Treehouse of Horror XXIV” kicks off with a tip of the cap to Dr. Seuss, with Homer scaring up trouble around Springfield as “The Fat in the Hat.” In “Dead and Shoulders,” Bart is decapitated in a kite mishap and his head is placed on Lisa’s body, necessitating that the two learn to act as one. With “Freaks No Geeks,” it’s the 1930s and Marge is a trapeze artist and Homer’s the strongman in a traveling circus, where sideshow freak Moe puts the moves on Marge.
Its time for another Treehouse of Horror everybody. Guillermo del Toro has apparently directed the couch gag this year, but I’m not enough of a film guy to really care about that. Anyway, enjoy this Halloween tradition. Or don’t. Either way.
Dead Homer Society 
46 responses to “Sunday Preview: Tree House of Horror XXIV”
The second one sounds suspiciously like something they did on Futurama.
…or the end of the third segment on “Treehouse of Horror II.”
“Oh, I hate having two heads.”
Also Treehouse of Horror 15, although to be fair, the opening and the first sketch were very good–imaginative, funny, good use of characters, hopefully indicative of the next two parts.
At least there it was just a throw-away gag.
The 2nd segment tonight (maybe it was the 3rd?) reminded me of the THOH XIII parody several seasons back of “The Island of Dr, Moreu”.
I really thought that as soon as Bart realized that he can control the body when Lisa’s sleeping, he would do something much more interesting that attempting to kill her.
Then… I remembered what show I was watching.
I am sure the 2 mintue and 45 second (!) couch gag will be the best part of the episode…and I don’t watch Del Toro’s movies.
Yep, that will probably be the sole highlight.
I liked the opening and loved the first sketch, which was very funny and imaginative; the next one had a few good parts, but was too disjointed; hopefully the finale will put it back on track.
Third sketch: Too many jokes based solely on the characters, but some good gags like the asymmetrical eyes and Krusty warning about Hitler. Salvaged by the ending, which was very weird and pretty funny. I guess this was better most of the last ten or fifteen Halloween shows, but only the first sketch and the ending felt like things out of the old days.
lol the ending was “weird and pretty funny”? Wow you’re a lucky person who can laugh off a scratch.
Fucking Homer duck in feathers going from newspaper to newspaper, they call it… hmmm.. oh yeah, a MONTAGE. Wow that’s new!
Also, all of a sudden… this? Shit guys if you ever want to bad trip a person on drugs, then that’s the right ending aight.
Was it something like Pacific Rim rip-off?
Family Guy is doing the same plot of someone hasving two heads. Seth Macfarlane must lurk around the Simpsons writers’ room to ensure the most efficient plagiarism.
No, Family Guy is doing an episode where Peter has a vestigial twin on his shoulder.
I just saw that Family Guy episode tonight. It was funny. But also annoying.
There was a time when the writers had to keep the intro short and even cut scenes to fit three stories into twenty-two minutes. Now they have to use filler even for that.
Just watched it.
The del Toro opening, aside being awfully long intro of whatever it starts with regularly, was just taking Springfieldians and turning them into characters from… his movies I guess (which I almost never watched… oh yeah there were the sucky Hellboy and Blade, and whatever else). The first segment was actually VERY promising, and maybe by itself didn’t stand out as much, though the animation and the rhyme were fun. Then the other two came it and ruined the evening… So yeah, in all, a half-assed 4.5 out of 10 (assuming 5 is quite good with some ratings), and of course, whatever shit MacFarlane took on the rest of your Sunday, I’m pretty sure it all sucked less.
Now back to not watching it.
About the opening, my thoughts exactly. Although I don’t think it was his movies only – check out http://www.indiewire.com/article/television/guillermo-del-toros-simpsons-opening?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed
I was hoping that he would create something new/original, using the denizens of Springfield as his palette. Something completely unexpected and/or subversive. This is why I liked Banksy’s opening so much.
lol Freud once said that people who make vases think a lot about penises. This is something like that: try to cram in as many links to existing movies there are, with little to no regard to del Toro. Hitchcock’s Birds, The Living Dead, etc. etc.
I would’ve actually much more enjoyed seeing the Pacific Rim parody with Homer controlling one of the mechs or something. Random crap is sometimes OK, not ALWAYS, but it doesn’t mean you must just… drop it.
I would have enjoyed that intro much more without the overt del Toro fanservice cameos of his movie characters–especially the last Pan’s Labyrinth bit with Lisa. Otherwise it would have been a well-earned, if dubious, highlight.
The main three segments really weren’t very good. Most of the jokes didn’t stem far from cheap gross-out jokes that really didn’t stand out at all. The “Freaks and Geeks” one at least had a bit more creativity in it even though its entirely cribbed from the 1932 movie “Freaks.”
However the “Freaks” segment really dropped the ball in that famous “One of us, one of us, gooble-gobble, gooble-gobble” homage with some pretty half-hearted voice delivery. It was a line referenced more than once and much more memorably in golden age Simpsons episodes. Same with Bart’s “Ay Carumba” in “Dead and Shoulders.” I’m sure Nancy Cartright used to give Bart’s exclamations and delivery a lot more snap than this.
Well said.
To quote Bart: “This (episode) both sucks and blows”.
The problem with the show as it is today is that the writers think that by simpsonizing any movie/series/book characters that are mildly popular today, they would save the day. No fucking way!
Take Season 8’s episode where Homer meets an alien in the woods. It features Leonard Nimoy who has NOTHING to do with X-Files, and the whole X-Files setting in only there to mock the crap out of it. You don’t have to watch X-Files in order to enjoy the ep, nor do you have to know who Nimoy is. Sure, the plot itself is somewhat shallow, but at least it doesn’t contradict itself, make characters appear from and disappear into thin air, and isn’t ridden with references solely based on X-Files.
A lot of episodes from Season 24, and whatever I picked up from Homerland, seem to follow the most basic form of parody: simpsonize and retell. Don’t invent plots, don’t introduce characters. Simply simpsonize and copy whatever already exists. And as long as they do JUST that, I won’t bare to watch something I could see amongst high school webcam parodies on Youtube.
Well said Stan! Good points. That reminds me: I love the “Springfield Files” from Season 8, one of my all time favorite Simpsons episodes, so damn funny!
I have to agree with you about that episode. I just read that episode capsule, The Springfield Files, on SNPP.com btw.
I always reference this ep to someone who brings up the subject of how Season 8 sucks compared to the earlier ones.
I was also among the rare viewers to not shit on the show until Season 20 or so. Up until the point of no return, and even then, everything deserves a chance.
I also disagreed with the notion that the show was crap from Season 11 on. In my opinion the show did not go bad until Season 17.
DIdn’t get bad until season 17 or 20? Might be worth going back to watch Kill The Alligator & Run or Saddlesore Galactica again.
I never had a problem with the Alligator or Saddlesore episodes. I think the only reason people hate the Alligator one so much is because Kid Rock was in it. I hate him too but at least the episode did not center around him!
People only hate the Alligator episode so much because Kid Rock was in it. I hate him too but he was only on screen for a short time!
Not me. I hated it because it was all over the place and hardly ever funny. The bit with Homer watching the TV show he didn’t understand felt like a totally different show to me.
“No listening, you hear me?”
“…No?”
“You don’t don’t learn, do ya?”
So at least it wasn’t all bad. Saddlesore, though? And less than a year later, Brawl In The Family, the one that made me give up watching it every week.
I love Kill the Alligator and Run, but even after all these years, I still agree with Comic Book Guy that Saddlesore Galactica is the worst episode ever.
Boy oh boy, what a truly toothless Halloween special!
The Fat in the Hat segment was baffling. Dr Seuss is the theme of a Halloween segment, why? Zombie Simpsons seems to think childrens stories are good fodder for Treehouse of Horror for some reason. Remember the board game segment or how about the Charlie Brown bit?
The Double Header story was short, pointless, unfunny and truly, truly un-scary. And as has been pointed out done already by Treehouse III and Futurama. has anyone else noticed how timid they are with gore? Every time someones limbs or other appendage gets chopped off, it’s always a clean cut with zero blood. Lop off an arm and it looks like fresh sliced ham.
And the third segment ‘homaged’ the plot to an obscure 1930s movie. Again, nothing terrifying or Halloween-like. They hang Mr Burns off screen and descend on Homer for some reason. That’s the extent of the horror, other than the fact that they’re circus freaks,
The Fat in the Hat bit was hilarious, at the same time the least I deplore in ZS is gore because boy oh boy have they forgotten how to make someone’s death funny. Also, they tried to venture into an animation style uncommon for the show, and every time they do that, I kudos because as previously mentioned there’s nothing as boring as HD.
I have to somewhat agree on the other two bits, though not because of what you invoke. The Bart/Lisa bit could’ve been funnier had they developed more on controlling of the body part, imo. It shouldn’t have taken them so long to come to Bart losing his head, and putting him in charge of Lisa’s body would’ve been quite an interesting setting for at least a couple of funny jabs. Meh…
Lastly, the 1930ies bit sucked ass. This is the only part of the argument that I completely agree with you on. If there was a movie they tried to retell, they had to at least pick a CLASSIC. They could’ve as well retold the Marxx Brothers story, or the Three Stooges, but Freaks… um, what was that? A movie about freaks? Somehow I’m not impressed.
To cherry up the top I really think that what they need next time (oh god there’s going to be one!) is a narrative presentation for Halloween. They didn’t do that for, uh, 20 years now? Fuck the couch gag, fuck montages, etc. Just have a character come and talk to us. I’d be in for that anytime.
Yep.
Well, “Freaks” was always sort of a cult classic (probably less so now) through much of the 20th century and was THE movie starring real deformed sideshow folk as sympathetic protagonists for several decades and a pretty effective 30s melodrama/horror movie of the era. It’s also the source of the “One of Us! One of Us!” chant which was also used in a few golden era Simpsons episodes.
The Simpsons episode really didn’t add much outside of sight gags and lame jabs at the 30s. Any attempt at being emotional or creepy is undercut by some weak joke or feeble attempt at being subversive. Pretty much the equivalent of the Simpsons THOH segment on “The Island of Dr Moreau” though a bit worse.
Hmmm okay, but I’m sure even though I didn’t watch that movie in my reminiscent years, the “One of us” sequence surely wasn’t as much straight in the face as it was in their version: Homer comes out of the tent -> Burns is dead -> The freaks come to mangle Homer for some reason, although none of them even knows about his plot. I mean in no way could such nonsense be written in a movie, especially in the b&w ones.
“The Island of Dr Moreau” I mentioned above as well. That’s what the 3rd segment, maybe 2nd segment too, reminded me of!
And um guys…. What has that pic above with Milhouse riding a girl’s bike behind a menacing car have to do with this, or any, THOH episode? I don’t recall seeing this scene or anything like it in this year’s THOH.
It’s in the opening.
That scene was in the opening Del Tomo sequence.
A pair of stupid questions:
Why haven’t they fired and/or killed Hoover? And if they can kill off Glick for an episode, why not Agnes for two seasons?
Oh and BTW, if Bart killed Lisa, he’d die too, since he’s still attach to her.
I only agreed to sit through this for the octuplets. Once again, I cannot stress enough how much Marge pisses me off! It’s like in any episode they appear in, Marge is a bitch, or the Simpson family are in a nasty predicament (like the Idol from Happy Tree Friends).
Just to clarify: he didn’t want to kill Lisa, he just wanted to chop her head off to become the only owner of the body.
BTW I just rewatched Season 5 ToH yesterday, and the ending with Homer waking up with Burn’s head is EXACTLY what they went for here. Bit by bit. Except they made a whole story out of some silly closing gag. Not good brah, not good.
Also I googled about ”’Freaks”’ some more and have to take a couple of words I said earlier back: it WAS good material to work with. Maybe not as good as the more known horror classics, but at least it was fresh of an idea. The prob is they did neither with it. Neither did they come up with original poetic sketch integrating parts of the story like they did in their first segment. Nor did they simply retell it with the townsfolk impersonating characters. They went with a) 1930s cliches, b) forced joke pummeling (Moe’s ugly, Meg’s a reject whoops plagiarismo) and c) REALLY stupid ending. Everything Zombie Simpsons style – check. Ugh.
The opening is cool, and it almost makes me want to watch the whole special. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. Even after I stopped watching ZS, for a few seasons I did watch the Treehouse of Horror episodes but those eventually jumped off the cliff in terms of quality as well.
I think the intro is a bit reference heavy, but it works because the Treehouse of Horror episodes have always been reference heavy. I only wish that it featured a broader range of references, not just recent stuff. But I LOVE the whole “Springfield falling apart” thing.
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