We shared some of the BGN Team’s favorite Halloween episodes, but rarely do we talk about the worst.
ABC’s short-lived series My So-Called Life was one of the WORST Halloween episodes I’ve ever seen. It was so far removed from the series that I was wondering WTF I was watching while it was on. Even when My So-Called Life went into syndication and later aired on MTV, I hated watching the reruns of this episode. Now to be fair, most Halloween episodes of dramatic series tend to be a bit detached from the storyline, but I just really hated this episode.
Basically, there’s this guy in Angela’s (Claire Danes) school by the name of Nicky Driscoll (Andrew Kavovit) who died a violent death several years before, and he’s haunting the hallways of the school. The ties that bind Angela and Nicky together are a textbook the two shared, and now Angela is not only seeing visions of the deceased Nicky walking the hallways and staring at her longingly — the same way she stares at Jordan Catalano (Jared Leto) — but she’s now determined to find out more about who Nicky was? How did he die? My question here is why is Angela suddenly attracted to some dead guy and who cares about who Nicky Driscoll is when Jordan Catalano is alive and well!
But then the writing takes this weird turn and they start intercutting images of Jordan leaning against the lockers with Nicky. Listen, this show meant everything to me. So the moment they step even slightly outside the show’s grounded reality, I get frustrated, angry even, because they’re messing with the formula that made it so special.
My So-Called Life mirrored so much of my own high school experience, and this Halloween episode completely pulled me out of it. It was like they inserted a Supernatural episode before Supernatural even existed and I hated it.
(By the way, I’ve only seen the first season of Supernatural, and honestly? I don’t get the hype. But I digress.)
So then, Angela is following around more ghosts in the story and tries to prevent Nicky from going into the light. (I guess to become a permanent ghost?) I don’t know, it was all too weird and I hated every last minute of it. I also hated Angela’s Halloween costume, in which she dressed like one of Nicky’s classmates in this retro 60s eyeglass frames and vintage attire. It was just ridiculous to me. I don’t know why this episode angered me so much as a fan of the series, but I loathed every frame per second of this episode.
The b-story arcs between Sharon, Rayanne, and Brian were okay. There is an interesting revelation of Angela’s younger sister Danielle who is incessantly seeking Angela’s attention. Her little sister throughout the series is constantly ignored by both Angela and her parents and in this episode, Danielle dressed up as her sister for Halloween. This is pretty telling since this is her one chance not to only get Angela’s attention but also to show how much she sort of worships her older sibling.
That plotline keeps the episode from being entirely unwatchable, but the rest of this Halloween episode completely falls apart for me.
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Jamie Broadnax
Jamie Broadnax is the creator of the online publication and multimedia space for Black women called BlkCosmo Blerds. Jamie has appeared on MSNBC’s The Melissa Harris-Perry Show and The Grio’s Top 100. Her Twitter personality has been recognized by Shonda Rhimes as one of her favorites to follow. She is a member of the Critics Choice Association and executive producer of the BlkCosmo Blerds Podcast.
