Retro Rundown: Goosebumps “My Hairiest Adventure” Review

Hello Goosebumps fans!

Last week, I talked about some of my favorite episodes of Goosebumps (of all time essentially) and today aka 8/29/2022, I watched an episode of Goosebumps that I thought I never watched but I remembered some of it. Basically this was a brand new episode to watch with fresher, adult eyes.

I have previously reviewed “The Blob that Ate Everyone”, “One Day at Horrorland”, “The Haunted Mask” and “A Night in Terror Tower” so this will be another addition to the growing list of reviewing Goosebumps as an adult.

Let’s talk about the episode “My Hairest Adventure”! Oh and spoilers beware!

This episode was very bizarre. I don’t know how to describe the episode or how I was feeling during the episode. Once I started watching the episode, I immediately started piecing things together and by the “middle” of the episode, I figured out what was going on and I knew I wasn’t going to get full details or a full backstory.

I did not.

The episode feels like a filler. Like this isn’t spooky or scary, it’s a mixture of camp and “basic”. There’s nothing exciting or new about this episode that you can re-watch and go “yeah I missed that the last time”. It’s a very simple and predictable story and I wonder how different the episode is from the book. If I have time, I’ll include that in here at the end if there are differences!

We are following our lead character Larry, who is incredibly allergic to dogs. He is also narrating throughout the episode which I wasn’t a big fan of. I don’t mind narrations but perhaps it was the writing that didn’t do it for me. Anyway, Larry has a group of friends that are getting ready for a band audition. We see his family, his cat Jasper, and his life as what I am assuming a 13-15 year old. These kids, in rehearsal, find an expired bottle of instant tan and one character, who looked to be of East Asian descent says that he needs it too. Boy, you do not need that! You already have a tan! But Larry uses it on his hands and tries to scare his friends but then promptly passes out from a “reaction”.

This reaction causes Larry to become hairy. Oh I just got it. Hairy Larry, he’s an unknown Garbage Pail Kid. Long story short, he, and the other kids in the neighborhood, were dogs. And the doctor who was treating his “allergies” was essentially experimenting with turning dogs into children. These parents, including Larry’s, knew of this, and when their “children” couldn’t keep the facade of being a dog, they would disappear overnight. A best friend of his, Lily, has one green eye and one blue eye and what does he encounter? A dog that has one green eye and one blue eye.

The one highlight from the episode is that Larry is the dog from the opening title of Goosebumps, minus the glowing eyes.

What I didn’t like was the writing and set up. It was very predictable once the episode got started. I never got to connect or feel with these characters unlike the one episodes I reviewed. Hell, even in The Blob that Ate Everyone, there was some depth to characters. This whole thing just felt like a filler. I’m very curious about the episodes before and after… hold on. 

HA! I knew it! I knew it was a filler! The previous aired episode is Night of the Living Dummy II and the episode after is Stay Out of the Basement. These two episodes are really fun and I believe made my list of favorites.

As for differences, it seems to be very subtle but one big thing that I read is that in the book, Larry does not care about the growing of hair and it is black, which could have almost given us a werewolf/An American Werewolf in London vibe but instead in the episode, Larry is frantic and paranoid about the hair and I don’t know, why did they make this episode???

If you want a good and confusing laugh, check it out. It is from the first season, episode 11, sandwiched in between two highly memorable episodes. Oh you know what it reminds me of? A bad version of Animorphs! But there are no cool aliens or Yerks.

I’d give it a 2 out of 5 stars. It’s quite meh.