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Treehouse of Horror: Every Halloween Episode Reviewed!

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  • Rhesus PositiveRhesus Positive GNU Terry Pratchett Registered User regular
    The "say what you're going to do as a joke and then do it" is a Family Guy staple joke construction

    Just as an indication how low the series has sunk

    [Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
  • RanlinRanlin Oh gosh Registered User regular
    I tried playing along but gave up at 20, they just got so dire so fast I couldn't do the rest.

  • Rhesus PositiveRhesus Positive GNU Terry Pratchett Registered User regular
    I watched them while pooping

    It seemed appropriate

    [Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
  • MegaMan001MegaMan001 CRNA Rochester, MNRegistered User regular
    At the beginning of this thread I had such a positive vibe. These were great! I loved these episodes.

    Then I find out all of my favorite ones were in the first seven seasons.

    I am in the business of saving lives.
  • MatevMatev Cero Miedo Registered User regular
    Story of every Simpsons review, really (It's still mostly gold through Season 10/11 for me)

    "Go down, kick ass, and set yourselves up as gods, that's our Prime Directive!"
    Hail Hydra
  • EmperorSethEmperorSeth Registered User regular
    My golden age ends halfway through season 8. But I'm on record as a Homer's Enemy hater.

    You know what? Nanowrimo's cancelled on account of the world is stupid.
  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    s9XfN9W.png
    Treehouse of Horror XXVII
    Original Air Date: October 16, 2016

    Hey the Simpsons are getting Christmas trees, which is fine since it's supposed to be a joke on Christmas Creep. However, there's no payoff for this: it's just to get them cornered in a tree lot by some antagonists that we'll get to in a moment. The trees don't come to life (give it five more years), they don't use the trees to defend themselves, and the tree lot plays no role in this besides getting the Simpsons in a place that is isolated and has one exit. Which, I feel horror movies have done a good job coming up with those that don't require invoking Christmas. They can't get a mysterious flier about a spooky house offering candy to anyone who braves walking up to it? Maybe Homer is like "I dunno...that house does seem to be of the haunted persuasion..." and maybe Bart goes "They're offering full-sized candy barsssss..." and that's enough for Homer to be down for it. Bam, now you have a plausible setup in a scarier location that doesn't require mentioning a different holiday and doesn't involve a joke with a punchline of Ivanka 2028. Wow! And that took me all of like five minutes. Imagine if this was you have eight hours a day to do this with more than one person!

    Okay so the Simpsons enter the lot and it turns out to be a trap of their worst enemies! Er, I guess Homer's worst enemies? Christ this is lame, and let's explain why by going down this supposed rogue's gallery:
    • Sideshow Bob: If these were introduced as enemies of the Simpsons as a whole, I could let this one slide since Bob is the ONLY recurring villain of this list, but they specifically state Homer as their enemy and how they lost every battle they've had with Homer. Sideshow Bob is Bart's arch-nemesis, like they literally had him in a Halloween episode last year, so this isn't even "blunder" territory but a simple "you don't give a single fuck about your job" situation. This is the second time strictly in Halloween episodes where Sideshow Bob was called Homer's enemy (the other being the Ned/Dexter short). Like, Lisa has a greater claim to Bob as an enemy. What the fuck?
      Frank Grimes: I don't understand their sudden fascination with Grimes. He was the big lumbering zombie monster in last year's intro, and now he's here. He had literally one episode and died in it, so are you so hard-up for enemies that you're digging this far back? Doing some research, I know there was an episode with the son of Grimes (coincidentally also featuring Sideshow Bob) but that is reaching. Grimes didn't die because of his hatred of Homer: he died because he lost his mind entering a situation where he learned that the world is savagely unfair, and the rules just don't seem to exist except for him. So he snapped and died because the rules still apply to him. Like it was literally about a "normal person" entering the weird TV logic of the Simpsons and played for dark humor. Battle? Evil Plans? Sure.
      Kang/Kodos: I'm sure the script says which one it is, but is doesn't matter. These characters only exist in Halloween episodes, rarely even feature in a short, even more rarely interact with Homer, and finally even MORE rarely is it in some direct antagonist role. Hungry are the Damned there was no plan, and Homer was just going along with Lisa. Lisa's Dream they were foiled by the wish Ned Flanders and didn't even interact with Homer. Citizen Kang is like the ONE time Homer was directly trying foil their plans, and he failed. Do I need to go on? Starship Poopers was a domestic dispute that Homer didn't really stop. The Day the Earth Looked Stupid they both won and Homer did nothing to interact, much less oppose them. ET Go Home they were thwarted, but that's less Homer and more the military. Wow! Good work there, I guess.
      Leprechaun: This is just sad. A decade later and you still think this guy is the height of comedy. Haha, riverdancing, a timely reference in 2016, haha.

    This is the most I've written about an intro, because I think this is the worst one so far. The Simpsons is not an action show. They are not spies or superheroes or mercenaries or whatever. It's about a working class family, so wacky recurring villains just isn't really a thing. I mean there is Sideshow Bob, but that's restricted to Lisa and Bart, who as kids it works as a change of pace every so often. And even then this list still sucks. No Mr. Burns? Wouldn't Herb have a bone to pick with Homer? I guess by 2016 Danny DeVito had better shows to work on. This sucks, and it especially sucks as a milestone celebration where deep history pulls are to be expected. Like everything with modern Simpsons it's just lazy and overly Homer-centric.

    God and then they tack on a couch gag for whatever reason. Whatever, it's a boring reference, especially when measured up against far more competent parodies like Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off! It's not offensively bad, and Homer betraying the couch approaching this elusive thing called humor. Otherwise it's entirely needless.

    I almost wish they had done another election-focused short instead of this. Almost.

    Dry Hard: Oh god it's only the first short and it's a shallow, non-Halloween parody of a recent pop culture thing.

    This one is a mess that the writers clearly didn't give a shit a bout but desperately wanted to be relevant so they did it anyways. It's pretty baffling if you haven't read/watched the Hunger Games, especially the way it keeps switching to PART X which I assume is spoofing...the movies having parts? Like, Harry Potter did that years ago? I mean with the Shinning you had the day of the week and the scare chord. It's clearly a reference to the movie, one that I don't get, but I don't need to because the joke of Homer forgetting things on the last leg of their trip and having blow a day driving all the way back is funny. The reference just helps me understand that this process is taking time, and if you're a Shining fan you get an extra laugh from whatever it's poking fun at. Does the Hunger Games series do this? I'm not a complete idiot, I get that each PART WHATEVER is moving things forward in time with not-funny consequences. I just don't get anything out of the reference. It's the little things that make the difference.

    Uhhh what else sucks? Oh yeah, Mr. Burns wasting water, a joke that is easily done by showing Burns having over the top water decorations, which can get even more elaborate. It lets you get more humor in by having Burns do more jokes while the background pulls double duty. Instead we get an overly long sequence of Burns hosing water off his desk and doing a Flashdance homage because I guess we're utter morons that can't understand he's wasting water.

    Oh and then the parody loses interest and becomes a...well more of a reference than anything to Fury Road. Hey, gotta get those references while those movies are uhhh a year after they left theatres? HELL YEAH WE'RE THE SIMPSONS WE'RE HIP AND WITH IT FELLOW CHILDREN. I guess modicum of credit by making the crisis a water shortage so it doesn't come completely out of left field, but that's the faintest of praise.

    And you know what? If this short can't hold its attention on anything, then I think I can move on. It sucks.

    BFF R.I.P.: Oh my god actual Halloween content, and an actual good premise. What a time to be alive.

    Pretty sure I've done that reference before. Oh well.

    Lisa having an imaginary friend that is killing off Lisa's real world friends is just perfect as a premise. It makes sense that Lisa had an imaginary friend. It makes sense that as a lonely kid, any friend Lisa made would drive this imaginary friend jealous. It is creepy and disturbing to have this imaginary friend respond by killing anyone who gets too close to Lisa and even threatens to form any kind of bond with her. Watching a short focus on murdering children is still pushing the envelope for Treehouse of Horror even if they did something similar last year. God, the series suddenly got a little too into killing kids, but I think BFF does it better by having a bit of mystery and conflict behind it rather than just...murdering Bart constantly. And Sarah Silverman is playing a character! That isn't Sarah Silverman! Amazing!

    Where the short falters, because it's Simpsons in 2016 so of course it falls short, is in the pacing. Instead of spreading out the murders, they pretty much do it in rapid succession and reveal Rachel as the killer in the first few minutes. It would have been better to spread it out, have some jokes with the family. Maybe Bart mocks Lisa cruelly for being so lame god mercy kills anyone who tries to be her friends. This makes the growing cemetery more humorous as it has time to leave your memory and then keeps coming back, and the Lisa Simpson Wing joke would be a solid payoff. Then the police are chasing Lisa, which forces her to find the culprit, and then you get the Rachel reveal and the race to save Marge from being killed. The jail scene was pointless, so just have her easily escape Wiggum because he's Wiggum or maybe Bart saves her because he hates imaginary friends. "I've always hated imaginary friends since my imaginary friend Sam just left me one day. I never knew why..." and it quickly pans all the way to the TV with ominous music.

    This sets you up for the climax where maybe Bart's imaginary friend returns to save the day. Or perhaps we nix the gag about the TV killing Bart's imaginary friend, and instead Bart says he knows what kills an imaginary friend: TV! And with Rachel defeated, Homer thanks television for saving the day, and invites the family to sit and watch TV with their friend, the TV. And his expression slowly goes blank as he calls it their wonderful friend. Their best friend. Their only friend. Then as the Simpsons get absorbed into watching TV, it slowly pans to the TV as ominous music plays to close out the episode on a spoooooky note. I know this hews very close to the TV ending of Dial Z for Zombies, but it's a show that should have been cancelled like 20 years ago so I'm working with what I got. I think it's different enough.

    And I spent a lot of time talking about how the episode should work instead of what I thought about it, because it really burns out faster after Rachel is established as the villain and the killings stop. You got bad prison jokes, Lisa is Girly jokes, and it's all very flat and not funny. Then the climax focuses on Homer in what should be a kid-centric episode, because I guess the writers think all we want to Homer!

    This short always sticks out in my memory as being like an oasis of at least passable shorts in an ocean of crud, so it's got that going for it.

    Moefinger: Ah, cool, back in the crud ocean.

    I don't even know what to say about this short. There's no theming, it does a poor job of lampooning the source material, there's no pacing, and it's all an excuse for one big violence scene complete with awkward musical guest.

    The theme sucks. This is not a horror movie nor is it tense or scary.

    The parody sucks. It seems like an Bond send-up, but I've also heard Kingsmen. I know Bond, and these jokes are either tired or just unfunny.

    The pacing sucks. There spend over half the short just setting up Bart as a secret agent, then they go straight into the climax and reveal of Homer as the villain. Limited time is not an excuse: they had this giant tumor of an intro they could cut from AND they decided to take an extra couch gag on top. No excuse.

    The fight scene sucks. The music guest feels forced, the fight has no flair or fun animation, the violence isn't close to the fun stuff we've seen in the past (although the decapitations are slightly bloody), and it serves no purpose.

    The best joke in this short is their parody of Bond intros that EVERY has done to death, executed without any creativity or spirit, and after that garbage they seriously list a bunch of short-lived shows mocking them for being bad. Comedy gold. If I made any of those shows I'd probably be relieved I didn't run my series into the ground as soulless corporate brand. Six hundred episodes, and maybe 200 are actually good? Haha! We lasted long enough to output more garbage TV than all of these shows combined! We're #1! Hooray for meaningless milestones! I know they intended for this to get people's ganders up, especially listing Futurama, but honestly it's the funniest things Treehouse of Horror has done in maybe the past 15 seasons.

    Easily the worst short of the episode. At least Dry Hard was trying every so slightly. This is passionately going through the motions. God, this is how they spent the 600th episode. I guess it's only fitting that the Simpsons become the joke.

    Unfun Facts: This is the 600th episode of the Simpsons, as if the poster didn't make that obvious enough.

    This is the first Treehouse of Horror to debut on streaming services around the same time it aired.

    This episode is banned in Japan, presumably due to the violence of the Moefinger short. Or maybe because it was so bad.

    Rating: I hate every short I see
    From Dry Hard's mess to Moe's death spree
    No, you'll never make a dummy out of me

    Oh my god, I was wrong
    'Twas Simpsons all along
    I guess you finally made a dummy
    (Yes we finally made a dummy!)
    Yes you finally made a dummy out of meeeeeeee

    ef7ohmlwnffd.gif
    "I love you, Mister Jean!"

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  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    The Moefinger shot is absolutely riffing on Kingsmen and hard, which feeds into your commentary on the mad max refrence - In this case kingsmen came out in 2014! And i mean, Kingsmen is just bond, but more explict on the child soliders angle (god but kingsmen is fucked up on so many levels). I'm pretty sure actually that knowing the kingsmen references make the episode worse and creepier, especially the having a little sherri bit.

    I think the one good bit is almost the "Bar drunks are agents" and even then that's just like the lowest hanging fruit and dosent even really make much sense other than Kingsmen had... a bar at one point? There were some fights in it. Therefore, Moe.

    Ideas hate it when you anthropomorphize them
    Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
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  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited October 2021
    gMaclEd.png
    Treehouse of Horror XXVIII
    Original Air Date: October 22, 2017

    The Sweets Hereafter: I guess the intro gets a title now? Feels a bit off since they're still fairly short, but whatever.

    I guess they wanted to get their money's worth from whichever studio did the CGI animation here (I couldn't find a studio name), and the short itself is mostly candy puns. I find it weird that Lisa joins the family on eating the chocolate bunny. I mean if it isn't cannibalism it definitely isn't vegetarian. It also sidesteps the existential terror of being left on a shelf indefinitely, which I think might have been a stronger line to follow. Not good, not super bad. Moving on.

    The Exor-Sis: Can't believe it took this long to tackle this one, but I am not complaining. I crave the Halloween content.

    Having the victim be Maggie is actually a pretty fun idea, although this is ruined by giving her a voice. I think it'd be waaaaay creepier if she kept the voice and mannerisms of a baby but it's all contrasted with demonic stuff happening. Instead she has a standard deep voice that doesn't work very well here. She talks too much and it just feels very generic. I did like Homer's creepy lullaby, albeit very much undermined by the sinister happenings around them. You need a subtle touch with that stuff, so focusing on it just doesn't really work. Also did Homer get like...half-possessed or something? We don't see Pazuzu leaving Homer, and he puts the statue in the crib with her implying that Pazuzu is still in there? Whatever, just an awkward transition.

    I like the idea of the Exorcist, only it's at a big house party and everyone is trapped with this possessed infant. It's a clever idea, and allows other characters to shine a bit in a Halloween episode. Too bad it's just wasted on random murder and stiff jokes. Everything is just understated and it quickly ditches the party to pull in a guest star for a much more bog standard parody. Imagine if Rev. Lovejoy was there and felt a rivalry with the Ben Daniels Priest, and this results in the Priest thinking he has beaten the demon, and then he painfully dies. Rev. Lovejoy calmly says "Times like these call for calm, silent prayer. Excuse me a moment." then leaves the room and audibly flips his shit off-screen. It's better than...Catholic priest jokes where Marge and Homer give a concerned look because I guess they didn't want to explain the joke but we're still very worried we wouldn't get a joke that was like ten years played out by then...and depressingly still relevant even today. Still doesn't excuse the sloppy execution.

    Then Bart randomly gets possessed and there's a joke about Homer going to jury duty. I didn't hate this one, but I feel like it had real untapped potential. As is, it's just a bit watchable. I mean, at least they didn't do a vomit joke!

    Coralisa: Makin' up a short about Coraline
    Hope it's good, hope it's fun, not a waste of time
    It better be worthy in the eyes of everyone who ever laid their eyes on Coraline
    When I come around reviewing, John and Tim should never ever leave me booing
    My eyes are on this storyline


    I really liked the title card for this one. The song is nice and creepy, and so is the animation that goes with it.

    Oh, there's the vomit. You guys just couldn't help yourselves, eh? Obvious jokes are like catnip or something to Simpsons writers. Ah, and they even repeat it later in the episode. I mean, can't waste TOO much money on those CGI scenes, so let's fill time with 2D scenes of nothing.

    But boy is that CGI pretty looking! They really do nail a distinct and fun look for the characters, setting it apart from Homer cubed and giving me something to latch onto for entertainment. Even the other characters look a bit different than their regular counterparts, button eyes aside. Really, really wish they would stop making "The Halloween Budget is larger" jokes. You just did that last year, and it wasn't funny then.

    Let's keep being nice: Neil Gaiman was a cute choice to voice Snowball, and I did like the joke where he says he can talk anywhere but prefers to only talk in the other world. Lisa is real good fit for this role, as she something of an outsider in her family, even from Marge, and they don't have to force her to be "different" in the way Coraline was. Lisa eagerly wanting the button eyes to keep living in the other world is pretty expected but I couldn't expect otherwise.

    Okay, that's enough of that.

    The short is too enamored with button eyes and doesn't focus on the horror. It's also just a congo line of the Simpsons entering the Other World to get button eyes and there's nothing interesting going on there. Like, Lisa wanting to go through with it was sufficient, it's not going to get funnier a second, third time. We do get Other Marge flipping out into a cool bug monster, but then the entire short comes to a screeching halt to focus on Homer having TWO WIVES. Damn that is better than an interesting climax. And Other Homer isn't even dead so....why did Other Marge get upset? Why not have Lisa eagerly take the buttons, then realize Other Marge has dark secret or has some small flaw that Lisa can't stand, like they're vegans or something. No I don't know if Lisa ever graduated to vegan. Frankly, I don't want to know. It's a detail I can do without.

    So uh...another short with a promising premise, this time a really nice execution, but further failing to hit the potential. I'm sensing a pattern now.


    MMM… Homer: Ah so this one. The short so out there they had to bring the back the content warnings. And I applaud that, as this special desperately needs to push out in to weird new directions.

    But the executions sucks, and I think it may be the short that falls the shortest of its potential. So let's real quick go into why it's bad:

    1. Too much time wasted on Homer eating food
    2. "Hey you ate you" isn't scary nor funny. Boo.
    3. Another pop music montage. Boooooo.
    4. The whole concept just isn't played up for horror at all. The whole autophagy thing dies the moment they decided for Marge to take Homer to therapy like it's some mundane problem. It sucked.
    5. RANDOM GUEST CELEBRITY AS THEMSELVES. Granted Mario Batali is a chef, but he's also Mario Batali so fuck him.
    6. The ending is boring and the joke they achieve to explain why Homer was able to feed so many people was not a good payoff. It's very obvious they wanted to make some lame puns with restaurant signs.
    7. (I was saying boo-urns)

    So rewrite time! Homer is excited to overeat once Marge leaves, but is disturbed to find that all the food is locked up by Marge barring "inedible" fruits an veggies. But Homer is saved! The freezer lock came apart! Except it only has one hot dog. It syncs back up with the original script, Homer chopping his finger instead of the hot dog, the dog eating it, the finger falling on the grill and enticing Homer. He eats his finger and instead of a lazy halleluiah joke, he makes a joke like "Mmmm...autoerotic..." or something like that as the music takes a dark turn. Homer then snaps out of it, and says no more eating himself. Eating yourself is only for crazy people...and maybe the gingerbread man.

    But later he's hungry again, and maybe his shoulder angels debate whether or not he should...partake in himself again. The angel is like Homer, think of your family. And the cholesterol, because you know where that finger has been! Meanwhile the devil responds by seductively reading a recipe book, Homer-Cooked Meals. Then devil Homer is like "Don't you remember how amazing you tasted? Here, try it." and hacks the angel Homer to death and feeds him to a delirious Homer. Cue disturbing music, Homer cast in silhouette as he hacks his finger, cooks it on the grill, and eats it. Maybe continue in the same art style as the background color gets blood red as Homer continues to hack off bits of himself. Eating his arm like corn on the cob, etc. You can do a montage, just make it fucking scary or disturbing with appropriate music.

    So Marge and the kids return, suspicious of his weight loss. Cue the scene of Marge smelling food and coming downstairs. As she enters the kitchen, maybe a a scare chord, some unnaturally contrasting colors as she sees Homer cooking a hunk of his leg.

    "You know what they say, Marge" Homer says, unnaturally calm, drool beginning to run down his mouth, "you are what you eat."

    Cue Marge running out of the room screaming. Maybe flash forward to Homer in a hospital recovering, explaining to the kids that he went a little crazy like, I dunno, Nixon? "But Daddy's better now and that scary time is behind us. And Marge, I want you know that I'm sorry, and I hope you find it in your heart to forgive me. I swear that was a rare, one-time thing." The family seems pleased and leave for Homer to get some rest. Then shadows cast over Homer, revealing a book titled Recipes for Barbe-you.

    "Because next time, I'm thinking medium-well. Hahaha...HAHAHAHAHAHA." Cue credits.

    Thank you for reading my Simpsons fanfiction. It's not funny, but at least it's spookier.

    Unfun Facts: This is the first Treehouse of Horror to use fully CGI animation since TOH VI.

    This is the first Treehouse of Horror to give the intro a formal title card.

    Back in the 90s, Bart was featured heavily in ads for Butterfinger, thus the joke.

    John Frink wrote the episode and Tim Bailey directed it, thus my joke.

    Yes, the character Frink was named after John Frink.

    This is the first episode to have an audience content warning since Treehouse of Horror V, albeit for a specific segment as opposed to the episode as a whole.

    This is the only time Lisa gave a warning to the audience, and coincidentally she was the only member of the Simpsons family to not feature in these warnings up until this point (if you count Maggie via the opening of TOH IV with Marge nagging Bart about warning the audience)

    Rating: I always remember this episode as being the one "good one" out of the later seasons. All three were on theme, and they all had either solid to great ideas and some fresh new art for us to look at. However, I traditionally watched these while marathoning them over a weekend, and I imagine this episode looks a lot better when you have been binging a few hours of utter trash right before it. Taking these episodes one day at a time, the deficiencies of XXVIII become far more apparent, and the episode becomes a bit tragic as the potential is just wasted on bad jokes, poor pacing, and really bad aesthetic (especially in the last short). When starting this, I imagined possibly giving this episode C or so, but now I'm more content to just keep it above outright failure. Hooray, the streak of failure has been broken! Let's just tighten up these shorts and we might be entertaining again! As-is, this is watchable if a bit frustrating to see them brush up against greatness only to shirk away.
    x2cr526euqw4.png

    Now...bonne nuit.
    PPqdNRo.png
    Bonne nuit to you all

    Sterica on
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  • TheStigTheStig Registered User regular
    You put more effort into these reviews than they put into writing these.

    bnet: TheStig#1787 Steam: TheStig
  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited October 2021
    MI9a6YZ.jpeg
    Treehouse of Horror XXIX
    Original Air Date: October 21, 2018

    I find it incredibly odd they stuffed Cthulhu into an intro segment, when Lovecraft seems like a rich vein for shorts, but okay. There is way too much preamble with the Welcome Signs, the return of....the not very amusing tombstones? I guess these went away for a good reason.

    God, I hate how the background is pretty atmospheric, but everything is bright. Could you look at them devoid of context and tell they were outdoors at night? Then we have the townsfolk immediately turn into pretty boring sea monster people, and Cthulhu comes and he's given a voice and the voice is very "I'm totally tough and not about to get humiliated in a shocking twist!" It's nothing scary, just haha Homer is fat and beat Cthulhu in a very obvious twist. And then he eats Cthulhu! Haha, Homer sure is fat!

    Instead, why not have Cthulhu beat Homer (seriously, Homer lost an eating competition to a regular person) and then Cthulhu maybe boasts or something, and Homer snaps and starts eating Cthulhu alive. Then Homer is like "I don't feel very good." and Marge says something warning Homer about sushi. Then tentacles starting coming out of his body, and then his gut bursts open and in the open remains of his corpse you have some weird eldritch tadpoles spelling out the title. Bam done.

    Intrusion of the Pod-y Switchers: I struggle to come up with something more evocative and encompassing for this short than cringe. This is cringe. Like I find this episode more embarrassing than the episode that is just Homer farting, even if I feel this is marginally better by the faintest of hairs. It's not as one-note, but it's poorly paced and painfully funny and unfocused.

    Like, is Apple super litigious? You can't do better than Mapple? Or Steve Mobs? This episode feels like something an out-of-touch boomer would write, but I feel like most of the writing staff has been skewing a bit younger over the years. Joel H. Cohen wrote this, and he's been writing episode since 2001, so maybe? Kids and their dang gizmos. I was going to cut them slack for the title since airpods did exist, but they namedrop iPods, a device that hadn't had a new device released in like three years (when this aired).

    And what is the message here? I know "people look at phones too much" is like the Dullhalla for hack writers, but it doesn't make sense with the source material. The point of pod people is to create a double while killing the original, so the double can infiltrate society, kill more people, creating more doubles, without arousing suspicions. If our guard is already down due to playing those gosh darn disgruntled avians, then what is the point of the pod people? Even more so since the whole plan is from some very poorly design tree people whose goal is to just transfer human consciousness to replica bodies on their planet. What is the point of the pod people???

    The whole message about phones is only really prevalent in the opening and ending of the short, with the middle feeling like passionless obligations to the parody. There's a few parts that could have been creepy? The kids do spend a bit more time being afraid than bored, so that's something. I thought it would have been interesting having the kids team up with Lou the whole short to fight the pod people, but that lasts all of a minute. It feels like it just wants to make bad jokes than be scary OR funny OR tell a decent story. It just flounders on all accounts and feels really disjointed since it's fighting its premise with the message they feel they must tell us. And then the Simpsons get their phones and it ends. Remember when the show had some even-handedness? Like maybe phones saved the day or something, but we're still not exactly healthy to fixate on all day? No? Episode is going to end because a Christmas Tree alien just magically creates phones? Just...going to end it there. Okay, I didn't care much either.

    I'll save the last bit for the Comic Book Guy scene that called out me, right down to my grading system! That wasn't even an intentional decision on my part to show my keen knowledge of Treehouse of Horror lore: I just couldn't find good picture of the Monkey's Paw from TOHII showing each of its fingers. The layers of my mind have been peeled back for all to see the petty fraud beneath. Or maybe it just tells us a few things: the writers are aware of the criticism, they are very sensitive about it, they don't understand why nobody likes their work, and they have a massively inflated sense of worth. A C-!? Haha, you wish. Hell, I wish, then I wouldn't have to sit through this crap.

    No, this is not the Simpsons falling from high praise to suddenly people being cranky that it's only average now. No, the Simpsons sucks and sucks hard. Maybe in the teen seasons you could say it had degraded to merely passable, average television, but today it's just garbage TV. Now, the rest of the season I can sympathize, as having to come up with new ideas after nearly 700 episodes is daunting, especially when this series did not have a large, fantastical scope that allows for decades of television like Doctor Who or something. But Treehouse of Horror is different. You have just one a year, it only has to be a few minutes long, and you have a very deep well to drink from since it only has be horror-themed to be acceptable. You don't even have enough episodes to fill two seasons, and you already ran out of ideas a good decade ago, and that is super depressing.

    So no, the episode is not bad because it's a parody of a horror movie. That's GOOD. That's the one GOOD thing about this episode, which is saying a lot because "it's based on something scary or is scary take on something" is evidently a high bar to clear for Treehouse of goddamned Horror. It's bad because you don't care. You don't care about pacing, direction, atmosphere, and jokes that are carefully crafted and executed. The classic Simpsons had jokes that went through many iterations and were carefully scrutinized by the rest of the writing team. This seems like a person submits a joke, the people think it's funny and it just goes in without further screening. I don't want to call it lazy, because care does into these episodes, but it does feel like people do not have the passion or drive of the earlier writing team. That the Simpsons is a funny show, so if you got hired then you must be a funny person and therefore you don't need to workshop anything. You're not a writer: you're a Simpsons writer! But news flash: the Simpsons at this point hasn't been considered unanimously good for two decades now. You aren't a good writer who got rewarded by being placed on a good show. You're a warm body hired to keep a brand going until streaming finally forces it off the air.

    This short has a very bad parody of a 2001 scene where it just flashes random crap and we're supposed to find it funny, and one of those bits of randomness was Bart and Homer saying you don't win friends with salad. And I guess I get a bit of that smug, Comic Book Guy superiority when, in one of their worst shorts, they decided to attack nerdy critics and then turn around and desperately try to wave those golden years in our faces in some desperate attempt to remind us this show used to be good and by proxy has to still be good!

    To that I say: C-


    Multiplisa-ty: Okay got a bit long-winded there, so let's keep this short and sweet.

    The premise is that Lisa snaps and develops multiple personalities, which...feels a touch insensitive, but in this case it just means she changes accents every so often. Can Yeardley Smith just not perform Lisa with different personalities, or do the writers not know how to write Lisa with different personalities so they thought different accents would be funny? It's probably the latter, although a few points for having some reason behind it (they reflect the answers on her test that Bart stole and mucked with).

    This short really highlights the problem with the shorts: Bart, Milhouse, and Nelson are freed by Lisa and walk in a hallway that's wrecked and filled with dolls hanging from the ceiling. The come across three effigies of themselves on fire. And that alone is awkward because they just in the middle of the hall not held up by anything and just look out of place. Milhouse looks at them and says "I wish the calories burned that easily" and Nelson mocks him for having body image problems. Let's analyze this!

    My go-to joke for underreacting to horror is The Shinning, with Mr. Burns opening the elevator and blood rushing out of it, his only reaction being "That's odd. Usually the blood gets off at the second floor." This is funny because you expect the characters to find it scary or disturbing. Homer is more perplexed but that's Homer. It's funny because Mr. Burns is underreacting to a disturbing situation, but that's not the only joke! This is his property, and his statement implies that this happens on a regular basis. It also humanizes the blood in a funny way, in effect turning a scary moment (which has a bit of build up with the blood getting focus and the scary music) into a humorous one. You also get a nice reference to the Shining, with the two blood elevator scenes having similar shots. But if you haven't watched the Shining, it's still a weird, scary thing that happens in a mansion that has already been established as having been the site of murders. So it may not be the best example of a reference making sense for non-viewers, it does establish that this is a Mansion With Problems and it's a Halloween episode so spooky things will happen. Ultimately, you still get to enjoy the joke.

    Now let's take Milhouse's comment. Why does Milhouse care about his weight? Now which characters are fat or thing varies from the needs of the writers, as basically every man or boy in Springfield has a rounded belly. Bart has spent episodes as both very athletic and fit as well as tubby and out of shape with no change to his design. Unless you are strictly designated as fat (Marvin, Uter, Homer, etc.) then it varies and it's not a go-to trait of Milhouse. It also has nothing to do with the effigies, and the only humor is that Milhouse is taking fire and underreacting by complaining about his figure. There's no other joke here, unless you count Nelson mocking Milhouse for having body image problems, which unfortunately "Nelson mocks person for a problem you wouldn't expect a bully to know" has been run well into the ground at this point. The characters lack nuance, and everything is stripped down to one defining trait. Milhouse is patheric; Nelson says Haw Haw and mocks people.

    So let's rework the joke. Keep in mind that I am one person thinking this up in five minutes, and I'm not terribly funny so this isn't really how you write a Simpsons joke but it's more to illustrate a point than prove I am the funny lady and the writers suck. So the kids see the effigies which are strung up in nooses because that it actually scary instead of them awkwardly standing there. They scream, and Milhouse calms down a bit and says "Hey maybe it's not so bad. Maybe Lisa just made these to light our way out of here!" and then the outer layer of the effigies burn away to revealed the corpses of, I dunno, Sherri, Terri, and Marvin? They are students that either mock or Lisa directly competes with. Show a moment of the stunned faces of the kids, maybe Bart says something like maybe we should be a bit less optimistic. Maybe Nelson punches Milhouse saying "That's what you get for not accepting the gravity of the situation!" or perhaps "haha (as opposed to haw haw, very important detail obviously) you're going to die painfully." And then his eyes widen when he realizes that applies to him, maybe followed by a crud or a damn it.

    This works because we get a small joke with Milhouse being unrealistically optimistic about the situation given he's seeing an effigy of himself hanging from a noose and on fire. This plays up Milhouse being naive, and also having a crush on Lisa so maybe also a bit of denial about her intentions. Then you get the twist of the effigies having dead kids inside, providing some horror and being funny because it makes the situation even worse and make Milhouse all the more foolish. Bart's comment is more of a bridge to the payoff, which is Nelson antagonizing Milhouse just for trying to have some hope in a dire situation, and that works with Nelson's character because he can't help but pick on nerds even in horrible cases like this. You even get a bonus joke of Nelson realizing he's in the same grisly trouble that Nelson is in. There, I wouldn't call it fixed, but it's better.

    I wrote like four paragraphs on this because I don't know how to describe this episode in a new and exciting way. It does have a bit more directional flair with how the camera goes around Lisa in her opening scenes, and I believe her confrontation with Bart had somewhat interesting "camera" work with the height difference. But otherwise it lacks that atmosphere, Lisa's personas are uninteresting, DID probably isn't the best thing to build a parody on for a horror short regardless of Split doing it, and the scenes where Lisa kills Nelson and Milhouse are rushed and overly invested in Paper Bale Milhouse. Also her motivation is sold poorly? Like she already has shown to flip out over a B, but that episode really sold her mild breakdown, whereas this one doesn't even give us that. At least Nelson was somewhat entertaining this short.

    Geriatric Park: I have to make this quick, as I have already written almost 2500 words on a single Simpsons episode, and I promised I wouldn't take two hours to write this review.

    (I do not take two actually hours. It's more like an hour of writing with frequent fucking about on my phone or web browser in-between. My god, maybe the writers are right about phones!)

    Okay so Jurassic Park can work as a horror short. But this takes place completely during the day, and is paced like absolutely crap. They go to the park, we get some setup, then we get a montage of the seniors turning into dinosaurs and killing a few people, then Lisa talks to Abe and it's over. I cannot stress how mundane and boring this was to sit through. The dinosaur design were kinda neat, but otherwise it just spent too much time on build up and not on the payoff. Get to the park earlier, don't try to mimic the Itchy & Scratchy Land joke that nothing could possibli go wrong, have seniors transform immediately (also why did raising the heat do it? Don't seniors like the thermostat cranked?), and then give us a few scenes of the Simpsons fleeing the dinosaurs at, you know, night, as they try to reach Grandpa or an escape copter or a cure or some goal. Bam, you're already a decent bit better.

    Also, I know Grandpa eating or hurting Lisa was an obvious joke, but the writers are super-averse to killing her in these shorts in an offhanded manner, so it might be worth it. Or maybe we don't go with the cliche "Character shows gesture of kindness towards monster, beat, monster eats person" and she just offends his elderly sensitivities by having her smartphone go off with a text or something. Oh shit that might actually offend the writers, I guess that won't work. Uhh maybe she implies kids have it hard these days and that sets him off. I dunno, I'm so tired. It's like five minutes of bad jokes and then the actual interesting part with the dinosaurs happens and is resolved in like two minutes. Short is bad.


    Unfun Facts: Joel H. Cohen (not the one you're thinking of) also wrote Hex and the City. He has written thirty episodes so dang.

    His brother, Robert Cohen, wrote one episode for the show: Flaming Moe’s. Ouch.

    This is the Treehouse of Horror with the lowest ratings so far, at just under three million watching. To be fair, streaming can be blamed for some of that drop off.

    On IMDB, this is the lowest rated Treehouse of Horror Episode, ranking as the 36th worst episode of the series 700+ episodes. Conversely, TOH V has the highest of the specials, placing at 4th best episode of the series.

    Rating:
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    HA, just kidding.

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    Sterica on
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  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    I really don't want to be too mean to the writers, but jesus christ.

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  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    I mean, i think it's worth being mean here? This is pap. It's not like you're just mindlessly spewing insults - you're critiquing, and critiquing well, and the unforuante truth of it is this stuff is shit. Hell, i've been defending some of these episodes, or bits of them and i'm out of nice htings to say at this point. How do you fuck up Cthulhu? How!? Even the lighthouse cigar gag is honestly just... what. You could make it so much more creepy by having him visibly transform the lighthosue into the a cigar, and the lighthouse keeper becoming a wick person (and probably being blaise about it).

    There is so much good horror out there you could mine, and i'm not even a horror fan! Hell, you could mine stuff that's losely horror adjacent - Do a starship troopers parody with a focus on the "Whoops, dumbest invasion ever" bit, and you could get good horror AND social commentary! (And actually give Kang and Kodos something to do rather than jokes about them not having something to do). Do something with the stephen king's IT! there's so many things out there you could choose.

    Or you know, you could parody that known horror franchise, Avatar. Wait what.

    Ideas hate it when you anthropomorphize them
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  • King RiptorKing Riptor Registered User regular
    Sterica wrote: »
    I really don't want to be too mean to the writers, but jesus christ.

    No no they deserve it.

    I have a podcast now. It's about video games and anime!Find it here.
  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited October 2021
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    Treehouse of Horror XXX
    Original Air Date: October 20, 2019

    Hey! We're at the 30th episode! And they managed the line it up with 666th episode, which I think is pretty cool. And hey, an Omen reference is fitting enough...and that's all the nice things I have to say about this intro. No wait, I think Marge, Homer, and Flanders being impaled was neat way to queue up the title.

    First, Maggie being just randomly swapped out because Homer wanted a girl is really weird and very distracting. Second...this is just the same Exorcist parody they did two years ago, right down to red eyes that don't even that scary or good. She has the same powers she did before, but I guess she doesn't talk? Though they also reuse the same voice actor as her for the Exor-sis short. The only unique thing is the Omen suicide scene that they are contractually obligated to reference. This feels really lazy for a double-whammy milestone.

    Danger Things: This short's weakness is that it's overly dedicated to the Stranger Things parody, and it also really wants to make a bunch of 80s reference. Not jokes, just...references. As if they were afraid putting THE 80s on the screen wasn't a big enough hint. Like when Kirk goes through his closet and keeps pulling out 80s Stuff, it's weird and not funny.

    Then it just races to through the very basic plot, Milhouse gets captured, his parents do the Christmas light thing (but stop featuring in the rest of the episode), the kids go to Frink and Lisa goes to the Over Under (ugh) and it has random Ullman Show Simpsons wandering around? It's also weird they got not Upside Down to match the source show so closely, it just clashes and feels like they're trying to ape the style. Then you have the joke of many regular Spingfielders just living in here because haha they're bad and the place is bad. Except...place is good? So instead of a climax, they just turn the monsters into ugly jokes and we get boring Amazon jokes as the Simpsons just shrug and live there.

    Boring, next!


    Heaven Swipes Right: God even a more nothing short. Like, when the title screen is phoned in, you know you're in for a bad time.

    Homer dies, but prematurely so Heaven (filled with stale Google and general tech startup jokes) gives him the option to inhabit a new body. So he gets a body of some sports hunk, but in one day he abuses the body to the point where it looks like him. Which is maybe the only thing here approaching a joke. There's no horror to this, there's no wit, and there isn't even real commentary on Tinder or anything. He just uses a phone to find new people who are doomed to die so he can occupy their body. The targets aren't very interesting, like Bart convinces Homer to take Chalmers's body and just order Skinner to give himself a purple nurple. Hilarity!

    The ending is also super creepy, with Homer settling on Moe's body and Moe ending up in Maggie's body and telling Marge he's hungry. This fucking awful, and I'm glad this episode is being so bad and lazy so I can take a little break after writing a novella of words this week. Yeah, this short has no reason to exist.

    Garbage, next!


    When Hairy Met Slimy: Julie Kavner is starting to sound awful now, and it's only going to get worse, but somehow Patty and Selma sound pretty normal. Not sure how that works, but I just don't really want to talk about this short either.

    I'll say one nice thing: I kinda liked when Mr. Burns said he'd kill Kang earlier when Kang tried to offer a clean, cheap energy source to spare his life. You can see it coming a mile away, but it's somewhat humorous.

    Otherwise, it's got pacing problems, where just goes through the expected jokes of Selma/Kang being together. Selma is ugly, Kang is an alien, oh wait let's directly reference the source! Which isn't even a horror movie although I guess if we cared enough we would attempt that. But nah, let's make Infinity War references! That is just so deeply embarrassing, and it's just the same expected issues of them just making bad jokes and then suddenly there's a conflict that's basically introduced in the climax or right before it, so there's no tension, no suspense, no nothing. Well we did get a bloodless decapitation. Wait, I think only I like them ironically.

    It's bad!

    Oh, quick addendum, there's lame joke where Kodos woos Patty and has a stupid identities joke which feels more like an excuse to made bad sci-fi sex puns. And the fact the next scene has the two couples interacting like bickering het couples make it even more fangless. Uhhhh we don't know how to write actual queer couples, so we'll just assume they two descend into resentment and passive-aggressive sniping. Thanks, I'm glad we made a stupid LGBT joke in order to get that Lockhorns-grade comedy.

    Unfun Facts: This is the 30th Treehouse of Horror.

    This is the 666th episode of the Simpsons.

    Rating: When this was about to air, I was actually pretty excited. It was such a neat alignment of milestones, a once-in-a-lifetime event that likely isn't going to happen again. I mean, how many shows make it to 666 episodes AND have a recurring Halloween special? And sometimes they do bump up the quality a touch for these milestones (well the TOH ones, if episode #600 is anything to go by). And it's just so...devoid of creative and craft. The intro is basically microwaving a a short from just two years ago, the first short is likely the best but is just confused as it whether it wants to be a slave to the original series or do its own thing, the middle segment is a thin gruel of a dull concept that isn't even on theme, and then another non-horror parody that is just a dud. If you removed the the actual bit that celebrate the milestone, I would not have been able to distinguish this from any of the other dreck. I cannot tell you how disappointed I was that this didn't even try to elevate things even marginally like XXVIII.

    So, a bit sorry this review is brief and not very thorough, but these reviews have gotten gargantuan in size and I felt this was an appropriate episode to take it easy. I mean, if they're not going to try, why should I?
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    Sterica on
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  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    Also, a correction to the XXIX review: Robert Cohen wrote Flaming Moe's. I did not realize there was an episode in Season Who Fucking Cares called Flaming Moe, so I got a bit lazy with the title. Apparently the episode is pretty transphobic, so I wouldn't want to besmirch Mr. Cohen.

    The joke was to besmirch the other Mr. Cohen, who wrote like thirty episodes and yet couldn't come close to his brother's one.

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  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited October 2021
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    Treehouse of Horror XXXI
    Original Air Date: November 1, 2020

    YEESH this intro. So it's about the 2020 election, and it's modern Simpsons, so you know it's going to be lacking in any subtlety or humor. Despite mocking late-night comedians and their very hacky material regarding Trump, there really isn't much here except...rattling off everything he's done for the past four years? Then it turns out Homer didn't vote, it was all a dream, and from there it goes straight into the apocalypse on inauguration day. Besides not being funny, as the whole end of the world thing with Trump's presidency has been beaten into separate atoms, it also doesn't make much sense? Like, Trump just stays president, so why would everything go to hell in a handbasket on that specific day? Yeah, maybe stay away from the political commentary if all you have to offer is the same low-hanging fruit of the past few years.

    The Four Horsemen carrying the episode title was kinda cool though.

    Toy Gory: Alright, so it's Toy Story but Bart is mean to his toys and they get revenge on him for his mistreatment.

    So let's go into the number problem one with this short:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBO1KfmUgv0
    THE ORIGINAL FUCKING MOVIE DID IT BETTER

    Not only is there good build up, the brilliant use of Sid's abuse against them as they look scary in their broken/twisted states, excellent use of cinematography and music to create atmosphere, and of course the final reveal, where Woody switches from his toy speaker to his actual voice. It's good and pretty spooky. I mean it's a kid's movie so they clearly weren't go for big scares or anything, but it's effective. Maybe it's unfair to compare Pixar to the Simpsons, but both are legends in their respective mediums, and this is Pixar's first feature film and this is the Simpsons...688th episode, so I feel like maybe they could have learned something having fifteen years of hindsight.

    Toy Gory, on the other hand, it aimed at adults, is trying to be scary, and is somehow worse at it than a G-Rated movie. We get an intro of Bart tormenting his toys, played to a mock Randy Newman song. Which I only give a sliver of credit since it's about Bart and not the extremely tired jokes about Randy Newman. So then the toys mourn the latest toy Bart destroyed, which I guess cool of them to have a nod to Doll Without Pity by having the Krusty doll back, and then take away that credit over a joke about the dead toy being married to a monkey toy when the toy was supposed to be brand new. When did it time to date!? Especially trying to date a monkey. We all know monkeys play hard to get.

    Sorry, I'm getting distracted.

    So they capture Bart, drag him to the treehouse, during which we get an awkward cut-away gag about TCM and how it had to stop showing a movie because of how it depicted the Irish. I dunno if this is mocking older movies or TCM, it's probably the latter because people said Apu was problematic and oh nooooo the past is flawed. But even then it sucks because it has nothing to do with the episode and is awkwardly shoved in there as the toys drag Bart away past his parents. It'd be okay as a quick gag playing the background, but they actually stop and cut away from the current scene to the lame TCM joke and then cut back to the actual plot. While the Simpsons are guilty of partaking in unrelated gags for the sake of gags, they tend to subtly relate to the episode. The infomercial spoof was relevant because it got Homer to order the juicer that caused the flu outbreak in town, which kicks off the plot as everyone gets sick and Marge is stressed from caring for the family and accidentally takes something without paying. Not saying this is always the case, but it may surprise you how many seemingly irrelevant parodies or jokes have small connections to the plot. This does not, and it is abrupt and distracting and bad.

    Then the toys take the bag off Bart's head and bam, they're alive. Nothing subtle, no direction or mood to establish (although at least it's darker than normal? Thanks completely different animation team!), and just nothing. They use some stuff to hide the violence and that's it. Bart is turned into a toy, and this is creepy, especially them giving him a drawstring with phrases. Nancy Cartwright does really sell an unnaturally sweet tone from Bart there. But again there's no direction or sound cues to build up tension as to what happened. Bart and Lisa at a weird side angle, everything paced normally so there's no suspense, and you get a cut of the toys watching for no reason, and it's just a jump cut so it's not done for any good reason. As I tend to say, there is potential here, but it's utterly wasted.

    And the episode...keeps going? It decides to go ahead and explain what happened to us via Dr. Hibbert, because that's truly frightening and I guess letting your imagination wonder what exactly it is they did to Bart's body to make him a dead, human toy is just too risky. We might not understand the plot that is pretty much over. And it's still not done! We get a montage of the toys...messing around with Bart's body? Like it's a SECOND Newman song, which I guess makes it a Wacky Re-Murder Montage? And it's done in the regular artstyle so we don't even have that going for us. And then it closes out on the joke DON'T BUY TOYS. Great, guys.

    Fixes: abbreviate Bart's toy abuse as he's already well-know for treating his toys like crap, have the thrust of the short be Bart trying to escape his toys (maybe his parents have to attend Lisa's sax recital or something), and have the ending be Lisa discovering his toy corpse. Or do that EARLIER in the episode, and then the thrust becomes the toys use Bart to attack the rest of the family to take over. Maybe as they fight back they tear off Bart's arm and reveal his erector set skeleton or something, like a Toys R' Us Terminator. I dunno better than this.

    Into the Homerverse: Oh for god's sake.

    No, this is stupid. I refuse to engage with this crap all that deeply. The only thing I like is the plot being set in motion by Homer accidentally eating the Halloween candy. I just had to rebuy our Halloween candy this year since the house ate the first two bags, so that's actually relatable, funny, and in-character for Homer since he means well but his appetite got the better of him. And then we get an entirely out of theme movie parody. No, just no.

    The blog Me Blog Write Good which took the significantly more arduous task of reviewing every Simpsons episode, had the far more clever idea of the Homers being different Treehouse of Horror incarnations of himself. Which would also tie into this being the 30th Year Anniversary since the special aired, so a bit of a look back would be appropriate. I am steadfast in my refusal to offer corrections on these shorts that don't even try to be scary, and honestly that's more creative than anything I would have been able to think up.

    A good example of the modern show sabotaging its own joke is on perfect display here. So there's a "hilarious joke" that with multiple Homers in the town they are eating everything. Which...you already did over a decade ago with the Clone short but sure. However, a joke I found funny was Krusty Burger being forced to used less...traditional types of meat to keep up with demanding, which then cuts to Krusty overseeing them back in some exotic animals, some sports balls, and then Gil saying "What's this new gig I'm going to?" Which is kinda funny...until it refuses to cut and keeps going on so we get the sound of saws and screaming. Instead of immediately cutting and letting the dark humor soak in, it just explains the fucking joke. Cool.

    What else do I hate about this short...the alternate Homers are all boring and one-shot. Like the Anime Homer just does the same anime jokes you've seen since like 1999 at this point. Hanna-Barbera Homer switches between cartoon characters as a gimmick but he only really does it once and then sticks to Snagglepuss Homer for until the very end for a lame joke. Why even have that? He was Yogi Bear for like thirty seconds and stayed Snagglepuss the rest. I know I know, he did BRIEFLY switch to another character I've already forgotten, but that was for five seconds and had no jokes or meaning to it. Pixel Homer does like one video game-esque thing and it's not even very interesting. God this is so devoid of anything.

    Oh and the alternate Mr. Burns are equally uninspired and don't even bother to match the Homers. Video Game Homer isn't pixelated or in any way made to look like a video game character. Anime Burns is not stylized to look more like an anime (and they repeat the SAME anime joke as with the Homers going for the last piece of bacon earlier). I don't think Noir Burns was even grayscale, and Noir Smithers was so what the hell is this?

    Worse, Harry Shearer seems to be developing the same issues as Julie Kavner, and his Mr. Burns sounds tired and weak. I think first thing that upsets me about the series continuing to drag on like this is that we're not going to get a proper finale with the original cast. I know the show is like two-thirds garbage now, but it clearly had an influence on me growing up and I would like to get some closure on that. Yet the cast is already dying. We lost Marcia Wallace years back, and Russi Taylor died during the airing of Season 31. They just unceremoniously recast these roles, and at this point I am very confident that someone on the core cast will die before the show decides to end. And back in the day, Harry Shearer threatened to walk, and the staff shrugged and said they'll replace him. I guess they really do assume nobody will be able to tell the diddly-ifference. Now losing a cast member due to money squabbles is different than death, but I still fear they would just outright replace them and keep on trucking so long as the money keeps coming in. So one day we'll just have a show that literally isn't the Simpsons anymore. Just an entirely alien staff of actors and writers far removed from the original. How bizarre.

    But the real tragedy is what we lost from that cast. The series is full of talented actors, and I really feel for what we lost because they were stuck recording lines for the stupid fucking show that should have gone off the air two decades ago. I know the cast hasn't done just the Simpsons, but it's undeniable that their potential was really wasted by having so much of their schedule dominated by this show well past its prime.

    ...it's really obvious I didn't want to discuss this short, isn't it? Yeah, it sucks.

    Be Nine, Rewind: This is probably the best short and, all together now, yet it fails to live up to the potential.

    The initial mystery is fun, and I actually got a mild laugh out of Lisa dying to the ceiling caving in and then the mirror falling on her even when she dialed back her frustration. Then we get a Wacky Murder Montage! I believe the song is from Russian Doll, what the show is a parodying. Or is it Happy Deathday? Or both. Whatever, still don't like montages when we got very little time to work with.

    And then...it doesn't go anywhere. The short just faffs about until it comes to the random conclusion that killing Gil will end the loop. Like they go to Comic Book Guy, figure they need to work as a team to figure out how to solve this, and they kill Gil with no explanation as to why. Gil wasn't plotting anything, all he did was engage the loop by driving through Lisa's house by mistake.

    I really have nothing to offer here. It's very similar to the Sideshow Bob short where it was enamored with murdering a child over and over without any central conflict or plot going on. Except this one is even weaker as at least Bob had Bart basically held captive so they could do something at the end. This doesn't even have an antagonist, but just a mystery the writers quickly lose interest in so they can make bad jokes.

    Yeah, that's it. It didn't upset me like the other two, but it also didn't leave any kind of lasting impact.

    WAIT WAIT, IT ACTUALLY HAD A BLOODY DECAPITATION. That counts for something, right?

    Unfact Fun: This is the 30th Anniversary of the original Treehouse of Horror's airing.

    This is the first Treehouse of Horror with Sherri and Terri's new voice actress since Russi Taylor's passing.

    This is the third Treehouse of Horror to have a short in CGI. Yes, I know the show has been digitally animated since, like, the 00s or whenever. You know what I mean.

    I believe this is the first Treehouse of Horror fully made start to finish under ownership of Disney. It may have been the last one.

    Rating: Oh my god just one more of these to go.
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    Sterica on
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  • PaperLuigi44PaperLuigi44 My amazement is at maximum capacity. Registered User regular
    Ooh, that blog seems interesting, I'll keep it in mind when I'm bored.

  • BucketmanBucketman Call me SkraggRegistered User regular
    I thought I had seen a ton of these...but the last one I remember seeing is the Harry Potter one, which was...20 years ago.

    I need to lay down.

  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited November 2021
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    Treehouse of Horror XXXII
    Original Air Date: October 10, 2021

    So we have five shorts now instead of three? I dunno if this offends the sensibilities of long-time fans, but maybe playing with the format can breathe some new life into this dinosaur and keep the shorts more focused than they've been for like....twenty years or so?

    Barti: Wow, they really wanted the world to know they were owned by Disney, eh? This is basically just an intro like you'd see in any other Treehouse of Horror, so feels like the whole "five short" deal is more gimmick than anything.

    The short is some Disney-esque signing with animals killing each other, then a brief recreation of the infamous scene from Bambi. Milhouse is decapitated via shotgun from Burns (bloodlessly), Bart runs, then he comes back and it turns out Burns was killed by Homer (as a deer) and we get some jokes and he and Lenny (again, as a deer) devour Mr. Burns. I found the herbivore joke kinda funny in an absurd kind of way, but this offers nothing new to the many Bambi parodies over the past 50-60 years. I don't feel the art here is different enough and it looks overly bright and saturated like everything from the HD era. The song also wasn't funny or pleasant to listen; it's just trying way too hard to be subversive of Disney in the most fangless manner possible. Sorry, but this doesn't come close to the biting-the-hand humor that was done with Fox. Underground Comix this ain't.

    Bong Joon Ho’s This Side of Parasite: I have not seen Parasite yet, and unfortunately I was unable to see it before viewing this like I had planned. I have no idea why Bong Joon Ho has his name in the short's title, but the titles can be very hit or miss.

    This short is a mess. It has a decent setup, with the Simpsons all getting hired in Wolfcastle's mansion so they can mooch off him while the family is away. It's nothing incredible, and it's odd to have a random Itchy & Scratchy that isn't memorable or interesting enough to merit its inclusion. Wasn't the point of more shorts to trim the fat and put that time elsewhere? Anyways, that's when Kirk comes to the door, and you think it might be interesting when he's looking troubled and suspicious. He reveals a door behind the fridge, and it's...random Springfieldians living in some maintenance level of the mansion? We also see Homer winded going down the stairs, but don't worry: Bart is there to explain the ho-hum joke. Then the characters all get in a disagreement (jealousy of the Simpsons living in the house? Too many people? It's not super clear) and we get a big fight because violence = scary, you see.

    At one point Lisa just explains the whole allegory taking place, we get a lame jab against conservative (IT BETTER NOT BE SOCIALISM, god just stuff Moe full of straw while you're at it), and then we get a scene where...Burns is at the top floor of the mansion for...reasons? And they kill him after he makes a lame joke about being too young to die. God, Harry sounds so tired.

    Then we cut to the aftermath, the Simpsons I guess taking over the mansion with a giant pile of bodies, and it just ends. Maybe this makes sense to people who saw Parasite? It's not scary, there's a bit of suspense when Kirk arrives, but then it descends into a nonsensical violence and that's it. Yeah, not a good start.


    Nightmare on Elm Tree: Interesting that now they decide to have a short about the titular Treehouse itself, when we just had two milestone episodes celebrating the 30th episode and another celebrating the 30th anniversary. Honestly, it would have been an interesting idea, maybe Homer gets sick of Lisa being scared and tries to hack it down, and it mysteriously defends itself.

    Sadly, that is not the case here.

    The treehouse isn't even particularly relevant to the short: it's just a large, well-known tree in the Simpson's yard. Nothing magical or special about the tree either; it just gets hit by lightning and comes to life. Also the worst thing is how it develops a mouth from the large hunk cut out of it by Homer, and it looks okay. But later in turns into a standard Simpsons Overbite Mouth and looks awful. This is what I feel causes a lot of the worst design issues for modern Simpsons, be it the tree people from the Body Snatchers short or a bad Grinch lookalike. They just design the character and then slap an overbite on it without seeing if that truly matches Groening's style. It also just makes everything samey, and it DEFINITELY takes away form the horror of the short since instead of a scary tree monsters he looks like the father of that stool that came to life many episodes ago.

    And then it's basically like any other "X rebels against humanity" short, with the Dolphin short being the most similar to this. Just replace the Dolphin stuff with Tree stuff and it's very similar, right down to the town fighting back and losing. I guess it also has shades of the Great Pumpkin short where the Treehouse is enraged by the way humanity treats trees. I feel this is very derivative as a result, and I think the short would have been better served as one monster tree stalking the town and killing them. We don't get many slasher-type stories in these, where one monster picks the town off one by one, and on the other have we have a ton of shorts that break down into big, violent messes at the end. Shit, this episode just has that in the previous short.

    I guess as a trans woman I should mention the joke they made in the middle of the short and...meh. While the Simpsons has an absolutely bad track record with LGBT topics, resting on its laurels with the good Homer's Phobia and bad There's Something About Marrying episodes as proof of its queer cred or something, and yet continuing to make gay jokes into the 2010s. There also has never been a similar episode for transgender topics (nor bisexuals now that I think about it), and the show still treats trans people much like it did gay people in the 90s and 00s. I imagine one day they'll awkwardly tackle the topic, and act like it's a brave stance when public opinion has shifted enough to make it of absolute minimal risk, or maybe the show will finally die before they have the chance to embarrass themselves. Who knows! So I can see why the joke may rankle people, as the Simpsons has not earned the benefit of the doubt, yet for me it feels like they wanted to make a lame pun that had already been made by trans people like 5+ years earlier? And since the show clearly likes the very collaborative effort it had in its past, there was nobody it saw "Hey, this might be interpreted in the wrong way. Also, it isn't funny, and furthermore feels like you're just writing down the first tree jokes that come to your mindand you accidentally made a plant pun and had to justify it. I'm fired, aren't I?" So yeah, it feels more like they did the Attack Helicopter shtick to get the pun in. Personally, I'm more offended by the As Themself cameo of Tree Rollins, who may win some kind of award for bad guest stars.

    Audrey II is trans, by the way. That's my headcanon now, and you can't stop me.

    I also want to focus on the most bizarre part of the short: Homer gives up chopping the tree and falls asleep, and a dream balloon comes from his head, leaving the interpretation it's a dream. It's also named after a horror movie based on dreams, and it wasn't a joke or anything. Homer starts dreaming then lightning strikes and kicks the short into action. Is this Homer's nightmare? Nothing comes of this; the short just ends with the trees victorious. Maybe that was the original concept and they couldn't make it work without being too similar to the original short from the classic seasons? It feels like they make the short name first and build the concept around it (a bad idea, by the way) so maybe? Either way, this is a bit better than the Parasite parody, but that's a low bar to clear. This brings nothing new to the table.

    Also, Homer? I WISH there were two good shorts in modern Treehouse of Horror episodes.

    Poetic Interlude: Another mini-short, featuring Maurice doing a solid Vincent Price impression while telling rhymes of Bart being up to mischief. I like the gothic art style, and it's relatively inoffensive and watchable. I don't get why they decided to speed it up. There's no impetus for this besides Homer and Maggie urging him to speed up, but why not take advantage of this format change and let it breathe? Then it ends with Maggie killing Price for no reason and there's no cleverness to it. She just types RIP into her speak and spell. Why not give her another scary guest voice actor that continues finishes the poem by ending Price's rhyme? This just feels a bit half-baked, but it's better than the last two, so maybe there's something to be said for shorter, well, shorts.


    Dead Ringer: Let's get this out of the way: yes the TikTok thing is pretty groanworthy and is absolutely unnecessary for this short to work. It almost feels like product placement to a degree, even if that feels a bit silly to feature your product being instrumental to children's deaths. However, marketing has gotten more "hip" to what works and are more willing to go for seemingly contradictory advertising. Capitalism works in mysterious, horrible ways.

    Otherwise it's very rote and by the numbers parody. The kids die in the first minutes of the short with little build up, scares, humor or anything. Almost feels like an obligation, although I did appreciate the joke that Milhouse watched it X times and had X knives in his back. Is the joke funny or am I just in shock they didn't feel the need to explain it right after? Also, TWO bloodless decapitations which feels like a treat or punishment for the last short I'll be reviewing. Also something something Sherri and Terri's new voices. I didn't touch this last episode when they had Grey Griffin voicing, but they were such bit characters in the classic season who tended to speak only 1-3 lines an episode if they were lucky. Does it matter what they sound like now? It's close enough.

    You get a lot of stuff you expect: two jokes of a character annoying the demonic voice on the phone after viewing the video, spoofing the contents of the Ring video, and so forth. I did like a few jokes, like Skinner and the kickball team's doping investigation (although this would be much stronger by having the kids walking down the hall with one freakishly buff leg as opposed to showing them play kickball), and I also liked the atmosphere of Lisa taking on the ghost by herself.

    I feel like the explanation for the ghost's tragic story was ripe for humor and refused to take advantage of it, and I recalled the Nightmare on Elm Street short (the good one) where it showed Willie's origin as a serial killer. It was a hilarious showcase of the townspeople and their indifference towards the suffering of the janitor for mundane problems about their kids. In the age of parents flipping out about teaching racism or that being queer is actually not a bad thing, Kirk demanding time to speak about spaghetti lunches while Willie burns to death feels relevant. Why not a joke about Chalmers voicing concerns about the well, and Skinner reassuring him that the students are disciplined and taught safety so it's never been a concerned....and then the girl goes jumping down the well. Maybe have Skinner dig himself deeper by trying to come up with a lame excuse that she's training for the diving team. You know, something! Instead we get Willie being lazy and Wiggum being scared for some reason. They just feel like afterthoughts. Also, why is a tree from the other short walking around in the background? Their weird need to do callbacks to prior shorts in the episode has always been annoying with one exception ("Ugh, I'm bad at this.") and that was more of a running gag that anything. This wasn't even a joke: it's just distracting.

    I will say Lisa does go well with this short, seeing a problem the school wants to ignored. Bart may have been better to have a larger role, just to get that Bart and Lisa Adventure vibe that has worked well in the past. Bart just doesn't have much to do here, and Lisa is by herself at the end. It is cute that the ghost initially takes up Lisa's offer of friendship, but Lisa is too desperate for friends and ultimately drives the ghost away. However, her just jumping back into the well feels expected and trite. Maybe she tries watching her own video, realizes it doesn't work, and then screams as Lisa readies the sax solo. Give it scary music to close out the episode.

    What we didn't need is to bring back the stupid Disney song parody, complete with the traditional unfunny Kang and Kodos cameo. You had EXTRA SHORTs. Why not give them a short? Also, they really don't have to be in every TOH if you can't do better than this. So yeah, it ends on a fairly sour note.

    It is the best full-length short of the three. At the very least, this is putting in more effort than the first two shorts by at trying to have a logical plot, some jokes, a bit of atmosphere and that's it. I'm done.

    u̸̮̇ṋ̷͠f̵̥̽u̸̥̽n̴͔̎ ̸̳͗f̷̻̆ą̴̑c̴͉͂ṭ̵́s̶̞͂: This is the first Treehouse of Horror with five shorts.

    Susan Egan sang the intro, and she voiced Belle in the stage production of Beauty and the Beast, which technically makes her Disney Princess.

    An episode hasn't involved the actual Treehouse since the first episode, and this is the first time it appears in an actual short and not as part of a wraparound/framing device.

    This is only Maurice LaMarche's third cameo on the specials. I figured he had done more.

    Rating: I was really hoping breaking up the format would help these shorts, and it did cut down on mindless filler like Wacky Murder Montages. However, it really wasn't that much of a gamechanger, as we've already had the intro as it's own mini-short, and the poem likely wasn't even two minutes long. And that doesn't the other problems, like pacing and not being particular funny or scary. And there was still plenty of scenes that should have been cut early in writing. TikTok complains aside, I feel the Dead Ringer short is a decent template for them to build on, as it feels a bit more grounded. Make the deaths more impactful, up the humor, and maybe don't go so hard on mocking the source material and we could see some decent episodes. However, it's not enough, and the prior two shorts were duds so while I appreciate the attempt to course-correct, I find that it stills falls short.

    And so, let me grant my final rating to the Treehouse of Horror: one last F to close out the Halloween season.
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    But wait! We're not quite done yet. Tomorrow I'll do a bit of a recap, and that will close out my month of Spooky Reviews. Until then, enjoy your Spooky Weekend!

    Sterica on
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  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    No Thanksgiving of Terror review? I guessi t's not a treehouse, but thought it might squeak in as being adjacent at least! (on the other hand, if you're just done with simpsons, yep, that'd fit!)

    Ideas hate it when you anthropomorphize them
    Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
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  • ProlegomenaProlegomena Frictionless Spinning The VoidRegistered User regular
    This has been a real journey, thanks for doing this even though it has now reached the point where I can't even bring myself to read them.

  • EnlongEnlong Registered User regular
    No Thanksgiving of Terror review? I guessi t's not a treehouse, but thought it might squeak in as being adjacent at least! (on the other hand, if you're just done with simpsons, yep, that'd fit!)

    Well, we could have someone do a review of that in about a month.

  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
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    Halloween of Horror
    Original Air Date: October 18, 2015

    Haha, I have tricked you…with a treat! I wanted to make this part of the review, and though it’d be appropriate to do so on Halloween itself. It’s also going to be a bit odd reviewing a normal episode as opposed to three shorts, but a refreshing change of pace!

    This episode really took people by surprise, with the writers just randomly deciding to do a normal Halloween episode seemingly out of the blue. There’s no milestone, not an anniversary, and it doesn’t even replace the normal Treehouse of Horror for the 27th Season. There is a bit between Homer and Flanders at the beginning of the episode where the latter asks if they’re doing the treehouse stories this year, and Homer just rattles off some fake short ideas and states “Yeah, people love it.” all in a disinterested tone. I can’t help but read deeper into this as a statement from the writers. Were they sick of the annual tradition? Was this an attempt to try something new and rekindle their interests? It would explain a lot, although it’d be weird to be exhausted with the once-a-year episode that has way fewer rules on what you can do (and they uh, don’t even follow those rules most of the time) but they are okay with 20 full episodes about a working class family every year? Maybe I’m reading too much into it.

    The premise is that Lisa is excited to visit Krustyland’s Halloween event (why not Duff Gardens? Oh well), and she is so terrified that she wants nothing to do with the holiday. What really makes this work is that it sets up conflict within the family, as the episode begins with Homer and Marge setting up their extravagant Halloween decorations while judging the "skippers" who turn off their lights on All Hallow's Eve. This sets everything up when Lisa is so traumatized by the theme park that she wants nothing to do with Halloween, and Bart is appalled when Homer starts taking down their "Everscream Terrors" setup. Homer angrily tells Bart he knows what this makes the family, but it has to be done for Lisa's sake. From there, things segue smoothly into a B-Plot where Marge tries to give Bart a nice Halloween outside the house with little success. But we'll get into that later.

    The main plot is Homer trying to give Lisa a nice, scare-free Halloween in the hopes it will get her back to normal. Lisa has regressed a bit to the point where she has dragged out "Tailee" a ratty old piece of a stuffed animal from her early years that was used as a kind of emotional crutch when she was scared. However, earlier in the episode Homer got three temp employees fired from Apu's Spirit Halloween-esque Pop-Up shop, and stage a home invasion to get revenge on Homer. So things go from bad to worse as Homer starts by trying to secure the house without alerting Lisa to something being wrong, to frantically hiding them both from the invaders once they get inside the house. There's a surprising amount of tension and suspense on display here, complete with good musical cues, nice atmosphere, and actual interesting directional choices. While I may have preferred a more mundane family feud over whether or not to "skip" Halloween, that likely would have lacked the actually scary elements that you'd expect for a Halloween episode. Maybe if we had those during the normal specials that wouldn't be necessary, hmmmmmmm?

    Bart and Marge's B-Plot isn't quite as interesting, but it's cute and does tie into the end of the episode. Marge tries to make it up to Bart by taking him to another neighborhood's Halloween block party, but this year they aren't allowing families from outside the neighborhood. So Marge pivots to trick-or-treating before the night is over, but is too late as houses turn off their lights and so begins "Adult Halloween." This is a brief Rocky Horror song parody about adults going out to get wasted, wear weird or erotic costumes (or both), and have kinky sex. The song would have worked, but the lyrics are very forced and in many cases hurt the meter or rhyming of the original. While I do like the idea of trick-or-treating having this "scary" ticking clock of adults having their own inappropriate fun, but it's not fully utilized here. The B-Plot is them being denied entry to the block party, trick or treating being over followed IMMEDIATELY by the NC-17 Halloween song, and that's it. There aren't any other scenes from this until the two plots connect at the very end, so we don't get Marge trying to find a wholesome way for Bart to enjoy Halloween while drunken adults in horny costumes provide unique obstacles. And unlike Homer and Lisa, there's no real study of Marge and Bart's family dynamic. Just Bart being upset at the lack of Halloween fun, and Marge trying to make it up to him. Then it ends. Oh well, it's enough content to have easily been the A-Plot, so better this than hurt than main story.

    Homer and Lisa are great here. Lisa feels like a real kid instead of an adult voice of reason or a sarcastic one-liner machine for the first time in who knows how longer, and Homer feels like more the bumbling dad we knew and loved. He doesn't have quite the rough edges of the classic seasons, but he does have the heart, and that is something I really missed. He didn't get the temps fired out of malic but because he innocently exposed their scam. And watching him try to awkwardly handle things in a caring as opposed to abusive manner was a breath of the fresh air. From trying to whistle a happy tune, except he's nervous so he starts whistling the theme to Halloween. This even leads to a cute scene where Lisa herself starts humming it, likely because she wouldn't have seen it given how prone to scaring she had shown thus far. My god, the story in the Simpsons making sense? In the year 2015!?

    This also leads to some sweet moments when the two are hiding in the attic, with Homer stating that as a father he has lied to her thousands of times, but in this case he can't lie to her about the real danger they're in. Or they have to stay calm, because there's only one "good brain" between the two of them. It may be a bit overly sweet for the Simpsons, but it's at least not artificial and does sound like something Homer would say to his kids in a very serious situation. And again, I am amazed about the logical and orderly procedure of events: the goons break in the house. Homer takes Lisa to hide in the attic. Lisa points out the attic is full of the decorations from both Halloween and other holidays that may allow them to get attention. The find some old unused fireworks from July 4th, but it's windy so Homer can't get a match to stay lit (it's Halloween, so a windy night makes sense!), and there we get Lisa giving up Tailiee as a way to maintain a flame since it's been unwashed and soaking whatever oils have been on her skin since infancy. The fireworks go off, the decorations are arranged to spell HELP! and since the adults are out partying most of the neighborhood is around to see it. They even explain why Homer didn't have access to a phone (they stole his cell off the charger and he forgot to pay the phone bill). It's incredible that they found a grounded, intelligently sequence of events to tell a story without resorting to outlandish deus ex machinas, or giant plot holes with smug fourth wall meta jokes to try and excuse the lazy writing. It's a bizarre thing to watch dead in the middle of the Simpsons almost unanimously regarded "terrible" seasons.

    THEY EVEN HAVE GUEST STARS THAT ARE PLAYING OTHER CHARACTERS. It's like for a single episode they collectively decided to give a shit. Or maybe Fox executives went on vacation and forgot to check in on things. Who knows!

    The episode is not perfect, however. If it's lacking in anything, it's humor. You may not laugh at all this episode, although there are a few good gags like the temps writing in what looks like blood a threatening message on the kitchen walls, and then next to it is an explanation that they're in the house because they know Homer is stupid. And they know this because we had another decent joke where they say Homer is going to be sorry he got them fired, and he insists that he feels bad and is sorry now, not getting the implied threat. So even the jokes have connective tissue, week as they are. The horror night where Lisa got scared has a joke where just everything gets shut down in a "crybaby" alert, which had potential to be more funny than it was, but I feel the joke overstays its welcome. Timing has always been a recurring issue with modern Simpsons, and it's still present here. I also did like where Homer blames the temps for stealing his phone, and then blaming them for not paying his phone bill. Again, you aren't going to laugh like the "That's bad" bit or "he was a zombie?" exchange from the classic seasons, but what's here is okay if a bit underdeveloped. If I had to choose between the Simpsons aging into being overly soft and sweet with more dad humor than real jokes, I'd take it in a heartbeat over it trying to be hip and relevant with embarrassing attempts at chasing the edgy humor of its heyday.

    But yeah, I really liked this, and I think it was a good way to end this review series with something a bit more positive.

    Facts: This is the first Halloween episode to be within the series' vague idea of canon.

    Carolyn Omine wrote the episode, and she also wrote my personal worst episode Treehouse of Horror XXII, so I'm assuming this is penance for her sins.

    Rating: There's a scene where Marge talks to Lisa about her sudden fear of Halloween, and it drew me right back into a season 2 or 3 episode in how we had a mundane problem being handled by a dysfunctional family. It was brief, but it showed that they can pull off above average television if they tried. All that's holding this one back is an undercooked B-Plot and the humor taking a backseat to the story, but I can still recommend this as part of your Halloween Simpsons rotation.
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    Okay, TOMORROW tune in for a final recap, and have a Happy Halloween!

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  • PaperLuigi44PaperLuigi44 My amazement is at maximum capacity. Registered User regular
    Reading that (or at least the A plot) felt like an alternate reality where the show actually did end and then we got a reboot with a new creative team or a 2016 Flintstones style comic.

    That may be over-praising the episode but it gave me a sensation other than apathy or disgust and that's something.

  • EmperorSethEmperorSeth Registered User regular
    You gave it your highest score! A seven out of ten!

    You know what? Nanowrimo's cancelled on account of the world is stupid.
  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited November 2021
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    Thanksgiving of Horror
    Original Air Date: November 24, 2019

    You have been fooled again! Since the Simpsons has historically been extending Halloween into that first week of November, why not go ahead and look at their curious decision to give Thanksgiving not just a special, but a horror special? It was my plan all along to end on this review; I just like surprises.

    So we get another intro in front of the red curtain, with Julie Kavner sounded really rough here. This feels very modern Simpsons, with everything being bright and Homer cracking jokes in the audience and a joke with Kang and Kodos that I like but again lacking in subtlety. Part of me like the more low-key vibe of just going through the motions because everybody knows these warnings haven't been done in earnest in literal decades, so everything being lacking that tone gels with me a bit. But if you're trying to create an actual horror vibe, then you want Marge on stage with nothing but a dim spotlight to illuminate the scene. Create that lonely feeling, like nobody is in the room with her.

    Now, this is a Thanksgiving episode, so are we going for that Treehouse of Horror vibe or something different? That's what makes this episode a bit trickier to judge, although I feel like it wants to be a Treehouse of Horror but for Thanksgiving. However, there's no right or wrong answer. Maybe you dig the chill vibe of some bad jokes, like when you're hanging out with your family and maybe one or two cousins before everyone else arrived for Thanksgiving dinner.

    A-Gobble-Ypto: This short has a very simple premise and does a very good job sticking to it. It's the first Thanksgiving from the perspective of turkeys, and I think it really does a good job at illustrating the horror of being the main course for dinner.

    We get some nice backgrounds, some decent "camera" work with the shots, and there's some genuine violence. I really don't understand why this episode in particular is so violent compared to Treehouse of House. We get vicious crow attacks, brutal bear maulings, and honest-to-god bloody decapitations. I am utterly mystified as to why they decided to put the extra effort in this one, and then go right back to bloodless stabbing and overused decapitations in the regular specials; it's weird!

    Now I am a proponent of violence not being inherently scary, however I feel they do a good job in framing these with a horroriffic lens. The turkey killings are shown from the birds' point of view and do well to drive home how scared these animals are, and the crows killing Lou and Eddie is pretty dark despite being the punchline to a joke. And Wiggum rampaging after the turkeys high on snuff can be pretty scary looking at times. We also get a bit of suspense with Homer dodging Wiggum as the latter goes off the cliff, and latter with trying to save their egg from a vengeful Wiggum.

    Things didn't like were Milhouse just immediately setting the town on fire. It's not within his character, it lacked motivation, and just felt like it was trying to force the plot along. Also giving the turkeys subtitles after being unintelligible the whole episode just for the sake of a Nelson "haw haw" punchline felt like a week ending. Have it the whole thing end with the turkeys overlooking the grisly feast, and then it turns out it was a story Grandpa was telling to the visibly disturbed kids, who then blithely says "Now let's eat!" and digs into the turkey. Or maybe Lisa telling the story to her family during Thanksgiving, and they shrug and dig in. Feels like a stronger payoff.

    But hey, a strong start to the special! And you have to admit that the weird turkey gobble voices could be kinda cute at times.

    The Fourth Thursday After Tomorrow: Okay, let's get this out of the way: this episode is incredibly painful because it is Julie Kavner talking to Julie Kavner and her voice just sounds so rough throughout. It's like the writers had some kind of competition for a script that could give her the most lines of dialogue. For that reason alone this is my least favorite short of the three.

    What I do like is how this one goes for more of an existential horror than visceral, with AI Marge being a prisoner and threatened with non-existence (painful non-existence). It's actually astonishing that there is no violence in a short about an AI designed to cook goes rogue and there is not violence at all unless you count Marge tripping once. And it's not just the idea of you being a copy of the real you, and you're just a product (I mean that's kind of the point of the Black Mirror episode...I think? I never saw it. Wow, I haven't seen much of any of the original inspirations for these shorts, have I?). It's also the idea that there is a copy of you out there that can convince people it's the truer version of yourself. It's flirting with your husband, wowing friends and family, and even your own infant child chooses it over you. And this all organic: AI Marge never goes insane and tries to kill the family or replace Marge via violence a la House of Whacks: she does it all by winning people over to her.

    I honestly wish this angle was played up more: one by one, AI Marge convinces Homer, Bart, and Lisa that she's the "real" Marge, and we have the actual Marge desperately trying to convince the family otherwise. It culminates in AI Marge again getting Maggie to choose her over Marge, and Marge screams at Homer that this has gone on far enough, and he needs to delete that AI once and for all. Then the family stops and looks at the AI, which agrees, and the family slowly advances on the real Marge, who asks what they're doing.

    "Deleting you," they say, as it pans up to the AI Marge who is smiling as it fades to black. Again, I don't want to resort to violence here, and letting your imaginary decide exactly what "deleting" means here. It also gives it a twist to separate it from the Black Mirror episode since it's less the morality of punishing that AI copy and more about how it compares to you as a person.

    As-is, this is the weakest segment because the ending is just AI Marge executing an escape and escaping with little noteworthy besides the Maggie scene. Then the AI escapes to....Etsy, and oh Homer is a robot and we get a oh-so-creative joke about forgetting wedding anniversaries. Strong premise, so-so execution.


    The Last Thanksgiving/The First Blarg-sgiving: It is so bizarre to me that this series has never really done anything close to an Alien parody despite having Kang and Kodos as its seasonal mascots. I guess it's because the two are sentient, so it wouldn't be as a scary if they're making jokes as the eat everyone on the ship?

    A cranberry sauce monster that eats bones because it's gelatin is actually a really creative idea. And the entire cast is children, so this is like seven minutes of kids getting their skeletons sucked clean out of their bodies. It's not a bloody affair, but it's still pretty gross seeing the skin of children being casually tossed aside by the beast. We also get a second joke about eating the skin since The Day the Earth Looked Stupid. Not as funny, but it's a Thanksgiving special so you got to have at least one joke about eating the skin, right?

    The kids also play well off each other, and while you probably could have gotten jokes like skipping over Frink's warning about the replicator with Homer, it's so refreshing to have it be Bart just bored and impatience as opposed to Homer being stupid for the umpteenth time. I also like Milhouse's little "haw haw" to Nelson's skin after he gotten eaten, and Lisa losing her mind and peaceful contact clearly failed and screaming to kill it. It's not mindblowing jokes, but after weeks of poor humor even little things like this are nice to see. And then we get Martin, gloriously taking the role of the weirdo who comes to admire the alien entity. It's a nice scene full of bombast as Martin gives himself up to the monster, and gets a bit of gross humor as his skins flops down the side of the wall. And they even hint at the beast's true nature by threatening its can. Not bad!

    I do wish the short ended with the Simpsons noticing the rain, Bart and Lisa freaking out, and the family losing their bones to the cranberry rain. Then the native aliens gather their skins and have the first Blargsgiving. I guess that doesn't mesh with the monster wanting to be eaten, and also the Thanksgiving theme of two different cultures coming together to feast. Although, as an American that last one just rings increasingly hollow with every Thanksgiving so who really cares? Have two alien species feast then, and have the cranberry sauce as part it.

    It is bold that Homer just outwardly says the sauce is now pretty much made up children's bones. Like, why did this get unique treatment for violence? Did they promise this was just a one-off special occasion, and next year they'd go back to bloodless, boring killings with no creative flair? I'm glad I watched this later on in the month, as I would have been way less forgiving of those bloodless decapitations.

    So yeah, I still liked this one. I think the first short is the winner, but this is a strong runner-up, and I can easily see people preferring this one. I just feel that one had clearer vision, and this was one was more about a monster randomly killing kids. At least the turkey was specifically about how Thanksgiving would be viewed by a turkey. But I'm still down for a spooky short of people being gobbled up by a monster for no real reason than the hubris of wanting more cranberry sauce. Sometimes a bonesucking gelatin is its own reward.


    Fun Facts: This is the final episode to feature Russi Taylor as a voice actress on the show. You have to admit, Martin sacrificing himself to a gelatin monster is a heck of a way to finish a career.

    It is not their first Thanksgiving episode, as that goes way back to Season 2's "Bart vs. Thanksgiving", which debuted only a month after the first Treehouse of Horror way back in 1990.

    However, alongside that episode, it comprises the only two good-to-decent Thanksgiving episodes, as the other two are "Homer the Moe", which takes on Thanksgiving as a celebrity-guest-driven afterthought, and the despised "Homer vs. Dignity".

    This is the first time we got another audience warning at this beginning of an episode in over 20 years.

    Please let Julie Kavner rest.

    Rating: A lot of people were buzzing about this special, and while I thought it was perfectly fine, I'm not that jazzed about it. It feels more like people are surprised it just isn't awful as opposed to it being any kind of real throwback to the classic Treehouse of Horror episodes. I feel Halloween of Horror actually does a better job of getting closer to that classic Simpsons feel (albeit moreso Classic Simpsons than Classic Treehouse of Horror), whereas Thanksgiving of Horror just manages to stay focused on the horror theme as opposed to random parodies or poor (sometimes outright ignored) execution of maintaining that scary aesthetic and tone. What's here is still something that I wouldn't turn off and might even consider slipping into the rotation as a bridge from Halloween to Thanksgiving. Honestly this is roughly my baseline for the Halloween specials after this many seasons of the show: just hovering around the average mark instead of spiraling the drain. A nice surprise to end this review marathon (for real this time).
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    That's it, I'm actually done now, no fooling. I'm not going to review Simpsons Bible stories or the Serfsons or whatever. Take care of yourselves during this week of post-Halloween blues, and I'll try to get a recap tomorrow. Thanks for reading or even watching along with me!

    Sterica on
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  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    This has been...
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    Treehouse of Horror Reviews
    Original Run Date: September 29th - November 1st 2021

    Thank you all for reading! I originally had this idea in late August, when I was plotting out my holiday schedule and trying to decide where to fit my traditional Treehouse of Horror marathon. I thought just reviewing them once a day would be a nice change of pace and easier on my schedule. Oh boy was I wrong, with every review averaging about 2-3 hours of my afternoons, especially in the later seasons. I wanted to be sure that I was being very thorough in why these later seasons (is it later if they're approaching twenty years old?), and not just throwing out unconstructive criticism because it's not what I grew up with, and therefore bad. This resulted in the older seasons being very brief, because it's not hard selling people on those episodes, and the later seasons growing out of control until I had to start doing intentionally "shorter" reviews for my own sanity. I really wanted to go into more detail about episodes like TOH XXX, but sometimes you have to pace yourself. And so many things I forgot to comment on, like how much I hated the ending of Mr. and Mrs. Simpsons after they shoot Skinner and he has some "remember me line" and Homer is like "no" that was clearly added in post against a black screen.

    Sorry, just had to get that out.

    Later in September I would also be diagnosed with ADHD, which made this also something of an exercise in sticking to something no matter what. As I said in earlier reviews, those 2-3 hours were not me just deep in thought over bloodless decapitations: it was a breathtaking amount of messing around on my phone or other monitor. However, I was able to stick to my goal of one review per day, for 34 days, even if some of those reviews got in righter under the buzzer. And yes, that is why many of them had horrible typos; my goal was to just stay focused on getting these reviews out. Like these two paragraphs are the result of an hour of me "writing". Still, I think it has helped me a little bit in its own way, and I can at least be content I took on a project and stuck with it. Which has NOT been the case with anything in a long while.

    Hey let's do some shout-outs:

    Me Blog Write Good: Was a blog I stumbled upon while looking up stuff for these reviews. They basically review every episode, and are still at it with Season 33(!?). They are similar to me in a being a bitter fan who despises like 2/3s of the series now, but the reasons for such can be surprisingly different. The blogger is also interesting that they didn't grow up with the show live, but instead watching classic episodes in syndication and some of the teen seasons before moving on and coming back to the show to see how it's aged. If you crave more reviews, then you got like 700+ more to read.

    TheRealJims is a Youtube Channel that is doing retrospectives on past seasons as a whole, and they're up to Season 11. They also do individual reviews, favorites lists of each season, character timelines, series mysteries, and more! They're also a Simpsons fan that skews a bit younger, and they have a more positive slant as a whole. This past month they even released a list of their top 20 shorts of the modern Treehouse of Horror, and somehow the Back to the Future episode got in there, so you know they're not another Simpsons curmudgeon.

    I guess I could post No Homers or something, but I'm not actually that much of a super fan. The extent of my appreciation is just streaming a season once a month or so while doing chores...or doing a month-long daily review series. But whatever!

    So thanks again for reading, and the few of you who even tried to watch along with me! It was fun doing this, and I hope it made your spooky season a little spookier. Who knows what I'll do next year? But until then, enjoy the upcoming holiday season!
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