Omg y’all every time we do a Jem episode I just feel like it has been TOO long. So I’m happy to introduce, in her Halloweek debut, Jem (and the Holograms). So there’s this girl at the Starlight House (Terri) and she is terrified of Halloween. Jerrica comforts her after some other girls scare her with creepy masks while they’re all watching a Halloween movie.

Then she heads off to an abandoned opera house as Jem. She and the Holograms are checking it out as a concert venue. So here is my question. Is synergy also like a caffeine pill? Jerrica is the primary caregiver to a houseful of abandoned children by day and she’s a rockstar at night, so when does she sleep? Maybe if Jesse Spano had Synergy she would have done well in her classes and not sucked at that dance.

Back at the Starlight house, everyone is designing scary costumes and terrorizing Terri. Jerrica is all like, “You’ve got to learn not to take the scary things so seriously.” Um, Jerrica, I don’t know if you’re aware of this but YOU RUN A HOME FOR ORPHANS. There’s a really really good chance that they’ve had A LOT of scary things happen to them. Thus, they might be a little jumpy!

But what do I know? The best approach is probably to sing “It’s Fun to Be Scared.” And let me state for the record that I disagree with the entire premise of this song.

Meanwhile, The Misfits hear about the benefit concert that Jem and the Holograms plan to have at the opera house on Halloween night. They set out to destroy it because they are horrible, horrible people. They decide to have a concert too–which is dumb because obviously everyone would go see The Holograms over The Misfits but whatever.

But then things start to happen at the opera house. Spooky things. Like set pieces almost crushing The Holograms spooky. (I think, MAYBE just MAYBE this was slightly inspired by The Phantom of the Opera.) Right after this happens, The Misfits show up with a building inspector. (A coincidence? I think not!) But Rio has been such a good stage hand that the building inspector finds nothing wrong.

The Misfits plan to sabotage the opera house, until more spooky stuff happens, convincing them that it’s already haunted for real. And that leads us to this scary acid dream of a video:

The Holograms deduce that the owner of the opera house is probably responsible for all of the shenanigans. But they cannot figure out why he would want to sabotage his own building. They decide to go on with the show anyway. That was such a dumb idea because things only get spookier. And this time that poor child, Terri, is there to see the show. When everyone runs from the ghost, she has the misfortune of falling through a trap door.

She’s chased by some creepy looking eyes throughout the opera’s underbelly. Running through the dank hallway, she sees a light through a doorway. There she finds a group of men, including the opera house’s owner plotting to create these spooky special effects. They see her and chase her away. On the run again, she finds the REAL opera house owner locked away. So who is the lookalike??

When the bad guys start to run away, Jem uses synergy to create a spooky diversion. Is there no limit to the power of synergy?? Jem could literally be taking over the world with this shit, but she’s content just to help some orphans and sing some songs. When they unmask the look alike, they realize he is The Misfits manager. And they are royally pissed because he has been wasting his time creating spooky pranks instead of helping them setup for their show. But then the tent that The Misfits are using for their concert venue is struck by lightening, so they can’t have their concert anyway.

Very Special Halloween Lesson: As it turns out, being utterly terrified for a whole night only to find out that it was all fake has cured little Terri of her fears. So I guess maybe that’s an argument for watching a scary movie or going to a haunted house this Halloween except I would never actually recommend either of those things because they both sound awful.