(originally aired November 4, 2007)
More Halloween disappointment, in what may be the worst Treehouse of Horror yet. I keep mentioning how the tone of these segments feels no different than normal episodes despite the fantastical happenings in them, and this year’s installment is no different. The first segment is evidence of that, a riff on E.T. where Bart takes in Kodos, thinking her to be a kindly alien, when actually she needs his help building a matter transporter to send her kind to Earth to wage war. In “Hungry are the Damned,” the Simpsons were terrified when Kang and Kodos abducted them, as anyone would be coming face to face with a giant disgusting alien creature. Here, none of the family seem the least bit perturbed that there’s an alien in their house. They give out their cutesy joke and move on. The second segment is a parody of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which as we all know gets played in heavy rotation during the Halloween season. Let’s watch Homer and Marge have an all-out, exaggerated gun fight, just like in that movie! This is extremely thematically appropriate! Ugh. Last is “Heck House,” which is the worst one of all. The kids play pranks across town on Halloween night, most of which are very destructive and dangerous, until Flanders steps in to scare them with his hell house. From that point, it’s just more ultra-religious Flanders shit again (“Please, Lord, grant me the power to psychologically torture them into loving you!”) Thank God there’s only one Treehouse of Horror left I have to watch. Before long, I can flush these new ones from my memory and only remember the good times, when the show knew how to be spooky and hilarious at the same time.
Tidbits and Quotes
– Pretty humungous cheat with Kodos in the shower. It’s stupid enough that she can maneuver through the house considering how large she is, but when we see her in the shower, it looks to be as big as a pool.
– I like the image of Bart riding his bike with the gigantic Kodos in the basket up front. And Kang showing up briefly at the end before getting shot and killed (“What’d I miss?”)
– Did Homer and Marge kill Abe in their gunfight or did he just faint and/or have a heart attack? He has no bullet holes, and he just kind of falls over and I can’t tell. I also don’t care, so there’s also that.
– I think “Heck House” may be the worst individual Treehouse segment of all. It feels so empty and meaningless. The kids go from throwing balloons at people to really dangerous stuff like whacking poor Hans Moleman in the face with a bat, diverting gasoline trucks and smashing them into buildings, and just straight-up robbing Lenny’s house. And Lisa’s there too, but she spends the whole segment shaking her head and looking annoyed. Why wouldn’t she just go home? Or try to stop them? Angry citizens show up to Homer’s door for answers, but he ends up getting his head clogged by a pig rectum, so he’s out (in Plopper’s much-awaited appearance in the series!) Also, we see the kids have dropped the pig from the roof, and the townspeople just stand there. Why not go after them and apprehend them? Unless they leap off the roof, they’d have time to storm the backyard and grab them. Anyway, Flanders appears and diverts the kids to his “hell house,” which of course is lame, until he gets divine powers to send the kids to down to the real Hell and give them a lesson on the seven deadly sins, which is basically just a bunch of comedy sketches involving our characters. They sully the Devil Flanders image from one of the most classic Treehouse of Horrors, and reuse the Hieronymus Bosch-inspired Hellscape as seen in “Bart Gets Hit By a Car.” And then we end with another sorry shot at FOX, who had just recently acquired the Wall Street Journal. Not scary, not funny, made no sense… why do these Halloween shows anymore if you can’t do them properly?
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I disagree; I thought “Heck House” was the best of the three segments. Though that may be because I think the concept of seven deadly sins is interesting and liked how they were represented. My main problem with the segment is that it felt like an afterthought; it was way too short and rushed.
Other than that, it was a pretty lousy THOH special. “Mr. & Mrs. Simpson” had no business being in the episode. It has nothing to do with Halloween.
“Did Homer and Marge kill Grampa in their gunfight or did he just faint/have a heart attack? He has no bullet holes, but he just kind of falls over and I can’t tell. I also don’t care, so there’s also that.”
Pretty sure he was caught in the crossfire. This was the only laugh I got from the second segment, though; it’s just so abrupt.
Just to point out in the opening there was meant to be a shot at family guy in the promo mocking but FOX had it taken out due to their fucktardness of thinking the simpsons and fg shot were part of an actual feud which also resulted in simpsons mocks in family guy being taken out.
I agree with what you said about Lisa in the Heck House segment. She should have just gone home since she couldn’t do anything to stop Bart’s, Milhouse’s and Nelson’s pranks. Did she even need to be in this segment after the first minute of it? All we get from her is “I warned you. And yet, my punishment is no less severe. That’s odd.” which might make sense if you believe (which I do) that Lisa was responsible for stopping them but never actively did that.
I have a lot of memories of Heck House, and that is because of my local Fox station. For some reason they started having audio difficulties during that segment when it first aired, and the last minute of dialog was cut out my their sound going completely out.
Anyway, this trilogy sucks. It isn’t the worst, that still goes to XII, but it is down right dreadful.
I still don’t think there’s been any TOH segment worse than “The Diving Bell and the Butterball.” Praise Jebus you won’t have to cover that one.
I don’t even remember that one and I just watched the entire series this Summer.
It’s the one where Homer’s paralyzed and can only communicate through farting…and yes, a part of me did just die after typing that.
Oh god, you know what, yes, that entire THoH is worse than XII. That is also the one with the Avatar spoof that has nothing to do with Halloween either, right?
I still maintain that 6 minute fart joke was the best segment that year. I think that episode is in my top 5 worst.
Heck House was supposed to be better but they cut it for time. The end involved Ned actually finding out he was possessed by Satan and not God. I can’t remember anything else, but when I first read about that I was pissed. That was around the time I gave up with this show, because they’d leave shitty filler in rather than give an actual ending/plot to their final segment.
Oh man! They should have made the first segment a little shorter and not have Kodos in the shower. I mean, despite Ned working for God, I saw many clues pointing to the Satan twist at the end, but never thought about that until you said it.
Robot Chicken did a much better “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” parody involving the Brady Bunch parents.
This one is pretty awful, but not the worst. There are much much worse than this one, though, the Mr and Mrs Simpsons segment is without a doubt one of the worst segments in the history of the franchise. I agree, there is absolutely nothing Halloweeny about it. They could have easily at least made the party Kent Brockman was at a Halloween party and have everyone in masks, but nope, they play it pretty straight forward.
ET is a shitty movie, so the fact that they made a shitty parody of it does not surprise me in the slightest. The scene in the shower with Homer and Kodos was just beyond creepy, and yeah, the shower kept changing sizes. It was small when Homer was outside of it, but then huge when we saw Kodos in it.
The only reason I think Heck House is the best of the three is because it is the only one with a Halloween theme going on. Other than that, meh, forgettable.
The only thing clever I can see in this episode is the intro.
“Mmmmmmmmm, developed by…”