The shadows lengthened across the land as the crepuscular, mid-morning hour drew nigh. And from their trailer crypts, terrifying visions did emerge, staggering into the Tuesday gloaming, baying for blood and updates on the weather. Their shapes were at once familiar yet strange, as though glimpsed through the gossamer membrane that separates reality from nightmare. Let us gaze upon these spine-chilling creatures now, these japing demons conjured forth by the clock’s ominous toll on All Hallows’ Eve’s Morning! Look at them, and feel your mind unraveling and filling with fun party tips!
Today
Having cracked open the abyss to let its infinite black seas swallow the world by dressing up as the Peanuts gang, this year the infotainment incubi of Today showed uncommon mercy, wrapping themselves in the mocking, and once again largely gender-swapped garb of country musicians. Peer into the hellish, fake-bearded haze of Hoda Kotb as Blake Shelton, Savanna Guthrie as Kenny Rogers, and Matt Lauer as Dolly Parton, and know what it is to have your assumptions about sexuality torn asunder! ASUNDER!
Pin needles into your eyelids and force yourself to stare at a 44-year-old Carson Daly playing Billy Ray Cyrus to 64-year-old Kathie Lee Gifford’s Miley Cyrus, ostensibly! Feel the hours run screaming backward as time loses all meaning and Carson Daly all dignity! Drink deep of Al Roker as Willie Nelson and feel like he probably had a pretty good time!
Just as your heart has ceased rattling the brittle prison bars of your ribcage, here comes Megyn Kelly dressed as Shania Twain, beckoning you into the netherworld between fury at her continued attempts at bland normalization and schadenfreude at how poorly she is pulling it off! Here will you dwell eternally in the purgatorial limbo between Megyn Kelly Today and Megyn Kelly Tomorrow!
Good Morning America
Rest now in that liminal realm, inhabited by the virtuous, yet irrevocably lost souls of Good Morning America—today disguised in superhero garb. so that some might at last speak their name! By the flicker of 8 a.m. Eastern candlelight, you make out faces you seem to recognize: Robin Roberts as Wonder Woman. Michael Strahan as Thor. George Stephanopoulous, totally phoning it in as “Clark Kent.” Seriously, why even bother, George? you literally just put a Superman T-shirt under your regular clothes. Your true form is Belphegor, demon of sloth, lazily loosed upon daytime television!
There are also those whose names are born on a whispering and dissipating wind, including Amy Robach as Spider-Man, Lara Spencer as Black Widow, and Ginger Zee as Baby Groot. Yes, specifically “Baby Groot,” the pointless distinction of which and unnecessarily clunky staging it requires will drive you to the very brink of insanity!
Stirred by a hot promotional wind, Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo were later blown in to “critique” these costumes, cursed to lurch ever forward along the wretched path of Thor junkets!
The Talk
Listen! From the phantom belfry that once stood atop that crumbling gothic church in the woods, do you not hear that rotted, long-lost bell thrice issue its ghostly chime, followed by a low moan of “Uhhh…. Okay.”? Then the hour of The Talk’s 3rd Annual #Rocktober Lip Sync War is upon us! Uhhhh, okay!
Sharon Osbourne as Julie Andrews! Sara Gilbert as, confusingly, Ozzy Osbourne! Julie Chen as Cyndi Lauper! Sheryl Underwood as Prince! Carrie Ann Inaba as Lady Gaga! Terry Crews as a guy who should say no to more things! Their lips move and the voices of the dead and unlicensed speak through them anew!
Ellen
Reaching deeply into the ashen loam where she lay sepulchred in the dust of 2015, Ellen DeGeneres clasped the bony and desiccated hand of “Karla Kardashian,” resurrecting her “lesser-known Kardashian sister” character as a horrifyingly zombified cultural reference! Feel your mouth pull back into a rictus grin of feigned amusement as “Karla Kardashian” interacts with actual Kardashians! Join us here, in the ingratiatingly polite laughter of the damned!
The View
Hark, our guileless talk of the undead has called forth Once Upon A Time, which is still on ABC and therefore worthy of some kind of half-assed cross-promotional thing about “storybook characters” on The View! Your bilious stomach roils as you fight to accept that, sure, Whoopi Goldberg as Mother Goose, Megan McCain as Little Red Riding Hood, and Joy Behar as Pinocchio all fit the bill—however much the mind might reel at that last one especially.
But come on, Paula Faris. Waldo from Where’s Waldo? Oh, I’m sorry, I guess I don’t recall the rich, classical narrative of Waldo; maybe it was all in the subtext, hiding in plain sight behind a fucking wordless picture book. Do you even know what a “story” is? Is this blasphemous flouting of definition part of your fiendish plot to drive us all to madness and unleash bedlam on the world?
Wendy Williams
Dressed as the Statue of Liberty, idealistic symbol of the amity, enlightenment, and freedom from oppression that America beams like a beacon into the larger world, Wendy Williams suddenly collapsed on live television, which is certainly not a terrifying metaphor for anything! Anyway, she recovered and she’s fine.
Live With Kelly And Ryan
Like wraiths dragging you to Hell, their shapeshifting visages flashing jeering visions of those whom you wronged in life, Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest donned a whole lot of costumes today and it was exhausting. It was, frankly, all just very tiring to take in. Taylor Swift, Game Of Thrones, Stranger Things, Wonder Woman—no obligatory office party costume went untouched, and they even dressed up as each other. There’s a music video that you can watch, I guess. I don’t know.
Fox And Friends
These idiots dressed up as “idioms,” applying their ability to drain all enjoyment out of the English language by going as common phrases like “A Million Bucks,” “Blessing In Disguise,” and even “Devil’s Advocate”—a redundant costume that Jillian Mele superfluously outfitted with a judge’s robe as part of Fox And Friends’ continued bafflement with the legal process. Finally, Brian Kilmeade dressed up as his own book. Fuck Halloween.