“We had a story to go with this painting, but it was far too intense, so we just threw something together with vampires. Enjoy.” – Bart Simpson
Zombie Simpsons has a well deserved reputation for massively over-relying on physical comedy. When they’re completely out of ideas, which is often, they’ll just find ways to cause Homer and/or Bart a lot of pain. In this episode, Homer stuck his head into a flaming jack-o-lantern, was run over by a lawnmower, repeatedly fell down, was eaten by a shark, bitten by vampires, fell off a bell tower, and then hauled off by whatever that thing Milhouse was supposed to be. And that’s just Homer, when he wasn’t getting hurt, the odds were decent that someone else was. Even in a Halloween episode you’re supposed to do more than just beat the shit out of your characters.
When that wasn’t happening, it was either string music of suspense or one of the usual Zombie Simpsons “parodies”, where they think drawing characters with big eyes and overbites is enough to qualify as satire. The opening with monsters in The Office style and the parade of vampires in the third segment spring immediately to mind.
The numbers are in and while they’re not as bad as they could be, they’re still pretty bad. Last night, 8.20 million people waited patiently for the Twilight/Harry Potter part so they could finally turn this one off. That’s up from the most recent episode, but it’s also the lowest number for a Halloween special ever. That’s good news all around as the Treehouse of Horror episode is always one of (if not the) highest rated episodes of the year. Season 22 is almost certainly going to be the lowest rated season ever and, if these are the best numbers they can get with a guest star laden Halloween episode, might do so by a pretty big margin.
[Note: Sorry there wasn’t a preview/open thread post yesterday. Three weeks off got us out of our routine.]
Dead Homer Society 
6 responses to “Even Vampires and Wizards and Wizard Vampires Cannot Save You”
I think the reason why you detest the string music is that it’s creating tension where none exists. Whenever the show did it, it was to parody it to make some mundane activity sound suspenseful for the sake of comedy like whenever Marge drank wine in “You Only Move Twice.” Case in point, I absolutely loved it when they played up the fake tension for “he’s making scones!” THAT was using it correctly.
By the way, that segment had one hell of a weird ending. Maggie suddenly goes Clockwork Orange on us? …Yeah…
Actually interesting note: http://www.neenja.com/articles/4/40_movie_references_from_the_simpsons – upon browsing them internets for THoH references, I stumbled upon this page which shows comparisons between The Simpsons parodies and their respective sources. Needless to say that no scene from a double-digit episode is in there. Also, Dracula (not Tweenlight) remake is in there, as well as Bart with vampire teeth. Clockwork Orange’s in there too, and this time it’s fairly appropriate – children dressed in costumes, telling scary scories. It’s not disgusting – doesn’t have to be. Nobody gets hurt – nobody needs to. And yet, all the jolly fun is in there, in this very episode.
WOW totally mind-blowing and subtle and I thought 90% of the scenes featured on the page were original :O it just goes to show you the attention to detail rather than shoving it in your face :/ and also I notices the the older TOH segments were similar to Twilight Zone episodes (classic show that 3/4 of the 1990’s audience would have never heard of) where as the newer TOH segments were similar to Family Guy episodes [needle comes of the record] SERIOUSLY and don’t get me wrong I like Family Guy but for a show like The Simpsons (the show that made prime-time animation possible to make again) to use it as a source material is very, very poor commitment :/ surely they can find an old obscure TV show as source material like Bewitched or something i dunno? :/
Ah, the crux of the matter is how smart the show thinks the majority of its viewers are. Sure, there are people who enjoy smart, witty, subtle humor, but they are grossly outnumbered by people who’d rather see Homer/Bart/Hans Moleman get blown up / beaten up, or treated like tenderized meat. Sadly, the (overall shrinking) core Zombie Simpson’s audience doesn’t give a crap about anything that made the show work in the first place. These ‘fans’ are either too impatient or too stupid to care.
Yeahh, this one really sucked. (And not “your blood.”) The first segment was utterly pointless (and did we really need the bloody deaths of Rod and Tod?), the second was just bizarre – WHY do Homer and Marge automatically jump to murder? – and the third, by virtue of being not very good but still slightly funny, easily managed to be the best. Even with a story that just kind of fizzled out.
Yup, this is definitely the crappiest ThoH episode ever. Tweenlight is the only thing that barely keeps it together, and even this is a Twilight parody, which itself is not so great. The only moment I really laughed at is when Edmund shows his teeth to Lisa after like two minutes of performing supernatural crap. I’d say that and Marge in a bikini is what holds the whole episode together.