Halloween lives on

[vovat]

bethje and I watched the Paul Lynde Halloween Special last night, which included guest stars Margaret Hamilton, Billie Hayes, Betty White, Florence Henderson, Donnie and Marie Osmond, and KISS. Why don't we have specials with such bizarre combinations of celebrities nowadays? There was a bit of a wait from Netflix, which is why we ended up watching it so long after Halloween. Because, I mean, who would willingly choose to watch a Halloween special in November?

Well, Fox apparently thinks we will, what with their persistence in putting the Simpsons Halloween special on after Halloween. Perhaps to reflect that, but probably actually due more to the writers running low on ideas, the segments tend to be getting more and more away from horror stories. With all the horror movies that are coming out nowadays, they choose to parody...E.T. and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Yeah...okay. Not to mention that American Dad did an E.T. parody last season, and when a two-year-old show beats a twenty-year-old one in spoofing a 25-year-old movie, you know something is amiss. Still, the "E.T. Go Home" segment spawned a few good laughs, mostly because it's hard for Kodos (or Kang, but he was hardly in this one) to deliver a line without it being funny. The second bit was weak, although Homer and Marge's excuses for being out late were kind of amusing. The last story was definitely the best, although it took a while to get to the main point, and it didn't have any real conclusion. I think they probably could have gotten away with using that as the entire show, since it sort of had three acts in and of itself (the kids' destructive rampage, Ned setting up the hell house, and the Ned as Satan part). But then, they're obviously not going to stop the tradition of three stories per Halloween episode at this point. Anyway, hell houses are pretty bizarre. If you haven't seen the documentary Hell House, you owe it to yourself to do so. It's really creepy, and not for the reasons the people who set it up want it to be.

That Family Guy had to resort to a clip show is kind of sad, but framing it with Seth MacFarlane setting up the clips and the people bad-mouthing the show was a clever idea. And the actual new FG episode was a pretty novel idea, and actually driven more by plot than gags (although it had those as well). I do think the callback to the original Kool-Aid Man appearance would have worked better if we hadn't just seen the earlier joke in the clip show, but I suppose that won't be a problem when they rerun the episode. While I'm pretty sure they'll return to the status quo at the end of Part 2, I really don't know HOW they'll do that. Well, unless they resort to the cop-out conclusion of the whole thing being a dream.

Comments

[kristenjarrod.livejournal.com]

I deleted the clip show from my DVD recorder.

Well, unless they resort to the cop-out conclusion of the whole thing being a dream.

I've read a lot of people hoping that.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Hoping that they DO go with the cop-out dream ending, or that they don't?

It seems like they're going to have to have kind of a cop-out, unless they want to totally change the dynamic of the show. But then, they've had Brian being married to Lois and Meg falling in love with Brian without any lasting effects on the status quo, so who knows?