Plot: Penny begrudgingly partakes in Halloween as Snack Girl when her parents (taking the roles of Snack Man and Snack Woman) force her into it. She believes Halloween is just for little kids and wants none of it, not even attending Wizard Kelly’s Hallo-Tween Frightacular with special guest Lil Romeo. After consuming one of her father’s putrid Proud Scary Snacks, she gains superpowers. Also, there’s a ghost in Penny’s house.
Breakdown: The last time I tangoed with The Proud Family, I kinda tore into it – justified as though it may be. I did legitimately hope that today I could present a good example of a Proud Family episode to make up for it a little.
Credit where credit is due, this episode is nowhere near as anger inducing as the Kwanzaa special, but it is just all kinds of silly and weird.
Like many episodes, a lot of the characters are just being assholes to each other. Penny’s making fun of her friends and family for partaking in Halloween festivities and acting like she’s better than them because she’s oh-so-mature and refuses to partake at all in such childish frivolity. Her friends make fun of her back. I honestly don’t get why she’s not into the Frightacular, though. She seems to be a fan of Lil Romeo, so why not endure it just to watch him perform live?
Oscar forces her to dress up as Snack Girl and give out his gross Proud Scary Snacks at the door or else she’ll be grounded until the end of the year. Oscar’s also very unpleasant to everyone else, even slamming the door on the face of the guy who was trying to warn him of the ghost, but what else is new?
Addressing the story, yeah, Penny becomes a superhero by eating her father’s gross snacks, after getting hit by lightning because of course…She also loses her powers after a bunch of the snacks get caught up in an exploding ghost.
I kinda don’t feel like giving you the context for any of this stuff, because I don’t think it’d help.
The other kids are enjoying the Frightacular, and for all you Lil Romeo fans out there, he does voice himself here, and he does perform. The song’s pretty good, but it’s a very weird and out of place moment in a Halloween special.
Penny comes to the Frightacular after saving all of the goodie bags from the Gross sisters, and she gets greedy asking for rewards for the deed. She’s invited to perform with Lil Romeo, but we never hear them both (or her at all) singing.
Back with her family, her father is warned by a previous homeowner that their house is haunted by a man named Garret Krebbs, which is why he sold the house to Oscar for a mere $500. And wouldn’t ya know it, even though they’ve lived in the house for over ten years, tonight’s the night Krebbs decides to attack.
Penny saves the day and destroys the ghost, but since she loses her powers as a result of the battle no one believe it was her. However, she’s gained a better appreciation for Halloween as a result.
Also, throughout this entire ordeal, they are very clearly playing a knockoff of the Halloween theme, even though absolutely nothing in this episode has a single thing to do with Halloween, the movie, besides taking place on Halloween….
The next day, everyone talks about the hero who saved Halloween, but Penny keeps her secret. They see something flying in the air, believing it’s the mysterious hero….and it’s Suga Mama’s dog, Puff, who has now become a superhero after eating some of the snacks.
The, uh….end I guess.
I gotta be honest, I completely forgot this Halloween special even existed. I was browsing lists of animated Halloween specials and this one came up as one of the best ones from Disney Channel, and I went from “The Proud Family had a Halloween special?” to “OH YEAH! It did….I completely forget what it was about…” to finally, after looking it up “OH YEAH…I kinda remember that……a little!” And bear in mind, I did watch The Proud Family fairly often when it was airing.
……I’m sorry, I just don’t get it. I don’t really get good Halloween vibes from this special. I don’t get much of anything besides confusion. It’s like a word salad, but with random plot elements.
Have a performance by Lil Romeo. Have Penny gain superpowers. Have her father’s snacks be the conduit for said superpowers, somehow and someway. Have a random as hell meteor nearly hit a small child. Have a ghost wait ten years before attacking the family of the house he’s haunting. Why was he even dicking around pretending to be a magician at the party for several hours before attacking?
I guess the lesson was that Halloween…..Uh…Halloween’s not just for kids….because you can get superpowers? No, that can’t be it. Don’t buy houses for $500 because there has to be a hitch? Maybe….Is there even a lesson in this episode?
By the way, all of this DID actually happen. They didn’t balk and say it was a dream or something. It all legitimately happened. The world of The Proud Family is very, very odd sometimes….and I still haven’t reviewed the movie yet…..
This episode really highlighted how god-awful the animation was in this series. I look back to the Kwanzaa special and realize that they must have bumped up the budget a smidge on that episode because I didn’t have much to complain about there, but here? It actually makes me sad. It’s so cheap, the lip syncing is terrible and there are numerous very obvious loop animations. I remembered the animation quality being bad, but this was near laughable levels. Disney, why was your budgeting for the animated Disney Channel shows so inconsistent?
I guess, at the end of the day, this is a perfectly harmless Halloween special. It’s nothing good or bad, it’s just really, really goofy and nonsensical and doesn’t capture the Halloween mood that much. It didn’t make me angry, it didn’t make me happy, it just kinda baffled me.
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The Anime Madhouse 
Lil Romeo? Wow, this really dates itself. I have to make a confession…I had his first album when I was a kid before I had better taste in music. The only reason why he had a career is because he’s the son of Master P and had to be competition with Bow Wow at the time. Hahaha! XP
I didn’t see that special, but I agree that weird stuff happens in that show like talking credit cards, blue sister bullies, and helium-filled houses from what I remember. Then again, as an adult I had issues with The Proud Family especially with people being jerks to each other, Oscar’s bumbling nature, or Trudy being straight up abusive with her double standards to the Proud patriarch. The animation wasn’t that great either.
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I looked him up as I was doing this review and was surprised to see he’s still making music, though now he just goes by Romeo. As someone who fell head over heels for nearly every boy band in the late 90s-early 00s, your Lil Romeo album gets a pass from me, sir. XD
Yeah the show was filled with a lot of weird stuff. It was certainly unique, but that doesn’t mean it was all that good. Oh, speaking of the Gross Sisters (the blue bully sisters) I remembered there was an episode where Penny became a bully and joined them and she inexplicably turned blue. Like ????
Have you heard they’re doing a reboot on Disney+ ?
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He’s still doing music? Wow, that’s crazy. That doesn’t surprise me about him dropping the Lil just like how Bow Wow used to have a “Lil” in his name when he was a kid. Good to know about getting a pass. Hahaha! I actually talk about some of my past musical tastes in a future music documentary review. My music tastes now are vastly different compared to my childhood years. Even more shocking that I actually record avant-garde/spoken word stuff as Ospreyshire. I think everyone had embarrassing musical tastes in their younger days.
Definitely and there was some stuff going on where I raised eyebrows even when I saw it during my youth. Good point about uniqueness not always being good and this is coming from a guy who is drawn towards unique shows or movies. Gross Sisters! I almost forgot their names. I didn’t see that episode, but that is bizarre with Penny turning blue. Seriously?!?
WHAT?! First Kim Possible, and now the Proud Family? Are they going to remake a bunch of the 00s Disney Channel/One Saturday Morning/ABC Kids shows? What’s next? Remaking Fillmore or Even Stevens? Wow, just wow.
After doing some research on The Proud Family, this was animated by Jambalaya Studios. They’re the same people who animated Bebe’s Kids, Rover Dangerfield, and even the HBO Happily Ever After series.
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My heart went pitter-patter when you suggested them making a Fillmore remake lol On one hand, I’d LOVE more Fillmore. On the other hand I’d be very skeptical if they can pull that off. As far as I’ve seen, they don’t even have the original series on the service yet.
Someone suggested making an Even Stevens reboot ala Girl Meets World or Raven’s Home where we get like the kids of the original cast. I’m way more meh about that idea. I don’t have much confidence they’d do it, though, either. Shia reportedly didn’t have a positive experience on the set of the show, and he didn’t participate in the Zoom reunion they held recently.
They’re remaking/spinning off SO much, dude. Check it out. https://www.j-14.com/posts/reboots-sequels-prequels-and-spinoff-series-coming-to-disney/
Its ridiculous. People are demanding more original content in general, definitely more new content on the platform but so much of it is just remakes/reboots and spinoffs. My jaw dropped when I saw they were also targeting Turner and Hooch, like WHAT? Yes, let’s give a whole new generation some trauma. We shouldn’t have to suffer alone. And it’s a series not a movie, so it’s even more confusing.
That note about the studio makes so. much. sense.
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Haha! That’s fine. Weird how they don’t have Fillmore on Disney+.
Yeah…I’ll pass on that idea. That doesn’t surprise me at all about Shia not having a positive experience or not showing up at the Zoom reunion. He strikes me as someone who wants to distance himself from his Disney Channel origins much less fame.
I read the article and couldn’t believe everything that was planned so far. I did hear about the Cruella prequel. I guess they didn’t want Maleficent to be alone in regards to Disney villains with their own movies. Some of those other ideas were just lame or I didn’t care about because I never saw the original.
When I saw the live action remake idea of Robin Hood, I almost flipped my desk. SERIOUSLY?!? That is a whole new low in Disney’s hubris and complacency by making a fake live action movie involving a version of the story WITH NO HUMAN CHARACTERS! What? Are they going to grab Jon Favreau to be apart of this nonsense? I am seriously debating whether not a “live action” Robin Hood is more stupid or the fact that a “live action” Lion King existing is more stupid. I remember joking about Disney making a live action Robin Hood on a comment last year and I guess the House of Mouse must have read it just to troll me. Wow, they’re not even trying anymore.
Good on those people wanting more original content, but Disney should listen to their fans. People are getting sick of these needless remakes and pointless sequels, prequels, and midquels. It’s the Disquel formula all over again! Mickey Mouse is just sitting in a giant office smoking Cuban cigars while saying “These customers don’t care. They’ll buy that stuff anyway. Ha-ha!” My brain hurts from seeing all of those concepts of rehashed movies and shows that nobody wanted.
I can see that. Haha! Not going to lie, I did like the Happily Ever After show as a kid with how they re-contextualized the fairy tales, but featuring different cultures. That was cool with me being a geography nerd and actually seeing the famous characters as different races when I was a kid. We didn’t have cable then, but my Aunt recorded a VHS tape with a ton of episodes on it. In hindsight, I could see a connection with the art style in both series.
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