January is SWHS Awareness Month!

If you don't explain it to your kids,
they'll only pick it up on the streets.

I think it's time we had the talk. No, not where do babies come from? talk, everyone knows about the doodle and the hootenanny, I'm talking about The Talk. The Star Wars Holiday Special talk. You did know there was a Star Wars Holiday Special, right? I only ask because I am shocked at the number of people I encounter who have no idea such a thing ever existed. In fact, I'd like to declare January to be National Star Wars Holiday Special Awareness Month. Yes, I realize that January is already National Bath Safety Month, but try not to slip in the tub for next five minutes while you have your awareness raised.

He even has a special sink for it.

I should start off by saying that the Holiday Special won't ruin Star Wars for you forever, so relax. At worst it's an amusing footnote in a series that's already 50% crap and while the internet is not exactly hurting for musings on how shitty it is, I did show it to some friends last night who'd never heard of it and now I feel the need to share. Of course, if you're already familiar with its crapulocity, you can skip this post. No hard feelings, I promise the next post will be about how Eric Cantor drowns puppies or something.

Name? Momaw Nadon. Screen time:
2.3 seconds. Backstory and
action figure? Check and check.

So what the hell is the Holiday Special? Here's a link to the Wookiepedia entry, but in case you're lazy and/or impatient, I'll sum up: The year was 1978 and Star Wars (the movie), its associated comic books, breakfast cereals and action figures (made out of every random extra to appear on camera at any point during the film's run time) had just made all the money in the world. Desperate for more, a pack of corporate geniuses looked at the film and thought to themselves: How can we possibly shit all over this? Their answer? Take advantage of some contractual fine print and force the cast to participate in a two-hour made-for-TV 70's style variety show.

Now I know forgiving George Lucas is sort of in right now, but I'm not convinced that he's as innocent as he claims when it comes to the special. Some sources insist he was uninvolved, others lay the blame squarely at his feet. Who's telling the truth? I don't know. The point is it happened, it can't unhappen.

Of course he is responsible for this scene in Episode III where Yoda hacks a bunch of
Clone Troopers to death with a child-sized lightsaber. A man like that is capable of anything.

This human family enjoying each other's
company at the holidays is somehow less
believable than the Wookie family in this movie. 

The 'premise' of the 'movie' is that Han is trying to get Chewbacca back to his home planet of Kashyyyk (three y's) for Life Day, which I guess is the Star Wars version of Christmas. Most of the two hours is Chewie's family sitting around waiting for him. They pass the time growling in Wookie-speak (yeah, no subtitles thank you very much) and in an oddly accurate portrayal of real families at the holidays, moving from one form of solitary entertainment to the next. Like holy shit, everything in their tree house is basically a TV.

Chewie's family is what writers would call a framing narrative, but we're going to call a flimsy pretext for jumping between variety show segments. Every time a Wookie turns on a hologram or a virtual reality porn chair, we sit there and watch them watch a cooking show, or a commercial or Bea Arthur singing.

Above: Art Carney strapping grandpa into his Virtual Reality Porn Chair.
Did you think I was kidding?

Here she is wrestling Velociraptors...
underwater. Is there anything she can't do?

Yes, indeed I did say Bea Arthur singing. She plays Ackmena, the Mos Eisley cantina nightshift bartender in one of the few watchable segments. According to her Wookiepedia page (she's got one too), Arthur was pals with some of the production staff on the Holiday Special and while filming her scene had no idea it was for Star Wars. So not only was Bea Arthur unwittingly the best part of the SWHS, she's also an official part of the Star Wars universe. Her character almost got an action figure, almost but for whatever reason, Ackmena wasn't as popular as our pal Boba Fett who was also introduced here.

Uh-huh, Boba Fett's first appearance in anything anywhere was in this special. Even more weird is that he appears as a character in a cartoon Chewie's son watches. To clarify, this is a cartoon starring his dad, Han Solo, the droids and the overrated bounty hunter who will later try to feed Chewie to the Sarlacc. Has your mind exploded yet?

Next time you see someone rocking a Fett tattoo, feel free to point out to them
that one of the Golden Girls survived on Tatooine where as the Mandalorian could not.

Evidently not.

Thought so. Now go buy a copy off of ebay or something and watch it. I'll wait. Finished? You are? Great, see what I mean? Sure it's terrible, but it's also kind of amazing, right? Mark Hamil's creepy post-car accident plastic face, Carrie Fisher singing the Star Wars theme. And what's going on with the ending? Oh, and chances are your copy (like mine) was dubbed off of someones Betamax, so it retains the original commercial breaks which themselves make the thing worth watching at least once. Still, you do have to wonder how the people involved let this happen in the first place. I mean, at the time, Star Wars consisted of the original movie and this. Weren't they worried they'd loose credibility, or to borrow cold, soulless language of marketing people, tarnish the brand?

Even more baffling? According to the laws of the Star Wars Universe, the SWHS is legitimate Star Wars. As with any fictional universe that's been around for a while, Star Wars has certain rules dictating what does and does not count in the official continuity and despite everyone involved trying to forget it ever existed, SWHS counts. Let that sink in.

Harvey Korman in drag playing the host of a space cooking show is as
validly a part of Star Wars as The Empire Strikes Back. Holy shit.