The Star Wars Holiday Special


About This Episode

In this episode, we dive into one of the most infamous moments in Star Wars history—the Star Wars Holiday Special. Released in 1978 and largely forgotten by its creators, this peculiar blend of Wookiee family drama, musical numbers, and bizarre celebrity cameos has become a cult phenomenon among fans. Whether you’ve seen it, heard about it, or are discovering it for the first time, grab your Life Day robes and join us for this Backtrack all about the Star Wars Holiday Special!

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Show Notes

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker

Transcript

Jon

Gen X grownup podcast listeners to this backtrack edition of the Gen X grownup podcast. I am John joining me as always, of course is Mo. Hey man, not a show without George.

Mo

Hey, how’s it going?

Jon

Hey, George.

George

Hey, how’s it going guys?

Jon

In this episode, we’re diving into one of the most infamous moments in Star Wars history, the Star Wars Holiday Special. Released in 1978 and largely forgotten by its creators, this peculiar blend of Wookiee family drama, musical numbers, and bizarre celebrity cameos has become a cult phenomenon among fans. Whether you’ve seen it, heard about it, or discovering it for the first time, grab your life day robes and join us for the backtrack all about the Star Wars Holiday Special.

George

I don’t think the creators forgot about this piece of shit.

Jon

ah they would They would like to.

Mo

No, i it’s is it Debra Lee burned into their heads?

George

I think they might’ve blocked it, but they didn’t forget accidentally.

Jon

Yes, can I please forget about it? Please, please, please, please. Before we jump into that, time for some quick fourth listener email. This time around, our fourth listener is Aaron R. And the subject line of his email is gen X sitcoms slash mash spinoff, okay?

Mo

OK, that was a good one. I remember that was fun.

Jon

Oh yeah, yeah. So he says, greetings to all of you. I recently got to listen to the Gen X sitcoms episode on the podcast.

Mo

Mm hmm.

Jon

The Gen X sitcoms were definitely the best. Okay. I mean, so far he’s accurate in his email.

Mo

Yeah, it’s just in everything.

Jon

So that’s right. He goes on to say, when you were talking about the MASH verse, because we talked about a trapper and whatever together with MASH, it reminded me of a show that I learned about that basically has been relegated to television trivia. There was another attempted spinoff from MASH. In 1984, a pilot was aired for a show called Walter, which was based on Radar O’Reilly after he moved to St. Louis to become a police officer.

Mo

What?

George

Ah.

Mo

I don’t remember that at all.

Jon

What? Yeah, what? I say the same thing. What? It was run as a CBS special presentation and was even preempted on the West Coast by the Democratic National Convention.

Mo

Oh jeez.

Jon

So it had a very short life, but it does hold a place in MASH history. I love MASH and trivia, so this show was the perfect mix of both.

George

does Does that mean that it’s short life literally was one episode into three time zones and that’s it?

Mo

Yeah.

George

It didn’t make it past three time zones.

Mo

That’s it. That’s what it sounds like.

Jon

That’s it, you got it, that’s exactly right.

Mo

That’s what it sounds like to me.

George

Damn.

Jon

It it barely even got a life, let alone a short life, yeah, yeah, I know.

Mo

Sounds like another show we’re about to talk about.

George

And yet we’ll find a way to do an hour and a half on that fucking show. I guarantee you it’ll be longer than the show aired.

Mo

We have to find it.

Jon

ah Now, Aaron took care of us, he sent us a couple of links, both to the, to a, what is it, I don’t know. and what And Aaron has already taken care of that for us.

Jon

He sent a couple of links, including one to YouTube where you can go and watch that pilot right now if you want to.

Mo

okay

Jon

So a moment i’ going to pass those to you if you’ll throw those in these show notes for this episode.

Mo

absolutely

Jon

ah Aaron wraps it up by saying, thanks again for the constant strolls down memory lane. Aaron R. Bismarck, Missouri.

Mo

Fantastic.

Jon

Yeah, thank you, Aaron. yeah I’ve not watched this yet.

Mo

I’ve never heard of it.

Jon

I’d never heard of it.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

Yeah, I think so. um It’s part of the Mashverse, but barely.

George

I mean, if maybe you lived in California at the time and you didn’t know about it.

Jon

It’s a dead alley. You have a chance.

Mo

Yeah, that’s right. You just, you couldn’t even see it at all.

Jon

There’s no shot.

Jon

Thank you for writing in to tell us about that and for your thoughts on our episode, Aaron. If you would like your email featured here on the show, it is drop dead easy. Just hit us up at podcast at genekgrownup.com or read every single email.

Jon

And most of them like Aaron’s will eventually make the show. All right, well, we can’t put it off any longer. It’s time now to talk about the Star Wars Holiday Special after this quick break.

Jon

I have to offer my sincerest apologies for those who are trying to forget about the existence of the Star Wars Holiday Special, but here coming into Christmas season, ah we thought it was a great opportunity and as the last to backtrack of 2024.

George

I think you should apologize to us.

Mo

for making us watch it

Jon

Well, okay.

George

Yeah, re-traumatizing us. This is terrible.

Jon

Maybe, that’s it that leads me to a great question, George. So prior to being forced to watch it for this episode of the podcast, what was your previous knowledge of an exposure to the holiday special?

Jon

I’ll start by just saying I knew it existed, and I even had downloaded it to watch someday because I had a, yeah you know, the MST3K rift tracks guys ah riffing on it. It’s like, oh, maybe I can enjoy people making fun of it, but I had never actually watched it all the way through.

Jon

What what about you, Mo? What is your exposure?

Mo

So it was funny because we we brought it up as, Oh, we’re going to watch this. I said, Oh wow. I never saw this. As soon as I watched the first three seconds, the memory came flooding back of me having seen they’re looking forward to this thing, waiting for it to come on air.

Jon

Oh, you had.

Mo

My dad letting me stay up to watch it.

Jon

Like in the day, at the time.

Mo

And that’s at the time.

Jon

The first, the run. Oh, wow.

Mo

Oh yeah. And watching it.

Jon

oh

Mo

And my dad lasted like three minutes. And he went off and read his newspaper and I remember ah it just all came back to me.

George

Mmm.

Mo

Every scene I was like, Oh my God, I forgot about that. Oh my God, I forgot about that. So I saw it when it aired.

Jon

George, what about you? George, what about you?

George

Yeah. I mean, I have memories of this in the same way. You might have your like three to six year old memories. Once you hit your fifties, like they’re like little flashes of, did that shit really happen?

Mo

Oh yes.

Jon

Right.

George

Like I kind of have a memory of the Wookiee house in the tree and the really bad costume faces, just little flashes.

Jon

Familiarity, but.

George

So when I watched it in preparation for this recording, stuff was like, Oh yeah. Okay. That’s where that flat, that memory was real.

Mo

Mm hmm.

Jon

Hmm.

George

But then other things I was like, what the fuck it it’s. Yeah.

Mo

Yeah.

George

Whoo.

Mo

o Yeah.

Jon

There’s a lot of that in this.

Mo

Yeah. That says it all right there.

George

I’m glad I didn’t have a lot of memories and now I’m really mad that I do have current memories of this.

Mo

Whoo. That says it all.

George

gu

Jon

ah Well, then I guess I will apologize for forcing you to watch it.

George

yeah

Mo

Oh, you jump in there.

Jon

I think it’s a good place to hop in.

Mo

OK.

Jon

Yeah.

Mo

So guys, I don’t know if you guys saw a documentary called there’s a disturbance. I’m sorry. It’s called there is a disturbance in the force. Um, it came out like a year or two ago as a documentary about the making of this holiday special.

George

Mm-mm.

Jon

OK, sounds good.

Mo

And if you haven’t seen it, everyone out there, I highly recommend you go see it. It got like a 90% tomato rating.

Jon

All right.

Mo

I mean, it’s it’s a really, really good documentary. Um, but one of the things it did is said like, and it’s interesting because everyone looks at it now says, okay, it’s how bad it is, et cetera, et cetera. But they said, okay, you have to look at it in the context of what was going on in TV and around there in the nineteen late 1970s.

Jon

Mm-hmm.

Mo

And there was a lot of horrible, horrible TV specials being made back then.

Jon

Like what?

Mo

I mean, they literally had one.

George

Hmm.

Mo

It was like a Perry Como meet Shamu. I mean, it’s literally, um, they talked about how like, and, and of course Star Wars, you know, came out in 77.

George

Wow.

Mo

This special came out a year later and they were terrified because the movie was, the next movie wasn’t coming out until 80. So that’s three years later.

George

Right.

Mo

So they were terrified that everyone forget about this movie. And the, and the, the, the wave that it was riding would just crash and it’d be over.

Jon

Oh.

Jon

Oh, so by the time the empire came out that people would forget about Star Wars, it was the fear.

Mo

So, so yeah, so they were doing everything they could to make sure Star Wars stayed in everybody’s brains, you know?

Jon

Hmm.

Mo

And so they did things like they had, you know, um, Donnie Marie show. Remember that show?

Jon

Mm hmm.

Mo

They had an entire Star Wars segment that they did a singing song thing.

George

Yeah.

Jon

I’ve, I’ve seen some of those people in like storm trooper costumes on the Donnie Marie show.

Mo

Yeah. Yep. Stormtrooper.

Jon

That’s right.

Mo

And Marie dresses Priscilla with the ah hair and everything like that.

Jon

I forgot about that.

Jon

z

Mo

Um, you know, they had Cher showed, Cher had a program show. They did a Star Wars thing. They had things with like Darth Vader dancing. I mean, it was just anything, everything they could do.

Jon

Really?

Mo

There was an energizer, sorry, there was an energizer buddy car ah commercial with Darth Vader.

Jon

really

Mo

When his lightsaber dies because he’s not using energizer batteries. its

George

So let me see if I understand what you’re saying. Their reasoning was this thing was so shitty. We want people to forget about it. Let’s just blanket the market with shitty Star Wars stuff so that everybody will forget about this one shitty thing because it will just become this all big shitty mess.

Mo

Well, I think it was more like they were doing everything they could. They were trying to get Star Wars on TV as much as possible. Like theyre the actors were doing talk shows all the time. I mean, they were just trying to get them out there, get them talking.

George

Right.

Mo

And I think a byproduct of trying to do this was the holiday special.

George

Hmm.

Mo

You know, it was just another thing they were trying to do.

Jon

i So this is a side effect of like, how can we permeate media with Star Wars while we’re working on Empire?

Mo

Yes.

Jon

And this just happened to be the worst choice of those things that they chose to do.

Mo

Oh yeah ah yeah.

Jon

Oh, damn.

Mo

And they also said that like Star Wars, no one expected Star Wars to be this phenomena that it was.

Jon

Sure, you don’t know.

Mo

You know, because like, you know, Star Trek, I think became that it just took later for Star Trek to kind of get there. I think the new generation next generation shows and stuff like that really just made Star Trek like a phenomena.

Mo

But but but before that, it was kind of cult status. But Star Wars, when that movie came out, it was just everywhere. You know, I mean, it was comic books. It was everywhere. Everyone was talking about it. People waiting online for hours to go see it.

Mo

You know, it was the first blockbuster with quotes around it.

Jon

Mm hmm.

Mo

Um, and so again, they never had anything like that before. So they weren’t sure what to do. You know, like, how do we, how do we keep this going?

George

Well, I mean, I know it was a big blockbuster.

Mo

You know?

George

I’m not going to say it was the first blockbuster though. Wouldn’t jaws be qualified as the first blockbuster? Cause that was 71 I think, right?

Mo

yeah Um, 71.

George

73.

Mo

Yeah. But Star Wars made so much more money.

George

Yeah.

Mo

It broke like every record by far.

George

Okay.

Jon

Right. Like before Jaws, people didn’t know it wasn’t a blockbuster thing. But by the time now that was established and people it we became events came ah grew up out of these big movies.

Mo

Right.

Jon

I think you’re right.

Mo

Yeah, we said like, you know, people dressing up as Star Wars characters to go see the movie.

George

Gotcha.

Jon

Yeah.

Jon

Mm hmm.

Mo

I mean, it’s stuff like that just never really happened before.

George

Right. Yeah. Nobody came as the shark to jaws, I guess.

Mo

Exactly, exactly. Or Richard Rivers.

Jon

Or a barrel.

Mo

And so they were looking for a Star Wars special, I think, you know, and Lucas, everyone knows that Lucas is kind of a media, what’s the right word for it, whore, when it comes to his stuff as a marketing.

George

Yeah.

Mo

I mean, he will market anything, right, to get money off his stuff.

Jon

pretty blunt.

George

Yeah. I’m not going to, I mean, I guess is it horror hooker though, because he did get paid a lot.

Jon

Yeah.

Mo

That’s true. Hooker. He got paid a ton. And so he had this like, you know, and before he did Star Wars, he wrote like a whole bunch of backstories and stuff like that to help, you know, and he had a whole idea of Chewbacca having a family, Wookiee planet, but he could never get it to work in any of the movies, you know, because it would just seem.

George

get it to work here either!

Jon

Oh shit, burn.

George

ah

Jon

End of episode everyone.

Mo

Yeah, you’re absolutely what is it right on that.

Jon

There’s the summary.

Mo

Um, ah so, so he kind of threw this idea out. Like, Hey, why don’t we make it a Christmas thing and make this whole holiday thing about Wookiees?

George

oh

Mo

And of course the TV producers and all that were like, yes. You know, they’re like, absolutely.

George

is

Mo

100% green light it. And the sad thing is they, they thought for sure and that before they started filming, of course, that they were creating the next. Every Christmas show that would be on TV, like Rudolph and

Jon

Mm hmm.

Mo

you know, Frosty and, you know, like every Christmas this show is gonna be on air and that’s what they thought going into this.

Jon

Yeah.

Jon

Isn’t it just jarring? It certainly is to me. You guys are bigger Star Wars fans than I am. But for me, it was jarring just how different the tone of this special is from anything we’ve ever seen before.

George

Mm hmm.

Jon

And it’s not like Star Wars didn’t already exist. That’s established. But this was so sitcom-y.

Mo

No, it was very,

Jon

They didn’t even try to to try to live in the universe. It was like plucking the characters out and putting them on a sound stage that’s too well lit and too happy and too cheerful.

Mo

Yep.

Jon

It was very weird.

Mo

Yeah, it was, it was horrible.

George

Yeah.

Mo

Um, and you get, oh yeah, actually.

George

Yeah, production design was awful.

Mo

And you’ll later on, we’ll talk about some of the things that went wrong, but that was definitely part of it though was just, you know, just, it was just a bad idea. It was just a bad, bad idea.

Mo

I’m going to give you like a two second summary of the entire movie, which is Han Solo and Chewbacca on the Millennium Falcon trying to make it to, it’s called Kashyyyk, which is Chewbacca’s home planet for the life day holiday.

Jon

yeah Okay.

George

OK.

Jon

That’s more than it deserves.

Mo

That’s the plot.

Jon

Mm hmm.

Mo

That’s the movie.

Jon

That’s right.

George

Yeah.

Mo

That’s the whole purpose of this movie is them trying to get him home for this special holiday and

Jon

Mm hmm.

George

Planes, trains and Millennium Falcons, right?

Mo

Yeah, there you go. Oh, my God, that would have been a better title.

Jon

Very good. Yeah.

Mo

And it was and basically it opens up with them in the Millennium Falcon. They had some they couldn’t get the original cockpit set. So they had this cardboard thing they built. I mean, it was just terrible.

Jon

Mm hmm. I didn’t notice that.

George

I just like, I, I amazed myself with my own reference. Think about who was in plane trains and automobile and the character that he played in space balls.

Mo

Hmm.

George

Right.

Jon

who everything’s connected, everything’s connected.

Mo

Oh yeah. Everything’s connected.

George

It’s all there.

George

You know, I was, I was struck by. the knowledge that we have now of Star Wars, like all the films, the books, the TV series on Disney Plus and everything else that we’ve had.

Mo

Yeah.

George

We’ve often ah talked about it amongst ourselves how, you know, there’s this mythology that Lucas had this whole grand galaxy planned from day one and knew everything and all like that.

Mo

Mm hmm.

George

This special as the first thing he’s done since the original movie shows that’s full of shit because I’m pretty sure the fucking clones had blown this planet to hell and back 15 or 20 years ago, according to the prequel timeline.

Mo

Mm hmm.

Mo

Probably.

Jon

that right?

George

In re Revenge of the Sith, that’s where they, they went after Yoda and Yoda cut their heads off and then Chewbacca helped him get in the escape pod.

Mo

Yeah.

George

That whole order 47 or whatever it was, they were just kicking everybody’s ass and subjugating their people.

Jon

Oh.

Mo

Yeah, it. Yeah.

George

There’s no way that Chewbacca’s family would have been just happy as a lark and going about carrying out trash and yeah,

Mo

it Yeah.

Mo

Exactly. Yeah. Going about the daily lives like nothing’s going on.

Jon

Right. Right.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

Right.

Mo

I totally agree.

Jon

It’s like a three’s company set neighborhood going on there as if there’s things didn’t happen.

Mo

Yeah.

George

like They looked more like ah an American suburb than Kosovo, right?

Mo

Mm hmm.

Jon

Right. Yep. Yep. Well, even before we saw anybody, I was watching they run through all the guest stars, which we’re going to get to in the course of walking through this.

Mo

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Jon

So I gotta ask, I guess you guys, since you actually might’ve seen it, Moan, we know you saw it in reality and George apparently has some for flashbacks. He saw it at some point in reality, but as I’m watching all the guest stars and I’m like, holy crap, look, Hall’s in this.

George

right

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

Oh my God. Like my head would explode as a kid. I’m realizing this is gonna be awesome. Look at all, everybody is involved in it. Oh, but two yeah the brutal reality started kicking in later.

Jon

But I imagine as a kid, I would have been excited about five minutes in until I found out what was going on and we walked in.

George

I don’t think, I don’t think I would have as a kid.

Jon

and But. No.

George

No, because the guest stars were my parents’ favorites, not mine.

Jon

Oh, oh, what excited the little me?

George

Like Bea Arthur wouldn’t have been somebody I would have given a shit about. Art Carney? Fuck that guy. Now, you know, Mark Hamill and all those, you know, from the Star Wars film, yeah, I would have lost my mind about them, but like the ones they plugged into this thing, a la Jim Nabors style and a holiday special.

Jon

Sure, yeah.

Mo

Mm hmm. Yeah.

Jon

yeah jim ne Ah.

George

ah i I don’t think I would have been excited about him, but my parents might have watched it because of that. Maybe that’s how I ended up watching it.

Jon

Jim neighbors should have be and shouldve been in this. He was missing. He was an obvious omission.

Mo

Oh, he absolutely should have been in this one.

George

Yeah.

Mo

Yeah, and I agree with you, George, and I’m thinking like as a kid, I don’t remember exactly my reaction, but probably Ben’s like, Han Solo, yay! Luke’s camera, yay!

George

Right.

Jon

Yeah.

George

Yeah. Who the fuck is this guy?

Mo

Princess Leia, yay! Bea Arthur? yeah like It would have been like an up and down.

George

And it wouldn’t have been Bea Arthur.

Jon

Yeah, who is that?

George

I’d have been like, Maude? What the fuck is Maude doing in this special?

Mo

Maud? Yeah, he’s like, Maud? You know, no Ralph? I mean, come on, you know? Yeah, it was terrible.

George

Oh, man.

Jon

So once you, it really just begins, you open the door on this sitcom and you meet Chewbacca’s family, which ah we ah you have to assume he has a family, but so his wife’s name is Mala.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

That’s great. and his dad and son are named Lumpy and Itchy. Now, Chewie is short for Chewbacca.

Mo

Chewbacca, right.

Jon

Are we to expect that like, like Lumpy is Lumbaca and Itchy is Itchuca or something? Are these short for, his name isn’t Chewie, it’s short for Chewbacca. And then his wife has this regular like mala, this nice name.

Mo

Mala, we should set that one. Let’s go. OK, Mala, not bad, right?

Jon

What goofy is,

George

Molly was a good name.

Jon

and

George

I like that one.

Mo

Yes, yes, I did too.

Jon

Yeah, I don’t know. and but But even that opening scene, it requires so much patience.

Mo

But

Jon

I kept waiting for a translation to understand what was happening, but it was just.

George

Oh, God.

Jon

really but

Mo

Okay. You talk about patients.

Jon

Really?

Mo

Okay. So one of the things they talk about in that documentary is that one is that they didn’t believe in doing subtitles in the late seventies because they felt people could not read them fast enough.

George

Okay. ah So John and I were talking a little bit about this before we started the recording and before you jumped in Mo, because later on ah I had made a comment and we’ll talk about it now, I guess I’ll just, but to me, this felt like a foreign language film without the subtitles.

Jon

really

Mo

Yes.

George

That’s what 90% of this thing felt like. And.

Jon

Yeah.

George

I so was telling John, I said, maybe it’s because American audiences at that time, they felt they weren’t ready for subtitles on TV.

Mo

that That’s basically, what’s what they thought.

George

And I guess it’s what the documentary is saying, huh?

Mo

The producers thought that, oh yeah. And ten and so, and then they make it like, and um George Lucas was insistent that they not speak English, you know, or, or whatever.

Jon

OK, we get that.

George

They didn’t.

Mo

Do you know how long that scene was without any dialogue?

Jon

You win.

Mo

It was nine minutes.

Jon

It had to be 10 minutes. Yeah, if forever.

George

Yeah.

Mo

It was nine minutes long without a single word of English being said, except some weird family life stuff.

Jon

Mm hmm.

Mo

And I’m sorry, his dad looked bizarre.

George

Yeah.

Jon

Yeah.

Mo

He just looked bizarre, but…

George

The whole upper, the bottom lip becoming the upper lip but casting of the mask.

Mo

Yeah, what what the heck was that?

George

And ah it was there.

Mo

It was just… Oh my god, yeah.

George

there have been movies that didn’t have dialogue in them for long periods of time that we’ve had a little bit more modern that definitely were more successful in conveying the story and the emotions since then.

Mo

Mm-hmm.

Jon

Hmm. Hmm.

George

Maybe this was one of the first tries of that outside of silent movies, which had subtitles, by the way, fuckers.

Mo

Yeah, they do have subtitles.

George

I’m just saying, but maybe that was Like they just didn’t know how to do it properly then because they didn’t have enough examples, I guess.

Mo

I don’t know. And I think because they couldn’t didn’t have subtitles, they had to like emote a lot more, had to over exaggerate things a lot more, which made it look even more ridiculous.

Jon

It was like mine.

George

Come here and take out the trash.

Jon

It was like this. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

Yeah. Right. Over the top stuff.

Mo

You know, it was terrible. So and then that goes into the next scene, which they actually move into like the moon cooler part, I guess, is that Mala contacts Luke. So the first time you see Luke to find out where Han and Chewie are, because they’re doing some space things.

Mo

And then she also contacts our first guest star, not outside the Star Wars universe, Sondan, which again, not a bad name for Star Wars universe thing.

George

Right.

Jon

Yeah. Cool.

George

No, that’s a good Star Wars name.

Jon

Star Wars name. Yeah.

George

Yeah.

Mo

Yeah. Who is a local trader played by who who’s this one, guys?

George

Art Carney.

Jon

Art Carney.

Mo

All right. Cardi, because that’s who else you expect to have in a Starbucks universe, but our. Norton Norton.

Jon

That was my first note that something was going weird. But before even Art Carney, when I realized, oh, so we’ve seen Han Solo.

Mo

Hmm.

Jon

but he’s off by himself with Chewie.

Mo

Yes.

Jon

And then we saw Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker, but he’s on a screen with R2-D2. And I’m like, oh, you couldn’t even get everybody together for this shoot. They’re just putting in a day’s work.

Mo

Yeah.

George

right yeah

Jon

The rest of it’s carried by people wearing rugs and Art Carney and Maude.

Mo

yeah

Jon

That’s who’s carrying this thing. Now, I will say at the end, they all come together. That surprised me because I thought maybe they never showed up on the same soundstage, but

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

That was my first hint that, like, this isn’t really a Star Wars thing. This is, oh, we got some Star Wars people to put in a cameo for this wookie sitcom is really what I ended up watching.

Mo

yeah

Jon

Yeah, it was weird.

George

Yeah, part of it makes you wonder, were they thinking, Hey, if this is popular, maybe we can get Star Wars on TV. And, you know, like, uh, instead of, you know, instead of having, uh, Bill Cosby’s latest family sitcom, we can have Chewbacca or whatever.

Mo

Maybe a series, you know.

Jon

Mm hmm.

George

I don’t know. I mean, John, you know, Art Carney, that whole scene that I know you, You were talking about it earlier, but I felt like there was a missed opportunity in that Mo that so art Carney, he was old as shit at this point.

Mo

Oh, yeah, honeymooners.

George

Right.

Mo

I mean, come on.

Jon

Yep.

George

Yeah, he had a ah hearing aid, a large hearing aid in his left ear that was apparent to the camera. Every time he turned to the right, you know, the left ear would be on camera.

Mo

Yeah.

George

And I thought that was a missed opportunity for the set designers. Why not stick an antenna or some lights or some shit on that hearing aid and turn it into a Star Wars deck, right?

Mo

Yeah, make it techy.

Jon

Right.

Mo

Yeah, make it techy.

Jon

That makes sense.

Mo

Absolutely. That definite miss opportunity.

Jon

Yeah.

Mo

Think about that, but absolutely right.

George

Yeah.

Jon

Art Carney was delivered the first groaner of many in this with this pun where you he’s he’s in his shop showing these things and go, oh, there’s these little craft crafts at someone.

Mo

But many.

Jon

She did it by hand, solo.

Mo

Yeah, because he’s.

Jon

And I’m like, oh no, you’re gonna make jokes about your own franchise in your first franchise ah piece?

George

ah

Mo

Oh.

George

Yeah.

George

Yeah.

Jon

I couldn’t believe that.

Mo

Oh, it was terrible.

George

yeah I think it’s time that we, we do what the show did. We need to take a break just for a moment, because if you just run through all the plot points and don’t talk about something else, it’s going to be as fatiguing as the show was to watch.

Mo

ah okay

Mo

Mm hmm.

Jon

okay yeah

Mo

Yeah.

George

I i had to pause it several times. So let’s talk just a minute about the commercials. Now, Mo, I don’t know if you got to watch the, the version that John and I did, which was,

Mo

No, I didn’t. I feel bad. I may rewatch the commercials in that one.

George

Yeah, it was somebody’s VHS recording of the special directly off of the live TV feed from back in 78 or 79, whenever this thing came out.

Mo

Mm hmm. Nice.

George

ah But i’ve as we were watching these commercials, I realized how many of these products that I had forgotten about

Jon

Okay, yeah.

Jon

Yeah, yeah.

George

that are just simply no longer on the market that made some great commercials of the time. Like there’s a, there was this cold medicine that my parents used to live by called contact in the commercial was pulling apart the little pill, the little, the little capsule and the little, it was in two different commercials during this special one where it was its own commercial and one where some other cold medicine was making fun of it in their commercial.

Mo

Oh yeah!

Jon

All the balls come flying out.

Mo

Contact the tablets! yeah Yeah! And the things fall out? Yeah, yeah, yeah!

Jon

Yeah.

Mo

Oh my god, that’s right!

George

I’m like, damn, that’s so awesome.

Jon

The cold medicine wars.

George

But the ones that the two that got me the most a, because this was sponsored by a company, in this case, General Motors promoted and sponsored this.

Mo

Yeah…

George

They got there. Here’s our, here’s our family type of commercials. Like they showed a guy who was turning the wrench on the line and another person who was doing this stuff. And these people were just doing voiceovers over their B roll of the stuff they did it.

Jon

Sure.

George

I really like welding the most of all. That’s the best thing for me. And. It was just so neat to see those day in the life. So we don’t really see that that much these days in commercials or anywhere else, except for a documentary. But then the commercial that really threw me off the most, there’s a fucking union commercial, not a commercial that was made by a commercial that was promoting unionization in this country.

Jon

Wow.

Mo

Was it the union label song one or was it a different one?

George

No, it was for the the female, uh, textile workers union or something like that.

Mo

Wow.

Jon

Wow.

George

Yeah. It was, it was like this union of women laborers kind of thing.

Mo

I have to watch this.

George

And it was a 30 second spot promoting that. And if we don’t keep this union going, products are going to fall off the fucking, they were right. All our shit’s made in China.

George

Now we should have paid attention to this goddamn union commercial.

Jon

See, they should have reaired the holiday special more often.

George

Right.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

I would have saved everything. they So coming back from our commercial break, we get into our next guest star. So Mala, which remember Mala is the wife of Chewbacca, right?

George

Mm hmm.

Mo

yeah

Jon

So she is trying to prepare food, trying to make a meal. So she’s watching a cooking show on TV. And the cooking show is by this, weird-looking alien, played at woman, played by male comedian Harvey Korman, dressed up in drag.

Mo

Yeah, kind of a Julia Childish kind of thing vibe to it.

George

Yep.

Jon

Very Julia Childy.

George

Julia child. Yeah.

Jon

Yeah, very much so.

Mo

Yeah.

George

A hundred percent.

Jon

and And this is, at some point in the middle of it, she has, oh, she has four hours arms. all She had two, somebody somebody’s behind her with two more arms.

Mo

Yeah.

George

Yeah.

Jon

And somebody wrote in before about the the scene with the stir, whip, stir, whip, whip, whip, stir, stir, whip, stir, that thing.

Mo

let do

Jon

So weird. and Again, sitcom. It was so goofy and it helped. And mala couldn’t keep up because he had three and four hands and it stir whip pound, stir, whatever.

Mo

Mm hmm.

Jon

And she couldn’t do it. It’s dumb.

George

That, you know, the person wrote in about that because John, like you mentioned, we were talking about it before the recording started that you and I played one of these street fighter Marvel games where you play ghost writer and you had this chain.

Jon

Yeah.

George

You could just kill me from across screen.

Mo

Oh, yeah.

Jon

Yep.

George

And I started saying whip whip dead. I wonder if that’s not a repressed memory now that made me say it the same way the Julia Childs Harvey Corbin character did.

Jon

Maybe

Mo

Yes.

Jon

you had it in your head, right?

Mo

Oh my God.

Jon

oh what was So where what was the next scene? So the next scene, so who who comes over?

Mo

Oh God. Oh no.

George

Oh.

Mo

yae Oh no. Oh no.

Jon

the So the Art Carney, Art Carney character comes over to their house and he brings over gifts, life day gifts, right?

Mo

I just needed to talk about.

George

Mm hmm.

Mo

Yeah.

George

He’s bringing life day gifts, yeah.

Mo

Oh my God. I’m sorry. This next scene is horrible.

Jon

And so he gives Chewbacca’s dad itchy this Like he has this holographic chair, kind of a VR thing.

George

Mm hmm.

Mo

Yeah. It’s like a VR kind of deal. Yeah.

Jon

And so he gives him this program.

George

That looks like a like an old fashioned hairdryer from a salon.

Mo

Yes, which it probably was, which it probably was.

Jon

Exactly, right.

George

Yeah.

Jon

ah Exactly, right. and then And then he gives him like a program for it or some disc and whatever he’s like, you’re go really gonna enjoy this. Hubba hubba, know what I mean? Like, oh no, what is this thing?

George

Yep.

Jon

So Itchy puts on this helmet and he starts playing this thing. And so we get recording artist, Diane Carroll, as like this porn chair program that’s like, I am your deepest fantasy.

Mo

Yeah.

Mo

Oh my God.

Jon

Do you feel me? I feel you and your wants and desires like, holy shit, what is this? shit This was a holiday special. What are you thinking?

Mo

Okay, when I was watching this and that scene came on, I turned the volume down. I’m like, oh my God, I don’t want Amy here. That’s what else you guys think I’m watching in here.

Jon

should I don’t want people to know what I’m watching.

Mo

This thing is terrible. Oh my God. and

George

My first reaction when I saw that was itchy has a VR porn date.

Mo

Yeah.

George

That’s exactly what it felt like to me.

Jon

Mm-hmm Yep o Well,

George

Like if he had, you know, Google quest or what the hell ever back then, that’s what this, I was like, Oh wow, this is terrible. It was on live TV right after a union commercial.

George

That’s some bullshit.

Mo

Oh my God. And it just also gets me, it’s like, oh my God, Diane Carroll, very respected actress and singer, extremely broke broke ground.

George

Yeah.

Jon

that’s cuz nobody’s seen this

Mo

Yeah, broke ground on so many things, broke barriers on so many things. And I’m like, Oh my God, this is the image I’m going to have of her from now on.

George

She broke barriers, all right.

George

Whoo.

Mo

so So the next part, or one of the next parts, I’m just jumping here, is that um you know Stormtroopers arrive at Mala’s house because they’re looking for Chewbacca. They’re trying to arrest him, right?

Jon

Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

George

Yeah, yeah.

Mo

Of course.

Jon

Yep.

Mo

And so to distract them, they have this 3D music box thing.

George

Mm hmm.

Mo

And who is playing on it? It’s Jefferson Starship.

Jon

but Starship.

George

So.

Jon

So it’s like a music video like say empty is right.

Mo

Yeah, it’s a music video.

George

Yeah.

Jon

Yeah, effectively.

George

It. That’s the thing that it may made me feel like it was a holographic portable DVD player that inspired MTV 40 years later, 20 years later, whenever MTV started.

Mo

They are something.

Jon

Mm hmm.

George

It was crazy, but i I focused a little bit on Jefferson Starship part of it because that band in that version has a really weird history.

Jon

Yeah.

George

It started off as Jefferson Airplane.

Jon

Mm hmm.

Mo

Right.

George

Then some of those people left to be formed Jefferson Starship. Then some of those people left to form Starship that ended up having number one hits in the eighties and stuff.

Mo

That our ship, yeah, yeah.

Jon

Right.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

Yeah, that’s right.

George

And I’m like, it’s just this weird dichotomy. And it all came from a holographic portable DVD player, apparently.

Mo

Who knew?

Jon

and I was watching it because I was like, oh, look, I’m kind of a music video. It’s interesting. Like, what’s their take on it? Well, in advance of music videos, really, I mean, other you have people on variety shows, you see them live, but it’s not a music video produced kind of with the song.

George

Mm-hmm.

George

Right.

Jon

And the song had a tribe was trying to hear the lyrics. It it had some kind of like sci fi out in space kind of thing.

George

ah Oh, yeah.

Mo

and Yeah.

Jon

But man, that lead singer, he could have benefited from auto tune. He was like, really?

Mo

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Jon

Whoa. Is that what it sounds like before it goes through?

Mo

Well, actually I don’t think it was there. I’m sorry. I don’t think it was their actual normal lead singer though. Cause I think their lead singer was in rehab at the time.

George

Grace Slick, very likely she might have been, yeah.

Mo

Yeah. Yeah. I kid you not. And they had to switch to this other person. Oh my God.

Jon

Well, who he was, yeah, he he was horrible, horrible.

Mo

That’s terrible.

George

So does anybody know if that song was one of their songs that was released on a regular album or if it was only done for the special?

Mo

Yeah.

Mo

It was written it was done for this. It was done for this.

George

Oh, wow.

Mo

They did release it on an album later, but it was done for this.

Jon

Was it? Oh, I didn’t.

Mo

So, oh, my God.

Jon

With that vocalist, hopefully they had rerecorded it.

Mo

Yeah, I know.

George

Hmm.

Jon

Jesus.

Mo

So. All right. there If there is a high point in this movie, if there is one, it’s just the next part.

Jon

ah It’s the ending.

Mo

The size that it’s the ah the weirdly placed. um Cartoon that Lumpy is watching.

Jon

Oh, yes.

George

Mm.

Mo

Which was, he I guess he’s he’s supposed to watch like his father’s adventures or something like that.

Jon

Yep.

Mo

So he’s watching this animation. And let me tell you, it was very like heavy metal-ish.

Jon

Exactly, exactly, exactly.

Mo

Was that what you were thinking too?

Jon

All three of us had the same take.

Mo

Oh really?

Jon

We were just talking before the recording.

Mo

Okay.

George

Yep.

Jon

Yep.

Mo

Yo, it had Boba Fett.

Jon

you Yes.

Mo

It had freaking Boba Fett was a thing.

George

Yeah.

Mo

It had Boba Fett.

George

Yep.

Jon

So that was the first appearance of him then, right?

Mo

Yes, it was.

George

Mm hmm.

Jon

Because he didn’t show up until it all holy shit. That’s right.

Mo

Yeah. He did not show up until his next movie.

George

Yeah.

Jon

yeah You said high point and i I made a note to myself. It was startlingly surprising pleasantly. What a shift in tone and quality from the live action thing I’ve been watching to this cartoon that was very, and not just because heavy metal is an adult cartoon, but it’s a very mature and complex art style and drawing style.

Mo

Yeah.

Mo

Yeah. Very, very, yeah.

Jon

And it it deviates a bit from these Star Wars kind of like look a bit, you know like a 3PO had vertically blinking eyes or something, but it was cool.

George

Yeah.

Jon

It was all really neat.

Mo

Yeah.

George

And Chewbacca’s eyes were just white cylinders. They weren’t, no pupils in them at all.

Jon

Mm-hmm.

Mo

Yeah, it was very, ah but it was cool, though.

Jon

Yeah, it was.

Mo

And the story I thought was actually kind of cool story, actually.

Jon

Yeah.

George

It was a great story. That should have been the holiday special story.

Jon

Mm-hmm.

Mo

Yeah, they just had to tie it into Christmas somehow.

George

I don’t watch the shit out of that.

Jon

Exactly. Give me 24 minutes of that.

George

Yeah.

Jon

Boba Fett saves Christmas or how Boba Fett ruined Christmas and somebody had to save him.

George

Either way, yeah, Boba Fett plays the Grinch.

Mo

Right.

Jon

Whatever. Yeah.

Mo

Yeah, either way.

George

I don’t give a shit. It was awesome.

Jon

That was so good.

George

It was really well thought out. It reminded me a little bit of the Star Trek animated series in tone.

Jon

Mm-hmm, sure, yeah.

George

The art style definitely had the heavy metal thing.

Mo

Hmm. Mm hmm.

George

John and I were talking before the podcast mode that, and so we had the same observation you did. It was a well thought out and perfectly placed narrative, not in the special, but just in and its own self.

Jon

Yep.

Mo

By itself. Right, right.

Jon

Yeah, it was well executed.

George

I think the reason why maybe it felt so good was because you had just gone through 45 minutes worth of non-English bullshit, whip, whip, stir, VR porn chairs, whatever.

Jon

Roar, roar, roar. Whip, whip, stir. Roar.

Jon

And the pork hair.

George

And now you get something that you can really hold on to. Now, I don’t know as a kid, I would have enjoyed it, but I enjoy it. I think as an adult more than I would have as a kid.

Mo

Yeah, I agree with you. As a kid, it’d been weird, but yeah, I’m with you.

Jon

Mm-hmm.

Jon

It’s great.

Mo

So, and we’ll jump in.

Jon

So what’s next?

Mo

Oh, next is the Cantina scene with Acmena, I think is her name, if I pronounced it right, who is B.

George

Oh fuck off.

Jon

Okay.

Mo

Arthur, who, I mean, don’t be wrong, B. Arthur, love her stuff in mod. I thought she was fantastic and stuff, but, but,

Jon

The golden girls. Yeah.

Mo

And then the big question is, is this the cantina from Star Wars? Is this supposed to be a different cantina? Is it the same band and it?

Jon

Right. Is it, is it a cantina that’s on this Wookiee planet or is it a flashback?

Mo

Yeah, is it someplace else?

Jon

Cause Art Carney is there doing stuff.

Mo

It. Yeah, you know, oh, yeah, so weird. I mean, and they had um Harvey Corman was there to like hitting on her.

Jon

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s right. It wasn it wasn’t Art Carney was Harvey Korman.

George

right not harvey corman the whip whip stir harvey corman this is a new harvey corman who who he had become a stalker of her character because she would deliver a line as people would leave the cantina that’s what his entire character was like he thought she was in love with him because she said come back or whatever the phrase was

Jon

He came into hit on her and

Mo

It’s Harvey Corman. Yeah, hitting on her.

Jon

All that would have been, no, no, no, as another character.

Mo

No, no, totally different. A new character. Yes.

Jon

Right.

Jon

Right.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

Yeah.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

Right. Come back to me soon. I can’t wait to see you again kind of thing.

George

Yeah, but she said that to everybody and then he gets super sad.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

So he thought,

Jon

That might have been the best written part of this special that you had to interpret and understand how he misunderstood her affections.

George

Right.

Jon

And all of that would have been fine if we didn’t then break into a way too long Bea Arthur Cantina song.

Mo

Yeah.

George

Mm.

Mo

Yes.

George

Like from the low rent Greece version of this series, like just terrible play theatrical.

Jon

Yeah.

George

And she should not. I like be Arthur.

Mo

Yeah.

George

She was awesome in the golden girls, seminal classic of the eighties.

Mo

Mm hmm.

Jon

Certainly, ye yep, yep.

Mo

Hmm.

George

She was great in mod. One of the best shows in the seventies.

Mo

Hmm.

George

I love her. She’s a great straight man in a comedy environment.

Mo

Mm-hmm.

George

No question. She should not be fucking singing.

Mo

No. No. And I don’t know if you noticed that song she was singing was to the music from the Cantina scene.

George

Yeah, like in the background, but not terribly rhythmically either.

Jon

Oh, we we noticed.

Mo

Yeah. No, it was just there. Oh, it was just so…

Jon

And you don’t have the you know the original Star Wars Cantina scene, a lot of it, and we’ve heard this in the past, like they went and got Halloween masks.

Mo

yeah

Jon

You’re like, oh, for this guy we’re gonna use this, for this guy we’re gonna use this.

George

Mm hmm.

Jon

And it seems like for this, they went back to the same store and Star Wars already bought all the good masks.

Mo

They had to get what’s left.

Jon

And so now they’re like, what do you got left? a Goofy masks. And she would keep, since none of them could talk, because they were just masks, right? Bea Arthur would go, I know what you’re going to say, and she’d say his line, and I know what you’re going to say, and I’ll say his line.

George

Right.

Jon

And the song kept, is I’m like, oh, it’s awkward. And then the second verse, I’m like, okay, finally. Oh, shit, a third verse is coming. It kept coming. It felt like filler. How padded out with this, was it 10 or 12 minutes long song?

Jon

It was way too long.

Mo

Yeah. Oh, my God. So horrible.

Jon

Painful. Oh, okay.

George

I feel like we’re talking too long about this goddamn scene.

Mo

Yeah. But.

George

Let’s move on.

Mo

Yeah, let’s move on.

Jon

Yeah, it doesn’t deserve it.

Mo

Absolutely. So they they come up there. They somehow trick the stormtroopers. Don’t the wise don’t really care. Right.

Jon

Yep.

Mo

um And the stormtroopers leave and whatever. But oh, my God.

George

Well, not all the stormtroopers leave though, right?

Mo

Oh, that’s right. You’re right.

George

One stays behind because he has to be the fulcrum that allows them to move on to the end of the special, right?

Jon

Mmm.

Mo

Mm hmm.

George

The whole life day, the life day thing, whatever.

Jon

Yep.

George

But in that moment when he’s there and protecting and Chewbacca and Han Solo come back and everything, We get one of those little things that maybe only a few people hear from our generation, but we get a Wilhelm scream as he’s pitched off the balcony of the tree house.

Jon

That’s right.

George

And I’m like, Oh, that’s so nice.

Jon

ah

George

They were using it back then. you You gave me the cartoon, which I love, but at least you give me a Wilhelm scream in this one scene.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

Yup. So this is all in service to getting to what the surprising thing I mentioned earlier that, oh, everybody actually did show up on the same stone stage. So there’s this celebration that is a Wookiee celebration.

Mo

Yes.

Mo

Mm hmm.

Jon

It’s their cultural celebration. They all put on these red robes and they march off to wherever, you know, this tree of life or whatever it is. And then these stars from Star Wars and all the robots from Star Wars take over their celebration and stand up on the stage and they’re like, we know this is your celebration, but too bad we’re going to sing a song anyway.

Mo

Meh.

Mo

And Princess Laius is the one singing, which is even more bizarre.

Jon

Right? Odd? Did you see that coming?

Mo

And what was the deal with them walking into the light? like

George

Oh, I saw that. And the first thing I thought, are they ripping off Logan’s run?

Mo

Like…

George

When did Logan’s run come out compared to this?

Mo

Did he die on that day?

Jon

Mm. Right.

George

Because that’s exactly what that whole ceremony felt like to me.

Jon

Yeah.

George

Like I thought itchy was going off to itchy land or some shit. I didn’t know what was happening.

Mo

Yeah.

George

Cause it was called life day.

Mo

And.

Jon

Carousel.

George

And I’m like, well, fuck maybe they’re killing itchy off in this shit.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

It’s end of life day.

George

I don’t, that’ll be a great twist.

Mo

End of life. And.

Jon

Merry Christmas, everyone. Time to kill your father.

Mo

And I think the red robes.

George

I was like, was M. Night Shyamalan’s father involved in this goddamn special?

Mo

Oh, my God, what a twist, but apparently the red robes was also because they couldn’t get enough costumes.

George

What happened here?

Jon

appropriate So they they called up the Catholic Church and said, you got any choir robes we can just borrow for a second.

Mo

It went in a robe. Oh, it was so terrible.

George

Oh man. All right. Well, we’ve gone through the whole special. Now we got to see the life orbs in the walkthrough and everybody coming together and do the final scene.

Mo

Yeah.

George

I just want to ask you guys a question and I’m not going to ask about the cartoon. I’m not going to ask about the VR porn chair or mods singing in a Cantina.

Jon

ah we

George

And Mo, you might not be able to answer this because I know you watched a different version of the special than John and I did, but I’m just wondering what was your favorite commercial because there wasn’t a whole else lot to love in this fucking special.

Jon

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Jon

I’ll tell you of mine. So I really enjoyed seeing like the the the the promos for other stuff. Like I saw a Dallas promo in there, you know, for an upcoming episode or whatever.

George

Right. Yeah.

Jon

But the one that I watched and went, uh-huh, was the one with, the it was about a general ah telephone or bell Bell electronics, whatever it’s called, ah the phones.

George

The phones.

Jon

And they’re like, oh, look, a Mickey phone and this phone or whatever. But but it was like,

Jon

we knew that they had just, or where they either just, or we we’re about to ah ah get rid of the monopoly for Bell, right?

Mo

Oh, right.

Jon

So they had to do other things.

George

Right.

Mo

Break him up.

Jon

And so this commercial was buy genuine Bell, make sure you get a real telephone, not one of those knockoff garbage phones, buy one just like you always used to buy for bus, the overpriced ones, trying to hang onto that monopoly with the monopoly getting broken up.

Mo

Yeah. Babe bells.

Mo

Right.

Mo

yes

Jon

And I thought that was really interesting for the time, especially, ah but yeah.

Mo

Wow.

George

Yeah, because this would have also been around the time when people were transitioning from the phones that the company owned to owning their own phone.

Jon

Exactly.

George

Right.

Mo

Right.

George

Cause we talked about that before in the rotary telephone episode.

Jon

Exactly. Right.

Mo

Cause you leased the phone.

Jon

Yeah. Yep.

George

ah Yeah.

Jon

Yeah. They lost their grip.

Mo

Hmm.

Jon

What about you?

George

So Mo do you, did you see any commercials or okay.

Mo

No, I didn’t see any. I’m going to go back and watch it for sure, but yeah.

Jon

Oh, you’ll have to check that one out. Yeah.

George

Yeah.

Mo

Fast forward to the special.

George

Yeah. It’s, that’s exactly, I was thinking to myself as we were watching, as I was watching the special, like I’m watching this, like I sometimes watch the Superbowl.

Jon

Yeah.

George

If I don’t care about the teams in the Superbowl, I’m not watching the game. I’m only caring about when the commercials come up and I hush my family like, Hey, shut the fuck up.

Jon

Yep.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

ye

Mo

It’s commercials.

George

I don’t care who just scored a field goal.

Jon

It’s commercial time.

George

I want to see what this commercial is about this next car. I loved the, the different stuff that John’s talking about the GM commercials. They were a lot of fun. There was a commercial though, that was about a car.

George

And it’s not that I love the commercial the commercial wasn’t like outstanding or anything like that, but I just loved the fact of seeing this old pricing model in place back in 78.

Jon

oh

George

So it was $99 down, $99 a month.

Mo

Wow.

Jon

For a car?

George

for a car, the car as shown, you know how they always give us the as shown price in the little small, they didn’t do that.

Jon

For a car.

Mo

Wow.

Mo

Oh yes.

Jon

Mm-hmm.

George

They did. They they called out the as shown price like verbally and put it up in big numbers on screen was $4,612.

Jon

Okay.

Jon

Man. Oh, God, that’s a down payment now.

George

I was like, that is so awesome to see how things have changed from now to then, not only just in the numbers, how they’ve changed, but in the presentation of the numbers and what.

Mo

Mm hmm.

Jon

Mm hmm. Yeah, the transparency, the openness.

Mo

Right.

George

Yeah, completely.

Jon

Yeah, huh.

George

It wasn’t like, you know, the whole like super quick talking guy trying to read off a bunch of, you know, like because, except for this and except for that and except for this and all that bunch of small text at the bottom screen, none of that, it was calling everything out.

George

Here’s your car.

Jon

The

George

And I think it was, um, it was a Ford Lincoln Mercury and they had this cat. That was the mascot for the thing. There’s like, like a little kitten kind of cat that was, and just all these cars that were coming through.

Jon

Uh-huh.

George

And I was like, holy shit. I forgot about these cars. I certainly forgot about how people sold cars in the seventies.

Jon

Mm-hmm.

George

Cause this was right before the embargo oil crisis stuff in Carter’s last year.

Mo

yeah, yeah, yeah Cool It’s just special

Jon

Sure, sure.

George

Right. So yeah.

Jon

Yep. They were neat to see. I fast-forwarded through some of them until, like you, I started to realize, now, wait a minute, these are almost as entertaining, if not more entertaining, than what I’m drudging through in the first place.

George

Mm-hmm.

Jon

All right, so we get back, we’re gonna try to figure out what happened? What caused this thing to be so weird and wonky and jarring? Stick around.

Mo

So many things went wrong with the show.

George

ah

Mo

If there was, if there was a book about how not to do a special, this show exemplified all of it.

Jon

ah Chapter one.

Mo

I don’t know if you guys ah originally, it was only supposed to be a half hour show.

George

Yeah.

Jon

Hmm, would have been better as a half hour show.

Mo

That was the the first mistake that, yeah, that was the first mistake.

George

The cartoon.

Jon

Just a cartoon, right? to

George

Yeah.

Mo

And then of course the producers like, Oh, it’s Star Wars. Oh, let’s, we got to keep it. And then next, you know, it’s like an hour and change. It was like an hour plus.

George

John’s recording was an hour and 58 minutes, so that’s with the commercial.

Jon

Right.

Mo

Yeah.

George

So that means it was a two hour special that you would have had to sit through.

Jon

A two hour block on TV, right?

Mo

Yeah. A two hour special.

Jon

Yeah, yeah.

Mo

It knocked out both the incredible Hulk and Wonder Woman that night it to air.

George

Yeah.

George

Oh, fuck off.

Jon

Not cool, not cool, Star Wars.

George

You could have given me Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman, thrown the Boba Fett thing at the end and I’d have been happy as a lark.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

Right.

Mo

and say And one of the biggest issues they had though, is that Lucas was only involved at the very beginning because he had to go work on empire. You know, he had to go, you know, working on this cause suddenly he had all this extra money and budget and he had to go, you know, he had his big ideas.

George

Hmm.

Mo

So he started like somewhat being involved and then he just went off. And I think that was one of the big problems.

George

So. You know, we’ve watched the Star Wars stuff and they did, Star Wars was one of the first ones they did in the icons on earth. And in that it was revealed that one of the reasons why Jedi kind of went off the rails was because it was Lucas, but he didn’t have his ex wife around telling him what to do.

Mo

Mm-hmm.

Mo

Right.

Jon

That’s right, yep.

Mo

The kind of tent pulling back a little bit.

George

You say Lucas was only involved at first. I wonder if maybe we would have benefited from his wife being involved in this more.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

Oh, I’m sure, I’m sure.

Mo

Oh, absolutely.

Jon

Well, somebody who knew something about the franchise at all being involved, ah CBS just hired variety show writers who didn’t know anything about sci-fi and that’s painfully obvious.

George

Right.

Mo

Yeah.

George

Mm.

Mo

Yes.

Jon

It’s easy to just kind of like, oh, this is crap and this is garbage as Star Wars, but as a variety show in the late seventies, it’s on par.

Mo

yeah

Jon

It’s silliness, it’s goofiness, it’s musical numbers. I’m not saying it’s good. I’m saying it’s on par with that kind of thing. It wasn’t Star Wars creatives making a Star Wars thing.

Jon

It was variety show knuckleheads being forced to make a Star Wars thing.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

So I think you get what you give it you put into it.

George

But it was like I was saying earlier, it was, it was a variety show, but it was a variety show in the form of a foreign language film with no subtitles, which makes it really hard to digest for an audience who doesn’t speak Chewbacca language.

Jon

ah

Jon

it

Jon

why And that’s the kickoff.

Mo

Yes.

Jon

Like it starts like, what’s this gonna be?

George

Yeah.

Jon

10 minutes of I don’t know what’s happening. It’s really, it’s hard to get into.

George

I mean, you do get the little segment of solo and Chewbacca in the Millennium Falcon at the very beginning that honestly kind of fucked them up even worse because it gave you the idea that we’re going to get Star Wars for like a minute and a half.

Mo

Yeah, it’s very beginning. Yeah.

Mo

Yeah, it will absolutely.

George

We got that. And then boom, we get Chewbacca, itchy, lumpy Mala taking out the trash and sitting in VR porn chairs for the next 20 minutes. It was ridiculous.

Mo

Oh yeah. And like you said, because they had these variety show writers and stuff and producers working on this, they treated it like a variety show and they’re thinking a family variety show.

Mo

So they’re like, Oh, who can we bring in that to draw in the older crowd?

George

Mm hmm.

Mo

Oh, be author. Let’s just’s get, art let’s get, I mean, seriously, they were, like you said, if you were watching any other Chris special, like, you know, Jim neighbors, Christmas special, they, you would totally expect them to be on it.

George

Right.

Jon

to get Harvey Corman.

George

That’s what we were saying.

Jon

Yeah, yep.

George

Yeah.

Jon

Of course, that’s right. That’s who needs to be there.

George

Yeah. How the Statler brothers didn’t do a set on this show totally blows my mind.

Mo

and And, and also show you just a complete lack of just not understanding the demographic they were targeting on this at all.

Jon

I know

George

Mala, Mala, Mala, Mala, you cheat.

Jon

some of the Statler brothers still I know. it

George

right

Jon

Mm-hmm.

Mo

Like just they again, I, I don’t, the writers, I think we’re doing the best they could with what they knew, you know, but it was terrible.

Jon

You’re just, it was no focus. at that that I think that’s it for me.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

There’s no focus.

Mo

Mm-hmm.

Jon

They’re trying to serve all these audiences, the Star Wars kids, but also I guess we’ll try to please these audiences in a musical thing and just, there’s a lack of focus that’s so obvious and unfortunate.

Mo

Yeah.

George

Right. Hmm.

Mo

Yeah, it played like a sketch show.

Jon

I did. Yeah. Yeah.

George

Yeah.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

Too many sketches that went on too long.

Mo

Mm hmm. Yeah.

George

Well, and oddly enough though, it first started off with a director named David Akoma, who was a documentary director and he didn’t work with multiple camera setups.

George

You know, documentaries is usually just one handheld camera going around or a stable camera doing an interview kind of a thing.

Jon

Oh, making films.

Mo

Yes, yeah. single yeah

Jon

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

George

Uh, but he got replaced by a guy named Steve Binder, who was known for directing concert and variety shows, which makes sense for what they were going for.

Mo

Mm hmm.

George

They were just wrong to begin with, with what they should have been going for.

Jon

but

George

It should not have been a variety show. You could have done Star Wars, like Red Nose Reindeer special, right? That’s, that’s a holiday special, but instead of focusing on holiday special, they focused on variety show and that’s where everything went off the rails.

Mo

Right.

Mo

Yes.

Jon

And you could smell the variety show in it.

Mo

Oh, my God, yeah.

Jon

We’ve said it multiple times.

George

Mm-hmm.

Jon

We didn’t even talk about the silly acrobat thing that went on on the chess board that was like,

Mo

Oh my God. Yeah. strict The Cirque du Soleil deal, whatever that was.

Jon

Right, you and you pile that on top of all the Wookiee speak.

George

Oh Jesus, Cirque du Soleil, I thought the same thing.

Jon

Yeah.

Mo

And one thing they sell top on the documentary is that when this director took over, he said that, yeah, they they they interviewed him. He’s like, yeah, I got there on set. And he says, okay, well, why aren’t we going to do this scene? He’s like, Oh, we’re out of budget.

Mo

Like when he took over there, he spent all the money.

Jon

oh

George

ah

Jon

oh there So a new director couldn’t make decisions that matter probably, so.

Mo

So he was like, Yeah. So he was doing everything he can to cut money, to save things. It was ridiculous.

Jon

yeah Yeah, I noted that Jefferson Starship just arbitrarily was chosen because they had a song called Hyperdrive.

George

yeah

Jon

And so since ships in, no, no, since ships in Star Wars had a Hyperdrive, like this is perfect. There’s the connection. It makes great sense. They must be related.

Mo

And call Starship too.

Jon

They’re not, right? And it’s called Starship.

George

Like who was the, who was the onset grip who said, you know, if you guys want music in this, I’ve been listening to this Jefferson Starship album and the third song on the second side is called hyper dry.

Jon

So with,

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

Oh, book it. Somebody get him on the phone. Quick. Greenlit.

Mo

and And again, you have to watch the documentary, but they did a lot of like later interviews with Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill, those guys, and where people asked them about this movie and the reactions.

Jon

No.

Jon

yeah

Mo

Like Harrison Ford, like he was kind of playing it up a little bit, but he suddenly got like really uncomfortable. He kept shifting in his chair.

George

mm hmm.

Mo

He’s like, do you remember the special? He’s like, no. go either And Mark Hamill, they interviewed him at like a con and someone asked him and he said that they were explicitly told not to talk about it.

Jon

Nope.

George

Wow.

Jon

Really?

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

Oh, yeah. So look, Lucas is famous in Hollywood for burying his mistakes and burying versions he doesn’t approve of and making modifications and purging, trying to purge the universe of you know this version of my film or whatever.

Mo

Yes. yes

George

Right.

Jon

So you can, I guess you can see where they’re coming from. It, it doesn’t match. It doesn’t blend. It’s not of the same fabric even of anything else in the Star Wars universe. However, despite all of that, it has become an integral part of the Star Wars universe for fans because of how reviled and how weird and loopy it is.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

So you guys don’t matter. We get back at our last break. We get back. In our last segment, we’ll talk a little bit about how it has endured and become a lasting legacy of the Star Wars franchise. Stick around. Cool. Yeah, I knew that’d be quick.

Jon

So the Star Wars holiday special does exist. No matter what you would like to think, no matter what George Lucas would like to think, no matter what Disney would like to think, now that they own it, it does.

Mo

Yes it does.

Jon

and Though they tried to not let you see it, you don’t tell people not to see something, it just makes you want to see it more. So we have seen it and we’re aware of it. And it kind of has this kitschy place in pop culture and the legacy of the franchise. And it’s been ranked worst of the best or best of the worst, however you want to think about it, in many, many things. It was number one in a what were they thinking, the hundred dumbest events in television history. Yeah.

Jon

It was ranked number three in the five goofiest moments in the Star Wars mythos. Wait, wait, number three.

George

Number three, what the fuck was one and two Jesus was Jar Jar ahead of the holiday special somehow.

Jon

There were two more worse.

Mo

Wow, what was two? I know, I want to go look at that now.

Jon

and That was something in that maybe, no, couldn’t be, couldn’t be. That was in like a UK Star Wars magazine. So go to look it up. A TV guide ranked it at number 11 on their 25 most hilarious holiday TV moments mentioning that it was unintentionally hilarious, which true.

George

Yeah. All right.

Mo

and That makes sense.

Jon

And both TV Guide and TV Land ranked the special number 59 on their top 100 unexpected television moments in a five part special that aired back in 2005.

Jon

So if everybody recognizes it didn’t go away, you couldn’t bury it.

George

Wow.

Jon

It actually made it more visible and that visibility is canonized in how bad it was.

Mo

Yeah.

Mo

Yeah. And the funny thing is how, is how it became like, it’s almost became like a, a symbol of how, how nerdy, like we are true fan. Like, were you like a real fan?

Mo

Because everyone has remembered this aired in 78.

Jon

Yeah.

Mo

We didn’t have VCRs then to record things. It only aired

Jon

That’s right.

George

that’s right.

Jon

Yep.

Mo

Yeah, it only aired the one time. So in order for you to see it, you had to like get this bootleg copy from somewhere. And it became like a symbol. Like, Hey, have you seen the holiday special?

Mo

And if person said yes, like, Oh dude, you know, you bump fists cause you’re a real fan. You know, we get it now.

Jon

Right. That just jarred my memory, George. We’re talking about the one we watched with the commercials. That wasn’t somebody’s VHS recording.

George

Mm-hmm.

Jon

That had to be like a network air check tape.

Mo

Mm-hmm.

George

I was just thinking that it, but it had to be a network air junket though, because it was a localized version because some of those commercials were local to the, like it showed movie trailers or movies, you know, that were airing and it showed those theaters in the area only.

Jon

Yes.

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

Yep.

Jon

That’s right. Right. This escaped from some television station that aired it, not some home VHS recording.

Mo

Yes.

George

Wow.

Jon

So somebody had to air check some two inch reel.

George

So it’s on a beta. That’s a beta tape somewhere, right?

Mo

Oh, yeah.

Jon

It could have been a reel to reel, could have been a two inch magnetic tape.

George

Oh yeah.

Jon

This was like salvaged, rescued, yeah.

Mo

It. Yeah, I know. What was the quality of the one you guys because the quality I watched looked like a recording of a recording of a recording.

George

Wow.

Jon

Oh, no, it’s nice. it’s It’s quite nice.

Mo

Is it OK to watch yours in because it’s terrible.

George

Yeah, it’s not bad, yeah.

Jon

It’s very watchable. but It’s not perfect, but it’s it’s yeah, it’s nice. ah Okay, other places that has just popped up um in the in white and nerdy Weird Al Yankovic song, there’s ah just a snippet of a scene where he is ah like doing a drug deal with somebody, but what he’s getting is not drugs.

George

Yeah.

Jon

It’s a bootleg of the Star Wars holiday special, right?

George

Absolutely.

Mo

That’s perfect.

Jon

Again, to what you said, Moe, how nerdy are you?

Mo

That’s perfect.

Jon

How big of a fan?

Mo

Yep.

Jon

Yeah.

George

Yep.

Jon

yeah

George

ah You know, in 2007 Hasbro, they released a Boba Fett action figure with the likeness from the animated cartoon that we all love so much called Boba Fett animated debut.

Jon

Did they?

Mo

Yeah.

Jon

Oh, awesome.

George

I desperately want this. I’m sure John and Mo probably also want this.

Mo

Uh, big time.

George

So for all of our Gen X grown up fans out there, if you happen to come across this, either buy it and give it to us or give us a link or whatever, I think all three of us would enjoy having this in our collection.

Mo

Oh, absolutely.

Jon

That’s because that was neat.

Mo

Big time.

Jon

I was just an animated thing was so good.

George

It was really good and I, and his costume was different in the animated, of course, expected me, but not so different that you didn’t know who it was.

Jon

Yeah.

Jon

Yeah. yeah

Mo

Yeah. Yeah.

Jon

Immediately recognizable, yep.

Mo

Yes.

George

Very nice. Um, another thing this just for me, I am big fan of the Mandalorian in chapter one of the Mandalorian first episode, there was a reference to life day in that episode.

Mo

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Mo

Oh yeah.

George

So I guess, uh,

Jon

Oh, oh yeah. ah

George

um I’m guessing Jon Favreau, who I think helmed Mandalorian in the first season, was a fan of the special or at least knew of its, you know, yeah, at least knew of its existence enough to throw it in there.

Mo

Yes. Yes he did.

Jon

Well, fan.

Mo

yeah There was another reference to the Mandalorian that, um, when Boba Fett comes into the show, you know later on, he has a rifle with the two prongs on it that was a copy from the animated series.

George

Yeah.

Jon

Yeah.

Jon

Yes.

George

yeah

Jon

e That’s right.

George

Right. Well, it’s, and it’s, uh, that’s not his rifle. Uh, the first time we see it in the Mandalorian is the Ming Na Wind character has it because she had gotten it from Boba Fett.

Mo

Oh, she is. That’s right. Right.

George

But yeah, you’re right.

Jon

Oh.

George

That’s the, that’s the one that he uses to tame that big water creature Loch Ness monster fucking thing.

Mo

But

Mo

and uh there was a scene i don’t know if you guys watched the latest the new show um sales skeleton crew have you guys watched that yet yes watch the pilot there’s actually a scene in it and the scene we kind of glossed over really quick there’s a whole hologram dancing circularly bizzardness thing going on they actually have that in the pilot of this the kids watching something very similar almost exactly the same actually yeah it’s these little characters dancing doing acrobats

Jon

Yeah, I was a pilot. Yeah.

Jon

Mm hmm.

George

Oh, yeah.

Jon

Yep.

George

Oh, wow.

Jon

It’s like, it’s like in a daycare. It’s like for super little tiny kids, right? They’re like, oh, just entertaining them. So it’s like a nod to the Star Wars holiday special, but also saying, look how juvenile this ridiculous segment was for the holiday special.

Mo

absolutely

Jon

It’s for babies to watch.

George

I guess that’s why lumpy was so enthusiastic about it. Cause he was a kid. So.

Jon

Right, exactly. He was, he was digging it and he, and was he controlling it and making them bigger and smaller? I don’t know what he was doing. It was really weird.

George

I wasn’t sure about that part. I couldn’t figure that out. That was just weird.

Jon

I don’t know. I don’t know.

George

Cause then the bigger one was recognizing the smaller one cause it like pointed down to the gate and made other ones come out.

Jon

ah

Jon

Yeah. Mm hmm.

George

I don’t know. It was weird.

Jon

Yeah, there was no rhyme or reason.

Mo

Yes, absolutely.

Jon

It was just dancing clowns. That’s pretty much what it was.

Mo

this

Jon

ah What one more ah community a TV series community in 2011, they had an episode called regional holiday music. The main characters watch the inspector space time holiday special, which which was was, you know, it wasn’t a direct, but as a reference, kind of a nod back to the Star Wars holiday special, you know,

George

Oh, funny.

Mo

Oh god. There’s one last thing I have to bring up though. If you go to like the Disney parks, the the Star Wars area and stuff, if you go there on November 17th, that’s Life Day.

Jon

Uh-huh. Really?

Mo

That’s the day that special aired and they have life day stuff.

George

ah

Jon

Whoa, wait. So when you go to the park on that day, they actually observe that.

Mo

Yes. They have a life day celebration.

George

Wow.

Mo

Yes.

Jon

That’s that’s cool.

Mo

And it’s November 17th, the day it aired.

Jon

Oh, I bet it’s hard to get in on that day.

Mo

Oh, it probably is.

Jon

I get enough people again. How big of a fan are you? Yeah, there you go.

George

it’s It’s not hard to get in on that day. I’m guaranteed not a lot of people are going to the fucking park for life day.

Mo

No, it is.

Jon

Oh crap, if I ever went, I’m gonna dress up as Harvey, Harvey Corman’s whipw whip, whipster girl.

George

Oh.

Jon

Gotta put on your cosplay. Let’s go.

George

Right.

Jon

Whip, whipster, whip, whipster. All right.

George

ah

Jon

I have good news for you. The punishment is over. The torture has ended.

George

Phew.

Jon

We can stop talking about the Star Wars holiday special.

Mo

It was fun to talk about it.

Jon

It was fun to talk, you know, it’s one of those things that it’s so bad. It’s not so bad, it’s good.

Mo

No.

Jon

It’s so bad that it’s good to enjoy it with other people who acknowledge what it is.

George

Mm-mm.

Mo

Yes.

Jon

ah Just the the camaraderie that, yeah, it’s it’s it’s it’s like a secret club. Do you know about it? How well do you know about it? I love it. Guys, this has been great. Thank you. Before we leave, we’re running along on this show.

Jon

I want to thank a couple of brand new Patreon supporters.

Mo

Oh, fantastic.

Jon

oh They keep coming and we love you for it. Over at patreon dot.com slash Gen X grown up, you can sign up to support what we do financially with a monthly pledge for as little as a buck a month.

Jon

And both Sam H and Jeffrey S did that very thing.

Mo

Awesome.

Jon

Sam Jeffrey All three of us are so grateful to you and to everyone who put your money where your mouth and your ears are, ah listening to the show, watching on YouTube, enjoying on the website.

Mo

since

Jon

If you would like to join them again, genexgrownup.com slash Patreon, head over, sign up. It’s super easy. We love your support and it allows us to keep doing what we do here on the show.

Jon

That then is going to do it for this backtrack on the Star Wars holiday special. The last one we’ll ever do, I think. Possibly the last one we’ll need to do.

Jon

Not the backtrack, the holiday special. We’ll do more backtracks.

Mo

ah Okay.

Jon

In fact, we’ll have another backtrack coming your way in a couple of weeks. New episode also. Next week, I am John. George, thank you so much for being here.

George

Yes, sir.

Jon

Mo, you know I appreciate you, pal.

Mo

Hey, happy holidays guys.

Jon

Happy Life Day.

Mo

Happy life day.

Jon

Fourth the listener, it is you. We all appreciate most of all. I can’t wait to talk to you again next time. Bye-bye.

George

See you guys.

Mo

Take care everybody.

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About The Author

Mo As someone who barely manages to squeeze in as a GenXer my memories include more of the 70's than those younger GenXers. Reading and movies are my passions with some video gaming thrown in there for good measure!

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