Original airdate: November 5, 2023
The premise: In “Wild Barts Can’t Be Token,” Bart is transformed into the first living NFT, and Marge must venture into the blockchain to get him back. In “Ei8ht,” to help with a serial killer investigation, an adult Lisa turns to Sideshow Bob for help, who is incarcerated for murdering Bart decades earlier. In “Lout Break,” a contaminated Homer creates a town-wide outbreak, causing every Springfield resident to transform into a Homer clone.
The reaction: Last year’s Treehouse of Horror, to my absolute shock, was actually quite good. Like, very good. Which sadly means that this year’s was inevitably going to pale in comparison. I wouldn’t say this one is terrible, like most of the recent Halloween specials have been prior to last year’s, but it’s pretty unremarkable. The first segment has basically aged like milk, as the NFT market has all but collapsed at this point. Even though that’s built into the ending of the story as a joke, goofing about crypto and NFTs is so tired and overdone at this point, as we just saw from an episode of the Futurama reboot. They also blend that with Snowpiercer for some reason, as the blockchain is presented as a train running through a snowy landscape that Marge has to make her way through. I guess one Bong Joon-ho movie wasn’t enough for them to desecrate with a half-assed Halloween parody. Segment two curiously opens with a recreation of “Cape Feare,” with admittedly nice looking blending of the original season 5 footage with new animation to appear like cel animation. Here, we see an alternate history take place, where Bart’s plan to distract Bob with “The H.M.S. Pinafore” comes up short, as Bob catches wise and horrifically butchers the boy right before Lisa’s eyes. Many years later, Lisa, now a professor specializes in true crime, is sought after by police officer Nelson to help their investigation of numerous grisly murders. This leads Lisa to have to consult an imprisoned Sideshow Bob to get inside the mind of a twisted serial killer. So it’s basically a blend of Se7en, The Silence of the Lambs, and other such procedural thrillers. Enlisting Bob’s help on a murder case instinctively makes me think of season 14’s “The Great Louse Detective,” and then the twist ending of Lisa having snapped, with a new dominant personality making her commit the murders herself to get locked away with Bob and kill him, reminded me of a recent segment where they did a Split “parody” starring Lisa. I know after 35 years, the writers will undoubtedly end up accidentally treading over the same ground, but if you do, you better have a really interesting new take on it. This certainly is a more vicious and violent story, but nothing really to perk my interest. The last segment suffers from the same repetition thing, as a town full of Homers reminds me of season 14’s “Send in the Clones” with the duplicating hammock. There’s the added comic element of every Homer resembling different Springfield residents, but it’s not enough to make the story feel distinct enough. They have a scene with all the Homers at Moe’s, Bart and Lisa are debriefed on a plan to stop the Homers… it just feels too similar. So yeah, I don’t know what miracle occurred to make last year’s so good, but I hope they’re working hard behind-the-scenes to conjure up that dark magic for the next one.
Three items of note:
– It felt like there was a weird unexcited energy to this year’s special, at least to me. This is the first Treehouse of Horror in I don’t know how long that didn’t have an opening scene, just a quick bit of a gravestone charcoal rubbing revealing “Treehouse of Horror XXXIV” and then we immediately go into the first scene. Also, no opening title cards for each segment. For some reason, the titles were buried within the episodes themselves, with increasingly less emphasis as the segments go on. The first has a zoom-in within the first minute, that’s good enough. The second segment, you’d think you’d put the title up after the opening “Cape Feare” flashback, but instead it’s later when Lisa sees the first crime scene, which I guess they felt they had to do because that’s when you realize they’re doing a Se7en homage. The third segment, we don’t see the title until three minutes in, nearly half the length of the story, as the church marquee letters get bumped by a bunch of Homers and “Lout Break” is revealed. They were trying something different, but it just felt so haphazard. I always peek over at No Homers before I do these write-ups, and some people seemed unclear what the titles were, or if they had any at all, so that seems like they missed their mark with this new technique.
– I’ve talked about before how when you really think about it, Sideshow Bob’s bloodlust in wanting to disembowel a 10-year-old boy is really disturbing, and not something that should really be analyzed super closely. There was a Treehouse segment a while back where Bob finally kills Bart, but to keep his passion alive, he repeatedly clones the boy so he can kill him again and again, and that felt a little icky. Here, seeing “Cape Feare” Bob slash away at Bart as blood gushes everywhere is genuinely disturbing, which to be fair, I guess you would want to evoke in a Halloween special? But the whole story felt a bit too much. The murder scenes, while exaggerated to be goofy, were a bit too gross. And the finale with Lisa viciously stabbing Bob in his cell almost felt sad to me. Like, this story is about a woman traumatized by the brutal murder of her brother as a child, who then loses her mind, horrifically murders a bunch of her old schoolmates, all so she can slay her brother’s killer in prison. These specials should be spooky, and even dramatic, but they should always be fun, and this one seemed to take it a little too far.
– As a Homer-ized Kirk walks out of church strangling a Homer-ized Milhouse, it reminded me of a “news item” I briefly saw on Twitter, reporting that the show had retired the “Homer strangling Bart” running gag, citing that “times had changed.” Searching for it again, I didn’t see any attached link to it to a news article, but then eventually found one, leading to a write-up in the Independent. But there’s no actual source from a writer or producer, it’s all built on a joke from the last episode, when Homer is introducing himself to their new neighbor, and he casually mentions strangling Bart, following it with, “I don’t do that anymore. Times have changed.” I thought it was a cute enough line, wanting to put his best foot forward meeting someone new, thinking it would make him seem like an enlightened man who has grown past committing child abuse. Unlike other thornier “controversial” elements of this show, Homer strangling Bart never really felt uncomfortable since it was played so over-the-top and cartoony whenever they did it, but over time, I absolutely understand why they’d want to phase that joke out. The show is definitely going for a more grounded tone, so having Homer viciously attack Bart would certainly clash with that. Also, like prank calling Moe or Nelson’s “Haw Haw,” they’ve done so many variations of the joke that it might as well be retired at this point. So yeah, it was just kind of weird that it was being “reported” on, and the very next episode they did a strangling joke. But who cares? Well, apparently some very normal people on Twitter do, responding to the “story.” “The most pussy generation of all time,” says some guy. “I grew up watching this show and never had the urge to choke anyone. People are fucking weak now. Rip the Simpsons,” says another. Take that, Wokesons!
Me Blog Write Good 
i honestly don’t remember, when was the last time Homer strangled Bart anyway? most of the later seasons have escaped my mind by now
Most recent I can remember is Winter of Our Monetized Content.
Yeah … this was disappointing. I thought last year’s THOH was straight-up excellent, not just by modern Simpsons standards, but by actual television standards. Those segments can hold their own with the golden age THOHs in my opinion, all three of them. Can’t say the same thing for any of these. But at least each segment felt distinct, unlike most HD Treehouses. I have a lot of thoughts about each of them.
Wild Barts Can’t Be Token – Doomed from the start. But it was only doomed because of how modern Simpsons handles “topical” shit. I thought for a second that the NFT thing would just be set dressing and it would be about Homer and Marge progressively killing every family member to profit off their NFTs or something. Had this segment done a story like that it wouldn’t have mattered that NFTs are old hat, since they would just be a means to an end in this story about satirical greed. But the NFTs were an end in themselves here. This was just them rattling off a list of stale NFT jokes they found in an Ars Technica comment section. So of course it aged terribly before this segment was even produced.
Ei8ht – I really wanted to love this one. The concept of an dark alternate timeline Simpsons where the characters aged and dealt with trauma is an incredible one. But the tone of this felt all wrong. The dialogue was all this unnatural exposition (and the occasional shtick) that no real human being would say unless they’re a writer for modern Simpsons. So it never felt like there was any real drama or tension, and to compensate for that, this was one of the goriest Treehouse segments ever made. Like, every other shot is of something gruesome. It doesn’t feel scary, just … perverse. I have no problem with gore in cartoons, or even some blood on The Simpsons, but there’s a line somewhere and this crossed it. It just felt wrong. I think last year’s “The Pookadook” understood how to pull off a tense THOH segment. Treat the situation seriously and the characters like real people, and you won’t need to rely on excessive blood and gore. But again, I really loved the concept of this. That’s why it broke my heart to see the tone so mishandled. A Simpsons story like this will probably never happen again.
Lout Break – You know what, I liked this one! It doesn’t reach the same heights as anything from last year, but it just wants to be silly, dumb fun and I think it succeeds in that regard. Feels like something out of an old Simpsons comic. Plus, seeing Simpsons characters transform into Homers evokes the “You got the Dud” meme, and that’s always fun. I also loved the bit with Moe. It felt more clever than what we usually see from modern Simpsons episodes.
Overall, this would be one of the stronger HD Al Jean Treehouse of Horrors, but it’s comfortably the weakest of the three run by Matt Selman (Thanksgiving of Horror, THOH 33 and this).
I know most people don’t tend to agree with me on many things Selman related, but I think a lot tend to agree that the way dialogue is handled in episodes run by him tend to come off as crappy for being the same kind of over-explaining that feels like something off of Family Guy where they do a “Joke” and then tend to either explain it afterwards or set it up in an “Unironic” way.
Yeah, there was at least one line in Ei8ht that reminded me of some of the crappier lines from Not It (“Build the tension…”) or A Serious Flanders (Comic Book Guy calling out the tropes right before he’s killed).
This episode convinced me that the difference between Al Jean and Matt Selman is way tinier than a lot of fans say. The common Simpsons narrative is that the show stagnated because of Al Jean. And while that’s kind of true, Selman and his co-runners stepping up to the plate and exhibiting many of the same writing flaws reveals that the guilt is shared. It’s not just Al Jean being a hacky writer. The rot runs deeper than that. The Simpsons has thoroughly atrophied.
I do think Matt Selman’s episodes have more passion and potential than Al Jean’s, in no small part due to their use of co-runners, but the key word is potential. Certain co-runners are able to put a fresh, unique spin on the series (Carolyn Omine gets a lot of praise for this), but most don’t. That’s why I can’t get behind this idea of this being a “Simpsons renaissance”. The show is more ambitious now but it hasn’t fundamentally changed. We’re just seeing some specific details shift around a bit.
@Aidan
I was loving a lot of what Selman and his team were bringing to the table up until about a year ago. The OAB production cycle has been a lot shakier and I’ve been regularly disappointed by episodes that have fallen well short of the mark. It’s worth pointing out that Selman has now been showrunner for 81 episodes and is poised to overtake Scully as the second longest in that role this season in terms of episode count. I’m certainly seeing signs that he’s getting a bit long in the tooth. With the exception of Omine, his co-runners have also fallen away after a promising start. In my opinion, the only genuine success from either of the other three in the last 12 months has been Bartless.
Honestly, though, Omine has propped up the last couple of years dramatically. The show looks a lot worse if you take away Pixelated and Afraid, My Octopus and a Teacher, Treehouse of Horror XXXIII, Step Brother from the Same Planet, My Life as a Vlog, Fan-ily Feud, and A Mid Childhood Night’s Dream.
That second segment sounds aggressively unpleasant.
If you’re someone who hates nothing but mostly gratuitous bloodshed for seven minutes, then yeah segment two isn’t for you. I’ll even go as far as to say that it’s on-par with the Bob kills Bart segment from 2015 in terms of how bad it was.
That segment ends with Bart turning Bob into a weird chicken/frog creature, which itself is quite the body horror. As for this one, I don’t even how to describe it; like, it’s not funny as a Simpsons segment, and it’s too graphic even for a THOH segment. It’s all just a big, bloated mess.
The first segment sucks due to them being extremely late (which is par for the course for the series) in making fun of NFTs, and to throw on a Snowpiercer parody, which had been cancelled for over a year on American television, makes things even more dated. I’d say the only saving grace for them was the Homid 19 segment due to how “everyone is Homer” routine actually is funny because the visual gags of everyone looking like Homer and acting like Homer is easy, but effective. If only Dan was 10 years younger.
As for the “I don’t do that anymore, times have changed” comment, didn’t Family Guy mention they were phasing out the gay jokes in “Trump Guy” when Donald Trump told Peter that many people became homophobic thanks to their show and then just a few episodes later call back to that and go “that was taken wildly out of context”?
Not to compare a show that has never been known for being the purveyors of good taste to the Simpsons, but its hilarious to see news articles randomly take a quote, especially when they can’t even call back to the last correct instance of Homer strangling Bart (which was Season 32’s “I, Carumbus”), and make a huge spectacle out of it, and then see reactionists run with it as if society is continuing its endless march towards the vague threat known as “woke”.
I mean, are you really surprised? The only goal of the news now is to shake people by the shoulders and scream “BE ANGRY!”
Why in the hell didn’t they air this last week? They aired that weird stupid episode instead that I’ve almost completely forgotten already.
FOX is gonna FOX, I guess.
And let me just state for the record that compared to last year’s surprisingly decent outing, this was just bad.
It’s funny how people say that this year’s installment was a disappointment and a letdown compared to last year’s “Brilliant” and “Excellent” outing since I’m the opposite where I thought last year’s was on-par with how crappy most of them have been post-2014 save for one decent segment (Death Tome) with the only things that were “Different” being it was run by Selman and had each segment written by a different person, both of which barely factored into the supposed improvement in quality. Whereas I thought this was an improvement over not just that but most of the HD era THoH’s.
That said, it suffers from the second segment which is on-par with last year’s worst (Simpsonsworld) but for different reasons. Simpsonsworld suffered from being seven minutes of pandering while Ei8ht suffers from being mostly seven minutes of nothing but gratuitous bloodshed that gives me Thanksgiving of Horror flashbacks though in my case that’s not a good thing since I’m one of the under 10 people who hated that episode. As has been previously stated, they go too far with the gore to the point where the whole segment (and the episode to an extent) suffer as a result even though this was the exact same thing that Thanksgiving of Horror was guilty of except worse because that was 90% of the episode while this was just seven minutes that are jarring compared to the rest of the episode.
However, what saves it for me is that this was the first time since 2014 where I thought the episode was mostly worthwhile, but it’s still worse when compared to that one since it’s worst segment (A Clockwork Yellow)’s biggest crime was simply being boring which I’ll take in a heartbeat over a seven minute bloodbath.
What a time we live in where I can say that the segment about goddamn NFT’s is probably the best of the three! And it goes to show that I knew nothing about Snowpiercer until after watching it and I assumed that it was a parody of Infinity Train.
The last segment felt like a slightly better version of the Homerverse segment from 2020 which I’m in a minority of thinking was the best (and only alright) segment that year. Though it’s no Send in the Clones and the all hope is lost ending has been done better in other segments like The Day the Earth Looked Stupid, the ending here was decent enough and the song over the visuals of how far the virus has spread was actually kinda funny.
I’d actually be really interested to hear your reasoning as to why you thought last year’s THOH was worse than the one in 2014 (and possibly any others over the preceding decade, honestly) because that’s a pretty rare opinion to see. Is it just that you didn’t notice a difference?
Speaking for myself, I liked last year’s THOH because it felt like the stories took themselves earnestly. The characters were making decisions that real people might make in those contexts, as opposed to spouting strange one-liners like a 60-year old standup comedian who’s afraid the audience might get bored. (See, in my opinion: every Treehouse episode from S16-33 … and this most recent one, too.)
I thought last year’s was worse because as I previously mentioned I didn’t see any difference between it and the majority of the HD era ones other than who was running it and the fact that each segment had a seperate writer which apparently hadn’t happened in about 20 years. But these two things barely factored into the alleged improvement in quality as otherwise it was the same as most post-2014 THoH’s where the majority of it sucks save for one segment that ranges from watsted potential to actually decent.
The Pookadook at best is simply OK, but it has the same issue as A-Mid Childhood Night’s Dream where it’s an idea that ideally should’ve been tried at least 10 years earlier as the current state of Marge’s voice really drags it down compared to how it might’ve been in 2012 or so. Death Tome is the only segment of the three that I felt like they fully tried, and is currently the best of the 2020s THoH segments. And I’ve already explained why Simpsonsworld fails and is the worst of the bunch. You can argue that the Ullman segment from 2014 was also guilty of being seven minutes of pandering, but from my perspective it didn’t feel nearly as obnoxious and in your face as it was in Simpsonsworld.
And I’ll respond to your other reply here.
The flaws in Selman’s episodes have always been there, but obviously it’s more easier to notice them now when he’s running most of the episodes versus when he started in 2011 when he was only doing like two or three a season and everyone was happy because they were “Different” even though I’ve been of the belief that he was never much better than Jean, and he has his own unique flaws that I’d go as far as to say are worse than Jean’s.
I agree that what many see as a “Renaissance” for the show since the beginning of the so-called Selman era I see as continued stagnation at best that’s been on-going for about 15 years. And unfortunately, I honestly think the show is in it’s worst position now more than ever to the point where I no longer have the desire to watch every episode, and it says a lot that most of the ones I’ve skipped so far that they’re all Selman run (Carl Carlson Rides Again, Hostile Kirk Place, Fan-ily Feud and Thirst Trap) with one exception being Jean (Clown V. Board of Education) and they were ones where they all sounded bad or unappealing just based on the synopsis’ alone.
Hi John,
Could you explain how SimpsonsWorld was ‘pandering’ as opposed to a deliberate, concerted attempt to reflect on the legacy of the series and its classic-era obsessed fanbase?
It just came off as pandering in that what others see as “A brilliant look back on the show’s legacy”, I see as just seeing how many forced callbacks Selman can do in seven minutes to the point where he makes most of AD!’s pointless callbacks they do to appease the Reddit bootlickers look subtle in comparison!
Oh, and to reply to your earlier comment about Selman longing the tooth, I already feel like he reached his burnout point last year with Meat is Murder. The most un-Simpsons episode of the entire show and the perfect embodiment of how far the show has fallen in terms of their parodies.
I learned recently that Kelsey Grammer’s father was murdered by a deranged maniac and his sister was gangraped and murdered by a serial killer.
I am not gonna judge how he coped with this horror but I’m not gonna lie it kinda colours his performance as Sideshow Bob in retrospect.
“So yeah, I don’t know what miracle occurred to make last year’s so good…”
Carolyn Omine co-ran it. Not Brian Kelley.
When Phillip J. Reed reviewed ALF on Noiseless Chatter*, he postulated that even though ALF was a terrible show, it had at least One Good Writer. It’s the One Good Writer who made sure almost every episode had some good idea, good line, a kernel of something great … but in the final episode, these things got drowned out by the mediocrity of everything else.
I think Carolyn Omine is post-classic Simpsons’ One Good Writer. That doesn’t literally mean everyone else’s work is bad, but in the context of a show that constantly undercuts itself for the sake of awfully written jokes and expository dialogue, Omine’s proclivity for narrative drama and earnest character work is a breath of fresh air. It probably saved a lot of decent post-classic episodes in ways we don’t even know about.
The great thing about Selman’s co-runner structure is that it empowers individuals. Omine, being the One Good Writer for this show, does great things when she’s in charge. As cynical as I am about this show, I’m actually looking forward to next week’s episode, since it has her at the helm. It’s a shame she never ran a full season.
*I can’t recommend Phillip’s reviews enough, by the way; they’re absolutely hilarious, even if you’ve never seen ALF and don’t intend to. Link here: http://noiselesschatter.com/alf/
“This is the first TOH in I don’t know how long that didn’t have any real opening scene, just a quick bit of a gravestone charcoal rubbing revealing “Treehouse of Horror XXXIV” and then we immediately go into the first scene.”
I think since last year.
There was a Kang and Kodos storybook intro last year.
Really? I don’t remember that… not that these episodes are memorable. Just checked on Wikipedia and it says: “This is the first Treehouse of Horror episode to not have an opening sequence, and instead just opens on a book of the episode before going straight into the first segment. “
@vyrnnus
I never saw you talk about “My Life as a Vlog” and “Fan-ily Feud”, have you changed your mind about those episodes? I remember you said (at least with the first one) that Omine was weakest as a co-run, does that still exist but over time has it gained a new understanding?
was the weakest of Omine as co-a run* fuck I’m sorry for that blunder
Hey Agony,
I still think ‘My Life as a Vlog’ is Omine’s weakest effort as a co-runner, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s *bad* by any means. It’s just not the kind of format that plays to her strengths. I really like Fan-ily Feud and, much like her other contributions, it gets better every time I watch it.
I thought the third segment was funny. I tend to like Treehouse episodes that have some silliness to them interspersed with the horror (so The Shinning, gremlins on the bus, Bart the fly, etc.) The middle section was a bit grim, though Lisa’s plan was clever and unlike Silence, the cold blooded ‘brilliant’ serial killer didn’t get off scot free which is a major point in its favor, and the first was really dumb with some unnecessary cat deaths. Dunno why Simpsons hates cats so much, I love them.
Good review. BTW, I know it’s been a decade, but any interest in continuing your Dreamworks and Disney blogs? A lot of films have come out since you last updated.
It’s crazy (but flattering) how people still remember those blogs. No, I don’t really have any interest in returning to those, but I guess I can give my incredibly quick thoughts on each studio. After switching to CG and garnering quick success with Tangled and Frozen, Disney quickly dug itself into a little rut it has yet to hoist itself out of, relying on the standard Disney story elements and tricks, but the same song and dance is getting real old, real fast. I’m very curious to see how Wish performs, if that reinvigorates them at all, but I have no interest in seeing it. For me, I’m very bored by the Disney style and their movies, they’re basically at the bottom in terms of animated studios I’m excited about. The only modern-era Disney movie I really loved was Wreck-It Ralph, and then they mucked it up with that awful sequel.
As for DreamWorks, it’s funny thinking how much has changed in a decade. Illumination basically took its place as the main irreverent Disney competitor, then basically supplanted Disney in terms of financial success, and now that Universal finally bought DreamWorks, now they’re basically the company’s secondary studio under Illumination. It’s hard to even say what DreamWorks’s niche is anymore, but I’m happy to see that they’re pushing their visuals in new and interesting directions, as seen with The Bad Guys and the new Puss in Boots. A trailer for their newest movie releasing to Netflix, “Orion and the Dark,” written by Charlie Kaufman, just came out, and it looks pretty damn nice.
I agree with you that Dreamworks’ evolution has been very interesting. I adore Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, and hope that it and Orion and the Dark encourage Universal to treat it as a more artistic and edgier alternative to Illumination. However, Ruby Gilman: Teenage Kraken shows that Dreamworks, like all studios, is still capable of making confused, unappealing films.
As for Disney, Frozen was what they needed at the time, but they learned the wrong lessons from its success. Moana was a bright spot, a return to form that I really love, but more often than not their films fall extremely flat for me these days. I can only hope they try more experimentation in both storytelling and animation style to grab my attention.
“The only modern-era Disney movie I really loved was Wreck-It Ralph, and then they mucked it up with that awful sequel.”
I knew there was a reason I liked you 😆
Kelsey Grammer’s dark energy is always a welcome occurrence to spice up ordinary The Simpsons episodes, even in newer seasons, so I really enjoy the Sideshow Bob script material he performed in the 26th and 34th Treehouse of Horror episodes. Wanted Dead Then Alive and Ei8ht were not the best Treehouse of Horror stories, but they are good to watch because I still indubitably respect them for having the guts to give Sideshow Bob a major role in a new Treehouse of Horror episode demonstrating what could happen when he finally kills Bart.
We watched finally watched this one, which was quite the letdown compared to the year before. The first story, revolving around NFTs made no sense to me. I guess it’s because I still don’t truly understand what an NFT is nor why people were into them, but it was dumb. Marge being on a train was a neat idea, but then they did nothing with it. It’s apparently meant to be a take on something called Snowpiercer, which might be cool if I understood the references. The ending was kind of dumb too. Anyway, the second story was a much more interesting story mimicking Seven. It’s set in a universe where Bob murdered Bart in Cape Feare and it turned Lisa into a detective. There’s some nice plot twists that occur and overall it was a really enjoyable episode. It’s very dark, which makes it stand out. The only issue is the abrupt ending that just left me thinking, “Ummm, okay…” The third story was dumb, with a zombie outbreak but instead of people turning into mindless zombies, they mutate into Homer and act like Homer. It did get a few chuckles out of me though with the scene at Moe’s and a few other moments, making it better than the NFT story. Nevertheless, it was still pretty empty. It’s a shame they didn’t keep the same momentum as the previous year’s Death Tome story, but hey, that’s modern Simpsons for you, 95% pure grade A dogshit mixed with a bit of genius every now and then.