It’s Halloween and the Romans (a.k.a. The Lawrence brothers) are busy planning their nights. Matt has FINALLY been asked to a party, Joe is taking Andy trick or treating at the mall, Claire (Joe’s step-mom, Matt & Andy’s mom) is going to a party, and Lloyd (one of the mechanics at the family business) has plans to watch “the scariest movie of all time,” The Sound of Music. (“The hills are alive!”)

Claire takes forever to decide on a costume. There’s a lot of pressure on this night, since she hardly ever goes out. She finally settles on being a piece of gum stuck under a chair. It’s, um, certainly original. The costume consists of dressing from head to toe in pink (the toe part consisting of fuzzy pink slippers).

And just to make it clear that she’s not simply bubble gum, she wears a chair-hat. The chair/gum scale is off for obvious reasons. I can only assume she didn’t want to break her neck in order to ensure the authenticity of her costume. But this basically means she looks not like a wad of gum, but rather a woman wearing a chair-hat.

Meanwhile, Matt sits at home handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, waiting to go to the party until Joe returns home with Andy. Andy’s costume is Spider Man dressed as a ghost. (He’s wearing a Spiderman Mask under a bed sheet.) Joe takes him to a kid’s party at the mall and flirts with a fortuneteller while Andy plays with his friends. The fortuneteller is obviously Lou, a mechanic at his garage. But I guess he’s so confused by her harem mask that he doesn’t recognize her. This makes it abundantly apparent how rarely he looks at her eyes.

When the fortuneteller accurately guesses Andy’s costume, Joe pays her $10 to tell his fortune. Back at home, Matt stingily hands out  candy based on the quality of the kids’ costumes. Geez, he’s way too young to be this much of a curmudgeon. When some college kids stop by his apartment to trick-or-treat (already super creepy) sans costumes (cannot decide if this makes it more or less creepy), Matt refuses to give them candy (duh, I mean isn’t it illegal to trick-or-treat after a certain age), so they hang him on the Halloween wreath on Lloyd’s door.

Wait, hold on. Lloyd also lives above the garage? Does Lou also have an apartment there? Is housing like a fringe benefit of being a mechanic at that place?? When he discovers that the college kids took all of the candy, Lloyd leaves the apartment to hunt them down. He also leaves Matt on the door, whoops.

In his hurry to get home, Joe accidentally kidnaps a child. To be fair, she’s also dressed as a ghost/sheet person. But she’s Casper, not Spiderman/Ghost. Joe rushes back to the mall to retrieve Andy and return the kid he took by mistake. In his haste, he doesn’t stop to help Matt off of the wreath. Vulnerable and alone, Matt is egged by Halloween pranksters.

Back at the diner, the little girl’s dad has accidentally mistaken Andy for his child. He and Joe are relieved to see one another and switch their children before Joe heads home again. Luckily, by the time he gets back Lloyd has found the college kids and forced them to clean up everyone’s apartments. They then decide that Matt is cool and invite him to go a party with them, which just so happens to be the party he’s been trying to attend all night anyway.

Joe apologizes to Andy for leaving him behind at the mall. Andy tells him not to worry and that he was okay because he was with Lou. (OBVIOUSLY.) And of course, what’s the one thing that no Halloween episode is complete without? A Very Special Halloween Lesson!

Best Halloween Dialogue:
Matt (on the phone): Iris, slow down. What’s Debbie’s costume? She’s Madonna? From which album? The book? Oh, what page?