Treehouse of Horror: Comedy in Horror
And so it’s come to this. Sometimes when you’re writing every day for a month, you run out of steam. I thought I was getting away with something yesterday by writing about the short Legend of Sleepy Hollow cartoon, but, apparently, I needed another blowoff day. Hence, The Simpsons. So what, am I just gonna list a bunch of gags I liked? Yeah, pretty much.
Growing up, I loved The Simpsons. For my money, there are about 8–9 seasons there that constitute one of the very best programs ever on television. That’s only about a quarter of the series’ run at this point, but it doesn’t take anything away from how good it was. During those early years, I always looked forward to the Treehouse of Horror Halloween specials. They’re not episodes I go back to a ton in adulthood. They are a bit hit-and-miss and can be diluted somewhat by the three mini-episode structure, but, when they were new, you always wondered what they’d direct their unique brand of comedy at that year.
For this exercise, I watched installments V-VII from seasons 6–8. Those years are particular favorites of mine, though I generally love 2–5 as well (while being tolerant of 9–12). I was somewhat surprised to learn that they’ve kept up with this tradition and will be premiering installment XXXIII this weekend. From taking a gander at Wikipedia, I’m pretty sure the last one I watched was XVI from 2005, which tracks as that was my last year in high school and I probably had nothing better to do. Maybe I’ll go through and check out some later season Treehouses of Horror this weekend, just to see what they’re like. “It’s the Grand Pumpkin, Milhouse” sounds promising!
V: The Shinning: Naturally, this is the Simpsons’ take on The Shining, as the titular family become winter caretakers of Mr. Burns’ haunted lodge. There are a lot of fun gags referencing the film — the blood floor, the horrific background of the land on which the lodge was built, Homer with an Axe, Willie in the doomed Scatman Crothers role — but my favorite part is the set-up. Mr. Burns cuts the cable and removes all the beer from the property to ensure honest work out of the caretakers. As they’re about to leave, Smithers asks Burns to consider if this tactic is perhaps the reason all the previous caretakers butchered their families. It’s actually kind of horrific to think about, but the best comedy in these episodes is always infused with darkness. Also worthy of mention is Moe in the role of the antagonizing barkeep. I love when Homer gets trapped in the freezer and Moe tells him that “some of the ghouls and I are a little concerned”. They (including a wolfman, a mummy, a dracula, Jason Voorhees, and Pinhead) all bust in to haul him back to his murderous task.
V: Time and Punishment: I’ve decided I’m really only going to give a lot of attention to the sections I love. This one is good, but not great. It has to do with Homer accidentally traveling through time and messing up his present. The gag with the toaster repeatedly getting stuck on Homer’s hand is very funny. I also love the shrugging prehistoric sloth and that, despite wielding a club, Homer decides to lay out a giant mosquito with a left hook. His whole fed-up rampage is great. I also appreciate that his first trip back from the past results in a legitimately terrifying reality. Flanders as the supreme leader of the world is, of course, horrifying for Homer, but the forced conformity and threats of lobotomies are pretty disturbing stuff.
V: Nightmare Cafeteria: Another one bordering on greatness. While the elementary school’s detention halls are overflowing, they’re also running out of money for food. Principal Skinner comes up with a solution for both — start eating the troublemakers. Unfortunately, this just becomes an excuse to eat the most delicious-looking children. The absolute ghoulishness of Skinner and the teachers is the highlight of this segment. In the Teachers’ lounge, Mrs. Krabappel is immediately able to deduce what’s going on, referring to “processing Jimbo’s carcass”, and when Skinner just taps his nose to confirm, she laughs! Edna’s weight-gain from eating so many kids is also pretty grotesque and the sight gag of her reading “The Joy of Cooking with Milhouse” is a great touch.
Treehouse of Horror V gets extra points for doing a gag across all three segments where Groundskeeper Willie is killed with an axe to the back. Also, the final segment ends with the revelation that it was all Bart’s dream and that the only thing they should be concerned about is that fog that turns everybody inside out. Of course, the fog immediately seeps in. I remember being legitimately disturbed by this! Even poor Maggie is put through this torture. But it’s all capped off with a song and dance number, so the pain can’t be too bad.
VI: Attack of the 50-Foot Eyesores: I didn’t do a thorough audit of all the ToH episodes, but, based on memory alone, this might be the best segment of them all. This is the one where Homer steals the Lard Lad’s giant donut. This, coupled with some atmospheric anomalies, causes all the town’s super-sized advertisements to come to life. We get some great creative kills from this concept, including two of my all-time favorite Simpsons gags back to back: first, their giant Mr. Peanut approximation grabs a car from oncoming traffic, twists it open in the fashion of a peanut, pops the passengers in his mouth and eats them. This immediately cuts to Chief Wiggum turning from writing a parking ticket to see a very tall man coming out of the Big & Tall shop, who he promptly shoots dead. When his deputy, Lou, informs him that the deceased was the captain of the basketball team, Wiggum covers by saying “well, he was turning into a monster.” How will the Simpsons stop the carnage? Marge tells Homer he simply has to give the Lard Lad his donut back, but, when he does, L.L. just uses it to sow more destruction. When Homer asks Marge if she’s tired of being wrong all the time, she replies “sometimes”. No, the only real way to to end the horror is to ignore the advertisements (makes sense). So, they get Paul Anka to sing a little jingle to divert the townspeople’s attention — at which point the monsters become inanimate once more. It works! And it’s a strategy I wish could be employed more in real life.
VI: Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace is another all-timer in the annals of ToH history. As you can probably assume from the title, it’s an A Nightmare on Elm Street send up. This segment is home to some classic, and often-quoted gags (at least in my household) during Willie’s villainous origin story: lousy Smarch weather, Kirk Van Houten grousing about Milhouse getting two spaghetti dinners in one day, don’t touch Willie (good advice!). But the thing that really sticks out for me is how inventive the episode is with its nightmares. Martin dreaming about being the “wondrous Wizard of Latin” always gets a laugh out of me. When Willy kills him (“moris: you die”), Martin jolts upright in his desk at school and gives out a blood-curdling shriek. It’s legitimately unnerving, but it’s also funny because of how far it goes. Him being carted out of the classroom in a petrified death pose and into the kindergarten is just icing on this gruesome cake. In the end, the Simpson kids resolve to do battle with Willie in the dreamscape, which ends with him becoming a truly badass bagpipe spider monster. Bart and Lisa would have been done for here if not for Maggie saving the day by plugging the creature with her pacifier. The segment ends with Lisa’s admission that she thinks Willie might still be out there, followed by the man himself showing up on a bus to make faces at them. When the bus pulls away, he shouts that he left his gun on the seat and chases after it. So, I guess his plan now was to just shoot the children!? Different times!
VI: Homer3: Yeah, it’s kind of a shame about this one. It’s just not very good, but they can’t all be great! Homer gets stuck in a three-dimensional realm when trying to evade Patty and Selma. The procession of characters showing up to help — Ned with a ladder, Rev. Lovejoy, Dr. Hibbert, and Chief Wiggum — is amusing, so is the part when Homer asks everyone if they’ve ever seen Tron, but it’s pretty light on laughs compared to the other two. I also just hate the way the 3D Homer and Bart look.
VII: The Thing and I: It turns out Marge and Homer have been hiding Bart’s evil twin, Hugo, in the attic and feeding him buckets of fishheads. This is a solid segment, mostly because it’s an all-time great outing for Dr. Julius Hibbert. When Lisa tries to correct him for his un-PC use of the term “Siamese Twins”, he retorts “and hillbillies prefer to be called Sons of the Soil, but it aint gonna happen”. Then, when recounting his impressions of infant Hugo, he utters the classic line “too crazy for Boys Town, too much of a boy for Crazy Town”. Hibbert even saves Bart from Hugo’s experimental surgery by encouraging Hugo to look at himself in a mirror, at which point he holds up an empty frame through which he lands a knock out blow.
Outstanding. In the end, it’s revealed the Bart was actually the evil twin, so Hibbert proposes a solution that will “make everything right”. Did anyone learn anything from their experience with Hugo? No, the solution was simply to chain Bart up in the attic and let Hugo roam free in his place.
VII: The Genesis Tub: I’m not really a fan of this one. In it, Lisa spawns a tiny civilization in a petri dish and is eventually shrunk down. It has some funny moments, but it’s not really horror and it just kinda ends like they wrote themselves into a corner or got bored with the concept.
VII: Citizen Kang: Another good one — mostly for its astute and cynical political commentary. Alien antagonists Kang and Kodos swap places with Bill Clinton and Bob Dole ahead of the 1996 elections (JESUS I’m getting old). We get the classic “abortions for some, miniature American flags for others” line and some additional ridiculous alien political speeches that don’t really sound that far off from the real thing. In the end, Homer accidentally jettisons the real Clinton and Dole into space, so, when he reveals the ruse to the voters, Kang and Kodos just laugh. They, rightly, point out that our two-party system will force everyone to choose between literal monsters because supporting a 3rd party would just being throwing your vote away. Another fantastic bit of comedy here that I don’t want to ignore is the scene of Kang and Kodos in their human disguises on a walk. A van from the DNC pulls up and a befuddled staffer leans out to inquire why they’re holding hands everywhere they go.
What are your favorite Treehouse of Horror episodes and/or segments?
Streaming: Every Simpsons episode ever is currently available on Disney+. What an age to be livin’.
