Forget ‘Scream,’ This Beloved ‘90s Sitcom Has a Near-Perfect 23-Minute Slasher

On paper, it sounds like it could belong in one of the Scream movies: while stuck in detention and abandoned by their teacher, a group of teenagers wander about their eerily quiet high school after hours and gets picked off one by one by a mysterious masked killer. It isn’t an underappreciated horror gem, though — it’s an episode of a sitcom. ABC’s Boy Meets World unexpectedly put out one of television’s best Halloween episodes with Season 5’s “And Then There Was Shawn,” a surprisingly effective slasher homage that deserves a spot in your Halloween rotation.

Okay, it’s important to address something. So, “And Then There Was Shawn” isn’t technically a Halloween episode — it aired in February of ’98 — but these are just minor details: the episode is very much Halloween in spirit, with enough spooky flourishes to make it a crucial inclusion in your regular October rotation. While the series did produce some “legitimate” Halloween episodes, one titled “The Witches of Pennbrook” and another called “Who’s Afraid of Cory Wolf,” “And Then There Was Shawn” is the best of the bunch and arguably the best episode of the entire series. When watched in retrospect, some late October evening, it just feels right. It fits. The episode is as Halloween-y as they come, with its fair share of horror film references and a pack of legitimate scares.

‘Boy Meets World’ Turns Detention Into a ‘Scream’-Inspired Nightmare

It begins like any other episode of the series: after a classroom disturbance, the gang finds itself in detention under the wrath of Mr. Feeny (William Daniels). This is season five, remember, so a major plotline revolves around Cory (Ben Savage) and Topanga (Danielle Fishel) having broken up, much to Shawn’s (Rider Strong) dismay. Just a few minutes into the episode, things start to shift gears and swerve into slasher territory. Feeny leaves the classroom, locking the doors behind him. A ghoulish janitor (played by an uncredited extra whose identity remains a mystery) appears in the doorway, smiling that creepy breed of smile that few can master. The lights flicker off, and when they turn back on, “NO ONE GETS OUT ALIVE” has been written on the chalkboard—in blood. “I don’t think it’s because he ran out of chalk,” quips Angela (Trina McGee-Davis).

Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.

Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.

• He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
• Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
• The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
• You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.

Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.

• But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
• Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
• Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
• You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.

Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.

• You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
• The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
• Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
• Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.

Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.

• The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
• You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
• That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
• It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.

Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.

• You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
• Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
• Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
• Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.

What’s so impressive about this episode is how effortlessly it merges its indulgence in the ’90s horror aesthetic with its established comedic formula. It’s never a straight-up parody, and while it shares plenty of DNA with 1996’s Scream, it never riffs on any one particular film. Instead, it indulges in some of the aspects that make horror movies so damn fun by toying with slasher tropes, such as the fact that virgins never die (Shawn admits that he’ll get “as sick as you can get without actually dying”), the inclusion of a silent creepy janitor, and the unexpected discovery of freshly-slain corpses.

There’s also Kenny (Richard Lee Jackson), a guest character who only appears in this episode, and whose sole purpose is to serve as the killer’s first victim, much akin to slasher films’ tendency to kill off lesser-known actors first. The episode plays hilariously off this fact, with Shawn repeatedly referencing his extensive knowledge of horror films to state that Kenny, not being a primary character, will obviously be the first to die. When he inevitably is (death by pencil), all bets are off, and the episode goes into wonderfully uncharted territory.

Why ‘Boy Meets World’ Is Scarier Than Your Average Halloween Special

• Image via ABC

• Image via ABC

• Image via ABC

• Image via ABC

• Image via ABC

• Image via ABC

• Image via ABC

• Image via ABC

• Image via ABC

• Image via ABC

For being an episode of a teen sitcom aired on primetime television in the ’90s, “And Then There Was Shawn” is a hell of a lot scarier than it ever needed to be. Even if the deaths are generally absurd — it is still a sitcom, after all, and comedy is still the goal—there was something kind of terrifying about watching our beloved characters under threat from a deranged killer. When the characters are killed off in increasingly creative ways, it’s hard not to imagine the excessive flashes of blood that the R-rated slashers use as their bread and butter. Even if this episode is comparatively tame, with the kills being TV-appropriate, it’s still considerably scarier than any sitcom Halloween special airing before or since. When, lights flickering, a voice sings in a carnivalesque melody over the loudspeakers, “Here’s a knife, here’s a gun/there’ll be fun for everyone/Death is on the menu to-niiiiiiiight”, it’s both catchy and legitimately spooky.

Throughout its entire run, Boy Meets World provided sharply written scripts and a particularly talented cast, and few episodes prove this as much as “And Then There Was Shawn.” Written by Jeff Menell, a horror film addict who spent time as a film critic for The Hollywood Reporter before writing for Boy Meets World, Menell used his passion for slashers by making a smart, faithful homage that pulls from a pool of knowledge of the genre. The episode not only teases such movies, but also respectfully follows the trail that they left behind. As Shawn calmly explains to his friends, there are rules to the horror world that must be abided by, and this episode knows its best not to upset these unwritten codes. There are the untouchable and amorous virgins (Cory and Topanga), the wise-cracking slacker (Eric), the charming side-man (Shawn), and the scream girl (Angela).

‘Boy Meets World’ Pays Homage to ‘Scream’ and ’90s Horror Movies

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    Image via Dimension Films</figure>

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