Turns out Raymond wasn’t the last show with a laugh-track that I actually enjoyed. Back in 1998 a show premiered on the Fox network that took me a little while to start watching, but once I did I realized just how tremendous it was. Of course I’m talking about the hilarious “That ’70s Show” and specifically today about their 1999 episode, simply titled “Halloween.”
I can’t find a full version of this episode to embed, but you can watch it on Netflix now.
It’s Halloween time in Wisconsin, and the gang is trying to figure out what to do. Kelso wants to go see Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Jackie suggests a haunted house at her church, and Forman wants to check out their old school that is now burt and abandoned.
Fez is just bewildered that you can actually get free candy, so they take him trick or treating – and he ends up getting an apple.
Then do go see Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And even though it was Kelso’s idea, and Jackie did not want to go because of how she felt about Texans, it looks like Kelso is the only one that is scared.
At the same time Kitty and Red are home giving out raisins to trick-or-treaters. The costumes of the kids have some 70s classics like Star Wars and Spider-Man, funny how both of those are common costumes still today.
The thing is – when you give our raisins – you get eggs in return.
They reminisce back to earlier times, back 20 years when Halloween was simpler. There’s nice flashback scene to 1957 where we see Kitty finding out she’s pregnant with their first child, while having to deal with her visiting horrible mother-in-law, played by the legendary Marion Ross.
Meanwhile, the gang ends up at the burnt-up school.
The girls split off from the guys after Kelso gets scared and almost runs off without protecting Jackie. The girls come back later after finding something really scary – their old permanent records! The records lead to secrets about their past, like Jackie’s middle name, Forman actually being guilty of something Hyde was blamed for, and that Kelso actually stayed back a year and was 18.
And could be buying them beer.
The secrets leads to fighting, which they blame on the records – that must be destroyed! They end up burying them because, as Kelso said, they’ve already been in a fire and cannot be destroyed that way.
This episode was great, and this show as so much fun. I want to say it reminds me of my childhood, but it doesn’t really. Well, some of “70s” stuff does, but I was 4 years old when the 70s became the 80s, so it wasn’t really my time.
What it does remind me of is my early “adult” years. The show premiered in 1998, but this episode was in 1999. That year I bought a house and started a new job. The house is long gone, but the job is still here. The next year, I was married.
She’s still around too.
I remember watching this show at my own house, on my own television, in my own living room, trying to figure out what it meant to be an adult, while watching these guys enjoying a simpler time of life in a simpler time in the world.
I still haven’t figured out the whole “adult” thing, nor am I in any rush to.
