We all know the Clueless TV series “aka Cher with a Canadian accent” can be iffy at best, but this one is an homage to Scream so please, as George Michael would say, “listen without prejudice.” Or in this case, read without prejudice.
Cher is dressed up as US Attorney General Janet Reno and Dionne is dressed as Ginger Spice. They are arguing over who the better role model is when Cher receives a creepy phone call from (presumably) the Ghostface killer! When he describes her costume over the phone, Cher yells out to Dionne to get away from the window.
Dionne tells Cher it’s probably just Murray riffing on Scream and that she shouldn’t be worried about it. She even answers the next phone call and starts taunting him. But when Murray shows up at the door (while they’re still on the phone with Ghostface) Cher and Dionne turn back to see the window behind them open and shriek in fear.
They fill Murray in on what’s going on and he tells them to turn off the lights. They all crouch down on the floor and Murray explains that the door was open when he arrived, so he came in to check on them. They’re about to crawl along the floor and out the door when Cher points out that there could be more than one person spying on them.
They retreat from the door and cower under a table. Dionne tries to get Murray to go investigate the house, which devolves into them arguing about how broke up with whom. When Dionne insists she was the one to break up with Murray, he says “and the last episode of Seinfeld was really funny.” Ohhh topical for the time and still funny today!
Moments later a gloved hand reaches through the open door and grabs Murray! But don’t worry it turns out it was his friend Sean. It was Murray playing a prank on the girls after all.
And he wants them to help him plan a haunted house and Bob Saget’s abandoned mansion! (Cue joke about Bob Saget’s career in 1998.) So I guess this was all a really, really mean trial run for a haunted house. Note to all the men out there: don’t pretend to stalk women as a joke. Also just don’t stalk women at all. Or anyone. Okay, thank you.
Moving on. Cher offers her father’s connections to help Murray with the haunted house. The special effects lead criticizes Murray and says his haunted house is basic and derivative. But Murray doubles down on his original idea — which is mostly just a lot of body horror. *cringe*
Murray ends up being so demanding that the special effects guy quits right before the haunted house is set to open. Murray sends a classmate to figure out the special effects stuff (in place of the professional so ugh yeah wonder how successful that will be). But moments later the classmate ends up dead — stabbed in the back — with a warning note to the others.
At the end of the first part of this two-part episode, Cher suspects LITERALLY EVERYONE including Dionne and her own father! Sounds like Cher would really benefit from a therapist.
At the beginning of part two, Cher and her friends are being questioned by the police. Dionne tries to tell the cops that Murray is the killer, but Cher tells them she’s just saying that because of “Post Traumatic Breakup Stress.” She assures the detective that Murray isn’t a killer (okay, strike comment from earlier about Cher having trust issues).
The coach, who is their creepy faculty sponsor and left with Amber prior to the murder to buy trash lingerie…um…yeah I cannot believe this is played for laughs, suddenly reappears at the bottom of this creepy tall staircase. She’s dead too.
Moments later Amber appears again, playing dead. Dionne accuses her of being the murder but she’s quickly ruled out because everyone agrees that Amber would have killed Dionne first.
As they continue their search, the detective opens an armoire to find Murray with a knife. He shots him dead only to have the real Murray walk into the room moment later. It turns out the Murray in the armoire was just a special effects gag.
The detective leaves the house to use his car radio and says, “I’ll be right back,” leading everyone to freak out that he won’t because Horror Rules 101 dictate that you should never say such a thing.
The detective gets locked out of the house and Murray refuses to let him back in when he knocks. He’s worried that the detective is the killer or the killer is faking the detective’s voice. When they finally persuade Murray to open the door, they are greeted by the detective’s dead body followed by the Clueless version of Ghostface.
They all rush into the kitchen (Amber has never seen one before) where they spot Sean’s dead body through the window. Just then another classmate walks in. She’s holding a knife. But it turns out she’s not Ghostface. She’s just creepy and insane. We know she’s not Ghostface because he flies through the window seconds later, and Cher hits him over the head with a frying pan.
Meanwhile, the creepy classmate was impaled by a giant shard of broken window (yikes) and dies. Ghostface begins to stir, so Cher hits him over the head with the frying pan and they all run away. UGH! I was really hoping for an unmasking!
While they others flee, Ghostface grabs Amber. Murray, Dionne, and Cher leave her behind because no one really likes Amber anyway. As they try to figure out the best way to get out of the house, Ghostface (there’s always two, right?) springs through another window behind Cher and pulls her threw it. Murray and Dionne try to escape through an adjacent door only to discover the special effects guy’s corpse.
The end up barricaded in a separate room with their only means of escape being through a skylight. Murray declares his undying love for Dionne and tries to have sex with her, but she says they have to remain virgins in order to survive (more Horror movie rules). Idk how much of this show is not cannon (I didn’t watch much of it) but this clearly contradicts some of the events of Clueless the movie.
Anyway, Murray confesses to Dionne that he slept with someone while they were broken up, so he’s definitely going to die (Horror movie rules style). Just then Ghostface breaks into the room. Dionne fights him off of Murray, but when Murray tries to save Dionne his legs stop working. This truly is a nightmare!
(I figured this was all special effects gags to teach Murray a lesson, but maybe they’re going to sue the “all a dream” trope instead. What do you think?)
Dionne unmasks Ghostface in the scuffle and reveals him to be Sean. Turns out he wasn’t dead!
Murray thinks it’s all a joke until Sean tells him he’s serious.
Just as Sean is about to stab Dionne, Cher and Amber appear behind him and shoot him. (Idk how they got two guns, but this is America and we do have a known problem with that. Smh.)
As he is dying, Sean calls out to Murray who is such a good friend that he goes over to him and comforts him even though he just tried to murder him. Sean using the last of his strength to shake Murray and then starts laughing and tells him he was right and this really was all just a joke.
Having learned his lesson, Murray tells the girls: “I’m gonna lay off all the slasher stuff. It’s a lot less cool when all of the sudden it become real.”
In the end Murray turns the mansion into a really tame venue that once kind says “makes Barney look edgy.”
Either I’m bored as shit in quarantine or this was actually a pretty good episode. Maybe both!
Very Special Halloween Lesson: Ordinarily, I would feel like this is way over the line. But then again, a teenage boy calling teenage girls and pretending to be a criminal stalker is highly concerning to me, so maybe Murray needed to learn this lesson. I won’t go so far as to *endorse* it because this is a friendship ruining level of pranking. It’s also weird that they only “got back” at Murray and Sean was the one actually making the weird phone calls. Pretty solid Scream homage though. I’ll give it that.
The Very Special Blog 
