Olive, the Other Reindeer

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Olive, the Other Reindeer is an animated Christmas television special, produced by Matt Groening of Simpsons fame and directed by Oscar Moore. It first aired in 1999, and was based on the 1997 children's book by Vivian Walsh and J. Otto Siebold.

[edit] Storyline

The story follows a dog named "Olive" (voiced by actress Drew Barrymore), who doesn't act at all like a dog. When she returns home from some errands, she finds her owner, Tim (voiced by Jay Mohr), putting away Christmas decorations and announcing morosely that there "won't be any Christmas". Olive eventually finds out that this is because Blitzen, one of Santa's reindeer, is injured and can't fly. Santa hopes he can make the Christmas run with "All of the other reindeer". Mishearing this on the radio as "Olive the other reindeer", Olive becomes convinced that it is she Santa is referring to, prompting her to travel to the North Pole to fill in on the sleigh team. Helping her is Martini, a con artist penguin (voiced by Joe Pantoliano), and standing in her way is an evil mailman (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) who is fed up with having to deliver the heavy loads of mail during the Christmas rush. He attempts to foil Olive's valiant plans in the hopes that Santa will be unable to make the journey, in the hopes that Christmas will end and he won't have to carry so much Holiday mail. He's also vengeful towards Santa for being repeatedly put on his "Naughty" list.

Like the title character, many of the characters' names are well known mondegreens; "Richard Stans" (from the phrase "which it stands" in the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance) and "Round John Virgin" (from "... round yon virgin" from the song "Silent Night"), for example.

• Olive finds a package while locked in the back of the evil mailman's truck. The package is marked from "Deus ex Machina". It contains a metal file which Olive uses to escape from the truck and proceed with her attempt to save Christmas. Note that this is Drew Barrymore's second reference to Deus ex Machina (see Donnie Darko). It is also Matt Groening's second reference to a "god from the machine" (see Simpsons Characters).