Streaming is killing the Halloween episode and I won’t stand for it

polygon.com:

Halloween meant one thing and one thing only in my childhood home: The Angry Beavers. That is to say, the overlooked Nicktoon’s one and only two-part episode, “The Day the World Got Really Screwed Up,” in which the beaver brothers go trick-or-treating and wind up at the home of their favorite B-movie actor, Oxnard Montalvo, whereupon an alien attacks and an actual B-movie plot occurs.

I really cannot understate the extent to which this episode rewired my family’s collective brain. One could not prep for trick-or-treaters without enunciating “But—! Where’s the cAAndé??” in the delightfully dramatic pronunciation of Richard Steven Horvitz’s Daggett D. Beaver. It was all thanks to the humble Halloween special, a magical time of year a television season when we get to go to a costume party with our fictional friends, and we don’t have to scramble to put our own outfits together.

And in the name of minor joys and silly costumes, we can’t let streaming distribution kill the Halloween special.

If you have a favorite Halloween episode, it’s more likely than not that it’s from a sitcom like The Office, a cartoon like The Angry Beavers, or kids programming like The Adventures of Pete & Pete. But they’re not just a staple of kids and comedy TV! The Halloween episode has also been embraced by dramas like Grey’s Anatomy, action classics like MacGyver, procedurals like CSI, teen soaps like Dawson’s Creek, and genre fare like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

And while these shows go way back, there are plenty of modern series dedicated to the Halloween special, notably Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Abbott Elementary, and Bob’s Burgers. But shows dedicated to holiday episodes all have one thing notably in common: They’re network productions on a