Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts

Quick Question: What Are This Year's Best TV Character Halloween Costumes?

With the very best holiday ever fast approaching (take a hike, Arbor Day/Grandparents Day!), it's time to start thinking seriously about what costume to wear this Halloween. Luckily, from drama to comedy to reality and beyond (...not that much beyond), television offers a plethora of excellent choices. Let's take a look:


This October 31st, why not be "the one who knocks" ...on doors for treats that is! At this point there are enough versions of Albuquerque's finest Chukka-booted drug lord to rival elements in the periodic table, but if we're talking just this past season, then fans have a few main iterations to choose from:

1. The flashforwarded, 52-year-old, scruffy-hair-having, black-frames Walt

2. The behatted, growly-ass Heisenberg Walt

3. The always welcome chemical-suit-and-facemask, "up in the cook," "Mr. White" Walt.

Whichever you pick, here's a tip: Instead of gluing on a fake goatee, just heat up a bag of fun-sized Three Musketeers in the microwave for about 22 seconds, stir the gooey contents in a bowl, sit on your hands, and consume that nougaty mix faster than an alley tweaker on a blue-hot bender. Instant facial hair!


All Hallow's Eve is the perfect time to be a fake person/creature/idea AND get political. Why not do some of that, and hit the streets as Homeland's Carrie Mathison. Simply slap on a pant suit, plug a finger in your ear, and stare down everyone in the vicinity like they are a secret terrorist (ESPECIALLY folks dressed as M&Ms;). For added realism, phone in an actual bomb threat to the same party you are at, then keep your cool while others scramble for safety. Stand on the couch and announce "remain calm citizens, I found the bomb: it's... ME!" If the host doesn't make you leave, then sidle up to the oldest person with a beard and whisper "That was a close one, Saul. That was a close one." (WARNING: You may never be invited to things again).


This quirksotic gal is a great choice for those who can only afford thrift-store costumes, OR for boring mainstream sorts looking for an excuse to get bangs/dress "indie." Either way Jess from New Girl is a simple charmer sure to please the room. IMPORTANT: The key to a convincing Jessica Day is her stunning peepers, however one should NEVER purchase used cosmetic contact lenses from any sort of thrift store, or person standing by a car, in order to change one's eye color—even if the lenses have been sterilized by soaking them in a glass of water that is sitting in the sun (beware eye fleas). Also, it is imperative to monitor one's adorkable levels throughout the night. If you find your head jammed inside a trick-or-treat pillowcase singing made up songs to candy, know that adorkability has reached dangerous levels and it is time to go home and draw a bath. Just remember to wash the towels!


Or how about "Honey Boo Boo" from the critically acclaimed Here Comes Honey Boo Boo? Ah, the diabetic cheeks that launched a thousand eyeballs (at the TV) and captured the heart of a rubber-necking nation. This charismatic pageant competitor/adorable victim of circumstance (nee Alana Thompson) is Halloween incarnate: flashy outfits, a biological make-up that is mostly sugar, and a day-to-day existence mirroring the unchecked wildness of the holiday. Plus, her nickname already has ghost words in it ("Boo!"). Simply whip up a bottle of "Go-Go Juice" (Mountain Dew and Red Bull), spray down a ballerina tutu with gold paint, pop on a sparkly cowgirl hat, and strut the streets like your parents lost track of your whereabouts five hours ago while eating Domino's Brownie Squares and "sketti."


Of course, no list would be complete without a costume option that is just scary as crap. Enter this dope-looking prison zombie from The Walking Dead's Season 3 premiere. All this nasty number takes is some prison blues and artfully applied neck gunk (like food-jelly). Do you know someone from prison? Are you allowed to buy strawberry jam? If not it's cool: just march into your nearest Lucky's supermarket and shoplift some fruity preserves, rub the stuff on your neck, then get arrested for said shoplifting. Go through the penal system and receive a free haircut (like this zombie), making sure to never wash off your fake wound. If necessary, lie about the neck-berries and say it is wet eczema. When the glorious day comes for your release, check the box that says "Yes, Would Like to Keep Prison Clothes Please" on the exit forms. Hopefully it is still Halloween when this happens and your made-up gash is still intact. If not, maybe a real zombie apocalypse has occured and you will have bigger things to worry about.


So gang, what TV character do YOU think will make the best Halloween costume this year?


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Hey Look, It's TV.com's 2012 Halloween Jack-o'-Lantern Stencils!

Everybody knows that there is almost nothing in life quite as important as carving amazing Halloween jack-o'-lanterns. This year is no different! We at TV.com would like to give you a leg up in your local pumpkin-carving contests by providing you with stencils in the likenesses of five of TV's most frightening or just plain awesome characters. What better way to annoy your uptight homeowners' association than by displaying one of these excellent orange babies right on your front porch? Go ahead, get knifey!

(Right-click the character names and choose "save as" to download printable PDFs.)

Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad
For a jack-o'-lantern that says "I have good taste in TV and am most likely a badass," it'd be hard to go wrong with a Walter-White-as-Heisenberg pumpkin. [Note: If you are a former chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin, this pattern may be a bit too on-the-nose. Consider a less obvious pattern.]

Madeleine Stowe, Revenge
This jack-o'-lantern will look particularly wonderful in front of your 24,000-square-foot mansion in the Hamptons, especially if that mansion appears to be made completely of CGI. Careful, though, this pattern is practically begging for a ransom note to be stabbed into it with a steak knife.

Danny Pudi, Community
Only in the darkest of timelines would this pattern not make you a sensation in your community! (Relevant puns.)

Nick Offerman, Parks and Recreation
In case any of your neighbors puts out a Whitney Cummings-themed jack-o'-lantern this year, feel free to knock it off their porch and replace it with this one!

Alana Thompson, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo
Trust us, you will never find a face more perfectly suited for carving into a pumpkin! Their shapes are nearly identical!

1. Print out your desired PDF. (You may want to shrink or enlarge the main image depending on the size of your pumpkin.)

2. Transfer the image to your pumpkin. If you don't have carbon/transfer paper (who does?) then a quick 'n dirty way to do it would be to scribble the backside of the paper with sketched-on pencil until it's relatively dark. Then flip the page back over and trace along the stencil lines. This should result in a transferred image onto the pumpkin.

3. Using a fine pumpkin-carving knife, start with the middle of the image first, carving away the darkened areas on the stencil, moving outward. TIP: You don't need to carve all the way into the pumpkin, just remove the orange outer skin and as much of the yellow as necessary to let light through.

4. Send a photo of your new jack-o'-lantern mailbag@tv.com! We'll post your best attempts!

Click here to get the download links.


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Bob's Burgers' First Halloween Episode: Mostly a Treat

Bob's Burgers S03E02: "Full Bars"

Bob's Burgers did its first Halloween-themed show tonight, joining the long history of Fox's animated series celebrating the holiday with a dedicated episode. As far as first forays into the tradition go, "Full Bars" was a solid one, even if I have some quibbles.

Teddy's "Black and Orange" party was where the episode stumbled a little bit. I love send-ups of the "murder investigations at a party" scenario, but I never felt like "Full Bars" committed to it all that well. There were good bits to be had—I liked Teddy comparing shoes to the deceased guinea pig Francis, and the realization that Teddy and Francis essentially had matching costumes cracked me up—but they never amounted to a satisfying whole.

The biggest fault may've been with the climax, or lack thereof. The decision to shift the blame to both Bob rolling all over Francis and Teddy spray-painting her left the whole event feeling sort of wasted, without much of a punchline. Everyone just wandered off, and then Linda recounted the tale to the kids when they arrived home.

But with that said, it wasn't that big of an issue in the long run since the rest of the episode was such a treat.

After being thwarted in their own neighborhood (receiving oyster crackers, order numbers at the deli, and seaweed candy from Mr. Frond), the kids took advantage of their first solo trick-or-treating excursion and decided to head across the bay to Kingshead Island, where the upper-class families live ("Rich people are better at Halloween." "And skin care!").

I think it's really to the show's credit that it didn't engage in some intense class-warfare comedy. The episode was defter than that, painting Kingshead Island as a more complicated place than just "where the rich people live." Milo and Ned's costumes weren't particularly inventive compared to the Belchers', and they even recognized Gene's masterful Queen Latifah costume (while failing to identify Tina as a mommy mummy). These weren't snobby kids. Even Bryce and his gang weren't concerned with the fact that the Belchers were from the mainland. They just saw some young kids out past the Halloween curfew, prime targets for the Hell Hunt ("IT'S HELEN HUNT!!!").

Most of the humor was actually mined from the Belchers' amazement at full-sized candy bars ("How did this not topple your economy?!"), and they even came off in a slightly poorer light than Milo or Ned after they took more than one candy bar from the Wagners' self-serve candy bowl. While this sort of thing could come off as mean-spirited, making fun of blue-collar kids, I feel like the show has earned these moments over the course of its brief run—the strength of the family, and its neighborhood, has routinely been connected to its lower economic rung. The kids were be a bit out of place, and it was ultimately their outsider status that allowed them to turn the tables on Bryce's gang.

So Bob's gave us a decent bag of candy for its first outing at Halloween, and hopefully it'll just be the first of many.

– "Maybe means maybe, Bob. It doesn't mean 'I'm too scared to say no.'"

– Specials board: The Jack-O-Lentil burger.

– "Right. Left. Kill. Kill." "You know it's a limp, Teddy."

– Bryce and his gang were so lame that they even made a tired The Warriors reference. Amanda was totally right to ignore him.

– "I can pee on myself. I don't need any handouts."

– Louise's slo-mo throw of Amanda's phone into her passing car and it missing? That's the sort of punchline that was missing from the Teddy's party plot.

– A quick programming note: Since it's October, that means it's time for the MLB postseason, and that means Fox's schedule gets a little wonky. There'll be no Bob's Burgers (or any Fox animated programming, for that matter) next Sunday, but it'll be back on Oct. 21.


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