Halloween on TV

By: Crystal Lynn Cox

Saturday October 25, 2008

Trick or Treat Specials
Halloween is a holiday steeped in American history and tradition, not unlike the 30-minute sitcom of American television. No October 31st would be complete without at least one “Halloween Special” on America’s favorite network TV shows. Some comedies choose to go a little scary on Halloween while others decide to stick with the comedy but many at least give their show a holiday theme. Each show in America’s “Halloween Special” history does things their own way, as always, and that’s what makes them unique.

By far the most famous Halloween special in American television history is The Simpson’s “Treehouse of Horror.” The special has been running since the series’ second season in 1990 and will air “Treehouse of Horror XIX,” the episode’s nineteenth installment, this October. No other show on television has ever made such a long-running Halloween special, and in fact, few shows have even shown this many of them in comparison to their network runs. The Simpsons’s contenders in animated comedy series include Futurama, which released one Halloween episode in its third season, King of the Hill, which released two Halloween episodes, and American Dad with a Halloween episode coming out this year. South Park has done 4 Halloween episodes throughout its many seasons, but they have been spaced out by several years—in 2006 they released their first Halloween special in 7 years. The greatest competition The Simpsons has ever seen, Family Guy, has never released a single Halloween special! It seems like Family Guy is doing its best to avoid any extra comparisons with The Simpsons.

Halloween episodes have changed over the years, too. In the past, the Halloween episodes on half-hour sitcoms tended to try to be scary. The 1960s show Bewitched had a Halloween special almost every year that it ran, out of 8 seasons. In The Addams Family’s two season run, the show released a Halloween special both years, in 1964 and 1965. This show, like Bewitched, dealt with “ghostly” issues on a regular basis so their Halloween specials were often only slightly more ghoulish than their regular episodes. The Munsters, also of the 1960s, went a step farther by never releasing a single Halloween special at all, even though “Halloween” is essentially the subject of the entire series!

In 1972, The Brady Bunch had a Halloween special called “Fright Night” which featured the kids trying to scare each other with fake ghosts. Their joke goes bad and they end of really scaring some people. The 1970s Happy Days, a show about teenagers growing up in the 50s, made a total of 3 Halloween specials and all of their sequences attempted to be scary and some succeeded! In the 1980s, the Newhart show featured two Halloween specials, one in its first season and one in its sixth. Both dealt with creepier issues than many other situation comedies usually like to address. The first is an episode about the characters finding the body of a witch buried below the house and the second has a War of the Worlds feel: the characters are at a Halloween party when they discover there has been an alien invasion.

As the sitcoms of today air their Halloween specials, it is less likely that they will be scary. Many of today’s family comedies present Halloween shows that are simply holiday-themed but do not attempt to go outside of the premise of the series with too much scary-exploration. Some sitcoms let the entire season pass right by without any acknowledgement of the holiday, even when their show airs on October 31 and others attempt to find more clever ways to address the holiday through their episodes. The sitcom According to Jim features 3 Halloween episodes so far because Jim’s favorite holiday is Halloween. The 90s sitcom That 70s Show features two episodes that deal heavily with Halloween: one of them, called “Too Old to Trick or Treat, Too Young to Die,” is an intelligent episode full of parodies of some of the most famous and frightening Alfred Hitchcock films ever made. The popular TV series Everybody Loves Raymond released a single Halloween episode in its 9 season run but the episode is not about Halloween in any way except that it takes place on Halloween. The episode’s theme, as is often the case, is Ray and Debra’s sex life, or lack thereof. Even the show Gossip Girl released a show near Halloween that features a “masked ball,” but the episode is not specifically identified as a “Halloween Special.”

No matter how television shows wish to deal with cultural holidays, one thing remains the same: both Halloween and the half-hour sitcom are deeply embedded in American history and culture. Some shows may not wish to spotlight the holiday by creating a special episode while other shows may wish to celebrate every holiday every year, but either way the fact that each show can make that choice just shows the American way. Either way we are certain that our favorite sitcoms and Halloween are both here to stay!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
 
 

Some Unexpected Shows that NEVER had Halloween Specials

The Munsters

Scrubs

Seinfeld

Full House

The Dick Van Dyke Show

Family Guy

The Bob Newhart Show

Three’s Company
 

Directory of Halloween Specials for some Popular American Sitcoms

The Addams Family – “Halloween and the Addams Family” (1964) and “Halloween—Addams Style” (1965)

The Brady Bunch – “Fright Night” (1972)

Newhart – “Mrs. Newton’s Body Lies A’Mould’Ring in the Grave” (1982) and “Take Me To Your Loudon” (1987)

The Cosby Show – “Halloween” (1985)

Family Ties – “It Happened One Night” (1988)

Growing Pains – “Happy Halloween” parts I and II (1990)

The Simpsons – “Treehouse of Horror” parts I-XIX (1990-2008)

Step By Step – “Something Wild” (1994) and “Dream Lover” (1997)

King of the Hill – “Hilloween” (1997) and “Little Horrors of Shop” (1999)

SouthPark – “Pink Eye” (1997), “Spooky Fish” (1997), “Korn’s Groovy Pirate Chest Mystery” (1999) and “Hell on Earth 2006” (2006)

Everybody Loves Raymond – “Halloween Candy” (1998)

That 70s Show – “Halloween” (1999) and “Too Old to Trick or Treat, Too Young to Die” (2000)

Futurama – “The Honking” (2000)

King of Queens – “Ticker Treat” (2001)

Friends – “The One With the Halloween Party” (2001)

How I Met Your Mother – “Slutty Pumpkin” (2005)

The Bernie Mac Show – “Night of Terror” (2005)

Ugly Betty – “The Lyin’, the Witch and the Wardrobe” (2006)

 Gossip Girl – “The Handmaiden’s Tale” (2007)