'Tis the season of the holiday specials. I don't think it's possible to describe just how much I love them or to even explain my reasoning. Rudolph, Grinch, Twas the Night Before Christmas, Frosty... Some of my favorites of all time. Something about seeing them every year just makes them better and better.
One thing that I've noticed over the years... I can tell where commercials were originally intended to be...or at least where they usually are. And I notice when the networks put them in odd places and cut parts out to fit in more commercials. That is one of my commercial pet peeves...that and those little commercials that pop up in the corner or along the bottom of the screen DURING the show. Watched the Grinch the other night. Darn network put commercials all over the place. I must say it was smart of them for their removal of the original fade outs that marked the inteded commercial spots...but I'd rather see the whole thing. Not only did they cut a few scenes (which I must admit get overlooked a lot...even our old VHS tape from when I was little has one scene missing), they also shortened scenes!
But I'm not going to dwell too much on that. I saw Rudolph the next night on another station and it was the whole thing. Commercials may have been moved around, I'm not as good with this one, but nothing was cut out. And there was one scene that gets skipped a lot that was included.
Still, networks having gone crazy with commercials or not, it's still way more fun to watch them on tv than on tape or dvd. Why? No idea. But it's always been that way for me. Movies, favorite episodes of shows, and specials are infinitely more fun when watched on tv.
My earliest (and one of my favorite) christmas special memories is sitting in our living room eating dinner (chicken in mushroom sauce), which was always a treat when we didn't eat around the table, watching Twas the Night Before Christmas. I still say that's my favorite of all the specials, probably because of all my favorites, it's on tv the least. Which is ok with me, as long as it's played once I don't want to see it a million gillion times. <3
