As fans of the longtime hit sitcom Friends know, everyone’s favorite gang goes big for all sorts of holidays. It doesn’t matter if it’s Thanksgiving (remember that time when Monica put a turkey on her head), Christmas, New Year’s, or even Valentine’s Day, Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), Ross (David Schwimmer), Chandler (Matthew Perry), Monica (Courteney Cox), Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) and Joey (Matt LeBlanc) would celebrate them all.
That said, it must also be noted that Friends only ever featured Halloween once. And after all this time, it seems fans figured out why that was the case.
What Happened In ‘The One With The Halloween Party’?
The episode aired back in November 2001 during the series’ eighth season. As fans may recall, Monica and Chandler decided to throw a Halloween party. Later on, fans see Monica in a Catwoman suit and Phoebe as Superwoman. Meanwhile, a pregnant Rachel presents herself as “a woman who spent a lot of money on a dress, and she wants to wear it because soon she won't be able to fit into it.” As for the guys, Ross decides to dress up as “Spud-nik” while Chandler shows up as a pink bunny (it was Monica’s idea). On the other hand, Joey simply opts to show up as Chandler (which is genius).
Meanwhile, in the episode, Phoebe also runs into her twin sister, Ursula, and her fiancée Eric, who is portrayed by Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn. The One with the Halloween Party marks Penn’s first appearance in the series (he would go on to appear in another episode soon after) and it is believed that he agreed to do it due to a little family pressure. While speaking with Entertainment Weekly, the actor’s spokeswoman revealed that Friends “is must-see TV in the Penn house.” His children, Dylan and Hopper, are such huge fans of the show and in fact, Penn’s family has visited the set over the years. Meanwhile, the show’s producers are also huge fans of Penn. However, they decided not to approach him until they found the perfect role.
As always, the episode featured a lot of fun moments (and jokes). There’s that scene where Rachel hands out candy to trick-or-treaters (and gets in trouble later on). Meanwhile, there’s also the time when Ross and Chandler hold an arm-wrestling match after Monica and Phoebe which man would win in a fight. And of course, there’s that love triangle involving Phoebe, Ursula, and Eric. Generally, the Halloween episode was enjoyable to watch. However, fans believe it wasn’t as good as the other Friends episodes, especially the other holiday-centric ones.
Here’s Why Friends Only Celebrated Halloween Once, According To Fans
By the time Friends decided to do a Halloween episode, expectations were high. The show may have never done one in the past, but they’ve already done several holiday-centric episodes at this point. Hence, fans were looking forward to something truly spooktacular. However, viewers quickly realized that wasn’t exactly the case. For instance, while (most of) the cast did show up in costume, none of them showed up in anything scary. Hence, it looked more like a generic costume party than an actual Halloween party. At the same time, it seems that costumes shown in other holiday episodes looked better than the Halloween costumes (with the exception of Monica’s Catwoman suit, of course).
And while it was amusing to see Penn with Kudrow, fans weren’t exactly impressed with the storyline involving them, as one Reddit user pointed out. It just wasn’t as compelling as the ones that involved A-list guest stars Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, and Bruce Willis. At the same time, even people who worked on the show admitted that Penn’s guest appearance could have been improved. “I think the least successful one was Sean Penn on the show,” director Kevin S. Bright admitted during an interview with Metro.co.uk. He also pointed out that Penn wasn’t really used to doing episodic television (he mostly did films at that time). “Just the style of the production wasn’t what he was used to, doing a show like that, so there was a little deer in the headlight affect.” The story also takes over the actual Halloween party storyline.
Because of this, it's possible that the show opted to skip Halloween for the remainder of its run. In fact, seasons 9 and 10 focused on Thanksgiving and Christmas again instead. That said, the series’ air dates may have also factored into the lack of Halloween episodes. For instance, the show’s season 9 episode The One with Phoebe’s Birthday Dinner aired on October 31 and the next episode only aired a week later so it didn’t make sense to do a Halloween episode by then. Similarly, in season 10, the episode The One Where Rachel’s Sister Babysits was aired on October 30 and the next episode aired on November 6, which was no longer an appropriate date for a Halloween episode.
Meanwhile, despite the mixed feelings around the show’s only Halloween episode, Friends went on to become one of the most successful sitcoms in Hollywood. Never mind if they couldn’t be spooktacular, the gang had a lot going for them, as far as fans are concerned.