Fat Albert’s Christmas Special (1977)

Trailer:

Trailer?? This is a time of giving! Here, watch the whole thing!

*Spoilers throughout*

What’s It About: Fat Albert represents everything about the spirit of Christmas: kind, giving, and gaining weight from eating too much. I have a very soft spot in my heart for Fat Albert, as soft as Fat Albert’s arteries are hard. So it’s fantastic that just as I was wondering what to wrap this ridiculous series up with, Fat Albert’s Christmas Special pops up on Netflix Instant. So join us for music and fun, and if you’re not careful you may learn something before it’s done.

It’s snowing all over the junk in North Philly, which doesn’t chill Fat Albert’s bones because they’re buried 3 1/2 feet inside his body. Fat Albert and the gang are putting together a Nativity scene in the junkyard so they can give their parents a nice Christmas surprise and so everyone can feel the true spirit of Christmas. You know what their parents would probably prefer? That their children didn’t spend all of their time in a junkyard. And they’ll be thrilled to trudge out in a blizzard to the local dump and get a few rat bites and lockjaw scrapings just to see Russell lay in a bed of hay.

Unfortunately, as the gang is practicing their Nativity play, ol’ Tightwad Tyrone comes banging on their clubhouse door, braving a raging snowstorm just to tell the gang that he hates their clubhouse and wants it bulldozed to the ground. He’s just as big an a-hole as the rich miser in that other Christmas classic: Phineas T. Prune in The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t. Will Tightwad Tyrone also see the error of his ways by the end of this special? We haven’t gotten that far, but yes, of course he will. The Fat Albert cartoons aren’t exactly bastions of originality.

The gang is upset that they’ll have to give up their precious junkyard location. I’m sure they would land on their feet and find a nice crack house property somewhere in Philly. Before they have time to sob into Fat Albert’s bosom, there’s another knock at the door. Instead of Tightwad Tyrone with a can of gasoline and some matches, it’s just a little kid named Marshall. Does he want to destroy their clubhouse too? Well, maybe, but he doesn’t come right out and say it. He explains to the gang that his family was driving along next to the junkyard and their car broke down. But that’s not all. The job his dad, Ray, was supposed to get fell through, they have no place to stay, and his mom, Marge, is pregnant and is going to pop any second. It’s weird, because the family doesn’t seem poor at all, especially since the dad’s mustache is immaculately groomed.

The gang invites the family into their clubhouse so they can get out of the cold. What kind of heating system does this clubhouse have? There’s no fire going or anything. Maybe Fat Albert just radiates a tremendous amount of body heat. Anyway, Ray asks where the nearest hospital is, and Fat Albert orders Bill to take him there. Wait, how about the nearest phone? I don’t think this plan is going to work. Let’s hope Fat Albert makes a good midwife.

Fat Albert remembers that Tightwad Tyrone is going to demolish the clubhouse that night, which would ruin Christmas for that family if the mother and her unborn baby were buried underneath junkyard clubhouse rubble, so he thunders off to beg Tyrone to not be such a d*ck. As Fat Albert is pleading with him at his general goods store, Tyrone takes time out to yell at a charity Santa, which gives him the bright idea to use Fat Albert as a Santa in front of his store, in exchange for sparing the clubhouse. This causes business to boom, because a Santa at a store is a rare and marvelous sight indeed. This special has more parallels to The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t than I thought.

Bill and Ray make it to the hospital, but the receptionist just hands Ray some insurance forms to fill out. Instead of saying, “Look, you don’t understand, this is an emergency, I need an ambulance to pick up my wife because she’s about to give birth in a junkyard,” he just says he doesn’t have insurance, and she tells him to go to the city hospital, a.k.a. the poor people’s death house. Then they just go back to the clubhouse. She’s going to have that baby in the middle of the junkyard Nativity scene come hell or high snow.

The gang goes looking for Fat Albert to get his advice on the situation, because apparently they can’t take a dump without asking Fat Albert how to wipe. Well they see Fat Albert in the Santa suit and accuse him of being a sellout, and cause such a commotion outside the store that Tyrone fires Fat Albert and declares that the clubhouse is as good as gone. However, Mudfoot Brown, the filthiest person in North Philly, interjects and yells at Tyrone for being a jerkwad. But in a twist, Fat Albert sticks up for Tyrone, saying that maybe he’s mean because nobody’s around to be nice to him… since his wife died. You can always count on a Fat Albert cartoon to lay something heavy on you, aside from Fat Albert himself.

Back at the junkyard maternity ward, Ray is explaining to Marge that they can’t make it with another mouth to feed. I guess maybe they should have thought of that possibility before she got pregnant? He even says he doesn’t make enough to feed Marshall. Maybe they should have thought of that before they had Marshall? Marshall overhears this, and decides to make everyone’s lives easier by cutting out. Good call.

The gang comes back, telling Ray and Marge that Rudy and Dumb Donald went to fetch a doctor, the same doctor who delivered Fat Albert. “And he had to make two trips,” quips Russell, and everyone has a good laugh about Fat Albert’s morbid obesity and the extremely dangerous situation in which he put his mother’s birth canal. Actually, there’s no way Fat Albert wasn’t delivered by C-section, and they probably had to cut his mother in half to get him out.

As the gang goes after Marshall, Marge goes into labor. After they rescue him from an iceberg (you heard me) Fat Albert explains that Marshall’s family may be poor, but they’d be a lot poorer without him. Well, not monetarily, Marshall. They’re still going to be very, very poor in that department. Marshall realizes this, and runs off again.

So the doc comes back, Marge has the baby Jesus, and Tyrone busts the door down again, with Marshall in tow. He demands to know what’s going on, and they tell him that a baby has just been born on his property. So I guess that means legally he owns the child and/or that the child is legally considered junk. Russell convinces Tyrone not to hurt the baby, and Tyrone not only doesn’t hurt the baby, he offers Ray a job and decides not to burn the clubhouse to the ground! What a turnaround!

The Wise Men Junkyard Gang lay some gifts on the baby, and Russell gives Tyrone his Brown Hornet decoder compass. Everything worked out for everyone! Except for Mudfoot, who will spend a cold Christmas alone in his hovel tonight.

Is It Actually Jolly: It’s more of a tearjerker than jolly, and through most of it you just feel bad for everyone, as you should with a show about people who live in junk.

Jolliest Moment: The miraculous, bloodless delivery of the son of God Ray.

Dumbest Moment: When nobody thinks to dial 911 or find a cop or something. I’m sure the cops are no strangers to the area around the junkyard.

Overall: The show follows the do the nice thing and change the old miser’s heart story to the letter, but it’s Fat Albert, and I love watching the trials of life in a junkyard and the artistry of talking jive, especially on Christmas.

Score: 6.5 (out of 10)

 

HO, HO, HO HEY, HEY. HEY, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!