Megabucks Presents: Square Pegs Christmas episode (1982)

With all the little nods to the show I’ve made in the past, it was as inevitable as Thanos that I would fit this in somewhere. It was easier than, well, fitting….ready?….fitting a square peg in a round hole.

But first, my holiday entertainment update. Reading-wise, I’ve been looking at this 1982 collection of DC Christmas stories, featuring the likes of the Teen Titans dealing with a modern day Scrooge, and Batman getting saved by the star of Bethlehem. I finished a 2000 making-of book about A Charlie Brown Christmas too. Via MeTV Toons, I watched Richard Williams’ A Christmas Carol in full for the first time in a long time. Marley, just Marley. And Ignorance and Want, Jim Henson’s Zombie Babies. Heading back to classic sitcoms, I checked out That Girl, season one, and its first holiday episode, “Christmas and the Hard Luck Kid.” Love Marlo Thomas, think Ann Marie was a charming and cute character, and the idea behind the episode is nice…but I forgot how pushy Ann was when she’s upset that one of her boys’ school student’s parents won’t be home for Christmas. Agreeing to stay at the school and celebrate with him, she constantly insists on getting the kid to enjoy himself. Also, Ann kisses him on the lips at the end! Happy Holidays, little Tommy, your gift is discovering your manhood early!

(Amazing Trivia I just found out now looking up details for this article: “Tommy” was actually Christopher Shea, meaning he has another holiday special connection, and a BIG one at that. He was the voice of Linus in A Charlie Brown Christmas, among other Peanuts specials. No wonder he never wanted Sally…once you go Marlo, you don’t go back-o.)

Now for my “And I call myself a researcher!” moment…I way undersold how many times Ed Asner played Santa Claus outside of the animated special and Elf. This article gives six more credits, then there’s The Christmas Star, which is not mentioned probably because he really isn’t the real Santa in that. And I can’t skip a mention of his name without saying he was a stand-up guy and, as the YouTubers would say, an S-list celebrity meet and greet.

And now, let’s go back to, like, a totally radical time in TV history….

Square Pegs was a one-season wonder on CBS, airing in 1982 and 1983. Created by Anne Beatts (also a writer for SNL), it can best be described as a big ’80s time capsule. The show hits all the character types representing that era, and includes references to music, TV, and more out the wazoo. It is set in the fictional Weemawee High School, in an unnamed American town, and focuses on freshmen Patty Greene and Lauren Hutchinson, two teenage girls who want nothing more than to be part of the Weemawee in-crowd. There’s just one problem: they are both decidedly uncool; Lauren is short, said to be plus-size, and wears braces, while Patty is tall and skinny, and wears glasses. Don’t feel too bad, once she moved to the city and discovered sex, she did okay. This makes them targets of ridicule and repulsion from the cool kids, led by Jennifer DiNuccio, the typical “Like/you know/okay?” valley girl, and LaDonna Fredericks, a sassy African-American, post-Disco diva (Sidenote: in fact, I just found Claudette Wells, who played LaDonna, on the socials. She is also an author these days). But our protagonists have their own offbeat friends: Marshall Blechtman and Johnny “Slash”. The former is a wannabe stand-up comic, while the latter is a somewhat spacy, New Wave enthusiast. And now that I think of it, the two pairs would cement Square Pegs as Laverne and Shirley But In the ’80s and In High School. I get Lenny and Squiggy vibes from Marshall and Slash, and Patty and Lauren too just want to make their dreams come true, doing it their way, as it were. Then there’s Muffy Tepperman. Oh boy, Muffy Tepperman. Way before Chris Jericho and Kurt Angle, she mastered the art of being an insincere, overbearing, annoying nice person. Usually in the name of raising funds for “her little adopted Guatemalan child, Rosarita”.

Despite the show’s short run, they did have enough time to have a Christmas episode; a two-parter Christmas episode, even. That is the timely subject of today’s column, as we look at :

A Child’s Christmas in Weemawee

We start with the usual expository narration about how the girls plan on pulling a Triple H and working their way to the top of the school by taking advantage of cliques. And NO, that was NOT meant to be a nose joke about Sarah Jessica Parker. I like to think I’ve outgrown looks-shaming women a long time ago. I’m at least trying to improve myself. As it sometimes happens, we’re not getting the version of the theme tune with the Waitresses’ lyrics. I think it’s just because the original broadcasts alternated sometimes, but there is an unfortunate Waitresses-related bit of scrubbing later on.

Muffy has an all-ethnicities choir of children, and announces like she’s Jay Stewart that “These children, dressed as they are…” will tour the classrooms for the next five days singing Christmas carols. Here, they are singing “[Don’t Sue Us, Disney]” because they’re an international bunch. Lauren is asking Patty if divorced parents means she gets to have two Christmas dinners. Oh, Scotty…

There’s also a Secret Santa drawing, and LaDonna complains about first picking one of “the fat girl’s friends” and then “the fat girl” when she re-draws. Muffy doesn’t allow do-overs because “if Baby Jesus had that attitude, we’d all be Hindu!” On one hand, like milk. On the other, it works because of how clueless Muffy is. Jennifer’s boyfriend Vinny similarly doesn’t like his choice and claims the drawing “is rigged just like professional wrestling!” What’s next, there’s no Santa Claus? Both are quite similar, in that the clues were out in the open, but I just didn’t want to believe them. With Santa, it was A Christmas Story, where my friend tried to remind me that the Old Man says “What did WE put there?” when — spoiler — Ralphie discovers the BB gun package.

Moving along, Johnny gets Jennifer (or “Fennifer,” as he misreads the calligraphy, and this becomes a running gag…) and philosophizes what she would like if he was her (“Probably what I like, cause I’d be me!”). While Marshall gets Vinny and longs for an easier choice like Yassir Arafat. Time for the girls’ picks, and Lauren gets…herself, so I guess Muffy allowed LaDonna that redo. Speaking of LD, that’s who Patty selects, and she bemoans picking someone “who hates everything I do…and I do nothing!” But Lauren sees it as a way for them to climb the popularity ladder. Not only that, but she has put together a map and timetable by which both of them could crash all the holiday parties in town.

Afterschool time, where Jennifer talks about her shopping spree for herself, and I guess mall security wasn’t quite what it would become, because she managed to leave her money and take the clothes, security tag and all. Vinny brings up his New Year’s Eve party, causing Jennifer to dread watching “that dead guy’s band.” I assume she’s talking about Guy Lombardo, but if I’m to go by online research, they stopped airing his show about 2-3 years earlier than this episode. Then again, another episode does bring up Card Sharks, but I give that a pass because Mark Goodson would have been syndicating reruns of the show in ’82, which is how I became familiar with the Jim Perry version as a kid, while being none the wiser. Of greater note, Vinny also extends an invitation to Patty and Lauren for his party…if you read between the lines, it’s just for warm bodies purposes, but a win’s a win for our heroines. But the most interesting conversation naturally belongs to Marshall and Johnny, who bring up the KRAFT TV SPECIAL COMMERCIALS. If this is before your time, well, basically any special Kraft sponsored in the 70s and 80s would contain these mini-ads where they provide “recipes” for party foods and such. The show pretty much nails it, as said recipes require copious amounts of cheese and marshmallows, among other Kraft products. Check this out if you are entertaining your friends…though you might think this more appropriate for entertaining your enemies…

But now for the big plot point of the episode(s), because Patty’s father is in town, and as It Was A Thing On TV would say, we have a name playing Mr. Greene: none other than Wally Cleaver himself, Tony Dow. Strangely, we’re less than a year away at this point from a Leave It To Beaver resurgence with the reunion movie on its way. Anyway, he wants to spend quality time during the holidays with his daughter, meaning no party crashing, no Vinny’s for New Year’s, no nothing.

Back in class, the Christmas pageant is announced, and when it’s suggested even girls can play Santa, LaDonna is interested…until she learns she has to cover her face with the beard. Jive talk between herself and Mr. Spacek, the teacher, ensues. As they’ve been doing on and off, the singing kids arrive, while Lauren volunteers to play Santa instead, as it’ll help her hear about parties while undercover. Vinny making (yet another) fat joke somehow leads to everyone confusing Blackbeard, Bluebeard, Blackfoot, and Bigfoot, impressing Johnny who didn’t know Christmas had so many icons. Lauren is disappointed because she forgot that Santa was fat, making her broader minded than most of the characters on this show, including the writers. We then switch to music class, which involves Jennifer refusing to sing, LaDonna trying to be Ella Fitzgerald (and more jive talk with Mr. Spacek results), and Vinny actually identifying several carols cause his aunt was a nun. After this, Patty breaks the bad news to Lauren, adding to her disappointments today. For the first time in many, we hear Mr. Greene’s plans: go to a cabin in the woods and do ice fishing with frozen eel chunks. It is at this point that the Music Clearance Monster rears its ugly head too, when Patty goes to see Lauren at the diner. We’re SUPPOSED to hear the Waitresses’ “Christmas Wrapping” but on YouTube and DVD, it has been replaced. Never mind that the group is otherwise all over the show, theme tune included. Their version of such IS in the end credits, so we’re allowed one Waitresses recording per episode? But seriously, it’s probably because “Wrapping” is on a higher tier in their discography, getting really big during the 2000s and up. I think the last time you see the scene unmolested was when Sony had a rerun package in syndication in the late ’90s (and I THINK that delivery of Raccoons recordings I gave Scott might include it, if I remember my collection right!). Anyway, it leads to a flashback montage showing us all the girls’ antics thus far, to get across Lauren’s point that the big Christmas party raid was supposed to make all that finally worthwhile. This takes us into the second half, where Spacek is now casting elves for the pageant, along with a new role: the Lonesome Reindeer, which Johnny Slash takes, before freaking out when Spacek gives him the antlers to wear. He echoes the words of MeTV Toons fans everywhere: “YOU KILLED BULLWINKLE!”

Meanwhile, Patty tells Muffy that she will not be participating at the class party, and she agrees to give her leftover squinting or red eyes pictures she won’t be sending to Rosarita. Curiously, when she says “it’s the next best thing to being there,” Patty says she’s thinking about phones, and that pictures are “worth a thousand words.” Give it a couple of decades, and same difference. We get another Marshall/Slash moment…the singing kids just came by again, and Marshall asks, “what country would you be?” Slash: “Wyoming.” Marshall: “It’s a state. ” Slash: “A state of mind.” And Vinny, who comes off as more sympathetic than he lets on, commiserates with Patty (“You wouldn’t understand.” “You’d be surprised at what I don’t understand.”) and simply advises her to do what he does and not listen to her parents. Mrs. Loomis, another teacher, and Lauren stress eat the decorations, and Jennifer and Johnny Slash also bond over him trying to coax gift ideas out of her, asking if turtles make good Christmas presents. This turns into discussing hair dye, which may or may not involve using colored markers. She ends up inviting him to New Year’s too, which leads me to ask Lauren, why the map and elaborate plans? The cool kids eventually break down and invite everyone anyway! Heck, Patty and Lauren got invited before one of them had to ditch for her dad. Speaking of which…we then see Patty and Mr. Greene in the car, and he notices his daughter feeling down and asks, “Why the long face?” COME ON WALLY, I SWORE OFF CRACKS AT SARAH JESSICA’S LOOKS, BE BETTER! We get the “I’m not daddy’s little girl anymore” routine which somehow transitions into a fantasy scene where Patty is in sepia eating a shoe? Anyone get this reference?

So back to Weemawee for the gift exchange and Lauren is still understandably feeling down and having none of anything, including a “My Name Is…” moment against LaDonna. The running gag here is Johnny’s gift to Jennifer is moving on its own after she discarded it. But enough of that, Patty is here! Her dad understood everything, and it’s time to party! After all the on-and-off abuse, we get a Moment of Heartwarming with Patty and LaDonna, thanks to a gift of an Ella Fitzgerald songbook. The two girls sing together, then the entire class joins in so we can have our Televised Christmas Card From The Cast scene. Last segment, we learn that despite Lauren drawing herself earlier, somehow Muffy got her name and she gifted her with a checked out library book. Jennifer’s gift to Johnny is his gift back. The end, play us off Waitresses.

Well, it still has its charms, even if there’s certain things that have me scratching my head sometimes; mostly, the fluctuating “we hate you/we tolerate you/we’ll begrudgingly socialize with you/okay, we can get along after all” feelings between Jennifer, LaDonna, and Vinny, and Patty and Lauren. Marshall and Johnny Slash are a revelation every time I go back to watch the show, and it’s almost a shame they aren’t remembered better. Still, a nice, somewhat exaggerated, look at the decade I grew up with.