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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 4 years

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Psycho Analysis: Christmas Special Villains

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Much like I did for Halloween, I wanted to do a bunch of one-shot or at the very least minor Christmas villains, which presented me with an interesting problem – most Christmas specials don’t really have villains. Usually the main obstacle to overcome in any holiday special is some sort of emotional fault of the main character, a lack of belief in the spirit of the holiday, or something to that effect, and when there is an actual villain, it tends to just be ones from the show at large with a Christmas-related scheme. Like I’m not doing Princess Morbucks or the Kanker sisters for this.

Luckily, There were a few I was sure on, and I managed to scrounge up a few more to deliver five lovingly-wrapped holiday villains. We have:

Mrs. Claus from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy

Ghost Writer from Danny Phantom

Robot Santa from Futurama

Edna Jucation and the Faculty Four from Codename: Kids Next Door

The Woodland Critters from South Park

Here’s the most interesting thing: Despite Christmas stories tending to lean more towards internal conflict and self-reflection, when they do have actual, tangible threats like these, they tend to be honestly and genuinely great. This is in stark contrast to A lot of the villains from the Halloween specials, who tended to just be big scary baddies without much oomph to them.

Actor: Mrs. Claus is portrayed by Carol Kane, an incredibly prolific actress who you may know best as Valerie, the wife of Miracle Max from The Princess Bride. And much like in that film, she manages to be as enjoyable and funny as the guy playing her husband, which is a tall order indeed – in that film it was Billy Crystal, and in the special it’s Gilbert Gottfried.

Ghost Writer is portrayed by Will Arnett of all people. This was post-Gob Bluth but pre-Batman and BoJack, so while not unknown by any stretch it’s definitely weird to go back and see him in a Butch Hartman action cartoon of all places. He does a great job, as to be expected; when has he ever done poorly?

In his first appearance, Robot Santa was voiced by none other than John Goodman. Normally I’d say Goodman would be perfect for the role of Santa, but… this one’s a maniacal robotic serial killer. It’s a wonderfully jarring juxtaposition. After that, John DiMaggio gave Robot Santa a voice for his other appearances, and he does a good job for sure. Obviously he’s no John Goodman, but really, who is?

Edna Jucation is voiced by Candi Milo, and the Faculty Four are played by Dee Bradley Baker and Darran Norris; Baker is the Unintelligible Tutor and Thesaurus Rex, while Norris is Mr. Physically Fitastic and the Human Text. These are all top-tier veteran voice actors, and they do a fine job, but I can’t particularly say they really make any of these characters stand out or be memorable, which is a shame.

As to be expected, the Woodland Critters are voiced by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Big shock there. Even less shocking is that they are perfectly funny as these depraved animals.

Motivation/Goals: Out of all of these, I think it’s really fitting that Mrs. Claus is the one with the best motivation. As the HEAD head vampire in the North Pole, she has turned Santa into a vampire and put a halt on Christmas because she is overworked and exhausted, having to do all the household chores all year while Santa only works one night. It is absolutely, perfectly understandable that she snapped… but apparently this isn’t even the first time, as Santa mentions at the end this has happened on multiple prior occasions. You think he’d treat her better after the second or third time, but then we wouldn’t have a plot.

I’d say that Ghost Writer and the Woodland Critters are tied for the next spot; both of them have solid reasons for doing what they’re doing. Ghost Writer was just a humble author trying to finish a Christmas story in time for Christmas, but unfortunately this caught the eye of the extremely Scroogey Danny Phantom, who absolutely hates Christmas due to traumatic events caused by his family fighting on Christmas in the past. Danny, in a moment of incredible callousness, blasts the poor ghost’s manuscript to bits and then proceeds to rub it in, which drives GW to breaking the annual truce and using his powers to torment Danny by trapping him in a Christmas story where he and everyone else can only speak in rhyme. It’s honestly hard to feel sympathy for Danny here, but GW does take it a bit too far.

The Woodland Critters, on the other hand, are just utterly depraved… but that’s to be expected seeing as they are the creations of Eric Cartman, inhabiting a Christmas story whose sole reason for existing is to make Kyle look like a tool. In the story, they get Kyle knocked up with the Antichrist. You see, there master is Satan, and they want nothing more than for his spawn to be born into the world. They really just exist as a reason for Cartman to rip on Kyle for being a Jew at Christmastime, as Kyle himself points out in their debut episode.

Edna and the Faculty Four are a bit simple and amusing, as is befitting of a gimmicky villain from The world of the KND. They team up with the Delightful Children because Substitute Teacher’s Day is virtually unknown compared to Christmas, the kind of absurd, wacky reason for villainy you’d expect from a world where some of the most feared supervillains include an evil dentist and a vampire who spanks people. Robot Santa is likewise extremely simple, yet effective: every Christmas he flies down to Earth to punish the naughty – which is everyone except Zoidberg. This is due to a programming oversight that left his standards set way too high, so no one can ever measure up. Except Zoidberg. There’s really not much more to him than that, but really, does their need to be?

Final Fate: Mrs. Claus is redeemed at the end of the special thanks to Billy, who helps her understand the true meaning of Christmas and who heals her husband so that he can apologize. Things seem like they might work out for real this time because now Malcolm McDowell’s vampire is around to help with tidying up, so hooray! Happy ending here!

Ghost Writer gets thwarted because Danny picks up an orange; as Ghost Writer never watched Drake & Josh and thus didn’t realize that “door hinge” is an acceptable rhyme, he was unable to continue writing his story and got beat up by Danny and his rogues gallery and then thrown into Walker’s prison for breaking the yearly truce in the Ghost Zone. At least he got to complete his book?

The Woodland Critters go out when Santa comes in and blasts them away with a shotgun… but since they are technically fictional characters, they show up in Imaginationland to cause problems. Still, it’s reassuring to know they can be taken out with simple firearms.

Edna Jucation, the Faculty Four, and Robot Santa really don’t have any canonical final fate; they just get defeated and then go on their merry way. In Robot Santa’s case, he actually showed up quite a few more times after his initial appearance to wreak havoc, but the Faculty Four and Edna were entirely oneshot antagonists.

Final Thoughts & Score: Christmas honestly fares a lot better than Halloween does as far as I can see. The villains tend to be a lot more thematic, or at the very least they have more personality and thematic function. Halloween doesn’t really have any sort of core themes to work off of as opposed to Christmas, which has a lot of reoccurring themes in works based around it. Still, most of these characters just settle on being funny.

Mrs. Claus and the Woodland Critters are the best of the bunch here, and both earn themselves a spot on the Nice List with a 9/10 each. Mrs. Claus is just a lot of fun, mostly because of the fact she has legitimate grievances on top of being a unique twist on the character. Mrs. Claus as a vampire overlord who commands hordes of vampire elves? That’s the sort of creative wackiness that Billy & Mandy delivered on. The Woodland Critters are just funny, plain and simple, acting as the sort of amusing subversion that could be expected of from South Park in its glory days as well as being totally in line with Cartman’s personality. These are the exact sort of original characters I’d expect from a guy who ground up a kid’s parents and made them into chili, what with their blood orgies and ultraviolence. Amusingly enough, they score a point higher than Cartman did in his own Psycho Analysis, which is mostly due to their limited appearances meaning that they stay remarkably consistent, where Cartman tends to be whatever an episode needs to be, be that hero, anti-hero, or villain.

Next up are Ghost Writer and Robot Santa, who both get 7/10. Ghost Writer is a very amusing oneshot, but it’s honestly weird that out of all the Villains from Danny Phantom, he’s the first one I talked about. You’d think it would be Ember or Vlad or something… at any rate, he’s an amusing antagonist, but he’s also one who it’s hard not to view as being in the right, especially since Danny was just a jerk to him completely unprovoked due to his own personal hangups with the holidays. As usual with fun ideas on the show though he was only ever used once, which is a real shame but at the same time understandable; his gimmick really only works with Christmas, so it would have been weird shoehorning him into another episode’s plot. For what he is, he’s fun.

Robot Santa has a similar problem, not really being able to function outside of Christmas specials, but his few appearances leave him as an amusing antagonist who never really overstays his welcome. He’s not as entertaining or engaging as, say, Mom, but he definitely offers some laughs with his hilarious concept and his ridiculous levels of bloodlust. Points t him for helping out the heroes in the first Futurama movie too.

That just leaves us with Edna and the Faculty Four, and the Faculty Four just manage to scrape onto the bottom of the Nice List with a collective 5/10. They don’t really have much character or personality, especially when compared to the heroic Marvel pastiche that is Elfa Strike, but as brief amusing gag villains meant to pay loving tribute to the Fantastic Four, I think they’re decent. Edna is not so lucky; she’s a bit obnoxious, shrill, and doesn’t really correlate to any sort of Marvel character, which is baffling since the entire episode is one big love letter to Marvel comics. Sad to say, but she’s landing smack dab on the Naughty List with a 2/10. She doesn’t even have a cool gimmick!

I suppose that wraps it up for Christmas special villains. Doing something like this is tough, because it really makes you sit back and wonder what sort of Christmas villains you should put on. Obviously I avoided any theatrical film villains, but that did leave one particularly glaring omission of a villain from a holiday special… a big, green, unpleasant omission. He’s a mean one, for sure...

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 4 years

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Psycho Analysis: Scoring System Rework & Mass Correction

Welcome to the second year of Psycho Analysis! The first year was one hell of a learning experience for me as I reviewed and rated all sorts of villains, and as I’ve been on hiatus I’ve come to realize my scoring system is inherently flawed and that I’m not totally satisfied with the rankings I gave everyone before.

Now, here is the original scoring system, as laid out in this post introducing the series:

1 - Absolute garbage; the worst of the worst

2 - Seriously bad

3 - Excessively mediocre

4 - Below average

5 - Average/Standard, nothing special

6 - Above average

7 - Pretty good

8 - Excellent

9 - Outstanding

10 - Amazing, one of the very best

Now, it’s decent, and I’ve mostly stuck to it... but I feel it needs a rework. It’s just too vague and doesn’t really give much meaning to the overall rating. So here is an updated ranking:

1 - A terrible villain, one that fails on nearly every level or at least is so utterly worthless and incompetent as to be unenjoyable, even ironically.

2 - Mediocre and forgettable. There may be a couple good things... but not enough to make you care all that much.

3 - Almost awful, but with some redeeming quality that holds them back from being worse. These villains can be “So bad it’s good” villains.

4 - Just below average. They have enough problems keeping them from being called good, but they’re not totally worthless, just underwhelming.

5 - Average villains. These tend to be super basic or generic villains saved by good vocal performances.

6 - Above average; nothing too special, but definitely leaning towards being a really good villain

7 - A really good villain. Nothing majorly outstanding, but enjoyable. Think a really good anime filler episode villain.

8 - The Big tier. These are low-tier greats, villains who are really good but have just a few too many flaws keeping them from going higher.

9 - Nearly perfect icons. These are villains who could very easily stand among the greatest of all time, but just lack the proven staying power or recognition.

10 - True icons. Reserved only for the villains with a notable impact on culture or who are extremely well-regarded amongst fans of the works they’re in.

11 - This is reserved for special occasions, villains who have had a massive and undeniable impact on popular culture, in some cases changing the course of fiction as we know it.

And now for the corrections... as you can see, the tier list up there is how the old villains were rated, based on their scores from the original Psycho Analysis posts. But I feel like I overrated and underrated some villains, so with the new scorings in mind, let’s go over who belongs where:

11: Orlock, Vader, Wicked Witch, and the Grinch should be the only 11s so far. The Witch should just barely be ahead of the Grinch, though honestly they’re pretty equal in terms of impact. Very little to change here.

10: I feel like I gave out 10s a bit too easily before; I didn’t really have much in mind besides “really great villain.” So, to rectify, here is the new order: Batty, Kira, Senator Armstrong, Joker, Tyler Durden, Gaston, Kefka, Mojo Jojo, Thanos, Skarsgard!Pennywise, Curry!Pennywise, Voldemort, Giovanni, Dahlia Hawthorne, Ghetsis Harmonia, Pyramid Head, Betelgeuse, Tamatoa, Patrick Bateman, Team Rocket (Jessie/James/Meowth).

9: A lot of really great villains are bumped down to 9, but I think they could easily get back up to 10 someday, if they’re staying power increases. The new ranking for the 9s is: Mysterio, Ego, Aro, Candyman, Toomes, Mewtwo, Lucy, Ernesto de la Cruz, Sabretooth, The Sanderson sisters, Imhotep, The Kingpin, Hopper, Cyrus, The Grand High Witch, The Grandmaster, Vanilla Ice, Wammu

8: More rearranging. Nicholson!Joker, Obadiah Stane, Jafar, Cartman, Hexxus, Oogie Boogie, Joe, Buffalo Bill, Eisidisi, Ultron, Van Pelt, Archie, Nancy Claus, Jimmy Brando, Jack O’Lantern, Pet Shop, Woodland Critters.

7: Most of the enemy Stand users moved down here because in hindisght very few of them rise above just being enjoyable challenges for Jotaro. Princess Ahmanet, N’Doul, Screenslaver, Mariah, Forever, D’Arby Bros (both are about on equal footing, though obviously the Elder gets the edge), Ghost Writer, J. Geil, Anubis, Maxie, Caius, Tod Spengo, Steely Dan, that Halloween Toy Story guy, Robot Santa.

6: Not too much change here. Carrey!Grinch, Kars, Remake!Freddy, The Noid, John Doe, Bun-Bun, Rubber Soul, Douche.

5: Again, much of it is the same. Farquaad, Marcus, Ratcliffe, Faculty Four, Gray Fly, Endgame!Thanos.

4: Benedict Cumbergrinch, Hans, Scrappy, OG!Maxie & Archie. Quite a few cuts here.

3: I came to terms with my enjoyment of a lot of crappy villains, so I decided to switch around 2 and 3 and spruce things up a bit. Terl, Slipknot, Justin Hammer, Snoke, Storm King.

2: Remake!Jafar, Bellwether, Whiplash, Enchantress, Leto!Joker, Fright Knight, Fake Captain Tenille, Killian, Evelyn Deavor, Russell Van Pelt, Edna Jucation, Pumpkinator, Arabia Fats, Kenny G, Incubus. A lot of the 1s I realized were just my personal biases; did they really deserve to be named the absolute worst villains ever when they tended to have problems like “no real screentime or personality” or “bad and stupid plans but otherwise ok performances?” 1s are only for the bottom of the barrel, and so now that is...

1: Rowan North, Dudepeel, and Killian. These are the three worst villains so far. I have nothing nice to say about any of them, and examples like these need to to stand for what is worst in villains.

Going forward, this is how I’m going to be keeping score, and these are the official rankings I will stand by.

#Psycho Analysis

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