734. Treehouse of Horror XXXIII

Original airdate: October 30, 2022

The premise: “The Pookadook” is a Babadook parody. “Death Thome” is a Death Note parody. “Simpsonsworld” is a Westworld parody.

The reaction: I usually dread having to write the reviews for the newest Treehouse of Horror since I always have the same criticisms every single time. And briefly looking back at the last few years’ reviews, I open every one of them saying the exact same fucking thing. But not this year. While I can’t say I loved it, this is most definitely the best Treehouse of Horror in… maybe fifteen years? Certainly of the entire HD era. It feels like they used up their worst Treehouse impulses on “Not It,” so this one was able to get away with being more creative. “The Pookadook” is based on a movie I loved when it came out, but I don’t remember a lot from it. But the story is digestible enough on its own, which is a good thing: an evil spirit inhabits Marge to try and kill Maggie. It actually got pretty intense, as Marge sends the rest of the family away and Maggie is genuinely terrified as they’re leaving. There’s an element of the story that gets introduced late where the spirit is feeding on Marge’s frustration and resentment of the family for having to clean up all their messes (and is annoyingly spelled out aloud by Marge at the very end), I kind of which that aspect were introduced at the beginning to make the story feel more complete. But these segments are always running against the clock, so it’s not a huge deal. “Death Thome” got a lot of Internet buzz in the last week, as it was animated by out-of-house by a South Korean studio, emulating the Death Note anime. The segment looks incredible, clearly a ton of work went into capturing the look of the series, as well as adapting all the Simpsons characters and locations, anime-style. There’s lots of great touches throughout, like the detailed portraits of Abe and Santa’s Little Helper, and the sailboat painting above the couch emulating a famous Japanese woodblock print. The story itself also feels appropriately adapted, with Lisa attempting to rationalize murder by only taking out “bad” people, like Snake holding a kitten at gunpoint, or Mr. Burns and his executive board before they can poison the planet. This turns into a nice bit where she starts to run out of causes of death, as you can’t have write down the same death twice (“Liquefy in a giant blender.” “Already did that.” “That was ‘pureed.’ Totally different setting.”) It’s a really fun segment, and the passionate embrace of the different visual presentation clearly shines through. “Simpsonsworld” riffs on Westworld, presenting a Simpsons theme park filled with robot versions of your favorite character, re-enacting classic episodes for your amusement. At least until one Homer gains self-awareness, gathering the rest of the family up to escape. It’s pretty much reference-palooza, as we see in the fake Springfield and behind-the-scenes is filled with wall-to-wall references to past episodes. The amusement park is run by “real” flesh-toned humans, as we see in a great shot of one of them extending their arm as they remove their glove, revealing five fingers. They still have the standard Groening overbite design though, I feel like it would have been cooler if they looked more humanoid. There’s not a lot of substance to this segment compared to the other two, which it doesn’t really need to have, but I’ll give it to them, it doesn’t wholly rely on references-as-jokes, cleverly re-contextualizing a couple of classic moments (an army of Ralphs ominously saying, “We choo-choo-choose you to die” was genuinely disconcerting.) It’s all very charming and cute, which is a pretty good descriptor for the whole episode. Unlike many of the past years where these specials seemed to just be on autopilot, just switching up the parodies and getting by on either “I recognize that reference” or the same shoddy jokes they’d do in any regular episode, for whatever reason, you could really feel the effort put into all three segments here, both in the storytelling and the animation. And especially with the latter two stories, they felt like things the show had never done before. Between this and “Lisa the Boy Scout,” I’m pretty stunned to be so positive this early in the season. Both of these were definitely more experimental and meta stories, but last season’s “Portrait of a Lackey on Fire” was a successful grounded story about a secondary character. Shockingly, the show does have some creative life in it, but how much we’ll see of it as the season continues awaits to be seen.

Three items of note:
– “Death Thome” deserves to get signaled out regarding its animation, but the whole episode was very well animated. There was some especially great stuff in “The Pookadook” when Marge is possessed; the sequence of her leaping up and pounding the basement door down was really fantastic. Speaking of which, the back half of that story makes great use of Julie Kavner, her more gravelly, weakened voice actually being a strength to make her sound more malicious.
– Just like with It, the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror comics also did their own Death Note parody years ago, done in a really wonderful manga style. But unlike “Not It,” both the comic and TV versions feel equally enjoyable, and it’s neat to see two successful renditions inspired by the same source material. In “Murder He Wrote,” it’s Bart who gets his hands on the Death Book, so the story plays out in an entirely different way. It’s definitely worth checking out.
– Knowing about the “Simpsonsworld” segment, I wondered if there would basically be exclusively references to the first ten seasons, and yeah, that’s pretty much what it was. We see the Grumple, and a couple of the Lisa and Abe robots were dressed in outfits from the Al Jean era, but besides that, it’s entirely material from the 1990s. Maude getting shot with a T-shirt cannon and Abe re-enacting “Old Man Yells at Cloud” were the only other “newer” references I caught, both of which are over twenty years old. This is something I always point out whenever the show does a direct reference to the past, it’s always to the classic era, ignoring the nearly two decades of episodes that followed. I can’t exactly fault this episode for it, though; if they’re building the fantasy of a Simpsons theme park, of course it’s going to be focused on the monorail episode, the Stonecutters episode, the Be Sharps… you gotta give the people what they want. We also get another repeat of the Homer sinks into the hedge meme, which this show has referenced a couple times, which were kind of groanworthy, but here, Homer vents his frustration at the pushy tourists forcing him to do it (“I’m so sick of that stupid hedge!!”) He then pushes the tourists through the hedge instead, killing them instantly as a pool of blood seeps out underneath the topiary. Good stuff.