It's seems I forgot to pay the meter, so I have to go to the court house and pay off a fine. New York being such a busy city, they have court at all hours of the day. I'm supposed to be seeing a Judge Harold T. Stone in the Criminal Court Part 2.
Yes, you guessed it- since I am in the Big Apple, I'm talking everyone to Night Court. This very goofy show debuted in 1984 and ran for an impressive 9 seasons. Even more impressive is considering how silly the show was, it won 7 Emmy awards!
The show had several Christmas episodes. One of my favorite's is when everybody gets snowed it due to a blizzard. But since I have talked some much about snow for a while, I am going to focus on the January 11, 1984 episode from the first season. Santa Goes Downtown actually is a Christmas episode. But it aired after Christmas. That's because Night Court was a mid-season replacement series. NBC was afraid to air a couple of episodes and then have fans lose interest when it went on holiday hiatus until the new year. Thus the show's very first Christmas episode was aired just in time for MLK Day!
The episode features a very young- not quite a household name- Michael J. Fox. His TV series Family Ties had been running for just about a year when he filmed his role on Night Court as a teen runaway. But by 1985 and the release of the comedy sci-fi film Back to the Future, Fox would become one of the biggest stars around!
So back to Night Court. As I mentioned Fox plays a runaway, who along with his girlfriend get caught panhandling. With it being almost Christmas, Judge Stone (played by Harry Anderson) hopes to reunite the kids with their parents and holds them until they cant determine who the kids really are as neither are talking.
As court continues, a man dressed as Santa is brought up on charges of trespassing. However, when he declares himself to be the real Santa. He too is held over until he can be evaluated by a psychologist. But he seems to know a lot about what all of the court officers got for Christmas when they were younger.
Santa tries to make friends with teens. But the boy openly yells and mocks him. So Judge Stone makes the boy apologize. At this time a file has come in on the missing kids and Santa fools the kids into revealing their true names. At one point, Santa is picked up by the folks at the local mental hospital and the kids are reconciled with their families. But it is revealed that the kids in the file are different from the ones that just meet back with their folks. So was that Santa the real deal? And is that jingle bells in the distance???
I'm pretty sure I did not do that episode justice. But that's okay. As my Advent gift for you today, I have the episode in it's entry
Oh, they're calling my case. Gotta run. Enjoy and until next time, Merry Christmas!
SORRY-BUT DUE TO COPYRIGHT, THE VIDEO HAS BEEN REMOVED.
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