatus, 2024 became far and away my biggest year since I first started this as a little car blog 12 years ago and relaunched with a media focus in 2019.  I have you all to thank for that and I really, truly, deeply do.  See you next year!

Pacific Northwestern Exposure

Maybe it’s impossible to catch lightning in a bottle—look at how hard it is to follow up great projects with sequels.  Look at how bad Iron Man 2 was compared to Iron Man.  But sometimes, the third time is the charm.  I mean, not Iron Man 3, but it was an improvement at least.

Okay, that’s enough of the idiomatic cliches, but I do want to talk to you about St. Denis Medical, the follow-up to the follow-up from Superstore creator Justin Spitzer.  After suffering through 2021’s American Autos, which felt like it was written in 2016, I thought that perhaps Superstore was a fluke.  I could tell American Autos was trying to recapture the magic of Superstore, even drafting in Jon Barinholtz (brother of the reliably hilarious Ike), who probably had the highest joke hit rate in the show, for a bigger role.  But it didn’t work and while it managed a second season, I still don’t understand how.  It left me skeptical when I saw commercials for Spitzer’s new show.

But St. Denis Medical rights the ship with aplomb.  It’s not about the doctor’s office in Red Dead Redemption 2 where Arthur helps a doctor amputate an injured man’s limb, but rather a struggling, underfunded hospital outside of Portland, Oregon, even though I can’t stop myself from giving it a French pronunciation like the town from that game.  But it’s not St. Denis, it’s “Saint Dennis”.  That’s fine, I can live with that.

Going back to the mockumentary well for a feel good comedy may seem like a tired mechanic now, after shows like The Office, Modern Family, Parks & Rec, and Abbott Elementary, and the show does borrow heavily from the Parks & Rec playbook, but it’s all the better for it.  The talking heads don’t take anything away from the flow of the show and it allows for layered jokes and it never detracts from the episodes’ stories.  Ensemble comedies like this can often hinge on casting and St. Denis’s cast is well chosen.  Wendi McLendon-Covey of Reno 911! and The Goldbergs plays the head of the hospital, doctor turned administrator, a real Leslie Knope-type; well-meaning and overbearing, she wants her hospital to be seen on the same level as big city hospitals, but she genuinely cares about her staff and the patients.  I’m talking about the complete opposite of Dr. Kelso from Scrubs, it’s genuinely refreshing to see.  Josh Lawson returns from his too short stint as Tate in Superstore (and Kano in 2021’s underrated Mortal Kombat, where he offered most of the comic relief) and, while he plays a version of Tate here, surgeon rather than pharmacist, he shines in every scene.  I love his comedic timing and delivery, he serves up laughs every time he’s on screen.  Veteran comic actor David Alan Grier also features heavily and the cast is really stabilized by his presence.  He plays the jaded old doctor who is just past it, but in a charming, funny, Ed-Asner-at-the-end-of-Up kind of way.  Alison Tolman’s Alex is the star of the show and she continues to delight in every role I’ve seen her.  Her stint in the first season of the Fargo series was a standout performance, her recurring role in Brooklyn Nine-Nine showed she had the chops for a full on comedy, and in St. Denis she keeps up the record of strong performances.  Rounding out the cast is a number of somewhat familiar faces, like Kaliko Kauahi (Sandra from Superstore), Mekki Leeper (from Jury Duty), and Kahyun Kim (from Cocaine Bear).  Some great one-off appearances too, like Erinn Hayes, who has done the comedy doctor thing before in Childrens Hospital and its criminally underrated and too short-lived spin-off Medical Police and Nico Santos from Crazy Rich Asians, another Superstore vet.

It’s a time-tested formula.  Understaffed, underfunded, with a new guy there to help the characters explain things to the audience, this time in the form of a wide-eyed young nurse who comes from an insulated religious community.  His upbringing lends itself to some great comedic moments, where his family, who doesn’t believe in medical science and disapproves of his career as a nurse, tells him to be more like his cousin—whom unfortunately died of strep throat.  The lack of staff and funding means there are always problems to deal with and it gives the characters something to work around; in a drama, it makes for conflict, in a comedy, it gives you plenty of awkward situation for comedic moments to grow.  St. Denis sits on the shoulders of giants, sure, but it does it really well.  Sharp writing and strong actors make it so it doesn’t seem like it’s just a copy trying to chase the feeling of another show, a trap Parks & Rec managed to avoid as well.  In this post-Ted Lasso world, one where you feel increasingly yelled at by everyone and everything, where everything is vying for your time and attention and wants your rage and anger to fuel it, I can’t get enough of watching good people trying to do good things and that’s what St. Denis is all about.  Even David Alan Grier’s lovable curmudgeon gives a damn about his patients and his fellow coworkers; the normal doctor v. nurse conflicts aren’t a focus of the storytelling, rather they approach the job as if they’re all in it together.  It’ll never not be refreshing to see; I am so glad the era of comedies about “friends” who just constantly snipe at each other and go for the jugular is over.  A friend isn’t supposed to just be someone who knows you well enough that they can hit at your insecurities and you’re supposed to shrug it off and, boy I have had lots of coworkers I couldn’t stand and some that I’ve become lifelong friends with, which makes a show like St. Denis Medical such a relatable, fun, and uplifting watch.

One thing that does make St. Denis unique is its focus on the nurses for the viewpoint of the show.  It’s not a show about heroic doctors—Lawson’s surgeon Bruce has a god complex, but he’s not the hero of the show, rather, he’s the butt of jokes.  Grier may be a jaded doctor who has seen it all, but he’s used most effectively as a foil for Tolman’s Alex, who is the heart and soul of the show, and most of the characters are viewed from the lens of her perspective.  She’s the one who interacts with admin the most, she manages the other nurses, and the doctors look to her first.  Leeper’s Matt may be the FNG, but he’s not the star like JD from Scrubs, he’s more of a bit player.  Tolman’s Alex is the one who makes this show what it is and while she sets very high standards for the character work, no one in the cast disappoints and most live up to those standards.  Lawson and McLendon-Covey especially, who was toned down very quickly into a believable, likable, and funny character.  She started with the needle pointing a little too far towards Michael Scott, but was deftly redirected towards Leslie Knope, much for the good of the show.  The pilot had some rough edges that needed to be smoothed out, but by the end of the second episode, I was hooked.  Again, taking a page from great comedies like Abbott Elementary, this focus on the on-the-ground characters gives a comedic look at the very real problems in backbone industries like healthcare and education.  They’re downstream, affected by decisions made miles above them, but while they take a moment to acknowledge them, the show isn’t about that.  Even COVID is given just a small mention, whereas Superstore made it a front and center issue.  St. Denis Medical is a show with something to say and, lucky for us, it says it in a really, really funny way.  It’s airing weekly on Tuesdays on NBC, streaming Wednesdays on Peacock, and frankly, it’s become one of the shows I look forward to every week.  With all six aired episodes on Peacock, there’s plenty of time to catch up over the holidays before it returns on January 14th.  And I definitely recommend you give it a try.

[As this post is going up on Tuesday, December 24th and not Monday as usual, I would like to take a moment to both apologize for the delay and wish everyone who is celebrating Christmas a merry one.  Have fun, have food, and make some memories—at the end of the day, they’re more important than presents anyway (but I do hope you get some good presents too).  In case you missed it and still need to pick a movie to watch with the family or you just want to get in the holiday spirit for any reason, you can check out my 2024 Christmas Special here.  Have a fun and safe holiday!  I’ll see you in a week.]

It’s a Wonderful Strife

I am a huge Grinch.  Every time I watch that movie, I root for the fuzzy green guy to complete his plan and finish off the denizens of Whoville once and for all (I’ve never seen How the Grinch Stole Christmas, he was trying to kill those Whovillains, right?).  But, honestly, I think it’s Christmas music that I can’t stand.  It’s such a strange genre of music, where something like 90% of the songs exist solely to tell you that it’s Christmas, as if it’s a surprise that it comes towards the end of the year, every year, since 336 CE.  But, every once in a while, the mood hits and I like a Christmas movie.  After spending about an hour going through my streaming apps and giving a thumbs down to everything that even looked like Hallmark Christmas movie, I came across 8-Bit Christmas on HBO Max.  I like video games, I like Neil Patrick Harris (or as I know him, Dr. Horrible), and it’s sitting on an 84% RT score, so I decided to give it a try and see if it can break into my top 5 Christmas movies.

It starts with a familiar scene for parents these days.  Jake Doyle, played by NPH, is talking to his daughter who desperately wants a phone for Christmas while on the way to grandma’s house.  When they get there, she sees his Nintendo and asks how he got it, because she always thought he wasn’t allowed to have video games growing up.  He goes on to tell her the story of how he got his NES.

From here, the story starts to unfold, Princess Bride style, with NPH flashing back to his childhood in the late 1980s and cutting back to the present for his daughter to try to hide her growing interest in his tale of Christmas hijinks.  And hijinks they are indeed.  You see, the only person in the neighborhood with an NES was the rich douchey kid who loved to lord his Nintendo over everyone.  This kid gives off mega 80s movie villain vibes.  He made kids line up in front of his house before he would choose the ones he’d let come in with the promise of play, sometimes making them pay some sort of tribute before doing so.  He wore a karate gi, casually, over not one, but two polos with popped collars.  He teased the kids once they got in, almost never letting them actually get their hands on the Nintendo.  He’s the kind of kid whose dad owns a dealership and has definitely tried to shut down a ski resort so he can develop on the land.

The movie has fun with the unreliable narrator mechanic, changing the story in front of your eyes as Jake tries show himself in a more responsible light to his daughter, as parents do sometimes, I’m sure, and it’s very well possible that the rich kid wasn’t nearly as monstrous as he made him out to be, but that’s part of the fun of a movie that’s told like this.  Realizing that Christmas was his best chance to get his parents to buy him a Nintendo, he goes on a campaign to trick them into agreeing to get him one because they, as Jake’s daughter rightly noted, did not allow video games in the house.  I can commiserate with this; nothing was worse as an indoor kid than being told that I shouldn’t be inside playing video games and I needed to go outside and play.  My response then was as it is now—if the outside is so great, why has all of human existence been an endeavor to wall ourselves off from it, thus creating the far superior inside?  I digress, and I love all you outdoorsy types and all the gear (I want a camp stove, I don’t know why), but for kids growing up in the 80s and 90s as video games were making their initial foray into homes, this felt very relatable.

Once they see through his plan, Jake learns of a wreath selling contest for his Boy Scouts-like group with the top prize being a Nintendo Entertainment System.  There it was.  Right in front of him, in the form of a flyer in his little hands, was the proverbial golden ticket.  If he wins the Nintendo, he doesn’t need his parents to get it for him.  He was the master of his own fate, ready to pave the way to 8-bit heaven with a road of holly, fir tree branches, pine cones, and those little red berries you always see.  And the way Jake tells it, just about every boy in the neighborhood (as adult Jake pointed out, the 1980s were a less inclusive time) went all in on, turning it into a cutthroat, dog-eat-dog competition that would definitely get a reality show called Wreath Wars on A&E if it were happening today.  Unfortunately, Jake isn’t exactly what you’d call a natural salesman, but in exchange for helping to convince their parents to get her a Cabbage Patch Kid, his sister is willing to give him advice that will potentially give him a leg up on the competition.  Now, if you’re of the age where you don’t remember what it was like for there to be a hot toy of the Christmas season, you might not fully understand what kind of ask this was.  Cabbage Patch Kids were the Tickle Me Elmo and Furby of the 80s.  Forget Talkboys and Beanie babies, parents were decking the halls and decking each other in the aisles of toy stores to get their hands on one.    This was a big ask.  (Good god, I wanted a Talkboy so much after seeing it in Home Alone 2 and, frankly, I still do)

And from then on, things get, well, complicated for Jake, in ways I don’t want to spoil for you, but suffice it to say, 8-Bit Christmas is a wild ride of plans and schemes.  It has sufficient twists and turns and surprises to keep even the most jaded of viewers (like me) engaged, and the movie almost changes genre multiple times, and each time, it does it in a fun manner.  In some ways, it’s set up like a heist movie, with planning stages and everything, including the full on planning board like a Grand Theft Auto 5 mission.  The whole thing comes together as part Home Alone, part Ocean’s 11, part Boiler Room, part A Christmas Story, and all fun.  At the end of the film, Jake, in both real time and in the past, realizes that the really important things about Christmas—about life, really—are what you do with the time you have and who you spend that time with.  Stuff is stuff, it’ll always be there; there will always be the next Nintendo, the next Tickle Me Elmo, the next Beanie Baby or Cabbage Patch Kid.  But they aren’t making any more time and at some point, we all reach those empty shelves where the Cabbage Patch Kids and the Tickle Me Elmos and Tamagotchis all used to be.  8-Bit Christmas is a reminder that the consumerism of Christmas, and indeed daily life now, isn’t the be all, end all of existence.  The memories, the experiences, the look of joy gifts put on the faces of the people you care about, that’s what really counts.  It’s what makes this not just a great Christmas movie, but a great movie for any time of year.  It could have been set at any time, at any birthday or holiday (I know I wait with bated breath every year for my Arbor Day presents, I’m not immune to this), and still tell the same, fun, impactful story.  I’m not going to lie to you all, when the movie came to the closing of the third act, some pepper or something got into both of my eyes at the same time and they watered uncontrollably for a little while.  So it was kind of hard to see through all the not-emotional-even-a-little-bit-because-I-hate-Christmas tears in my eyes, but I’m pretty sure it was a good ending.

8-Bit Christmas is without a doubt, a wonderful, joyful, and nostalgic film that’s a fun and easy watch for the everyone, thanks to its PG rating.  I’m not sure if it cracks into my top 5 Christmas movies, but if it doesn’t, it is very, very close.  It’s definitely one I will watch again, of that I am sure.  So if you’re looking for something to watch with the family this weekend or over the holidays, I suggest adding this one to the list.  If you’re celebrating this holiday season, I hope you have a safe and wonderful time, some good food, some good presents, given and received, and above all else, I hope you make some memories you cherish with the people you care about.

Regular service resumes Monday, so I hope you enjoyed this holiday bonus post and I’ll see you then!