Burning Down the Treehouse: Some Idiot Reviews Ninety THOH Segments in Thirty Days

#41

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If you're worried that we're doing Frankenstein again fret not, because we barely are. The reanimation of Frink Sr. is about where it ends, the segment kinda makes its own rules from there. What follows is a grotesque parade of Jerry Lewis performing fatalities to beef up his body with guts for no discernible reason, climaxing with him stealing brains at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and babbling nonsensical revelations. It is such a visceral experience of a segment, and I dig it for its aimless carnage set against the performance of Jerry Lewis, who never sounds particularly sinister as he commits these deeds but is consumed by some sudden incomprehensible desire that must be fed. The horror of the absurd is at play on full volume here, and it works, but if I may be a noxious overanalyzer, I get it. These are Swartzy's last hurrah segments, but I'm a little crestfallen that we never seem to get a real solid Frink story. The pieces are here even, I love the detail that Frink Sr. is a much more suave guy, a brilliant mind but not a total schmendrick with the stammering and flayvins, who is rather disappointed his son's version of that came out so dweeby.

They probably could have found a way to focus that relationship conflict to create a reason for Frink Sr.'s rampage, you don't have to lose any of the spine-ripping glory and you have a sense of purpose to the character. I'm all for characters being sudden ghouls in a Halloween story but since we have never seen Frink Sr. before it does feel like potential ignored. Thats all "what if" though, as a second chunk of comedy chaos in this above-average-for-the-time thoh, it does work, and while the graceless gore would be a desperate sign of a series that's lost its punch quite soon, here it's so animated and ghastly it's hard to even take seriously. They do a Saturday Night Fever reference for God's sake, how do you review full-bore Swartzwelder? I guess I already did the thing he would want to hear rather than my prattling, I laughed. You probably will too.
 
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this is the most exciting thread simps section has had in years
simps section: i disagree
 
#42

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we wrap our surprisingly decent swartzwelder send-off sorta-scarefest with the best segment of the three, and possibly the best of jean's mammoth run. first off, holy moly it's another twilight zone sendup finally! they'll forget to do these classic stories when there's no room to sandwich them into their abundant current trailer spoofs, i think this may actually be the last one, which is a shame but not a shock. eyeing twilight zone for "remember the classic era" points isn't enough itself, but thankfully this sucker is quite sturdy in structure. perhaps the most inspired touch is the way the watch is found, as one of those extravagant prank devices marketed to young boys in the ads in the backs of comic books. thohs have all but forgotten how to be cryptic and mystical with their all-powerful objects but this is a nice alternative for this particular story, a goofy gag like x-ray specs or spy cameras but way more legit than a kid would be used to, that alone is genuinely clever execution.

alot of the jokes that follow before the big timefreeze are pretty obvious as bart pranks tend to be in general as time goes on but i'll give them the pass within this framework because if you gave two rapscallions this device this is the shit they'd do. the real treat is post-watch smash though as we get the two boys manipulating everything to their heart's content including abducting oscar de la hoya which pays off more than you could possibly imagine. every guest star in this thoh is funny, add that to the pile of miracles. i will say i think bart regretting his stopping of time because he misses being a regular kid is off the mark. i think a better take would be that a bart without the friction against his troublemaking loses some of the spirit of pranking in the first place. im sure he loves hugs from his mom, but trying to spin the story into meaning something is gonna take more than treacle.

inversely, the way they take fifteen years to finish the eight-hour-guide to repair their watch is excellent and relatable, soon enough the simpsons will be amazing at random talents for no reason so to see these two kids remain so incapable of rigid focus that they permanently jank their age in the timeline is pretty great, as are the silent eerie shots of the still springfield before reactivating the watch. no doubt this segment could have been a great one back in the day, but it's still about as complete and as funny a segment as id expect to get from the era i'm in, and for once in these xiv segments i dont feel im floundering around the fact that they're so swartzweldian that they defy critique. i'll miss the creativity of throwing some simple device or monster out of a twilight zone episode into the simpsons world and seeing how it reacts, but at least swartzwelder provided me a fond farewell to those sensibilities long after id accepted they were gone. a nice surprise, this segment, and this thoh. now back to the usual.
 
Actually Stop the World wasn't the last Twilight Zone THOH segment. That would be the costume one from XV
 
#43

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remember when homer's character was so demonstrably diluted into jerkassery in "g-g-ghost d-d-dad" but at the very least there was divine comeuppance and him being bullied by the devil? a sad state of characterization affairs that buys a new shitty version of homer that became so commonplace that it spread like melanoma that wont kill its host through the architecture of the entire structure known as the simpsons, but at least they seemed to know. i held onto that last gasp like precious oxygen and now im breathing in the poison that may never end. homer has had questionable and rude tendencies for a long time, but as they got worse they also got louder, so as soon as he's on the screen you already know what your plot is, homer is a dick and ruins everything. the white hot liquid jerkass runs through the veins of this segment, and it absolutely craters it.

i can forgive the title-firstness of the segment because it gives an opportunity to let ned have some twisted fun with premonitions, he's a good soul so he's perfect for being this chosen savior of springfieldians and his christly nature is a good juxtaposition to the brutality he's made to witness. the subversion simply being that he fails and they die anyway is simple but if they committed to it they could've gotten cruel irony out of his extraneous efforts, but they passively blaze through their three jokes before getting to homer being a volatile dimwit. i have two things to say about this disaster and im duckin' out: homer being such a lunatic he dooms the world can and demonstrably has already worked, but there's not a second of remorse or emotion or comeuppance. then what makes it worse is when he gets to heaven, after marge implies he destroyed the world to get outta cleaning the garage because nobody reacts to anything realistically anymore, god instead of punishing homer gives him a frisbee and leads him into heaven discussing their buffet or something. this alone is why scully homer for his immense faults and for setting the stage for what came next is still better than jean homer. no subtlety, no character, no remorse, no payback, no arc, no story. garbage, worst one yet.
 
#44

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you'd think having made the dumb historical trilogies more established and consistent would prevent them from shoving them in thohs where they dont belong, but no. another dressup dud, jack the ripper meets sherlock holmes i guess, and all i can muster that isn't continuing to scratch the broken record besides astonishment at how bad some of these professional voice actors' british accents are is dismay for how stunningly amateurish this is as a mystery. the structure is as cookie cutter as they come, drifting unenthused from one stand-in and their useless and obvious jokes to the next, stuffing copious exposition from lisa along the way because that's how you make a good mystery tell me everything to my face. we are given dialogue to lead to the next person but there are no details to even qualify this as a mystery. the only knot in the narrative we get is the ol' "its the one you least suspect" trick of making it the police officer, who i personally would most suspect acab. i don't know they keep doing these when they're just vehicles for the same ye olde jokes, regardless even of the time period itself. oh and british people eat bad haha. lifeless outing, and there's more of these i think augh.
 
#45

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this segment is substantially too horny, but its the one good thing about it. our zombie family is injected into the body of mr burns and bumble about until we hit the six minute mark. ho hum. straightforward parodies are gonna be the norm so i better come up with shit to say. they don't really comment on the nature of the genre here though, its just more homer ruining everything and exposition from every angle courtesy of frink. no stakes either because while homer growing back in full inside of burns is an amusing ghastly visual it reminds me that they could've made it matter that their presence in burns is a ticking time bomb and they just kinda don't.

they do have the stakes of maggie's acidification but nobody seems too pressed, it's bad enough when our characters no longer respond to these segment's horrors like real people, but now they just don't care about anything, least of all homer who turns his journey to stop his daughter's literal death into a power trip. the visual gags of a shrunken family inside burns should be easy but they're largely grotesque, homer insinuating he ate two of burns' rib bones (???), burns decrepit struggling heart being pierced by their vessel, and uh bart pissing inside of burns. cool. another kiddie pool shallow collection of boring jokes in a setpiece wasted.
 
Yeah, I really enjoy The Ned Zone. I'm normally allergic to Jerkass Homer, but I find him palatable in this segment mostly because it doesn't really play things straight.
 
#46

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"uh, mom? remember how you said you wish we would never grow up?" thanks lisa, good realistic dialogue a literal second after bart's apparent death, which happens by the way because he just randomly decides to leap out the window toward the swimming pool cuz he's a lobotomized chimp now. what follows is jaw-dropping, our latest winner of the crown of shit for worst segment so far. maybe if the show could establish any narrative or character dynamics without them feeling like jokes to rush the plot rather than help tell it, this wouldn't feel so intensely cruel and stupid.

as it stands, the family's relationship with david (same name as the movie btw cuz writing is hard) is extremely shallow and barely given time but we are meant to believe that not only do they love him as much as a real son for no discernible reason, but upon bart's miraculous return rather than show any real relief it becomes a competition between the two of them. bart being jealous is valid, but if this segments idea of subversion is tossing bart out in the woods because the robot is a better son anyway it should get a better idea. all the grim unpleasant characterizations of the nihilistic early jean era injected into one of its ever-lifeless thoh affairs. oh and homer dreamed it all but he's also possessed by the devil but it's just so he can get outta work. sure. yeah worst so far, but i have a feeling it's time on the throne of festering diapers will be brief regardless.
 
#47

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the segments would get more violent in the jean era, not that there weren't some stark moments of grotesque and gore in the classic era but they were certainly more sparse, presumably because blood and body parts themselves don't equal horror unless you ramp up to them effectively, which this segment doesn't, opting to just shotgun blast secondaries for a few minutes. the original story is about humans being worth the hunt for their reason, so springfield's brainlessness is not a great start, but maybe they could riff off of that. they don't. it's hard to explain but these segments used to be able to simplify but still tell the same story or invert the story to make a clear point about it, now they just seem to bypass details for convenience and lethargy. even though it still slots into the supervillain burns category, ramping up the psychological menace of his intent like the original story could lend some tension. maybe they think burns doing it for no discernible reason is funnier, maybe it could somehow be, but it isn't here, its just alot of wayward deaths and some baffling asides that prove how little idea they had in executing this as a full short.

back in the brilliant "dial z for zombies" there were some aside gags like the tv bit with mel eating krusty, but these help flesh (heh) out the comedic landscape of the themes being tackled, the weird sports commentary thing here is just a time vampire, utterly needless but all the idea on paper they had was uh aimless bullets through characters until we get homer eating frink good lord and dangling barney's corpses from a tree good Lord until marge hits burns and smithers in their heads with frying pans. they kiss and presumably fuck in front of terry bradshaw, who just keeps talking because we gotta hit that six minute mark. the most dangerous game surely could work as a simpsons segment that works in a survival horror meets psych horror way, make me care people are dying, emphasize the helplessness of the chase, you could do alot with the food chain stuff from the original that's clever and subversive, but it's so goddamn quippy and toneless, and just to get the job done we are literally stuffing filler into shorts, like a cucumber down the pants to pretend it's packin' way more than it was born with. desperately flimsy segment.
 
#48

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well this one's the closest to endurable in xvi, but the show is getting less and less funny, sometimes seemingly forgetting what a joke is or how comedy works, sometimes just spinning the ol' tertiary character wheel for their next stereotype joke to toss on the fire, so its potential is...i wont say wasted but compromised. the concept is actually pretty great, a scorned witch robbed of her best costume gift certificate decides to turn all of springfield into their costumes. given the wide array of costumes, we are given quite the playground for visual gags, and they get decent mileage out of it, even some of the obvious gags like hans being turned into an actual mole even though he had no costume or newly swole abe the gorilla going too crazy swinging about and falling to injure his back anyway did amuse me, perhaps because of the whip fast pacing of this gallery of gags to get them all in, corralling everyone into the middle of town rather than smash cutting gag to gag was a nice way to compact the chaos too, watching how fast their new forms cause them to fall apart, sometimes literally.

i do suppose you could ask why just because they become their costumes do they have to adhere to them as there doesn't seem to be a force over their will or anything, and some gags like homer trying over and over and over to drink beer as just a head and whining all the while are egh, and also its not their fault that jared from subway is a gotdang pedophile and i guess "sexually ambiguous" was a lucky guess but at the time it was still a weird shot! enough quick jokes take advantage of this idea to make these nitpicks not a huge bother but a story would've been nice, they even craft the framework of some costumers preferring their new selves which would work, but its only for a couple more gags before its reverted anyway. weird. and no im not gonna talk about the ending with dennis rodman and everyone as giant pacifiers. im simply not. have to wonder how this creative idea would've fared even in the scully era but as it stands, at least this one has a little juice in it, seems like maybe they had some fun even.
 
#49

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homer eats people. that's it. that's literally it. never assume it can't get worse, through al jean all things are possible, except the good things. look, i get it. homer is the food monster, so let's ramp that up for the halloween special and make him a literal food monster. i understand why that pitch would elicit a few passive boomer chuckles in the writer's room, and maybe maaaaaybe there is a way to do it, i'm not inclined to lean yes on it but im giving it the slightest smidge of benefit of the doubt, if only because i know this isn't it, because this is peak flaccid shock value bait, cranking up the kills to absolutely no avail. it's disgusting, and its aimless, and again we are just fervently plowing filler into these segments like humans down homer's alien blob eatin' chute to get them to proper size, what with the cavernously terrible sir-mix-a-lot parodies and dr phil cameos.

characters being more sinister for the specials can and has worked, but homer eating alien goop is too inane, and him eating people leads to nearly no actual jokes, that is the whole joke. i guess i'm meant to gasp like wow look at all the casualties but there's no meaning to any of it, these guys think a high body count constitutes a halloween spook now. if im letting out any noise it's a deep exhale of pained exasperation. in the end he's put to good use by….eating the homeless. biting satire. another useless and awful segment showcasing a manic homer who never pays for his lunacy and no story is even considered let alone formed. our latest worst segment.
 
#50

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hoo boy, this weird thing. my last runthrough of the thohs front-to-back was around when season 25 was airing, and while there are some hefty stinkers fouling up the near-distance, this was one of the most baffling segments i had yet seen. it seemed about as on the other side of the world from thoh as could be possible, a golem-centric jewish romantic comedy of sorts with richard lewis and fran drescher. we've had tonal disconnects in the past for the sake of the joke, but the simpsons family welcoming some clay statue man into their home and trying to match-make him just sends interrobangs spiraling around my noggin, what fresh incomprehensible hell could this be? well let's try to make some sense of it. part of the issue here seems to be that the writers actually dug a little too deep for the reference material to resonate, as this short is based on a 1915 movie called the golem which itself is based on 16th century hebrew mythology. yeah another jewish myth golem film, yawn right?

the golem's primary purpose was to strike against anti-semites who sought to harm the jewish people, he was a guardian of the people who assembled him, but upon being reawakened by an antiques dealer to be his servant, the golem falls in love with the dealer's daughter, is rebuffed, and rampages and consequently murders some peeps. ok, so there's our template to try and make sense of this, and to some degree it does start to. krusty's exposition explaining the golem's purpose of protection boiling his service down to shotgunning anti-semites is mildly funny, and honestly krusty's personal usage of the golem to do the same to his hecklers is very funny, that is technically protecting jewish people from persecution! this bit works so well it kinda feels like it is the actual story to follow, to illustrate the change in jewish culture and how upholding that protection would entangle the golem in all manner of silly business regarding jewish entertainers. im sure that'd still have over the recommended dosage of jewish jokes, but it's a good idea.

nah though, instead we just get bart manipulating the golem to get revenge on his bullies. now i get this part is meant to mirror the dealer and servant part where bart's wants from this mystical protector are so much more trivial, but krusty coulda done that! there's so little mileage outta the bart stuff sadly, all i can note is the continued hacking up of characters sure is trying to evoke the halloween essence with minimal effort, there couldn't be a greater disconnect. then comes the golem falling in love part, and i don't have answers for how to cleverly invert this bit, but playing it even more straight by adding fran drescher is a highly curious angle, and it's just more excuse to ramp up the jewish comedy jokes and references to latkes. really weird. i should probably hate this one but this is weirdly among the few jean thohs that further research suggests somewhere along the line they really had somethin', but like so many others the thread gets lost along the way. even richard lewis as the golem is a pretty likeable performance, but it can only take us so far. not as baffling as once thought, but still harmed by its narrative decisions.
 
#51

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people seem to enjoy this one, and while there are some endearing elements, overall it's too clumsy and heavy-handed to sell it's joke. first the good stuff: despite dressup segment proximity, much of the humor plays into a cluelessness befitting the types of people who would fall for a radio broadcast as being a real invasion, jokes that present the already mob-prone springfeldians as completely in the dark about basically everything, combining the ye oldeness with the typical idiocy to basically turn them into cavemen, which mostly works and leaves the jokes not quite as obvious as possible, though some like the labored first world war joke certainly are. second, and this is rare to say this far down the road, but there are some successful tonal elements, such as the bookending 30s pop crackling like a perfect offset to the nuclear war paranoia era, fallout 3 teaser style, and the shots of orson welles, played ever so perfectly by maurice lamarche, add a bit of lived-in presence, with some cute gags from his portrayal. for a little bit even amidst the ensuing chaos, the calming nostalgic tone is genuinely noticeable, even if the sepia tone feels a little cheap.

sadly, the damn thing can't just leave itself be. the town undressing and pretending to be animals is dumb enough, but im more irritated by lisa literally waddling on screen to explain that the broadcast was fake. we don't need a reveal of that at all but even if you must is there no other way but static exposition for this series anymore? this is followed by kang and kodos actually invading the now smoldering town who have let their guard down to the implication of invasion. as a standalone gag to bridge the two war of the worldses and flip the story with a boy-cried-wolf irony, this could be a funny capper, but they drag this thing until its skin is scraped off the bone with blunt needless iraq allegory which they also literally explain, in case you didn't get it. sigh. so close honestly, but while its among the more efforted jean segments, its mistakes throttle it's potential.
 
Was afraid you’d slam Golem. I’m glad you didn’t, because I’ve got a soft spot for it. It’s odd, because on the surface, it seems like a dumb idea for a THOH segment, but it works pretty well for what it is. And it’s not often you see a character have a moral struggle in a THOH. It gets a little weird with the girlfriend aspect coming in, but I don’t really have a problem with it. I’m actually not sure if I’d like your suggested revision with more focus on the golem’s antics with Jewish entertainers, mostly because I’ve never been a huge Krusty fan. I think they put Bart in there instead to get some more Simpsons involved, and I’m OK with that here.
 
tyler said:
#51

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people seem to enjoy this one, and while there are some endearing elements, overall it's too clumsy and heavy-handed to sell it's joke. first the good stuff: despite dressup segment proximity, much of the humor plays into a cluelessness befitting the types of people who would fall for a radio broadcast as being a real invasion, jokes that present the already mob-prone springfeldians as completely in the dark about basically everything, combining the ye oldeness with the typical idiocy to basically turn them into cavemen, which mostly works and leaves the jokes not quite as obvious as possible, though some like the labored first world war joke certainly are. second, and this is rare to say this far down the road, but there are some successful tonal elements, such as the bookending 30s pop crackling like a perfect offset to the nuclear war paranoia era, fallout 3 teaser style, and the shots of orson welles, played ever so perfectly by maurice lamarche, add a bit of lived-in presence, with some cute gags from his portrayal. for a little bit even amidst the ensuing chaos, the calming nostalgic tone is genuinely noticeable, even if the sepia tone feels a little cheap.

sadly, the damn thing can't just leave itself be. the town undressing and pretending to be animals is dumb enough, but im more irritated by lisa literally waddling on screen to explain that the broadcast was fake. we don't need a reveal of that at all but even if you must is there no other way but static exposition for this series anymore? this is followed by kang and kodos actually invading the now smoldering town who have let their guard down to the implication of invasion. as a standalone gag to bridge the two war of the worldses and flip the story with a boy-cried-wolf irony, this could be a funny capper, but they drag this thing until its skin is scraped off the bone with blunt needless iraq allegory which they also literally explain, in case you didn't get it. sigh. so close honestly, but while its among the more efforted jean segments, its mistakes throttle it's potential.
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This is a fair critique. I really like this segment - the aesthetic/atmosphere is quite lovely and it's one of only a handful of Jean-era THOH segments I can regularly re-visit - but your criticisms are accurate and well-reasoned. It's definitely undermined by its heavy-handed approach and the execution of the actual invasion (which takes too long to start) leaves a lot to be desired.

Keep up the good work, Tyler!
 
#52

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An E.T. parody coulda probably been rather quaint at one point in the series, but there's a pervasive obviousness to the proceedings here, maybe because they ran out of Kang and Kodos jokes long ago and are trying to stretch one of them to fit another full short, but the jokes do just feel much more like Kang/Kodos jokes they've been itching to grab off the backburner than really anything E.T. related. Its weird though because the subversion while again obvious is probably a fair way to go, making the alien completely non-innocent and dangerous to the planet while leaving our whimsical child stand-in in Bart too bathed in the Spielberg wonder of the alien friend to notice or care. Obliviousness can work wonders, but aside from the fact that Kodos is such a familiar character that it all seems like a foregone conclusion, the cluelessness extends to Lisa too which feels overt, we don't have a straight man here and we're left aimless until the military and the aliens start killing each other.

Again a few E.T. jokes that aren't too bad on their own, Kodos being way too huge for bart's bike basket (though thats ruined when he just learns to bike faster anyway) and Kodos opting to gun down the soldiers rather than fly (though That's ruined by Bart's on-the-nose reference to flying with the power of love gosh Jean and co. let a joke land correctly) but even these knowing references with better delivery would feel as though they're coming from a show that's done alien jokes too much and made them too familiar. This also explains why they know how to subvert E.T. as its built into their go-to jokebook but it leaves it feeling so, so obvious that it's hard to engage. Also this is one that especially coulda used some tone, some of that glossy, lighting-addicted Spielbergian magic to offset the blatant bad deeds of Kodos. As it stands, pretty lazy.
 
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#53

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happy halloween, here's an action comedy spoof and by spoof i mean it's just the movie with the simpsons characters again. like i've said before, i don't mind segments not being scary, and while we are so far past tonality even existing it feels redundant to complain, this really does feel like a genre bridge too far, and they clearly have nothing to show for this choice. given how verbatim these faux-parodies have become this really could have been any movie that year. why not elektra, or sin city, or perhaps pooh's heffalump movie? what difference would it really make.

nonetheless, this is what we were given, and despite some effort from the animators to do the high octane and dynamic direction of action films some semblance of justice, it still falls prey to the homogenized plain yogurt taste of jean era simpsons on those terms, and beyond that is a total non-starter chock full of the same dumbass boomery husband/wife jokes you've heard parting the red sea of boos at your average open mic night. they fight, they shoot at each other, they make up, they fuck on a dead wiggum, and that is basically it. the writing for these really has just become downloading current movie scripts and scribbling out the names and putting homer. to think these are only gonna get more prevalent, guess its the easiest to ahem, "write".
 
#54

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i really do miss character stories in these halloween stories, but we are so far gone and characterization has been so demolished that im praying they stop trying because its getting brutal to see how much things have been diluted. the beginning of this segment is actually pretty good, simple but in that way these used to be. bart, milhouse, lisa and nelson are trick-or-treating and after agnes is an asshole to them their inner mischief night is awakened and they go prank brazy on the town, with lisa of course the trepidatious one. this story thread could go in some fun twisted directions seeing just how far we can take their devilish actions and have lisa endure that, make it another genuinely unsettling nega simpsons sorta experience. sadly this zombie hasn't gotten enough brain chunks in its cranial cavity to piece that together and before you know it, we're off on flander's wild sanctimonious ride. this sucks on so many levels, the satire if it has earned those letters in that order wallops you so hard you'll need an ice pack for the concussions, flanders at his most blatantly hyper-christian, literally telling the kids that things like women being seen as beautiful is a sin. about as subtle as a brick to the hippocampus, which would probably fill my head with more sensation than the flaccid 7 deadly sins vignettes plastered all over this thing.

again, a 7 deadly sins, religion-based horror segment could be cool, but none of the jokes feel related (or funny) and they have no sense of smooth connection to the narrative, we just peer into a crystal ball as they happen one by one, it's a glorified list joke. also, lisa's whole thing with being unsure of their behaviors going too far? yeah none of that mattered because she's wrangled in all the same and its forgotten, we're getting to that point folks, where story threads even in six minute chunks are being forgotten. guess the zombie has alzheimers too. the hell sequence has some inspired designs but it's hard to get excited about them or any other potential when this is just another excuse to brandish flanderization as a shortcut for storytelling. a pitiful affair, one of the absolute laziest so far.
 
#55

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bay's first transformers movie came out a year before this segment, and yet i'm still dubious they saw beyond the trailer. bay's explosion-centric auteur of the dumb maximalism theater is the low-hanging fruit the jean era would eagerly chomp to deflect the fingers pointing at low culture from pointing at them, that they don't suggests to me they forgoed the movie. c'mon couldn't you have sent one of the low-rung stooges to see it and take notes, maybe jeff westbrook you do seem to hate him. what we are served instead is a largely single-joke affair that at best contains cursory knowledge of the cartoon. i feel like "desperately xeeking xena" proved you could do bright campy saturday morning cartoon style action and make it fit the halloween experience surprisingly well, but the effort isn't here.

we spend most of our time showing different everyday objects and machines revealing themselves to be the robots in disguise. thats accurate to the lore, but its not saying much besides haha here's a transformer called sex toy thats naughty we are naughty. the abundance of these similarly undercooked jokes fills up much of the real estate of this segment, and i know its nitpicking, but sometimes when something transforms its color changes to resemble the referenced bot and it's just confusing like i get the joke already i don't need the color scheme to tip me off. i'm all for trying to break the mold of the halloween segments with different genres but given the results of each especially non-halloween segment of the jean era i don't think they care enough about the material to even scrape the mold.
 
#56

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the simpsons has had an interesting arc regarding its relationship with celebrity, back in the good ol' days it refused to kowtow to the brand names and iconography, opting to corral huge hollywood stars into their studio just to give them a couple dumb or embarassing lines before booting them. it was perfect, it was all you needed, take household names and turn them into pests and dorks, they'll do it because all publicity etc., and the simpsons can maintain its steadfast refusal to shine any upper class shoes on account of their prestigious owner. "homer at the bat" practically wrote the book on how to do a properly funny celebrity episode, ditch all the guest star worship and make them utter clowns. this would begin to change as the show progressed, the scully era for all its headfirst anarchy had a foot in the interest of drooling over big names strolling into springfield, and the disconnect was immensely felt. besides the lack of teeth on the show, it just felt hollow and transparent, the simpsons revelling in its own status and buddy buddying with the world it was too smart for before, the show that made clowns of everyone to defang the value of celebrity itself was making episodes with the likes of mel gibson and alec baldwin. the jean era naturally followed this with all its boneless scully era ways, stuffing useless celebrity vas everywhere and bad pseudo-parodies like uh well dr phil or terry bradshaw. it's a clear indication that the simpsons had become that which it fought against, celebrities went from being part of the fabric of ruthless satire and irreverence to being status currency. so then, this segment.

homer killing a bunch of celebrities, who aren't even voiced by their real selves, certainly doesn't constitute the regressive footsucking worship typical of the era, so that's a start! actually there's a couple lampoons of the cynical and corrupt advertisement industry that are pretty spot-on here like the buzz with lemon planet of the apes parody, the excessively chopped up john wayne ad, and the whole concept of killing celebrities to avoid paying them for spots. that's proper satire wowee! the rest is murky though, i like the throughline but homer himself being recognized for his accidental krusty killing and subsequently hired to be a professional celeb hitman, i dunno. im teetering on whether or not this approximates scully-esque hyper-silliness or its homer gets a job/is good at random thing-ness is still too jean-y, its really just those episodes but the thing per halloween touch is uhh murder. same with the climax of the celebs coming down from heaven to take out homer, which is so cuckoo its amazing but again there isn't much here besides the inanity of the scenario, and the concept promises alot more.

the more i try to admire the punk rockness of 100% braindead simpsons anarchy the more i feel the aneurysm pulsing so i don't think i feel right doing that. ill give this shit credit for the boldness of its chaos and how far it goes and some choice ridiculous scenarios that are so anti-simpsons they do tickle the perverted scully lobe, based and redpilled if you like, but i can't help but feel like i'm complimenting a show for getting things especially wrong. classic simpsons knew how to seem like it didn't care while putting hella effort into every atom in the proceedings, while full-bore nonsense may be truer to the jean era's capability and thus less annoying than being lied to that this a competent show in any facet, it makes me feel a weird blend of that old school aloofness and genuine desire to rush the writers room to lunch. do i enjoy this segment? yes. is it a good segment? no. i hope that's a sufficient ending, i wrote this like ten times and felt myself dying. these kinda segments are a nightmare, how do you analyze the intent of "fuck it"? shoulda just posted a shrug emoji.
 
#57

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it's very telling that the jean era, notorious for trotting out the most surface level versions of springfield's characters to maintain a facsimile of approval of the institution we call the simpsons, would think it sufficient to toss vince guaraldi music, the iconic profile shots and a few more references like homer as snoopy and the famed dances at me and call it a parody. i will credit the art department for the accurate hazy painted backgrounds, the dusky warm-toned skies feel right, same to the general palette here which is a bit more focally autumnal. unfortunately, the writing isn't even close. the precocious and believable essence of schulz can't be excavated here, it's no wonder it opens with the theme straight up, hoping it'll sap enough goodwill from its memory retrieval, but the execution of the rest is so hollow it can't fool for long.

milhouse as linus lines up fine but everyone else is just not playing their part, bart as charlie brown doesn't ring true for a moment and i'm not even sure who lisa is, same with say nelson, who is nelson pretty sure. same with the adults, their wah wah gimmick of the animated specials ditched for a lame obvious trombone joke, well worth taking another huge bite outta the immersion. if anything could've worked here it's the grand pumpkin being real and a dangerous man eating monster, but the short doesn't get the whimsy enough to offset it, and the grand pumpkin antics quickly lose the plot for weird uh pumpkin segregation jokes. yeah this thing's deceitful, nearly zero jokes regard the peanuts comic, the characters aren't even attempted, every peanuts moment is directly lifted. this isn't loving homage, its nostalgia sheep wool for the sellout wolf. a pathetically insincere "effort".
 
tyler said:
#57

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it's very telling that the jean era, notorious for trotting out the most surface level versions of springfield's characters to maintain a facsimile of approval of the institution we call the simpsons, would think it sufficient to toss vince guaraldi music, the iconic profile shots and a few more references like homer as snoopy and the famed dances at me and call it a parody. i will credit the art department for the accurate hazy painted backgrounds, the dusky warm-toned skies feel right, same to the general palette here which is a bit more focally autumnal. unfortunately, the writing isn't even close. the precocious and believable essence of schulz can't be excavated here, it's no wonder it opens with the theme straight up, hoping it'll sap enough goodwill from its memory retrieval, but the execution of the rest is so hollow it can't fool for long.

milhouse as linus lines up fine but everyone else is just not playing their part, bart as charlie brown doesn't ring true for a moment and i'm not even sure who lisa is, same with say nelson, who is nelson pretty sure. same with the adults, their wah wah gimmick of the animated specials ditched for a lame obvious trombone joke, well worth taking another huge bite outta the immersion. if anything could've worked here it's the grand pumpkin being real and a dangerous man eating monster, but the short doesn't get the whimsy enough to offset it, and the grand pumpkin antics quickly lose the plot for weird uh pumpkin segregation jokes. yeah this thing's deceitful, nearly zero jokes regard the peanuts comic, the characters aren't even attempted, every peanuts moment is directly lifted. this isn't loving homage, its nostalgia sheep wool for the sellout wolf. a pathetically insincere "effort".
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This kinda reminds me of when Nelson sings (to the tune of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas"): "You are such a stupid moron, / It makes people wanna punch you! / The Grand Pumpkin's super-ga-ay! / Punch, punch, punch, punch, wedgie!" :lol:
 
I’ll be very comfy and warm in my nostalgia sheep wool, thank you very much. It works for me, especially as one of the few segments based on something I’ve actually seen.
 
#58

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thoh xx has alot of fans, many consider it among the best jean thohs, perhaps even the last great one. i tended to take that with a grain of salt, or more as i had plenty of my own salt to go around. at one point i remember presenting a scathing review of xx in retaliation to what i deemed unfounded praise. i wouldn't say i've softened so much that such incendiary retorts are beyond me, as this series has likely proven, but i do feel open to reevaluation even of the perceived scum at the bottom of the tank. now i feel the need to preface by saying, watching all of these in a row is a very different experience to individual viewings, if anything it actually probably best recreates the memory of watching the show in real time and seeing its evolution or lack thereof, and after enduring a roughly three or four thohs worth of barely-halloween material, it's no wonder even the notion of an obvious hitchcock parody would seem relieving. it might suck but it's also not mr and mrs. friggin smith. here's what actually shocks me though: it doesn't suck?

maybe it is just that relief talking, but there's alot to like here. the only issue to get outta the way is well, it's not very funny, which is understandably a deal breaker for some, but the main issue with the comedic flubs are how they mess with the tone. but that's the goddamn thing friends, there's tone! the series hasn't done a spoof so broad without necessarily being simplified in a long time, and honestly the details manage to resonate, the hitchcockian essence pours through themes of voyeurism like with the scene of lisa approaching krabappel's apartment only to ding dong ditch her (the one good tonebreaker because it has character and narrative purpose), familial horror with bart's psychopathic behavior and efforts to push it on lisa and the anxiety dwelling as lisa tries to figure out what to do, and of course the excessive criss crossing emphasizing the proud dumbness of the advent of the twist. it's a contradiction of the whole narrative but...that's kinda the point! the direction throughout is nice too with some detailed shadow work, memorable techniques like dolly shots and the merry go round scene with the smeared trees.

even the on-the-noseness of the hitchcock reference parade montage doesn't bug me too much cuz it happens so fast and is in addition to all of this. it all feels...comprehensive? yeah it does. i really just wish they cut their insatiable urge to do their usual jokes like bart mooning some tennis patrons, it feels unnecessary. far as actual halloween experiences go though, this is as close as they've gotten in many many installments, it isn't just a retelling with stand-ins, it's a thoughtful melange that amounts to solid homage without just being eye-wink heavy. limitations are all what seem unavoidable at this point, at that rate id wager i may have hit the hd era thoh quality ceiling immediately.
 
I love that segment, but I gotta agree XX is massively overrated. The first segment I loved, the second I liked, and the 3rd was one of the worst segments I have ever seen.
 
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