Beavis and Butt-head (voice: Mike Judge) watch some videos, read a few letters, and star in two shorts: Huh-Huh-Humbug! and It’s A Miserable Life. In the first, Beavis fantasizes he’s the manager at a burger joint and is visited by three ghosts. In the second, Butt-head is shown what the world would be like if he were never born.
If you don’t know the slackers Beavis and Butt-head, this is as good a place to start as any. But there isn’t any need. Their show was a combination of videos (it was shown on MTV) and vignettes where these two mentally challenged failures giggled a lot about sex and walked around in a world they couldn’t comprehend. It’s funny for a few minutes.
In this Christmas special, the two are stuck into the most popular holiday stories of our times, with far less radical results than I would have expected. Beavis gets the Scrooge role in A Christmas Carol. There needs to be a law that no one can make another version of A Christmas Carol, in any form. Straight versions, comedies, musicals, and sitcom season episodes—it’s everywhere. This variation is an excellent example of why congress needs to get to work on that ban. This is supposed to be a “twisted” take on the story, but it is surprisingly tame. Beavis sits on the couch as the ghosts pop in and show him that his employee is poor. He uses his trademark laugh and isn’t saved. That’s about it.
The second part is better, only because this take on It’s A Wonderful Life is actually warped. The angle come down not to persuade Butt-head that he should live, but rather that the world would be better if he killed himself. Of course he isn’t convinced. The jokes are thin and repetitive, and the segment wore out its welcome long before it was over.