My episode taping was quite nearly through;
This summer I saw every eppy but two:
Fright Knight and The Fright Before Christmas are those
That Ebeneezer Nick just never quite shows.
I suppose that the holiday themes are the reason;
they won't show these episodes in the wrong season.
October arrived, and I taped the first one,
And now it's December; my catch-up is done.

The theme of this story's familiar to all,
our hero's "Bah, Humbug!" will lead to his fall.
A Wonderful Life? No, Frank Kapra it's not;
A Brit named Charles Dickens inspired this plot:
A true Christmas classic, an annual play;
So often adapted it's now a cliché.
But dialogue rendered in anapest rhyme
turns trite into gold. It's a rollicking time!

So Danny's the Scrooge whose mind must be converted,
And Sam is Bob Cratchit, her Goth-ness inverted.
Of ghosts we have plenty, past, future and present;
Their holiday truce makes them almost quite pleasant.
And if all the rhyming might make you too cheery,
there's one Tiny Timmy whose plight makes you teary.

The family’s annual Santa Claus battle
though funny, is also a metaphor that’ll
stand in for the annual holiday stress
familiar to children whose parents obsess;
or families split by conflicting traditions
their holidays troubled by mixed definitions.
While cynical pundits with cold calculation
cry "War against Christmas!" throughout all the nation.
Kids caught in the middle: It’s secular! Holy!
New Year’s Day seems to come ever more slowly.

A holiday episode needs a huge cast,
They could spend Nick's money like this ep's their last.
But the budget was tight, so Butch made some choices;
we got all the ghosts, but not all their voices.
So Skulker was talking, but Technus said squat.
The Box Ghost is Jack, so that saved Butch a lot.
And Lunch Lady's voice was provided by Maddie.
(That's overtime pay for both Mommy and Daddy.)
And Lancer, alone with his railroad-themed plight,
said no "Christmas Carol!" on his Silent Night.

The story has pathos, angst, tension and sadness,
as Danny descends into poetic madness.
It's hard empathizing with Danny's distress
when the writing is done with such arch silliness.
As an everyday episode, merely okay;
but as holiday fluff I'll give this one an A.

Rating: None given

By Bluemoonalto

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