Franklin Armstrong, the first Black character in the comic strip, is the subject of a new “Peanuts” special that explores a contentious sequence from the 1973 special “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.”
This weekend, Apple TV+ debuted a new special called “Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin,” which tackles the contentious moment in which Franklin is seated on one side of the dining table while the other guests are seated on the other. The whole cast of Peanuts is shown assembling around Franklin at the same dinner table in the most recent special.
“Hey Franklin, we saved you a seat over here!” In the video, Charlie Brown remarks as Franklin round the table.
Charlie adds later, “When you’re surrounded by good friends, you know you’ve found your home.”
“In order to maximize the impact, I proposed that we replicate the shot precisely as it appeared in the Thanksgiving special,” Director Raymond S. Persi said in a Daily Beast interview on how they brought the scenario to life. “So, we examined the initial frame. You’ll observe that the table has the same strange, crooked perspective in the special. We included it solely to encourage people to identify with that particular moment right away.”
