Review: Freshly Baked: The Robot Chicken Santa Claus Pot Cookie Freakout Special: Special Edition

What the hell was this?

Santa, Krampus, Jesus, the elves, and yes, The Nerd return to the 2017 edition of the Robot Chicken Holiday Special. Unfortunately, I think the producers may have been drunk on eggnog and out of ideas when they put this one together because, boy, is it bad.

This year’s effort is really just a bunch of silly songs written by Jemaine Clements. Krampus is shilling the benefits of coal, Santa eats a pot cookie, the elves are doing their best to convince you to lighten their workload, and I haven’t listened to anything Jesus has said in almost 15 years, so that part I blocked out.

Seth Green returns as Santa, which is kinda like getting coal during the Christmas specials for the kids expecting to get Seth MacFarlane back to reprise his role who sounds WAY more Santa-y and would’ve nailed the singing parts a bit better than what we got as well. Heck, I would’ve been happy with bringing back Christian Slater to reprise his role as Composite Santa!

Fortunately, Adult Swim has a marathon of Robot Chicken holiday specials later in the month, so, check your local listings for those because those are going to be way better and avoid this messy effort. I’m only giving extra points for the stop-motion producers being incredible at their jobs and carrying the asses of the collective writing department this year who were fine with a 12-minute long advertisement for a free soundtrack instead of the insanity this show normally gives us this time of year. Here’s hoping the rest of Robot Chicken season nine is way better. Note, I also watched this AFTER Bob’s Burgers’“The Bleakening“ which was also more of a musical episode, and it was WAY better than this, so feel free to watch that one as an alternate.