The Top 10 Sitcom Halloween Episodes From ‘Community’ to ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’
Halloween is upon us, so stay safe out there — and stay away from the taco meat.
Tonight, America’s costumed children will venture out in search of treats, trickster teenagers will commit playful acts of vandalism and us older, sensible folk will hole up in our homes, eat candy and re-watch festive, barely frightening and deliciously nostalgic TV shows and movies from our own childhoods.
While horror films are the traditional fare for a night such as tonight, the last half-century of American culture embracing the theme of the season has led to every syndicated TV show at least attempting a Halloween episode, and, for those of us who prefer laughs to gasps, we’d rather settle in with a sitcom than a slasher while we eat cupcakes decorated like skulls and drink punch that we’ll pretend is blood.
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But although most every American sitcom has made at least one Halloween episode, not all of them are created equal. Here are our favorite festive and funny sitcom episodes to consider streaming tonight…
How I Met Your Mother, “The Slutty Pumpkin”
Back in the first season of How I Met Your Mother, Ted’s hopeless romanticism was still endearing, joking about women wearing slutty costumes was still in vogue and the hanging chad reference was already outdated. Though Ted’s search for Katie Holmes wouldn’t conclude until six seasons later, the first How I Met Your Mother Halloween episode was easily its best.
Frasier, “Halloween”
Any time one of the Cranes throw a party, it’s must-see TV, and Niles’ lavish costume bash was no different. Fittingly, the reveal that Daphne was pregnant would pay off when she went into labor during another one of Niles’ parties later in Season Five, but that one sadly had fewer festive references to Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.
Curb Your Enthusiasm, “Trick or Treat”
Per usual, Larry making a perfectly reasonable moral stand unjustly turned him into the antagonist when a bunch of blasé teenagers who look like they should be filling out college applications show up to his door costume-less demanding candy. We stand with the bald asshole.
30 Rock, “Stone Mountain”
Now I’m not superstitious, and that’s probably why I’ll never be a celebrity. In this Halloween special, the entire entertainment industry enters a Rule-of-Threes frenzy following the tragic demise of the Pac-Man guy and a world-famous clog dancer, and, in one of the now-melancholy but always iconic moments, Betty White promises to bury Tracy Jordan.
Parks and Recreation, “Meet ‘n’ Greet”
This festive episode hit right at the peak of so many important character plot lines in Parks and Rec — Ben’s strained roommate relationship with Andy and April, Tom’s failing business Entertainment 720, Leslie’s City Council race — and it proved to be a pivotal turning point in all of them while delivering one of the greatest lines in the show’s history: “Someone will die…” “…Of fun!”
South Park, “Hell on Earth 2006”
If Diddy did it, even Satan doesn’t want to do it – enough said.
Roseanne, “Boo”
Back in the 1990s, sitcoms tended toward the “treat” side of Halloween rather than the “trick” aspects of the holiday, but not Roseanne. The Connor family always took Halloween very seriously to the point where their holiday devolved into a boldly graphic fright-off — though, nowadays, the real horror show is Roseanne Barr’s Twitter history.
The Office, “Halloween”
It’s so fitting that Michael Scott would put off the sobering task of laying off one of his “family members” until the most festive moment possible. His reasoning that losing your job is one of the scariest events of adult life almost makes sense, but it didn’t make Devin feel any better about being written off the soon-to-be biggest sitcom of the 2000s.
Community, “Epidemiology”
Most of the time, when a sitcom introduces actual supernatural horror to its decidedly non-zombie-filled universe, there’s some twist at the end that undoes every undead moment that happened up until that point and returns the world of the show to neutral, but the Men-in-Black-grade memory erasure couldn’t undo Shirley and Chang’s terrifying and torrid affair.
The Simpsons, “Treehouse of Horror V”
The greatest “Treehouse of Horror” episode is, by default, the greatest Halloween-themed sitcom episode of all time. While many other “Treehouse of Horror” episodes may deserve to land on this Top 10 list, I felt it would be unfair to force every other sitcom to compete against more than one entry from the iconic annual holiday special — and I didn’t want to get sued, either.