Shrek the Halls! (and See Gross Stuff!)

***This week we will be celebrating the holidays with Christmas recaps. First up is SexyPanda with Shrek The Halls!!

It’s Christmas, and that means the season of perpetual hope and peace and love and Baby Jesus and family and friends.

OR…it means fights and crabby people and panic and anger and tears and bankruptcy.

With Shrek the Halls, we get it all (well, except bankruptcy, because I don’t think Shrek uses money)! Just like a REAL Christmas. Join me!(First of all, my apologies on behalf of ABC. See, they didn’t put up an online episode for this, so I had to get screengrabs where I could, which meant some deft Googling on my part. I’d love to spice this up a bit with more hot, sexy ogre action, but…my hands are tied.)

We open with buns. Buttocks. Cheeks. It’s Christmas, after all, the season of perpetual fannies! (Oh, don’t let the Brits know I used that word.)

No, it’s not a snow-covered mountain! It’s Shrek’s baby’s bottom, dusted with baby powder after a diaper changing. How cute! Shrek’s listening to Summer Breeze (sadly, not the Type O Negative version) and sunbathing in Hawaiian swim shorts while the babies play in a pool of mud next to his chair.

That fucker, Donkey, blocks his sun and interrupts with his Christmas glee. See, there’s only 159 days left til Christmas! “He knows when you’ve been sleeping, he knows when you’re awake!, ” Donkey sings. Shrek shoos Donkey away. “I don’t care about Christmas.”

Sooner than later, it’s autumn and Shrek’s chopping wood for winter as the leaves fall. Donkey interrupts again, nearly getting hisself decapitated, to sing “Jingle Bells”. Shrek is pissed now–he really does NOT care about Christmas!

Now it’s winter, and Shrek heads out to shovel the walk. He takes one shovelfull of snow and DAMMIT, there’s Donkey again! “Dashing through the snow…!” he sings! Oh wait, Shrek is shoveling the route to the outhouse! Excellent! But doesn’t he just crap in the house? I mean, he IS an ogre.

Just as Shrek gets finished shouting his breath into Donkey’s face about how NO ONE here cares about Christmas, Fiona bursts out of the house, exclaiming about the white Christmas! Shrek is like, “ohhhhh shit.”

Donkey wants to level with Fiona but Shrek decides to eat his feelings and play pretend, just to save his marriage. Smart man.

Credits! Shrek is running across a snowy field to that crazy theatrical trailer song they play when things are crazy and dramatic. Ya know, the one with a chorus singing things in a Russian-ish manner that ends with crazy timpani bing-bongs? YOU know! You do! I know you do! Anyway, turns out he was heading to town to buy a book about Christmas. He can’t fuck this up now! Fiona will divorce his ass!

The bookshop lady sells Shrek “The Village Idiot’s Guide to Christmas”, which spells it all out, from decorating the house to the stockings at the fireplace and the tree. Shrek’s all set. She really wants to make the sale because the store is closing, but also, the book kinda sums it all up perfectly. Shrek’ll take it.

Shrek is back out on the streets, as villagers fling themselves by with worry about their perfect Christmases. Needing the perfect toy, being out of marshmallows for the sweet potatoes, having no egg nog. Shrek is concerned.

Next morning–Shrek is outside, decorating the house. He hangs a toilet seat on the front door as a wreath. We pull back and see that Shrek basically threw Sanford and Sons’ junkyard on top of his house as decoration. Donkey appears to tell him he’s doing it all wrong. He needs tinsel and lights! Donkey gives Shrek a Christmas card, and he’s characteristically grumpy about it.

Donkey tells Fiona that he’ll help Shrek get it right. Fiona’s like, “um, no thx. We want a FAMILY Christmas, ya know, first one with the kids.” Donkey’s all sad. Shrek’s around the side of the house, checking the book, fretting that he’s getting it wrong. Fiona grabs him to head out for a family day in the snowy woods.

Sledding! Fiona capturing snakes and burping in their faces to paralyze them and bend them into candy cane shapes! The Shrek/Fiona triplets blowing up lizards to use as Christmas tree balls! Uprighting a rotting log to use as a Christmas tree! Yoinking a possum off a tree to cook up as the Christmas roast!

Finally, they’re home and all decorated and sitting by the fire, just like they’re s’posed to. Shrek starts to tell the Christmas story. Just as he gets to the part about how the house wasn’t stirring, Donkey bursts in with a wreath around his neck. Uh oh!

The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf are there, too, along with the Three Blind Mice, the Gingerbread Man, and, my favorite, Puss in Boots. MAN, I hope he does that gigantic sad kitty eyes thing and hacks up a hairball.

Puss in Boots immediately resigns himself to being tortured by the Shrek triplet babies, complete with tail-pulling and head pounding. Poor kitty.

The Three Little Pigs set the table and Pinocchio is being an obnoxious ass about further decorating. Donkey calls up to his Dragon wife to have her fluff up Shrek’s sad little fire. It incinerates the possum that had been on the spit.

One of the Blind Mice is hammering a stocking into that shrill bitch Pinnochio’s leg. I LOL when Gingerbread Man hits on an angel-shaped gingerbread cookie (“Did you hurt yourself when you fell out of heaven?”) Shrek is ousted from the house as Pinocchio shrieks for the dancing to begin, and the techno Moulin Rouge song kicks in, disco lights and all.

Shrek’s hanging out in the outhouse, pissed that this damn Christmas party is goin’ on. Fiona tries to get him to come in. He agrees, and on his way in, we see the Dragon chick doing the famous Charlie Brown Christmas special dance. (Why isn’t THAT what you do when you’re doing the Cha Cha Slide and they tell you to do the Charlie Brown?? It confuses me every time!)

Gingerbread man pesters Shrek as soon as he’s inside–”I don’t feel good.” Whiny bastard. Then he pukes up a perfect Hershey Kiss. Ah, much better! Donkey saunters past and happily eats the chocolate chip that’d fallen on the floor. EWWWWW.

Just as Shrek and Fiona are about to share a kiss under the mistletoe, with Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” playing in the background, that coked-up asshole, Pinocchio, swoops in and steals Fiona. He starts screaming the song at the top of his wooden asshole lungs. He’s also copping a hefty feel off of Fiona’s rack.

Aww, Shrek’s about to pop a cap in someone, when he spies his kids playing with Donkey’s kids under the table. He bends down and starts telling the Christmas story again. Those kids are damn cute for CG ogre babies. Well, nevermind. Donkey takes over and Shrek is pissed.

Donkey’s tale isn’t quite the traditional one. His speaks of 20-ft cheeseballs and a huge egg-nog fountain, as well as a parade and some morons doing interpretive dance. The piece de resistance is a 50-ft waffle Santa. You heard me.

Puss interrupts Donkey to tell his OWN tale of Christmas, complete with soulful Spanish guitar. (mmm, that cat is sexy. I love his little goatee chinny-chin.) He speaks of a Zorro-Santa-cat creature, and then gets transfixed by the ball at the end of his hat. Another LOL.

Gingerbread Nerd’s turn. To him, Christmas is a nightmare. See, for him, Christmas was all about makin’ time with some hot piece of gingerbread ass, but all of a sudden, Godzilla Santa came to eat his lady-friend! Oh shit!

Shrek’s had enough. He wants everyone–everyone!–out! Get out! His Christmas for Dummies book falls out, and Donkey gets it. Uh oh. They squabble over it and it goes flying, knocking all kinds of crap over, in true booby trap fashion. Shrek’s had it and bellows for everyone to leave. Donkey’s feelings are hurt–this isn’t how you treat people on Christmas!

(Can you tell that, at this point, I found a good source for screengrabs? From here til the end, baby. Merry Christmas.)

Shrek heads back in, relieved to just be him, Fiona, and the kids again. But wait, Fiona’s all packed up and leaving. She’s pissed that he treated their friends–their family–like that on Christmas. Shrek’s like, “Woman please. They ain’t family. And that wasn’t family, that was chaos.” Fiona’s like, “Dude, that’s how family is. They suck and you get pissed but you love them. Merry Christmas.” Then we get taught a lesson about how Christmas isn’t about you or me or the kids. Wah wah wah. Fiona heads off self-righteously to apologize to everyone. And maybe do some jello shots.

Aww. Shrek heads inside to survey the damage. Some crappy indie song about December and loneliness is playing while Shrek makes that “oh well, shit” face at Donkey’s Christmas card.

Fiona, the kids, Puss, and Donkey are out walking, arguing over who was the biggest Christmas asshole. Eventually, they settle on Donkey being the biggest ass. Fitting.

And then! To what should my wandering eye should appear, but a big fat green ogre who scared the shit out of everyone! He apologizes to Donkey for him “taking getting kicked out of my house the wrong way.” Nice anti-apology there, Shrek. Oops. He tries again, and is, again, a douche. Finally, he admits that this is HIS first Christmas, and he was just trying to make it right for his family’s first Christmas. Donkey bursts into tears when he finally gets it, that ogres don’t celebrate Christmas and that’s why Shrek was all a hot mess.

Final LOL of the night–Shrek invited everyone to come back to their house for Christmas. That douchehead Pinnochio is all camped out by the fire, telling the Big Bad Wolf that he specifically chose this spot, wah wah wah, and Wolf kicks that fucker across the room so he can set up HIS blanket. YES!

The special ends with Shrek’s telling of the Christmas story. It includes farting, unicorn poop, Ogre-Claus, nuclear belches, swamp juice, and boogers. Ah, Shrek.

“Smelly Christmas to all, and to all a gross night!”