“Could you please take in your jack-o-lanterns from past Halloweens.” – Mrs. Winfield

Halloween has come and gone, and all across America jack-o-lanterns are slowly decaying before their inevitable trip to the garbage dump or compost heap.  (As I type this, two of them are sitting on my front steps, likely being nibbled at by squirrels.)  Of course, no Halloween would be complete without some Treehouse of Horror, and we here at the Dead Homer Society aren’t the only ones who think so. 

First up is this excellent rundown of the best and worst Simpsons Halloween segments that our old friend Andreas from Pussy Goes Grrr posted in the comments to last week’s Reading Digest.  He watched every Treehouse of Horror episode and has reported back from the wars:

Pretty much everything after season 9 or so gets pretty mediocre, but a few late-season segments stand out as utterly abominable. Generally, it’s because they 1) think that “scary” means “has endless, meaningless bloodshed”; 2) think that “no rules” means “none of it needs any internal logic whatsoever”; and 3) they just aren’t funny, at all.

His examples of abominableness are truly abominable:

“The Fright to Creep and Scare Harms,” though, is somehow worse, beginning with its pun clusterfuck of a title, and continuing through its non sequitur-laced storyline. Lisa doesn’t know Billy the Kid’s real name? Billy the Kid opposed gun violence in his epitaph? Lisa can ban weapons, just like in Treehouse of Horror II, except now she doesn’t need the monkey’s paw? Cowboys can come back to life of their volition? Five gun-toting skeletons is all it takes to conquer Springfield, and that merits using a time machine? Jesus, it’s just so bad, and negligible as entertainment.

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing.

Of course, lots of other bloggers put fingers to keyboards over the Halloween weekend.  This next one is from a blog I just found called “Simpsons Reviews”.  It’s very generous towards Zombie Simpsons while still acknowledging that the old ones are better.  The list is pretty good, and of the top ten segments there’s only one entry from Zombie Simpsons:

8. Dial M for Murder, Or Press # to Return to Menu (THoH XX)
Okay, this may surprise you with this selection, but I really loved this one. For those of you who don’t know, I’m a huge Alfred Hitchcock fan, I feel that he’s the best director of all time (But that’s just my opinion). This segment takes some great plot elements of his works and melts them together into a pretty good story. If you’ve stopped watching the show for a while, I’d say give this segment a chance, it’s much better though if you can spot each Hitchcock reference in the segment.

The problem isn’t that they’re referencing Hitchcock scenes, the problem is that all they’re doing is referencing Hitchcock scenes.  Citing things isn’t the same as parodying them.  In that segment they literally ran through a bunch of Hitchcock shots – just ran through them – and expected people to laugh.  As Dave said in our Crazy Noises discussion of it:

Referencing something isn’t enough to make a joke

Coincidentally, that exact same segment is on the worst part of this excellent best/worst list.  As you’d expect, the best list doesn’t have anything from past Season 9 while the worst list – thoughtfully titled “Worst (So Far)” – is nothing but double digit seasons.  He singles out one of the same ones for outstanding achievement in the field of awfulness that Andreas did:

2. Mr. & Mrs. Simpson
From: Treehouse of Horror XVIII (11/4/07)
Written by: Marc Wilmore
Premise: Homer and Marge try to get counseling after admitting to being assassins.
Why?: What does parodying Mr. and Mrs. Smith have to do with Halloween? It’s not like its even regarded that highly as a film, but worthy of a parody I guess. So Homer and Marge want to kill each other at one one point but the reasoning behind it is just plan lazy, this really doesn’t make any sense.

I’ve never seen that one, and I can’t say that I want to. 

Next up is a double list from a site called Animation Revelation Features.  Two of their bloggers put up top ten lists for Treehouse of Horror segments.  Sadly, both are somewhat infected with Zombie Simpsons.  This one is almost half Zombie Simpsons, though they are kept at the bottom of the list.  More telling, is this one – posted by the awesomely named “SNES Chalmers”:

9. Mr. and Mrs. Simpson(THOH XVIII )

It’s so hard for me to pick more recent episodes of THOH, since pretty much everything past season fifteen is a blur to me(this goes for the show itself, not just the THOH episodes), but this one does stick out to me

Mostly it’s a good list, and maybe I’m reading too much into this, but I get the sense that SNES Chalmers felt obligated to take some pity on Zombie Simpsons and include a couple of them lest he be thought a killjoy.  Everyone gets their own opinions and gets to do whatever they like on their blog, but may I make a small suggestion?  If something’s hard to do then it’s not worth doing.  Zombie Simpsons isn’t the jerk your friend is dating that you have to hang out with out of politeness.  It’s not like Zombie Simpsons episodes get their feelings hurt if they’re not included. 

And finally, we end back at the beginning.  In his rundown of the best and worst of the Halloween specials, Andreas linked a post he had written about “Treehouse of Horror V” back in April.  When I saw the link, I thought to myself, “I remember that”, but then I scrolled to the bottom and was surprised not to see a pingback from us.  Either that link is sitting in some long dusty draft that I never finished or, more likely, I accidentally deleted from a Reading Digest and didn’t realize it.  So Andreas has my apologies for that because this is an excellent breakdown of “Treehouse of Horror V”. 

In particular, I want to highlight this:

As Ashley and I were discussing earlier, “The Shinning” isn’t just parody for its own sake. It doesn’t even bother with many of The Shining‘s most iconic moments – the occupants of the rooms, Danny on his tricycle, the twin girls – and instead focuses on the analogy of Homer and Jack Torrance as frustrated men within the strictures of the nuclear family.

This is a very astute observation.  “The Shinning” is the opposite of so many Zombie Simpsons “parodies”, both in Halloween episodes (see above) and regular ones, in that it doesn’t treat its source material as a checklist.  Doing so with The Shining would be tough in the first place, the movie is chock full of famous images and moments, but it’s easy to imagine a much less creative seven minutes that followed the movie through every twist, turn, “redrum” and imaginary boy who lives in Bart’s mouth.  “The Shinning” is a perfect example of less being more.  Instead of mindlessly referencing things and confusing recognition with humor, it tells its own story within the parameters of the original and makes comedy along the way. 

Anyway, I hope everyone had a great Halloween.  I’m off to take in my jack-o-lanterns before the neighbors complain.