A ‘Treehouse of Horror’ Marathon

One of my undertakings this previous Halloween season was to watch every single Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” episode, all 30+ of them. Let’s see how I did.

Treehouse of Horror

Feel free to skip ahead to “The Raven”. It’s a legitimately good adaptation of Poe. Bart is perfectly cast as the titular bird.

Treehouse of Horror II

Perhaps the classic Treehouse of Horror episode, this is the first that begins to bleed the final story into the framing device. I like the Homer-in-the-box.

Treehouse of Horror III

An all-around great triptych here, it’s hard to beat Homer falling from the first floor of a tall building to the demise of his career.

Treehouse of Horror IV

We’re squarely in the golden age of these Treehouses, and once again it’s hard to find a bad moment in these segments. Flanders is also perfectly cast as the devil.

Treehouse of Horror V

The best Treehouse of Horror. Watch it and agree or disagree.

Treehouse of Horror VI

Another great episode, maybe the last truly great Treehouse of Horror. Watch it for Groundskeeper Willie as Freddy Krueger.

Treehouse of Horror VII

The first two segments are flawed, but “Citizen Kang” is my single favorite Treehouse of Horror segment. Some of the best election satire this side of Bob Roberts.

Treehouse of Horror VIII

Now they’re starting to get hard to watch.

Treehouse of Horror IX

Promising premises that don’t live up to their potential.

Treehouse of Horror X

I like Lucy Lawless here. Other than that this is a pretty bad one.

Treehouse of Horror XI

The dolphin one is almost good.

Treehouse of Horror XII

Meh.

Treehouse of Horror XIII

“The Right to Creep and Scare Harms” is the most tortured title I’ve ever seen, and that’s from someone who watches Bob’s Burgers.

Treehouse of Horror XIV

Bad.

Treehouse of Horror XV

Also bad.

Treehouse of Horror XVI

Sometimes I wish I could get turned into my Halloween costume. But that’s usually because my costume is “me, but less crazy.”

Treehouse of Horror XVII

The one with Orson Welles is actually pretty good.

Treehouse of Horror XVIII

How exactly is “Mr. & Mrs. Simpson” supposed to be horror?

I guess that’s where I stopped, shortly before writer’s block took me. I think I got further into the episodes than this, because I know I watched the “Thanksgiving of Horror” episode in season 31, of which the “A-Gobble-Ypto” segment was actually kind of ingenious. Go figure, when The Simpsons breaks from doing the same thing for thirty years, they can produce some genuinely enjoyable television.

Some of the best moments in these episodes don’t even come from the episode; instead, the opening sequences can outshine the episode itself, including Guillermo del Toro’s opener from “Treehouse of Horror XXIII”, which I’m pretty sure has a Phantom of the Paradise reference in it. I’m too lazy/disinterested to rewatch and check. A couple other episodes have good opening sequences too. Again, it seems when The Simpsons either A) lets another artist have at it or B) breaks from stagnant convention they can actually be good.

It does also seem that The Simpsons gradually dropped the “horror” from “Treehouse of Horror” and the yearly episode became a repository of anything that couldn’t be justified in what passed for Simpsons realism. In this way, many of the series’ most imaginative concepts (alongside many of the more derivative) are compressed into a few minutes as one third of an anthology episode and therefore don’t land very well.

But then I’m tired of talking about The Simpsons. Let’s talk about something else please. I just watched Wallace Shawn read “Why I Call Myself a Socialist” on YouTube. With theatrical whimsy Shawn focuses less on dry materialist critique and instead emphasizes the psychic narratives involved in assignation of strict, reductive (and “productive”) roles to members of society. You should watch that video. In fact, I’m going to list a bunch of other things you should watch instead of The Simpsons.

• Painting with John on HBO Max (see also my article last night)
• My Dinner with André, which features Wallace Shawn
• The Princess Bride, which also features Wallace Shawn, this time shouting “inconceivable!” a lot
• the Toy Story franchise, featuring Wallace Shawn as a toy dinosaur
• just anything involving Wallace Shawn, seriously, he’s delightful
• video game speed runs
• old clips of The Majority Report that dunk on Meghan McCain (there are plenty, and they are worth it for Michael Brooks’ McCain impression alone)
• Truth to Power, a documentary on the music and activism of System of a Down’s Serj Tankian
• Jacobin’s YouTube series Weekends with Ana Kasparian and Nando Vila
• a sunset
• the new episode of Last Week Tonight (John Oliver covers Andrew Cuomo and dives deep into police raids)
• The Hobbit (bad, but not as bad as the current era of The Simpsons)
• a plastic bag drifting in the wind (weird, but also the only morally defensible part of American Beauty)
• Dawn of the Dead (the Romero version, not the Snyder version, or honestly even the Snyder version, you do you)
• Thom Andersen’s documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself
• the pairing of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, such as A Bit of Fry and Laurie and Jeeves and Wooster
• the first 7 seasons of The Simpsons
• paint dry

THE END, although not of The Simpsons, not ever.