nothing screams more this season to me than the grim adventures of billy and mandy an absurdist
cartoon from the mind of maxwell adams starring a boy a girl and the grim freaking reaper who is
now stuck under their command that's one game of limbo he'll surely never forget one thing
i'll never forget is fred fredberger and that this is the show that gave us this beautiful creation
he just wanted some nachos oh yeah and some frozen yogurt but today i not only wanted to
show my love for this show but tis the spirit of the season discuss the halloween special
billy and mandy's jacked up halloween this episode is pretty rad overall and any excuse i have to
discuss halloween related anything within cartoons and tv shows you bet your sweet bippy i will
i will say rewatching this halloween special for the first time in quite a while reminded me of how
much this show got away with in the early 2000s as well as why i think it has left such an impact as
a halloween special in a show that already got away with so much in it the episode starts out
with billy watching what seems like a spoof of the texas chainsaw massacre but it turns out to
just be a commercial which is more terrifying mandy and grimm show up at the door as hamlet
holding the skull while billy grabs grim's scythe to be the grim reaper for halloween before they
head out to trick-or-treat they stopped by irwin's who has a running costume changing gag throughout
the episode first being sleeping beauty all is an attempt to woo over mandy she tells him to change
into something scary and they they just ditch him right after promising that they'd wait we also see
how obsessed he is with mandy and honestly he rivals helga's obsession of arnold without irwin
they all start their trick-or-treat adventures first stopping at a house of an old lady who
doesn't want to give out her candy to any kid so i guess that means the mean lady gets herself a
trick mandy super glues her welcome mat and tricks her to come back outside making her get stuck on
the mat and then spraying her with a fire hydrant so mandy leads everyone into her house and they
literally just rob her of all her miscellaneous holiday candy like there was valentine's day
themed candy and christmas themed candy either she just hoards the candy or got a super great deal on
it all after the holidays sorry that's just the smart shopper and me thinking trust me buy your
halloween candy on discount after halloween while enjoying their stolen candy billy wants to know
why people can be tricked on halloween so grimm tells the tale of a guy named jack who like to
play tricks on everyone in town usually going a bit too overboard with it properly pissing
off everyone in the town who were now sick of his antics one night the town comes together to
send the queen a gift in the name of jack that turns out to be a prank on her to frame him
so the queen just just kills jack i'm not i'm not even joking we see blood spilt and everything
this isn't an adult swim show cartoon network no wonder my generation has so many sleepless nights
not the taxes or the debts or any of that it's because of you
billy and mandy and by extension i raise you in vader zim i'll never forget the organ harvesting
how thrilling
so much for freezing anyway grimm while doing his job as the grim reaper visits jack to come
take him away as we see an axe stuck in his back yeah again this dude is dead but jack gets the
upper hand by using his trickster ways to take the scythe from grimm now making a deal between
them for grim to get his scythe back and for jack to have eternal life but grimm doesn't always cow
tale to everyone except to billy and mandy he's essentially their ... so grimm cuts off jack's
head which leads his eternal life-filled headless body to place a pumpkin upon it thus becoming
an alive dead dude with a pumpkin on his head fine jack-o'-lantern which did he get his name
after putting on the pumpkin or was his name jack-o-lantern beforehand or should i say before
head oh brother this guy stinks now throughout the years he has been trapped within endsville as time
and technology grows around his home trapped in time only ever coming out during halloween to pull
tricks on unsuspecting townsfolk irwin shows back up as a turtle well not just any turtle a female
indonesian red black sea turtle with mandy still displeased she sends him back to change once more
and billy and mandy split up for trick-or-treating after that of course though billy ends up at the
exact house of jack and right off the bat we see how annoyed jack is with billy's antics
also no stranger here to cartoons we've spoken on before but jack is voiced by wayne knight which i
must say fits really well for the character design of jack i just personally think he looks really
cool and i truly dig the character once jack takes note of the scythe being the real scythe
of the grim reaper he tricks billy into taking the site for himself as he sees an opportunity
not only for tricks but for revenge on the entity that trapped him in this life billy just sees him
as a friend to go trick-or-treating with it first and just tags along but jack first uses the powers
of the scythe to summon friends from the afterlife back to the mortal realm chaos will reign chaos
these spirits inhabit the pumpkins within the pumpkin patch creating an army of ghost pumpkins
or demon pumpkins or whatever you want to call them i don't know it's your life quickly the city
gets taken over by pumpkins jack reigns supreme with billy on his side who's just excited to have
halloween never end ah billy never change jack wants more than this though he wants to take the
fight to grimm and get revenge upon him back over with mandy and grim irwin shows up again
as a banana just continuing his rip-offs of hey arnold not cool my dude but swiftly jack and billy
show up as jack captures grim and takes him away now holding him hostage we hear him spilling his
grievances with grim all while spinning the scythe way too close to billy's head but we do know that
grimm's head can come off no problem but the power his scythe holds can detach it permanently
upping the true threat of the power jack now holds billy walks off as he loses interest to the whole
situation and then shortly realizes that grimm is actually in real danger and runs out for help
at the same time mandy begins making her way to where grim was taken irwin is little bo
peep for a second still not impressing mandy and then billy runs into mandy and explains
what is going on causing mandy to go full commando mode with her own bag of
tricks to fight back against jack billy being used as a distraction
well distracts jack with his uh posterior while mandy lays a bunch of trap pranks for jack but
jack is too smart to fall for that so easily and he foils mandy's plans until a knight in shining
armor shows up scaring jack until it's revealed to be irwin once again in a new costume but now
stumbling and falling into every laid trap that mandy had put all the pumpkin spirits in jack
burst out until after so hard that the pumpkins begin exploding due to dying of laughter as they
now head back to the afterlife mandy sees an opportunity to reclaim the scythe going sicko
mode on some remaining pumpkins and thus returning the scythe to grim who sets free jack into the
afterlife ending his eternal life but that's not how we end the episode oh no no no we actually
then panned down to the underworld you know censors as jack is still pulling tricks on the
ghouls and monsters working and living down there and they clearly aren't having any of that either
i won't claim this being the darkest thing i've ever seen in a cartoon i'm sure i can come up with
a laundry list of more far worse than this but even for billy and mandy's sake not only seeing
blood death the fiery inferno down below all in a show i watched as a kid did leave a long
enough impact on me all these years later sure it's within the season and spirit of halloween
to get darker and creepier and all that but can that be done today on daytime kids television
that all being said i'd love this episode i mentioned how cool jack was as a character
but when it comes to halloween specials and cartoons this one is high on my list for how
i used the holiday as a catalyst to tell a fun tale of revenge with fun and interesting visuals
while still keeping the zany out there humor the show was known for blending comedy and horror
can be hit or miss depending on how it's used and executed and here is a perfect example of telling
a story that may not seem the most original but using the playground of characters in their own
unique way to tell the story i feel too many halloween specials try to just be spooky or
use the holiday in a generic way to have a holiday themed episode here thankfully billy and mandy use
the way the world and their show works to the storytelling's advantage culminating in why i
think this is a top tier halloween special it also fills up the full 22 minute run time rather than
usually having two 11 minute segments which with how fast-paced the episodes usually are gave it
that time to breathe to not feel rushed going up against an allotted amount of time if you've never
seen this halloween special i highly recommend checking it out i have personally re-added this
special to my yearly october must-watch list and i am kicking myself for not having it on
there for so long now you remember back when all these cartoons had web-based video games
on their respective network sites i mean maybe they still do today but i don't have time to find
out listen either you get content or i play video games by myself your choice but like i was saying
there were two cartoon network video games based off this halloween special infernal candy where in
which you just trick or treat and scare adults who don't give you candy then there is harem scarum
a 2d platformer where you traverse several levels to face down jack o'lantern himself at the end and
for this one specifically i recall playing quite a bit back when it first came out this special
episode hey the whole series in general was such a surreal trip into pure chaos i find it hard to
describe what this show is and i think that's why i love it in the same era we had shows like
ed nettie that would also bring a similar nature of attitude just on cartoon network alone they
just complimented each other so well in my opinion and each stood out on their own but they had this
energy about them this visceral attachment that i couldn't take my attention away from plus we got
fred fredberger and that's all the world ever needed but i wasn't finished i appreciate you
checking out this video and rocking with me for a little bit today let me know your thoughts on this
halloween special as well as the show in general make sure to hit the like button and subscribe for
more content like this follow me on twitter for updates on content live streams and more i got
a few extra spooky related videos for the end of the month coming out but until then later
you