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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: October 26, 2011
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: American Horror Story: Murder House, “Halloween (Part 1)” (Season 1, Episode 4) [Watch on Netflix]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Believe it or not, there was a time when we didn’t have American Horror Story every fall to freak us out (and, speaking for every working entertainment journalist out there, give us excuses to write articles about its controversial nature). True to its form as TV’s preeminent example of more-is-more entertainment, American Horror Story always manages to get even more horrific for its Halloween-themed episodes. They’re kind of events unto themselves, multi-part arcs that tend to place a ghost story within the ghost story that is the season itself.
This all kicked off in the show’s very first season, set at the murder house in L.A. In the two-part episode, the dead were able to walk among the living, which meant the ghosts that populated the show were able to escape the grounds of the titular house. More than any other season, Murder House was a ghost story. As viewers watched the season unfold, questions about who was dead and who wasn’t would continue to present themselves, but the “Halloween” episodes gave those questions a foundation in the narrative. Suddenly, there were rules about how ghosts could operate.
Many of the mysteries of the first third of the season got unraveled in these episodes; in particular the back-stories of the Zachary Quinto/Teddy Sears couple and the sad, horrifying history of Lily Rabe and Matt Ross’s characters that gave birth to the house’s malevolent nature in the first place.
In later seasons, the Halloween episodes would begin to feel a bit more like one-offs. The Wes Bentley arc in Freak Show was so removed from the story’s narrative as to be without consequence. But the Halloween-night happenings at the murder house would reverberate throughout the rest of the season — particularly the fate of poor Addie — making it the series’ strongest Halloween outing of them all.
[You can watch the “Halloween (Part 1)” episode of American Horror Story on Netflix]
Joe Reid (@joereid) is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. You can find him leaving flowers for Mrs. Landingham at the corner of 18th and Potomac.
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