Original airdate: November 24, 2024
The premise: Visiting a strange circus, Lisa encounters the Illustrated Man, who regales her with three unique tales as depicted by his many, many tattoos.
The reaction: The spirit of Halloween lives on at The Simpsons and it’s practically Thanksgiving! I imagine the staff had hoped this would air prior to the Treehouse of Horror, as did previous double-dipper spooky specials like “Halloween of Horror” and “Not It,” so I won’t grumble about this episode’s airdate. What is odd is that unlike those previous two episodes, which utilized the half-hour format to tell different kinds of scary stories, both inside and outside the “canon” setting of the series, this one is a three-segment anthology just like the annual Treehouse of Horror. This is the show’s tribute to Ray Bradbury, with the three stories and the framing device inspired by his stories. All well and good, I suppose, except I found the whole affair pretty uninteresting. The first story involves a 1950s Bart trying to get help for a buried woman, but no adults will listen to him. The second story has Chalmers take advantage of a robot doppelgänger to take his place so he won’t have to be bored to death by Skinner. Both of these weren’t that compelling to me, and felt very predictable. The moment Luann complained about Kirk in the first act, I knew he was the one who was buried. Skinner getting his own robot double was also very expected. I haven’t read these Bradbury stories, but he was so influential on science fiction and horror storytelling, I definitely feel his impact on so many other stories I love that I can see why this wouldn’t hit as hard. The final segment was hands down the most intriguing, but sadly by default, a sort of reverse-Fahrenheit 541, where all low-brow entertainment has been outlawed and any contraband videotapes are incinerated. The idea of it is kind of amusing, but it didn’t really go anywhere beyond that simple reversal joke. Homer discovers dumb television, he’s enthralled by it, he tries to share it with Bart, ends up on the run, then finds a group of underground connoisseurs of crap, and then they’re all exposed and run out of town. Meh. I get they wanted to do their Bradbury tribute, but this really felt like a superfluous second Halloween outing. “Halloween of Horror” was a surprisingly solid effort, and a rare glimpse at Springfield set during Halloween, something we never get to see. I didn’t really like “Not It,” but it definitely was tackling a much larger story than could be told in a seven-minute Treehouse segment. But this, I just don’t get. I don’t see why you’d want to do an anthology episode again alongside Treehouse of Horror.
Three items of note:
– Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man was actually already subject of parody in one of the first “Treehouse of Horror” comics from Bongo Comics. The tattooed man funnily enough being Michael Jackson himself, Leon Kompowski, he told three stories of his own to Bart and Lisa. Reading the comic back, I easily found it more interesting and entertaining that this special almost three decades later. I like the specialized color palette for each story, and the wrap-around device is definitely funnier. This certainly was a total coincidence that they retread this similar ground, but it doesn’t bode well that a comic tie-in from the 90s executed an idea better than your 2024 episode of television.
– The ending of the final segment featuring the outcasts of society telling campfire stories about TV slop like Vanderpump Rules and America’s Funniest Home Videos reminded me a lot of the incredibly interesting Simpsons-inspired stage show Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play. I saw it many years ago, not knowing a whole lot about it, and I was definitely not expecting what it ultimately was. The play is told in three sections, the first starting a few years after societal collapse, where a group of survivors are sitting by a campfire recounting the events of the episode “Cape Fear.” The second section takes place several years afterward, where a theater troupe is retelling the same story, but the narrative has warped and changed many times over. The third section takes place many, many years after that, as the story has changed even more into a bizarre dark opera. It was a very intriguing look at the nature of adaptation and how things change over time, with “Cape Fear” being the perfect example, being an episode of TV directly inspired by a film, which was already a remake of another film. It’s certainly an absolute recommend for any Simpsons fan if a local theater just so happens to be putting it on in your area. Also, I found it a huge bummer that Mike Reiss trashed the play in his book and thought it was stupid. C’mon, man.
– Of course I have to talk about the biggest Simpsons news of the week: Pamela Hayden announcing her retirement. This certainly was a surprise. It was initially promoted that this episode would feature her final speaking role, but she will also appear in the Disney+ Christmas special coming next month. But wow, this is pretty incredible stuff. This show’s been on the air for so long that people are starting to retire from it. Hayden will be 71 in a few days, she certainly has every right to want to pack it in after multiple decades of tremendous work. But her departure from the show will definitely prove to be the show’s biggest challenge yet: recasting Milhouse. Grey DeLisle stepping in as Martin and Sherri & Terri is one thing, but Milhouse is a pretty major character, and anybody they cast will definitely take some getting used to for sure. This also circles me back around to my long-held belief about the only way this show could possibly end is with the passing of one of the core six cast members. Hayden’s retirement opens the possibility that perhaps one of them could retire instead, but unlike Hayden, who only plays three secondary roles, I think the main six may feel a heightened obligation to stay on to keep the show going. Longstanding anti-team player Harry Shearer is a possibility (he’s also the oldest, turning 81 this year), but considering he hasn’t quit at this point, maybe he figures he’ll stick with it ’till the end. There’s some who have speculated the show may continue on regardless of anybody retiring or dropping dead, that they’ll just replace them with other actors, or, god forbid, use AI to produce their voices, but our theorizing can only take us so far. I certainly couldn’t have predicted Hayden retiring, and I certainly can’t predict when, why or how the show will ultimately end. But when it does, I’ll be there. We’ll all be there. And we shall see how it all unfolds… in time.
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”Also, I found it kind of a huge bummer that Mike Reiss kind of trashed the play in his book and thought it was stupid. C’mon, man.”
100% agreed. It’s kind of depressing to see the people who worked on this show’s heyday not being very receptive to other artists’ creative works.
Because that’s what these people are, they’re artists, even if I’m sure most of The Simpsons’ writers would endlessly mock the notion that what they make is in any way art. And they’re right to do that in some ways, since the concept of being an artist has an academic pretense to it and satire is perfect for mocking pretension. But classic Simpsons stands tall as a work of art. It said something, meant something, and was executed incredibly well. Then you look at what The Simpsons is today (and how lots of its classic writers, like Mike Reiss, still consult on it) and I feel like they’ve lost the right to dump on anyone else’s work and be taken seriously. At least not without providing a good reason why.
“We’re going to copy Ray Bradbury stories with barely any creative twist or execution, so our 36-year old show has more episodes to make money” is an absolute failure artistically. If it leaves you with the impression that that’s what it is, it’s really shitty art. It was probably just made to be disposable entertainment, which is A-OK, but that means if it failed to be entertaining, that’s it. It’s over. All it did was waste time. Like most Simpsons episodes from the past 20 years.
(“Just my opinion” disclaimer: If this episode strikes you as more creative, fair enough. That’s valid. Simpsons animators always pull their weight these days, and this IS more inspired than this year’s THOH.)
The idea of this episode being retold around a campfire seems just as absurd as America’s Funniest Home Videos. It’s great that both exist, since they have an audience, but I hope today’s Simpsons doesn’t think it’s objectively superior to stuff like AFHV, let alone something passionate like Mr. Burns. That makes it pretentious. And if The Simpsons is pretentious, we need satire to come in and humble it.
From Wikipedia
In writer Mike Reiss’s memoir about writing for the show, Springfield Confidential, he describes his disappointment with the play, saying that both it and the playwright failed because the play was what The Simpsons itself never was, “grim, pretentious and dull.”
Wait until he finds out Alfred Hitchcock and the Twilight Zone were never meant to be funny.
I love the idea of The Simpsons writers thinking they were adapting comedies into Treehouse of Horror this whole time.
The Simpsons and pretentious? Where was he when Hostile Kirk Place was made?
I think Pamela will also be in the other Disney + exclusive episodes this season that’ll come out next year like Yellow Planet.
Of all the THoH adjacent episodes we’ve gotten in the past few years (so not including Halloween of Horror, which I’ve honestly never really cared about), this one is probably the best although that’s not saying much when your competition is an overrated piece of crap that’s 95% gratuitous violence/pointless gore with zero substance and the other spends half it’s runtime with writing that’s on-par with how FG does parodies in their awful anthology episodes.
Further more, this just feels like the kind of episode that only really works the first time you watch it and it only gets worse with every subsequent repeat so I’ll probably never watch this one again outside of maybe the final segment only in isolation. So I’ll glady take the last two THoH’s (well, as long as you remove Ei8ht from last year’s) over this any day.
In that same book, Mike Reiss called The Problem with Apu “a nasty little documentary”, so I wouldn’t really take his opinion seriously about anything.
Not to reopen that can of worms but the same people who tout Apu as a progressive character ignore that during Jean’s second tenure as show runner, they took away all of his development and made him into an even worse caricature of Indian American businessmen because they all pretty much stopped watching around Season 14.
Also, he defended the private company that went to the Titanic wreck by saying “I went down there just fine”.
He is right though, that Apu shit was just that, shit. It was made by some dumbass loser who wanted attention and got it.
I still like my idea from nohomers that if they’re gonna spoof more literature they should do the most dangerous game with burns as the hunter, the power plant employees as the targets, and smithers as the hero.
Anyway I liked this even if it was predictable.
They basically already did that premise in Treehouse of Horror XVI.
I did not know that! I hope it was a good story.
I caught this episode through happenstance, as my stepdad was watching football on FOX. I don’t know why I sat through this, but for some reason I did.
I think that’s how most people watch modern Simpsons tbh
What?!? Pamela Hayden is retiring?!? Why? Some of the other actors that have been there since the beginning are even older then her.
I hope they don’t recast any of her character’s, but rather out of respect, retire them. I’m pretty sure she played more then just 3 characters as well. Based on what I researched, she plays Janey Powell, Patches, Ham, Jerri Mackleberry, and Sarah Wiggum.
Really is a damn shame they couldn’t let her have more time with those 5, one last time, and it’s a shame she didn’t get to utilize her talent more with regards to voicing those 5 throughout the show, it almost seems like wasted talent.
I’ve seen over 700 episodes of this show and even I have no idea who Patches and Ham are.
Missed opportunity for a Patches and Ham spotlight episode?
Patches (and Poor Violet) were two sad orphan characters who made a handful of appearances, most prominently in “Miracle at Evergreen Terrace.”
Ham is one of the nerdy Superfriends featured in “Bart’s Comet.”
*Miracle on Evergreen Terrace
Milhouse, Rod and maybe Jumbo are more than likely going to be recast because they’re just too important. I mean, retiring Milhouse would mean that Bart has virtually zero actual friends as his friendships with Martin & Nelson are more fairweather than legit.
*Jimbo, damn autocorrect!
So lame she decided on retiring, any ideas on why? And good god, can they get enough of recasts? Most aren’t even any effort, or sound remotely close to the character. How much more do they want to make this show more and more unrecognizable?
Hayden’s reason for retiring is that she has other projects she wants to devote her time to. After 35 years, I guess it was inevitable that someone’s commitments and priorities would eventually change.
They can replace Jimbo with his cousin Jumbo. It worked for Fat Tony.
My wife and I have decided to tackle some of the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes we haven’t watched before, starting with thsoe from this season, which apparently had two. Before anything though, I know I mentioned this in 37 [remier 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. 🙂
The family going to a circus based on Bradbury’s book was kind of cool. I liked the little nods to his novels as he was a genius and I really liked Lisa getting the stories from the Illustrated Man. I will say the first story really did nothing for me. It had some good jokes in it though and the little twist was amusing even though it was predictable if you paid attention to Marge and Homer’s conversation at dinner. The ending was funny and so totally Bart. The second story with Skinner and Chalmers having robot variants was utterly stupid and as I said, Skinner’s voice was atrocious to hear. On the other hand, I really liked the Farenheit 451 story as it was well paced, had a wicked soundtrack, and the digs at horrible shows like the Kardashians are deserved fun. I will say compared to past stories, this was not too bad for modern Simpsons tales.