Original airdate: October 10, 2021
The premise: “This Side of Parasite” is a Parasite “parody.” In “Nightmare on Elm Tree,” Bart’s treehouse comes to life and gathers an army of trees to wage war against their human oppressors. “Dead Ringer” is a “parody” of The Ring, except with TikTok instead of a videotape. Yes, you read that right.
The reaction: Here we are at another Halloween special, where I struggle in vain to try and come up with something new to say about them. No real scares or tension, unremarkable tone, parodies that don’t actually parody anything… I’ve said all this stuff before. The first segment just retells the plot of Parasite up until the very end where they attempt to build atop the rich social commentary of the film by having all the “parasites” hiding under the house fight and kill themselves. I really didn’t get it. It reminded me of the Stranger Things segment where they tried to condense so much source material plotting down to a few minutes that it loses all meaning as a story. I can’t imagine this would make much sense to anyone who hasn’t seen Parasite (if you haven’t, feel free to chime in. And then go watch Parasite, it’s fantastic), and to those who have seen it, it’s just a series of scenes you recognize from that movie you saw. The third segment is not as slavish to the source material, but it’s equally as dull with Lisa uncovering the mystery of the ghost girl killing all her classmates, with the “twist” being that when the girl comes to get her, Lisa bests her by smothering her with her friendship, resulting in the ghost girl banishing herself because everybody hates Lisa. Really uninspired stuff. Along that vein, the second segment felt incredibly bare bones. While I like the impulse of writing a story about an actual treehouse of horror, it’s basically nothing but the trees going on a rampage, and then they kill all the humans. It reminded me of “Night of the Dolphin,” but without the Snorky character, so there’s no story other than a bunch of pop culture jokes to fill time (Little Shop of Horrors! The Wizard of Oz! A Tree Rollins cameo!) Modern Treehouse of Horrors are normally pretty forgettable, but this one felt like the weakest I’ve seen in a while, without much of anything I could even charitably call out as a highlight.
Three items of note:
– This year’s special was advertised as having five stories instead of three. The opening is a riff on Disney with Bambi (Bart) fearing his mother (Marge) has been shot and killed just like the original film, but a Homer buck ends up goring the hunter (Mr. Burns) to death. I’d hesitate to call this a parody. I honestly don’t even know what to call it. Between segments two and three is a brief visual poem read by not-Vincent Price, “The Telltale Bart,” depicted in a twisted storybook style of Bart getting up to all sorts of mischief. This segment is actually an expansion of a bit from a season 18 episode “Yokel Chords,” where Bart terrifies his classmates with the legend of “Dark Stanley,” where we see his nightmarish tale come to life in the same sort of Edward Gorey-inspired art style. However, watching that clip again, the art direction is pretty striking and unique, and by itself, it’s a pretty fun and inspired sequence. “The Telltale Bart,” on the other hand, has the Gorey-style designs, but none of the interesting visual direction. It’s just animated straight ahead like it were a normal section of the episode, only in a different style. It also abruptly ends with Maggie killing the Vincent Price storyteller for the story taking too long, which was just random. In the end, it ultimately came off as kind of boring, especially given how they executed a similarly stylized sequence so much better thirteen years earlier.
– It’s so strange how we get “parodies” of Parasite and The Ring in the same episode; the former being an example of the writers desperately trying to take on current pop culture, but being far too late to the party (although of no fault of theirs, the pandemic has kind of wiped all pre-2020 pop culture from any kind of relevancy anyway), and the latter just feels like such an uninspired pull, given Ringu is almost twenty years old. But the bulk of the original Treehouse of Horrors were based upon older movies or Twilight Zone segments, so what made them so different? Well, on top of the show being produced in the 90s when those other works felt more timeless in an age when there were only so many media outlets, those episodes actually crafted real stories with these characters, and many times with some kind of unique twist or hook that was unique to the Simpsons universe. Homer goes mad in the “Shinning” house because of no beer or TV. The Talking Tina doll from The Twilight Zone is re-imagined as a Talking Krusty. I never saw the source material of any of these segments until much later, but these stories made sense to me, made logical sense, and most importantly, were incredibly funny, completely on their own. Meanwhile, the Parasite segment featured no real Simpsons spin on the film whatsoever, and like I said before, must not make a whole lot of sense to someone who hadn’t seen the movie.
– Yes, it’s true, the Ring segment features all your favorite Springfield Elementary students saying the word “TikTok.” It’s as awkward as it sounds., I guess it’s no different than Dolph writing on his Apple Newton way back in the day? But at least that had a joke to go with it. Whatever. Grey DeLisle gets in a few more lines as Sherri and Terri, and I think she’s starting to sound a bit better. It’s not perfect, but it felt close enough that it didn’t sound jarringly off as it did a bit in her first couple of appearances.
Me Blog Write Good 
I actually thought the Bambi and Bart segments were really well done.
However, the rest was typical latter-day Treehouse of Horror fare. Shame.
Mike, I forget the exact quote but you once said in a review how you wondered what happens in the writer’s room that sucks the life out of these stories. Most of these segments this year from a creative standpoint felt interesting. But when you watch them there so bare-bones there’s nothing to them. It just feels like when they’re at a loss for what to do they just kill a bunch of Springfield citizens, and hope for the best. I think what made Thanksgiving of Horror so surprising was that segments like the First Thanksgiving may have had brutal killings of all your Springfield favorites, but they also had heart and comedy to them, which made them just the more enjoyable. A lot of episodes this season have me hyped up like an episode where Ned Flanders is hunted down by a killer from streaming TV, or a potential Bleeding Gums Murphy centered story, or Maya and Moe getting back together but a part of me realizes how none of the modern episodes rarely ever deliver. I wish this was Season 8, where if they promised a Reverand Lovejoy episode you’d get that, and so much more, but sadly it’s not. The only thing that interests me is what plots they’ll be doing in the future. I mean there doing a Shauna and Brandine Spuckler episode this season, there basically just grasping for straws now, and I can’t wait to see it blow up in their faces.
A Parasite parody only two years after the film was released? Once again, Zombie Simpsons is timely as ever
Well, at least they are making sure Tiktok is a parasite, Like what it is.
Finally, somebody realizes how shitty TikTok is.
Day 3
Feeling actually kinda scared right now, but not in the way this years Halloween special wanted me to be
Well, that was the Treehouse of Horror. Way to start off with a love letter to a huge theatrical hit from two years ago. Well, what do you expect? Zombie Simpsons TOHs have been like this for a long time now. Ten years ago they failed to parody Avatar which at the time was… two years old. This shit doesn’t surprise me anymore. Whatever. This was the only segment I knew about before the episode came out and I was curious to figure out why former NBA player Tree Rollins was guest starring. Turns out they only wanted him on the show because his nickname is Tree and they wanted him in a section about evil trees. Brilliant. Oh, and Zombie Simpsons using Tiktok is just pure facepalm. I’m surprised Tiktok became so mainstream and trendy. I liked Tiktok in late 2018, it had a lot of charm with amusing stuff like “Maybe I’ll be Tracer” and “If you don’t like furries go away” but it ran out of steam pretty quick after that. But I know why ZS was referencing Parasite and Tiktok, because they’ve always wanted to be desperately relevant ever since The Simpsons Movie. But damn, the fact that this year’s TOH used Tiktok as a narrative for the final segment, which is supposed to be the biggest story of the episode is what terrified me and gave me nightmares last night. I thought the show’s Millennial marketing was pretty terrifying but it’s Gen Z marketing? If you need me I’ll be watching TOH IV so I can be reminded of better times… Wait, what’s that? They’re bringing back Ruth Powers next episode? Well if you need me then I’ll be watching “Marge on the Lam” so I can be reminded of better times… “A lot of blue hair? What a freak!” Ah, gets me every time…
Not just Ruth Powers (being voiced by Pamela Reed as well for the first time in at least 15 years), but
also Maya from Eeny Teeny Maya Moe.
…huh.
So TOH is once again irrelevant.
You know, I came here to point out that there actually was a joke or two I chuckled a tiny bit at. But now that I’m here, I’ve completely forgotten what those jokes even were. Funny how that works.
That’s the same issue I had. There was a joke Bart made in the Ring episode that I laughed at, but now I can’t remember what the joke was. It’s not the first time that has happened with the modern series.
Can’t wait for their Squid Game “parody” two years from now
They already did The Hunger Games.
I really hate the false advertising in this show now. “Five segments”? Please. It’s the usual 3, with the usual short opening skit, and a little extra skit in between tales 2 and 3. There’s nothing to distinguish this THOH, structurally, from any of the previous ones. It’s like last season, when they advertised Manger Things as revealing “a never before seen room in the Simpson’s house”. The desperate hype attempts to get people to watch get more pathetic every season.
THIS.
The Ring / Tik Tok story is a combination I thought impossible – simultaneously striking while the iron is stone cold (to be fair, The Ring is a proper horror film and still remembered, it’s just a surprise it took so long to do it when it could have been in TOH XV or so), and being a major case of “We’re Still Relevant, Dammit!”
Hello everyone, I’m back. This is the first episode of the show I have watched since… well… THOH XXXI. First off, what the hell? Halloween is a freaking Sunday this year. Why the hell are they not only NOT airing it on Halloween itself, but also three weeks early? If nothing else, it should have aired on the 24th!
Now that that is out of the way, I am utterly disgusted with their tasteless “transplant” “joke.” I don’t know who thought that was supposed to be funny, but myself, my wife, and our friend who was over as we watched this last night all groaned rather than laugh. It was very disgusting and felt out of place. It was the 9/11 joke Bart makes in the one where they return to NYC all over again.
WIth that said, here are my thoughts on the stories themselves:
Opening segment – Um…. okay… That just seems random and they’re doing a Disney segment because of course they can.
Parasite – Did they even watch Parasite? It’s not a freaking horror movie at all, why are they trying to turn it into one? None of this made any sense and the pacing was bad. Instead of develping a plot it just jumped into them all being hired off screen. WTF? And then the battle royale thing was bad.
Nightmare – First off, they already did a Nightmare on Elm Street parody that was well done decades ago. Why are they trying to do another one? Oh, the only thing it has in common is its name… ooooooooooooooooooookay, then why even use that title? This story sucked ass and was not even remotely funny. It’s so bad they even had to make a self-aware comment about the second stories. Wow, I hope they didn’t take hours to think that joke up. And then of course, as I said, there was the distasteful trans joke. What a total piece of shit this story was.
Telltale – Um… okay… that was utterly pointless. Why wait until he gets to Dec to have Maggie kill him instead of doing it sooner? That would have probably been funnier. The animation was a call back to Bart’s Stanley story from one of the better episodes of Season 18, but without any of the effort that made it effective and chilling back then.
Tik Tok – An episode centered around Ring and it was as subpar as you can expect from modern Simpsons, but you know what, at least it was a freaking horror movie segment. There was one joke that I did get a good laugh at, though I don’t remember what it was at this point. Nevertheless, that alone makes this the best of the four tales they did even though its ending was crap. Although, it was kind of funny to see even the ghost get annoyed with Lisa.
Unless you watch every Halloween episode of the show, there is no reason to touch this one. It’s not the worst of them out there, yet, it’s nothing special either.
They air Halloween episodes early because of baseball. Otherwise, they end up being aired in November like last year.
Yes, but when was the last time Halloween was an actual Sunday night?
Nevertheless, they usually air the special either the weekend before Halloween or the weekend after, NOT THREE weeks early.
Honestly, at this point I feel like you could cherry pick a couple popular movies of the last year or two and/or a couple big shows, replace the characters with The Simpsons, and propose it to the writer’s room and they’d call it brilliant.