As I was watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine this week, I realized that I was being tricked. The show had promised a Halloween episode — shouldn't I have been scared? Where was the danger? The fear? The spookiness? Instead, the most Halloween-related things I saw on the episode were a few absurd costumes and a black-and-orange suit. Not impressed.
As the leaves fall and pumpkin-flavored everything abounds, the average television viewer is bombarded with numerous commercials promoting any number of Halloween-themed episodes. ABC, in particular, has made an entire event out of Halloween with ABC’s Halloween Spooktacular, starting more than two weeks before Halloween. But this rise in Halloween-themed programming, from ABC to all network television, isn’t a recent phenomenon.
While there are still, of course, the traditional Halloween specials like It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and the rather unconventional specials like Toy Story of Terror!, regularly scheduled programs often dedicate an entire episode to Halloween. Classic shows like Roseanne,The Office, and The Simpsons became known for their famous Halloween episodes. Similarly, more recent shows like How I Met Your Mother and Modern Family have created memorable story arcs involving Halloween, from Ted’s search for the "slutty pumpkin" to the Dunphy’s haunted house. Without a doubt, as October 31 draws near, the holiday saturates the airwaves.
There are reasons for this Halloween takeover – it’s more than honoring the holiday.
“Halloween is a holiday people write about because traditionally, everyone has a new show that will run new episodes at that time,” RTVF Professor Geoffrey Tarson said.
Around other holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas, it is not always safe to assume that a show will air; thus, Halloween has developed into a broad range of guaranteed content for scriptwriters. It stands as an opportunity to change up the plot, breaking up what could be the monotony of a 22-episode season while still playing an important role in a show's plot and character development.
“There’s a goofiness of adults letting their inner kids out,” Tarson said. “[Halloween episodes] can offer a glimpse into a character’s personality, which is helpful especially for comedies.”
A common Halloween storyline involves a character having a nightmare; not only does the holiday offer the opportunity to implement these supernatural, dream-like attributes, but a nightmare provides a glimpse into a character’s interior fears and desires. And, contrary to what you might think, Halloween often allows for the resolution of a love story. The idea of being able to become someone else for a night on Halloween can make a character’s fantasies a reality or give a character the confidence to do something they otherwise might not do.
Perhaps Halloween’s inherent cinematic qualities also lend itself to television better than holidays like the Fourth of July or Groundhog Day. After all, it is a holiday centered on flamboyant costumes and harmless debauchery.
“The trend of the Halloween special is as a sales tool. It provides an opportunity to promote and it works as a publicity tool, an attention grabber. Halloween is a tangible sales gimmick,” Tarson said.
Regardless, isn’t the key word in ABC’s Halloween Spooktacular still “spook”? I always thought Halloween should be a day about frights, not laughs. Yet ABC advertises their Halloween Spooktacular as a “Wednesday night family comedy block of tricks, treats and laughter” with five different sitcoms doing Halloween-themed episodes, including Modern Family and new comedy series black-ish and Cristela. Although network competitors like Fox, CBS and NBC are not explicitly creating a Halloween event, many of their sitcoms have also aired Halloween-themed episodes. Has network television officially repackaged Halloween into a funny holiday?
Well, the answer is both yes and no. While network television has redefined Halloween by switching the emphasis in its holiday episodes from scares to laughs, silliness has often been intrinsic to Halloween's identity.
Perhaps there exists an implicit but unfair standard of comparison for sitcom Halloween episodes. The horror-comedy dynamic immediately brings to mind classic black comedy films like Scream and Cabin in the Woods.
“Horror-comedy films generally carry, not necessarily darker, but more pointed elements of horror. But, at the same time, they parody allegedly scary stuff,” RTVF Professor Brett Neveu said. “Comedies play up the fun of Halloween; it is not necessarily about fear.”
Some of the tropes of horror films, including blood and danger, are tropes which sitcom Halloween episodes simply can’t and don’t replicate. Although the jump-scares that sitcoms generally use aren’t gruesome or amid life-threatening situations, there is still humor to be found in people being scared in a safe way.
I guess Brooklyn Nine-Nine can keep last week's not-so-clever title “Halloween II” after all. Even though Halloween isn’t the center of the episode, it is a launch-point for the episode’s plot and character development and a chance to do something that deviates from a typical episode. But however you personally feel about Halloween episodes, it is obvious that you won’t be able to escape the specials and themed episodes, so you might as well laugh along.