Welcome • User Guide
ToS • Privacy • Canary
Donate • Bugs • License

©2025 Poal.co

222

Around the holidays, that bongo-infused remix of a Hawaii 5-0 song that preceded a CBS Special Presentation was one of the most anticipated things on television for me as a kid. It (probably) meant that some cartoon was about to be shown, and CBS had the broadcast rights to all the Peanuts films.

But now that I go back and look at them as an adult, they're damn depressing. Charlie Brown is a manic depressive. His sister is a homicidal maniac in the making. Lucy is a sociopath. Linus is mentally defective. All of the characters have some sort of strange mental malaise that prevents them from being likeable. Even the situations are depressing, everyone is a loser that apparently has no parental guidance in their lives, they're just mini-me adults going through a parody of life itself. Even the dog is crazy, somehow imagining itself to be a WWI pilot.

I guess it's the different between being wide-eyed and suddenly figuring out how the world works.

Around the holidays, that bongo-infused remix of a Hawaii 5-0 song that preceded a CBS Special Presentation was one of the most anticipated things on television for me as a kid. It (probably) meant that some cartoon was about to be shown, and CBS had the broadcast rights to all the Peanuts films. But now that I go back and look at them as an adult, they're damn depressing. Charlie Brown is a manic depressive. His sister is a homicidal maniac in the making. Lucy is a sociopath. Linus is mentally defective. All of the characters have some sort of strange mental malaise that prevents them from being likeable. Even the situations are depressing, everyone is a loser that apparently has no parental guidance in their lives, they're just mini-me adults going through a parody of life itself. Even the dog is crazy, somehow imagining itself to be a WWI pilot. I guess it's the different between being wide-eyed and suddenly figuring out how the world works.

(post is archived)

[–] • 21 pts

Charles Schulz was writing about his own internal struggles and observations reconciling the world he saw to the one he expected. The characters were intended as humorous portraits of the various vices he noticed, both his own and around him. He was painfully shy, prone to depressive bouts, and his first wife was a world class shrew, the basis for Lucy.

Underneath it all, however, was an unyielding hopefulness. Charlie Brown lost over and over again, struggled, but in the end, he didn’t give up. Schulz made sure he never kicked the football, but Charlie Brown had something better than success: determination.

[–] • 9 pts (edited )

Peanuts' appeal was exactly for the reasons you give; ultimately all the messages are hopeful. It was the wacky characters and situations that gave the strip its charm. These were things that all kids could relate to. This was nothing new, of course, and has been done a million times since but Shultz managed to walk the line between overwhelming insanity and saccharine sweetness perfectly. And it appealed to kids exactly because it operated at their level. Sure adults also read the strip but in a detached way.

No one ever walked away after reading Peanuts feeling the weight of the world. The unyielding hopefulness and determination that you mention was always there, despite the unending machinations of Lucy, deranged antics of Snoopy, and all the rest. OP's take on the strip forgets what it's like to be a kid, surrounded by forces you don't fully comprehend and definitely are not in control of. The difference from the real world being, of course, that sometimes the real world is also very scary and dangerous.

[–] • 0 pt

I really appreciate well thought out and written comments like these. Kudos to both of you.

[–] [deleted] • 3 pts
[–] • 0 pt

That's probably the best version I've seen/heard

[–] • 7 pts

You forgot the dyke Peppermint Patty and her sub. Schroeder was a pretty normal Aryan. He didn't do shit except live to glorify the culture of his forefathers. He even tolerated Sally's stalking in hopes of someday making physically perfect babies.

[–] • 2 pts (edited )

And Charlie Brown was a Jew, clearly.

Always going on about how he's the victim. Couldn't do sports worth shit. A Nazi sympathizer for a pet who constantly torments him. The list goes on and on.

How many is 6 million peanuts, exactly?

[–] • 2 pts

Peppermint Patty is a tomboy. She is shown to be interested in Charlie Brown and other boys.

[–] • 3 pts

But now that I go back and look at them as an adult, they're damn depressing. Charlie Brown is a manic depressive. His sister is a homicidal maniac in the making. Lucy is a sociopath. Linus is mentally defective. All of the characters have some sort of strange mental malaise that prevents them from being likeable. Even the situations are depressing, everyone is a loser that apparently has no parental guidance in their lives, they're just mini-me adults going through a parody of life itself. Even the dog is crazy, somehow imagining itself to be a WWI pilot.

Stop projecting.

[–] • 5 pts

I was writing about you.

[–] • 2 pts

I was writing about you.

So you think I'm all of Charlie, Charlie's sister, Lucy, Linus and others? I'm not so complicated. Time for bed.

[–] • 2 pts (edited )

I disagree about Linus. He's pretty intelligent imho. Peppermint Patty was a dyke. Charlie was manic depressive, like me as a kid. Also the adults were non entities , totally useless to the kids , or just an annoyance at best , pretty spot on.

[+] [deleted] • 0 pt
[–] • 0 pt

Schulz did not write Peppermint Patty as a dyke.

[–] • 3 pts

She represented the new found feminist who thought power was dressing and acting like men. It spawned the dyke lifestyle. Thus the "tomboy" comments.

[–] • 0 pt

Maybe not , but she sure looked and acted the part

[–] • 3 pts

She was a boy crazy tomboy.

She had a huge crush on Charlie Brown, figure skated, and also had a massive crush on the French kid in Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown.

[–] • 2 pts

I’ve never liked that cartoon. Even as a kid it creeped me out.

[–] • 2 pts

The thing nobody thinks about…At Halloween time all the adults of Charlie browns neighborhood conspired to give him a rock instead of candy. What assholes

[–] • 2 pts

I found them slow and boring as a kid. I preferred the exciting cartoon shows that were designed to market toys.

As an adult I don’t have time to sit and watch one, but I discovered the Peanuts Christmas album by Vince Guaraldi Trio (A Charlie Brown Christmas). It was boring to me as a kid, but I love it now.

[–] • 2 pts

The 1960s jazz is probably the best part of the cartoons.

[–] • 1 pt

You have to understand that Peanuts was a Sunday comic in the newspapers, something that adults as well as children followed. All of the comics from that era were adult ((usually) not sexually) themed, even if it was fairly obscure to kids. This is also true of early cartoons, which were often played before movies and not directly as children's entertainment. A lot of the old comics had some rather rough humor and poignant commentary about society.

[–] • 0 pt

I believe the local birdcage liner is still running Peanuts.

[–] [deleted] • 1 pt

All of the characters have some sort of strange mental malaise that prevents them from being likeable.

That's why I didn't like it as a kid, didn't even bother to read them in the funnies anymore. Always looked for Calvin & Hobbes, Garfield, non sequitur and the caveman one.

[–] • 1 pt

I love the Christmas Special. It's for adults but little kids can enjoy it also. Music is mature and great. It's better that It's A Wonderful Life and all those Christmas movies.

All the bitches call Charlie a loser and blockhead for getting such a shitty tree. Then they decorate it and the girls say, "you know, Charlie did get a pretty good tree."

When Linus straightens Charlie out about Christmas being about Jesus Christ it was a ballsy move by the producer cos...Christmas is all about materialism and has nothing to do with Christ being born. Totally serious moment in the movie. Great stuff.

Also, Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer is totally an adult movie. It's about all the outcasts that don't go with the mainstream. Kinda like extremist mega MAGA semi-fascists.