Santa Inc.

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Santa Inc. is an American stop-motion adult animated comedy miniseries created by Alexandra Rushfield that premiered December 2, 2021, on HBO Max. The stop motion animation is produced by Stoopid Buddy Stoodios.

Santa Inc.
Making an adult comedy of one of the jolliest holidays around almost NEVER ends well.
Genre: Comedy Running Time: 30 minutes Country: United States Release Date: December 2, 2021 Network(s): HBO Max Tubi Created by: Alexandra Rushfield Distributed by: WarnerMedia Direct Starring: Seth Rogen Sarah Silverman Leslie Grossman Gabourey Sidibe Craig Robinson Nicholas Braun Maria Bamford Seasons: 1 Episodes: 8

However, thanks to the Warner Discovery merger, David Zaslav's cost-cutting measures have caused not only this but many other original shows on HBO Max to be permanently removed from the service around July-August 2022, which would've rendered this show as lost media if not for video piracy measures.

Plot

Candy Smalls, an elf at Santa's workshop, wants to become the next Santa after the current one retires.

Why It Had Coal This Christmas

1. The premise is dumb and does not make any sense as there is already a female Santa Claus named Mrs. Claus in the traditions of Christmas. It is also highly unoriginal as films like Disney+'s Noelle already tackled the idea of a female Santa.
2. Many unlikable/annoying/mean-spirited characters:
   • Candy Smalls sabotages everyone else's dream of becoming the new Santa Claus.
     • Her telling Santa to "go fuck himself" after getting his advice ruins all sympathy from the audience.
   • Junior is a self-entitled, sexist, and arrogant jerk to everyone around him, mainly Candy and her friend Goldie.
   • Cookie is abusive to her husband Craig. What’s worse is that all of it is played for laughs, meaning the show relies on cruelty for comedy and treats female-on-male abuse as a joke. This is both offensive and insulting to male abuse victims.
   • Goldie is basically Quagmire from modern Family Guy if he was an offensively unfunny black woman stereotype who constantly makes sex jokes.
3. The series relies too much on sex jokes which, unlike Big Mouth, aren't executed well due to being centered around a Christian figure like Santa Claus.
   • There are also a lot of unfunny and offensive jokes about rape, incest, necrophilia, homosexuality, masturbation, abortion, and suicide. This is wrong and disturbing for a Christmas-themed show, even for 2021 adult animation standards.
   • There are also some extremely tasteless animal abuse jokes as well. For example, when Rudolph Junior is hit by a car that Candy is driving, she leaves him to die.
   • It even goes as far as to offend Jews...which is what Seth Rogen and Sarah Silverman are!
4. In the trailer, Candy says "Good news, sir! More American kids believe in you than they do in vaccines or the Holocaust!", and Santa responds with "That's great!". That line was made fun of by many commenters in the trailer's comments section on YouTube (when it was still open), due to how problematic some can view it as, and is especially disrespectful towards those who died from both the Holocaust and COVID-19 (and even to those who caught the latter and recovered). Not helped by the fact that it was included in the final product.
5. The series relies on too much swearing, as there is a curse word in almost every sentence when a character speaks, which is all just irritating and not funny.
6. Many gross moments: like Candy's mom, Big Candy, constantly showing herself naked in public.
7. It relies so much on political humor that it feels like that's all it has to offer, other than the terrible sex jokes. Not to mention, said sex jokes and politics are also out of place for a miniseries centered around Christmas, which is typically something kid-friendly.
   • The series tries way too hard to mock white supremacy and ultimately fails at doing so. One example is that Devin, the Santa Inc. intern, makes an unnecessary and stupid joke about replacing the game whack a mole with whack a white supremacist.
8. Despite the decent animation, the character designs, especially the elves, range from grotesque to downright ugly.
9. Very cringe-worthy dialogue such as "If I die, get rid of my porn!" and "You gotta get intimate that jolly bitch, bitch!". These lines were made to be adult so the series would get a cheap laugh out of viewers, but these lines and many others are plain unfunny.
10. The series says that to be Santa Claus, you have to be a white male, which is both racist and sexist. However, Candy does try to prove the other characters wrong throughout it, but unfortunately fails in the end.
    • Not only that but most male characters in the series are portrayed as either incompetent, sexist, perverted, cowardly, or throw-away characters, further showing that the series is nothing but anti-men propaganda.
11. Poor Christmas-themed soundtrack that mostly consists of a generic instrumental of the jingle bells song in different versions.
12. Laughable special effects that look like a GIF animation, especially with the snowflake effects.
13. The two-parter final episodes are not good at all and ended this series on a sour note.
14. Overall, this series damaged the reputation of Seth Rogen and Lionsgate because the former defended the show and called the critics and everybody who panned it, white supremacists.
15. To sum it all up, this feels like a rejected sketch of Robot Chicken stretched into a full series.
16. In fact, the animation looks like a rip-off of some stop moiton adult shows like The PJs and Glenn Martin DDS, to the point where many call it “An streaming equivalent of Glenn Martin DDS, a Christmas-themed version of High Guardian Spice.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The stop-motion animation is nice, as expected from Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, the studio that does the animation for Robot Chicken and Buddy Thunderstruck. Unfortunately, the studio wasted it on something this terrible.
2. The voice acting is decent, mostly since it has a cast of talented actors like Seth Rogen, Sarah Silverman, and Craig Robinson. Although, same thing as above.
3. Santa is, surprisingly, a likable character. He may be somewhat of a jerk throughout the series, but he gets along well with kids and has a good reason why Candy can not be the next Santa. It's not the fact that Candy is a female, but she has proven herself not to get along with kids, which is a vital part of the job. Unfortunately, Candy, after learning all of this, tells him off. Despite this, many people consider Santa the best character in the show.
4. The concept of an elf (much less, a female one) wanting to become the next Santa Claus is pretty decent, despite the abysmal execution.
5. Some funny moments here and there.
6. Santa, Inc. did try to show how women often have trouble in men-dominated workplace, but they still did horrible jobs.
7. Good ending: Santa Claus gives Candy a reasonable explanation on why she is unfit to be the next Santa (being good with kids is an essential part of the job, and it is a skill Candy lacks), only to be met with a "Go fuck yourself" response from her.

Reception

Santa Inc. was universally panned by audiences and critics, who derided the show's script, tone, messages, and humor despite praising the stop-motion animation. On December 3, the show had a 3% audience score on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and a 1.4/10 on IMDb, as well as a 7% on Google. It also has a user score of just 0.3 on Metacritic, indicating "Overwhelming dislike". In response, Rogen claimed that the series was being review bombed by "white supremacists", showing off his personal political views while not handle criticism (he is ironically white by the way). The trailer has received more than 180,000 dislikes on YouTube, with the YouTube team disabling the comments. It was so badly received the show was removed from the service less than a year after it aired along with many others due to cost-cutting measures as a result of the merger. 

Trivia

• As mentioned above, Seth Rogen, who executive produced and starred in the miniseries, responded to the negative reviews by saying that Santa Inc. was getting review-bombed by "white supremacists".
• The show currently has a 1.4/10 on IMDb, making it not only the lowest-rated show from Stoopid Buddy Studioos and one of the lowest-rated shows ever made from HBO Max but even of all time on the site. Only 9% of Google users liked the show.
• This, along with many other shows affected by the Warner Discovery merger were permanently removed from the service on July-August 2022, less than a year after its release.

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