Full offense meant towards every other special we watched for this marathon, but Over the Garden Wall captures the spirit of Halloween far better than any of them. There's a tendency to look on the holiday as merely its surface-level elements, with the candy and the dressing up and the pumpkins and the gentle attempts at spookery. In fairness to them and many other Halloween specials, there's nothing inherently wrong with celebrating Halloween as a time of haunts and creeps at play and little else - it's wonderful we still reserve any amount of time for reveling in mischief and fear, and some truly great art has come from fully embracing the modern aesthetic, like The Nightmare Before Christmas. Halloween isn't just the modern practices and signifiers, though. There's a salient connection to an older way of life, an older system of beliefs, a link to times when it was believed certain nights blurred the line between this world and the other. Viewed through a modern context, you've not only a blurring between reality and supernatural, but also modern customs and bygone means of celebration. We've gone through quite a few iterations of how to observe Halloween and the sense of controlled fear in general, and this holiday marks a good time to revive them more than most.
Amongst its multitude of virtues, Over the Garden Wall's greatest strength as a piece of Halloween media rests on just how many autumnal and horror-adjacent ideas it evokes to pitched-perfection across a mere ten quarter-hour installments. Episodes can vary in focus from exploring the confines of a seemingly infinite manor seeking out a ghost in the spirit of old dark house movies, gentle schoolhouse dramas mixed with Scooby-Doo and Benny Hill sensibilities, harvest festivals directly informed by the aesthetic of gay nineties fall-themed postcards, or 80s teen dramedies. Quite a few episodes even make room for direct homages to Fleischer's creepier Betty Boop/Cab Calloway cartoons There's dozens of artistic influences on display throughout the series, all unified by a gentle modernized take on the classic fairy tale set-up of children wandering the woods seeking a way home. As all-encompassing revelry in imagery and tropes of Halloweens and harvests past as you could want, it ensures there's a special, particularly resonant moment for all audiences without sacrificing its own particular feel. Chasing a predesignated, boxed-in style to slap over everything simply can't achieve the same warm, cozy effect of merging multiple sources to create a vibe all your own.
It's good the series' artistic style is so dedicated to forging its own path whilst wearing its influences on its sleeve, for doing so is ideally reflective of the show's overall storytelling goals. I don't speak casually when I call this a modernized fairy tale; it's way more than just the sense of light whimsy meant by that evocation. The Unknown as a setting is reflective of both Wirt's self-serious teenaged poetic mythologizing and Greg's younger freeform train of thought approach to the world, a dark, never-ending wood where practically anything can and will happen, and children must watch where they step at every turn lest they stumble into a strange inhabitant. It's every bit the perfect stretch of land in which to abandon a Hansel and Gretel or Little Red Riding Hood, and leave them to learn a harsh lesson about never straying from the path, or always listening to their elders, or never trusting strangers. Over the Garden Wall avoids such overt moralizing - while dangers do lurk betwixt the edelwoods and deceptive forces do crouch in the dark, the vast majority of residents and travelers are merely people living their lives, and trusting supposedly obvious warning signs based on initial appearances often leads to more trouble than being kind and adaptive would otherwise. There's little need for Wirt and Greg to listen to a powerful authority figure or suffer greatly for their transgressions to learn their lessons. What they bring into the woods is enough to see them through, if they know how to use it.
A firm rejection of regressive, conservative views on childrearing will always earn applause from me, but what makes this show so special is how beautifully structured it is towards the goal of communicating that idea. How it will dedicate entire episodes to the old "you meet in an inn" set-up to explore the pros and cons of identifying oneself by a societal role, or sly repeat concepts from previous episodes in a new context to throw the viewer off-guard and foreshadow the characters' descent into despair when the same outcome produces vastly different results. How dedicated it is to finding a minute or two for development and honest conversation amidst whatever ten-minute slice of fun we're currently engaged in, often with direct relation to the game's unfolding. How gentle and consistent it is in revealing non-hostility of frightening entities in order to reinforce the sense of confidently conducting yourself and looking beyond first impressions for kindness rather than deception. How when it does reveal the genuine, immediate danger in the forest, it takes the form of unilateral, unflexible thinking patterns, mixes that with the original conception of a fairy for a fresh take on Der Erlkönig, and then simultaneously freshens it further and ties it closer to healthier old sensibilities by making the secret to victory acceptance of a different, adaptable worldview. On all levels I can conceive, Over the Garden Wall tries and succeeds at evoking the old to create and enliven the new, and it does all this with the added benefit of gorgeous art, charming characters, and alternately humorous and genuinely frightening moments.
This is what the children need. Fairy tales for the new age. Decidedly modern sensibilities used to explore and understand and grow beyond past attitudes. Something crafted with the total spirit of Halloween in mind, something that can understand the original impulses behind its celebration and find ways of thematically educating them about its nature and assuaging their own self-doubts, and finding room for new forms of surface-level fun besides. Over the Garden Wall is the kind of program which can play with a cat in a great big jack-o-lantern themed maypole raising the dead to new life in pumpkin costumes for a grand harvest dance amidst pastoral New English fields of wheat, and still make time for incorporating candy and costumes into its aesthetic. It's the complete package for Halloween viewing, and a lovely watch with friends. Odds are you've already seen it and don't need my glowing praise atop the thousands of other write-ups online, but I'm still thankful for the chance to watch it as the capper to this series.
Hey, thanks! It works for the November holiday too!
5/5
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