Review: Camp Camp “Culture Day”

Holy Challah Bread! A Hanukkah special ON HANUKKAH!

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

It’s Culture Day at Camp Campbell as everyone prepares presentations about their own specific cultures…even though everyone seems to not understand or care about the assignment. Everyone except Neil, who has a full blown Judaism monument set up, piquing most of the campers’ interest, especially the story of Hanukkah. He starts giving them a lesson on the basics, like how its eight days long and has chocolate coins, but seeing he’s starting to lose the audience when he gets into the weeds. So, Neil starts embellishing like crazy about Judas Maccabee in order to keep the attention coming. Basically, how all organized religion starts.

Neil suddenly feels a burst of confidence enthralling most of the camp in the tales of his people, despite it becoming increasingly based on lies (aside from the Infinity Gauntlet stuff, that’s totally true). Max, being a swindler extraordinaire, instantly sees through these lies, knowing that, eventually, Neil’s not going to be able to make any of this make sense. The cracks soon begin to show and the campers begin turning on him, but Max arrives to bail him out, giving him the book on the actual story of Hanukkah to tell. And so, Neil musters the confidence with the real story, the story of the Maccabees fighting the Greeks, saving Jerusalem, and keeping the menorah lit with only enough oil for one night that lasted for eight!

This parallels the b-plot of Gwen and Quartermaster stealing food from the Flower Scouts when the platypus ends up eating all of theirs. With only one can of spam as a weapon, they manage to get enough food for the Culture Feast. Everyone sits down for a nice dinner, while David is fine thinking all of this food was a miracle.

OUR TAKE

Last year, I covered an American Dad episode that also had the token Jewish kid of that show somewhat take the spotlight to give the Jewish Winter Holiday its own special. Other than the bigger issues of the episode that made it pretty mediocre, it always irked me that it only brought in Hanukkah as “the other holiday” to be in opposition to Christmas. Others, like the cult classic Adam Sandler animated film, “Eight Crazy Nights” even use it as simply swapping it out with Christmas. Being pretty lax in my own practice of being Jewish, I’ve more or less made peace that my people don’t need our holiday to be on the same celebratory footing as the default one, but as a fan of storytelling, I’m painfully aware that there are so many other kinds of plots and lessons you can get out of a holiday like Hanukkah that doesn’t need to be confined to simply being “weird Christmas with more blue”. And with the constant abundance of Jewish screenwriters, this damn near inexcusable!

Camp Camp, being perpetually taking place during the summer, is put in an odd opportunity to take advantage of this by having the holiday be brought up in a situation that doesn’t require Christmas at all, and even makes use of the story that originated it in the b-plot of the episode. The best we’d seen of something close to that before now was the Rugrats Hanukkah episode from 1996! Though, of course, it wouldn’t be this show without poking a few holes in the idea of a “miracle” and copious amounts of platypus fluids, but that’s not the real lesson here.

The real thing to savor in this potato pancake of an episode is Neil’s arc to get people to think what makes him different is actually something cool. When it’s not enough on its own, he starts adding a bunch of cool but random stuff to keep them interested, but Max assures him that he doesn’t need anything more than what’s real (or at least established) to win people over. In a way, it’s saying that Hanukkah doesn’t need to be as widely marketed as Christmas to be a perfectly fine holiday on its own. Or, to take that further, that people with other cultures or quirks outside the norm don’t need to make up stuff to be confident in themselves. Damn good holiday message if I’ve ever seen it.

Its stuff like this that has made me really come to like Camp Camp over the years, to the point that I think it might be their most well managed ongoing show at the moment. And as much as I say I don’t need it, it’s really nice to see another genuine holiday special for something I’ve celebrated every year around this time. Hope your holidays are just as nice!