The episode first aired on November 1, 2000, beginning a practice of the show's Halloween episodes debuting after the holiday itself due to Fox's late-October prime time schedule being pre-empted by the network's coverage of 2000 World Series. (Through 2010, all subsequent Halloween episodes save for 2009's "Treehouse of Horror XX" premiered in November, although beginning with 2011's "Treehouse of Horror XXII" the network has resumed airing the episodes on or before Halloween.) This was also the first "Simpsons" episode to have mixed-case closed captioning. The episode received positive reviews from critics.