I’m not a big Halloween person. I don’t enjoy horror movies or jump scares. If I do watch something that I personally define as scary, I watch it during the day. For example, that new Josh Hutcherson movie that is coming out at the end of the month (Five Nights at Freddy’s) I’ll be sure to watch it during an earlier showing because inanimate objects coming to life is one of my worst fears. But I do enjoy holiday themed episodes: Halloween, Christmas, Hanukkah, and the occasional Thanksgiving and Easter. So, here are 13 (the scariest number) television shows that do Halloween really well. PS - Most of these will be sitcoms revolving around families.
1. Community
The three episodes that stick out in my mind when it comes to this show are the Halloween episodes. In season 1, Annie Edison (Alison Brie) decides to throw a Día de los Muertos party for her Spanish class to get extra credit for herself and everyone in the class (although the latter doesn’t really matter to her). The episode is full of jokes about Annie’s insecurities about being unpopular, Abed Nadir’s (Danny Pudi) excellent portrayal of Batman, and Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase) freaking out after taking drugs from a student/drug dealer. If you don’t watch this episode at least watch the bloopers between Pudi and Donald Glover (as Troy Barnes) as Troy asks questions to ‘Batman’ like ‘am I good looking?’ It’s hilarious. The 2nd episode is a perfect marriage between the music of ABBA and a zombie thriller. As the students of the community college are accidentally infected by a meat like substance that turns them into flesh eating zombies. The 3rd episode is something of a Scary Movie spoof as the study group goes to help Pierce who locked himself in his panic room at his mansion. The group splits up into groups of 2 to find the password to the panic room all while being stalked by a ghost like creature who is haunting Pierce.
2. Modern Family
Every season of Modern Family had a Halloween episode because character Claire Dunphy (Julie Bowen) is obsessed with the holiday. She loves horror movies, haunted houses, and grotesque costumes. One of the Halloween episodes had a flashback of Claire literally giving an adult man a heart attack or a heart attack like event. I’d go out on a limb and say the best Halloween episode is when the entire extended family has a haunted house at the Dunphy house. Most of the family is having their own individual meltdowns. Cam Tucker (Eric Stonestreet) is reliving his childhood trauma of a Halloween where he got chased by the ‘townspeople’. Gloria Delgado-Pritchett (Sofia Vergara) is doing a weird American accent all because Jay Pritchett (Ed O’Neil) pissed her off over her thick Colombian accent. Haley Dunphy (Sarah Hyland) keeps dressing in really skimpy outfits like Mother Theresa “back when she was hot.” And Phil Dunphy (Ty Burrell) freaking out that his marriage with Claire is going to fizzle out leading to their inevitable divorce. None of the Modern Family Halloween episodes disappoint.
3. The Middle
Much like Modern Family, The Middle has wonderful episodes for the spooky season. Most episodes for Halloween involved the youngest of the Hecks, Brick (Atticus Shaffer) dressing as a person from history that no one has ever heard of like Sergeant Charles MacKenzie who fought during World War I. Or the hilarious moment on the later seasons when the oldest Axl (Charlie McDermott) and his girlfriend/Sue’s (Eden Sher) best friend Lexie (Daniela Bobadilla) come out dressed as Donny and Marie Osmond thinking their a married couple when in actuality they’re a sibling-singing duo. While Sue (the middle child) is dressed as a big wheel AKA ‘the third wheel’ in Axl and Lexie’s relationship. Every episode of The Middle has jokes about this lower-middle class family awkwardly struggling with life and the Halloween episodes don’t stray away from that hilariously relatable concept.
4. The Office
No one was expecting the US version of The Office to be the big cultural phenomenon that it was. Everyone could relate to the experiences or personality types on The Office. Whether it was Angela Martin (Angela Kinsey) and her uber-religious beliefs. Michael Scott (Steve Carrell) and his incompetent office managerial skills. Or Kelly Kapoor (Mindy Khaling) and her gossipy stylish-self. The Halloween episodes are just as relatable. For example, even as a kid I never understood why I needed to dress up in order to get candy when my parents could buy us some and we could stay in and watch a Charlie Brown Halloween special or something. Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) was the exact same way. His costumes included ‘three-hole punch Jim’ or writing “book” on his face (get it “face” - “book”) as a way of showing the least amount of effort. And then there was Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) who would go to extremes to scare his co-workers to death like carving a pumpkin and sticking it onto his head in order to scare Erin (Ellie Kemper) the office receptionist even if this prank blew up in his face. Sometimes shows will change character personalities for holiday episodes but The Office didn’t, in fact they used holidays to take their personalities to the extremes.
5. Brooklyn Nine-Nine
HALLOWEEN HEIST! Starting off in season 1 all the way to the very end of this hilarious cop-comedy every character got to show off their goofiest bits all to get the title of ‘Amazing Detective/Genius’ which would eventually morph into ‘Amazing Human/Genius.’ There was always a different winner, you just didn’t know who it was going to be until the last 5-minutes of the episode when the character would explain how they outsmarted the squad. Some episodes had more surprises than just who would prove to be the smartest for the episode. It didn’t matter that not all of the Halloween heists were actually on Halloween because no matter if it was a Cinco de Mayo heist or an Easter heist it still carried the essence of all the Halloween heists that came before.
6. Black-ish
I have to be honest, I haven’t seen every episode of this amazing comedy. Just the last season and some of the other episodes including the spin-off series Mixed-ish (sorry, Grown-ish, just not ready yet) but it is on my list of shows to binge (yes, there is a physical list). But I am quite familiar with all of the outstanding costumes that the family dresses in. And as far as I can tell the entire family dresses as iconic families from the Obamas to the Incredibles to the royal Wakanda family. Every costume is iconic and makes the show and the reference an even bigger cultural phenomenon than it already is.
7. The King of Queens
I can’t believe there is only one episode of The King of Queens. It really is iconic, but for some reason I kept imagining the episode into multiple episodes. The episode gives us an inside look into Arthur’s (Jerry Stiller) past as a weird kid in New York wants a “LEMON ICY!” Arthur has two heart attacks during this episode both because of his son-in-law Doug (Kevin James) who keeps inadvertently scaring Arthur with paper products (a paper balloon ghost and a bag of “LEMON ICY!”). This is the main plot of the episode and while it may sound depressing it manages to be hysterical because of the secondary story with Doug’s best friend. Deacon (Victor Williams) whose son wants to dress in a non-scary costume (I’m not gonna lie this storyline didn’t really age well).
8. The Goldbergs
ABC writers really know what they’re doing when it comes to Halloween. The Goldbergs is set in the 1980s meaning the writers had a lot to work with. Like matriarch of the titular family Beverly (Wendi McLendon-Covey) being petrified that her kids will accidentally eat a razor so she insists on taking the candy to the cops to be scanned for dangerous blades. Or Beverly dressing her youngest Adam (Sean Giambrone) in elaborate costumes based on what was popular in this classic decade like a Rubik's cube or a ghostbuster. Not to mention the shenanigans that 80s teen Halloween costume parties are like for the other kids Barry (Troy Gentile) and Erica (Hayley Orrantia).
9. Pretty Little Liars
Imagine this: you have a stalker with the sole purpose of ruining you and your friends’ lives. Add in a haunted house, some ghosts, and a serial killer on a train and you have a Pretty Little Liars Halloween special. The episodes always work well with the plot and what is going on with the Liars’ lives but there is always an extra scary element.
10. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
When you played dress-up as a kid, it wasn’t as characters that you hated or disliked. It was the characters you admired. You would take on their personalities the way they’d talk or sing or act. But it was all pretend. This isn’t the case in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Halloween episode. Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) dresses as an 18th century lady. As soon as she dons the costume on Halloween night she becomes that kind of woman - timid and submissive the exact opposite of Buffy. But she’s not the only one. Kids dressed as animals turn into an anthropomorphic version of that animal. But it gets worse when a gang of blood thirsty vampires decide that that is the perfect night to go hunting. WE NEED YOU, BUFFY!
11. Criminal Minds
For a show that has a lot of scary qualities to it, they seem to make Halloween seem extra scary. Some of the Halloween episodes don’t have a lot to do with this spooky holiday. And most that do are B storylines like JJ’s son (AJ Cook) doesn’t want to go trick-or-treating because he’s afraid of monsters. Or Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness) hosting a Dia De Los Muertos party in honor of everyone that the team has lost. Some of the criminals get to be at their most sinister this time of year. Two examples: in an earlier episode a burn victim turned serial killer uses Halloween Eve to stalk Detrois for his next victim because Halloween is the perfect time of year where having facial scars doesn’t really make you stand out. A more recent episode had a man in deep psychosis using this time of year in Salem, Massachusetts to stalk and kill what he believes to be modern day witches as he is the possible descendant of an original Salem witch trials judge/executioner. Don’t watch these at night!
12. The Fall of the House of Usher
Based on an Edgar Allan Poe short story of the same name, The Fall of the House of Usher is set to premiere on October 12th. Based on the trailer you can tell this limited series is coming out at the right time. The series suggestively takes place around a family that is as powerful as a mafia family. They commit heinous crimes and never get punished for them. Until one day a mysterious woman comes back (supposedly from the dead) to exact revenge on the family in extremely brutal ways. I can’t wait!
13. Bodies
No, not Bodies Bodies Bodies starring Pete Davidson. Much like The Fall of the House of Usher, Bodies is set to premiere later this month (October 19th) on Netflix. And the mystery is just as thrilling and sci-fi-esque. It takes place in England but at different times from the 1900s to the future. The twist is that multiple detectives during the timeline come across the same naked corpse, killed in the same fashion, found in the same alley. Did I mention the victim is always the same? There are three questions that need to be answered. Not who killed him, but more like what, what, what?
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