King of the Hill – “Hilloween”

Season 2, Episode 4
Original Air Date: October 26, 1997

I now associate King of the Hill strongly with John, so it figures that I’d be posting this review after a very John-centric day. I woke up a little early this morning to catch a screening of Stakeout, the latest feature from the Otteni Brothers, as part of the HorrOrigins festival. It was a lot of fun and you should check it out when it hits streaming. Later, I got Arby’s for the first time in a real, real long time. I think it was the first time my dad didn’t pay for me. My favorite part were the curly fries, for which they gave me horsey sauce (which was good) and Arby’s sauce (which was weird and bad). And now I’m writing about an episode of one of John’s favorite shows. Let me tell you about it.

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ER – “Ghosts”

Season 3, Episode 5
Original Air Date: October 31, 1996

One of the worst habits I’ve developed over the past few months is wasting time watching clips of TV shows on YouTube. Time that could be spent, at the very least, clearing my backlog of video games, TV shows, movies, and blog posts instead gets taken up mindlessly scrolling through popular moments of, most of the time, show I’ve already watched like New Girl and Scrubs. I guess it doesn’t feel like a waste of time when the clips are usually less than five minutes? Anyway, it all started when I got recommended a scene from ER where one of the doctors finds two other doctors have been stabbed. I had to know more: were they OK? One of them was. Who did the stabbing? David Krumholtz, it turns out. What were the ramifications of this? Hard to say. Thus I was overtaken by a desire to learn just how over-the-top this seemingly respectable show really was.

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Marc Summers’ Mystery Magical Tour (1988)

Marc Summers’ Mystery Magical Tour, also known as the “Mystery Magical Special,” was a special aired by Nickelodeon in 1988 and then through the mid-nineties. Marc Summers’ popularity is difficult to explain by modern standards, but the important thing to know is that he hosted a game show called Double Dare that helped put Nickelodeon on the map. I guess he was sort of like the Eighties’ equivalent of Scott Rogowsky, if kids were actually interested in his post-HQ Trivia career. But if those kids tuned into Mystery Magical Tour hoping to get their usual dosage of green slime, they were in for a rude awakening.

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Mr. Boogedy (1986)

After watching the 45-minute Disney Sunday Movie Mr. Boogedy, I hopped online to do a bit of research for this post. One of my favorite resources, Wikipedia, describes the movie as “a 1986 made-for-television family film and failed pilot.” It’s that second part that stood out. I had to look elsewhere to find more details, but it turns out the spark that little the fire that screams boogedy, boogedy, boo was a failed horror parody starring Cheech & Chong. Like, Scary Movie way before Scary Movie. That film fell apart at Columbia but was resurrected by Disney in an attempt to get a series going. Which makes me think the accidental humor in Mr. Boogedy isn’t accidental at all.

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Star Trek – “Catspaw”

Season 2, Episode 7
Original Air Date: October 27, 1967

The only holiday special in Star Trek history, “Catspaw” was the first episode of the original series’ second season to be shot, even though it premiered seventh so that it could air close to Halloween. That means it was the first episode to include new series regular Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov, who, like everyone who isn’t Kirk, Spock, or Bones, doesn’t do a whole lot on this adventure. In fact, if you’re looking for anything else particularly novel about this episode, you’ll probably be disappointed. It turns out that even in a spooky setting, Star Trek‘s gonna Star Trek.

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