It's corny, it's silly. The animation is wonky and the dialogue is stilted and awkward.
It's the X-Men Christmas special episode.
And it's just wonderful. Most of the X-Men cartoon focus on some sort of dilemma or physical confrontation with members either fighting each other or fighting some horrible external force that wants to wipe them out of existence.
But in this case it's a fairly light-hearted story, mainly revolving around Jubilee and her experience of having the first decent Christmas.
Christmas is in High Spirits in the Xavier Institute. Everyone's getting in on the season except for Wolverine of course. Who never gets in on anything fun. Jubilee wants to do some Christmas shopping, Wolverine wants nothing to do with it. Not only is he antisocial but he realises the horrible inconvenience of doing Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve. But alas he gives in to because jubilees just being so cheery about it. Storm also decides to join for some reason.
It's incredibly beneficial that she did Papa long because the only real conflict in the episode shows up in the form of a hijacked ambulance being kidnapped buy a bunch of mutants who live in the sewers.
The X-Men investigate the situation and discover that the sewer mutants are stealing medical supplies to try and save one of their members. One of the small mutants who got sick from the cold elements. But everything becomes all the more dire when they realise that they can't move little mutant without killing him. So they ask Wolverine if he's willing to hook himself up to a blood transfuse to try and save the little mutants life.
At first the Logan is hesitant, stating that sometimes the blood doesn't work.
I'm more concerned that they're going to hook up two people to transfer blood without even checking the blood type. But I guess that's a detail we're not supposed to think about.
But they're able to convince Wolverine to give it a try and the transfusion is a success. The little mutant survives and Jubilee gives up her gifts to the Sewer mutants so that their Christmas can be more merry.
And Storm relinquishes her power to the second in command of the sewer mutants, so that she no longer is there Chieftain*
There's also a secondary story involving Jean Grey and Gambit fighting over their cooking preparations for their Christmas feast. Jean Grey is trying to make a typical American Xmas meal and Gambits trying to spice the whole thing up with Cajun style cooking.
There's really no point of a secondary story and it takes up so little of the actual view time that I think they could have kicked the whole thing out and dedicated a bit more energy to the main story. Still it's amusing enough for what it is.
It's not a particularly good X-Men episode. With the exception of Storm releasing her title to the Sewer mutants, nothing else in the story affects the overall plot of the series. And the animation and dialogue can get really choppy sometimes. The whole thing's just kind of filler.
However as a holiday show it's kind of endearing. It's lightweight, Whimsical, kind of fun and it gets you in that whimsical spirit that you need to express, in order to enjoy the festive season. I wouldn't want to watch this episode at any other time of the year.
But I still think it deserves a spot in the Christmas holiday.
*In an earlier episode of the X-Men show, Storm had defeated this one particular Super Mutant in a duel for control of the Super Mutant domain. At the time it was because the mutants were trying to attack the surface world and where causing various problems that were making them on public Target for police forces and other ilk.
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