The Troubled Teens of Widow’s Bay

I said that I want to go back and rewatch Widow’s Bay from the start and study exactly how it works. It’s hard for me to pin down — not “horror comedy,” just good at both horror and comedy; works like a mystery box series, but also reminds you not to fuss over the details and just have fun; using the “monster of the week” format, but ending each episode feeling like you’d seen one chapter in a continuous story. After episode 8, my theory is that what makes the show hard to figure out is simply that it’s good at everything. It can do a take on Halloween that doesn’t just feel like reference or parody, and in fact ends up being more effective than just about any Halloween movie I’ve seen. All under 40 minutes, and while advancing two other storylines. The more I thought about it, the more I suspected that the series is, somehow, even better than I’d given it credit for, even though that’s been “all the credit there is.” Everything that made this version of the Halloween story so…