This Week in HMC History: October 26 to November 1

Halloween week in the archive. Lorne loses sleep, Matt loses patience with Connor, and the site changes hands.

2002: Matt has had it with Connor

Angel’s “Slouching Toward Bethlehem” aired on October 27, 2002, and Matt’s rant on the 30th did not hold back. He thought Season 4 was “getting weaker and weaker as the week’s roll by,” and he had no patience for the argument that Connor’s rough upbringing excused anything: “If anything, Connor should be kept in a cage at this point.”

2003: The Big Bads, and a green demon who can’t sleep

On October 26, Coach Jon’s Big Bad Series reached Angelus, Spike and Drusilla, and opened by explaining that the real value of friends is having an alibi in court.

The Halloween 2003 update had fresh wallpapers from readers, the FX Halloween marathon schedule, and Matt’s rant for “Life of the Party”, the one where Wolfram & Hart takes away Lorne’s need to sleep, and it does not go well. “Finally, something fun,” Matt wrote. “‘Lorney-Tunes!’ cracked me up. I’m lame like that.” Andy Hallett died in 2009. That episode is a good way to remember him.

2004: Number one in the omniverse

Around this time Buffy.Fu, our resident fake news desk, declared HMC officially the number one website of the omniverse, with “eleventy billion-million hits a day,” based on numbers it freely admitted were made up. Matt kept counting down Angel episodes in The Dimension, Aeryn’s Divine Musings column was “Crapology”, and the Halloween 2004 update apologized that the mail server was down, again, on the brand new server.

2005: The Poobah steps down

This is the big one. On Halloween 2005, after three and a half years, Matt announced he was done running the site:

“It’s been a hell of a ride, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I loved updating and creating everything so much, but after 3 1/2 years I’ve finally become burnt out.”

He handed the keys to Eric: “Eric is taking over and he’s going to keep this place going as long as he can. He still has a passion for it.”

Eric followed up in the same update, telling everyone Matt was only stepping away from the daily updates, that the site was working on “a new and improved HMC,” and that “we will not surrender.”

Twenty-one years later, the site is still here. The Poobah’s rants are all still here too, every one of them, in Rants.

See you next week in the archive.