"Halloween"
page 1
This episode originally aired October 31, 1998, and it is so far the most extended comedic role of hers that I've seen. She's played comedic scenes (Ernest Saves Christmas, Sisters), balanced with drama, appeared in sitcoms (none of which I've seen and are difficult to obtain), and had brief cameos with a single punchline (Seven Minutes in Heaven). This one lasts a full hour.
In "Halloween", she teams up with actress Jennifer Blanc, to portray two "impractical" witches who are closer to Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz, than Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman.
What if you knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what was going to happen tomorrow.
What would you do?
There is no easy answer
for a guy who gets tomorrow's newspaper
today.
Gary Hobson (played by Kyle Chandler), is a "master of the universe," a stockbroker whose expertise is predicting the future of economic trends, based on a close analysis of, among other sources, the morning paper. His powers fail him when he loses his job, then his wife walks out on him. Life seems to have no purpose until he notices an orange tabby, a neighborhood stray apparently, standing guard over his copy of the Chicago Sun-Times one morning. The stories on the front page seem odd until he realizes they're one day ahead. The only explanation given him is a cryptic note that says: "Live your life." What this all means is unclear, but as he finds the entire future now placed in his hands, betting on the stock market takes a back seat to helping the lives of the people he reads about each day.
It takes a while for him to appreciate this, however. Each morning, he reluctantly greets the cat named "Cat", and goes through the headlines for the day's work ahead. Although he secretly wishes to find the cat gone one day (and the paper with it), he feeds him breakfast anyway. And you know what happens when you feed a stray: they always come back!
Usually, when Gary tries to save the day, he can't reveal his special paper, so he tries to present himself as an ignorant bystander who gets lucky at just the right moment, like pushing someone out of the way of a falling piano. People are too stunned to question how he got there, and he leaves quickly before anyone can get suspicious. "Halloween" begins with an idyllic example of this:
"Some days, everything seems to go right..."
"Things fall into place, no rush, no complications..."
"Everything's the way you expect it... "
As the billionaire,distracted by his paper, blindly reaches for a strawberry from the fruit plate, Gary smoothly whips it out of his reach, and whispers into the waitress's ear:
"He's allergic to strawberries." She nods, no doubt thinking he's an aide, and takes it away unsuspectingly.
This fortells the plot, and introduces eating as its dominant motif.
"Some days you can wake up late, get in a jog before breakfast, save the nation from economic ruin..."
"and still be home before the bad weather hits.
Like I said, some days it all goes like...magic!"
Next
