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This story was initially revealed on Oct. 3, 2019. We are republishing it forward of Halloween.
Halloween, for all its spooky charms, could be an amazing vacation. There’s the nervousness of discovering a great costume, the strain to courageous fearsome issues like haunted homes and scary motion pictures and, after all, the battle to nab the perfect sweet.
Those searching for a extra low-key strategy to have fun fall’s most thrilling vacation can (and may) bask in a binge of TV’s greatest Halloween episodes. After all, the vacation has impressed among the most memorable vacation specials. Who may overlook the basic Friends episode through which Monica and Chandler host a drama-filled costume party with ruthless arm-wrestling competitions? Or the heartwarming proposals that happen in Halloween episodes of Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine?
Here’s a run-down of the perfect Halloween TV episodes of all time, introduced in alphabetical order.
“Fort Night” doesn’t depend on costumes, sweet or any typical Halloween gags to deliver the thrills for viewers. On the opposite: the Belcher youngsters, joined by their friends — the Pesto twins and Darryl — are foiled from getting the perfect sweet within the neighborhood after they’re first trapped of their fort by a truck, then by Louise’s nemesis Millie. Eventually, the children discover their means out of the fort. Although they’ve missed out on trick-or-treating for the 12 months, they nonetheless discover a strategy to get their sugar repair with a well-deserved prank on Millie.
It’s no secret that the officers and detectives at Brooklyn Nine-Nine love Halloween — a lot so, the truth is, that they’ve an annual Halloween Heist through which the stakes are stacked for the precinct as they cut up into groups to both pull off or cease a scheme. For the fifth annual Halloween Heist, nonetheless, Jake (one of many custom’s originators), makes use of the flowery competitors as a strategy to suggest to his fellow detective, his companion and girlfriend Amy.
While a typical episode of Buffy is normally as scary as a Halloween episode of another present, “Fear, Itself” actually upped the ante for the gang as every of them faces his or her deepest private fears whereas attending a frat party-turned-night of the residing dead.
One of Cheers‘ long-running jokes got here on the expense of postman Cliff’s love life, which is why “Fairy Tales Can Come True” is such a heartwarming shock. In the episode, the regulars collect at Cheers, the place Cliff, dressed as Ponce de Leon, amazingly hits it off with a girl dressed as Tinker Bell. While the 2 take pleasure in one another’s firm a lot that they shut the bar down, they make plans to fulfill one another as their common selves the subsequent night time. Both rooster out a number of occasions earlier than they lastly meet once more — however once they do, it’s a romantic second price ready for.
Larry David’s quirky neuroticism is on full show in “Trick or Treat,” when he refuses, as a matter of principal, to provide Halloween sweet to 2 teenage women sans costumes. As could be anticipated, it ends in catastrophe, with the following TP-ing and vandalism of his house being the least of his worries.
Frasier and Niles’ literary-themed Halloween party turns into the setting for a showdown between the brothers after a comic book misunderstanding with Roz leads Niles to imagine that the connection between his brother and his one real love, Daphne, could be greater than what he assumed.
Growing pains are not often extra visceral in Freaks and Geeks than in its Halloween episode, “Trick and Treats,” through which Sam and his mates try and return to the easy joys of their childhood by dressing up and doing one final spherical of trick-or-treating. Unluckily for them, nonetheless, they’ve a number of challenges to cope with: a bully, and an unlucky shock encounter with Sam’s massive sister Lindsay, out for an evening of pranks.
In “The One With the Halloween Party,” the gang gathers for a dressing up party hosted by Monica and Chandler, however the night time takes a flip for the dramatic as most of the mates confront their very own challenges. For Chandler, a pink bunny go well with costume prompts his delicate nature, whereas Phoebe offers with the wiles of her evil twin Ursula. For Rachel, newly pregnant, trick-or-treaters look like the proper strategy to faucet into her maternal aspect — however issues don’t go fairly as deliberate.
While this episode of Gilmore Girls may very well be seen as principally a car for Rory’s twenty first birthday and the stress of her rift together with her mother and greatest pal, Lorelai, it’s additionally an in-depth take a look at the intense quirkiness of their city, Stars Hollow, and the best way through which Halloween brings it totally to bear.
Glee‘s Halloween particular had its characters re-enacting the campy 1975 cult basic The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with the scholars taking over the long-lasting roles of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, Janet, Brad and the remainder of the forged, whereas Mr. Schue, Emma Pillsbury and her boyfriend Carl (performed by visitor star John Stamos) reckon with their love triangle. Fans of the unique movie have been fast to note that the unique Brad and Eddie (Barry Bostwick and Meatloaf, respectively) made cameos within the particular.
Meredith’s previous comes again to hang-out her as she feels her late mom’s presence in each scenario, which she tries to treatment by bringing her mom’s ashes to the hospital. While Meredith finally makes peace together with her mom, a revered surgeon herself, by washing her stays down the surgical procedure room sink, there’s much more taking place at Seattle Grace this Halloween, together with a person with a “haunted” foot, chainsaws galore and just a little boy searching for a brand new pair of ears.
In this Halloween episode from the present’s seventh season, we see everyman Ted Mosby lastly reunite along with his dream lady (visitor star Katie Holmes), who was dressed as a “Slutty Pumpkin” once they met at a rooftop Halloween party a decade in the past. In the years since their preliminary assembly (and after Ted misplaced the sweet on which she had written her quantity), he’s by no means stopped trying to find her — however as soon as he finds her, issues aren’t fairly what he expects.
The Always Sunny gang made good use of actress Kaitlin Olson’s real-life being pregnant to make a Halloween episode of epic proportions. And in typical trend, nothing seems as anticipated. While the episode aired throughout Halloween week, the precise episode doesn’t happen throughout Halloween, however in a collection of flashbacks to a Halloween previous. When the boys harass Dee for gaining weight, she casually informs them that she obtained pregnant on the final 12 months’s Halloween party by one among them. The remainder of the episode is a rollicking trip of every of their hazy views and recollections, with a race to seek out witnesses who will give them accounts of what actually occurred that night time.
When you’ve been on the air for so long as Modern Family has, there’s no scarcity of Halloween episodes — particularly when Claire Dunphy, Halloween fanatic extraordinaire, is concerned. However, it’s the present’s first Halloween episode that’s essentially the most endearing because it establishes the Dunphy-Pritchard crew and all their eccentricities as they cope with Claire’s actually horrifying Haunted House.
If there’s anybody who loves a theme, it’s Leslie Knope, however even the perky do-gooder of Pawnee couldn’t maintain her spirits up throughout a dressing up party when she came upon that her essential squeeze Ben obtained a job provide which may threaten their relationship. Not to fret, nonetheless — the title’s “shock” comes with a twist that’s candy, not spooky, when Ben proposes to Leslie, solidifying their standing as probably the cutest energy couple in all of Indiana.
Stranger Things offers within the enterprise of otherworldly thrills, so it ought to come as no shock that the present’s Halloween episode was further spooky, crammed with flashbacks to the Upside Down, imprecise rumblings of the Demogorgon and a mysterious creature present in a trash can. But one of many highlights of the episode is pleasant quite than horrifying: in step with the collection’ basic spirit of Nineteen Eighties nostalgia, the boys adorably costume because the Ghostbusters for Halloween.
The Office has greater than sufficient hilarious Halloween episodes, however “Costume Contest” would possibly simply take the cake for its wild ranges of drama and aesthetic acrobatics. When a dressing up contest is introduced, the Scranton staffers duke it out for greatest costume (can anybody ever overlook Gabe dressed as a really tall, very glittery Lady Gaga?). But the competitors for the costume contest isn’t wherever near the rivalry constructing between Michael and Darryl, making this episode one for the books.
No one does a Halloween particular fairly like The Simpsons, whose writers got here up with their very own campy style identify for the annual episodes: the “Treehouse of Horror.” The present’s sharp humor and sense of satire are honed most exquisitely in “Treehouse of Horror V: The Shinning,” a superb spoof of The Shining, through which Homer goes loopy like Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance. Unlike Jack, nonetheless, he loses his thoughts on account of not having any cable or beer, which is fairly on-brand.
While The Twilight Zone didn’t have any designated Halloween specials, the collection has develop into a go-to for Halloween fans, with marathons typically scheduled forward of the vacation. One of the episodes most cited for embodying the eerie high quality for which the present is remembered is “Living Doll,” a harrowing story a few doll out for revenge towards a merciless man. Annabel is shook!
