(originally aired November 11, 2001)
There’s a few more season 12 holdovers after this, but this feels like Mike Scully’s last hurrah: the last episode of his production run, and he co-wrote it. The last episode he had a writing credit on was also a premiere, “Beyond Blunderdome,” and it was garbage, and hey, so is this one! It’s just one insultingly stupid plot turn one after another, which cranks it up to eleven at the third act when absolutely nothing makes sense, and worst of all, none of it is funny. Things start out fair enough when Bart and Milhouse end up accidentally taking off with a police car. They end up in court, but thankfully Judge Snyder is a big ol’ pushover, with his handwaving belief that “boys will be boys.” The bit with the Simpsons talking about how court time is quality family time since they’re there so often is a bit conflicting to me: they’re clearly not an average American family anymore, but to be fair, how can they be after twelve years on the air? I’m on board with the episode until Judge Constance Harm takes the stand, a boring Judge Judy-style no-nonsense judge who doles out unique punishments, in this case ordering Bart and Homer being tethered together, citing Homer’s negligent parenting as the root cause of Bart’s behavior.

This plot immediately makes no sense. How is Bart expected to go to school, Homer go to work, change clothes, do normal everyday functions, do anything? But all of this can be excused if there’s humor to it, but all we get is Homer screaming about terror cobras or some shit. I’m shocked that they actually addressed that Homer works nights now thanks to this new arrangement, but nothing interesting comes from it. Things come to a head when Marge and Homer are about to have sex with Bart in the room until Marge reconsiders. Why was she considering it in the first place? This leads to a fight between Homer and Bart, and Marge, at her wit’s end, cuts the tether. But not so fast! Homer looks at one of the tether ends and sees a live video of Harm “through the magic of fiber optics.” Okay, let’s just say that Marge cut the rope right where the video screen was, that’d be dumb enough, but this is a live video, where she can both hear and see what’s happening, and her anger can set the rope on fire. The dumbness is off the charts. Severing the tether could have triggered some kind of alarm for Harm and she could have phoned them, sent police to their house, anything but this unbelievably stupid thing.

Harm now has Marge in her sights, believing that she is a bad parent too. When Marge refuses to admit to that fact, Harm has both her and Homer put in mobile stocks, which is even more dumb and inconvenient. They manage to break free in order to enact revenge on the judge, in the form of draping her houseboat with a banner reading “BIG MEANIE.” I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of this is. I suppose it’s Marge’s softball vengeance, but this is our third act, there should be something big going on. It’s as lame as George Bush’s “Two Bad Neighbors” banner. Homer and Marge’s plans are stymied by Harm’s freaking guard seal. Then Homer chucks a cider block, attempting to hit Harm, but ends up plowing right through the hull of the boat, sinking her house. So let’s see, Homer basically has an attempted murder charge, destruction of property, and I’m sure many other serious offenses here. But forget about all that, because Bart has a random, poorly set-up speech to make about how his parents are good and how everything is his fault. But before a harsher sentence can be reached, Snyder reappears so we can end the episode with no consequences. When your characters can do anything and get away with it, and weird impossible stuff can happen without much of an explanation, it makes your show… kinda stupid.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Wiggum has a Miranda Rights Teleprompter on his dash, which he puts to good use upon arresting Bart and Milhouse (“You have the right to remain… silent? That doesn’t sound right…”)
– I really like the pathetic charade Bart puts on with his innocence routine, played against the incredibly lenient Judge Snyder. Thinking it’s basically a done deal, Homer is anxious to wrap things up (“I’ll bring the car around.”)
– Jane Kaczmarek plays Judge Harm, best known at the time as the mom on Malcolm in the Middle, using basically her normal voice playing a Judge Judy parody, and it’s really not that funny. But I guess the writers thought differently as she kind of became the new permanent judge from the next several seasons. I’m sure we must have seen Snyder come back, but I was surprised (and disappointed) the next few times we see a court scene and she’s there.
– All the Homer and Bart stuff in the second act is boring and stupid, with some pretty lazy dialogue to boot (“We’re sure learning a lot about each other!” “Yeah, this tether has some pluses!”) Then we get the Moe’s scene, which has an incredibly dated joke about George W. Bush’s daughters, where we see Homer keeping his son outside in the cold for hours on end, and Moe inexplicably robbing Homer at gun point. Hilarious!
– Lisa mentions that the tethering has been quite beneficial, in that Bart might be on the honor roll this year. Really? Well it would have been nice to see that, it would give an interesting twist to this plot that the unusual punishment is actually working. Instead it’s all just dumb jokes.
– At the beginning of act three, we see Lisa confront Bart about feeling remorseful for their parents being punished for what he did, but it’s so quick and meaningless that it still makes his turn at the end feel incredibly random.
– To escape the stocks, Homer and Marge use Ned’s buzz saw. Of course now, we see that Homer’s entire arms fit through the stocks, when before it was just his hands. But whatever, who cares, fuck you.
– It’s such a lame joke where you see ‘BI’ on the banner, then it’s revealed as ‘BIG MEANIE.’ Oh my God, I thought it was gonna say ‘Bitch!’ How edgy! Come on.
– Honestly, this really is one of the worst endings we’ve seen thus far. If that cinder block had hit Homer’s intended target, Harm would probably have been killed. Whether Homer had intended that or not doesn’t matter, and in the end, he still ended up destroying Harm’s house. And what happens in the end? Absolutely fucking nothing.

(originally aired November 6, 2001)
A lot of the decline of the Treehouse of Horror episodes came from loss of tone. What were once unique stand-outs in a season would now just blend right in with all the rest of the monotony. A lot of this year’s edition feels indicative of that: most of the time I feel like I’m watching a regular episode, but with more fantasy elements in it. Take the first segment, “Hex and the City”: a gypsy lays a curse upon Homer, causing all of his loved ones to undergo hideous transformations. Marge grows hair all over her body. Bart’s neck starts to elongate, Lisa turns into some bizarre centaur. But everyone’s just kind of sitting around the breakfast table talking like normal, no sense of any shock or worriment from anybody. If the characters don’t care, then we don’t. Also Homer’s kind of a jerk in this one, stubbornly refusing to admit he’s cursed, despite the horrible things happening to his family. I get that’s the joke, but you’d expect a bit more of a reaction of him trying to rectify the situation. A big non-ending caps off this humdrum segment.

“House of Whacks” has more potential, but I feel it falls a little bit short. Like the first one, everything up until the end feels like a normal episode… albeit with a hyper-sophisticated super house with the voice of Pierce Brosnan. Brosnan is the standout here, with a fair share of great lines (“This is Constable Wiggums. We’ll be right there. Remove your knickers and wait in the bath,”) as he attempts to bump off Homer so he can have Marge all to himself. Or itself. It’s kind of slow to start, but once Brosnan puts his plans into action, things start to pick up, with some cool animation with the various appendages of the house as they attempt to thwart Marge from leaving and finish Homer off once and for all. I think the ending works too, with the family sending the house’s CPU off to Patty and Selma. A psychopathic machine, yes, but I guess Marge feels her sisters can deal with anything it can dish out. Not perfect, but it’s definitely memorable, and the best of the three segments here.

“Wiz Kids” is kind of forbearing, as it’s a story based on something from pop culture that is decidedly not Halloween-y, which we’d see plenty more of in the future. But Harry Potter’s kind of magical and fantasy, so it works well enough. A big annoyance is why they actually have the boy himself in class. Before that shot, we have the title reminiscent of the Harry Potter logo and the kids go to Springwarts School of Magic. At that point, we get the parody, we don’t need to have Harry fucking Potter sitting there in class. It’s such a small moment, but it just bothered me a lot for some reason. Anyway, there’s not much here in terms of story: Mr. Burns as Lord Montymort wishes to eliminate Lisa, the best wizard in school, for his own evil purposes, and enlists Bart to help him, who then feels bad and saves his sister. Whatever. There’s enough jokes here to keep it watchable, but I’m not too enthralled by this one. On the whole, this was an alright Halloween show, but that’s not too great praise considering they used to be season highlights. Ah well.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The Simpsons take a stroll through Ethnictown, a place where, as Homer puts it, “hard-working immigrants dream of becoming lazy, overfed Americans.”
– Tress MacNeille is the gypsy… of course. I like her childish taunt when Homer comes back at the end (“Ah, the curséd one. How’s that curse I cursed you with, Cursedy?”)
– Lenny and Carl give Homer advice on how to absolve his curse (“I was hexed by a troll, and a leprechaun cured that right up.” “Hey, you know what’s even better is Jesus. He’s like six leprechauns.” “Yeah, but a lot harder to catch. Go with a leprechaun.”)
– I really like Dan Castallaneta’s insane leprechaun character. I guess the writers did too because later he would show up in regular episodes. Like in “real life,” leprechauns apparently exist. I guess if jockey elves exist, then why not leprechauns? Goddammit.
– In addition to Brosnan, they got Matthew Perry to do one line, for some reason. They also have Dan Castellaneta doing Dennis Miller, and he’s specifically credited as such at the end for doing an impersonation. This show has its cast mimic celebrities all the time, why specifically mention this one? Maybe because the other two are the genuine article, but then why not have someone imitate Perry if it’s just one stupid line? Whatever. Who cares.
– I remember as a kid very much enjoying the sequence of Marge taking off her robe from behind. So does Brosnan, apparently.
– Brosnan and Homer talk about Marge (“You’re certainly a lucky man to have her.” “Lucky, schmucky! I knocked her up. But, she’s stuck now. We’re married till death do us part, but if I died, she’d be completely free, for man or machine.”) I’m not too big on the cavalier nature of Homer discussing his beloved wife, but it’s such a contrived, stupid line that I laugh anyway. As he walks off, Brosnan repeats, “Machine, eh?” Dramatic music sting. Then Homer pops his head back in to confirm (“Yep, a machine!”)
– I like how despite how sophisticated the Ultrahouse is, the basement is as plain as can be.
– It’s gratuitous and stupid, but I still love Bart’s failed man-toad vomiting abomination (“Every moment I live is agony!”)
– Montymort and Slithers debate how to stop Lisa (“We’ll need a go- between to get it away from her.” “How about Satan?” “No, no, I’m ducking him. His wife has a screenplay.”) A gag about how Hollywood types try to get their loved one’s scripts off the ground by schmoozing? It reminds me of the teamster jokes in “Children of a Lesser Clod,” these gags don’t really appeal to people outside Los Angeles. All this stuff reminds me of the classic Krusty line of him attempting to write relatable comedy (“Like when your lazy butler washes your sock garters, and they’re still covered with schmutz!”)
– I like Skinner using the amnesia dust twice, once to cover Milhouse’s failed invisibility trick, then to cover the audience’s disgust over his misguided ramping up of Lisa (“A sorceress so powerful, she made tonight’s refreshments out of dead people!”)
– The post-credits scene of Brosnan, the leprechaun and the toad thing is so strange, but it’s probably the best thing in the whole show, if only for more insane cackling from Castellaneta (briefly interrupted when he asks Brosnan if he can turn up the radio.)