Original airdate: November 1, 2020
The premise: In “Toy Gory,” Bart’s toys enact their revenge after being abused for too long. In “Into the Homer-verse,” an incident at the power plant results in a gathering of Homers from different dimensions. In “Be Nine, Rewind,” Lisa and Nelson find themselves reliving the same day over and over, trying to avoid death in the process.
The reaction: These are always the hardest write-ups to do, because my general criticisms of Treehouse of Horrors have been the same for years, and I don’t want to just repeat them over and over. Hell, I’m pretty sure I’ve used that sentence as my opener for the last four years at least. At least “Toy Gory” has pretty-looking CG on its side, similar to the Coraline “parody” they did a few years ago, but sadly used in service of a pretty dull story. The toys attack Bart and make him a living pull string toy, and then that’s the end. It feels like that should have been the midway point of the story. Bart basically acts like Sid from the first Toy Story, an absolute terror, ripping toys apart, but the climactic reveal of the toys being alive and confronting Sid in the movie is way more dramatic and eerie than this entire segment, so that feels like a bit of a failure. “Homer-verse” is yet another “parody” of a non-horror movie, and a pretty uninspired one. When I saw low-bit video game Homer, why couldn’t that have been Homer from The Simpsons arcade game? Have the other Homers be from other Simpsons media, or from other fantasy sequences over the course of 30 seasons? Especially since this is the 30th anniversary of Treehouse of Horrors, this felt like an appropriate opportunity to be totally meta, like all the different TOH universes are colliding (King Homer! Donuthead Homer! Grim Reaper Homer!) Instead, we get Hanna-Barbara Homer (jokes about Snagglepuss in 2020. Timely!) and Film Noir Homer, because it’s just like that movie they watched and ripped off… er, paid homage to. “Be Nine, Rewind” apes off of time loop movies, specifically the Happy Death Day films and the Netflix series Russian Doll (the segment opens with the same Harry Nilsson song that plays when time resets on Russian Doll.) Lisa and Nelson are stuck repeating Lisa’s birthday, and repeatedly kill themselves over and over trying to break the cycle. They even do the same wood chipper death from Happy Death Day 2U, except not as gleefully macabre as the protagonist in that film who threw herself in willingly, as part of a montage of her glibly accepting her death time and time again. More than half of the segment feels like them explaining the rules of their predicament and coming up with plans, and then later going to Comic Book Guy to list off a bunch of time loop movies, and the loop is broken by Nelson just randomly killing Gil? Whatever. These Halloween shows used to bum me out, but now I’ve just grown numb to how uninteresting they are.
Three items of note:
– This episode was written by writer/comedian Julia Prescott, who co-hosts the ‘Round Springfield podcast. She also co-hosts Stonecutters LA, a live monthly Simpsons trivia show in Los Angeles that I’ve gone to many, many times. Having seen her on-stage over the years, Julia is a very likable personality and clearly a super fan of the show, so I tried to go into this episode positively, hoping there would be some fresh voice to it, but alas, it felt exactly like all the recent Treehouse of Horrors to me. Just like when the show has had guest writers like Seth Rogan or Judd Apatow, something happens in the rewriting process that just homogenizes everything into a colorless slop, and I don’t know what that is. In fact, the season premiere “Undercover Burns” was also written by an outsider, David Cryan, a 29-year-old Canadian who reached out to Al Jean on Twitter to pitch ideas to him, which eventually led to him writing a freelance script. Between Prescott, Cryan, and recent staff hire Megan Amram, the hiring of younger writers who grew up creatively inspired by the show certainly feels like it would breathe new life into this old dinosaur, but as we’ve seen time and again, their episodes feel just as lame and tired as the ones written by the regular old stable of writers.
– The opening was exactly what I’d feared it would be: a ham-fisted anti-Trump election segment. Who is this appealing to? Trump is a moronic ghoul, but all the liberal comedic institutions just harp on the same “orange man bad” tropes, and now at this point, the “joke” is just literally scrolling a gigantic list on the screen of all of Trump’s transgressions and blunders over his presidency. Thinking about how they’ve done these terrible election cold opens the last decade or so, I thought even further back to “Citizen Kang,” an entire segment specifically featuring the 1996 presidential candidates Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. How was that different? Besides the humorous, subversive story (the classic “take me to your leader” demand being hung up because of the election, causing aliens to replace the candidates), the humor was derived from our political system and the election race itself, with only a few minor touches specific to that year’s candidates (Bob Dole’s unique speaking patterns, Ross Perot’s cameo.) Kang and Kodos’ perfect emulation of empty political jargon (“And always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!”), appealing to the broadest possible electorate (“Abortions for some, miniature American flags for all!”) and the travesty that is our two-party system (“I’m going to vote third party!” “Go ahead! Throw your vote away!”) are all things that are still painfully relevant six election cycles later, while this Trump-Biden opening will be dated immediately.
– Dr. Hibbert appears at the end of “Toy Gory,” still voiced by Harry Shearer. It seems like “Undercover Burns” is the switch-over point for the new voice actors, and this episode, “I, Carumbus,” and the upcoming “The 7 Beer Itch” were produced before it, so everything after that I assume will have the new voices. Later in “Be Nine, Rewind,” we get our first extended listen at Grey DeLisle’s Sherri and Terri (I think one of them had a quick line last season.) I think DeLisle’s Martin is pretty good, but Sherri and Terri… not so much. It’s a very distinct voice to try to match, and DeLisle is an incredibly talented performer, but it ends up sounding like a character from The Loud House or something. It’s as good as we’re gonna get though, so I guess it’s fine. No sense creating new characters in your thirty-second season when your actors die off, what’s the point?
Me Blog Write Good 
I know there’s another TOH in the works after this one what I’m saying is… Please let XXXI be the second-to-last TOH in the series!!!
And of course this is the third time Zombie Simpsons has repeated that Season 20 TOH opening from back in 2008. Watching it, I thought of that great quote by Harvey Fierstein “Anybody could do this. You’re the fucking Simpsons. Do something we have never seen before.”
Anyway, I’m going to vote today.
I came into this with low expectations, and it managed to finish even below THOSE. That “Toy Gory” segment was just bizarre (if the Radioactive Man figure was ACTUALLY radioactive, shouldn’t putting it into a microwave cause some sort of meltdown? And wouldn’t that be toxic if molten material splashed onto someone? By all respect, Marge wouldn’t survive that), the Homer-Verse segment was EXACTLY as one note a parody as expected (only serving to remind me of just how amazing Spider-Verse was), and the Be Nine, Rewind segment was boring and repetitive, even though I never watched the original source material. It legit felt like they just parodied the commercials for it.
Also, it’s ironic if Sherri and Terri indeed sound like Loud House characters, considering that episode a few seasons back where Bart tried to make Maggie a mini him literally was a copy of their episode “Changing The Baby.” Hell, any episode of TLH is infinitely more watchable than Simpsons at this point.
“It legit felt like they just parodied the commercials for it.”
So, the Simpsons are Seltzerburg, confirmed?
That episode came out before The Loud House even premiered. Your point still stands.
Well, at least you got some enjoyment from the CGI in the first segment. I guess that means this was the first time you actually liked something in an episode since last year’s Christmas show?
Now I’m imagining more Halloween Homers who could appear in a crossover, which is probably more fun than watching this episode. Jack-in-the-box Homer! Robot Homer! Homer with Mr Burns’ head surgically attached! 3D Homer! Chicken Homer! Blob Homer!
Regarding Grey Griffin’s Sherri and Terri voice, she does have a very distinct “snobby brat” tone that has been used countless times, so if you hear it once… you can never un-hear it anywhere else.
Anyway, I was dreading you reviewing this episode explicitly over the cold open. Satire of American politics has degraded for years to where even people like Jon Stewart are now stale and repulsive, and the Simpsons is more than happy to throw into the echo chamber instead of providing intelligent debate. There is some valid criticism of the “both sides suck” argument, yet if you intentionally choose to spare one side your harshest ammunition, then why are you doing political satire? Don’t get me wrong; the Republican Party has been atrocious these past few years, but let’s not pretend the majority of the Democratic leadership are saints, or Joe Biden is going to be the greatest president ever. When you deliberately let your biases get in the way of comedy, that’s why we’ve been getting nothing but “Orange Man Bad” humor on one side, or “Trump the Savior” shtick on the other.
As for the segments… “Toy Gory” had an interesting premise, but missed a few ideas in favor of just doing the lazy “toys get revenge on their sadistic master” bit, and the other two were just References: The Segment.
The only episode I’m remotely interested in is the upcoming Skinner/Chalmers episode as it’s likely going to not feature the family in any major role (hopefully) plus it’s a travel episode about the journey rather than the destination, and I’m worried it’s just going to be them going “Hey, you remember when Steamed Hams was an internet meme?”
The Skinners/Chalmers episode will probably be more memorable then the family-centric ones, but spoofs of the old “Road To…” movies are a bit of a cartoon cliche – The episode will probably leave us longing for Tazmania, Road to El Dorado and Tale Spin instead…
Hey, did you see that Bob’s Burger episode at all? That was freaking hilarious. It was full of a lot of great one liners and jokes that I couldn’t stop laughing my ass off throughout the entire thing. “We have a Van named Detta to get to.”
Oh yeah, this is supposed to be about The Simpsons. Well, this is the first episode from the season I have watched and I guess it could have been worse. It was a lot better than the last two THOHs at least. Though, that isn’t really saying much.
The Toy Story parody was pretty lousy as it really was just Bart being Sid without anything that made the situation interesting or creepy. I did like the call back to Clown Without Pity though with the Malibu Stacy doll that had been decapitated. I thought the animation was pretty subpar though. Like the scene when Lisa finds Bart’s body had little to no emotion in her character model at all. It might as well had just been a solid, unarticulated toy of her running into the house.
There was a lot of potential with the Homerverse story and they squandered it all. Like what the hell? It was pretty much just the Spider-Verse cast but as Homer. They could have at least had the anime one be the actual Mr Sparkle instead of what that fat slobbering abomination was. I’m not even sure I understand the Huckleberry Hound/Snagglepuss jokes. Were they trying to make a comment on something?
Now there were a couple parts I did enjoy from the Happy Death Day skit as getting to see Lisa die over was fantastic. However, there was nothing of substance to be found. I have no idea who this lady is that does the new voice for Sherri and Terri but she was terrible. It seems like she is trying way too hard to mimic Taylor’s voice instead of just doing her own thing, which makes it even worse. There’s nothing lousier than a voice actor who is just pretending to be another voice actor when their voice sounds nothing alike. It didn’t help that there were so many animation flaws in this tale though it wasn’t even funny. However, there was one scene I did legitimately like that got my laughing, which is why I think this special is better than the last few years. Nelson and Lisa are talking in her room about everything and Nelson shouts out to Ralph to move to the left, but then you hear the car crash and see Ralph’s ghost come through the floor.
Oh, I guess I should mention the election thing, which I hate Trump to death and I hope that worthless mother fucker dies whether he is re-elected or not, but this skit was just bad all around. It wasn’t remotely funny at all and I was amused by the bad 2008 election opening. Anyway, this special was just meh overall, so if you are going to watch a Fox Halloween episode from last night, go watch the Bob’s Burgers one instead.
Dude, you’ve never heard of Grey DeLisle? She’s everywhere in animation.
Looking her up Sean and I have heard her voice before in things like Billy and Mandy and Tomb Raider, but I did not know her by name. Now I definitely feel like her voice sucked for Sherri and Terri because she is a great actress when she does her own thing, but she’s trying to copy Taylor, which isn’t her style. She should just be doing her own thing. Or rather, why even have Sherri and Terri there in the first place? Why not get someone else that actually liked Lisa like the friend from last season, Alisson, or the preppy girl that tried to get a school dance together?
“…jokes about Snagglepuss in 2020. Timely!”
And he wasn’t even going to the bathroom!
(That’s going to seem weird out of context.)
Did The Simpsons ever parody George W Bush when he was in office?
Very, very few times. The only two I can recall are when Homer is showing pictures of him beating up “former President Bush” and then of him beating up “current President Bush,” and another episode where Homer’s talking about future American wars, although Bush is not mentioned by name (“Where will it be? North Korea? Iran? Anything’s possible with Commander Cuckoo-Bananas in charge.”) I remember on a commentary, Al Jean mentioned that they shied away from featuring W. Bush because public opinion of him would keep changing too quickly. I remember his approval being pretty negative through the majority of his presidency, but more importantly, who gives a shit about that? If they wanted to make fun of him, they should have just done it, not worried about whether people would get upset about it. It came off as an incredibly toothless defense.
Also in “Weekend at Burnsie’s” he said he could “walk up to the president and blow smoke in his stupid monkey face and he would have to sit there grooving on it”, presumably referring to Bush.
That is such a pathetically low-brow attack, so it doesn’t count…
Homer voting for Obama in one of the TOHs always felt out of character to me
I don’t think so. Besides, he meant one of those votes for McCain.
Herherher, Trump is a nazi! ::rimshot:::
Herherher I hate Trump ::rimshot::
It’s all just so repetitive and uninspired.
The 1996 election episode is brilliant. “What the hell is this? Some kind of tube?”
One joke I liked: Lisa worries about having to put one of her books in a hand me down box, then we cut to a shot of the box and it’s labeled “For Bart.”