A distraction askâ˘ď¸: your go-to best-of-the-best absolute fave Halloween movie/TV recommendations. Or ALL the Halloween movie/TV recommendations. Your choice on how deep you want to dig.
OKAY SO.
THE BEST, bar none, Halloween special ever made is Boy Meets World 5x17, âAnd Then There Was Shawn.â Period. There can be no argument, except MAYBE Community 3x06, âEpidemiology,â but I like âAnd Then There Was Shawnâ better because the parody and homage as less⌠biting? And because I think it continues and addresses the emotional core of the regular BMW season better than âEpidemiologyâ does for Community s3. âEpiâ DOES plant the seed (âŚheh) for the Season 3B major plot arc of Shirleyâs pregnancy and Chang Deciding To Murder, but it gets some major minus points for mocking Yvette Nicole Brownâs weight with other charactersâ responses to her costume, tbh. And âAnd Then There Was Shawnâ is just fucking iconic. It is THE Halloween episode manual, IMO, if there were to be a textbook on how to write a perfect Halloween episode for your sitcom.
HOWEVER, I also have to give major props to Bobâs Burgers and Psych, as complete series, for their CONSISTENTLY excellent Halloween episodes. A lot of series that have multiple Halloween eps really phone it in after one or two, because they donât have any more ideas for how to incorporate Halloween pastiches while maintaining the overall feeling of the series (tbh B99, while the Halloween Heists are excellent in general, is/has been coming very close to this line, and I think that if they HADNâT had to switch out the Heist to Cinco de Mayo in s6, they would have jumped their Heist Shark [and I think they know it, too, because it was lampshaded in the episode itself]) or they just straight-up donât have any more ideas for what or how to have the characters theyâre bound to parody or pay homage to a Halloween thing after theyâve already done one or two. And letâs be real: those one or two have probably been either The Shining or Rear Window, because those are pretty much the two that every show starts with.
Bobâs manages to make every Halloween episode feel very fresh and organic to the series, which I think they do have some leeway to do because of the nature of cartoons keeping the Belchers living a kind of loop of never aging, yk, but amazingly theyâve only done the âTina feels too old to trick or treat, maybe? Nope, sheâs not 14 yet, so thereâs still time!â thing in a way that felt tropey once (in 3x02 Full Bars). Theyâve been able to address Tina being 13/in 8th grade, and worrying about it being almost too late for her to keep trick or treating, in ways that were in-character and added to the overall episode in 4x02 Fort Night, 5x02 Tina and the Real Ghost, and 9x04 Nightmare on Ocean Avenue Street, without me rolling my eyes at the screen and going âTINA, EVERY SINGLE SHOW WITH A TWEEN IN IT HAS ALREADY DECIDED THAT THE AGE AT WHICH YOU MUST STOP TRICK OR TREATING IS FRESHMAN YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL, COME ON NOWâ which⌠at this point, is a Feat. Because like, Iâve POSTED over a thousand Halloween episodes, right? But Iâve watched and screencapped ::checks folder:: 3,715 Halloween episodes since 2014. Which is, um, a. lot. THAT SAID, even though those all deserve to be name-checked as Bests, the ACTUAL BEST Bobâs Burgers Halloween episode is 6x03, âThe Hauntening,â which is just⌠achingly perfect television. I know Iâve posted about it before (probably a couple times tbh) but the way that it aired originally back-to-back with The Simpsons 27x04, âHalloween of Horror,â so that the evening of Sunday cartoons juxtaposed eight-year-old Louise whose family worked so hard to scare her like she wanted with nine-year-old Lisaâs family working so hard to keep her from being too scared and make sure that she felt safe⌠reader, I FUCKIN CRIED. Little girls being deeply loved while also Spoopy Things!!!!!! IS WHAT HALLOWEEN SPECIALS ARE!!! FUCKIN!!!!!! ABOUT!!!!!!!
Psych, though, has the benefit of not really having any, like⌠central tone to the series? Beyond âfriendshipâ and âhaving fun with joking,â tbh? So itâs able to do what a lot of series get docked âpointsâ for in my Foolproof Halloween Special Ratings System That Is Completely Subjective To My Tastes And Mood, which is really just run full-tilt into parody and homage without really worrying about overall tonal connection to the rest of the season or series. 1x15, âScary Sherry, or, Biancaâs Toast,â while it DOES fall victim to the way-too-common Halloween episode trap of making mental hospitals into a Scary Thing (they are a medical normality and a necessary thing for health for many people and should not be feared), is delightful Spooky Fun AND has the benefit of having Shannon Woodward in it.* We all know by now that if an episode of any show has Shannon Woodward as the guest star, it will by default end up being one of the best, if not THE best, episodes of that series. Itâs just how having Shannon Woodward as your guest star rolls. I also really like, with Psychâs Halloween episodes, that quite a few of them understand the underlying thematic scope of Horror, which is âThe Monstrous Feminine Is A Thing And All Horror Tropes Are Actually About Womenâs Interior Lives Because Men Canât Write Women And Fear Women Always,â yk, in a way that is neither TOO Actual Horror, which I am too afraid of to Do, or too trite and demeaning, which is the other basic trap that Halloween stuff falls into A Lot. Like, Scary Sherry is very much about women villainizing other women, avenging other women, and being in very specifically-female pain, even though Shawn & Gus are still the lens through which we solve the mystery, and so are 4x04 The Devil Is In The Details And The Upstairs Bedroom and 6x03 This Episode Sucks. But they give their Monstrous Females dignity and breadth, which is impressive, ESPECIALLY since theyâre one-off guest characters. Also, 3x15 Tuesday the 17th is just plain funny and well-done, like, just give it props for the title alone.
*(Speaking of Shannon Woodward, another amazingly good Halloween episode is Raising Hope 4x07, âMurder, She Hoped,â which is among my very favorite Rear Window homage episodes and has probably the funniest gag in ANY Rear Window ep, in Martha Plimpton floating across the screen in the Grace Kelly silk nightgown and peignoir and announcing that it was on sale at Walmart, can you believe?! and honestly, yes. Perfection.)
FOR MORE ON MY RATINGS SYSTEM OF HALLOWEEN EPISODES, SEE HERE (with explicated ratings of the B99 Halloween Heist episodes).
