Halloween Candy

According to Philip Rosenthal, "we had always wanted to do an adult show about families" since season one of Everybody Loves Raymond.^[1] Steve Skrovan, for instance, had pitched "Halloween Candy" to CBS before the filming of the season; however, the network rejected due to being a Friday-night show^[1] It took until its third year when the series moved to Mondays at 9:00 PM for the episode to be produced and publicly aired.^[1] The episode is both writer Skrovan and director Steve Zuckerman's second collaboration of the season after "Getting Even."^[2]

Upon "Halloween Candy"'s original airing, The Palm Beach Post named it one of the "funniest moments" of all shows of the 1998–99 season.^[3] The Oregonian ranked it the seventh best episode of the entire series,^[4] and Russell Engebretson of DVD Verdict claimed it to be his favorite season three installment, alongside "Dancing with Debra" and "How They Met."^[5] As of October 2019, "Halloween Candy" is the eighth highest-rated Halloween-themed television episode on IMDb with a rating of 8.1/10.^[6] Both Tech Times and the International Business Times include "Halloween Candy" in unranked lists of best Halloween episodes to view on Netflix.^[7][8]