The Bleakest Sitcom Christmas Episode of All Time Was Based on a True Story
Along with festive lights, eggnog and drunken arguments after too many eggnogs, a staple of the holiday season is watching Christmas-themed sitcom episodes.
Mostly, these shows tend to be fairly heartwarming, like in Family Matters when Carl and Steve Urkel end up trapped on a subway train on Christmas Eve due to a power outage, but ultimately decide to decorate a tree and sing carols rather than resort to cannibalism.
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But some Christmas episodes are surprisingly dark, such as how the 1987 ALF special found the alien puppet counseling a terminally ill child and dressing up like Santa Claus to prevent a suicide attempt.
But things were far grimmer over on Married… with Children. The second season’s “You Better Watch Out,” began with a man in a Santa costume dying in the Bundy’s backyard after a promotional skydiving stunt goes horribly wrong.
If that premise wasn’t bleak enough, several neighborhood children then gather outside the Bundy house to make sure that “Santa” is okay. This forces Al to dress up as Kris Kringle and assure the kids that he’s fine, thus restoring their faith in Christmas — not because he wants to, but because the cops need the kids to vacate the area before they can wheel the corpse away.
The only thing that could possibly make this episode any more upsetting is the fact that it was seemingly based on a true story.
Way back in 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, Mesa, Arizona’s local newspaper editor, a man named John McPhee, decided to brighten everyone’s spirits, and boost the town’s economy, with a special event. He came up with the idea to have Santa Claus himself parachute into the town’s Christmas parade.
But on the day of the parade, McPhee found his parachuting Santa stuntman at the local bar “drunk as a skunk.” McPhee quickly threw together a plan B, which would involve him dressing up as Santa instead. Since he was no skydiver, McPhee put a red suit on a mannequin and had the flight crew pull the dummy’s ripcord as they tossed it out of the plane. “Santa” would then parachute to the ground, whereupon, McPhee would secretly take his place.
Unfortunately, the chute didn’t deploy, and Santa plummeted to the ground like Hans Gruber. The children reportedly started screaming, “Santa's dead, Santa's dead.”
McPhee still showed up in costume as Santa to try and pacify the kids (not unlike Al Bundy), but the damage had already been done. Weirdly, McPhee’s goal of encouraging folks to buy Christmas presents from local shops was achieved because parents went “overboard” with gift shopping for kids that year to try and make up for the psychic trauma of witnessing Santa fall helplessly to his death.
McPhee ended up leaving town after being branded “the man who killed Santa” — a designation that would later be bestowed upon Tim Allen.
