7. It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia: "Who Got Dee Pregnant?"

An episode of It's Always Sunny that had it all - completely over the top moments of the gang ripping on Dee's resemblance to a bird (complete with remembering her as an actual ostrich), horrifying implications (including the possibility that Dennis knocked up Dee), the Rashomon-esque narrative structure, and McPoyles being extremely McPoyle-y.

via wildcardcharlieday

6. Parks and Recreation: "Halloween Surprise"

Parks and Rec has a solid history with Halloween, but it's Halloween Surprise that takes the cake (apologies to all you Greg Pikitis/Mark Brendanawicz fans out there). Costume-wise, Leslie's "We Can Do It!" costume is maybe the most perfect thing that has ever happened on television up to that point - until the final scene where Ben gave Leslie a surprise proposal and the apartment of her dreams. It's almost weird to remember how soap opera-ish Parks and Rec was at times, and even weirder to remember how well it worked.

Also, Ron and Andy trick-or-treating is pretty great.

via therandomthoughtsofawriter

5. Modern Family: "Halloween"

While Modern Family has done a fair number of solid Halloween entries since, the original episode set the foundation for a lot of the great bits the show would play with later on - particularly Claire's love of truly terrifying decorations. Add to that Mitchell's desperate attempts to get out of the Spider-Man costume he wore to work, and you end up with a solid episode of a show it feels like no one has spoken of in 4 years.

4. How I Met Your Mother: "Slutty Pumpkin"

How I Met Your Mother is a lot like Lost - the early seasons were great, full of ideas and promise, exploring lots of new concepts while teasing out long mysteries. But eventually the characters became grating, the mysteries got drawn out, and the answers were never very satisfying. But that's why Slutty Pumpkin is one of the all-time great episodes - the idea of Ted repeatedly having to dress as his once-topical "Hanging Chad" costume year after year in the vain hope that he'd meet his dreamgirl once again, the allusions to Charlie Brown, and the mystery of who the slutty pumpkin truly was all made for an unbelievably solid episode.

And then the episode like 5 years later when they revealed the Slutty Pumpkin was Katie Holmes? Let's just pretend that never happened.

16. The Adventures of Pete & Pete: "Halloweenie"

Pete & Pete was basically the perfect coming-of-age show - absurdist and surreal, but always grounded in real human emotions that made the show stand out amongst its peers, especially in the early 90s. Halloweenies found Little Pete attempting to break the trick-or-treating record for most houses visited, while Big Pete struggled with whether to join the Pumpkin Eaters gang and betray his brother, and includes a great villain in "Endless" Mike Hellstrom.

"Trick or treat, gut bucket!"

3. Community: "Epidemiology"

Community's first Halloween episode, Introduction to Statistics, is pretty spectacular, especially the climax of Abed/Batman pulling Jeff and Pierce from the collapsing furniture fortress - but season 2's Epidemiology is where Community really hit peak Halloween-iness, thanks to giving into the show's strength of mimicking tropes and formats of other media, in this case: zombie movies (with plenty of ABBA sprinkled throughout for good measure).

2. King of the Hill: "Hilloween"

Hank dressed in a child's devil costume, Dale dressing up as "a high powered Washington lobbyist peddling influence", and ripping on nutjob religious fundamentalists? It's perfect.

1. Roseanne: "BOO!"

For those of you who don't remember, Roseanne was actually a pretty spectacular sitcom - and one of the first sitcoms to portray families in a less than ideal way. And in between the fights and money issues and EXTREMELY questionable overuse of Tom Arnold, there were the unbelievably great Halloween episodes. One of the more endearing aspects of Roseanne and John Goodman's marriage was their mutual love of Halloween - the costumes, the pranks, and the general atmosphere of terrifying one another. And "BOO!" set things off to a great start, with Roseanne going to absurd lengths to prank John Goodman (and without involving Tom Arnold, to boot).

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