Review: Solar Opposites “Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special”

Overview:

It’s Halloween in Solar Opposites and the spookiest time of year comes with a heap of holiday headaches for the different members of the family. An attempt to usurp Randall’s role in the neighborhood as the head Halloween guy leads to a disturbing decoration that literally takes on a life of its own. While this curious corpse opens Korvo’s eyes to the complexities of Halloween, Yumyulack learns the value of this Pagan pastime through his own sordid circumstances. 

Boils and ghouls, you’re in for a treat with this one!

Our Take:

Solar Opposites set some very high standards with their previous Christmas-centric celebration, “A Very Solar Holiday Opposites Special.” It’d have been easy for Solar Opposites to continue with this tradition and check off more Yuletide traditions from a holiday checklist. Much to the series’ credit and its ability to mix up the status quo, Solar Opposites instead turns to Halloween and its many spooky touchstones this year. Furthermore, rather than an episode that adopts a similar structure to “A Very Solar Holiday Opposites Special,” this special instead presents a story that’s more character-driven and the result of the Solars’ contrasting personalities rather than an episode that finds most of its humor in holiday ephemera. It’s satisfying that Solar Opposites doesn’t repeat itself, but also that this special feels more connected to the proper season and not an isolated holiday installment. “Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special” focuses on a holiday that has less to prove and ends up with an episode of Solar Opposites that has much more to say. 

It may seem obvious in hindsight, but the Solars harbor such complicated feelings towards Halloween because it’s a holiday that involves dark fantasy magic, which inherently conflicts with the hard-boiled sci-fi shit that so often fuels the Solars’ trademark shenanigans. This in itself is an excellent foundation for an episode that finds the Solar family divided over this triggering time of year. Yumyulack and Korvo are Halloween’s greatest opposition, although Korvo’s reasons have a lot more to do with his fragile, frightened nature. However, Terry and Jesse, through some clever sex coupon boilerplate manipulation, finagle their way into a lone Halloween decoration, which goes on to spawn a season’s worth of storylines. This Solar schism is consistently entertaining, but it’s really fun to get a dedicated Jesse and Terry storyline, which have been few and far between over the course of the series. 

While the rest of the Solars publicly vent their mixed feelings over Halloween, Yumyulack finds himself at death’s door and trapped within the bowels of damnation. There’s so much that Solar Opposites could do with any of its characters going to hell, but “Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special” decides to make Yumyulack’s stay in a fiery purgatory a clever distillation of his central gripe with the holiday. Leave it to Solar Opposites to turn eternal damnation into a fiery debate about genre. In fact, “Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special” is scripted by May Darmon, in her very first episode of Solar Opposites, but at no point does she feel overwhelmed or out of touch here in the slightest. 

It’s very entertaining as Yumyulack brags about the wonders of the universe and how they’re far more alienating than any hell-based horror stories. Casual conversations are had between an alien and hell’s greatest monsters and the episode’s ability to undercut these horrific sights only heightens Yumyulack’s spiteful tirade against this Pagan holiday. This cataclysmic exercise just leaves him more convinced that science trumps fantasy. 

Even after appearances from a Necro-Kraken and a multitude of hybrid hell beasts, sci-fi still remains the sexiest of genres by the time that the credits roll. Aesthetically, “Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special” looks gorgeous with its black-and-white stylistic approach for the afterlife (take that, Thor: Love and Thunder). The John Carpenter-esque score during the episode’s spookier sequences, as well as the decorations and attention to Halloween details are also appreciated. It’s also cute that the Pupa is the only one who cares about, or notices, that Yumyulack has died and gone to hell. Everyone is instead consumed over their Cryptkeeper sorrow.

On that note, it’s hardly brilliant writing to have Tales From the Crypt’s Cryptkeeper spout out a dozen disconnected pun-filled horror introductions, but it’s oddly fulfilling material. This silly joke is made all the better by the fact that John Kassir is actually the one who voices the Cryptkeeper, which adds a gleeful level of authenticity to this mayhem. It’s hard for any Tales From the Crypt fan to not cackle over every line that this reanimated corpse delivers. He even gets to provide his own morbid lyrics to a Smash Mouth hit. All of these Cryptkeeper shenanigans give “Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special” a fairly casual vibe, but the final act properly turns up the heat with a series of macabre events that run through a number of justified horror genre tropes. It’s entertaining to see Korvo get wrapped up in several spooky stereotypes as he attempts to blissfully ignore all of the haunting symbols that are around him.

Korvo’s reversal of his “Halloween Humbug” ways as he embraces a Great Pumpkin-led existence makes for a satisfying conclusion to his indefinite stay as a hostage. The Great Pumpkin actually preaches a sincere message about how Halloween helps humanity purge themselves of the things that they fear as a way to better remind themselves of what it means to really be alive. The saccharine nature of this Great Pumpkin epiphany feels as if it’s continually on the cusp of heading down a dark path, but it works in the episode’s favor that the Great Pumpkin maintains its purity. It’s more satisfying to see Korvo genuinely learn a lesson (despite the “clean slate” nature of these characters) than to have this sweet icon subvert his message through some scary, but thin, visuals. The Great Pumpkin’s soothing mantra elegantly dovetails together with the Cryptkeeper’s own patented means of storytelling, all of which actually wrap up this bonkers corpse-filled tale in a satisfying manner that’s also extremely fitting to the holiday.

“Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special” is another seasonal triumph from Solar Opposites that proves that they can likely turn any holiday into a satisfying celebration of comedy. Much like with last year’s Christmas special, Solar Opposites wouldn’t be remiss to return to more Halloween stories, but the success of this entry only makes it more likely that next year will turn to Valentine’s Day, the 4th of July, or Thanksgiving for inspiration. There’s a whole calendar of misadventures for these aliens to get into.