A Doonesbury Special is an animated television special co-directed by John Hubley, Faith Hubley, and Garry Trudeau. It originally aired on NBC on November 27, 1977, the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend that year.
A 25-minute Animated Adaptation of Trudeau's iconic newspaper comic strip, Doonesbury, the special finds the six primary characters of the strip's early years — Zonker Harris, Joanie Caucus, Mark Slackmeyer, B.D. and his girlfriend Boopsie, and of course Mike Doonesbury himself — still sharing a commune together outside Walden College. As the gang sits down to dinner, Zonker makes a proposal: observing that they haven't been doing any of their old hippie-style activities (organic gardening, macramé, group sex) in a while, he suggests that maybe they should just dissolve the commune and all move into condos.
Zonker forgets about his suggestion almost as soon as he makes it. Mike, however, is deeply troubled and winds up in a crisis of self-doubt, wondering if the spirit of the '60s has been lost and whether or not old hippies like him need to just move on. In the meantime, the kids from Joanie's daycare center are planning to appear in a Christmas pageant, and B.D. has a football game to play.
Notable as the last work of animation legend John Hubley, who died while the special was still in the storyboard stages; his wife and collaborator, Faith Hubley, continued working in animation until her own death in 2001. The voice cast includes Richard Cox as Zonker and Barbara Harris as Joanie.
Tropes:
- Animated Adaptation: The only one ever made of Trudeau's Doonesbury comic strip.
- Artistic License – Sports: Zonker's interminable yakking during the football huddle leads to three consecutive delay-of-game penalties for Walden, resulting in a touchback and two points for the opposition. This is wrong on multiple levels. First of all, the defense scores two points when the offense is downed in the end zone, or the ball is fumbled out of the end zone. Multiple penalties would only push you "half the distance to the goal", never into the goal. Secondly, when the defense scores two points in that manner it's called a safety; a touchback is something entirely different and does not result in any points scored.
- Book Ends: In the first scene, an autumn leaf falls from a tree, only to be harpooned mid-drop by Zonker, who is resistant to change. At the end of the short, another leaf falls, but Zonker lets it, signifying Baby Boomers finally beginning to accept that yes, they're getting older, and yes, things change.Zonker: (narrating) What happened to everyone? Ah, nothing special. Just... caring in different ways. Feeling the present as it moves by. Things gotta change, right?
(A leaf falls to the ground.)
Zonker: (laughs, speaking) And the trees agree! (Beat) Good going, trees. - Bourgeois Bohemian: Everybody in the commune except for B.D., who is a political conservative and thus can't be called a "bohemian" at all. The rest are the type who can argue about the George McGovern campaign and wax nostalgic about anti-war protests, while none of them have to work very hard for a living.
- Comic-Book Time: Seven years have passed since Doonesbury debuted in newspapers, enough time for Nixon to resign and the Vietnam War to end and for Mike to wonder if the revolutionaries of the '60s have lost their way. Yet somehow, B.D. is still playing college football for Walden. (In the comic strip, the characters would remain eternal college students until Trudeau took an extended hiatus 1983-84. After Doonesbury came back they started aging in something closer to real time.)
- Flashback: A long sequence flashes back to a late-'60s antiwar concert by Jimmy Thudpucker that everybody went to.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: It's not really clear why B.D. lives in the commune with the others, considering he's an extreme right-winger (he thinks the U.S. should have stayed in Vietnam and intervened in Angola to boot) and also a jock. He could not be more different than stoners like Zonker or hippie peaceniks like Mike.
- Lethal Chef: Everyone mocks the lasagna Mike makes for dinner.Mark: Is this benign?
- Limited Animation: John Hubley basically invented Limited Animation, and it is seen in this cartoon in some scenes where only a couple of characters are moving while the others are still against a featureless background. (The football scene is done this way.). However some other scenes have more intricate animation, such as how the camera zooms around Jimmy Thudpicker's concert.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: When he is seen performing at the peace concert in the 1960s flashback sequence, Jimmy Thudpucker is an obvious Bob Dylan analogue, singing an anti-war song on acoustic guitar while playing harmonica on a neck holder like Dylan did. The Jimmy of 1977, by contrast, is more of a soft arena rocker in the Jackson Browne mold.
- Power Ballad: Zonker watches Jimmy Thudpucker, on piano, performing a dramatic power ballad on some TV variety show. The cheesy tune provides a thematically-appropriate contrast to the more fiery, acoustic anti-war song Jimmy's seen playing at Walden in the 1960s flashback.
- Shout-Out: As the football team is taking the field, Zonker goes into a spiel about how the sport is, with its violence, reminiscent of America's aggressive imperialism. This is a subtle shout-out to the Oscar-winning documentary film Hearts and Minds, which made this exact connection. If there is any doubt the cartoon is referencing the movie, it's removed moments later when Zonker says he'll play in the game after all, explaining that he's "had a change of heart and mind."
- The Stoner: Zonker, as was true in the comic strip for years. Zonker is toking up on something while in the huddle during a football game. The rest of the players get contact highs, much to B.D's fury.
