080: SoraRabbit Does a Halloween Special

Happy Halloween everyone! I know you’ve come to expect my annual Silent Hill posts to be the main source of seasonal goodness at the SoraRabbit Hole, but this year, along with my usual Silent Hill post, I decided to do a couple more. I’ve already released a Short Hop about horror movies I watched this year and you’re currently reading a new experiment. If you recall, last year’s annual Christmas posts were about Christmas specials I found based on comic strips. They’re pretty good posts. If you missed them, you can check them out below:

069: SoraRabbit Does a Christmas Special: Animated Comic Strip Marathon Part 1

070: SoraRabbit Does a Christmas Special: Animated Comic Strip Marathon Part 2

This is a pretty sparse candy hunt. (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

Well, while I was searching for suitable specials, I learned that three of them also had Halloween equivalents. (Sadly, Family Circus did not get a Halloween special. I wish it had… it would have been awful!) I had so much fun watching and picking apart the Christmas specials that I figured why not do a post for the Halloween specials as well? So here we are, to discuss three Halloween-themed specials based on comic strips. Enough backstory, let’s go through some spooky cartoon goodness!

Title card. (Credit: Lynn Johnston, Lacewood Productions)

For Better or For Worse: The Good-For-Nothing was released in 1993 by Lacewood Productions. It was, of course, based on the long-running syndicated comic strip For Better or For Worse. This was part of a series of specials and not connected with the 1985 Christmas Special I talked about previously, which was done by a different studio. Just like with the last one, the video I was able to find was very poor quality.

Eep. (Credit: Lynn Johnston, Lacewood Productions)

Right away we can tell this takes place years after the Christmas adventure. Elizabeth is now a gawky teenager with glasses. They also have a younger sibling named April who’s a toddler. (April grows up to have a pet bunny in the comic strip, but this is sadly in the pre-bunny days of the Patterson family.)

As no one could have possibly foreseen, the special starts with a super lame joke. The dad, John, is raking leaves and it’s going poorly due to the wind blowing them around. Michael, the son, says “Dad, you might as well leave them. They’re called leaves, aren’t they?“

At this point I had to pause the video and just sit for a while, thinking over my life. All the choices that I had made that resulted in me sitting on my couch using my precious free time to suffer through a half-assed pun about leaves. I didn’t cry, not outwardly, but my soul withered a little more. It hurt in a place I haven’t felt anything from since my traumatic experience with The Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa. This joke and the emotional fallout from it set the stage— and my expectations— for the rest of the special. (Which I watched twice, by the way. I always watch these things at least twice. I’m as thorough as I am dumb.)

Anyway, we need to push onward. Elizabeth is entering Farley into some sort of dog competition and the mom, Ellie, is talking on the phone about entering something into a competition. But then she makes a squash joke. Not the sport, the vegetable. That’s the joke. While she’s attempting to make squash funny, and Elizabeth is distracted stopping April from playing with pots and pans, Farley digs up the garden and… ahem. Sorry, I just had to confirm that I had this right in my notes. He… squishes her squash. That is an actual joke in this special that aired on cable television and what the hell does any of this have to do with Halloween I’m so angry right now!!! (Deep breath, Sora, deep breath.)

After— sigh— squishing the squash, Farley scatters the leaf pile and gets yelled at. Ellie calls him a bad dog and a good-for-nothing and so that’s why the title is what it is. Yes, it’s a Farley episode. Kind of. But really it’s about the magic of squash.

Kidding. The squash will never be referenced again. It existed solely to fuel two weak attempts at humor and then was promptly forgotten. The special is actually about the delicate balance of power between a bully and his victim.

Haha weird. (Credit: Lynn Johnston, Lacewood Productions)

Continuing to evade the premise of Halloween, the family goes to the fair and a lot of boring stuff happens. Michael makes fun of Ellie’s jar of red liquid that she’s bringing along. Elizabeth makes fun of Michael. Farley sticks his head out the window and gets his fur messed up. When they get there, John does mention grabbing a pumpkin for a jack-o-lantern and pies and so I guess that’s a bit of a Halloween reference there. But really, it’s staggering how little Halloween there is in this Halloween special.

Here, in no particular order, are the fair festivities: Farley tries to hump a rich snob’s poodle. April steals a balloon from a clown and Ellie sends the clown to harass her husband. John gambles at the wheel of fortune. Michael plays a ball-throwing game and wins a stuffed flamingo, embarrassing a bully in front of his date. The bully steals the flamingo and gives it to the girl, who gives it right back to Michael and leaves. This angers the bully and starts him on his quest for vengeance. (No, seriously. More on this later.) April gets her candy apple stuck in Ellie’s hair and looks confused. (Ellie does not notice even though several strands of hair are pulled out.)

Oh, and then Farley is entered into the most inexplicably bizarre pet show in the history of pet shows. I’m not joking. The pet show includes a dog, a cat, a tarantula, a snake, a rabbit, a goldfish, a hamster, a parrot, and a pig. One of each, no duplicates. Now let’s not gloss over this, let’s really dig into it. What kind of pet show features a tarantula going head to head with a pig? What sorts of categories and criteria could they possible be judging them on? Are they checking the pedigree on that goldfish? Was the snake taught tricks? Is it a particularly well-trained and obedient hamster? How do you judge the quality of a parrot over that of a rabbit? Seriously, I want to know what kind of messed-up pet show operates this way.

Also of note is that the lady with the poodle did not enter her dog into the contest. Probably because they already had their limit of one dog. She was just there watching, her sexy little poodle tempting Farley to riot and ruin everything, which he actually does.

Mmm, a bowl of red. (Credit: Lynn Johnston, Lacewood Productions)

At some point Ellie wanders away from the confusing pet show and enters her jar of red fluid into a different competition. What is it? Jam? Juice? Whatever it is, the lady who’s judging things pours it into a bowl and starts munching on it with a spoon. Really getting in there and sampling that red stuff.

But then… Farley. Farley escapes containment and chases that sexy, sexy poodle all around the fairgrounds, knocking shit over in the competition, upending the bowl all over the judge lady. Tables are overturned, poodles presumably violated offscreen, and chickens set free. Ellie grins sheepishly and asks the judge if she liked her ketchup and I have so many questions.

Yeah, that was my reaction too. (Credit: Lynn Johnston, Lacewood Productions)

So that was a bowl of ketchup? Who eats a bowl of ketchup with a spoon? And why is it all over her if there was just a tiny bit in the jar? Did Ellie have tomatoes in her garden too, or can you make ketchup out of squash? If she was just going to make ketchup, why did they even bring up the squashes? This show is utterly baffling.

On my second viewing I did pick up on a brief comment Ellie made on the phone at the beginning about entering homemade ketchup. I missed that the first time. So that did explain why there was ketchup but not why this lady was eating it out of a bowl or how it could possibly have drenched her so thoroughly. If Farley hadn’t intervened, would she have eaten all of it?

Uh oh, street ruffians. Wait, is that Bobby Hill? (Credit: Lynn Johnston, Lacewood Productions)

After all the dog-fueled ketchup-related chaos, Michael walks into a barn still holding his stuffed flamingo, smiling contentedly at the cows. I’m not sure why he’s in there unless he’s just a huge fan of cows but the plot-related reason is so he can be ambushed by the bully from earlier. His name is Brad Luggsworth and he’s from Michael’s class. Brad has henchmen, which is how you know he’s a serious bully. Like the kind that does this for a living, you know the type.

Brad looms in on Michael and steps in cow poop. You know, because poop funny. This show is so banal and bland. Before Brad can give Michael the beating of his life, John walks in, looking for him. He asks what’s going on here and Michael says “Nothing” and walks out. John follows him doubtfully. Michael gives Elizabeth the flamingo and walks home, sulking. Brad stands in cow doody in the barn, vowing vengeance in the most psycho voice he can muster.

Michael gonna fuck some shit up. (Credit: Lynn Johnston, Lacewood Productions)

Back at home they give Farley a bath, continuing to gripe at him even though he probably doesn’t know English. He’s not even one of those talking dogs like you see on more popular cartoons. John visits Michael’s room and tries to make him feel better. We learn the writer’s idea of a teenage band is “Dead Guppies”, which actually kind of sounds like it could have been the name of a 90s grunge band. Michael says his dad embarrassed him and he could have handled those guys. John says three against one only works in the movies. Michael stomps off to sulk elsewhere and John looks directly at the camera and says “I don’t know what’s harder… being a kid or being a parent?“ I think they were going for wise with that line? Or expecting the parents watching this with their kids to turn to each other and smugly nod? Laaaame.

We cut to Michael walking down the street with his two friends talking about trick-or-treating and wondering if they’re too old. Hey, it finally happened! Ten minutes in and Halloween is confirmed to exist in their universe! I was starting to think I’d have to dig up some other comic strip-related special to take this one’s place.

They’re confronted by Brad who says, “Hey Mikey, you dressed up or are you really that ugly?“ Which is a weird thing to say and a super-weak attempt at bullying. Brad would be so easy to out-bully. Throw a “your momma” joke at him and he’d crumple into a fetal position. Once they’re out of earshot Michael threatens to punch him and his friends have very strange reactions to that which sound like they’re making fun of him. “WHOA!“ “Haha whooahhh!“

Uh, okay. (Credit: Lynn Johnston, Lacewood Productions)

That night Michael is still grumpy, John says he’s tired of his attitude, and Elizabeth is an angel for some reason. Oh, right, Halloween. I keep forgetting, because so does the show. With zero tact, John explains to the rest of the family that Michael is having trouble with a bully. Ellie seems indifferent. John comments, “He thinks he’s too old to run to his dad. And too young to die.“ And then he stares off into space, his eyes wide. Wow, dark, John.

Train your kids early in the clown arts. (Credit: Lynn Johnston, Lacewood Productions)

Trick-or-treaters come to the door and Farley runs out. Ellie is worried, John couldn’t give less of a shit. We then have a sequence where John takes Elizabeth out trick-or-treating and dog hunting, although they forget the dog-hunting part. Michael and his friends get candy of their own. John steals candy from Elizabeth’s bag. Farley pesters a young clown spawn for their sucker. It’s all very festive and spooky I guess. Michael wants to go to the other side for more candy but his friends are scared because they’d have to cross “the Dead Zone”, which I guess is the run-down slummy part of town? The reasons for it being called the Dead Zone are not specified, but I assume it has to do with a rash of unsolved homicides. (Maybe, if we’re lucky, April will solve the murders on the Easter special.)

Michael’s friends ditch him and he goes anyway, getting spooked instantly. Farley gets scared by a bat. The bat is purple, stupid-looking, cartoony, and off-model. Farley runs from it and honestly I would too. It looks like it doesn’t belong in their world. Somewhere in there, John comes across Michael’s friends and they casually mention he wandered into the Dead Zone, which startles John.

You’re going to be shocked by this unpredictable plot twist, but Michael soon crosses paths with the bully and his hench-bullies. Also, they’re hanging out at a burning barrel in the slums just having a great old time with no cigarettes, drugs, or alcohol, as teenagers are known to do. Brad dumps Michael’s candy into the barrel fire and prepares to beat the ever-loving shit out of him because Bully Life is 24-7 yo. There ain’t no off switch on Bully. Bullies don’t get no holidays off, ya dig? If ya ain’t bullyin’, you’re… you know what, never mind. I’m abandoning the bit. The show is not entertaining me, so I have to entertain myself. See what you’ve done, For Better or For Worse? You made me riff on bullying.

SNARL. (Credit: Lynn Johnston, Lacewood Productions)

Plot A and Plot B collide and Farley arrives just in time to fly from out of nowhere and pounce on Brad and snarl viciously. The bully is knocked over, the henchmen scatter, and Brad begs for mercy, most likely filling his pants, although the rating for this cartoon doesn’t allow that to even be referenced. But he for sure did, 100 percent. Hopefully before his henchmen fled. Maybe they’ll call him Braddy Poopypants at school from now on. The bully becomes the bullied. Michael soothes Farley, calming him down. Brad realizes that Michael could have let his dog eat him and while he doesn’t apologize in the slightest, he does admit that “that’s some dog ya got there”. He backs away and runs off, narrowly escaping with his genitals intact. For now.

Michael tells Farley he’s the best and to never let anyone tell him otherwise. John picks them up, claiming that he was just looking for Farley. They do have a somewhat touching moment here where John mentions Farley likes his freedom but he’s actually talking about Michael. Michael agrees and says “yeah, but he didn’t know what kind of trouble he’d get into.” I mean, it’s not good really, but it’s a passable sitcom family moment. See, this could have been better if they’d put more heart into it.

Here, have a wad of something indefinable. (Credit: Lynn Johnston, Lacewood Productions)

Back at home, Michael finishes telling the story and everyone realizes what a good dog Farley is. Even though he wouldn’t have been there to save Michael if he hadn’t run away, terrorized a bunch of kids, and caused the entire family to worry all evening. (Mostly Ellie.) It falls flat, but there was an attempt at growth.

Side note, twice in this special they pull a yellowish wad of something out of Elizabeth’s bag and start munching on it. Is it supposed to be a popcorn ball? A Rice Krispy treat? It’s not wrapped or anything… they don’t take plastic off of it. They live in a city with psychotic bullies and a full-on slum area that no one visits after dark and yet they feel safe eating an unwrapped wad of an indefinable substance without even looking at it first? It’s so weird. Also twice candy got stuck in people’s hair or the dog’s fur. I guess that’s supposed to be hilarious. Or a fetish. Or… both?

Yes, a hilarious fetish. My favorite kind.

That all aside, they love Farley now. Elizabeth rescues her candy from her dad. Ellie offers to call Brad’s parents but John says Michael can handle it himself. Michael says that since he stood up to Brad, he’ll leave him alone for a while. Ellie looks bewildered and I really think she’s high or something… she’s just seemed detached and confused the entire special. Elizabeth gives Michael a sucker because he lost all his candy and says that he’s pretty lucky anyway. He agrees and they stare out at the full moon.

And then Farley gets into the trash. The end

Chopper, sic balls. (Credit: Lynn Johnston, Lacewood Productions)

Thoughts: Wow. This was every bit as lame as I expected and more. This special has a serious “pause for laughter” vibe going on but they forgot to include any actual jokes to incite that laughter. There were a few half-assed things that may have been meant to be jokes, but they didn’t land. The story was simple and inadequate. The animation was standard and uninspiring, just what you would expect from cookie cutter cartoons in the 90s.

The music was a really bizarre choice, lots of popping and weird mouth noises. (Think the Seinfeld theme song without the charm.) And they kept looping the same little snippet of kids singing “Trick of treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat. The goblins are out.” Cocoa, who was half watching this over my shoulder described the music as a “cacophony” and that is very accurate.

It was all pretty ridiculous and half-baked. I could see some people enjoying it. I really didn’t, but I did have fun poking and prodding at it.

So now I have to give it a score on how it related to Halloween, how well it captured the feel of the holiday. I would say maybe a 2. They didn’t make any real reference to Halloween until almost halfway through the special. It felt like an afterthought. It was more about the fair, the naughty dog, and the lame-ass bully. Sure, when they got to the second half there were the usual Halloween concepts and imagery: jack-o-lanterns, kids in costumes, trick-or-treating, teenagers hanging out at a hobo barrel fire in the slums… no wait, that last one is not something that anyone would normally come up with.

Despite the trappings, it didn’t really feel like a Halloween special, just some stuff that happened to take place on Halloween. Most of it— raking leaves, harvesting crops, attending the state fair, dumbass bullies, unexpected dog horniness, bowls of ketchup— these are not things normally associated with the holiday, they just happen around this time of year. (Except dog horniness… I believe that’s a year-round thing.) What do you associate most with Halloween? Oh, bullied teens and bad doggos. Bah. But, yeah, this special was lackluster and half-assed, and it failed as both a Halloween special and as a piece of entertainment.

Oh, and Brad is totally going to beat Michael’s ass at school the next day. And it will be so much worse than it would have been before he’d been humiliated and shit himself in front of his friends and victim. The beating will be epic and no amount of “standing up to him” will stop it. I have zero doubt about that.

Damn, now I feel bad for the kid who made that godawful “leaves” joke. Yet another crime For Better or For Worse has committed on my dignity.

Title card. (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

Garfield’s Halloween Adventure was released for broadcast on CBS in 1985 by Film Roman. It was written by Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, the long-running syndicated comic strip this is based upon. This special was frequently paired with the next special and was pretty highly regarded. This one preceded the Garfield Christmas special by two years. (Which surprised me when I found out, since this one is a bit higher quality.)

Dammit Binky. (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

The special starts with Garfield sleeping peacefully in his weirdly uncomfortable-looking bed. He’s awakened by the exuberant Binky the Clown who makes him exercise. Binky mentions trick-or-treating, which excites Garfield. Already this is way ahead of For Better or For Worse, since they mentioned Halloween two minutes in instead of halfway through.

Garfield talks about how simple Halloween is as a concept and complains about the other holidays. In doing so, he says “There’s no dumb bunnies”, which I found offensive.

Wacky. (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

Jon is carving a pumpkin and Garfield scares him. The pumpkin ends up on his head and hilarity ensues, I guess. I couldn’t help but notice that he was scooping out the pumpkin innards after carving it, which is not the correct order for that operation. Just making it harder on himself. Also there must have been a hole on the bottom for some reason since it went cleanly onto his big ol’ bulbous head without breaking.

There was a fairly amusing part where Garfield refused breakfast to leave room for candy and then kept coming back to grab one more thing.

No context needed for this. (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

Garfield scares Odie, who had ended up with Jon’s pumpkin on his head. He realizes if he takes Odie with him, he’d have twice the candy, so he promises the dog one whole piece of candy all to himself for helping him.

Actually kind of a cool shot. (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

The pair go up to the attic to look for costumes. He comments that Jon never throws anything away, so that’s new information. Jon is a hoarder, confirmed.

Odie should have gone with this costume. (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

Garfield tosses random things over his shoulder and it all lands on Odie. It’s a cool costume, honestly. I like how you can’t tell Odie has dentures in because his normal teeth look like that too. Why did Jon have someone’s dentures? We’ll never know.

One side note, for a time here the animation goes weird and cheap-looking. Garfield and Odie are both off-model. I’m pretty sure they handed off some scenes to a different animation studio to get it done in time for Halloween, but I wasn’t able to find anything for sure in my research. Only one studio has credit, but it could have been a work-for-hire thing.

So weird. (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

Here we get a song by Garfield about playing dress up as he tries on different costumes. It’s… fine. I do wonder why Jon had a tiny bat costume, though. It’s probably better we don’t know.

He's about to loot the lasagna. (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

Garfield ultimately decides on a pirate costume for him and Odie is his first mate. Odie doesn’t get to keep the four peg legs, which is too bad. That got a chuckle out of me. Although I do have to wonder how Garfield stuffed his paw in his peg leg. (Cocoa says it’s because cats are actually a liquid, which is a fair point.) Why did Jon have so many peg legs? Hoarder.

“Lootin’ always be a good time,“ Garfield declares, and as a gamer, I have to agree.

What a lazy costume. (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

They go out trick-or-treating and Odie is scared of the monsters until Garfield shows him they’re just kids in costumes. There’s another song here where Garfield sings about not being a scaredy-cat but keeps getting scared. First he lifts a ghost’s sheet to find a hairy monster leg. Then a man with a big nose whose mask is the same as his face. Then he lifts another sheet to find it’s an actual ghost.

They don’t stay traumatized for long and go to their first house. This was a part that got an actual laugh out of me. Garfield said he’d teach Odie the finer points of trick-or-treating and when the lady opens the door, he just says “Gimme.“

At first the lady only gives them one piece of candy each, until Garfield threatens her with his sword, then she dumps candy in their bags. Does this mean she could hear Garfield’s thoughts? Or was she just freaked out that a cat was holding a wooden pirate sword and uncertain about what else he was capable of? Either option could be true, but I can think of no other explanation for how this scene played out.

Adventures on the high seas. (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

After a montage where they get more candy and don’t run into any more supernatural creatures, Garfield decides they need to get in a boat and sail off in search of more candy. He briefly considers that he may be being too greedy and should share his candy, but quickly decides against that.

He sings a little sea shanty and when he tells Odie to drop in the oars, he literally does. Splash. They drift off too far and enter what appears to be a haunted swamp. They come to shore at a haunted house.

Things are getting spoooooky. (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

After unsuccessfully trying to kick the door down, Garfield and Odie enter the house and look around. They come face to face with a horrifying old man.

Haha gross. (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

The old man is super creepy and weirdly detailed. (Note that he has five fingers on each hand while Jon only has four like most cartoon characters.) The animals are terrified but listen to his story. With a cut scene showing the action, he explains that a hundred years ago, a crew of bloodthirsty pirates came to the very island that they’re on. They hid in the house and buried their treasure beneath it. They signed a contract in blood vowing to return in 100 years at midnight to reclaim their treasure, even if they have to return from the grave. The old man says that it is exactly the 100 years tonight and he was their cabin boy, the only survivor.

Garfield, trying to pretend to not be afraid, says that they should leave and suggests the man get out of there too. He turns and finds the man has disappeared. They look outside to see him rowing away in their boat, along with Garfield’s entire haul of candy.

This was one of the genuine laughs of the special. (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

I found this hilarious and very well timed.

He hidin'. (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

The clock strikes midnight and the Ghost Pirate Ship arrives, Ghost Pirate Skeletons rising from the water and floating around. Garfield and Odie try to hide, Odie first selecting a flower pot.

Spooooopy. (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

Despite their best attempts to hide, the Pirate Ghost Skeletons find them and the little animals are forced to flee for their lives. They promptly almost drown.

They survived! (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

Odie rescues Garfield and they climb up onto shore, wet and miserable. Garfield is upset by how the night turned out. They were nearly killed by Skeleton Ghost Pirates, almost drowned, and worst of all, they have no candy to show for it.

Ah, a happy ending. (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

And then they spot the abandoned boat, with the candy still in it. Garfield is pleased. Not pleased enough to sing another song, but quite happy.

Back at home, in gratitude, Garfield gives Odie his entire bag of candy rather than just the one piece he’d promised. He tries to watch TV but it’s a pirate movie marathon— hosted by the old man from earlier— so his traumatized ass just goes to bed. The end!

Weird shift in art. (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

Thoughts: I actually liked this one way more than I expected to. It was surprisingly pretty funny and cute. It’s always nice to find enjoyment where you didn’t expect to. While I did enjoy the Christmas special somewhat, I wasn’t expecting much from this one and was glad to be proven wrong. Over the years my opinion of Garfield has changed… I loved the comic and cartoons as a kid, but as I grew older I realized that they were pretty much frozen in time, stale, unable to change or evolve. Jim Davis got Garfield to a place where it was comfortable, inoffensive, and easy to crank out with little effort. Simplistic, repetitive, and pointless. (“Mondays, am I right?”) This special, however, showed some real care and attention to detail, like the older strips did. Yes, there were jokes that fell flat, but they kept trying. And there were pretty good character moments and creative ideas.

Story-wise, it was pretty simple, but that worked for it. Garfield wanted candy. He got candy, then lost it. He got really scared, almost drowned, found his candy. Happy ending. He was pretty tolerant and nice to Odie, even though he started off using him to get candy. It was a little out of character, but sweet.

This special was cute and had charm, but it was weird how the art style changed in the attic scene to a cheaper quality. It gave it an uneven feel. Alternately, I did appreciate the different art styles for the old man, the pirate story, and the skeletons. Their different styles added to the creepy factor, making them seem out of place in a good way.

The music was lazy and bland. This one still had weird music choices, like the Christmas special had. But at least this time the songs were all holiday-themed and were blessedly short. Well, one was a pirate shanty, but that fit the theme because they were dressed as pirates. There were only four songs and all were short, so it felt like they were an afterthought.

All that aside, I found this special charming, endearing, and at times genuinely funny. It could have been better and it could have been waaaay worse.

What pirates were doing there I couldn’t say… I don’t recall any reference to an ocean or beaches in Garfield, and they’re driving distance from the midwestern farm where Jon grew up. Maybe that’s why the pirates had to hide their gold, because they were land-locked?

I just looked it up while researching this post and Garfield officially takes place in Muncie, Indiana. No oceans nearby. So maybe the pirates were sailing on Lake Michigan? Yeah, let’s go with that. It’s pretty funny to have lake pirates.

For the Halloween score I would give this one a 9 out of 10. It delighted in the Halloween aesthetic and imagery. This is what I would expect from a Halloween special— pumpkins, witches, candy, ghosts, costumes, skellingtons, enough of the unexplained to make you wonder what else is lurking in the shadows of their world. I mean, with this, Garfield canonically lives in a world with monsters and Ghost Pirate Skeletons. As opposed to For Better or For Worse, this special was deeply rooted in the holiday. If you took out Halloween all you’d be left with is Garfield getting yelled at by a clown and then going back to sleep.

Title card. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was first broadcast in 1966 and was the third special based on the popular Peanuts comic strip. It was the follow up to the popular Christmas special I covered last time, adapting the recurring Great Pumpkin story arcs from the comic strip and adding a couple of other comic elements. Just like the previous special, it was broadcast annually before 2020 when it moved to streaming.

A little background on this one for context: The idea for the Great Pumpkin came from the thought that Linus would mix up his holidays and confuse Santa with Halloween traditions. Schultz has said that the idea of the Great Pumpkin not showing was, in his mind, like kids whose parents didn’t have enough money for Christmas presents, holding out the hope and faith that maybe, just maybe, Santa will come next year. That’s pretty sad, but it adds a deeper layer to the story that I appreciate, so I wanted to share it.

Yup, it's Fall. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

Immediately I was struck by how much better the animation was than in the Christmas special. It was clearer, smoother. It only came out a year after the Christmas special, so I’m not sure what the difference is. Either they remastered it, or they had a bigger budget for the animation… I’m not sure but it was a notable difference.

Anyway, Lucy and Linus walk to a pumpkin patch and already we have all the trappings of Fall— pumpkins, fallen leaves, apples.

Punkin. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

Lucy makes Linus pick out the biggest pumpkin and then walks away so he has to carry it himself.

Wheee! (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

The pumpkin is too big to fit through the fence, so Linus rolls it. It soon gets away from him and he rolls out of control.

This show has lots of cute little moments. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

He almost crashes into Lucy but she steps out of the way before she even sees it. Not hilarious, by any means, but it’s a cute sequence. It made me smile.

Lucy proceeds to carve the pumpkin and the glee with which she stabs it and the startled look on Linus’s face actually did coax a laugh out of me. Linus is upset and says he didn’t know she was going to kill it.

His words are cut awkwardly as we transition to the opening credit sequence where costumed kids run from Halloween specters and decorations.

Snoopy is helpful. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

After this, Snoopy blows a lone leaf on top of the pile Charlie Brown is raking. He praises the dog for his help. Linus leaps in and scatters the leaves everywhere, ruining his lollipop.

But there was a signed document! (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

Lucy comes up and pesters Charlie Brown to do the football routine where she holds it and pulls it away just before he can kick it. I have no idea why this scene is even here except maybe as padding and because it’s a popular bit. Maybe because football is a fall sport? The part I liked about it is that she convinced him with a signed document and she gets out of that because it was never notarized.

That’s one thing I’ve always liked about Peanuts is that it doesn’t talk down to kids. I didn’t always get the jokes, but I appreciated they weren’t simplified. When I was little, I didn’t know what a document was or what it means for it to be notarized, but I got the gist of it. I remember grabbing my dictionary and looking up some of the words I read in Peanuts. Later on we get words like “testifying” and “restitution”… lots of grown-up words. I liked that as a kid… it made Peanuts seem like more mature art. Which is funny and sad at the same time… as I grew up, the strip didn’t. As it went on, it became more and more simplistic, losing the more nuanced humor it had early on.

This is cute too. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

Next Linus is writing to a supernatural entity he calls the Great Pumpkin. He wishes for lots of presents. He explains that on Halloween night, the Great Pumpkin rises out of his pumpkin patch and flies through the air with his bag of presents for all the children. Charlie Brown calls him crazy because there’s no such deity. Linus says he’ll stop believing when Charlie Brown stops believing in Santa.

There’s some more higher-maturity jokes here— Charlie Brown laments their denominational differences and Linus says that the Great Pumpkin suffers from a lack of publicity.

Snoopy has a messed-up laugh. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

Even Snoopy laughs at him. (His laugh is so creepy and weird.) Lucy’s mad because she knows she’ll be made fun of for Linus’s beliefs. Even Patty makes fun of him and I have no idea what she’s even doing there. I think she just walked into their house for the express purpose of taunting him.

Sally shows up too (seriously, every kid in the neighborhood just wanders in and out of each other’s houses) and crushes on Linus. She agrees to sit in the pumpkin patch with him before Charlie Brown shows up and asks what Linus is doing with his sister.

Linus is a Mutant? (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

Not dissuaded at all, Linus goes to mail his letter. Lucy follows him, asking how he plans to reach the mailbox. He, of course, uses his blanket and some form of envelope levitation or low-level telekinesis… it’s unclear which.

I like the blush shading. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

Charlie Brown is excited because he was invited to a Halloween party and does a jaunty little dance that got another chuckle out of me. Lucy ruins his day by saying that Violet screwed up her “to invite” and “not to invite” lists. While Charlie Brown suffers yet another unfortunate childhood social trauma, a happy Linus walks by with a Welcome Great Pumpkin sign to start his lonely pumpkin patch vigil. The comedic timing on his special is great.

You can be a ghost or witch. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

The kids get their costumes ready. Sally is a ghost, Lucy is a witch, Violet is a ghost, and Charlie Brown is a… you guessed it, a ghost. But a ghost with too many eyeholes because scissors are hard. Sally asks if tricks-or-treats is legal. They’re joined by two more ghosts and another witch. I guess there were only two options for costumes in 1966. Oh, three… Snoopy comes walking up dressed in his WWI Flying Ace costume.

They all head out trick-or-treating but Snoopy soon gets distracted by his psychotic break with reality. On their way, the kids stop off at the pumpkin patch to harass Linus. They just can’t leave the poor kid alone. He insists that the Great Pumpkin will come because his pumpkin patch is the most sincere. (This wasn’t mentioned before, so I think we’re seeing his theology evolve before our eyes.)

Remember how I mentioned earlier looking things up in the dictionary? Peanuts is the reason I looked up the word “sincere”. I can’t recall if it was the special or the comic strip, but one of them drove me to look it up. And it doesn’t make any more sense to me now than it did as a kid.

Now even Sally doesn’t believe Linus, but as they walk off she looks sadly back at him and then decides to abandon tricks-or-treats to join him. As long as he doesn’t try to hold her hand.

Candy time! (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

The kids go trick-or-treating and Lucy does ask for an extra piece of candy for her “stupid brother who’s sitting out in a pumpkin patch”. Then she complains about how embarrassing that was.

Charlie Brown gets a rock instead of candy. Even the adults are horrible to him. He gets rocks at the next two houses too. Do the adults have a second bowl filled with rocks next to their candy bowls so they can hand them out to the kids they hate? I’m confused, but I do appreciate they did it three times. Comedy rule of threes.

I'm still not sure why this is in the special. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

Lucy finally realizes Snoopy isn’t with them and this begins an overly long sequence where Charlie Brown narrates Snoopy’s adventures as a WWI Flying Ace. This eats up several minutes of the special and really breaks up the pacing. It’s interesting animation but feels so out of place.

Is this why they invited Charlie Brown? (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

On the way to the party, the kids stop off at the pumpkin patch to make fun of Linus yet again. Sally defends him, but even she’s getting frustrated with waiting. At the party, Violet draws on the back of Charlie Brown’s head so they can decide how to carve the pumpkin.

Eww, dog lips. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

Lucy bobs for apples and Snoopy is somehow in the vat. Still in character, Snoopy dances and cries as Schroeder plays old-timey music on his piano. (This part also goes on way too long.) But I did like the part where while Snoopy was crying he accidentally howled and looked embarrassed.

Linus has a spiritual moment. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

Back at the pumpkin patch, Sally is getting more and more upset. They think they hear the Great Pumpkin, but it’s just Snoopy, lost in his delusions.

Spiritual moment over. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

Linus faints from the excitement of finally meeting the Great Pumpkin he’s waited so long for. When he comes to, he asks what he missed and Sally loses her shit.

I guess Sally's crush is over too. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

Sally shouts at Linus for making her sit out in the pumpkin patch all night for nothing and missing tricks-or-treats and he owes her candy. All the other kids show up. Maybe Violet’s house is right next to the pumpkin patch and they heard her screaming?

Sally’s character is all over the place. she fluctuates between blind devotion, skepticism, and outright hostility. She defends him in one breath and accuses him of wasting her time in the next. She’s flaky, but it makes sense considering she’s, like, four or something. And she did miss out on all that candy, which would make the best of us cranky. And her brother sure can’t give her any candy.

Everyone leaves Linus all alone out there in the dark and he keeps the faith, still fully believing the Great Pumpkin will show up. However, he accidentally says “if he shows up” and feels bad, thinking that little slip of faith may have cost him everything.

Aww. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

For some reason that’s not explained, Lucy’s alarm clock goes off at 4 AM. She realizes Linus never came to bed and goes outside to find him freezing and asleep in the pumpkin patch. She leads him inside and to his bed. For all her complaining, Lucy did look out for her little brother, which is sweet.

The next day Linus and Charlie Brown discuss how crappy their Halloween was. All Charlie Brown got was rocks and Linus didn’t see the Great Pumpkin. Charlie Brown says it’s okay because he’s done lots of stupid things too. Linus starts yelling, showing that he hasn’t lost his faith. Next year for sure he’ll find the most sincere pumpkin patch and the Great Pumpkin will come. You’ll see. You’ll all see! He rants and raves and the scene slowly pulls back as the end credits play.

Stabbity. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

Thoughts: It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was cute and amusing. It was full of bright colors, smooth lines and animation, and nostalgic music and voices. The art has texture, the walls look hand-painted rather than just being one uniform color. I especially liked the plush-looking living room carpet and the blushing effects. This one really brought me back to my childhood and reminded what I loved about the Peanuts gang.

There were a few downsides, of course. The show is somewhat dated, and the abrupt scene changes were jarring. While I felt the WWI scenes were out of place and a drag on the plot, they were creatively done. There were a lot of different sound effects and expressions for Snoopy, a lot of different backgrounds and a good use of music. Still, these segments were strange and it all ends abruptly with no real resolution. But it does intersect with the main plot nicely in the party and the pumpkin patch. It’s like Snoopy went off and had his own little side quest, which is kind of his whole thing. They could have done without the piano part, which dragged the pacing down all over again.

The story was simple but solid, keeping focus despite the diversions of the unrelated football and WWI scenes. Even the Flying Ace stuff bled into the overall story, so it works despite the pacing issues it caused. It told a more solid story than the Christmas special. (Which I did enjoy, despite my blunt critique of it.) I just liked this one more, since it was able to keep focus and seemed a bit more sure of what it wanted to be rather than being a loose collection of vignettes ripped from the comic page with a loose message about the holiday.

This one told a complete story, with everything tying together and leading to a thoughtful conclusion. It was easy to empathize with Linus for his unfulfilled blind faith… Charlie Brown for his familiar disappointment with the holiday… even Lucy to some degree. I mean, we all have that crazy sibling or friend we just can’t seem to talk down once they get something in their head. The concept of the Great Pumpkin, especially given the context I provided at the start, works very well and gets the point across, even if you don’t know all the words the characters use. Linus is forced to rationalize why the Great Pumpkin didn’t come rather than accept that he could be wrong about his beliefs. It’s pretty layered when you think about it.

The experiences the characters have with Halloween are pretty common… in childhood you have to grapple with that fear that you might miss out on candy or presents if you do or say the wrong thing, if you just have that one little slip. Hell, the whole idea of Santa Claus has that “behave or go without” angle baked right in. Linus’s small slip of phrasing and the panic spiral it sends him into is very relatable. And the continued harassment and mockery he faces in the eyes of his peers and loved ones makes it easier to empathize and root for him. You keep hoping to see the poor kid get what he wants even though you know it’s just a delusional dog in the shadows of the pumpkin patch.

So in my post where I covered the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, you may recall one of my critiques was that it didn’t so much focus on Christmas as adapt elements from the Peanuts comic. How did this special do in handling the holiday? Pretty well, it turns out. Sure, there was the extended sequence with Snoopy as the WWI flying ace and Lucy pulling the football from Charlie Brown before he could kick it… those things were just ripped straight from the comics and felt very much out of place. I mean, sure, football is a fall thing and Snoopy was technically in a costume, but still.

Those sequences aside, the rest of it— the pumpkin carving, the trick-or-treating, costumes, Halloween parties, the Great Pumpkin stuff… that very much evoked the imagery and feelings of Halloween. For this reason, and subtracting points for the unrelated stuff, I give this special a solid 8 out of 10 on the Halloween scale. Good work, Peanuts gang. This pumpkin patch is sincere as hell.

They had way more options for costumes in the 90s. (Credit: Lynn Johnston, Lacewood Productions)

So those were the Halloween specials I watched this year. They were up and down in quality but aside from one outlier (I’m looking at you, Pattersons) they were pretty good and very much in the spirit of spooky season. Halloween is all about dressing up and celebrating the eerie and scary… decorating your house and carving pumpkins, selecting just the right costume, going out to mooch candy from the neighbors, and overall just reveling in the darker aspects of life. It’s a natural focus for a holiday special but the tricky part is in relaying these scarier concepts and imagery in a way that is still palatable to younger viewers while appealing to older viewers. It’s a delicate balance that’s really hard to capture properly. Focusing on the trick-or-treating and dressing up is an easy way to appeal to a wider age range of audience and get the feel of the holiday across in an all-ages setting.

I think Garfield did pretty well in incorporating scarier imagery into their cutesy cat story. Charlie Brown was understandably more tame with it, but made up for it with a deeper conversation about childhood experiences with holidays, expectations versus reality, and struggles with faith and religious differences. And For Better or For Worse? Well… it was there. It showed up. And it was Halloween for the last half of it, at least.

It tried, I guess is what I’m saying.

Why did no one go as a pumpkin? (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)

I know Christmas gets more attention, and more specials. But I do remember several Halloween specials when I was a kid. I did see the Charlie Brown and Garfield specials on TV, but not as often as the Christmas ones. It’s weird that Halloween wasn’t a huge specials holiday, since it’s really one of the most kid-centric holidays out there. At least it was when I was growing up. It was all about the spooky shows and the dressing up in costumes and getting free candy. Getting to wear your costume to school and pause learning for an hour or two for the party. Halloween decorations everywhere, transforming your regular world into a spooky wonderland for just a little while. As we grew up the holiday shifted to be way more about adults… with their fancy popup Halloween stores and their drinkin’ parties and Sexy Hot Cheetos costumes. (Seriously, that was a costume I saw in Spirit Halloween this year and it’s become a running joke around our house. “Nice costume. I mean, it’s no Sexy Hot Cheetos, but still…”)

Although I fear it’s inevitable, I hate to become one of those cranky old “in my day” guys, but seriously. In my day Halloween was about the kids. These specials brought me back to that mentality for a little while and I got to think back on my own trick-or-treating adventures. Watching Halloween specials with my family. Taking my brothers trick-or-treating for the first time. Looking at all the creepy decorations around the neighborhood. (Well, when we went into town… I mostly grew up out in the country until I was a little older and it was kind of always creepy out there. No street lights, you see.) It wasn’t all perfect, by any means, and Halloween came with its own dangers. It’s easy to idealize the way things were when you were younger, but it wasn’t necessarily better. Just different. And it’s nice to have little time capsules like these specials to look back on how things were back then. In that way, these specials captured a bit of the spirit of the season as it was when I was younger and I’m grateful to them for that.

"Gimme." (Credit: Jim Davis, Film Roman, United Media Productions)

Oh, and one last side note… I will totally be covering the second For Better or For Worse Christmas special this year. It’s going to be terrible. Stay tuned. If you know of any other Halloween (or other holiday) specials I missed, let me know. I’m having fun with this and wouldn’t mind doing more. It’s weirdly enjoyable to watch these aging kids shows and think way too hard about the logistics and plot of them.

Thank you so much for joining me as I watched, made fun of, and praised these Halloween specials. This was a fun post. I always enjoy thinking way too much about things that are supposed to be surface-level holiday cash-grab cookie cutter entertainment. Although there were times when I felt like I overreached this Halloween season— four posts is a bit much— I’m glad the posts all came together. We have one more visit to Silent Hill this year before we move on from Halloween and march inexorably towards Christmas. Until then, remember the sage advice of the wisest cat I know… “Gimme.”

Thanks for reading! (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, United Feature Syndicate)