LITTLE ROCK — Since Halloween falls on a Wednesday this year, TV has to cram all its Halloween-theme programs into a narrow window of opportunity.
Broadcast a Halloween show too early and viewers aren't in the mood. Air it on, say, Thursday and it's old news. We move on to Christmas-theme programs starting Nov. 1.
I think TV has gotten to the point of skipping Thanksgiving programming. It's straight to the hard sell of Christmas gift-giving.
But if our neighborhood is any barometer, Halloween is enjoying a comeback. Those large, inflatable yard pumpkins and ghost decorations have popped up like mushrooms. Lots of folks have sheet spooks hanging from the trees and giant spider webs strung across their porches.
Maybe the decorations are getting cheaper. At any rate, there are about a dozen kids between the ages of 6 and 10 within sight of our house, so we expect one, maybe two group runs on the candy jar before it tapers off to the isolated Ninja Turtle or Little Mermaid with Dad standing out at the end of the driveway.
Meanwhile, try to soak up the spirit (no pun) of Halloween with a few choice programs while you can.
Tuesday:
At 6 p.m. Nickelodeon presents Roxy Hunter and the Mystery of the Moody Ghost. Roxy (Aria Wallace) is a precocious 9-year-old who has moved into a spooky old house in sleepy Serenity Falls with her widowed mother and family friend,Max (Demetrius Joyette).
Max is an 11-year-old boy genius.
As with most 9-year-olds, Roxy has a vivid imagination and fancies herself something of a detective. Soon she uncovers an unsolved mystery that could destroy her new home.
There's crimesolving and the quest to reunite a lost love from ... beyond the grave.
We can assume there's also a ghost and it's moody.
The king of all Halloween special programs repeats at 7 p.m. Tuesday on ABC. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown has been an annual crowd favorite since 1966.
I, too, feel suddenly geezerish. I was 17 and a freshman in college when Great Pumpkin first aired. There are very few programs that can remain fresh and entertaining 41 years after they first aired.
I know that I'm not nearly as fresh and entertaining as I was at 17.
Also at 7 p.m. is The Singing Bee on NBC. It has a Halloween-lyrics theme and Ray Parker Jr. performs.
For bonus points, name anything else Ray Parker Jr. eversang besides the theme to Ghostbusters.
If you asked if you can count his Raydio days, you win the widescreen boxed DVD set of I Love the '70s (director's cut).
At 8 p.m. Tuesday on The CW, Reaper has a Halloween theme. You'd expect as much since the devil is one of the main characters in this comedy/drama.
Wednesday:
I assume you'll be getting the trick-or-treating out of the way early. Nobody stays out too late anymore going door-to-door. If you're still in the mood after that, here are a couple of shows to settle you down.
Ghost Hunters Live comes on at 8 p.m. on the Sci Fi Channel. We have a friend who never misses an episode hosted by the guys who work for Roto-Rooter by day and hunt ghosts by night.
It's all a lot of hokum to me, but if we disallowed hokum on TV there'd be precious little left to watch.
In this episode, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson return to "haunted" Waverly Hills Sanitorium in Louisville, Ky., in search of spooks.
Question: If these guys ever really find a ghost, will they give up their day jobs?
Finally, the History Channel is rolling out a new series at 9 p.m.Wednesday. MonsterQuest's premiere episode searches for a reported American Nessie in Lake Champlain.
The ax falls
. As predicted by every TV critic in North America, CBS has dumped Viva Laughlin after only two episodes.
What took them so long?
A special sneak peak came Oct. 18 after CSI, TV's top show. It bombed.
CSI was seen by 21 million viewers. Only 8.4 million folks couldn't find their remote controls to change channels when Laughlin came on.
Laughlin's regular time-period debut came last Sunday. Laughlinbombed even worse, scoring fewer than 7 million - and a third of those bailed out before the show was half over.
The show had two strikes against it before airing.
The press-panel session last summer in California was even painful. Series star Madchen Amick tried to paint a rosy picture when she said, "I think it's a great balance between both drama and musical. I think all audiences will like it - the musical audience and drama audience."
Neither did.
Every summer at the press tour, there are a couple of shows that go through the motions of a formal panel session with questions and answers, but that the critics know are doomed.
We know they're doomed. The cast and crew know they're doomed. The network knows they're doomed and they know we know they're doomed.
But it's a resilient town. The cast will bounce on to their next projects and Viva Laughlin will take its place in TV trivia as another example of America trying to adapt a hit BBC program and failing.
Into the void.
Meanwhile, a rerun of CSI was scheduled to fill the Laughlin hole today and The Amazing Race is set to return at 7 p.m. Nov. 4.
The Amazing Race has won five straight Emmys as the best reality competition series. Is it that good or are the others just that bad?
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Style, Pages 63 on 10/28/2007