THE WITCHES OF PENNBROOK

Boy Meets World

Season 5 (1997)

This Halloween episode of Boy Meets World is a TGIF crossover bonanza—it’s Boy Meets World meets Full House meets Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.  Despite being a child of the 90s, I am only a fan of one of the three shows represented.  While my love of Sabrina is well documented, I always found Full House a bit too saccharine and stupid, even judging by sitcom standards.  As for Boy Meets World, I also found it saccharine and stupid (and rather boring) but my main reason for disliking it is that during my tweens and teens (and even sometimes now) people told me I looked like the show’s lead actor, Ben Savage.  I never took this as a compliment (nor do I think it was ever particularly intended as one) so I’ve always had a somewhat antagonistic relationship with the titular “Boy.”

That being said, I did occasionally tune in over the years and I actually enjoy some of the show’s holiday episodes.  I vaguely remember watching “The Witches of Pennbrook," which actually aired on Halloween night in 1997.  It’s interesting for a couple of reasons.  For starters, it adds a witchcraft/fantasy element to a show that otherwise reveled in its ordinariness. But more importantly it features Full House actress Candace Cameron playing a witch, and, even better, Melissa Joan Hart in character as Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

The plot is your basic “guy gets new girlfriend who comes between guy and his bromantic roommate and then girl turns out to be witch looking to sacrifice them both on Halloween night to unleash a portal to Hell.”  The two guys in question are Eric and Jack, who in the show’s later season shared an apartment together.  Main characters Cory and Topanaga are given a super lame B-story about flying together in a small plane with an idiot pilot. 

The witchy new girlfriend is played by the aforementioned Candace Cameron and man, is she terrible in this.  Her acting is DREADful.  I don’t know if she was this consistently bad on Full House as well but in this episode she delivers her line in a bizarrely stilted, declaratory manner that is extremely off-putting.  I know she’s now (or always was?) a crazy Christian, along with her homophobe brother Kirk Cameron, so I wonder if she regrets playing a Satan-worshipping witch on primetime TV.  However she should be more embarrassed by her terrible acting.

Even though the episode’s finale takes place during a Halloween night party put on by Cameron and her coven, it's overall rather lacking in Halloween cheer.  We get just one true Halloween scene when Eric visits Mr. Feeny for advice (because Feeny holds ALL the answers and is by far my favorite character on this show, mostly because he spends his time being annoyed by all of the other characters.).  In the scene Feeny is handing out thesauruses to some trick-or-treaters.  It’s a cute moment but sadly short-lived. 

Once the witchy antics are over and the roomies have returned to their normal homosocial dynamic, we finally get our scene with Sabrina.  Eric, relieved to be rid of witchcraft, reveals that his new girlfriend is Sabrina Spellman.  And oh yeah, it’s also revealed that post-coven encounter Shawn is apparently now a talking frog?!  This episode really is a glorious mess.

If I have the strength I’ll do a post about the recent Halloween episode of Boy Meets World spin-off Girl Meets World that Nick made me watch.  It makes this episode seems like high art in comparison…

Halloween Quotient: Despite lots of witchcraft and witches, actual Halloween fun is scarce, earning this a 2.

See It, Skip It, Own It?

Fun to watch for the 90s sitcom nostalgia factor, but ultimately skippable due to the low Halloween quotient.