I Watched (Nearly) Every Post Super Bowl Show IV: The 2000’s!

I’ve made my stance on the inaugural decade of the 21st century fairly clear, both in this space and in real life.  On the whole, the 2000’s were a fairly uninspiring and creatively bankrupt ten years: trashy, cheap reality television really got cooking , and party girl celebrity culture was in vogue, thanks to an increasingly out-of-control tabloid media that was too happy to pass cruelty off as entertainment.  Oh, and I guess there was that 9/11 thing, a devastating event that fueled the desire for cheap entertainment in the first place.  Yes, there were plenty of cultural milestones to go around; the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy and “Mad Men” seem to get better with age.  But we have all memory-holed a lot of bleak shit.

I get to say this because I was there.   The 2000’s were probably my formative decade, starting it as a preteen and ended it as an official young adult.  I should have a lot of nostalgia for everything I grew up with.  But I’m not sure that I do.  I tell you this so that you understand I am not a 00’s apologist.

That said, the eleven Super Bowl lead-out programs that aired between 2000 and 2009 are actually fairly strong, proving that maybe there’s a lot of good stuff we tend to forget about.  Okay, maybe I tend to forget about them.  I’m kind of a cynical person.  I’m…I’m working on it.

Alright, here we go!  Post-Super Bowl shows of the 2000’s!

SUPER BOWL XXXIV

Show: “The Practice”

Episode: “New Evidence (Part 1)” (Season 4, Episode 12)

Aired: January 30, 2000

Network: ABC

Special Guest Stars: Anthony Heald, Clancy Brown*

*Maybe neither of them are really big names, but they’re both special to me, dammit!

Although I had never seen an episode of “The Practice” before this project, I was familiar with the show it eventually became.  There was a period of about a year and a half when spin-off “Boston Legal” was in my regular television rotation.  I was always curious to know what its original incarnation was like, but seven extra seasons worth of a blind watch always felt a little much.  Yet the urge always remained.

Based on this episode, I can see myself maybe making good on that promise one day.  “New Evidence” isn’t the most brilliant hour of television ever made, and it’s not exactly subtle (this is a David E. Kelley joint, after all), but it’s satisfying in an old-school kind of way.  Our team of Boston lawyers, led by Bobby Donnell (Dylan McDermott), are headed to California to help defend a murder suspect who is facing the death penalty.  They are saddled with his defense mostly off of a gut feeling Lindsay (Kellie Williams) has about his innocence, much to the chagrin of everybody involved. It’s an uphill battle the entire way for our leads, as witnesses get nervous, stories change, and new evidence emerges.

I think the funniest thing about the episode is how hilariously hostile it is to the state of California.  The entire theme of “New Evidence” is how everyone in Los Angeles is a rude and unhelpful asshole, as if somehow courtrooms in Boston are magnanimous and noble tributes to teamwork.  Anthony Heald’s judge talks on and on about how “maybe this is how you do things in Massachusetts”, like California is some swamp bayou hamlet.  I’m not offended, per se, it’s just such a buck-wild point of view.  Like, David E. Kelley is telling us how he really feels on this one.  

This does actually lead to one of the hour’s bigger flaws: the judge is so over-the-top irrationally evil that he quickly goes from a character you love to hate to just an annoying cheap source of conflict.  He forces people to be on the jury that should obviously be disqualified, he forces the Practice team to defend this man even when they end up having pretty good reason at that point to drop the case.  Also, it’s vaguely subpar work from Heald, a guy I normally like!  He keeps hitting the word “Massachusetts” the same slimy way, which has a ton of impact the first time, but loses its power with each repetition.

That said, I had a good time watching this and I was sad I didn’t have time to move on to see how this story would resolve itself.  Luckily, the next episode’s plot description on Amazon took care of that for me: “Lindsay gets [her] client freed when she determines that the defendant’s wife and the victim’s husband were having an affair and conspired to kill the victim.”  Gotcha!

SUPER BOWL XXXV

Show: “Survivor: The Australian Outback”

Episode: “Stranded” (Season 2, Episode 1)

Aired: January 28, 2001

Network: CBS

I missed the boat entirely on the still-ongoing “Survivor” craze, but at its peak, it was completely unavoidable even if you weren’t watching.  As I proceeded to not watch the first season, I still managed to find myself abreast of all the dastardly naked machinations of Richard Hatch, and was aware of the intense speech given by Sue Hawk in the finale.  I even somehow found myself browsing the premier “Survivor” fan site in the world, a website called SurvivorSucks (an early harbinger of how 21st century fandom would conduct itself, perhaps).  So, yes, when the next season got slated to premiere after the Super Bowl, I knew this was a big deal.  Continued to not watch it!  But I knew it was a big deal.

Watching “Survivor” now, nearly twenty-five years later, it becomes immediately apparent why the show was such a hit, and forever altered the landscape of reality competition: it’s one of the all-time great premises in television.  I don’t know that I really need to pore over the famous set-up of “everyone is formed into tribes and play challenges; winning team gets supplies, losing team votes somebody out.  Last person standing gets a million bucks.”  The format is simultaneously tribalistic and individualistic, forcing all contestants to have genuine social skills as well as an elite poker face.  It’s instantly compelling television.

Of course, the perils inherent to the format of this project is that I have to just watch the one episode then move on.  It’s double-rough because it’s the first episode of the season.  These types of things get more fun as you have folks to root for or against; the first episode of any reality game show is usually tough because there are so many people, you don’t know who to focus on yet.  The closest I came to bonding with a contestant was the guy who threw up on the plane getting in and is physically ill the entire time (he’s just like me frfr).  Naturally, he comes very close to going home in the first week, which is real “me” type of shit.  As much as I’d like to see when he actually gets the ax, I must move on.  The tribe has spoken!

SUPER BOWL XXXVI

Show: “Malcolm in the Middle”

Episode: “Company Picnic” (Season 3, Episodes 11 & 12)

Aired: February 3, 2002

Network: FOX

Special Guest Stars: Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Stephen Root, Tom Green, Cristina Ricci, Susan Sarandon, Patrick Warburton, Heidi Klum, Magic Johnson, Bradley Whitford

Like all millennials, I definitely had a “Malcolm in the Middle” phase, although mine didn’t last as long as others.  I think I probably faithfully watched, like a season and a half?  Anyway, I hadn’t seen it in ages, and I was eager to revisit the show that first launched Bryan Cranston into the bigger pop culture conversation.

So the good news is that, even at a full hour’s length, “Company Picnic” is pretty funny all the way through.  I had forgotten how well Cranston and Jane Kaczmarek play off of each other, and I had especially forgotten how well Cranston does with physical comedy (he’s crouching down, running around and freaking out like a goddamn pro the whole time).  But the three main kids are the real revelation.  Obviously Frankie Muniz holds everything together as the titular Malcolm (the middle child), but I was stunned at how polished Justin Berfield (as oldest child Reese) and Erik Per Sullivan (youngest Dewey) are in their roles.  Per Sullivan in particular provided me my biggest laugh (his sugar-induced freakout).

The…not bad news, necessarily, but definitely the thing most out of step with how I remembered “Malcolm in the Middle”: just look at that guest star list!  How the fuck did they land Susan fucking Sarandon?  More importantly, and I don’t say this lightly….did they need to get Susan Sarandon?  Did we need Magic Johnson in the most half-assed drag I’ve seen in a while?  I completely understand that this is a post-Super Bowl ep, and that means snagging big guest stars.  But “Company Picnic” has no fewer than ten, a number I have to imagine won’t be beaten anytime soon.  At best, it’s distracting and at worst, it’s madness-inducing.  

At least it made me want to go through “Malcolm in the Middle” again some time, especially sincere…ah yes, there’s a Disney Plus revival on the way.  Better cram it in now before its value is lessened!

SUPER BOWL XXXVII

Show: “Alias”

Episode: ”Phase One” (Season 2, Episode 13)

Aired: January 26, 2003

Network: ABC

Special Guest Star: Rutger Hauer

You would think that being such a big “LOST” guy would have made me an equally big “Alias” guy.  Alas, “Alias” is a show I got burned out on relatively quickly.  At its best, its twisty, espionage-driven narrative was loopy genre fun.  After a couple of seasons, though, it became clear that the show was too willing to throw any sort of established character or plot truths in the trash can in order to pull the rug out from under you.   After the millionth reveal that X character was actually Y and working for Z, it just got exhausting.  If anybody can be anything at any time, you question what the point is in getting invested at all.

“Phase One”, though, captures “Alias” in its absolute prime, and illustrates what made it special.  It is an absolutely buck-wild choice for a Super Bowl episode, though.  I’ve always been curious how this would have played to a completely neutral, first-time audience.  After all, this is the one where, right in the middle of Season Two, “Alias” decides to just take its arm and slide every piece off of its elaborate chess board onto the cold floor.  By the end of the hour, Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) and her father Jack (Victor Garber) are finally revealed to their enemies as double agents.  The dastardly Syndicate, run from the inside of SD-6 by the equally dastardly Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin) has been defeated, or so it seems.  It really is a finale-level of plot, the impact of which presumably only holds weight if you’ve watched the season and a half that came before.  I had a hard time imagining a half-drunk audience walking into this cold and being super into this.

Here’s the thing: I think “Phase One” actually weirdly works for a newcomer?  For all of the show’s narrative knots, the stakes are usually pretty clearly communicated: here are the good guys pretending to be bad guys, here are bad guys pretending to be good guys.  Sydney and her coworker Vaughn (Michael Vartan) are in love, but can’t show it.  Sydney has friends, and one of them is a young Bradley Cooper.  And…go!  To some degree, having no prior investment in the Bristow clan or her compatriots at either SD-6 or the CIA probably plays to your advantage on this.  Admittedly, the Syndicate suddenly being completely crushed kinda comes out of nowhere when watching this in conjunction with what came before and after.  But here?  You’re kinda just watching a successful mission playing out.

Yeah, there are some fairly obvious “this is for a wider audience” plays, none more famous than the opening “Back in Black” slow-mo shot of Garner in lingerie (funnily, it may be the most famous moment in all of “Alias”, a show that to my recollection didn’t really revel in sleaze otherwise).  You also get more “characters explaining who they are and what their relationship is to others” kind of talk than you would usually get.  We also get a big ol’ guest star in Rutger Hauer, who’s great as newcomer SD-6 head Geiger.  It’s clearly not a normal episode.

But “Phase One” ultimately succeeds through its performances, none better than the one we get from Carl Lumbly as Marcus Dixon, Sydney’s SD-6 co-worker who gets blindsided by the news that he’s been working for the very bad guy he thought he was working against.  As he silently decides whether he wants to blow his entire life up by submitting to Sydney crucial information that will bring everything crashing down, you can almost literally see every thought run through his mind.  It’s an astounding, quiet, character-focused moment that sells the whole hour, in my opinion.  For all its glitz and adrenaline, when “Alias” succeeded, it was off the back of its characters and cast.  “Phase One” is a plot-heavy episode that still manages to prove that.

Unfortunately, due to some bad luck with the broadcast (including a too-long trophy and post-game ceremony that included, for some reason, a performance by Bon Jovi), “Phase One” didn’t begin until after 11:00 pm on the East Coast.  Many viewers simply went to bed, and the ratings were the lowest the spot had ever pulled since the NBC Nightly News in 1975.  Not “Alias”’ fault, but other networks took notice all the same.

SUPER BOWL XXXVIII

Show: “Survivor: All-Stars”

Episode: “They’re Back!” (Season 8, Episode 1)

Aired: February 1, 2004

Network: CBS

My initial instinct is that potentially jumping blindly into an All-Stars season of any competition series is setting yourself up to fail; the novelty of returning favorites falters if you’ve never seen them before.  On the other hand, the second full season of “Top Chef” I ever watched was their All-Star year and I loved it, so I don’t really know what I’m talking about, I guess.

What stuck out to me immediately about this kick-off episode of “Survivor: All-Stars” is how quickly the game shifted.  With everyone having played before and (for the most part) gone pretty far in their initial seasons, there are no obvious weaklings for more savvy players to feast on.  I also thought it was smart for the show to ask back several winners, potential Survivor Hall-of-Famers who have to operate with targets on their backs.  Because all of these contestants are playing an elevated game, I found it more intriguing than the first episode of the Australia season we covered just a little bit ago.

As a “Survivor” newcomer, this also felt like a quick way to catch up on these iconic names and figures from the show’s early canon, when (again) you really truly couldn’t avoid chatter about it if you were clued into pop culture at all.  I finally got to see the villainous Richard Hatch in action, and I got to fall in love with Rupert Boneham twenty years after everyone else in America already did.  Oh, look, there’s Sue Hawk!  And that brick shithouse Rudy!  And Boston Rob (I could tell which one he was, because his name was Rob and he had a Red Sox hat on)!  Reality is not a genre I dabble in too much, so this felt like dipping into a completely different universe.  It’s fun enough that I would consider diving deeper into “Survivor” if there weren’t forty-eight fucking seasons worth of it.  Vote me out!

SUPER BOWL XXXIX

Show: “The Simpsons”

Episode: “Homer and Ned’s Hail Mary Pass” (Season 16, Episode 8)

Aired: February 6, 2005

Network: FOX

Special Guest Stars: LeBron James, Yao Ming, Tom Brady, Michelle Kwon, Warren Sapp

Where 1999’s “Sunday, Cruddy Sunday” was a snapshot of “The Simpsons” at the end of its prime, “Homer and Ned’s Hail Mary Pass” captures the show fully out of it.  It’s mostly concerned with quadrupling up on celebrity cameos, which is perhaps befitting an episode airing after the Super Bowl.  But would it be too much to ask for the cameos to at least be functional?  The whole crux of the episode is Homer developing a career in training athletes in the art of elaborate celebrations.  This sort of makes sense with football, a sport that was really having a moment with showboating in the 00’s (Randy Moss had fake-mooned the Green Bay crowd one year prior).  But basketball doesn’t make as much sense, especially not with Yao Ming, who to my knowledge wasn’t that much of an asshole on the court.  I suppose they could have gone with fight choreographers; after all, Ron Artest was available for V.O. work in 2005.  For the record, figure skating makes even less sense in this context.  What is a celebration dance in figure skating, exactly?

Still, it’s not all a wash.  I think the made-up touchdown dances are all pretty funny; I especially like the one where the ball is cooked on a barbecue griddle.  And Yao gave us one of the most hilarious half-assed voice performances I’ve ever heard on a professional broadcast (I think “shut up….kid. I gotta good thing. GOING. Here.” to myself more often than I’d care to admit).  But, this episode from twenty years ago served as a sign that the “Simpsons” heyday was firmly in the past.

Show: “American Dad!”

Episode: “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Aired: February 6, 2005

Network: FOX

Special Guest Star: Carmen Electra

At the time of its release, I sort of felt like Seth MacFarlane’s follow-up project to “Family Guy” was doomed to fail.  Its hyper-specific jabs at Bush-era politics and paranoia seemed like it would get old fast, especially since it aired IN THE MIDDLE of Bush-era politics; I was sick of it in real life, why would I run to go watch it in fiction?  I also wasn’t sure the various characters in the Smithe household made a lot of sense together; I know that adding an alien and a talking fish were there to kind of replicate the template of the Griffin family, but there’s a cohesion in Quahog with the “talking baby” and “talking dog” at least being members of a typical nuclear family.  Roger and Klaus being results of CIA experiments and missions always felt like a bit of a stretch.

Naturally, “American Dad” became the superior show to “Family Guy” over time.  As always, I know nothing.

Still, the pilot is fairly rough, with very little of what would make the show special visible there.  This isn’t to say it isn’t funny, just one-note.  Stan is an alpha male!  The son is a horny teenage boy!  The daughter is a liberal!  Imagine the trouble her and her dad will get into, eh?  It even relies fairly heavily on the famous “Family Guy”-style cutaway gag, something it moves off of fairly quickly, to my recollection.  Not terrible, but also not terribly indicative of the show to come, either.

SUPER BOWL XL

Show: “Grey’s Anatomy”

Episode: “It’s the End of the World” (Season 2, Episode 16)

Aired: February 5, 2006

Network: ABC

Special Guest Stars: Christina Ricci, Kyle Chandler

I’ve always kind of had a chip on my shoulder about “Grey’s Anatomy”.  Although it was the third to arrive of the trifecta of megahits in the 2004-05 season that turned ABC from a joke to the dominant American network (the other two being “Desperate Housewives” and “LOST”), it was the only one I didn’t watch.  Naturally, it was easily the most popular amongst my high school campus.  I also think “Grey’s Anatomy” being tapped for the big post-Super Bowl time slot felt like a slap in the face to “LOST”, my then-favorite show AND one that would have absolutely crushed the occasion, had the opportunity been provided to them (although the relative failure of the “Alias” post-Super Bowl episode probably spurred this decision more than anything else).

I also always got the impression that it was a heavily soap-ified version of “ER”; the constant references to a guy called “McDreamy” just kind of made my back teeth hurt.  Couple all of this with the fact that I was a teenage/early-twenties guy in its heyday and there likely could not have been a show more specifically created to be my enemy.

So I watched “It’s the End of the World” with no real context to anything before or after with no real intention of having a good time and…um, it’s terrific?  Like, it’s one of the best episodes I’ve gotten to watch in this project?  I know, I’m devastated, too.

It’s not that this particular episode showcases the most unique and tightly drawn characters I’ve ever seen on TV.  Everyone is young, quirky and horny, and they frequently talk in what I can only describe as “quirky millennial speak”, Meredith Grey herself being the worst offender (“she’s got my McDreamy, she’s got my McDog….she’s got my McLife!”).  You often wonder why everyone has enough downtime to be sleeping with each other so much (it’s not clear from this episode what Izzie Stevens actually does around here).  The medical cases on display here are not terribly grounded to anything resembling reality.  The main thrust: a WWII reenactor has accidentally blasted himself with a bazooka, and the only thing keeping the shell from blowing him (and the entire hospital) up is the inserted hand of a very green EMT (Ricci, in her second Super Bowl episode in five years).  You know, that old story.  Also buzzing around Seattle Grace is a very-pregnant Dr. Bailey and, unbeknownst to her, her husband, who has suffered a car accident and is currently having surgery performed on his brain.  It’s all a lot, the horrible day that Meredith predicted at the top of the episode.

But.  But. BUT.  The power of this episode (and I sincerely hope for peak “Grey” in general) is its elite ability to steadily work all these different plotlines and stitch them together in the exact right way at the exact right times to make “It’s the End of the World” such a fun hour.  And it seems fairly evident that the show understands what both their main and guest cast can do so well, and tailor the material to maximize them.  Katherine Heigl’s exasperation and TJ Knight’s anxiety flies perfectly against Isaiah Washington’s stoic coolness and Patrick Dempsey’s aloof heroism.  Ricci is wildly affecting as a girl who’s in far too deep, both literally and metaphorically.  By the time Kyle Chandler shows up with ten minutes to go as the bomb squad guy, I think I literally hollered.  It all just kinda works.

I know, I know, I’m stunned.  I don’t know that it’s going to inspire me to watch the 437* episodes I’ve missed, but I’m more than willing to extend an olive branch to one of the longest-running shows in American history.  I now fully understand why all the girls I knew in high school were addicted to this fucking thing.  Sorry for being a dick.  Kinda.  “LOST” still better, tho.  I think.

*That sounds like a sarcastically huge number, but that really is the episode count minus one as of this writing.

SUPER BOWL XLI 

Show: “Criminal Minds”

Episode: “The Big Game” (Season 2, Episode 14)

Aired: February 4, 2007

Network: CBS

Special Guest Star: James Van Der Beek

At the time of “Criminal Minds”’ premiere, I remember there being quite a bit of hand-wringing in the media about its constant violence and depressing criminal situations.  And, look, I’d be a hypocrite if I were to take any swipes at the show for that; after all, I was deep in the thralls of “24” at that time, and there, Kiefer Sutherland was fucking pulling knives into people’s eye sockets.  But I do get how watching a bleak serial killer get caught in the nick of time every week could start to affect your mental health, even if it’s fictional.

“Criminal Minds” clearly won the argument, though, almost certainly due to it tapping into the same large audience that would eventually migrate over to true-crime podcasts.  Accounting for a two-year hiatus in 2021 and 2022, it’s still on the fucking air, having aired its 344th episode last summer.  It may appear to now be a Paramount Plus exclusive, and is technically a revival called “Criminal Minds: Evolution”, but Wikipedia has kept up the season count, so I am forced to consider this all one big run.  For those who are curious, Zach Gilford (Matt Saracen from “Friday Night Lights”) plays the current Big Bad.  (Sort of) broadcast television, everyone!

Needless to say, I had never seen an episode until now, and “The Big Game” seems to serve as a decent introduction.  If you’ve ever seen a criminal procedural before, you know all the beats of this thing.  A deranged killer played by a recognizable guest star (in this case, James Van Der Beek) commits a brutal murder, and it’s up to our FBI squad to find him before he strikes again.  Our team consists of a beleaguered lead agent (Mandy Patinkin), a handsome man of action (Shemar Moore), a cool woman in a suit (Paget Brewster), a brilliant young autistic guy (Matthew Gray Gubler), and a brassy tech gal who knows everything (Kirsten Vangness).  Together, they will almost save the day until you realize, oh fuck, this is a two-parter.  

The plot will also be familiar if you’ve ever seen the movie SE7EN, although there is a nice twist towards the end that I probably should have seen coming, but didn’t.  The cast is comfortable with each other, although I was surprised that Brewster had just joined the cast a mere five episodes prior (she was great; Paget Brewster is always great).  Gubler is probably best left to the tumblr contingent to fawn over, and I was shocked at how checked out Patinkin seemed to be.  But the episode’s script serves as a functional nasty mystery.  I give points to its totally arbitrary Super Bowl connection right at the beginning; the first pair of victims were watching it on TV.  Cool promotion!

“Criminal Minds” is the type of big, broad, slightly bullshitty, but undeniably slick and competent style of network television that was already starting in 2007 to look a little out of date to people my age.  Most of my contemporaries were starting to flock to the exciting stuff happening on cable; this was the same calendar year where “Mad Men” would premiere and “The Sopranos” would conclude.  “Breaking Bad” was a mere year away.  Yet, “Criminal Minds” was a massive hit anyway essentially from the jump.  It was a Top 20 show in America throughout Obama’s two terms.  I’m certain this is the beginning of the schism between CBS and anyone under Social Security age.  They’re the old-man network now, but it pulls outrageous numbers off the back of that.  Really makes you think.

SUPER BOWL XLII

Show: “House”

Episode: “Frozen” (Season 4, Episode 11)

Aired: February 3, 2008

Network: FOX

At this point in the project, it’s worth asking if FOX overall has done the best with the “post Super Bowl show” assignment.  Admittedly, they didn’t start broadcasting Super Bowls until 1997, completely sidestepping the “flashy pilot” era that is fucking up every other network’s average here.  But, every show they’ve aired up to this point have been extremely popular, generally well-made television programs: “The X-Files”, “The Simpsons”, “Family Guy”, “American Dad”, “Malcolm in the Middle”, and now, “House”.  Not bad!  They’re no “MacGruder and Loud”, but still not bad at all.

Speaking of “House”, it was a treat to revisit it!  It was always a show that was secretly just a star performance and winning formula that pretended to be a prestige medical drama, but it’s worth nothing that both the performance and formula are really fucking good.  Hugh Laurie was heavily nominated for his portrayal of Dr. Gregory House over its eight-year run, yet he still somehow seems underrated.  There’s flat-out no show without his grumpy, foul-mouthed, deeply wounded lead role here.  And the format of “House” (House and his differential diagnosis team must help solve a series of mystery symptoms from a patient, typically a major guest star) can sometimes make it a bear to binge, since every episode is the same.  But, when taken in small doses, “House” is soooo fucking satisfying.  Watching brilliant, but abrasive, characters bounce off each other to solve a mystery is what television is all about.  

In “Frozen”, our major guest star is Mira Sorvino, with the added gimmick of her not actually being treated in House’s hospital.  She’s stranded in the North Pole, and must get treated for what appears to be a mysterious auto-immune disease via telecommunication.  “House” predicts the future!  At first, you worry this saps the show of its unique advantage: letting Laurie spar with another major celebrity.  Yet, somehow, he and Sorvino manage to develop chemistry without ever even being in the same room together.  The added twist of Sorvino being a psychiatrist, aka the exact kind of person House wants nothing to do with, adds a lot of back-and-forth between them.

No worries, “House” also contains all the grody details seemingly necessary for any big network show in the 21st century.  Drills get put into people’s heads, urine is drunk, major broken bones get gruesomely reset.  However, all of this is offset with a hilariously low-stakes subplot of House doing everything he can to get cable reinstituted in the hospital.  The moment of the night for me was his decision to, in response to hearing how much money cutting the cord has saved the hospital, find a way to waste the exact same money to even it out (he begins by dumping a container of tongue depressors on the ground).

It should be said, too, that I don’t think I ever got all the way to Season Four on my initial watch, so it was fun to see the cast now include Kal Penn and baby Olivia Wilde.  The whole running arc of House trying to put together a new team is the only aspect of this that feels a little unexplained to a prospective new audience.  There’s an end-episode twist where Robert Sean Leonard is now dating a recently fired candidate, and I had no clue who it was supposed to be.  Still, I think it can all be forgiven when the stand-alone aspects of the hour were otherwise strong.

SUPER BOWL XLIII

Show: “The Office”

Episode: “Stress Relief” (Season 5, Episodes 14 & 15)

Aired: February 1, 2009

Network: NBC

Special Guest Stars: Jack Black, Jessica Alba, Cloris Leachman

I got on with the American version of “The Office” late.

I was a fairly serious devotee of the UK original, and I was one of the many who thought the US version was a cheap faxed copy of the initial paper-company-set original.  I assumed the truncated Season One would be the end of it, and I promptly stopped paying attention.  By the time I realized, “hey wait a lot of people I know really like this…did ‘The Office’ get its act together?” it was already a couple of seasons in and I just stubbornly refused to jump on board, fretting that I’d be two years behind on the story.

Then, Super Bowl XLIII happened, and I noticed the episode afterwards was “The Office”.  And, I dunno, something came over me.  “Stop being weird!” I thought.  “It’s a network sitcom, not the fucking ‘Wire’.  How much continuity do you think there’s going to be?”  So I watched “Stress Relief” and had a blast.  Then the previews for next week ran, and the episode was all about Michael reconnecting with someone named Holly, someone we had met a season or two prior.  “Blasted continuity!” I panicked to myself before continuing to not watch it week to week.  And there my “Office” story would have ended, had I not ended up dating an Office superfan that I could binge the show with.  Sometimes, things work out.

Anyway, “Stress Relief” is certainly in the running for “Best Super Bowl Lead Out Episode” in terms of pure laughs.  It alone contains three signature Office centerpieces: the fire safety cold open, the CPR training, and the Michael Scott roast (as well as his belated responses the next day).  For a sitcom episode double the length of a regular comedy, it contains something like 25 of the best Office moments, a feat no doubt helped by its relative stand-alone status.  There’s a subtle, but very real, “introduce the characters again” feel, with a heartfelt Jim-and-Pam subplot in order to show off to potential new viewers everything that fans loved about the show.  

The only downside to it is that Jim-Pam storyline, where watching an illegally downloaded film with Andy somehow serves as a metaphor for issues Pam’s parents are having.  The plot itself isn’t so bad, although it forces us to believe Jim might have said something nasty to her dad, which is a little silly.  It’s the film they’re watching, MRS. ALBERT HANNADAY, which is supposed to be a parody of a typical Oscar-bait film.  The problem is that it doesn’t really feel like one; in fact, it doesn’t seem like any movie anybody’s ever seen.

Oh yeah, this is also how they incorporate their special guest stars.  I suppose the reason for this is that they wanted to preserve the grounded reality of ‘The Office’ by not bogging it down with celebrities playing characters.  What makes that funnier is the direction the show would eventually take, with Will Ferrell, Kathy Bates and James Spader all playing characters down the line.  Alas!

Still, we’ll always have ‘Staying Alive’.  “Staying Alive.’  Ah-ah-ah-ah…

24-Hours of Halloween Marathon III!

When I was a child, I was obsessed with holiday programming.

There was always a little thrill I got by going through the December TV Guides and identifying when certain Christmas specials were going to be on, the old and familiar (Rudolph!  Frosty!  Garfield!) alongside the new and untested (FOX’s 1999 special, Olive, The Other Reindeer!).  I should make it clear I didn’t necessarily watch everything that was on; even in the responsibility-free first decade of my life, how could I possibly pull that off?  But I liked knowing that the options were there.  A whole month’s worth of programming at my fingertips, even if just in “capsule description” forms.

It got to the point where I started cutting out newspaper listings and TV Guide pages and glued them to pieces of paper (yes, a literal manual “cut-and-paste” job) in order to create my very own Holiday Programming Guide, organized by date, time and channel.  That way, if one were ever so inclined, they could use this as a way to stay on top of all the different Christmas offerings; how else could you be reminded that 1997’s The Online Adventures of Ozzie the Elf was about to be on?  It should be mentioned that the applicability of this guide was always theoretical; even if some other kid or adult had been genuinely interested in using it to plan their prime-time hours accordingly, I only made one for myself and I wasn’t going to be giving it up.  

The concept of building a hypothetical programming block of holiday episodes, movies, and various miscellany never completely went away for me.  In both 2019 and 2020, back in an earlier iteration of this space, I developed a list of Halloween programming, enough to fit an entire 24-hour block, with the general idea being that, were someone so inclined, they could follow along with it and have the spooky spirit all day long.  Again, the usage is theoretical; to my knowledge, nobody has ever taken the offer up (almost as if most people can’t stay up to 4 or 5 am on a work night on a whim).  

After a few years off, I thought it’d be fun to resurrect this series from the dead!!!  What follows is exactly 24 hours worth of Halloween content from all across the decades.  Halloween is on a Thursday this year, so my recommendation is just to kick your Friday work day in the ass, enjoy the marathon and sleep in the next day.  In general, the idea is that the mood should slide from tame and family-friendly to more deranged as the night goes on.  Oh, and to add to the challenge, no double-dipping from previous years!  You can enjoy either the 2019 or 2020 editions to see what’s now off-limits.

To the list!

6:00 AM - 7:00 AM: Retro Halloween commercials! (YouTube)

As per tradition, we kick things off with a YouTube-curated hour of older Halloween commercials.  Much like the 2019 marathon, this one has a nice blend of 70’s, 80’s and 90’s advertisements, allowing for different generations to point at a dopey Lucky Charms commercial or RC Cola ad and go, “ah, the objectively best childhood was mine and mine alone!”  So as you enjoy your first cup of coffee/tea/whiskey this Halloween morning, please also enjoy the nice warm drug that is nostalgia (please use responsibly!).  Hey, is that a Spin City promo?  I remember that show!

7:00 AM - 7:30 AM: IT’S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN! (Apple TV)

Hey, I’ve somehow managed to never include any of the classic cartoon specials we’ve all grown up with in one of these!  I’m gonna go ahead and cash in on those now in order to provide you a Saturday morning cartoon feel to your morning.  First, let’s start with the famous 1966 Peanuts Halloween story, IT’S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN, where Linus sticks his neck out by expressing his weird beliefs to his friends, followed by his friends treating him like an asshole for it the entire time, culminating in Linus spending his entire night waiting for a messiah that never arrives.  The whole “Great Pumpkin” aspect of Linus’ personality is no doubt an intentional message about how sometimes having faith in something larger than yourself opens you up to criticism (but you gotta do it anyway), but goddamn, is this sometimes a frustrating watch.  Sally Brown, whose whole thing is having a crush on Linus, gets an opportunity to hang out with Linus all night in a pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin, the kind of thing that usually becomes a core memory for young kids.  But then she starts screaming at him about wasting her Halloween night once it’s clear the Great Pumpkin doesn’t show.  These hoes aren’t loyal!

The B-plot involves Charlie Brown going out to trick-or-treat and receiving rocks instead of candy from, presumably, the adults in town.  It’s a fantastic illustration of Charlie’s “born loser” quality, but I’ve always been fascinated about the implications of this turn of events.  Do people in the unspecified town that the Peanuts gang lives in have rocks in their home just ready to go?  Was this a coordinated attack against this one eight-year old kid?  What did Charlie do to everybody?  Did he call in a bomb threat to the school or something?  What’s wrong with everyone?

You know what, actually, fuck IT’S THE GREAT PUMPKIN.  From 7:00 am to 7:30 am, watch this compilation of spooky Looney Tunes cartoons instead.  Nobody getting screamed at for holding harmless outside opinions in any of these!

7:30 AM - 8:00 AM: GARFIELD’S HALLOWEEN ADVENTURE! (PEACOCK)

One of these days, I’ll do the Big Garfield Article (don’t get too excited), in order to fully explain the weird way in which Jim Davis’ most famous creation has haunted me my entire life; in short, however, what it amounts to is that as a kid, I enjoyed the flabby tabby way too much and nobody in my life has ever let me forget it, despite now being in my mid-thirties.  Such is existence.

As a result of that childhood love, however, I’ve probably seen Garfield’s Halloween adventure more times than I’ve seen any other October special.  It’s likely the Monday-hating cat’s best holiday outing due to its superior songs (“This is the Night” and “Scaredy Cat” are top-tier Halloween tracks), classic Garfield antics (saying “gimme” instead of “Trick or Treat”?  What won’t this rapscallion do?), and its willingness to get legitimately scary from time to time, at least as far as kids’ programming goes; the old man in the house still kind of unnerves me to this day.

Besides its basic plot being remarkably similar to John Carpenter’s THE FOG, I think the thing I always remember about GARFIELD’S HALLOWEEN ADVENTURE is its music.  Lou Rawls is a really fucking funny choice for Garfield’s singing voice, especially since sometimes Garfield just sings in his Lorenzo Music character voice (like in “What Will I Be?”), but it’s an iconic choice regardless.  He has a gorgeous baritone that adds a lot of class to what is essentially an 80’s cash-in special.  And nobody is giving fucking rocks to our characters!

8:00 AM - 10:00 AM: OVER THE GARDEN WALL (Hulu)

A Cartoon Network mini-series from 2014 that I wish had existed when I was growing up, OVER THE GARDEN WALL is a ten-part whimsical animated tribute to both the retro animation styles of the 30’s and 40’s, as well as the beauty of the fall season.  It’s also arguably an existential trip to a dreamscape?  At its center is a celebrity performance from Elijah Wood, who’s pretty good (Elijah Good) as Wirt, but for my money, the star of the show is surprisingly nine-year old Collin Dean as Wirt’s brother Greg (although two close runners-up are Melanie Lynskey as the bluebird Beatrice and Christopher Lloyd as the mysterious Woodsman).

The songs are all lovely and cozy, the color palette gives off immaculate autumnal vibes, and its sort-of-twist near the end of the show (although I would refer to it as more contextual than a total rug pull) provides all kinds of implications as to the overall meaning of OVER THE GARDEN WALL.  What a beautiful way to spend your Halloween morning.

10:00 AM - 10:30 AM: THE SCOOBY-DOO PROJECT (YouTube)

I’m now pulling this marathon into a slightly different direction, although we’re still definitively in the “original Cartoon Network content” zone.  

Waaaay back on Halloween Night 1999, Cartoon Network broadcast a Scooby-Doo marathon that mostly consisted of episodes of The Scooby-Doo and Scrappy Doo Show, a far cry from their epic 25-hour marathon of the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? cartoon in 1995.  To up the ante, a series of original shorts aired throughout the 1999 marathon starring our Mystery Machine gang.  These shorts, when taken collectively, was known as The Scooby-Doo Project, a direct parody of the then-smash sensation THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.

When I say direct, I mean direct.  Scooby and pals get lost in the woods, they end up in that fucking house at the end, Shaggy is even standing in the corner and everything, it’s heavily implied they’re all now missing…it’s surprisingly hair-raising when juxtaposed against the meta-nature of its humor and bright presentation.  In some ways, The Scooby-Doo Project putting classic cartoons into mature situations is what eventually led to Adult Swim.

I actually wrote about this thing a few years ago if you’re in the mood for a more complete write-up.  As far as this morning goes, it’s only about 20 minutes, so this gives you a little breathing room to pee or something.

10:30 AM - 11:00 AM: FUTURAMA Season 2, Episode 18 - “The Honking” (Hulu)

If I’m being honest, I’m stretching the definition of a Halloween episode juuuust a tiny bit in order to plug a thirty-minute hole here.  Strictly speaking, FUTURAMA never had an official Halloween episode during its classic run (Christmas was always more of its jam).  But this episode, in which Bender gets bitten by a werecar, is close enough for blogging work.  It takes its beats pretty directly from the classic WOLFMAN movies, there’s an act-one pitstop in a haunted house, the title is a pun on THE HOWLING…it counts!  There’s just no robot jack-o-lanterns or space trick or treaters or whatever.  I hope your heart isn’t broken.

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM: AMERICAN DAD Two-Pack! (Hulu)

One of the arcs of my life from teenager to twenty-something to thirty-something is my embrace of the Seth MacFarlane canon, then my subsequent rejection, followed by my tearful return.  A cartoon like Family Guy is the kind of thing you enjoy as a young teenage edgelord, then recognize it for the lowbrow shock-humor that it is, before eventually going, “you know?  A little Family Guy ain’t so bad.”

So it goes with the other major MacFarlane animated show, the arguably superior American Dad!, a series that has a real one-note premise (isn’t mid-00’s American jingoism fucking insane?), but has managed to leverage that into a nice universe of slightly surreal, yet character-based, comedy.  Although it’s usually pretty reliable for Christmas content, its Halloween output is a little more sporadic.  Still, I think these two episodes help you get that spooky flavor:

Season 6, Episode 3 - “Best Little Horror House in Langley Falls”

After years of being known for the best haunted house display in the neighborhood, Stan and Francine have to up the ante when a new Imagineer neighbor starts horning in on their territory.  Their million dollar idea: bring in a bunch of actual serial killers and set them loose inside their house (look, I give credit where it’s due…pretty spooky idea).  My wife and I have been quoting the navigation system of their neighbor’s spooky car for years (“at the corner, take a fright!”)

Season 12, Episode 9 - “The Witches of Langley”

Do you like THE CRAFT?  Do you like reminiscing about 90’s music?  Do I have the episode for you!  Steve Smith and his pals take up witchcraft in order to reclaim their lunch table at school.  Like all things boys take up, it leads them to becoming buttholes and menaces to their communities.  Meanwhile, Stan and Klaus start a podcast where they literally just list off the names of 90s bands they can remember, in one of the more searing indictments of the podcasting medium I can think of.  

12:00 PM - 1:15 PM: FRANKENSTEIN (1931) (Peacock, The Criterion Channel)

1:15 PM - 2:30 PM: BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) (Peacock, The Criterion Channel)

I’ve been having a blast the last couple of Halloweens slowly making my way through the vast Classic Universal Monsters series, which contains all kinds of things people don’t typically associate with the Draculas, Wolfmans and Creatures from the Black Lagoons, including Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, offbeat sequels, and outright comedies, including Abbott and Costello crossovers.  But, this afternoon, we’re going to stick with a couple of classics, the opening entries for my personal favorite Universal Monster, Frankenstein!

First up, 1931’s FRANKENSTEIN, which gives us the introduction to Boris Karloff’s monster, Colin Clive’s scientist (who gets the classic “It’s alive!” soundbite), James Whale’s confident humanistic direction, and the gorgeous, gorgeous sets.  There is a ton of memorable and iconic imagery in the classic Universal horror films, but almost nothing sticks under your skin as much as the shot of a grieving father solemnly carrying the body of his drowned daughter through town.  It’s one of the greatest films ever made for a reason.

Naturally, we follow up immediately with its even more revered sequel, 1935’s BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.  In this one, James Whale gives us some Christ imagery, a nice camp performance from Ernest Thesiger, some colors of comedy (Frank smoking that pipe!) and an all-time efficiency performance from Elsa Lanchester as the titular bride (who, for the uninitiated, is not the movie as much as you might think).  We get some great Una O’Connor screaming for good measure.  It’s a bold direction for a sequel, especially considering they could have just had Frankenstein go nuts on a town again and called it a day.

Many other FRANKENSTEIN sequels are worthy of your attention as well, including 1939’s SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (which replaces James Whale with Rowland Lee and manages to basically not lose a step at all).  But loading this whole section up with old FRANKENSTEIN movies would be a bit of a cheat, wouldn’t it?  It’s tempting, though.  There are a lot of them, especially when you start including the British Hammer Frankenstein flicks.  Maybe next year?

2:30 PM - 4:00 PM - BOB’S BURGERS Mini-Marathon! (Hulu)

BOB’S BURGERS has long been a comfort watch for me.  I wouldn’t call myself a super-fan or anything, but its efficient and satisfying style of comedy makes it come in handy whenever I need something to lift my spirits for thirty minutes.  It’s also a cartoon series that completely and fully leans into seasonal episodes, be it Christmas, Thanksgiving or, luckily for our sakes, Halloween.  There are literally almost a dozen Halloween episodes to choose from, so the only hard part here was choosing which three to go with to fill this ninety-minute slot.  Here’s what I landed on:

Season 6, Episode 3: “The Hauntening”

In which the Belchers do their damnedest to scare the completely unscareable Louise.  There are a lot of memorable quotes in this one (including a moment of lucidity from Gene regarding childhood in the face of certain doom), but I was frankly hooked from the opening scene in which Teddy gets repeatedly scared by the same dancing witch animatronic.

Season 9, Episode 4: “Nightmare on Ocean Avenue Street”

In which the Belcher kids determine the identity of a rogue gorilla-costumed candy-stealer on Halloween night.  This one is great if only because of the escalating decoration war Bob and Teddy find themselves in with the store-front next door.

Season 7, Episode 3 “Teen-a Witch”

In which Tina starts dabbling in witchcraft in order to get revenge on Tammy for stealing her sand-witch costume idea.  As what happens with such dabblings, she lets the power go to her head, casting spells on anybody that wrongs her.  Has she met her match when a crossing guard curses her right back?  Watch along to find out, and enjoy a guest performance from Billy Eichner for your trouble.

4:00 PM - 5:30 PM: THE FOG (1980) (Amazon Prime)

I think late Halloween afternoons are for ghost stories (or at least this one is), and one of my favorites is John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN follow-up, THE FOG.  It’s not really anywhere near as frightening as that initial Michael Myers story, nor is it as skin-crawling as other Carpenter classics like PRINCE OF DARKNESS.  What THE FOG is is remarkably cozy, at least as far as a story about ghost sailors returning to a small town to claim their gold can be.  The reason for that might be as simple as its Bay Area setting; Antonio Bay may be a fictional town, but considering most of the exterior location shooting took place in Marin County, one can do the math.

Besides its basic plot being remarkably similar to that of GARFIELD’S HALLOWEEN ADVENTURE, I think the thing I always remember about THE FOG is the beautiful radio station built inside the town lighthouse, where Adrienne Barbeau broadcasts her show out of.  It turns out to serve a crucial purpose in the movie’s story, where our ghost antagonists first make their presence known, but even if THE FOG had never left this set, I would have been happy.  More movies taking place in oddly located radio stations!  

The movie also includes Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Atkins, Hal Holbrook and an all-time Carpenter-penned theme.  Snuggle up and get lost in THE FOG!

5:30 PM - 6:30 PM: THE X-FILES - “BAD BLOOD” (Hulu)

Pulling an episode from THE X-FILES for a Halloween episode is kind of cheating; technically, almost any random hour of the seminal sci-fi show could be a “Halloween” episode.  But this fifth-season episode is the one my wife and I always throw on during the actual night of October 31st, because it’s kind of the show in microcosm.  The conceit is not a terribly original one, and one you would be familiar with if you’ve ever seen RASHOMON (or even a parody of RASHOMON).  Scully and Mulder both debrief the spooky events of the night before, and it turns out their recollections greatly differ.  

BUT, in that classic X-FILES fashion, the writing is so fucking sharp (the various differences are fun to discover), it features a fantastic dual guest performance from none other than Luke Wilson and, most of all, it all centers so precisely around the two characters that made the show what it was: Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.  Yeah, they’re the leads, but their characters were so defined a half-decade in, both by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson and by the elite writing staff Chris Carter had built.  The way Mulder and Scully process and visualize their previous night’s adventure is so fun because it’s so them.  BAD BLOOD is a good time!

6:30 PM - 6:45 PM: Music Video Break (YouTube)

I wanted to quickly shove this segment in to remind you all that sometimes Halloween goodness can be found in unexpected places.  To that end, here are two music videos from two different bands in two different eras that decided to hauntify their decidedly not-scary hit songs.  

“Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” - Backstreet Boys

Those who were hooked into popular music in 1997 are probably already well aware of this, but for the rest of us, this is my opportunity to inform you that one of Backstreet Boys’ biggest hits of all time has a “haunted house” music video.  Its inspirations are many: there’s some Thriller in the choreography, BSB’s costumes seem vaguely Universal Monster-inspired (Wolfman, Phantom of the Opera and the Mummy), and although the mansion it’s shot in was allegedly the one used in 1995’s CASPER, it felt to me more like if the EYES WIDE SHUT house had opened up an all-ages venue in one of its less-used wings.  Best of all, Antonio Fargas, Huggy Bear himself, plays their bus driver.  Is this music video sexual?  Yeaaaaah!

“Doing It All for My Baby” - Huey Lewis and the News

If you have even a cursory knowledge of 80’s pop hits, you’re familiar with this Huey Lewis mainstay.  But, did you know this song, seemingly about a man who’s so in love with the woman he’s with that he’s made himself a better man in order to give her the best version of himself, is actually about Frankenstein and his Bride?  I bet you didn’t, but you’ll be set straight after one watch of this music video.

More of a mini-movie than a music video, “Doing it All for My Baby” gives us Huey Lewis doing his best Peter Sellers impression, performing no less than three roles, as Dr. Frankenstein, Frankenstein’s Monster, and his scariest role of all (if the Bride’s reaction is anything to go by), Huey Lewis.  There’s absolutely no reason for this to be a big spooky movie tribute, but it is.  What a stupid little joy.  No Huggy Bear in this one, though.

6:45 PM - 7:15 PM: WANDAVISION - “ALL NEW HALLOWEEN SPOOKTACULAR!” (Disney Plus)

It remains fascinating to me how quickly the Marvel Cinematic Universe became cooked, especially relative to how long it was dominant in the pop culture zeitgeist.  Part of the issue was that the various franchises reached a level of saturation that was unsustainable, both in terms of quality assurance and audience enthusiasm.  This was accelerated by its expansion into the streaming television space, churning out multiple miniseries for the past couple of years, some of which have hit (Loki, Hawkeye), and some of which have heavily tarnished the brand (Secret Invasion).

In some ways, though, the MCU’s first official TV show* was its best.  Although people complain about WandaVision’s ending, and gripe about its awkward fit into the second Doctor Strange movie, the star vehicle for Elizabeth Olson and Paul Bettany benefited from a real “right place, right time” bump.  Premiering close to the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, the TV show doubled as a tribute to other TV shows, the kind that people had undoubtedly been burrowing into during lockdown.  I Love Lucy.  Bewitched.  The Brady Bunch.  Full House.  The Office.  

*Especially since the actual first and best MCU TV show has appeared to have been completely forgotten about in terms of canonicity.

Or, in the case of “All-New Halloween Spooktacular!”, Malcolm in the Middle.  It’s featured here not just because it’s a random Halloween-themed episode (okay, it’s technically the exclusive reason it’s being featured, but you know what I mean), but because it’s probably WandaVision’s best outing.  Some of the show’s television homages don’t ever elevate beyond broad parody (some of the sixties stuff doesn’t feel quite right), but it feels right at home emulating late 90’s-early 00’s style sitcoms.  The bouncy incidental music, the cutaways, the deep holiday branding…it’s a lovely homage that also manages to push the show’s plot into exciting directions.  It probably helps to have seen the prior episodes, and be somewhat familiar with the MCU as a whole, but the “All-New Halloween Spooktacular” can be taken on its own off of holiday vibes alone.  

7:15 PM - 7:45 PM: I THINK YOU SHOULD LEAVE DOUBLE HEADER! (Netflix)

Tim Robinson is a modern entertainer I’d expected to be more divisive than he’s turned out to be; his brand of comedy is fairly specific, and is dependent on social awkwardness, shifts in demeanor, and a lot of yelling and swearing.  I’m sure there have been plenty of folks that have fired up his cult hit sketch series I Think You Should Leave on Netflix and immediately went, “nope, not for me”.  But for the most part, people seem to love him, including me.

The beautiful thing about his show is that more sketches than you’d think touch on holiday trappings, even if somewhat superficially; there are at least three that would be right at home in a Christmas marathon.  To that end, there are a few episodes that contain sketches that could arguably be considered “Halloween” themed.  Tonight, you get just two, but they’re goddamn good ones, and fairly representative of I Think You Should Leave as a whole.

Season 1, Episode 5: “I’m Wearing One of Their Belts Right Now”

There’s an argument to be made that this is the strongest batch of sketches I Think You Should Leave ever put together.  It opens with the famous hot dog car scene, which has been immortalized as a meme that you’ve almost certainly seen whiz by your social media feed sometime in the last five years.  It also contains a centerpiece Patti Harrison sketch, and the wonderfully unhinged “the babysitter was late” sketch.  But the reason it makes this list is the equally meme-immortalized “Night Robert Palins Murdered Me” song.  It may not necessarily be Halloween-themed, but…look, the guy asked for something spooky, okay?

Season 2, Episode 1: “They said that to me at a dinner.”

A confident season debut that gave us the instant classic “Coffin Flop” sketch, which in an of itself could qualify as Halloween content if you squint your eyes.  But, no, this episode gets the nod due to its concluding ghost tour sketch which, yes, rests a lot of its initial laurels on the shock of talking about cum and jizz.  But, in that signature Tim Robinson way, he makes this awkward and uncomfortable guy approach something resembling sympathy by the end.  He was confused about the rules!  He was just trying to make friends!

7:45 PM - 9:45 PM: THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (Amazon Prime)

In the primetime slot, let’s throw on one of the best movies of the nineties, period, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS!  It’s one I gave the full article treatment to in an earlier iteration of this blog, in case you were interested in a full review.  Needless to say, however, that it’s a movie that launched thousands of painfully unfunny people nationwide doing their “fava beans and a nice chianti” impressions in front of thousands of very patient co-workers and classmates.  Of course, Anthony Hopkins’ performance here is the stuff of Hollywood legend (although I’ve always been more of a Brian Cox guy),  but what makes SILENCE OF THE LAMBS endure for me is the beautiful characterization of Clarice (and the quiet, simmering performance by Jodie Foster), and the way Jonathan Demme’s direction and Ted Tally’s script are interested in her seeming infiltration into a male-dominated world.  The reason her scenes with Hopkins are so potent is that, ultimately, Hannibal is the only one to treat Clarice as an equal.

Spooky, thought-provoking, classic.  What better film to serve as the centerpiece of this Halloween marathon?

9:45 PM - 12:00 AM: THE EXORCIST (MAX)

Oh, yeah, that might be a better film.

Arguably one of the best movies, period, THE EXORCIST is obviously scary as fuck if you believe in hell and the devil; it’s one of the most popular depictions of demon possession for a reason endures as a horror classic because it always remembers to make the terror personal.  The fear of trying to help a child who is becoming sick beyond recognition.  The fear that established science cannot help us.  The fear of not being there for a family member in their time of need.  The fear of being forever haunted by our regrets.  The fear of eventually receiving a legacy sequel that sucks so bad that your two follow-ups get canceled and forgotten about (okay, I’m editorializing on that one).  It’s a moody nightmare, made all the more chilling for how quiet it’s willing to be for most of its runtime.  It’s a great watch anytime of the year, but I can’t think of anything better to officially kiss October 31st goodbye.

12:00 AM - 2:00 AM: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET II: FREDDY’S REVENGE (1985) (MAX)

As we officially enter November 1st, we enter what I call the “insane stand-alone sequels to famous franchise” section.  I’m taking pitches for a catchier title.
I am of the belief that the first three Freddy Krueger flicks are essentially perfect for what they’re each attempting to be.  In a pinch, I’d pick NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS as the crown jewel of the entire franchise.  However, for a couple of reasons, I’m picking the oddball Part 2 to take the midnight slot of this marathon.  For one, it’s surprisingly stand-alone, putting the story of Nancy Thompson completely on hold to bring us the tale of Jesse Walsh.  For two, FREDDY’S REVENGE is fucking bonkers.  We have a way-less jokey Krueger; he seemingly barely talks at all, a more fitting demeanor for the disgraced child murderer than the open mic night comedian we get from Part 4 on.  FREDDY’S REVENGE is also famously a thinly-disguised queer body horror tale which, considering this was released smack-dab in the middle of the Reagan era and the rise of HIV in America, makes it one of the gutsier 80’s slashers out there.  To that, er, end, it features Freddy killing the school coach by whipping his butt with a towel in the gym showers.  How could you turn it down?

2:00 AM - 3:30 AM-ish: HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (1982) (Peacock)

HALLOWEEN is one of the longest running, most beloved horror franchises of all time, and the funny part is that there’s only, like, four entries I would refer to as “quality”.  The 1978 original is, of course, one of the greatest films ever made.  HALLOWEEN IV is kind of fun in a “return to the basics” kind of way.  I’m kind of a big fan of HALLOWEEN H20: 20 YEARS LATER, in all of its late-90’s glory.  And then, of course, there’s the much-aligned HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH.

Hated upon its release, with its decision to convert HALLOWEEN into an anthology series, rather than an ongoing Michael Myers saga, only serving to confuse more than anything else, I’m actually an advocate for its low-budget, grimy charm.  I can’t sit here and tell you to your face that it’s a good movie; when compared to the masterpiece that is the John Carpenter original, this one seems like a cheap exploitative excuse.  It features some bizarre acting, a sweaty lead performance from Tom Atkins, and one of the most gratuitous, sketchy sex scenes I can think of in a mainstream film.

But…consider how I first saw it.  I was over at a friend’s house, and we caught it running as a Sunday afternoon local station feature (when such a thing existed!).  I didn’t really understand it, and I remember being confused my my friend’s mom’s existence that this was, in fact, the original HALLOWEEN (although I was much too young to have known anything about the first HALLOWEEN, even at eleven years old, I strongly sensed that this movie about zombiefied Halloween masks could not possibly have been it).  But I remember being mesmerized by the Silver Shamrock jingle all the same.

Given that core memory, you’ll forgive me for having a soft spot for HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH, a movie that features zero witches.  It does feature a healthy dose of skepticism regarding the Irish, so how bad could it be?  Stay up and check it out, and enjoy its chilly, abrupt ending!

3:30 AM-ish - 6:00 AM: Herschell Gordon Lewis Double Feature! 

Let’s get weird and loose as we approach the final descent of this spooky flight.  I do not profess to be a connoisseur of the splatter king Herschell Gordon Lewis.  I have really only seen a tiny fraction of his sizable filmography, although a full deep dive is a perpetual entry on my cinema bucket list, so potent to me is his unique mix of zero-budget, education film reel aesthetic, stiff 50’s style acting and creatively irresponsible gore stunts.  His stuff is practically made for the twilight hours of the marathon.  Check out:

BLOOD FEAST (1963) (Tubi, Kanopy)

Coming in at a brisk 67 minutes, I still haven’t stopped thinking about this nasty, loopy little thing since first watching it a few years ago.  Shot in four days, BLOOD FEAST features a real sheep’s tongue, a gloriously insane title card (where the already bloody typeset gets literally sprayed with more blood before your eyes), disastrous performances, and more discussion about Egyptian food than you might expect.  I’m sincere when I say it’s a must-watch.
TWO THOUSAND MANIACS! (1964) (Tubi)

In some senses, this other seminal Lewis work is even more unnerving to me than BLOOD FEAST.  Yes, TWO THOUSAND MANIACS feels more like an actual movie you could imagine being made by a human than BLOOD FEAST, but its story of a Southern hick town celebrating its centennial by torturing and murdering a car full of lost Yankees is plucking a string of anxiety unique to America.  Obviously, it’s wildly exaggerating, but it’s hard to deny that this is essentially what it feels like both the Northern and Southern United States think of each other.  Plus, it’s got a genuinely catchy opening song.  YEEEEEE-HAW!

6:00 AM - 7:00 AM: Take a power nap. The 28-day Thanksgiving marathon begins at 7:00 AM. First up, this YouTube rip of the 1995 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade….