Why does Charlie Brown keep trying to punt the football when Lucy's holding it, if he knows she's going to pull it out of the way? And why DOES everyone in It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown blame Charlie for losing the Homecoming game when it was all Lucy's fault?
Because Charlie Brown is the Butt-Monkey. If he didn't get gimped continuously, the universe he inhabits would implode into a black hole.
There are those who posit that that has already happened. Somewhere around the time a white-haired, red-eyed kid in a giant bio-mech bit the dust, another kid on the other side of the world put on an unexpected burst of speed and kicked a ball in what could best be described as a 30-meter punt of Ultimate Doom...
I just got an awesome mental image of Charlie Brown running at Lucy and the football in slow-mo as Ode To Joy plays, with both of them exploding into LCL as CB's foot makes contact.
Shortly after imagining that image, I imagined Lucy piloting Eva-02 in a red plug suit. "Shinji, you blockhead!"
When Linus was a baby, he didn't have a blanket yet and he had a lot more hair
Have an Internet. Hell, have fifteen.
Wasn't Peppermint Patti in charge of that game? Considering she has some respect for ole' Chuck, I'm surprised she didn't tell Lucy to stop it.
To add to the Evangelion crossover, Ode To Joy would, of course, be played by Schroeder on his piano.
Charlie Brown keeps trying because he's gullible. Each time he initially refuses, but Lucy manages to convince him that this time will be different. It's a testament to both Chuck's naivety and optimism. I found the homecoming example a bit strenuous, but I'm guessing nobody noticed that Lucy moved the ball and they all thought Charlie just missed. (I never liked that one, because I think that's going too far even for Lucy. She likes to win too much to sabotage an actual game.)
There is a cartoon that shows Charlie Brown punting the football. It was drawn by a political cartoonist, not Schulz, just after the 2006 elections.
Just to be technical, Charlie Brown is trying to kick the ball, not punt it. Punting in football is when the person doing the kicking takes the snap directly and kicks the ball away. Just sayin'. When you have a person holding (Lucy in this case), it's a place kick.
Because, as proven in what's considered to be the finale to the series, if he manages to walk away, he'll see the rest of the world, waiting, holding a football for him
It just occurred to me, but couldn't a Lucy who was slightly quicker on the uptake have run the ball for at least a first down? I'll betcha the opposing team wouldn't have seen that coming.
Depends on the situation. You can't do this on kickoffs (in fact, pros normally use a tee — a holder is a last resort if the ball just won't stay teed up). For field goals and extra points, this is viable ... although it also means that Lucy is the ball carrier. Guess what defending football players love to run into and tackle.
I have always liked the tragic poignancy of the theory that, on some level, Lucy actually does believes she will hold the football and allow Charlie Brown to kick it every time.
For the record, Charlie Brown did manage to kick the ball once... Indirectly. Via Lucy's hand. Cue people being mad at him, and her swearing never to be that nice to him again.
I think you're talking about the one where Charlie Brown went to the hospital for an unknown illness (he just felt "sick", and checked himself in), and Lucy swore she'd let him kick the football if he got better. So he gets better, then makes Lucy go through with it. He ends up kicking her * arm* , breaking it, and having her declare "The next time you go to the hospital, stay there!".
Hold on, there was another time Charlie Brown kicked it. It was in the special "It's Magic, Charlie Brown," where Charlie Brown gets turned invisible by Snoopy and he finally manages to take Lucy by surprise. And it feels gooooood.
The catch on this one is that, since he was invisible, there's no way to prove he actually kicked it.
Also, in one of the last comics, Lucy has to go in for lunch and asks her little brother Rerun to do the honors of pulling the ball away from Charlie Brown. When Rerun comes in later, Lucy asks him if he pulled it away. Rerun responds "You'll never know," to Lucy's bewilderment and leaving us with an open and somewhat optimistic ending.
And so many people were angry about that one scene when everybody blames Charlie Brown for Lucy's making them lose the homecoming game that they wrote a number of protest letters, forcing the producers to go back and cut the scene out from subsequent broadcasts. Charlie Brown isn't just the Butt-Monkey, he's also The Woobie.
Actually, all they did was censor out Peppermint Patty chewing out Charlie Brown. This is weird because at the dance scene, they still blame him for losing the game
Because Charlie Brown is an absolute optimist. Even though he knows full well Lucy's going to pull the ball away, he just can't help hoping, in his heart of hearts, that maybe this will be the time he'll finally get to kick it. And that dream keeps him going despite the utter futility.
The better question is, "Why doesn't Peppermint Patty ever call for a 2-point conversion?"
Actually, Fridge Logic just reared its head: Charlie Brown DID kick the ball. Two times (a third might be a punt), and all in 'It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown'. How can we tell? His team's score moves from 6 to 13, then 20.
There was one time when Lucy was in the middle of a long speech and didn't seem to be paying attention to Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown started running at the football without warning her, wanting to finally kick it while she was distracted, but she noticed him and pulled it away after all. There was another time when Charlie Brown told Lucy that he was gonna get ready to kick it, but he knew what she was planning so he just left her there and went inside. Lucy kept on waiting for him and eventually fell asleep while holding the football. Charlie Brown looked out the window, saw Lucy sleeping with the football, figured this was his big chance and went to kick it—only for Lucy to wake up and pull it away at the last second.
As for why Charlie Brown got blamed for what happened in "It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown", Peppermint Patty blames Charlie Brown for a lot of things (for instance, she pinned the blame on him for the time she "bowled" another student down the aisle). She's also very, very stupid. My guess is that she wasn't paying attention and just blamed him because that's her go-to response whenever something goes wrong.
While it's easy to call her stupid in many other respects, she's in her element in sports, including football. Yes, the only play she gives the team is a run up the middle, but it's good enough for them to get three touchdowns over the course of the game. Then again, in a real football game the kicker is normally protected a lot more — and even if not, as mentioned earlier LUCY would be the target, what with her holding the ball and all. But instead Chuck whiffs the kick and has BOTH teams pile on top of him.
Aren't they a li'l young for a homecoming game?
On the topic of "It's Your First Kiss", a lot of things don't make sense about the football game. Why are elementary aged kids having a homecoming game? Why are the girls allowed to play on the team? Why doesn't their team have uniforms? Why is Snoopy the referee and everyone accepts this even though he's a dog? How did Charlie Brown get assigned to escort The Little Red Haired Girl and not even know he was until the day of the game?
One of the girls is their star quarterback. Now, the lack of other things you might want at a football game like, say, uniforms, padding, officials, and coaches? They blew the budget on the parade, I guess.
Huh?!
How the hell does the decathlon scoring work in You're the Greatest, Charlie Brown ? If Snoopy wins 2 of the first 5 events, and Charlie Brown none, how is it that the dog's in last place?
'Cause he's a dog?
Hey, Ain't No Rule that say a dog can't participate in the decathlon!... He's clearly an official participant in the event, with a school sponsor (Ace Obedience School) and everything!
You must be too young to remember the "Dan and Dave" fiasco. Each event is scored separately Snoopy had more botched events than Chuck, enough that the firsts didn't make up for it.
The decathlon does use a complicated scoring system in which the competitors "run against a table, not against each other" (to quote an NBC Olympic broadcaster). Peppermint Patty very briefly brings this up in the show, but doesn't explain it in detail.
The subject of the "Great Pumpkin"
Linus believes that the Great Pumpkin gives presents to all the children in the world on Halloween night. Why would he believe that if no one ever gets presents on Halloween?!
That's kind of the point. It's a metaphor for having absolute faith, even when everyone else thinks you're crazy. It may also be a not-so-subtle hint that this trait can be taken too far.
Actually, that's just an Urban Legend. According to the Word of God, Linus' belief in the Great Pumpkin was never intended to be a metaphor for faith. Schulz said that the only inspiration for the Great Pumpkin was that he thought it would be funny if a character believed in a Santa Claus-like figure for Halloween.
That's always bugged me in itself. It is about faith. There's no way to say it's not. Linus believes in an unseen quasi-spiritual being who rewards the faithful, while the lack of evidence tests his faith. There's no way for anyone, even Schulz, to say "it's not about faith". It's like saying "water's not wet". Maybe he didn't mean for it to be an extended metaphor for religion, and he probably did not intend it as a Take That! at religion... but saying it's not a metaphor at all is just denial. The cartoon, which was written by Charles Schulz, even has Charlie Brown giving the line "we're obviously separated by denominational differences" in reference to whether to believe in the Great Pumpkin or Santa, so he wasn't adverse to using the religious metaphor, at least for Rule of Funny.
It's not about faith. If it was about faith, it failed to deliver that message. The Great Pumpkin never appears. If it had to have a meaning, you could interpret it as being about staying the course even when all evidence points to something else, or just say it's about futility. Even if you can use it as a message to teach or re-enforce faith, that doesn't mean it's about faith.
Faith, Merriam-Webster definitions. "1a : allegiance to duty or a person, loyalty" as in Linus has an allegiance and loyalty to the Great Pumpkin and his duty to remain in the patch. "1b: fidelity to one's promises," as in Linus's promise to wait in the pumpkin patch. "2a: sincerity of intentions," as in the most sincere pumpkin patch, and his own sincerity. "2b: belief and trust in and loyalty to God, 2c: belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion, 2d: firm belief in something for which there is no proof," as in there is no proof of the Great Pumpkin and yet Linus firmly believes based on his own doctrine. "3: complete trust". Linus continues to believe even after being disappointed. "4: something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs". It is obviously about faith. Linus's belief in the Great Pumpkin is the literal textbook definition of faith, and the humor's driven by Linus putting his faith in something that seems patently absurd to everyone else. That's the whole point of it. Being "about" something doesn't mean taking a side on the issue and dropping an anvil about it. The story is about faith; specifically, it is about his faith in the Great Pumpkin. On a very basic, linguistic level, it is most definitely about faith.
Heck, your own words, "you could interpret it as being about staying the course even when all evidence points to something else" ...that's what faith means! Faith isn't just a synonym for religion; at least, that's not how I'm using it. I'm using it in the basic "belief in something without evidence, as an effort of will and as its own virtue" sense, and that's the definition of faith that the story is about. The disagreements come in when trying to decide whether and how to extend Linus's faith in the Great Pumpkin into a metaphor for anything else (personally, I think it's just Rule of Funny).
It's about a kid doing something funny. I think that's what Schultz was going for. I don't think he was trying to present a message about faith.
You're right; he probably wasn't, and any message a reader takes from it is most likely their own interpretation than something the author intended. But still, it is about faith. Just like it is about a kid, even if it wasn't intended as a message about kids.
It's also about futility. Linus is the only one who never realizes his own futility - that the Great Pumpkin doesn't exist.
Between Charlie Brown's various exploits (kicking footballs, flying kites, playing baseball—pretty much anything that's not marbles), Linus's never getting a visit from the Great Pumpkin, and the fifteen thousand metric tons of unrequited love in this comic (Charlie Brown/red-haired girl, Linus/Ms. Othmar, Sally/Linus, Pepperment Patty/Charlie Brown, Marcie/Charlie Brown, Lucy/Schroeder), you could say the entire strip is about futility and the art of never giving up.
Sorry, boys. Word of God says it is not about faith and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong and anything else is Misaimed Fandom. I heard Albert Einstein said, "God doesn't play dice", but Richard Dawkins says Albert Einstein didn't believe in a personal god. So why would he say God doesn't play dice? I don't know, that's his error for poor wording.
Albert Einstein was almost certainly a pantheist, who see God as being equivalent to the Universe. As such pantheists may use the term God and yet do not believe in a personal God. The term "God" to them can be replaced with "the universe" or "nature". This is made quite clear in Einstein's writings.
How old is Linus? Seven? I think he can be forgiven having a bit of a blind spot regarding presents on Halloween, the getting thereof.
My question about the Great Pumpkin is: how did Linus come to believe in it anyway? Kids believe in Santa because they have evidence: the word of their parents and other adults (including the media), the presents under the tree, and ubiquitous Santas during the Christmas season. People who believe in God have the support of friends, family, and major world religions. Since we see no evidence of the Great Pumpkin, either real (in-universe) or manufactured (like Santa), Linus' belief is puzzling. The Imaginary Friend theory doesn't work either; how many children actually believe in them, to the extent that they would skip trick-or-treating, or going to a party with their friends?
I think that someone (probably Lucy) made it up and Linus thought it was true. If it was Lucy, she probably just thought of it to mess with him, and eventually got tired of his obsession, finally decided to just tell him the truth, which Linus ignored. (If you watched the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode that parodies the Great Pumpkin, you can probably recognize this theory from it)
It's implied that the Great Pumpkin may exist in-universe. One strip has Charlie Brown running to Linus in the pumpkin patch and telling him about a radio broadcast. The Great Pumpkin was reported to have turned up at the pumpkin patch of someone named Freeman in New Jersey.
Or maybe there are folks in the Peanuts world that are crazy like Linus.
Latchkey kids?
I notice some old strips that show the kids going to the theater, apparently on their own. These kids are what, seven or eight? Why are their parents letting them run around alone? And in "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (just to name one) wouldn't there at least be some adult supervision in making a play? Man, Adults Are Useless.
They were also paying for admission with, like, a nickel. A more innocent time, perhaps? As for the play thing, it's more a matter of Adults Get in the Way of the Rule of Funny. An adult certainly wouldn't stand for any of Lucy's Christmas Queen back-sass. ...actually, that pretty much applies to the whole comic. Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown with adult supervision? They'd sit around making lanyards the whole time. Bleah.
For the first, I think you're just applying modern paranoid values to older literature. I was running around outside alone from younger than 7, as long as my parents knew where I was and when she I to be back.
Considering that adults are invisible (and mute in the comics) even when they are present, they were probably there all along.
I had a fellow worker who was older; he grew up in the 1950s. He related an incident where he and a friend, both around the age of 9, got on a bus and rode to downtown Miami to watch a movie, without adult supervision.
I grew up in the 70s and there were rare times when my friends and I would walk to the local theater and watch movies without any adult supervision. It was a rare event only because my family was poor. There was no perceived threat of any danger, even though we were out walking the streets at night in a group of three or four eight-year-olds.
The Hays Code required all movies to be family-friendly.
My favorite one's Bon Voyage Charlie Brown (And Don't Come Back): the kids travel to France seemingly without adults, and Snoopy is their bus driver! But it's all in the name of Rule of Funny; the series just takes place in its own innocent, kid-centered world. Or alternately, the events as we see them are being filtered through the gang's imaginations, like Calvin and Hobbes.
That's not the only time Snoopy ended up filling in for adults in general. He was the referee for the homecoming game in It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown. More specifically, the adults in this strip aren't exactly the brightest bunch.
There are some later cartoons which do show adults, such as a recent B-side to the Thanksgiving episode that shows the kids on a ship traveling to North America.
To contextualize some of this, the first Peanuts strip debuted in 1950 and, while the term "latchkey kid" wasn't in the lexicon at that point, the idea had some of its roots during the time of the comic, where kids were, y'all know, free ranged and the neighborhood kinda raised your kids.
The universe says when we're done, Charlie Brown.
Am I the only person to whom this strip came off as unfettered sadism? Granted, it has some cool supporting characters (Snoopy, Linus, et al.). The idea of feeling better about myself because someone else has it worse isn't exactly uplifting, and admiring Charlie because of his eternal resilience doesn't work because he's a total pessimist. Every time he tries, he gets ground down into the dirt, and every time he decides not to try, he gets derided for it.
It's not sadism. It's life. Our world has many nice, happy, friendly Everymen who are going to end up with bad luck and their faces rubbed in the dirt. Charlie Brown is the ultimate personification of that trope, with the entire friggin' universe in a conspiracy to make his life as miserable as possible. Does he give up? No! Sure, he may give a depressed monologue or two, complete with a "I can't stand it!", but in the end he always gets up and tries again. Shultz is making a quiet plea on the benefits of optimism and determination here. Charlie Brown has the worst luck imaginable, but due to his optimism and friendly nature, he's always "Good ol' Charlie Brown" to everybody he knows. No matter what life throws at you, if you keep a positive attitude, you'll get by. That's the lesson of Charlie Brown.
Amen!
Unfortunately, Charlie's less 'optimistic' and more 'delusional.' And those happy, friendly Everymen you mention don't suffer near as much as Charlie does at any point in his sad, pathetic life. He's basically Frank Grimeswithout the sweet release of death that Frank received.
You must lead an extremely sheltered life if you think no real-life "happy, friendly Everymen" ever suffer as much as Charlie Brown. I've known guys who LOST THEIR FAMILIES and managed to pick themselves up and go on. Charlie Brown loses ballgames.
Remember, despite his frequent assertion that nobody likes him, Charlie Brown has the love of two good parents, and he does indeed have numerous friends (Linus, Schroeder, Marcie, Peppermint Patty, etc) about whom the worst that can be said is they have their own eccentricities and faults and are not at all blind to his. Charlie Brown desires much and so is frequently disappointed, attempts much and so often fails. He has succeeded a few times, but one of the continuing messages of the strip, along with Charlie Brown's continued perseverance, is delivered by Linus at the end of A Boy Named Charlie Brown, which is that failure (or in this case, lack of success as he did come in second in the spelling bee) is not necessarily crippling. Not "don't be discouraged," because you will be discouraged, not "you'll ultimately succeed," because you may not, but that failure will only destroy you if you let it.
"I got a rock."
Regarding the Halloween special-I know Charlie Brown is supposed to be a Butt-Monkey and all, but what kind of bastard gives a little kid a rock on Halloween?
The better question is why doesn't Charlie Brown throw the rock at the window of the house who gave him one? Serves the bastard right!
Ad he didn't just get one rock, he got a whole bunch of rocks. That would all the adults had to have coordinated with each just to make sure Charlie Brown was given a rock. That's the most sadistic neighborhood ever.
It's never specified that the adults are opening the door. The kids who live in those houses could be doing as just a prank. Also, it might not be directed at Charlie Brown. He could just be VERY unlucky.
Charlie Brown kept getting rocks because he had a poor costume, what with all those holes in his sheet.
That's still no excuse. And for the record, the deal with the rocks are something invented by the special itself. It only crossed over into the comic years later, and it was just ONE rock. As far as this troper knows, nothing in the comics before or even during the special mentions anything about Charlie getting such a sour deal on Halloween. It could go either way: Either his claims about getting a bunch of junk are true, or - given his free-spirited behavior at the time - he was just whining. Did I mention he knew perfectly well how to cut two eyeholes in a sheet to make a ghost costume? The "trouble with the scissors" is something invented by the special as well.
Am I the only one who never questioned until his later years why Woodstock was eating turkey in the Thanksgiving special?
Just because they're both birds doesn't mean they're the same species. They could be just as related as we are to cows!
Not really. It's never clear what species he is, and many birds eat meat.
Indeed, wild sparrows love to peck at boxes of fried chicken people leave behind.
Seagulls are particularly omnivorous.
There was later a comic where Woodstock sees a turkey cooking and asks Snoopy (in bird-speak) what's going on. Snoopy horrifies Woodstock with tales of what humans eat on Thanksgiving and the bird proceeds to kick Linus in the shin who wonders "What was that all about?"
I have a dove who eats poultry if given a chance. I do find this a little disturbing.
Again, the universe says when we're done, Charlie Brown.
I for the life of me can not fathom why no one has brought this up yet, but why the hell does everyone hate Charlie Brown so much? Did he do some kind of horrible thing that tarnished his reputation, or is it just that Kids Are Cruel?
If you look at the first few years of Peanuts, Charlie Brown could be a real Jerkass and smart alec sometimes, not to mention causing trouble for other through his obliviousness. Consider this, this, this, this and this and these are not even the worst examples. None of the kids were perfect, and Charlie certainly wasn't an innocent target himself.
This troper wonders if maybe he's a reformed neighbourhood bully and the rest of the kids aren't quite so quick to forgive.
Unlikely. While Charlie was a lot wilder in his younger days, the first appearance was Shermy noticing him coming down the street, calling him 'Good Ol' Charlie Brown' ... and the last panel voicing 'How I hate him!'.
Kids? If we take the animated specials as canon, then not only do the kids hate Chuck (including his 'best friend' Linus at times), but the adults do as well. Which means that Schulz is using poor Chuck to prove that Humans Are Bastards.
Or that kids are, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
And that adults are, too.
He's sympathetic, relate able, never gives up (even when he should) and you want him to succeed. But on on the other hand, he's also a navel-gazing chronic depressive who manages to be a wet blanket in social situations. I get the feeling that half of Charlie Brown's failures occur because he expects them to, despite the veneer of optimism he puts on. That doesn't excuse the level of jerkassery he gets from Lucy and the adults in the neighborhood, though. Also, he's the "drama" sort of person that will turn any conversation into one about their problems and how awful their life is while tuning out anything else. The point being, he's a nice guy and he doesn't deserve most of what he gets but you can see how you'd get sick of him sometimes even if he were one of your friends. What's really odd is that the two characters supposed to be closest to him (Linus and Snoopy) tend to treat him either callously (Linus doesn't go out of his way to be mean but also doesn't soften his opinions or the facts no matter how much he knows they'll hurt Charlie Brown) or indifferently (Snoopy doesn't give Charlie Brown much reciprocation for all the kindness Charlie Brown gives him) - and arguably Peppermint Patty and Marcy are the two characters in the cast who treat Charlie Brown with the most genuine affection and closeness (their introduction marked a definite shift in the strip to slightly more positive) but this isn't ever really commented on or acknowledged.
As his best friend tells him during his very first television appearance: "Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you're the Charlie Browniest!"
It's widely acknowledged that in the strip's glory years, it was amazingly dark. Someone once said that the fourth panel of almost any 60s-era Charlie Brown strip is a perfect example of nihilism. Everyone hates Charlie Brown because Life hates Charlie Brown. He's the ultimate Butt-Monkey.
Actually, most of the major characters have their Butt-Monkey moments. Linus is bullied by his sister, has his beloved blanket stolen repeatedly by Snoopy, is stalked by Sally, and is mocked by the entire neighborhood for his faith in the Great Pumpkin. Lucy is renowned as a "fussbudget", gets the obedience of the other kids but not their respect, and loses every confrontation with Schroeder and Snoopy. Peppermint Patty is her own worst enemy. Any one of the Peanuts children could complain that the world is against them, but because our central character is Charlie Brown, we are more aware of his suffering than we are of the suffering of anyone else. Also, as pointed out by many others, he complains about it more than does anyone else.
It's nothing personal against Charlie Brown, the other characters (aside from Linus, Schroeder, Marcie, and Franklin) are just jerks. Lucy in particular.
Throwing him a bone.
The end of He's a Bully, Charlie Brown. On one hand, Charlie Brown succeeds at something, but on the other hand, Charlie Brown succeeds at something. If that makes sense.
Please elaborate.
Well, Charlie Brown wins in a game of marbles and he's never supposed to succeed at anything. It's out of character.
That special was actually based on a week of strips where a kid wins all of Reruns marbles and Charlie Brown goes and wins them all back. The special differs from the strip in that he has to be taught how to play marbles; in the strip he has always been good at the game, and the whole week of strips is really his Moment of Awesome. It's my favorite week of Peanuts ever.
Do keep in mind, the bully wasn't very good at marbles. He would challenge little kids who were still learning to a "friendly" game, then take all the marbles and run. Anyone with moderate skill could beat him. Still, the fact that Charlie Brown chooses to be that anyone says something.
Also, this was one instance where Charlie Brown was doing something for someone else instead of himself. He never wins at football or baseball for himself, but when he challenges a bully to avenge Rerun, then he wins.
Schulz did get a little softer on ol' Chuck later in the comic, this being but one example. The specials also tended to zig-zag on how he was treated. Even as early as You're In Love, Charlie Brown in 1967, he did manage to get the Little Red-Haired Girl's attention, something that never happened in the comic. Not that it was ever mentioned again.
That ain't reading materials for kids, Teacher.
Even for Charlie Brown standards, the New Year's special is cruel. Why does Charlie Brown's teacher make him read War and Peace during Christmas vacation and expect him to write a report on it?! Did he put a tack on her chair or something? When I was in school, my teachers never gave us homework during Christmas vacation, especially not impossible ones like that. It's because of Charlie's teacher being such a Grinchette that I can't stand that special.
I think it was based on a storyline in the comic strip in which he was required to read Gulliver's Travels, which is still challenging but a probably a more realistic option. Of course, in that strip he decided to put it off until the last day of the holiday ("I can read it tomorrow morning and do the report tomorrow afternoon.") while his classmates did it straight away, so in this case it was really his own fault.
Yes, but here the reason he can't get it done is because of Peppermint Patty's party.
My fifth-grade teacher pulled that kind of shit, though not with anything as long as War and Peace. Every evening, weekend, and school holiday was consumed by reading or writing reports. I strongly suspect that my lasting difficulties with essays are a direct result of this.
Never mind the length: What kind of psycho assigns a novel that features illegitimacy, death in childbirth, mangled battlefield corpses, attempted suicide and (implied) abortion to a grade school kid?
War and Peace is the standard Thick Russian Novel that everyone assumes is difficult and boring. (And it would be difficult for kids.) Teachers in kid lit tend to want to assign the densest books in existence for the kids to read, simply because they can't stand the thought of kids playing and having fun when they could be chained to the desk and laboring over grueling assignments.
A Sunday School teacher? Most of that kind of thing is in the Bible.
I thought homework during Christmas break was normal. Well, at least where I live. * grumble*
Inviting the Little Red Haired Girl
Speaking of the New Year's special, why did Linus hang out with the Little Red Haired Girl when he knows full well Charlie Brown has a crush on her? This only made things worse for Charlie Brown's already abysmal night.
Linus didn't know where Charlie Brown had went to, so he invited the LRHG to dance to keep her company until Charlie Brown returned. (It's equally possible that he was using her as an excuse to not have to dance with Sally.) It's Charlie Brown's own fault that took his book outside to read and fell asleep.
Why the heck does Charlie Brown go by his full name anyway? I was always bugged by that.
This is pure speculation, but maybe there is/was another guy called Charlie in the neighborhood (whom we never see) and the kids just got into the habit of calling Charlie Brown by his full name in order to distinguish him from the other Charlie?
A really odd WMG about this, but perhaps Schroeder is the "other Charlie"? Considering that Schroeder's full name was never revealed, it could be possible that Schroeder is just his last name and that his first name is Charlie. He could have wanted people to call him by last name just because it was cool (and made him seem more like a classical composer).
The strip actually semi-explains this one: There was a girl named "Poochie" who used to live in the neighborhood (she almost adopted Snoopy from the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm, but ended up choosing another dog instead... Snoopy still carries a grudge towards her for that), and she was the one who started calling Charlie Brown by his full name. For whatever reason, the other kids picked up on this habit and even after Poochie and her family moved away, just kept at it because at that point he was "Charlie Brown" and not just "Charlie."
Everyone refers to Charlie Brown by his full name rather than just "Charlie" because the producers want people to get the idea on which Charlie they're referring to. Same reason Peppermint Patty is called such, to avoid confusion with the original Patty, who had been a part of the Peanuts world since Day 1.
The Shipping of Pepperming Patty and Marcie
Why does everybody think Marcie and Peppermint Patty are gay when they're both very obviously in love with Charlie Brown? Peppermint Patty is good at sports and Marcie calls her "Sir," but those are the flimsiest excuses for "proof of homosexuality" I've ever heard in my life.
Even though this is cliche, I must say it: Marcie and Peppermint Patty could be bisexual.
Eight years old. Seriously, the internet has an annoying habit of associating sexuality with characters that by all regards shouldn't worry about such things.
I get that. I don't even think they're lesbians. I just don't get how Word Of God fits into this.
Well, Schultz himself said that they weren't lesbians. That's Word of God right there.
He never said that they couldn't be bisexual. He only said they couldn't be lesbians, since they both like Charlie Brown. Lesbians are different from bisexuals.
That's always been a bit of a wall banger for me, too. Especially since they each have a crush on Charlie Brown. The only reason that I can imagine that people think this is that 1) Peppermint Patty is a tomboy, and 2) she and Marcie are close friends. Okay, first off, being a tomboy and being a lesbian don't automatically go hand in hand (especially with young kids). Secondly, if having a close female friend makes a girl a lesbian, then most women and girls I know must be lesbians.
I do ship them, for a few reasons. First, the fact that they have a crush on him at this age doesn't necessarily indicate anything about actual sexuality. Second... I tried to articulate it better but I couldn't. It just feels right, somehow, especially because I also ship CB/Lucy.
Because Peppermint Patty is a tomboy and Marcie is her friend. Seriously, that's all there is to it.
I hate whenever someone drags out the lesbian/bi argument for Patty and Marcie. My friends and I both had a crush on the same girl in middle school, and we were still friends despite it. They're eight, people! They can be friends without feeling attracted to each other!
If their crushes on Charlie Brown were real, wouldn't they have some sort of competition for his attention? I don't see that happening, so it's possible that they are lesbians or bisexual and simply don't realize it yet. I like to think of it as Marcie having a one-sided crush on Peppermint Patty, and she's too infatuated with Charlie to notice anything.
They have competed at times. It's rare, but Marcie royally pisses off Patty during one sequence when they're talking and she's implying Charlie Brown making moves that he sure as hell wouldn't do, if you know what I mean. As far as shipping? People will ship anything.
To the one who wrote "Wight years Old" etc.: Regarding them as lesbians isn't any more sexual than if they were straight.
Speculating on somebody's sexual preferences is by it's very nature sexual, no matter what conclusion you reach.
It's shipping. Why should one care so much?
Well, if it's bad shipping ...
To kind of address a point, they are eight and so their puppy love for Charlie Brown is just that, puppy love, and so they might not have exactly those same feelings if they were older. To address a second point, well, Peppermint Patty and Marcie to spend a lot of time together and there's hardly a strip without the both of them.
The subject of the "Schroeder"
Is "Schroeder" Schroeder's last name or first name? He could be trying to act like Beethoven or something and have everyone call him by his last name.
Also Schroeder was introduced when he was a Baby and couldn't speak. so maybe it is just the bell tag that said Schroeder.
Schroeder is a surname. Most Peanuts characters bear a Germanic surname if they have one— we have the van Pelts and Reichardts already, and as Schulz mentioned Charlie Brown was basically based on the time when he was a GI, the Browns can be as well be referred as the Schulz's. One needs to note that due to the large amount of Central European immigration into the Twin Cities area in the 19th century, these surnames are very common when Schulz grew up.
There was one comic strip in which someone on the radio called him "Mr. Schroeder". It could be argued he only gave the radio station his first name, but there is actually a Peanuts FAQ that claims its his last name. BTW, you guys should really check this place out for answers. Great website.
Just lock the door, Schroeder
If Lucy annoys him so much, why can't Schroeder just lock the door so that she can't get in?
Maybe, although he doesn't love her and indeed finds her annoying, he nonetheless on some level appreciates the company and the attention. In the early sixties there was a storyline in which Lucy and Linus move away, supposedly for good. Schroeder is shown playing piano alone, when the hovering musical notes fade away and are replaced by an adoring Lucy, leaning on the staff. He stops playing and says, "Don't tell me I've become accustomedtothatface!"
I see three major possibilities, one or more could be true: 1) The boys of Peanuts all have a strong sense of chivalry, so Schroeder pretty much has to let her in. 2) She's probably more annoying/dangerous if he doesn't let her in. 3) His parents might let her in.
What happened to Shermy?
This is the same troper from the above two entries. Anyway, it just bugged me that Shermy got brother chucked and replaced by Franklin, who was virtually the same, except for the fact he was black. The Other Wiki or somewhere else once said that Franklin "proved to be more interesting in the long run". How exactly was he more interesting? Are black people more interesting than white people? Does Franklin have better hair? Why Why Why? (I do not hold anything against Franklin nor am I a Shermy fan or a racist, this is just something that bugged me)
A lot of Schultz's characters tended to fade in and out. Patty, Frieda and Violet kind of disappeared after a while, too (although I think Patty might've been ousted when Peppermint Patty became popular so people wouldn't be confused by two Pattys).
I can understand that, since Peanuts was a long running comic strip, but sometimes it just seems to me that the reason Shermy was replaced with Franklin was because the strip needed a black guy.
Shermy was never "replaced" by Franklin — you might as well say that he was replaced by Linus, or Schroeder, since his role diminished greatly while those two got larger roles (and Linus took over the function as someone for Charlie Brown to talk to on an equal level). By the time Franklin entered to picture (1968), Shermy had exclusively been a background character for several years — and he stayed as a background character for a full year after Franklin's first appearance, vanishing from the strip completely in 1969. So as far as I can see, Franklin's appearance had nothing to do with Shermy's disappearance, despite the two events happening in a fairly close proximity.
Besides, Franklin didn't really appear all that often, either.
As already stated, it's not true that "Franklin replaced Shermy". Furthermore, Shermy's fade into the background actually started about when Lucy was introduced (if you can call it that — she never had a literal "introduction") in 1952. Look at the first SUNDAY strips from that year. Shermy is all over them for about the first three months, and then virtually disappears — just as she makes her first appearance therein.
Shermy's disappearance (as well as other characters) could also be attributed to the changing dynamics of the cast. The strip's dynamics really changed from 1966 to 1971 when Peppermint Patty, Woodstock, Franklin, and Marcie were introduced. It may have been easier to write for these characters than it was for the others.
A lot of it comes down to Shulz's love-em-or-leave-em approach to character development. Most of his characters (the big exceptions being Peppermint Patty, Marcie, and Spike) are built without much personality or character traits. He then lets them evolve naturally through his writing. (A perfect example is that Schroeder wasn't initially a piano player, until a one-day gag turned him into one) The down side to this is that some characters never really click and as a result fade to obscurity. So Patty, Violet, and Shermy (and later Franklin, since he didn't grow much either) faded not due to being replaced, but just due to more interesting characters showing up.
Franklin was introduced as a character that had never heard of Charlie Brown before, so he couldn't be Shermy. Also, his primary role was to be a foil to Peppermint Patty at her school, so again, Shermy couldn't fill that role. He was also designed to be the Only Sane Man who found the stuff that went on weird, which again, Shermy couldn't do.
The intended audience
What is/was the demographic of Peanuts? Was it aimed at "everyone"? Or was it aimed at kids with a Periphery Demographic of adults? Or was it just aimed at adults? Maybe this whole demographic thing just bugs me because I'm more used to reading manga, where demographics are pretty obvious (shojo, shonen etc.), but it's still confused me.
You're right, the demographics tend to be vaguer for newspaper comics, where the strips range from Cathy and Garfield to Doonesbury and The Boondocks. When Peanuts came out, it was definitely aimed at kids (with some Parental Bonus thrown in), but it's smart and imaginative enough to keep its charm for adults, and it's been around long enough that all the people who grew up liking it have changed from a Periphery Demographic into a large portion of the audience.
The Time Period
When is Peanuts currently taken place? A lot of older medias get retconned into being in the present for that time. Peanuts currently gives a 50s - 80s feel so it's hard to tell.
Due to the fact that the characters don't age, Peanuts has a certain timeless feel about it. It doesn't really take place in a certain time period.
A lot of series take place in a void where people don't age yet they bop around time periods all the time.
The strips that are currently being reprinted date back to the early 1960s.
The Harry Potter strip from around the time it ended seems to imply 2000s at best.
In The Peanuts Movie, they still use corded phones. Those really haven't been a thing since the 90's.
Sliding timescale. It affects many fictional characters, and not all of them are comics or comic strips.
The Baseball gag
If Charlie Brown's clothes fly off when he gets hit with a baseball, what would happen if he got struck while he was already naked?
There's a joke about balls in here somewhere...
The question here is, why in the world would he play baseball naked?!
The strangest thing about Charlie Brown, to me, is the fact that he's a child who is almost completely bald. Was this ever explained? Lampshaded? Is it just a weird stylistic choice?
I think someone mentioned that he just had very, very fine hair. (I prefer the bald theory, myself. And what's wrong with that for a kid?)
Charles Schulz is supposed to have explained at one point that Charlie Brown has very fair hair and his father (who is, as we know a barber) keeps it cut very short.
It figures that blond + buzz cut wouldn't show up very well in newspapers. Think back to the original skinheads, who didn't shave their heads but instead wore a buzz cut with a #2 grade clip guard.
Charlie Brown basically looks like this kid◊ from that Mr. Bungle short so famously spoofed by Pee-Wee Herman. A very short platinum-blond crew-cut where you practically look bald (which makes the boy in Mr. Bungle come off as a weirdo for combing his hair. Like....what hair?)
For what it's worth, it's pretty likely Charlie Brown would be blond. Look at the known blood relative we see on-panel.
Going by the live-action portrayals in the MetLife commercials, he's likely blond with a buzzcut.
How does a bird and a beagle buy weapons?
Here's something that I just can't get out of my head ... where do Snoopy and the birds keep buying weapons? And don't tell me they're all fake..there's a mid-80s sequence where Snoopy's playing French Foreign Legion with the birds, and has a cannon. And uses it..
I haven't seen that one, but I'm gonna be guessing that it's his imagination, and in reality nothing was shot out of it. Unless Charlie Brown comes out and complains that his window was broken or something?
He laughed at Snoopy having blown a hole in his doghouse. I think Lucy's psychiatry stand and Schroeder's piano also took some friendly fire. And then there's Snoopy's assault rifle he took with for his dog license renewal..
There was a Charlie Brown Christmas/Halloween/Thanksgiving etc. Why oh why was there never a Charlie Brown Fourth Of July? They even had a Charlie Brown Arbor Day!
A few episodes of "This Is America, Charlie Brown" covered the Revolutionary War and the Constitutional Convention, which is why Fourth of July is celebrated.
How does she do her hair
How does Lucy do her hair in the morning if her arms don't reach the top of her head? (See this pic or any football-yanking pic for proportion.)
She forces Linus to do it for her. She's Lucy, after all.
Her arms almost make it to the top of her hair, so with a comb and brush she could probably manage pretty easily
Talk about overkill, Principal
A certain Rerun-centered strip. What kind of kindergartener gets reported to the principal for talking about running away to Paris!?
That level of stupidity has been equaled a thousand times over by the real zero-tolerance policies which Schulz was parodying. Satire is dead.
Snoopy doesn't have traditional cartoon "round circles with pupils" eyes, but if you look closely, they more resemble commas with a semicircle on top, which is really difficult to re-render in 3-D without creating something that could harm little kids' fingers.
As far as I see, Snoopy has Black Bead Eyes, the semicircle is only drawn to show depth when his head is turned or if he's rotating his eyes in some direction.
Are all the specials in the same canonical universe(from the 1960s to 2000s)? Some of the movies are contradicting. Do they take place in their own universe?
For somebody who's had a crush on the Little Red-Haired Girl for so long, you would think that Charlie Brown would've found out her name. But apparently not, because he always calls her "That little red-haired girl."
He's too afraid to ask.
You’d still think he would have figured it out after some time (perhaps from hearing someone else call her by her name).
He does seem to know her name in the specials in which her name is mentioned to be Heather (as well as The Peanuts Movie). What is strange is that he still calls her “the little red-haired girl” even after he already knows her name.
Stray siblings?
Something about the special Snoopy's Reunion always caught my attention. We see all of Snoopy's siblings as puppies being adopted by human families. Yet, years later, when we see Spike and Olaf getting notice of their family reunion, they are now living on their own. What's up with that?
Maybe their owners gave them up. Spike lived with coyotes for a while, so I'm guessing he ran away from his owners. As for Olaf, maybe his owners didn't like how chubby he was. He was, after all, voted the World's Ugliest Dog in his first appearance in the strip.
He's trying to crash in on Woodstock's totally outrageous pad, ya know.
Another Easter Beagle headscratcher: Peppermint Patty and (especially) Marcie go through three batches of eggs because Marcie doesn't know how to boil them. Why didn't Patty show her what to do after the first batch, or even the second?
There is a theory that Marcie is Jewish or some other sort of denomination that doesn't celebrate Easter and that's why she keeps messing them up since she was never taught how to color eggs.
Peppermint Patty maybe just didn't think of that? This IS Peppermint Patty we're talking about here.
She did tell Marcie the second time that they had to be boiled. Peppermint Patty apparently didn't realize Marcie didn't know how to make boiled eggs. Marcie came really close to getting it right that time, if only she hadn't cracked the eggs into the boiling pot instead of putting them in with their shells. She may have gotten it right the next time.
The Unfinished Halloween Candy
At the beginning of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, Sally complains that she hasn't even finished her Halloween candy and there's another holiday coming up. Um, in the Halloween special It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Sally spent all of Halloween night in the pumpkin patch with Linus (waiting for the Great Pumpkin) and didn't go trick-or-treating. So where did Sally get this candy she mentions?
The specials don't take place in the same year, maybe? Or maybe they're not supposed to be canon to each other? Or perhaps Sally told her parents what happened and got them to buy her some candy to make up for it, and she counts that as her Halloween candy.
Linus took Sally's "YOU OWE ME RESTITUTION!" to heart and bought her a load of candy on November 1.
Signing up for Summer Camp
How did Lucy, in 'It Was A Short Summer', manage to sign them all up for summer camp without their or their parents' input, signatures, permission and have it mean anything? Their parents might have to pay for this, and some might not want their kids to leave town, having plans of their own. I know, it's Lucy, it's a cartoon, all that but this seems to not only break the law, it seems easily overturned, and not everyone takes it the way Charlie Brown does.
Showing respect, force of habit, and to piss her off every so often. Although at the end I think Patty was just used to it, as if it were an odd nickname.
Again, that ain't reading material for kids, Teacher.
Back to War and Peace from the New Year's special: Charlie Brown goes to a store to ask for various adaptations of the book such as film or sound recordings but is unsuccessful. Why did he not think to check the library or elsewhere for study guides on War and Peace? These did exist as early as 1958 (Cliffs Notes was invented that year) and this was my first instinct anytime I was assigned a book in school or college.
Because the special just COULDN'T allow Charlie Brown to get that report done and ENJOY his holiday break.
Maybe he thought of it as cheating.
The Doctor is "IN"
Why does Charlie Brown keep going to Lucy for psychological help? She's the one who constantly makes him miserable in the first place!
Because 5 cent psychiatric help is all he can afford on a weekly allowance of 50 cents (as indicated by Is This Goodbye, Charlie Brown? when Snoopy takes over the psychiatric help booth after the Van Pelts move away and increases the cost to 50 cents.)
He's probably just desperate.
Was the lemonade any good?
Where is the cat?
In the comic strip, there were tons of unseen elements like adults, the Little Red-Haired Girl, the inside of Snoopy's doghouse, and the cat next door. In the cartoons, all of these were eventually seen except the cat next door. Why was that the one thing Charles Schulz never allowed to be depicted in cartoons?
Schulz just couldn't draw cats that well.
In addition to the above, Schulz openly admitted that showing the cat next door would have turned Peanuts into just another "cat versus dog" work, which he felt was overused already in popular media.
Why didn't his parents notice?
In the arc that introduces the Goose Eggs, Charlie Brown runs away from home because he bit the Kite-Eating Tree, and stays away for at least two days. When he reunites with his friends, Linus mentions that Charlie Brown can come home because the tree fell over and thus there's no evidence for a court case against him. BUT - at no point does Linus mention Charlie Brown's parents being worried about him. Did they even NOTICE their son was missing?
My guess is that the other kids covered for him. I mean, it might not be farfetched that his parents noticed but got an explanation that he's staying at a friend's house.
The Missing Letters
In a strip where Charlie Brown met Peggy Jean at camp, she writes to him after camp is over, but by the end of the summer, Charlie Brown has not received any letters from her. It turns out that this is because Sally kept sending away the mailman because the letters were addressed to “Brownie Charles” (the name Peggy Jean calls Charlie Brown, as he mistakenly introduced himself as to her). Why didn’t it occur to Sally that they were meant for Charlie Brown, considering “Brownie Charles” sounds very similar to Charlie Brown's name?
She's not very smart.
Demoted to Extra?
Okay, while I do understand that every special with "Snoopy" in the title features Snoopy with the lead role, and while I do understand why the specials with Charlie Brown in the main role have "Charlie Brown" in the title, but how come specials like Play it Again, Charlie Brown (which mainly focused on Lucy and Schroeder) and She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown (which primarily focused on Peppermint Patty and barely featured Charlie Brown until the last seven or so minutes) have "Charlie Brown" in the titles despite that Charlie Brown doesn't have the lead role in those?
Because the title has to be marketable. You wouldn't want to watch "Play It Again, Lucy & Schroeder", would you?
Forfeiting the game?
In the arc where Snoopy & Rerun bet on a baseball game, why did the PTA have to tell Charlie Brown that he had to forfeit the game? The club seems to operate without the PTA, so why? Did they take over the team before the arc?
It wasn't the PTA. Charlie Brown got called in by the League President, who said a bunch of parents got together to report their team for gambling, so they had to forfeit the win.
Does Charlie Brown have any friends beside Linus, Schroeder, Franklin, Rerun, Pigpen, Peppermint Patty, Marcie and The Goose Eggs (Austin, Ruby, Leland and Milo)? like out of all of the kids in the Peanuts series only 11 of them don't hate Charlie Brown also are they really Charlie Brown's friends since they did yell at him a few times and called him blockhead a few times.
More on the Missing Friends
(same user as above) whatever happen to Shermy, Patty, Violet, 3,4,5 and the other Peanuts characters who disappear and were replaced by Linus, Lucy, Schroeder, Peppermint Patty, Marice etc.
As noted above, the other characters were phased out as time went on. There ain't an in-universe explanation but y'all could take it that they moved away, goes to different schools, etc.
Breaking the Piano, Lucy, how could you?!
Why did Lucy destroy Schroeder's piano twice? I thought his piano-playing skill was why she was attracted to him.
She can't stand the fact that Schroeder prefers the piano to her.
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