Stocking Stuffer: The Twelve Craziest Things that Happened on THE SANTA CLAUSES
Okay, look, I know I’m supposed to be with my family right now, drinking eggnog and watching Rudolph or arguing about Ron DeSantis or whatever today. But I can’t help it. I can’t let this Christmas season end without completing a little bit of unfinished business. In my defense, you’re supposed to be with your family right now too, and here you are. Bear with me for a second.
This year was notable on the blog for me being able to update and “complete” a couple of long form series for me. Last month, I was able to resurrect my 2020 Scorsese retrospective by reviewing KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON. A couple of weeks ago, I was able to put a bow on this summer’s Sofia Coppola series by breaking down her biopic PRISCILLA.
However, I recently brought to my own attention that I made a promise at the end of 2020. After spending a few days going over the delirious insanity that was the SANTA CLAUSE trilogy, I had made a declaration at the end of the article for THE SANTA CLAUSE 3: THE ESCAPE CLAUSE -
This marks the end of the canonical story of Scott Calvin, at least so far. In the advent of Disney + expanding every brand under their corporate arm, it's a little surprising there hasn't been a SANTA CLAUSE 4 announced yet, or a 10-episode TV spinoff starring Curtis and Buddy. However, I wouldn't be surprised if Mickey Mouse changes his tune in the next couple of Christmases. If he ever does, I'll be here to review it.
As it turns out, Disney eventually met me somewhere in the middle. Technically, the movie trilogy is still defunct as of 2006. HOWEVER, last year, they dropped six episodes of a follow-up continuation series, entitled THE SANTA CLAUSES! My wife and I watched it and basked in its asinine nonsense, then thought nothing else of it afterwards. I realized later, after Santa had already come and gone, that I was technically obligated to do a write-up. Okay, well, I wasn’t going to go back and post something in late January, so I chalked it up to a lesson learned.
THEN, Disney had the nerve this fall to drop a second season. I took this as a sign. Thus, today, on the holiest of days, I present to you the twelve craziest things that happened during the first two seasons of THE SANTA CLAUSES (now streaming on Disney Plus!):
Let’s start with the theme song, a short little thing that sets expectations for the show perfectly. It’s not so terrible as it is downright bizarre, a jingle that seems to be missing a middle section. One’s mileage may vary, but I felt like I was going crazy every time this thing played in front of me. The graphics aren’t much more comforting, I’m afraid. It starts with a CGI reindeer turning around and staring straight into your soul, and it concludes fifteen seconds later with a bevy of CGI Santas raining down your screen. Interesting choices, both.
The episode titles themselves, quickly revealed at the end of the title sequence, are oddly chosen and crafted. I think they’re going for “funny-sounding” over anything truly informative. Here’s a sampling of a few of them: you be the judge as to whether that particular mission was accomplished.
Chapter One: Good to Ho
Chapter Two: The Secessus Clause
Chapter Four: The Shoes off the Bed Clause
Chapter Five: Across the Yule-Verse
Chapter Seven: The Kribble Krabble Clause
Chapter Eight: Floofy
Chapter Twelve: Wanga Banga Langa
Something that you probably suspected about THE SANTA CLAUSES is that it does dabble a little bit in the brand of conservative humor you may associate with modern-day Tim Allen. Yes, Santa moans early on in the first episode about how “you can’t even say Merry Christmas anymore”. Hacky shit, but I would actually submit that there isn’t enough of this going on in the series. Not that I think it’s particularly amusing, but I feel it’d be a stronger choice to go all in on the cranky boomer jokes rather than do one or two before settling for an amorphous “IP brand extension” tone. Yes, it probably is now “more accessible for all audiences”, but nobody’s watching but me anyway, you know? Let’s have some personality!
One of the running themes early on in the first season of THE SANTA CLAUSES is Santa’s search for a suitable replacement, a hiring event that gets opened up to celebrities and notable figures. It’s actually a pretty decent setup for a series of famous faces coming up to the North Pole and doing their thing for thirty seconds. Naturally, the show provides us only one: NFL great Peyton Manning, who auditions by grunting out, “Ho-Ho-Omaha!”, a reference to Peyton’s famous audible call that I’m guessing most of this show’s potential audience had probably forgotten about in 2022, or maybe never heard before at all. One has to imagine what would have happened if the first season had filmed a MERE year later; maybe Santa would be getting pitched by the Kelce brothers to appear on New Heights or something.
The Season Two premiere contains an interesting treat. The episode’s centerpiece is a quick music video-esque segment, featuring all the elves dancing around and providing backup to another elf singing “Dancing with my Elf”, a parodic cover of the Billy Idol song “Dancing with Myself”. Oddly, this turns out to be part of a training simulation for Scott Calvin’s son (don’t worry about it). I didn’t dig too much as I felt deeply weird Googling a child actress for more than a couple of seconds, but this felt like a way for Disney to showcase a potential child star in the making by finding a way to fit a singing showcase where one normally wouldn’t fit. I find this somewhat charming in an old-school Hollywood kind of way.
Season Two features the Easter Bunny. The Easter Bunny is played by Tracy Morgan.
Season Two’s main villain is a former Santa, known as the Mad Santa. One episode contains a flashback to Mad Santa’s original reign. He is hosting a party and banging away on a piano singing a song, to the tune of We Wish You a Merry Christmas, about how he doesn’t like porridge. Tracy Morgan’s Easter Bunny declares that the song “slappeth”.
Later on in the season, rhe Mad Santa grants everyone at a Santa Claus-themed park a present based on their deepest desire. One person gets a signed framed photo of Guy Fieri (I admit this one made me genuinely laugh).
A running storyline throughout THE SANTA CLAUSES’ second season is the need for Santa’s head elf Betty (Matilda Lawler, who is pretty easily the best child actor on the show up to this point) to attend Kribble Krabble, which turns out to be the elf version of the Amish ritual Rumspringa, where adolescents get a chance to live outside their religious confines. Here, Betty must go live among the humans in New York in order to….oh, who knows. Referring to Rumspringa as “Kribble Krabble” is one of those things that feels vaguely offensive in ways that are imperceptible. There’s nothing really wrong with it, but it seems like there should be.
90’s television and movie stalwart Laura San Giacomo recurs as Christmas witch La Bufana, a name I only held onto for its resemblance to that of jazz legend Paul Bufano.
THE SANTA CLAUSES expands on the greater SANTA CLAUSE lore (a bone-chilling sentence if ever there was one). It also contains a pretty major retcon. We find out in the fifth episode of Season One that the Santa that Scott Calvin appeared to have killed (played then by Steve Lucescu, now played by PARKS AND REC alum Jim O’Heir) is not, in fact, dead! He simply retired to the afterlife (which kind of sounds like he died to me, but never mind). Also, the passing of the mantle to Scott was no accident; he was a carefully chosen successor, handpicked by Santa after a chance encounter when Scott was a kid. See? There’s no random manslaughter in the original movie anymore! Are we having fun with any of this yet?
It’s likely this is the only thing you ever knew about THE SANTA CLAUSES and, in fact, might have been your first indication that the show even existed, but it should be noted that Casey Wilson, the pilot episode’s big guest star as the girl Scott Calvin encountered in the very first SANTA CLAUSE film, has gone on the record with what a disinterested asshole Tim Allen was during the filming of her episode. Although this is something that technically allegedly occurred offscreen rather than on, I think its potential truth helps clarify the weird feeling the entire show provides. It’s a show where even its main star, playing the titular character, barely wants to be there. You can feel it. There’s a big feeling of “who gives a shit” that permeates every scene of every episode of this. Amazingly, there’s a very real chance it gets a third season. As long as the streaming slot machine needs feeding, anything and everything can be a quarter.
You can bet I’ll be there if and when.