Peanuts/Awesome
< Peanuts
Having ran for eight months short of 50 years, made numerous forays in the field of animation, and generally won the hearts of millions (continuing to do so to this day), it is no wonder that Peanuts has many a Moment of Awesome under its belt.
Comics
- Eight years before Be My Valentine Charlie Brown, when the strip featuring the Schroeder's speech appeared in papers, it was just as awesome.
- Marcie gets one. An extremely sexist boy is giving her trouble:
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Marcie: One more word and I'll punch you in the face. |
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- Something similar happens when the pair get work as Caddies:
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Marcie: HALF? Why should we give you half our money? Ten percent is all you deserve! |
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- When Linus and Snoopy are putting a dinosaur skeleton together they begin dancing and raucously singing "Dem Bones", deliberately mixing the lyrics up ("the knee bone's connected to the wrist bone," etc.) until Lucy bodily throws them out the front door.
- Charlie Brown pulls one off in one strip where he talks up to the Kite-Eating Tree and points out that since he's the only one around who flies kites, without him the Tree would starve to death. As he says to Lucy at the end of the strip, "For the first time in my life, I feel needed!" And since this is Charlie Brown getting a Moment of Awesome, it's practically a Crowning Moment for Charles Schulz.
- This troper prefers Charlie Brown's other greatest reaction to the kite-eating tree... getting so mad at it, that he goes right ahead and BITES ITS TRUNK HALFWAY THROUGH! Didn't think I'd do it, did you?
- This troper thinks another crowning moment is when Charlie Brown realizes that Snoopy, who takes his food provided for him arrogantly for granted, missed his supper and does his Anti-Suppertime song and dance gloating while Snoopy watches stunned at this.
- This troper would like to nominate the strip where Lucy puts on one of Charlie Brown's shirts and goes about mocking him, to the entertainment of Patty and Violet. When Charlie Brown sees Lucy dressed like that, he simply tells her, "Well, hello, Charlie Brown, you blockhead!", humiliating Lucy and causing Patty and Violet to laugh even harder.
- One of Lucy's greatest "Moment of Awesome" bits comes when Charlie Brown says to Linus, "Well, another Halloween has come and gone and the Great Pumpkin didn't show up, did he?" Lucy counters: "No, she didn't, did she?", making Linus' hair stand on end. As Linus buries his head in despair, a triumphant Lucy says, "Never even occurred to you, did it?"
- Rerun gets his when Lucy has to go inside as she's about to engage in the classic scenario of pulling the football away, and leaves Rerun in her place. She desperately asks whether Rerun pulled the ball away, and Rerun's response ("You'll never know.") is enough to drive her to the Big "AAUUGH!"
- Many of the cast get theirs when Charlie gets one of his. Lucy is holding out the football again, and he decides to walk away. The last panel shows several girls, as well as Snoopy and Woodstock, holding footballs for him.
- There was a week of strips where Charlie Brown taught Rerun to play marbles; Rerun then went on to play against an older kid who pretended that they were playing for fun but, when he won, said "Keeps" and took all of Rerun's marbles. In retaliation, Charlie Brown challenges the older kid and wins back all of Rerun's marbles.
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Charlie Brown: Knuckle down, Joe. This is for keeps. |
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- The week was turned into a mediocre TV special called He's a Bully, Charlie Brown, which takes place at a summer camp, and someone else has to teach Charlie Brown to play marbles before he challenges the older kid. It was a pointless and disappointing addition to the plot that really lessened the Crowning Moment of Awesome that was the original strips.
- In one 1974 arc, Peppermint Patty refuses to go to school and sits on top of Snoopy's doghouse all day, much to the annoyance of Marcie. At the end, Marcie single-handedly smashes Snoopy's doghouse and screams to Peppermint Patty that Snoopy is a dog (and not a "funny-looking kid with a big nose").
- ...No mention of the week when Charlie Brown actually hit a home run? Against the girl who claimed to be Roy Hobbs' great-granddaughter? Roy Hobbs as in "The Natural"? ...Not just a Moment of Awesome for the Peanuts universe, but also a MOA for Schulz pulling a sort of "Tommy Westphal" move on American literature.
- Hell, any time Charlie Brown actually succeeds in baseball is a Moment of Awesome. In 1993, he went up to bat so nervous he left the bat on the bench and the next day showed him bounding home with a big grin on his face yelling about how he hit a homer at the bottom of the ninth, winning the game.
- Beware the Nice Ones indeed. Charlie Brown is slow to anger, but when he gets pissed.... Lucy has been spending the whole week trying to get the kids in the neighborhood to call her "Cutie." Ol' Chuck finally loses his temper and lays down a brutal "The Reason You Suck" Speech on Lucy: "You want someone to call you “cutie?” Ha! That’s a laugh! You’ve never acted cute in your whole life. You’re crabby, you’re bossy and you’re inconsiderate! You’re just about as “uncute” as a person can get!" He storms off, and Lucy stands there in shock, saying to herself, "I'm an uncutie!"
- Charlie Brown kicks the football, with a little help from your friendly neighbourhood Spider Man!
- One classic strip featured Lucy spouting off about the world's population and how there are "too many babies being born" and "the Earth can't feed this many people". Linus says, in a completely serious deadpan tone in the final panel, "why don't you leave?"
- Snoopy guards Charlie Brown's house with a machine gun. This is a COA for Sparky too, with some Show Their Work added in, as the gun is a Lewis automatic machine gun, a weapon he was familiar with during his own hitch in the U.S. Army.
Animated Specials
- Linus explaining the True Meaning of Christmas by reciting a passage from the Gospel of Luke in A Charlie Brown Christmas may be one of the best Moments of Awesome ever.
- It was a crowning moment for Schulz, as well, who had to fight with the network to get that scene. (And, for that matter, to get a lot of the special made the way he wanted it).
- The special itself was a moment of awesome--not only was it the first Peanuts special, but it was supposed to fail spectacularly...and, well, look what happened. For that matter, years later the animators were embarrassed about the cheap and rather shoddy animation and wanted to redraw the whole thing, but Schulz was firm--he liked it just the way it was.
- Schroeder's "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Violet in Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown.
- There was also the time, in the infamous cancer special Why Charlie Brown Why where Linus threw a fit at some random jerk for making fun of his friend Janice, who had leukemia. Had Peanuts not been a kids' show, there would have been a lot of cussing.
- Earlier in the special Lucy insisted Linus would get cancer for being in contact with Janice. Linus storms off saying, "I wouldn't want to catch your crabbiness."
- In A Boy Named Charlie Brown, Rod McKuen singing the title tune after Lucy says, "Welcome home, Charlie Brown!", followed by the images of everyone who worked on the film was a Moment of Awesome and Awesome Music at the same time, as well as Linus' speech that gets Charlie out of bed after an Epic Fail to end all Epic Fails:
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Linus: Well, I can understand how you feel. You worked hard, studying for the spelling bee, and I suppose you feel you let everyone down, and you made a fool of yourself and everything. But did you notice something, Charlie Brown? |
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- Charlie Brown kicking the football and taunting Lucy at the same time in the special, It's Magic Charlie Brown. Now that was a long time in coming.
- In the special It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown, Marcie's epic failures on making Easter eggs. First she fries them, then she tries to put them in the waffle iron and in the toaster, then finally, Patty tells her to boil the eggs. And she messes this up too, since she cracks the eggs open and pours them into the boiling water...
- "Happiness Is A Warm Blanket Charlie Brown" was arguably rather dull, and longer than the average Peanuts special to boot, but Linus pulls out a MOA at the at the last second with a typically Linus-like speech in which he defends his Security Blanket and calls the others out on their insecurities. From the top of Snoopy's doghouse, no less. You're welcome.
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