Summary
It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but The Big Show Show Christmas Special at least provides a cheery festive farewell to the already-canceled show.
This review of The Big Show Show Christmas Special is spoiler-free. You can check out our thoughts on the first season itself by clicking these words.
Since The Big Show Show, a family sitcom tag-team effort between Netflix and WWE Studios, has already been canceled, releasing a Christmas Special at this point feels like a bit of a kick in the teeth. But the positive way of looking at it is as a festive farewell, a way to sign the show off in the spirit of the season. On those terms, this departing half-hour just about works, but don’t expect anything from it that you wouldn’t expect from any of the earlier episodes, or indeed the slew of sitcoms — many of them superior — that are out there doing their own Christmas specials.
Weirdly enough, The Big Show Show Christmas Special sidelines the Big Show, aka Paul Wight, for much of its runtime, after some petty tit-for-tat putting decorations on the roof leaves him injured and unable to play the neighborhood Santa. In his place, his wife Cassy (Allison Munn) takes the reigns as Mrs. Klaus, promising the local kids a series of impossible presents in order to be memorable in the role.
In the meantime, Lola (Reylynn Caster), Mandy (Lily Brooks O’Briant), and J.J. (Juliet Donenfeld) enjoy a scavenger hunt for presents that also results in the episode’s biggest laughs and most touching thematic contribution, which is that time spent together with family — especially over the holidays — is what life is all about, rather than the exchange of gifts (even though the ones Cassy is giving out are pretty cool.) This is very standard stuff, and the usual staginess of The Big Show Show is still a thing — this is a far cry from the believability and relatability of high-tier sitcoms like The Conners and The Unicorn.
But, that isn’t the market that The Big Show Show is aiming to satisfy, and its usual audience — supposing it still has an audience at this point — will probably be quite pleased with this, even if it doesn’t exactly suggest that canceling the show in the first place was any kind of mistake.
