Halloween TV

TV is one of my most favorite things.  So is Halloween.  TV + Halloween = Super Extra Awesome!

Of course, there are the annual (or, not so much anymore) Halloween TV specials like It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Thank goodness they at least still show that one. More rarely seen are the Garfield Halloween special (which scared the crap out of me when I was little) and Disney’s Trick or Treat. Disney has like, twelve channels these days and they can’t manage to show The Legend of Sleepy Hollow or Trick or Treat once in the month of October? Disappointing.


But what I’d like to talk about today is the Halloween episode of a regular sitcom or drama. Any show that does a Halloween episode automatically endears itself to me. In fact, I probably would have never started watching How I Met Your Mother or Bones if neither had done a Halloween episode; now both are regulars on my Tivo list. But I’ll even watch Halloween episodes of crappy TV shows I’d otherwise be embarrassed to watch—Hope & Faith, Reba, Sabrina the Teenage Witch. For the entire month of October I put a “Halloween” watch on my DVR and watch everything it tapes. Does your normally painfully cliché sitcom have a ghost hanging in the window, a scene with trick-or-treaters? I’ll watch it. Here are some of my favorites, ones where Halloween wasn’t merely in the background, but a central tenet to the story and show:


How I Met Your Mother—I think The Slutty Pumpkin is still one of this show’s best episodes. It’s funny, almost everyone is in costume at some point, the rooftop Halloween party reminds me of hanging out on my apartment balcony on October evenings, looking out over the city (not New York for me, but the feeling is the same). Plus, it’s a sweet look into Ted’s desperation to find “the one” and there’s a nice moment between Ted and Robin at the end. This was also the episode that made me watch and subsequently fall in love with this show.


Roseanne—Of course, all of these are classics, but some are better than others. My favorite is the first one (I think), where they did the “walk-through” haunted house for their trick-or-treaters. The Alfalfinator? I’m so making one of my kids dress up as that one year, even though nobody will get it. Some of the later Halloween episodes were kind of weak (as was the entire show)—I’d remembered all the episodes from their first run in my childhood except the awful one with the AbFab ladies. I mean, you take an absolute recipe for success—Roseanne and Jackie, Patsy and Edina, and Halloween and make an entirely unwatchable show? Inexcusable. Fortunately, they don’t show that one too often. The rest are rerun almost constantly on various channels throughout October. I recommend all of them (except the one where Roseanne gives birth) to get into the holiday spirit.


Freaks and Geeks—I love this show so much. It’s so painful and amazing to watch. It aired during the fall of my freshman year of college and since I was a lowly, lonely freshman with nothing to do on Saturday nights I think I watched all the episodes that aired. I remember this one vividly—the boys, really too old to trick or treat, dressing up and getting egged. The mom happily baking cookies to pass out, not realizing that homemade treats had become dangerous. Such a great episode, tying together the childishness of Halloween with the show’s greater theme of growing up.


The Simpsons—How could I mention Halloween TV without at least a nod to the Treehouse of Horror? (I always mess up and call them Treehouse of Terror. I like the alliteration.) My favorite of these is “The Raven.” Probably because it’s one of the ones I actually watched after coming home from trick-or-treating when I was young. That makes me sound really young, but the show’s been on for 20 years. It seems like I never catch The Raven in the annual reruns anymore. Guess I’ll just have to buy the DVD.

And, for your viewing pleasure, here’s a list of shows that have done Halloween episodes that you might want to be on the lookout for in reruns this October (or fire up your DVDS to watch):

My So Called Life
Angel
The Office
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
South Park
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
Beverly Hills 90210
Home Improvement
Will & Grace
Friends
Sabrina the Teenage Witch
That 70s Show
Hope & Faith
Frasier
8 Simple Rules
Reba
Malcolm in the Middle
Bones
Supernatural
Charmed
What I Like About You