“The problem is that you don’t care whether you get good attention for, say, getting high marks in school, or bad attention for, say, turning your father into a jack-in-the-box. Homer, I see you agree with my theory.” – Dr. Marvin Monroe
“I’m not nodding. It’s the air conditioning.” – Homer Simpson
“Hey! I found a shortcut through your hedge maze.” – Bart Simpson
“What’s going on here? I’m so bulgy. My stomach sticks way out in front and my- ahhhh!” – Homer Simpson
Happy 20th Anniversary to “Treehouse of Horror VI”! Original airdate 29 October 1995.
And happy birthday to the one, the only Dan Castellaneta!
“You must drive this stake right through his heart.” – Lisa Simpson
“Take that, vile fiend!” – Homer Simpson
“Uh, Dad? That’s his crotch.” – Lisa Simpson
“Oh, sorry.” – Homer Simpson
“Welcome to our world, most gracious Lisa.” – Leader
“Your world is incredible. And you speak English.” – Lisa Simpson
“We have listened to you speak since the dawn of time, oh Creator, and we have learned to imitoot you exalctly.” – Leader
“At last, I’m going to do what Bob never could: kill Bart Simpson!” – Cecil Terwilliger
“By throwing me off a dam? Isn’t that a little crude for a genius like you?” – Bart Simpson
“Ooh, I suppose it is. Enh. If anyone asks, I’ll lie.” – Cecil Terwilliger
The annual Halloween episode has come and gone, and this year’s was just as bland and forgettable as last year’s, and the year before that, etcetera. Perhaps next year’s will break the cycle of boredom, but I guess we’ll have to wait to find out.
– Before we get started, let’s just pause for a moment to note that this is the twenty-sixth(!) edition of this. Jebus.
– Another weird opening, this time a bad “Grinch Stole Christmas” take off. Took the better part of two minutes, though, so at least there’s that.
– Segment one opens with Bart spinning Wendell on a merry-go-round so the kids can gamble on when he’ll puke. Wendell both barfs and doesn’t, so Bart somehow keeps the money and no one cares. This is off to an incoherent start.
– Sideshow Bob shows up to tell us what we just saw and explain a joke about the wallpaper on Milhouse’s phone.
– Bob’s dancing around with Bart’s intestines on his shoulders. Kinda weird.
– Bob is now drinking Bart’s blood with some wine. You know how you can tell these segments are slapdash? We’re two minutes in and barely anything has happened except Bart and/or Bob explaining what we’re seeing at that moment. For a brief comparison, by the two minute mark of “The Shining”, the family has arrived at the house, Bart’s met Willie and had his power explained, and Burns and Smithers are cutting off the cable TV and beer supply.
– After nothing happened for another minute, Bob is now using Bart’s corpse for putting practice.
– Bob stepped on a rake. Good work, guys.
– Bob is expositing again. Seems he misses Bart.
– Now we’ve got a montage of Bob killing Bart and reanimating him. This is gonna go on for a while.
– Homer just exposited what the “Reanimate” lever does after we saw a montage of it working.
– Anyway, that ended. On to segment two, “Homerzilla”! (There’s a fresh idea.)
– You know that joke where dubbed Japanese dialogue is deliberately offset from the character’s mouths (they did it at the juicer factory in Season 4)? They just did that joke, but had Comic Book Guy pre-explain it by saying, “Yes, let us show disrespect with poorly dubbed laughter.” Woof.
– Two minute mark. Still expositing the setup.
– Homerzilla is attacking now. It’s just a series of disconnected and not terribly clever sight gags. Ooh, Homerzilla has the fighter planes on yo-yo strings!
– And now we’ve swerved into a movie parody where Hollywood executives remake Homerzilla as a big, American extravaganza. Still mostly just Homer doing weak sight gags like plugging Buzz cola.
– And it ends on them narrating text we can read.
– Segment three just started with Lisa, off screen, expositing at Bart and Milhouse. Milhouse then fell down a hole, but told us about it so we wouldn’t get confused. Then Lisa and Bart talked about getting in the hole, then they got in the hole.
– Apparently we’re doing a Chronicle thing here, so the annoyances of found footage movies can come to the small, animated screen. Lisa and Milhouse have powers, Bart doesn’t and . . .
– Montage!
– Now Lisa lets us know that, “Milhouse has gone mad with power”. K.
– Now Maggie has superpowers and the episode finally gets around to ending with another montage.
– And we end on another admission that the show sucks, with Kang and Kodos yelling that it isn’t Season 4 anymore.
Anyway, since I’ve been blissfully slacking on this, let’s take a look at the numbers for the last three episodes. Two weeks ago, “Puffless” pulled just 3.29 million viewers, which places it at #10 on the all time least viewed list. A week ago, “Halloween of Horror” was watched by 3.63 million viewers. That makes it #16.
Of course, neither of those episodes had a football lead-in the way last night’s did. “Treehouse of Horror XXVI” was seen by an appropriately spooky 6.66 million viewers, which counts as a good number for Zombie Simpsons these days. That’s about a million people less than last year’s Halloween show, a dropoff that’s been pretty consistent this year.
“Not everyone died in the blast, Homer. Some of us were merely horribly mutated.” – Dr. Hibbert
“You’re mutants?” – Homer Simpson
“Uh, we don’t like the word ‘mutants’, Homer. We prefer ‘freaks’, or ‘monsters’.” – Moe
After killing Bart, Sideshow Bob doesn’t know what to do with himself; Homer wakes up with short-term memory loss; Because of radiation, Lisa, Bart and Milhouse gain super-powers.
Ah Treehouse of Horror. My favorite Halloween ever was probably the last time i ever tricked-or-treated, and FOX ran THOH I-IV back to back. In fact, I think nothing sums up The Simpsons more for me than when the house from “Bad Dream House” ultimately decides to destroy itself rather than live with the Simpson family. I doubt anything as epically awesome as that will happen tonight, but that seems like an unrealistic goal anyway.
“Hi, I’m Ed McMahon, tonight on FOX, from the producers of When Skirts Fall Off and Secrets of National Security Revealed, it’s World’s Deadliest Executions!” – Ed McMahon
“Welcome to Planet Springfield, the restaurant owned by me, Chuck Norris, Johnny Carson’s third wife, and the Russian mafia!” – Rainier Wolfcastle
“Don’t worry, Lis. I got a plan that can’t fail. . . . Yiddle, my man, you’re a genius.” – Bart Simpson
“I love my work.” – Yiddle
“What the?” – Bart Simpson
“It’s a label maker.” – Patty Bouvier
“We have one at home. Before we got it I was always finding Patty’s stubble in my leg razor.” – Selma Bouvier
“Eeehh.” – Bart Simpson
Sorry for the late post. We got some real good toy commercials coming up. I promise.
“The Burns bear, perhaps the most valuable little bear in the world, could be anywhere. It could be in your house. You could be looking at it right now. It could be right in front of your face as I’m saying this, waggling back and forth, perhaps being help up by a loved one.” – Kent Brockman
“Maggie, I’m trying to watch TV. Put that moldy old bear down. Moldy! Old! I’m gonna get something to eat!” – Homer Simpson
“Hey, Homer, isn’t this your sister-in-law on a date with Troy McClure?” – Lenny
“Pfft, Troy McClure, he’s a washed up movie star! He could be dating washed up supermodels.” – Homer Simpson
“Bart, would you like to read a book?” – Marge Simpson
“No.” – Bart Simpson
When Lisa becomes scared at the Krustyland Halloween Horror Night, Homer is forced to take down his Everscream Terrors decorations. Halloween pop-up employees seek vengeance on Homer for causing them to lose their jobs, and rob his house while Homer and Lisa hide out in the attic. Homer and Lisa light up their stored holiday decorations to attract attention and stand up to the intruders.
I guess we are having a pre-THOH Halloween episode tonight. Apparently in this episode, taking down decorations that I presume have already been bought and paid for causes employees of the decoration manufacturing company to lose their jobs and take to lives of crime. Nick Kroll and Blake Anderson will be wasting their talent tonight as guest stars.
Can you believe it has been almost 17 years since George Carlin and Martin Mull guest voiced in “D’oh-in’ in the Wind”? Not that it’s relevant, I just thought of them when I saw a pair of comedians lending their voices to a show that is almost 20 years past its expiration date.
“I don’t have a thousand bucks! But you do, don’t you, Marge? You do! You do! You’ve been squirreling it away, haven’t you? Saving it for a rainy day? That’s what you said, right? Right? Right!” – Homer Simpson
“Homer!” – Marge Simpson
“Dad is taking this in a less than heroic fashion.” – Lisa Simpson
“Uh, Magic, what if people think a guy’s a hero but he was really just lucky?” – Homer Simpson
“Don’t worry. Sooner or later, people like that are exposed as the frauds they are.” – Magic Johnson
“Thanks, Magic.” – Homer Simpson
“But there was more to the Old West than just sex, folks. A lot more! If you look off to your left, you’ll see a real, Old West hitching post, possibly used by bandits, possibly during some exciting adventure!” – Ghost Town Guide
“Are you saying you’re never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?” – Homer Simpson
“No!” – Lisa Simpson
“Ham?” – Homer Simpson
“No!” – Lisa Simpson
“Pork chops?” – Homer Simpson
“Dad, those all come from the same animal!” – Lisa Simpson
“Yeah, right, Lisa, a wonderful, magical animal.” – Homer Simpson
Happy 20th Anniversary to “Lisa the Vegetarian”! Original airdate 15 October 1995.
charliesweatpants.com
(The crotch really does wear out too fast.)
Dead Homer Society 
The Mob Has Spoken