Original airdate: October 25, 2026
The premise: In “Bride’s Shed Revisited,” a mysterious backyard shed turns Homer into different men of Springfield every time he goes into it, leaving Marge to choose her ideal new husband. “Dog Boy Afternoon” is a Pet Sematary parody where Homer buries Bart and Santa’s Little Helper in the same grave, and the two come back to life in each other’s bodies. In “Vehicular Dadslaughter,” a teenage Bart and Lisa’s search for their missing father leads them to the DMV, where Patty and Selma trap them alongside Homer: stuck in an endless driver’s ed video where Homer dies again and again due to his careless driving.
The reaction: It was such a wonderful surprise a couple years ago that “Treehouse of Horror XXXIII” was genuinely good, with all three segments being very successful, in my opinion. It proved to me after all these years of ho-hum Halloween specials, greatness was still possible. But if we’re ever gonna get another trilogy of terror at the level of quality, it’s gonna take at least another year, as I found this one to be pretty dull overall. I really don’t know what to make of the first segment: a newlywed Marge is already questioning her decision to marry a big dummy like Homer, but is shocked to find their brand new shed spits out a new husband for her, transforming her home and her life around her. She cycles through a bunch of familiar faces like Lenny, Chief Wiggum and Dr. Hibbert, wanting to find the perfect man for her, eventually landing on guest star Survivor‘s Jeff Probst. But she still misses her Homie, and is shocked to find him in the arms of Lunchlady Dor(a)is, eventually leading her to force them both in the shed to hopefully be together again. I certainly wouldn’t call this spooky enough to be a TOH short, and I also don’t really get what the point is? Marge gets to experience what life would be like with a better husband, but she’s cycling through the other shitty men of Springfield, and the episode isn’t really examining how different her life is or what she wants. They also did a similar short to this in the past where Homer kept dying and coming back in different bodies, which at least is a greater supernatural angle than this is. Segment two isn’t much better, with the mind swap thing of Bart acting like a dog not getting much reaction from me. The special felt incredibly casual up to this point, not really having anything too extreme, at least until we get to the end of this one where a ragingly drunk Homer is about to send Bart-in-SLH’s-body to be put down, and Lisa unleashes a pack of dogs on him, who proceed to bloodily and violently rip out his eyeballs and tear his guts out, maybe the most violent scene in any Treehouse of Horror, but in a way that felt extremely out of left field. Then the ending is Homer and Snowball I are buried and switch bodies and Homer’s eyes and body are intact again. Whatever. Segment three is the best by default, since it at least has a somewhat interesting premise of Homer being trapped in a looping purgatory of being done in by his own bad driving. It feels a little bit old hat in 2026 to be making fun of these 1950s style instructional videos, but after the first two lame stories, I was fine to just roll with this. Patty and Selma as the architects of Homer’s eternal torture certainly feels like an appropriate TOH segment, and this executes that idea as good as it can, I suppose. So yeah, another Halloween in the books. It’s insane that we’re now at well over a hundred individual TOH segments. And yes, we did just get “The Revengening,” but I respect that more for the Apu final act than as a full-length TOH. It’d be nice if we could get another solid TOH before the show finally closes up shop, which I have to assume will be forty years from now. Now that’s scary.
Three items of note:
– The show opening is a tribute to Nightmare Before Christmas with all our favorite Springfieldians recreated as spooky stop-motion denizens of Halloween Town singing a riff on “This is Halloween.” The sequence is incredibly well-realized by the folks at Stooopid Buddy Studios… but I don’t know what else to say about it. There’s no joke to it, no parody, no twist, nothing. Lisa sings that the specials are not canon, and then Flanders as Oogie Boogie bursts with green goo and the title appears. That’s it. It’s an incredibly cute tribute, but I dunno, is it too much to expect the show to do more than this? Like if this were an incredibly well done fan tribute, I would be more fond of it than something made by the show itself.
– I remember a couple years ago in “Treehouse of Horror XXXIV,” the three segments didn’t have title cards at their beginnings. They appeared a couple minutes into each segment themselves, but they were kind of awkwardly placed that they didn’t feel like title cards, it was all very odd. This year’s special does the same thing, but at least the mid-segment title cards are very clear and proper title cards. But why’d they randomly do this again. I dunno, I like when the title is at the start, it lets you know what you’re getting into. It always felt like their EC Comics tribute where you see the pun title on the first page to get you in the mood for the story. These segments are short enough that it’s strange to have a 45-second cold open to your seven minute story.
– Jeff Probst feels like a weird booking, but I have to remind myself that even though Survivor is on its 900th season, the show still gets very good ratings. I also couldn’t help but think that Probst is in his 60s, while this story is about a 20-something Marge falling head over heels for him. But then I figured that this also had to be a younger Probst since this takes place in Homer and Marge’s past. Then I told myself to fucking cut it out, this is a Halloween show, who cares about the stupid timeline. But then Probst makes a joke about Survivor season 42, so this is current day Probst. That season aired in 2022, so this would to be magical future Jeff Probst appearing before a fifteen-ish years younger Marge. Holy fuck am I still talking about this? Goddamn let it go.
