Buffy The Vampire Slayer

#7: Angel: "Life of the Party" (10/29/03)

Although Lorne was featured heavily in the finale of Season 2, and remained a fixture on the series ever since, Season 5 added new depth to a character that was often used primarily for comic relief. It was a chance for Andy Hallet, the actor who played him, to stretch his muscles into some new territory. The episode "Life of the Party" was one of Lorne’s best and serves as a supernatural metaphor for the office Halloween party gone awry.

The episode (from writer Ben Edlund) is a great mix of funny and scary and is filled with character revelations. As for Halloween, if you want lots of ghouls, goblins, and demons - Angel often delivers and this episode offers up an extra helping. There’s the demonic manifestation of Lorne’s emotions, the demon who carries about a pet gimp, and Devlin, the demon who comes to the party as a "human being" by wearing a sweater and what appears to be someone’s face.

#4: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "Halloween" (10/27/97)

Over its seven year run Buffy would do three different Halloween episodes, but it was this one, their first, that made the biggest impact. It’s Halloween in Sunnydale, and considering it’s a town with quite a big demon and vampire problem, you’d expect things to be worse than ever. But as it turns out, real demons reject Halloween and stay away. So all seems like it will be well, until suddenly, everyone in town starts transforming into their costumes.

This affects our heroes in a big way: Xander goes from a dork to a highly trained (and heavily armed) soldier and Buffy — wearing a costume she thought Angel would be attracted to — goes from tough warrior to meek maiden, which causes quite a dilemma as the episode progresses. Willow’s transformation is more abstract, though fascinating - dressed in a sheet, as a ghost, she finds herself a literal ghost, who steps right through the sheet, and in the process shows off, like it or not, the very revealing outfit she chickened out of wearing earlier. Meanwhile the town is overrun by all sorts of ghouls, goblins and other scaries, though most of them quite small in stature - After all, the majority of people wearing costumes on Halloween are kids.

A fun and clever installment, "Halloween" also scores points for being an important early episode for supporting character Giles. It is here that we first meet someone from Giles’ past, the nefarious Ethan Rayne, who turns out to be behind the transformations afflicting the town. When Giles confronts Ethan, he shows that he has been hiding a tough and formidable persona and the physical ability to back it up, that is nothing like we’ve seen before.