2024-08-24 modern family S02E04 Halloween
Posted on August 24, 2024 • 5 minutes • 887 words
Sitcoms have holiday specials. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween are the three biggest holidays, Besides these, Valentine’s Day is another major holiday that is commonly portrayed in sitcom storylines. Those are four main holidays.
The first season has a Christmas Special. The second season will feature a Halloween Special.
Halloween is celebrated on October 31st and it has various traditions, such as trick-or-treat. On Halloween, children will go to people’s doors and say “trick or treat”. The homeowners can either give them candy or they will play a trick on them.
The night before Halloween is known as “mischief night”. On mischief night, people will use toilet paper to “teepee” someone’s house. They will throw the toilet paper over the house, and it unfurls to cover the entire house, making it look like a teepee. This is a common prank that is played on mischief night.
Another prank on mischief night is egging someone’s house. People will throw eggs at someone’s house, and the eggs will splatter all over the house. This is more annoying because the egg will leave a bad smell the next day.
In this episode, it is still early on Halloween, which is Claire’s favorite holiday, unlike Christmas or Thanksgiving.
They have a huge setup for Halloween. There is candy on the table, and Luke wants to eat some. Haley is wearing a very inappropriate costume. They are preparing for the “House of Horrors” theme party.
The “House of Horrors” theme is very common. The idea is to create a haunted house with strange and scary things that will frighten people.
Usually, people don’t let others into their house. They just welcome the trick-or-treaters at the door, give them some candy, and then close the door. But Claire takes it to the next level. Since they live in the suburbs, which are typically very safe. She lets people come inside the house.
Everyone needs to think of a costume for the “House of Horrors” party. Luke and Manny came up with something together. Alex is kind of nerd, she’s very serious and thinks the costume is childish, so she doesn’t really prepare anything. Claire tells Alex that she can’t just slap something together at the last minute. She suggests that Alex should spend half as much time on the costume as she does on her homework, which is ironic since it is usually the other way around. Alex’s response is also funny. She reminds Claire that she has one child who’s not mediocre.
Then Haley walks in. She’s wearing a revealing “black cat” costume.
In the western culture, the Black cat is not just a cat. It’s a superstitious symbol associated with witches and bad luck.
A witch is believed to be able to shapeshift into a black cat. The black cat is considered unlucky omen, stemming from the Black Death in Europe centuries ago.
During the Black Death, over a third of European population died from the disease. With so many people dying, the dead bodies were simply left on the streets. A horse-drawn wagon would come by to collect the bodies. At the back of the wagon stands a a person wearing a heavy cloak and a mask, wielding a hook to drag the bodies onto the carriage. This person is known as the Grim Reaper.
Because of the widespread death, people begin to suspect that witches are responsible for bringing the plague. And since witches are believed to be able to transform into black cats, this leads to the superstition that black cats are bad luck.
In the western popular culture, cats are often seen sexy and elegant. Many teenagers, especially in high school, are becoming more interested in dressing in a more mature and womanly fashion. Haley is 17 so she’s basically an adult so she wants to appear more womanly.
As a result, in High school, Halloween is basically viewed as an excuse or opportunity for girls to wear very tight, very revealing, very inappropriate clothing. Teenagers push boundaries as they transition into adulthood, and this is part of learning process of know what to do and what not to do.
In the given scenario, Claire tells her daughter to go change because it’s too revealing. Claire’s perspective on this is based on her own persoanl experience, as she has definitely dressed up as a sexy black cat before and she’s got this treatment before. So over here, she’s trying to teach her daughter a wiser choice and don’t be a black cat.
Then Claires calls her Dad Jay. Jay jokingly pretends not to know about the party, teasing Claire. Claire gets angry, then Jay says, calm down, Morticia. Morticia is from a famous television series, the Addams Family, where Morticia’s favorite holiday is also Halloween.
This type of humor is known as “reference humor”.
Phil just found out about his neighbor’s divorce.
In light of this, Phils would probably become very introspective and clingy.
Knowing Claire, she would probably be pretty indifferent, especially since she’s got her hands full with the holiday panning.
The situation really hit him hard, so Phil didn’t end up helping Claire much with her prep. When the evening finally arrives, each member of the family is so self absorbed in their own petty squabbles that the House of Horrors turns into a big chaos.