About this time last year, Saturday Night Live introduced the gloriously absurd character of David S Pumpkins, a more-confusing-than-scary attraction at a Tower Of Terror-like amusement ride, in a sketch titled Haunted Elevator. Played by legendary actor Tom Hanks, the character became a breakout icon for the long-running comedy series, a viral phenomenon that no one really saw coming.
Such is Pumpkins' popularity that SNL even produced a full animated Halloween special in his honour, featuring Hanks and his skeleton sidekicks (Mikey Day and ex-SNL player Bobby Moynihan) with narration by Peter Dinklage and a score by Mark Mothersbaugh.
It, uh... it sure looks like it was... something.
So, maybe taking an idea that worked because of its innately inexplicable concept and beefing it out into a half-hour episode wasn't the greatest plan, but you can't blame SNL for trying — after all, Halloween specials are a long-standing tradition on TV, since at least the seminal Peanuts tale The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown made its debut over 50 years ago, back in 1966.
If you're like us and are planning on spending your All Hallows' Eve like a respectable shut-in, here are a handful of light-hearted classics to help keep you company for the spooky night ahead.
In the immortal words of David S Pumpkins: Any questions?
The Simpsons: Treehouse Of Horror V
The holy grail of Halloween specials, The Simpsons' Treehouse Of Horror anthology has yielded plenty of all-time great moments throughout its 27-year run. From early gems such as The Raven and The Monkey's Paw to golden-age moments like The Devil & Homer Simpson, Terror At 5½ Feet, Citizen Kang and Nightmare On Evergreen Terrace — and even some surprisingly strong latter-day efforts — the specials are a gold mine of quotable moments and memorable scenes.
For our money, there's none more memorable than the collected tales of Treehouse Of Horror V, arguably the strongest of them all, which features nigh-legendary stories The Shinning — which gave us the oft-repeated "No TV and no beer make Homer… something something" gag — as well as Time & Punishment ("This is indeed a disturbing universe") and Nightmare Cafeteria, in which the cannibalistic faculty members of Springfield Elementary can't resist eating the students in their charge.
It's just that perfect mixture of hilarious and horrifying that defined the best that the Treehouse series has to offer, and still stands up as not just the best of them, but an all-around superlative episode.
Futurama: The Honking
As Matt Groening's subsequent animated project after several years of Simpsons domination, Futurama was constantly beset by inevitable comparisons to its predecessor show during its early seasons. So, it's understandable why the creators and writers of the cult-favourite sci-fi comedy restrained from following in The Simpsons' footsteps when it came to Halloween (although they didn't totally abstain from the Treehouse episode format, utilising a similar approach for the dual Anthology Of Interest entries).
However, Futurama didn't shy away altogether, and did in fact have a Halloween episode, or at least a close approximation of one — namely, season two's The Honking, which originally aired just under a week after the holiday back in 2000. In the story, mouthy robot Bender inherits an old castle from an uncle, where he attempts to spend a night in order to seal the deal. After getting spooked, Bender flees the building only to be run over by a mysterious old car. He starts having blackouts and bad dreams, before discovering that he's been turning into a car and going on destructive rampages without realising it, thanks to his earlier encounter with, as it turns out, a werecar.
Along with the sincere nods to great horror films (namely The Car and The Howling) and the wonderfully ludicrous reveal that the head werecar is comprised from pieces of history's most evil vehicles, the episode also features a genuinely funny subplot about Fry being upset that Bender isn't gunning for him during his transformations, as lore has it the werecar should want to kill its best friend. Classic Futurama.
Community: Epidemiology
Whatever your feelings about Community's final season(s), there is no denying that its first three are essential viewing for anyone with even a passing interest in excellent comedy. Its frequently high-concept high-jinks earned it a dedicated cult following — one that, fittingly, proved powerful enough to bring it back from the dead — and the series was routinely praised for its smart and subversive takes on several TV and film tropes throughout its run (the Die Hard-esque Modern Warfare remains arguably one of the best episodes of any TV show of the past decade, at least).
Among the tropes to enter Community's sights was, naturally, the Halloween episode. First-season effort Introduction To Statistics is great, but even it pales in comparison to the near-perfect half-hour that was season two's Epidemiology, which chronicles Greendale Community College's brush with a zombie scare thanks to some tainted meat provided to a party by the ever-hapless Dean Pelton.
The episode had everything: Glorious Halloween costumes, Halloween costume anxiety, winking jump scares ("There is an insane cat down here!"), plenty of horror movie nods (including Abed's earnest plea for Troy to be "the first black man to make it to the end") and an all-ABBA soundtrack (aside from the occasional asides into Dean Pelton's shopping lists and personal notes). That it also happened to be a better zombie story than most serious attempts (looking at you, Fear The Walking Dead) is just icing on the cake.
South Park: Korn's Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery
Before it made the transition to socially driven satire, South Park got a lot of its kicks from being as fucked-up as humanly possible, and that tradition was still very much the order of the day when it aired its third-season Halloween special, Korn's Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery.
Casting the nu-metal kings of the time as cheery surrogates for the Scooby-Doo gang — investigating the arrival of 'pirate ghosts' in the little Colorado town — was inspired enough, and would have probably been a suitable cornerstone for any other series, but you can always trust Trey Parker and Matt Stone to take things past their logical conclusion, throwing in a storyline about Stan and Kyle attempting revenge on a group of fifth graders who prank them by digging up the corpse of Kyle's grandmother.
After nana Broflovski's remains are eaten by a stray dog — thus creating a mystery of 'the missing body' — the graveyard watchmen tell Kyle's mother that they suspect a necrophiliac may be at large. This later gives rise to some seriously graphic descriptions of the practice, because this is South Park, while Korn attempt to solve not only the mystery of where the body has gone but who's behind the pirate ghosts terrorising the town.
Also, there's an Antonio Banderas sex doll, so… pretty standard fare for this show, really.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Halloween
With a fastidiousness like few other shows, each year, Brooklyn Nine-Nine presents a Halloween special that pits the members of its precinct against each other in a battle of wits and glory for the title of ultimate "detective/genius". With the fifth instalment having recently aired, it's as good a time as any to revisit the episode that started the whole tradition — season one's aptly titled Halloween.
Remarkably, Halloween is only the sixth episode of the entire series, and it was an early high point for the show. It's remained among its best efforts since — no small task, given the general strength of Nine-Nine overall — and it's all thanks to the undeniable chemistry that exists between Jake (Andy Samberg) and Captain Holt (Andre Braugher). As the pair engage in their first bet — that Jake will be able to steal Captain Holt's medal of valour before midnight, lest he sacrifice his next five weekends, without overtime — we get a glimpse at the camaraderie, mutual respect and competitive spirit that makes them, and their Nine-Nine cohort, so wonderful to watch.
Also of note is the fact that all this scheming actually serves as a nice window to Jake's understated intelligence. We know he's a good cop and an excellent detective, but he's so often played as a hapless goofball that it can be easy to forget that he's actually quite brilliant; that the "genius" component of the game's grand title is likely more than just egotistic bluster, and he gets a chance to prove it with his first comprehensive win over his strait-laced captain.
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