And Then There Was That Boy Meets World Halloween Episode...

I have no idea what the first horror movie I ever saw was; I’m not even good at pretending like I know, but one of the most standout horror-comedy themes my life has seen has to be the “Boy Meets World” slasher parody episode from season five. To this day, “And Then There Was Shawn” is among the finest examples of everything horror parodies could do right in television.

Arguably the best of the show’s seven season run, this iconic Halloween episode is infused with a myriad of throwback references to the height of the ‘90s slasher film craze – namely the critical darling “Scream” (1996) and the less critically acclaimed but commercially successful “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (1997).

Also incorporating a nod to “The Usual Suspects” (1995), there are even some made up references thrown into the mix, like “Blood in the Showers” and “Killer, Killer, You’re the Killer and I Know You’re Going to Tell Me You’re Not.” And of course, the episode’s title derives from the 1939 Agatha Christie book “And Then There Were None.”

The episode starts off with the gang in detention in Feeny’s (William Daniel) classroom. Cory (Ben Savage) and Topanga (Danielle Fishel) have recently broken up, and the only one who seems to be having a harder time with it than the two of them is Shawn (Rider Strong). They soon discover they’re locked in the classroom after Feeny leaves and the sinister message “No one gets out alive” is written in blood on the chalkboard.

Each person embodies a slasher stereotype to follow the formula a classic horror movie demands: Shawn is suddenly a horror movie buff, scream queen Angela (Trina McGee) and Cory and Topanga as the final guy/girl. Eric (Will Friedle) and Jack (Matthew Lawrence) also show up, and there’s a kid named Kenny (Richard Lee Jackson) who’s the first to die, because, “Well Kenny, it’s certainly not going to be any of us,” Cory reasons.

There is clearly a menacing force at work that no one has seen, yet people are still going down one by one; Kenny indeed being the first. Things get real when Feeny dies after him, which poses even more of a problem since they were all initially convinced that he was the one behind everything.

‘90s rising star Jennifer Love Hewitt is also featured as transfer student Jennifer Love Fefferman. She portrays Eric’s love interest for about five seconds before she too is offed by the mystery killer at large. After all nothing says commitment to a slasher parody like getting J. Love to make a guest appearance on your show and spoofing of her own character in “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”

As any casual viewer of this show would know, there is usually some sort of life lesson at the end of each episode and you know this one is no exception! The end reveals the true degree of Shawn’s inability to deal with the end of Cory and Topanga’s relationship, perhaps because this was one of the only constants he’d ever known. Oh yeah, and the killer is actually Shawn, because we’re way past spoilers now.

Time has not been kind to most ‘90s shows (I’m looking at you “Beverly Hills, 90210,” and I say that with the most love) but it feels like this episode just gets better with time. BMW hadn’t quite hit its stride when it was still airing on the TGIF lineup, but fortunes change. Thanks to syndication, the show hit something of a revival after its season finale in 2000. And now, nearly two decades later, “And Then There Was Shawn” still takes me right back to feeling like a child again. Maybe I’m still too young to be nostalgic, but watching this episode is like the brilliance of VHS: you can stop a movie, put it on the shelf, come back six years later and pick up right where you left off. If that’s not love then I don’t know what is.