Review: Solar Opposites “A Very Solar Holiday Opposites Special”

Overview:

It’s Christmastime on Earth and nobody is more excited than the Solar family! The Shlorpians are eager to spread Christmas cheer and indulge in holiday treats, but the family seem to have their seasonal enthusiasm sapped after some of their controversial technology goes awry. The Solars are determined to have a Merry Christmas and not abandon one of their favorite things about Earth, but they’re forced to stare into the abyss and confront a feared Christmas custom–Jingle All the Way–before they can reach seasonal solvency.

Our Take:

A major component of what fuels Solar Opposites’ style of comedy is an everlasting list of pop culture touchstones that the series is able to effortlessly lampoon through the filter of Shlorpian misunderstandings. The Solar family’s fervent love for Earth’s television and entertainment has taken the series down some extremely entertaining paths and the tradition of holiday specials is well within Solar Opposites’ satirical wheelhouse. “A Very Solar Holiday Opposites Special” isn’t an all-time classic, but it’s a very satisfying take on well-trodden holiday territory and it’s enough to keep fans happy until season three comes into orbit.

There’s a lot of trademark Solar Opposites madness on display in “A Very Solar Holiday Opposites Special,” but right from the start it’s a smart decision to have everyone be pro-Christmas. It’d be so easy for Korvo to rage against this holiday, but it’s a welcome change of pace that everyone is united through this custom and that it even reminds them of their many Shlorpian traditions from back home. The holiday episode begins in an interesting place where the characters get to simultaneously insult Ready Player One and also use the best scene from the movie as fuel for a unique Christmas adventure. There’s definitely some fun to be had with the cast zapping themselves into Jingle All the Way, but the characters quickly realize that the threadbare nature of the holiday movie is an abysmal world to inhabit.

It takes a minute for the true nature of this holiday special to reveal itself, which causes its first half to feel a little aimless. There’s a level of effective misdirection in place where the episode temporarily looks like it’ll have a looser structure and just have fun while these wacky aliens indulge in a checklist of Christmas customs, only holiday malaise eventually sinks in and some sizable stakes develop. At first the episode comes across like it’s a bunch of cute treats in a stocking rather than a substantially satisfying gift under the Christmas tree, but the Solar family’s dire levels of Christmas cheer help pull together these disparate strands of tinsel until they all properly decorate this tree of an episode.

The centerpiece in “A Very Solar Holiday Opposites Special” comes down to an ultra-violent and highly stylized murder massacre. It’s without a doubt the most gruesome and excessive sequence to ever show up in Solar Opposites, which is honestly saying something since this is a series that regularly indulges in exaggerated violence. It’s fitting that a holiday special that’s all about spreading cheer also doubles as an episode where the whole family are covered from head-to-toe in blood. “A Very Solar Holiday Opposites Special” manages to lean into this crippling of the holiday season in a manner that doesn’t just make all of this carnage seem gratuitous, even if that’s its point. 

The Christmas plotting that drives the episode forward is a fun change of pace for Solar Opposites, but it also leads to a lot of enjoyable visual flourishes. The Christmas makeover that the series’ title sequence receives is really cute and a nice nod to the type of exaggerated Christmas touches that are often applied to holiday installments of regular series, like the shoehorning of Santa hats wherever it’s possible. 

In a similar vein, Solar Opposites puts together a live-action and stop-motion style “What the Fuck is Christmas?” musical number that’s so well constructed, creative, and effortless. It’s like a combination of the very best of South Park and Community’s Christmas parodies and it’s arguably more impressive than anything that’s actually in “A Very Solar Holiday Opposites Special.” It’s unclear if this “music video” was ever meant to be a part of the episode or if it was always independently produced as something extra, but it would have been an appreciated addendum to the beginning or ending of the special. It’s fair to say that not everyone will catch it on its own and it definitely deserves to be seen.

“A Very Solar Holiday Opposites Special” may not become a groundbreaking piece of holiday iconography that audiences will re-watch every year, but it’s still a very entertaining riff on Christmas staples. It ranks among the stronger half of the series’ episodes and this is hopefully something that Solar Opposites makes a tradition so that future holiday installments can get sharper and experiment with even crazier ideas that would otherwise be impossible in the series. Audiences deserve to see how the residents of Yumyulack’s Wall kick back during the winter season.