Dave Holmes Revisits The Top 20 TV Shows Of Christmas 1991

A season 2, original-Aunt-Viv episode in which Will and the Banks family go skiing, Will finds out his mother has a new boyfriend, and the kids unwittingly let a burglar into the ski cabin. That’s a lot of story, but this one is more notable for being the first to feature Alphonso Ribeiro’s “Carlton Dance,” a move that is equal parts Belinda Carlisle and Breakfast Club-era Molly Ringwald, and remains an immediately recognizable expression of joy. My personal jury is out on whether The Locomotion will really make you happy when you’re feeling blue— how, beyond swinging those hips now, do you even do it?— but the Carlton sure can.

Also fresh to the television world was Tony Shalhoub, here as new season-three character Antonio playing “Michael, Row The Boat Ashore” over and over again. Wings is one of those shows that ran for ages and was wildly popular, but nobody could tell you more than three things about it. Wings was the Avatar of sitcoms.

A CBS Sunday Night Movie starring Rue McClanahan as a 53-year-old newlywed who returns from her honeymoon (with much younger new husband Ted Shackelford, thank you very much) to discover that she’s pregnant. Complicating matters is the fact that her daughter (played by Kristy McNichol) is expecting at the same time! Hilarity probably ensues. John Wesley Shipp is in it, and Yanni does the score. In short, it could only be more 1991 if everyone were wearing Hypercolor.

Tied with A Bob Hope Christmas; see below!

NBC contained multitudes back then. Here, they tie with a season five episode of A Different World titled “Twelve Steps of Christmas” featuring Debbie Allen, and the Desert Storm-themed Bob Hope’s Christmas Cheer from Saudi Arabia. Hope’s guest stars include The Pointer Sisters, Johnny Bench, Ann Jillian, and Head of the Class’ resident ginger Khrystyne Haje. A Different World might have been Afrocentric and forward-thinking, but a Bob Hope Christmas Special line-up could be from any about 40 years.

Oh, who cares. Let’s take this opportunity to watch a peevish and petulant Burt Reynolds terrorizing American treasure and legendary germaphobe Marc Summers on a 1994 episode of The Tonight Show.

It is of course unethical to watch The Cosby Show anymore, which is a shame because we must deny ourselves some top-notch Phylicia Rashad. In this episode, Clair hides herself in an actual bunker to escape her hapless husband and nagging children, and while inside, she dances and sings like a woman unshackled. You’ll just have to imagine it. In the meantime, here’s Phylicia telling a reporter about the Jenny Craig “Great Take Off” program. The way she leans into the word “manifest” makes me feel like Phylicia Rashad might be the best kind of bananas.

Meanwhile, Northern Exposure’s Janine Turner ties with Burt Reynolds for the most bananas kind of bananas. She’s an ultra-right-wing personality now, who just got in hot water for addressing a group of fifth-graders and leaving them with pamphlets about abortion and sex trafficking, all while wearing a floor-length American flag coat. Here she is pushing her exercise DVD “Christoga,” where she mixes the discipline of yoga with the joy of saying “Jesus” a million times.

This week’s episode centers around Gunny, played by Beverly Archer, who also starred as Iola on Mama’s Family, recurred on Married With Children as a sexually repressed abstinence counselor with a crush on Bud, and wrote several episodes of ALF. I want a Beverly Archer biopic, and I want it now.

Tied with Full House; see below!

Where to stream Cheers

Tied at #10, the best sitcom in history and— you know I’m correct here— the worst. I was in college in 1991, and I had a group of friends who never missed an episode of Full House. I said: “Does it not bother you that this show is for children, and also is terrible?” They said “We know, but the baby is adorable.” I keep meaning to go to networks with my sitcom pitch “Here Is A Photograph Of An Infant.”

An episode from the unfortunate years when Julia Duffy and Jan Hooks were doing the speechifying. Let us look away, and instead reflect on Jan Hooks’ brilliant career with this 1990 SNL “Attitudes” sketch. The moment that starts at around 4:10 is the greatest SNL moment of all time, and I will fight all those who disagree.

On the pop charts, PM Dawn’s “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss,” the finest and most innovative pop song of the year, relinquished the #1 spot to Michael Jackson’s “Black and White,” a song whose video premiered simultaneously on MTV, VH1, BET and the still-fairly-new Fox (with this slapped-together Bart Simpson intro), and pretty much freaked the whole country out at the same time. Fox was still only on the air five nights a week at this time, and while The Simpsons was beginning to erode The Cosby Show’s audience on Thursday nights, the network also had each of the five lowest-rated shows. These included Charlie Hoover, in which Tim Matheson was ordered around by a miniature Sam Kinison, and the undisputed classic Get A Life, this week airing the episode in which Chris Elliott becomes an escort. Stop what you’re doing and watch it all.

…Which brings us to CBS’s ill-fated Bloom County animated Christmas special A Wish For Wings That Work. There is something about Berkeley Breathed’s work that just refuses to translate to television or film. Was it the absence of Milo, Binkley, and Steve Dallas? Would we all rather imagine Opus’ speaking voice? Or is Breathed even more of an extreme-niche situation than Chris Elliott? Whichever; I’m glad Bloom County is back, and that his new social-media strip-distribution system allows him to be nimble and timely, though I have now learned that the Venn diagram of Bloom County fans and people who have to leave jokey comments on every little thing they see on Facebook is one big circle.

Did you know Dauber from Coach was also Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants? Related: Do you believe people when they tell you the Spongebob musical is anything but a deeply unpleasant experience? I cannot imagine it.

Corkys, ranked:

1. Corky St. Clair
2. Corky Thatcher (from Life Goes On)
3. Corky Sherwood (pictured above)
4. Corky Romano
5. Bob Corker

I remember this episode clearly; in it, Brad and Randy tell youngest brother Mark that Santa Claus was real, but that he died just before Mark was born. As the youngest of three boys, I can tell you this is the only recognizably human moment in any Christmas-themed television episode, ever.

Watch the "Yule Better Watch Out" episode of Home Improvement on Hulu

Also in the world of music, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch had their second top-ten single, as “Wildside” moved from 15-10. Do you remember “Wildside?” Do you remember that the song opens with a dismissive “America the beautiful, huh? Pssh,” and that the video starts with an actual burning American flag? Do you realize how perfect an example of white privilege it is that this is not the first thing we mention when we speak of Mark Wahlberg?

Ugh. We can reflect on this, or we can consider Marky Mark’s 1993 educational video “Form, Focus, Fitness: The Marky Mark Workout,” which is on YouTube in its entirety. As a man who owned it on VHS, I can tell you that it works on a variety of levels.

Oh, also, right around this time in 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned, the Soviet Union dissolved, and we never heard about Russia ever again.

So we know Roseanne is coming back, right? We know John Goodman’s Dan Connor has risen from the dead somehow, and that Sarah Chalke will be back playing some new character. But did you also know that Sandra Bernhard’s Nancy will return? I do, because I listen to Sandyland on SiriusXM’s Radio Andy. This is a uniquely horrifying time to be alive, but one correct thing is Sandra Bernhard having an hour each weekday to fill however she sees fit. Sometimes it’s razor-sharp analysis of world affairs, sometimes it’s a deep musing on the significance of Roberta Flack, sometimes it’s a riff on yogurts that have disappointed her. It is never boring. Get some.

Have a very happy holiday season, everyone. Santa is real and miracles are possible. Ask Mark Wahlberg.

Dave Holmes is an editor-at-large for Esquire.com, host of the new Earwolf podcast Homophilia, and his memoir Party of One is in stores now.