A Hallowed E’en

10.31.24

A HALLOWED E’EN

Today’s Halloween episodes were recorded months ago, well before we knew they’d be dropping on this spookiest of holidays.

If we’d known the schedule earlier, we would have planned next week’s episodes for Halloween.  Next week we meet a self-medicating werewolf whom we’ve been talking about since the very first AGENT STOKER episode, and a multilingual vampire who might just be up for helping to save the world.

These twists on classic monsters feel like Halloween to me.  As a kid, I was all about the Universal Studios monsters, I had the Aurora model kits of Dracula and Frankenstein and the Wolfman.

And Halloween back in those days actually felt transgressive.  A thing that your parents didn’t necessarily approve. 

You look at old photos from the 1920s or so, and you see people who are dressing for Halloween in a way they could never imagine living otherwise.  Halloween took place in a liminal space between realities.

Now, on the other hand, not to sound like Andy Rooney curmudgeonly complaining about these kids today – but Halloween has been tamed.

People ask why I don’t always dress up for Halloween, and I have to ask, aren’t there plenty of other people doing that?  It’s gone mainstream and as a result it’s less macabre, less imaginative, less disturbing.

Even though today’s episodes don’t feature classic monsters, though, I think they’re plenty disturbing.  They move from one side of Queens to the other (that’s not the disturbing part).  First they reunite us with a woman who cannot die, and look at the terrible cost that brings.  Then they introduce a new threat from an old enemy, a way to turn you into a techno-zombie without you realizing it in time to stop it.

The simmering brooding mystery lurking throughout this whole season is unfolding chapter by chapter.  Enjoy this hallowed eve, and strap in for next week’s monsters, see you then!