Season 1, Episode 5
Airdate: October 9, 1976

Much like the entire run of The Addams Family, you could say that basically any episode of one of the various Scooby-Doo cartoons from the ’70s is spooky enough to feel like a Halloween episode. Perhaps it says something that The Munsters never even had a Halloween episode, since doing a Halloween episode of a show that’s basically already Halloween-themed is a bit redundant. Still, this was the first of several “official” Halloween episodes and specials to take place in the Scooby-Doo-niverse (sorry), though unsurprisingly there isn’t all that much in this episode that’s different from the tried-and-true formula of a Scooby-Doo episode. Regardless, it’s been god knows how many years since I’ve watched an episode of Scooby-Doo, so it was still kinda fun to watch these meddling kids solve a mystery. Continue reading →

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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Airdate: October 27, 1966

So… today was a crazy day. I don’t know how much enthusiasm I’ll have for writing about a 50-year-old children’s Halloween special, but we’ll see. If anything, watching It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was a pretty relaxing trip back to childhood to provide a little bit of comfort after a day that felt a bit surreal.

I say that the Peanuts transports me back to childhood not only because it’s about the comical melancholy of being a kid, but also because I have a few various memories of Peanuts from my own childhood. First, of reruns of the cartoon being aired occasionally (possibly on Nickelodeon?) as well as their presence in the comics section of the newspaper (remember those?) and experiencing the Camp Snoopy theme park at the Mall of America during my summers in Minnesota. In recent years, the Peanuts property I’ve returned to the most is the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas (as well as that special), though I do have a vague memory of watching It’s The Great Pumpkin on TV as a kid. Upon revisiting it, I was glad to see it has about the same high level of charm as everything else in the Peanuts universe.

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Season 1, Episode 7
Airdate: October 30, 1964

Welcome to the first entry in this year’s Shocktober, in which we’ll be looking back at a bunch of Halloween episodes of TV shows! It seems like it’ll be a mix of shows or specials the three of us are familiar with or ones where we have all but a vague idea of what we’re getting into. Personally, I’m just looking forward to some spooky TV hijinks to distract me from the real-life horrors of the upcoming election.

The Addams Family seemed like a great place to start for this year, since they are altogether ooky (in addition to being spooky). They also seemed like a good choice for one of these theme months we do, which tend to see us watching things that we’re not all that familiar with. Because even though I have a general idea of what The Addams Family’s deal is, I haven’t spent really any time with their ’60s TV show or their somewhat beloved movies from the ’90s. In fact, I didn’t even know that The Addams Family TV show wasn’t the origin of their long-running status as America’s most famous goth family, as they actually originated with Charles Addams New Yorker comics that started in the ’30s. Continue reading →