The first television show I remember as a kid having a “very special spooky Halloween episode” was Growing Pains, a show I adored as a child … until I had a real-life run-in with cast member Alan Thicke that left a bitter taste in my mouth. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say the man needs to learn some manners. (I’m still not finished with you, Thicke.) So, that and Kirk Cameron turning into a Crocoduck-picture-waving nutjob (seriously, look it up) pretty much spoiled that for me.

But, my goodness, do I digress! The point is that, in my humble opinion, television shows often give us their year’s best episodes when catering All Hallow’s Eve, so let’s take a look at some of the best.

The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror

I was so young when the first of what was to become a series of Halloween Simpsons episodes that I was actually scared. It began with Marge Simpson coming out from behind a red curtain onto a stage to directly address the audience, telling parents that they should probably put the kids to bed early, because they were about to show some scary stuff and didn’t want to receive angry letters the next day.

With The Simpsons now in its 789th season, the “Treehouse of Horror” episodes have been declining in quality for the past several decades, but when they started, they were awesome. I especially loved the vignette called “The Shinning,” a send-up of The Shining which was not only hilarious but actually a little unsettling, and the very first episode’s sketch which cleverly parodied The Amityville Horror.

And super props for one of their Treehouse sketches featuring Lucy Lawless in her Xena outfit.

Roseanne

One of the most groundbreaking shows of the 90’s, Roseanne had the gall to showcase a family that were not financially well-off, not living in a swanky pad, and not particularly camera-friendly, and we loved the Connors all the more for it.

One of the perennial favorites of the show was its yearly Halloween-themed episode, which usually showcased not only outrageous costumes for the cast, but imagined a humble Midwest family that was absolutely obsessed with Halloween, going to distance to decorate their house, freak out the neighbors, and play some good old fashioned practical jokes on each other. A decade after the show’s end, I still get nostalgic for the Connors around Halloween time.

As for which was the best, who can say? They were all great in their own way.

South Park - “Spooky Fish”

Evil twins from a parallel dimension are nothing new to fiction, but South Park did us one better. In the Halloween episode “Spookyfish,” we meet Cartman’s evil twin, who turns out to be the sweetest kid around. For an extra hoot, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, stuck a lame-looking goatee on the “evil” Cartman as an homage to the classic Star Trek episode, “Mirror, Mirror,” in which the crewmembers, including Spock, are switched with their evil twin selves. In this episode, Spock famously sported a goatee.

(This bit of facial hair homage was also used less humorously on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.)

But my favorite part? The fact that the whole episode was broadcast in “Spookyvision,” which amounted to nothing more than putting pictures of Barbara Streisand’s face in the four corners of the screen. Hilarious.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - “Halloween” and “Fear, Itself”

For a show that dealt with monsters and goblins on a weekly basis, the writers of Buffy came up with a really great concept for their first Halloween episode: that October 31st is the night that real monsters take the night off. It’s not cool to strut your stuff on Halloween, because that’s amateur night.

Unfortunately for Buffy and her gang, one of the amateurs is a warlock who has cast a spell so that anyone who bought one of his costumes will turn into their costume. This episode, which could have been a throwaway gimmick episode, was firmly entrenched in the mythology of the show, and gave us several firsts: the first time we see Willow’s bangin’ body, the first time we see Buffy stripped of her powers, the origin of Xander’s military knowledge, and the revelation that Giles has a very dark past.

The next Halloween episode occurred in the fourth season, and “Fear, Itself” featured the gang beset upon by a demon that caused everyone’s worst fears to become manifest. With the cleverness that was the show’s staple, however, the episode really just proved how scary your first couple months of college can be. While not in the same league as “Halloween,” “Fear, Itself” was one of the high points of the season, particularly for its hilariously lackluster climax, in which Buffy must fight the fear demon … who turns out to be about six inches tall.

Xena: Warrior Princess - Girls Just Want to Have Fun

About a dozen or so years before the current vampire craze, and preceding Buffy by a year, the constantly provocative Xena: Warrior Princess aired an episode in its second season that featured Gabrielle and Xena turning into vampires, or “bacchae” as they’re referred to in this episode, servants of the evil Bacchus.

Okay, as far as being accurate to Greek mythology goes, they threw everything out the window. Bacchus (or, more accurately, Dionysus) was a god of wine and merrymaking, not a lookalike to Tim Curry’s Darkness from the movie Legend, after all. But the point of this episode wasn’t mythological accuracy, it was just to have a rocking good time, and they did just that. This is truly one for the ages.

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