6x13 A Very Sunny Christmas

[7.7/10] This one was a ton of fun for the first two-thirds of the episode, and then sort of ran of steam and felt like it was treading water for the last third. The part where Dennis and Dee try to give a Frank an A Christmas Carol experience was superb and full of outlandish comic moments, and the part where Mac and Charlie figure out that their childhood Christmases were not as blissful and pure as they thought is comedic brilliance. But once both those storylines come to a head, the special doesn’t really know what to do with itself. Still, on balance, there’s a lot of laughs here, and it’s a fine X-mas outing for the show.

It’s a solid premise to have Dennis and Dee try to do the “ghost of X-mas past” routine with Frank to get back at him for being a stingy, and let’s face it, vindictive father ‘round the holidays. His reaction to his old business partner showing up as a ghost is great; his emergence from the couch during the “ghost of X-mas present” scenario at his old office is a bit of great comic audaciousness, and Dee and Dennis turning on both their dad and Eugene at the graveyard rounds out the story nicely.

The Mac and Charlie material is even better. The way it pairs Mac realizing that he and his family stole every Christmas he had as a child, and Charlie realizing his mom was a prostitute whose clients were guys dressed as Santa was brilliant. And the follow-up is even better, with Mac’s misguided attempt to make amends to the guy he inadvertently stole from as a kid. But that can’t match the sheer comic absurdity and mania of Charlie going psycho, asking Santa if he “fucked my mom,” and then turning everything into a bloody, horrifying scene. It’s the show going completely over the top but also owning it.

The problem is that once all that’s done, the show can’t match the same comic energy through to the end, and has trouble filling the remaining time. For one thing, the little claymation interlude is a bit too cute, and doesn’t do as much with the Rankin-Bass motif as, say, “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas” from Community did. Frank’s “transformation” is a bit of a dud, even if leads to the gang amusingly deciding that they’ve been relying on their parents too much for X-mas. And the climax, with Eugene robbing them at gunpoint isn’t a particularly satisfying conclusion, even if it does make good use of Chekov’s snow blower.

Still, the ending sequence of The Gang throwing rocks at trains, just like Charlie and Mac wanted, is as sweet and hopeful an ending as IASIP can muster, and it works well enough. Overall, this isn’t a homerun, but there’s a lot of good bits here, and it’s a nice way to close out the season.