It’s that time of year again, when primetime shows either put on their big kid pants and tackle a Halloween episode, or try and ignore the holiday. Halloween episodes can be iconic, annual offerings of comedy gold (Roseanne comes to mind) or can horribly campy (like this year’s Speechless) but they’re all fun and just another reason to love the Halloween season. Fresh Off the Boat has a pretty good track record of memorable Halloween episodes and seson 4 didn’t fail to deliver. While it lacked the snappier one liners and great costume and sight gags of prior seasons it did what few shows do during Halloween episodes: developed it’s characters.
It is no secret that Grandma Huang is practically our favorite character, delivering all the sass, so to finaly get a main plot involving her was a real treat [this isnt a Halloween pun].
Fresh Off The Boat – ABC
The episode has minimal Eddie, as he spends the majority of the episode dressed up with his friends, sitting on a stoop, sulking/”looking hard”, while watching a party they werent invited to hoping looking hard might snag an invite. We do get a glimpse of Nichole as she leaves to go to a more girl-centric party which she somehow agreed to let Prince-dressed Bryan tag along. The group slowly breaks away in cutaways with the final scene being Red getting invited to the party in an unexpected, albeit campy, twist.
Fresh Off the Boat – ABC
A lot of the episode is spent on Louis feeling like he’s losing his family ok n his favorite holiday, and specifically the back and forth with Evan who is acting more adult everyday. The hilarity in their dynamic is at a peak when Louis storms into Deidre’s Halloween party to steal back his son, who is bartending while dressed as Tom Cruise from Cocktail. The 90s costume gags are hit and miss, with Louis’s attempts at a group costume a little less inventive than prior years, but Eddie’s group bringing solid references [life isn’t the same without Emery and Evan’s couples costume, but we press on]. It’s a decently heart felt storyline with Evan showing his maturity, but still being the baby and letting his dad know he still needs him.
Fresh Off The Boat – ABC
The best part of the episode was Jessica struggling to write ever horror novel and then abandoning her project to help Emery figure out what’s going on with Grandma “Jenny” Huang. They here a strange voice from her room and then follow her when she leaves with a doverse group of people of few words. They follow her to a church, where thetheyy find she is in an English as a Second Language class taught by George Takei. George seems to be a potential recurring guest as it’s implied he and Jenny have a relationship starting. The entire thing is adorable, and the level of sass Lucille Doing delivers always has a rolling, and we couldn’t be happier with this episode and the realization that she delivers her English lines eerily similar to Betty White! Go back and rewatch on Hulu or ABC if you don’t believe me.
