TV Review: The Santa Clauses Episode 6

Well we’ve come to the end of a mostly disappointing continuation of The Santa Clause franchise- at least for now. The show has already been picked up for a second season… and I’m not sure if I’ll be watching. This first season of The Santa Clauses may be ok for children who are less discerning, but I can’t imagine that it’s very popular among adults. Considering that it is a family show, marketing towards children would normally be fine, except that this show is clearly trying to capitalize on nostalgia, which relies on adult viewership as well. The inclusion of Charlie in one episode and Bernard in one episode was certainly meant to appease the viewers who grew up with the original.

In this final episode, the rest of the Calvin clan arrives to save Scott and Christmas itself. Cal is able to subdue Simon’s “evil” drones by empathizing with them; such an act can obviously only work if the drones are sentient, so does North Pole magic have the ability to give machines sentience? Sandra briefly uses her animal talking magic to reconnect with a ferret, but then we never actually see the ferret again so I’m not sure why it was introduced in the first place. It’s a shame that Sandra only gains the ability to talk to animals when Cal seems to have all the natural abilities of Santa, clearly setting him up to be the successor.

While everyone is looking for the missing Santa coat, Carol gets the chance to fight some giant toy soldiers on her own and prove that she’s capable, except that I don’t understand why she needs to. She has already proven to be a strong, intelligent, incredibly capable women, so I really didn’t need to see her round-house kick a toy solider to prove that. There’s a tussle between Scott and Simon over the Santa coat, and Simon ends up realizing his folly when his daughter Grace reminds him of the true meaning of Christmas, which was to be expected. And when Scott goes to put on the coat again and transform into Santa, the scene is paced so that it’s obviously meant to be this big moment, but he’s been Santa for three decades and therefore wasn’t really that impressive.

It was actually a relief that Scott became Santa again in a way, because I was scared that they would make 16-year-old Cal be Santa before he even got a chance to really live. I think both of the kids need to continue living in the real world at least until they’re 18 so they can continue to get some vital social development, so maybe they can stay with Carol in Chicago during the school year- that’s my head-canon at least. After all, Carol just got a new position as a school principal, and I would hate to see her give it up yet again. Scott and Carol were very supportive of Cal finding a love interest in Riley, but I kept thinking about how if Cal is going to be Santa someday then he’s going to have to find a Mrs. Clause, which continues to perpetuate this manipulative Santa system. Riley says that poinsettias are her favorite flower, so that’s obviously a hint to her being ok with living at the North Pole. The “Mrs.” clause in order to have magical children that can inherit the role of Santa still lives a bitter taste in my mouth.

The Calvins save the day and have a few moments to celebrate before needing to officially kick off Christmas Eve. Carol gets a chance to tell La Befana all about the meeting Scott had with the past Santas (and Krampus), and they both remark on the lack of woman representation at that meeting- which is absolutely correct. If Krampus was invited to the meeting of Santas as a Christmas figure, La Befana definitely should have been invited too, and Mrs. Clause for that matter. So the showrunners are openly acknowledging the lack of women representation and yet doing nothing about it. At least it was nice to include La Befana in the final celebration at all, and Simon was not vilified for getting off track with Christmas.

Then finally Scott takes his entire family with him to deliver Christmas gifts, which was admittedly a really nice moment, but it begs the question- why didn’t he ever take them before? He was married for two decades but never took Carol? And why not his kids? Charlie got to go with him when he was nine years old, so there’s no reason for him to not take his other kids at the same age. This lack of inclusion makes Scott look like a bad father and husband. 

So their joint Christmas delivery was sweet, as was Cal’s idea to use magical snow globes as everyone’s presents, but otherwise I wasn’t particularly impressed. I may be willing to watch another season out of morbid curiosity, but I can’t imagine that it will be any better than this season. Some franchises need to be happy with what they already created and leave it at that- not everything needs a belated reboot or addition. The first movie remains the strongest narrative in this franchise, and it will be the only piece that I’ll happily return to each Christmas season.