Original airdate: November 3, 2024
The premise: In “The Information Rage,” the people of Springfield’s rampant political divide manifests itself in two giant red and blue monsters who begin to destroy the town. In “The Fall of the House of Monty,” a Victorian-era Burns finds himself haunted by his recently deceased and over-worked employees. “Denim” is a Venom parody, with the symbiote taking the form of Homer’s new jeans.
The reaction: I’m still surprised when I think back to the Treehouse of Horror from two years ago and how great it was. They still have the juice! That’s what made last year’s, and now this latest installment, so frustrating, in just how underwhelming these once yearly treats are nowadays. This one felt like it wasn’t even trying to be scary or creepy whatsoever, which certainly didn’t help. That’s what these specials are about! The first segment is all about the election, as if we needed to focus on this shit even more than we have for this election new cycle that’s been running for what feels like six years. And there’s not even time to craft any significant satire, so we just get “jokes” about dumb political touch points like plastic straws and book burning, and a very Hollywood liberal-style message of how we should focus more on our similarities than our differences and not let hate divide us. Like, yes, that’s nice, but isn’t this supposed to be a Halloween episode? The second segment seems to get things back on track, with an old-time setting and Burns being terrorized by rotting ghouls, but there’s not much meat on the bones of this story either. Burns grossly abuses his employees, they haunt him, then Burns kills himself to get the last laugh, until he’s pulled down into Hell. That’s pretty much it, and there’s not a lot humor-wise unless you think the ghosts yelling “Jump scare!” is super clever. The third segment looks to be where the focus went, as it’s by far the longest, and it’s the most ambitious. Homer’s symbiote pants were animated by Stoopid Buddy Studios, the folks behind Robot Chicken, which creates a really unique visual effect, seeing this stop-motion creature not only integrated into 2D animation, but directly wedged in between Homer’s traditionally animated top half and his shoes. It’s a cool effect, which I only wish was utilized in service of a better story. An act of heroism by his new pants gives Homer the in to get Marge to date him, but their courtship starts becoming more difficult as he is unable to remove his pants. They’re trying to have some fun with the dysfunctional relationship between symbiote and host as portrayed in the Tom Hardy Venom movies, but it’s a pretty fruitless effort considering those movies are already tongue-in-cheek about that subject, and while I personally don’t get them, they seem to be successful on that front to a lot of fans. This segment isn’t adding anything new here, except that the symbiote is pants, and that Homer ends up choosing them over Marge, a bummer ending just in time for a denim armada to begin their invasion of Earth. I choose to hold out hope, however futile it may be, that the show will shock the hell out of me sometime in the future with another Halloween special on par with “XXXIII,” but sadly, that day is not today.
Three items of note:
– The opening title sequence was designed by Jorge Guttierez, the incredibly talented artist behind El Tigre, The Book of Life, Maya and the Three, among other works celebrating Mexican culture and folklore. It’s wonderful seeing Guttierez’s unique style come to life, and he’s clearly a big Simpsons fan, so I’m sure it was a thrill for him to do this.
– I’m not that familiar with Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher” story, but from what I’m reading about it, I don’t know to what extent the second segment is really a parody of it? I could be misinterpreting. More curious to me is the visual style, which I can’t really pin down. The buildings and backgrounds are a tad bit more simplified, which is especially apparent in the shots of Burns’s lavish estate. I don’t know what they’re aiming for here, clearly there’s some artistic intent at play, but since I can’t figure out what it is, it just comes off feeling more like rushed artwork than anything else, unfortunately.
– Seriously, what a weird move to try and do a parody of Venom, a film series known for being over-the-top and goofy already. And weird too! This is a Halloween special, you should be going all out! Venom bites off people’s heads and eats them and shit! I thought this would be more in the realm of “Hell Toupee” where Snake’s hair seeps into Homer’s brain to control him, but here, there’s just nothing outside the Homer/Marge/Denim relationship. Which, again, that stuff is already woven into the movies they’re parodying! It felt like someone came up with the Venom/Denim pun and just left it at that. But what a waste of resources with all of that time and effort put in by the stop motion artists for such an undercooked idea.
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Why didn’t they air this last week? They could have just swapped the air dates for this and Shoddy Heat. Then again, the same thing happened last year.
Interestingly, there’s another episode being promoted as a TOH episode airing in three weeks.
Apparently this not airing last week when it should’ve had to do with FOX not wanting to pre-empt their entire Sunday lineup in case the World Series game from the night before was postponed to Sunday like what ended up happening a few years ago.
Well, then they could have aired it in EARLY October like they did in 2012, 2013 or 2021.
The most middle-of-the-road THOH yet! Nothing really terrible, but almost nothing good either. I guess that makes it the second-best of the HD era.
Although that first segment was pretty terrible… commentary so aggressively basic and self-satisfied that it loops back around to being obnoxious… and the second one, while neat aesthetically, was definitely a comedic dead zone … and the third one is really carried by the WarioWare-ass visual of stop-motion jeans overlaid on animated Simpsons …
… Yeah, still probably the second-best Treehouse of the HD era.
Although I actually enjoyed it enough for it to also be my second favorite THoH of the HD era (though my pick for favorite is 24), just like last year (and honestly the year before that too) it shows that just having every segment written by an individual writer again (and being ran by someone who isn’t Jean) ultimately means jack shit if the mixed reception towards this is anything to go by.
Funny you say the stop motion reminded you of WarioWare because it too reminded me of a video game, albeit my example was Clay Fighters.
Well… that was one of the THOH of all time.
The opening and closing segments were animated by Jorge Guttierez, which gave him a chance to reference characters from “The Book of Life”, which was a Day of the Dead film that everyone forgot about because Disney released “Coco” a few years later, which is unfortunate because Book of Life is a better film. Harmless.
“The Information Rage” is probably one of the worst segments ever in THOH history, and it seems like every year there is one segment that fights for that crown and brings down the rest of the show. “Divisive politics are divisive?” You know, this show used to bite the heads of Republicans and Democrats alike back in its more cynical days, but nowadays has firmly settled into the mealy-mouthed centrist position, lest they offend anyone. One of the monsters hates the environment, while the other one is anal-retentive about it (where it destroys a building then meticulously recycles the wreckage). Then the Pacific Rim portion of the segment just follows the usual method the writers force members of the Simpsons family into the important position; by being at the right place at the right time. Them randomly shoving in other monsters who do nothing other than go “Look at all of these other troublesome social media platforms” was pointless. And, of course the generic “don’t let politics divide us ending” that is immediately undermined by the town being destroyed soon after and Bart and Lisa sitting on top of their ruined mech accepting shit’s fucked.
“The Fall of the House of Burns” has a different problem compared to the previous one where nothing really happened. Mr. Burns is a slavedriver who forces his employees to make corn syrup by day and build his funhouse of a mansion by night, and reneges on a deal to feed the staff Thanksgiving dinner despite having the odds stacked against the workers. A hungry Homer falls into scalding hot syrup and accidentally kills the rest of the staff, setting up the part where the vengeful spirits go after Burns. That part had so little juice in it because they didn’t try to be creative with the spooks; instead having everyone go “JUMPSCARE!” like its a modern day horror game trying to appeal to 8 year olds. Also, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the actual House of Usher tale, which was about a man who is grasped with paranoia, believing that he will die in his home, and has to bury his twin sister who, in a twist, wasn’t dead quite yet. Burns unalives himself, thinking he’d be free from torment, but nope; he goes straight to hell, and there’s a heavy-handed joke about Black Friday to end the segment.
“Denim” was obviously the main segment due to the effort put into it, and I agree with Mike that there didn’t seem to be focus on following the events of the Venom franchise of films, but given who made the stop-motion, was on point given we had segments in Robot Chicken that had zero clue what they were talking about like Goku of Dragon Ball running around shooting people with guns and the Demoman from Team Fortress 2 being white when he’s meant to be black as a double-layered joke about him being the one minority but also the fact that he’s Scottish. Denim helps Homer get with Marge, but Homer absolutely wants to bone her yet the jeans won’t allow him to separate for even a few minutes to get laid for his own survival, causing the conflict. Eventually Marge does get to wash the jeans but Denim is enraged at not being dry-cleaned and tries to kill her, ultimately leading into Homer choosing the pants over Marge. The invasion ending doesn’t really make sense, given how Marvel Comics has spent the past decade or so revising the story of the Venom symbiote in the comics as more of an anti-hero trying to take down an evil deity that created symbiotes for his own army, culminating with Venom achieving Godhood, not to mention the trilogy sees Venom battle an evil symbiote in Carnage and ultimately takes on a planned invasion himself, but again, neither The Simpsons nor Robot Chicken seem to be aware of pop culture that well. It was meh.
Yes, this is yet another year where the Halloween show is in November, and I think the emphasis on Election Day (despite it really being about people pissed about LED light bulbs) and Thanksgiving was a deliberate punt on the show’s part because of that… yet there’s another THOH-themed episode coming on Thanksgiving itself that has more to do with television. It is what it is.
Four days before Thanksgiving.
Oh, that was supposed to be “The Fall of the House of Usher?” Okay, I guess I can see it though, as you said, it doesn’t resemble the story in the slightest. I still feel like there was something else is was taking its concept from though.
lol this show is not good anymore
That’s the way it’s been for 27 years now. What else is new?
My wife and I have decided to tackle some of the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes we haven’t watched before, starting with those from this season, which apparently had two. Before anything though, I know I mentioned this in 37 premier episode comments, but the voices are atrocious. They really should have just ended this show as they all sound bad. I think the worst, beyond the Simpson family, were Carl, Skinner, Quimby (who just sounds like Homer doing an impersonation of Quimby), Millhouse, and Millhouse’s mom. Also, I am posting this before I read your review as I don’t want my thoughts altered by your opinion, if that makes sense. 🙂
Anyway, on to XXXV after having watched Wicked This Way Comes:
Ah, we’re back to mediocrity, for the most part. I did like the opening that was done in this Mexican Day of the Dead style even though I’m not sure if it was meant to be satiring anything specific. The first story was complete dogshit though, parodying, if you can call it that, Pacific Rim, but with a monster represting Republicans and a monster representing Democrats. I get what it was going for, but it failed miserably as it wasn’t very funny. I think if nothing else, it would unite people on agreeing it was crap. I thought the second tale was the best of the three, which revolved around all of Burns’ workers being killed and haunting him. I know this is taken from something, I just can’t figure out what exactly. Either way, I liked how gruesome it was and it got a few good laughs from me. The third story was Venom, but with jeans and good god was it fucking awful. I didn’t think you could get worse than the first segment, but they succeeded. I will give them a bit of credit for using CGI for the jeans to make them look alien, but other than that, I hope to never see this tale again.
The Simpsons really has been experimenting by using different and surreal-looking art styles for different parts of their newer Treehouse of Horror episodes, something which started back in VI (Homer3), and has been an ongoing trend since XXV (The Others). This is a good thing to have because bringing in different animation studios for new Treehouse of Horror episodes and allowing three different writers to make their own segment again after 20 years makes them somewhat fresher, but having more visual variety makes them more interesting to watch.
I did not say it makes them better, I just said it makes them fresher (and more worth checking out) to have a wider variety of creatives who contribute different story segments into the same script, and who contribute their own animation style to different story segments or opening segments where their services will be required. Besides the cool-as-heck Death Tome segments of XXXIII, I liked the way the pants in Denim of XXXV were animated in stop-motion to time well with the traditional animation of The Simpsons, and the scary voice Kevin Michael Richardson performed for Denim.
I knew I would hate Information Rage. Perhaps that story wanted to be hated. It is like other bad new stories of The Simpsons which dive too deep into socio-political issues with little to no nuance to it (think Bart vs. Itchy and Scratchy or Poorhouse Rock), and no intelligent point to make about them resulting in a very mixed message at best, except now it is a Treehouse of Horror episode. It ironically made me prefer watching the opening segments about Election Day from XIX and XXXI, because they only needed two minutes to convey the seriously scary parts about voting, like rigged/broken voting machines and voting against a candidate who threatens to end democracy as we know it.
Blending different types of animation styles into new Halloween stories for The Simpsons is not a substitute for good storytelling, but I thankfully I never get the sense that they want to be. Borrowing different guest animation studios to animate Treehouse of Horror episodes for The Simpsons does not improve the directing or the writing on its own, but it does give some new Treehouse of Horror stories their own unique flair that makes them impactful enough and interesting enough to make me want to watch them a third time.
I liked the “Show’s Too Short” story bit from The D’oh-cial Network return with a new rhyming short story about Bart’s troublemaking in the middle of Treehouse of Horror XXXII. I really liked watching Death Tome in Treehouse of Horror XXXIII and feeling like I was seeing The Simpsons redesigned for a much different show with a much darker tone. I might be in the minority for having this opinion, but I really liked how Treehouse of Horror XXXIV parodied Snowpiercer with NFTs. I liked how Denim (the character, not the whole story) was animated in a different software from The Simpsons in Treehouse of Horror XXXV because it really helped to make him feel and look otherworldly, as he is intended to be.