Review-NBC’s Trio Of Holiday Specials Kenan, Young Rock, and Mr Mayor Show That You Can’t Win Them All

Photo courtesy of TVLine.

The holidays mean an absurd amount of holiday specials that fill every aspect of our viewing entertainment, and the sitcoms of NBC are no exception, especially during Christmas.

Kenan’s holiday special revolves around the family holiday tradition of opening presents a day early while Grandpa Rick gets hammered, a holiday extravaganza for the community brought to you (them? Yes, it’s them, right?) by the Mornings With Kenan staff that includes a vulgar sockpuppet named Pam-chop voiced by, well, Pam, and some family drama between Kenan and Gary. There’s a lot of laughs, some touching moments, and booze. Fun times, would definitely recommend. Moving on.

Mr. Mayor’s Magical L.A Christmas is just awkward. The story involves Mayor Bremer holding everyone over at the office while he struggles to figure out what to do for presents since the ones he ordered for the staff are stuck in shipping limbo. After another stern lecture from his daughter Orly (who acts more like an adult female figure rather than Neil’s teen daughter) the Mayor decides to bring in some last-minute entertainment in the form of a mentalist (but don’t call him psychic) and it doesn’t go over well at all. People just want to leave, Neil blows up at everyone for not appreciating everything that he’s done for them for Christmas, and reminds everyone how hard it is to be rich during Christmas and how he’s a victim. Sure, why not.

Meanwhile, you have Mikaela trying to bring Arpi and the weird staff photographer together as a couple for a Love Actually-style Christmas miracle since Mikaela is single and miserable, Tommy fighting with the sanitation staff over the discarded Christmas trees they were asked to collect and “do something with” and Neil accidentally destroying (and then somewhat fixing) Jayden’s life work that is a parody song about how fake Christmas in L.A is.

Thank you, next.

Photo courtesy of L.A Times

Last but not least, Young Rock brings us hope and enlightenment. Adult Rock finds himself sitting a child co-star down between takes of the Christmas film they are working on to tell her about how when he was her age, three ghosts visited him one Christmas eve night and they changed the way he looked at Christmas. Two older versions of himself show up to tell young Rock how bad all of his future Christmas’ would be for him (we’re talking Christmas’ without presents, without money, and even one involving putting his college football coach’s wife in the hospital on Christmas Eve) while the third ghost, Pére Noël (a french version of Father Christmas) showed Rock 2 and 3 that all of those “bad” Christmas’ turned out to be good simply because they tried to focus on the positives of each situation, and introduced young Rock to the power of perspective. It was a simple storyline with wonderful characters written and performed to their potential wrapped up in an imperfect but meaningful Christmas message.

All three Christmas specials can be stream here at NBC.com