I think we all missed a key truth when we fell for the underdog in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Nope, Rudolph's plight emerged because he was all too involved in the office politics, backstabbing, and general prejudice that permeated Santa's compound before the unions staged their picket lines and Fox broadcast When Good Reindeer Go Ballistic. Forgive my fanciful idealism, but we feel Rudolph's pain because day in and day out, we find ourselves locked in the mortal combat that your average Caribou Olympiad extracts on the soul.
Life is nothing but a long string of reindeer games.
It's nearly Christmas, and with a mere two days until his release, he's coping with a fellow inmate's desire to carve him up into an infinite number of smaller Rudys, and a holiday Jell-O concoction that threatens to take on a life of its own. When Nick buys the farm in a full-blown prison food fight, Rudy deals with his grief by assuming Nick's identity and hooking up with Ashley. Of course, Rudy isn't Nick, though he eventually manages to convince both himself and the trucker clan that he is. Needless to say, as Frankenheimer's and writer Ehren Kruger's ever-escalating web of master plans and deceit comes to fruition, the reindeer games of the title take on heightened meaning. If this sounds a little far fetched, trust me, it is.