It's almost Halloween, so you better have your costume dialed in, your pumpkin carved, and a cupboard full of candy for all the cute little moochers who'll be ringing your doorbell. Oh, you don't have any of that done? Ah, screw it. You can always turn off all the lights, pretend you're not home, and zone out in front of the tube. Watching all the Halloween episodes in this list could take you until Thanksgiving.
The only thing that could beat the scarily funny shows here is if the 24 excellent "Treehouse of Horror" episodes of The Simpsons were streaming for free, but you can purchase sets of those from iTunes for a reasonable price of $8 for each of the three six-episode compilations.
Community
So the must-see Halloween episode of Community is clearly "Epidemiology," from season 2. The gang has to deal with a zombie outbreak at the school's Halloween party, and the costumes are amazing, from the Dean's Lady Gaga outfit to Abed and Troy's Aliens duo…at least before some unfortunate wardrobe malfunctions. But the rest of Community's Halloween episodes are great too, including the Day of the Dead-themed "Introduction to Statistics" in season 1, "Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps" from season 3, and even "Paramornal Percentage" from the shaky Dan Harmon-less season 4. It's worth a marathon—and a marathon is worth throwing in another season 2 episode, "Critical Film Studies." It isn't technically Halloween themed, but everyone is in costume—the gang tries to throw Abed a Pulp Fiction-themed birthday party, but instead Abed re-creates My Dinner with Andre with an unwitting, unwilling Jeff Winger.
The Cosby Show
Will I ever tire of telling you that The Cosby Show is on Hulu Plus? Look, watching the best sitcom of the '80s with commercials for the Microsoft Surface is just a trip, and the show itself holds up amazingly well—family harmony and ugly sweaters are pretty timeless. The "Halloween" episode from 1985 is a classic, the one where Vanessa has her first boy-girl party, an exercise in extreme awkwardness, especially when her crush Robert shows up. But even better is the 1987 episode "Cliff's Mistake," when Cliff and the kids go all-out to make a haunted house in the basement, scaring poor Peter (Rudy's adorable round-faced friend) so bad he runs back up the stairs and right out of the house.
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