Cue: Creepy pipe organ music and a red-eyed bat flying at the camera.
Salem sits at a cob-webbed covered desk and reads to us from a giant book. This episode, he says, “may not be suitable for some parents.” Ooooh
In the witching world, Halloween is kind of like Christmas, which is why Sabrina’s family member sends her a doll as a gift. It’s weird because she’s too old for a doll but even weirder because the doll is creepy AF.
Sabrina finds the doll on the staircase “staring” at her. Thinking that Salem is pulling a prank, she tosses the doll up the stairs. OMG Sabrina, NO! You will anger her! But when she and her friends are watching a movie, she sees the doll again. This time it turns its head at her and BLINKS its eyes. AGHHHHHHH
This may be the most frightening thing I have ever written about on this blog.
When Sabrina tries to open the door for some trick-or-treaters, she finds that she is not only unable to open it, but also that it is electrified! This must be the doll’s doing. As if it couldn’t get any worse the doll says, “I’m a Molly Dolly and I’m gonna get youuuu.”
Wtf. How is this a show aimed at children?? Thank God, I missed this episode back in 1998. I’m starting to think that Salem’s message at the beginning of the episode wasn’t about parents at all. Why didn’t he say “this show is not for children or anyone who can’t handle scary movies on any level whatsoever.”
Meanwhile, Sabrina’s aunts are at a Halloween party. Unfortunately, that party has turned out to be an insane asylum that they can never leave, Hotel California style. So basically, Sabrina and her friends are about to get murdered by a doll and no one can save them.
Sabrina attempts to warn her friends about the evil doll, but they think she is playing a prank. I guess they’d think it was part of the prank if she tried to tell them she was a witch too.
Back at the insane asylum, an evil doctor chases Sabrina’s aunts with a giant needle. Ick. When a real Frankenstein’s Monster and a Mummy pop out of a closet (these are also Harvey and his friend’s costumes by the way), her friends say this prank has gone TOO far. But they’re obviously scared enough to run around the house while the monsters chase them.
Things reach a fever pitch when Sabrina engages in fisticuffs with the doll, and her aunts are the subjects of a scary experiment to switch their brains with those of some chickens. Sabrina subdues the doll and rushes to the party to find her aunts…who unfortunately are now chickens.
Luckily, the party isn’t really an insane asylum. It’s a theme party. So at the end of the night, everything will go back to normal. Also, that evil creepy doll is just the other realm’s idea of a good time. Sabrina and her aunts return home and put everything right. They laugh everything off as an elaborate practical joke. Omg how does Sabrina even have any friends?? She needs to put some kind of memory loss spell on all of them STAT.
Very Special Halloween Lesson: NO more dolls. Ever.
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.
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!
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.
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!”)
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.
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.
It’s a dark and stormy night, as Cory sits at his desk in the suburbs of Philadelphia. He writes with a quill pen, stolen from his mother’s feather duster, carefully documenting his transformation from teenage boy to WEREWOLF. (cue 
The next day he’s hairier. Eric tell him that this could be the first signs of a werewolf transformation. He shows him a tabloid newspaper and Corey takes it seriously. After hearing about werewolf sitings on the radio, Cory seeks out the help of a medium. She mistakes him for Billy Joel at first, but she does confirm that Cory is well on his way to becoming a full-on wolf. She paints a picture of what’s to come:
Mr. Turner asks to see Cory after class. So Cory sits down on Mr. Turner’s desk and picks up his keys. I guess he feels more familiar since Mr. Turner is basically Shawn’s dad. Mr. Turner has a pentagon key chain, which Cory apparently thinks is the same thing as a pentagram. He runs away and bumps into Topanga, who says that she can tell him if something is wrong because she cares about him. OH NO!
Things reach a fever pitch when Cory asks his dad to throw a silver picture frame at him “really, really hard.” Cory’s dad tells him that he’s not turning into a werewolf and it’s probably just the beginning of puberty. But Cory resists and tells him that he’s definitely turning into a canine. His dad says maybe it’s time to start shaving and goes upstairs to get a razor. At which point, Cory looks at himself in the mirror and sees a werewolf staring back at him.
So now here we are, where we started, with Cory writing his manifesto in ink, using a piece of a feather duster. Topanga then shows up, ready to go to the Halloween party. Cory tries to get rid of her before the full moon rises. But Topanga is confused by his freakout and tells him that he’s perfectly normal and needs to chill the eff out. (I’m paraphrasing.)
We open the episode with Rob (Dick Van Dyke) and his wife/roommate, Laura (Mary Tyler Moore), having a chaste night in their twin beds as Rob watches a scary movie about an alien named Kolak from the planet Twilo while Laura hides under the covers. It’s some weird movie where if you get a creepy walnut and open it, you’ll start to look like Danny Thomas, lose your imagination and your thumbs, and maybe end up with an extra pair of eyes in the back of your head…I’m not clear on that last part. Without thumbs and imagination, we can’t build the amazing stuff we have on earth. Ohhh profound. Or wait, is it? I’m not sure if it’s really profound or if I watch a ton of crap TV and this is just good writing. Rob proceeds to make creepy noises and keep Laura awake because that’s what you do to your wife when you’re in a summer-camp living situation.
The next morning Rob wakes up to find walnuts scattered allover the living room carpet. He finds Laura in the kitchen and says he got her message loud and clear. He apologizes for teasing her and gives her back one of the walnuts from the living room. But she doesn’t know what he’s talking about and insists she’d never put walnuts all over the floor. She sends Richie (their son) off to school with a bag of walnuts for lunch and offers to make Rob two eggs (aka walnuts) for breakfast. Rob thinks she’s laying it on a bit thick, so he heads to the office sans breakfast. As he heads out, she pops a walnut in his coat pocket, just in case he gets hungry.
But Rob still has his thumbs so all is well. Only he tries to light a cigarette and discovers he doesn’t have any thumbs. So he decides the only thing to do is go home and go to bed before he wakes up. He heads home and cannot find Laura. He tries to put his hat away in the coat closet and finds it to be filled with walnuts. Laura comes flowing out of the coat closet in the sea of walnuts. She’s from the planet Twilo and she wants to turn Rob from human into a Twiloite. Buddy and Sally join her in surrounding Rob, but then the alarm rings and Rob finds himself back in his bedroom with Laura, who has also been having nightmares.
Billie Jean (Helen Slater) and her brother, Binx (Christian Slater), are on their way to a lake near their home when a group of guys see them and decide to follow Binx’s Honda Elite Scooter because they think Billie Jean is hot. As they follow them, they become increasingly aggressive. One dude is literally crawling over the hood of the car as they ride down the highway, another snaps pictures of her.
Hubie and his friends track Billie Jean and Binx down shortly thereafter. Hubie steals Binx’s scooter while he and Billie Jean are swimming. Remember, Hubie’s pal with the camera? He doesn’t miss the opportunity to take some more shots of Billie Jean as she and Binx race out of the water.
Billie Jean decides to give Hubie the bill for the repairs. When he won’t listen to her, she talks to his father–who tries to rape her “in exchange” for giving her $50. Binx walks in on this happening. He doesn’t realize what’s going on at first because Billie Jean and Mr. Pyatt are in the office above the store. Believing Billie Jean won’t be successful in getting Mr. Pyatt to hand over the money, Binx decides to help himself to the cash register, where he also finds a gun.
Billie Jean and her crew run around doing “outlaw things.” They go to the mall and leave IOUs for walkie-talkies. Shortly after seeing this movie, I requested to leave an IOU for a notebook and was informed that this is definitely not an acceptable practice. They also squat in a mansion, which is pretty cool. There’s even a cool teenager, Lloyd, who lives in the mansion. He even offers to be their hostage, so they can gain a little leverage. While at the mansion, they watch the news and learn that Billie Jean is famous. Meanwhile, Mr. Pyatt capitalizes on her fame by selling Billie Jean memorabilia.
As Billie Jean and her friends flee one neighborhood in a hail of bullets (**eye-roll**) one of the girls in Billie Jean’s group thinks she’s been shot, but really she’s just gotten her first period. Man, I’m all for the triumph of the female spirit but are you kidding me? She gets her first period in the middle of a gunfight and we have to stop and talk about how great it is? Like pass me a tampon and let’s move on, I’m a freaking outlaw motherfu**r. Also, shout out to The Simpsons‘s Yeardley Smith for playing the girl who gets her period.
Eventually, Billie Jean turns in two of her friends for their own safety. So this leaves only Billie Jean, Lloyd, and Binx. But in the midst of an argument while trying to steal a car (Billie Jean doesn’t want to but Binx and Lloyd insist it’s necessary) Billie Jean become separated from her friends.
It largely seems that this celebrity safe passage is meant to serve as an opportunity to play an extended montage over the full length of Pat Benatar’s theme for the movie. Ultimately, she finds Binx and Lloyd at the abandoned miniature golf course where they spent their first night as fugitives way back at the beginning of the movie. When she rejoins her friends, Billie Jean admits that she’s lost her sense of self in all of this. The Joan of Arc persona that was once so liberating has taken over everything and she can no longer be a normal person.
It’s at this point that I have to ask, what exactly is this commenting on? Is it celebrity? Mob mentality? A really extreme example of subjugation? Or maybe this movie got so caught up in making an “important point” that it became a soap opera with nothing to say. And then Billie Jean sees Mr. Pyatt. She pulls off the wig and approaches him alone, just as she did earlier in the movie. But this time there are plenty of witnesses. And this time she’s a celebrity who get a lot of press. She confronts Mr. Pyatt and learns that it was Lloyd’s father who paid for the scooter’s repairs. Trying to save face, Mr Pyatt gives her a ton of cash “for [her] troubles.”
Simply put, Billie Jean didn’t confront Mr. Pyatt in her video because she wasn’t ready to yet. This whole campy-mess of a movie is her path to finding those words. What we’re basically seeing here is a really heavy-handed coming of age and recovery from trauma all rolled into one. Billie Jean starts off as a girl who doesn’t really say anything when she’s uncomfortable. Then she becomes some neo-Joan of Arc vigilante who is all about “fairness” (like in general and somewhat materialistically at that). And then finally, she pulls off that damn muppet wig and straight up calls that jackass out for trying to violate her. And when she does that, she’s transcending “Bille Jean the Legend,” to become a much more complex Billie Jean, the person.
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