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

#79

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I pen this particular preamble to inform you that even my ridiculous ass has to learn when to take a break from the Jean machine's mean scene, so while i had taken my THOH journey quite a considerable way before, I stopped after THOH XXVI, knowing I'd be back to chow down on these perpetually unseasoned seasons of seasonal scenes again soon enough. So here we go, including the newest, we got twelve totally fresh segments for these eyes and ears and this heart and brain. Somehow through it all, I remain excited. I guess there must be a morbid passion tucked in the recesses of my mind if I can commit to this journey in the first place. so what have we first under the cloche of anticlimax? Well boy howdy it's another rootin tootin movie reshootin', or two I guess because this mashes elements (full scenes) together from The Hunger Games and Mad Max: Fury Road, though the latter is mostly visual but I think the specific post-apocalypse with no water is the latter, though im sure its many movies.

The opening dried-up landscape could have lead to some interesting worldbuilding but we are almost immediately flung into The Hunger Games and from there it's just a bunch of flimsy skits with such witty observations as "the guy who was played by Woody Harrelson in the movies is often drunk!", "Peeta is a funny name!", and "Children die in The Hunger Games!" wickedly astute. I swear these are getting worse and worse, they can barely commit to the details of the source to make a plain-faced mimic because now thats too hard, they can't inject any character, either their own or the ones from the source material into their parody - a word i'm deeply tired of using for the wet tissue paper, singed bible page level withering it contains. If this counts a parody then how it makes me retch up my lunch counts as dinner - and now they cant even stick to one movie, and I'd like to think that could mean a more general parody but nope it's just two blunt recreations of things they saw during the commercials of whatever boomer shit they watch and car crashed into each other in the hopes it would fill their runtime. Not only are these not parodies anymore, they're not even finished mimicries. They're animated commercial breaks, about as ceaselessly innocuous as the toothpaste and antidepressant ads in between. I knew these fuckers were only watching the trailers, and now they literally aren't adding content past the trailers.
 
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#80

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(this is bff r.i.p. not sure if the dynamic title card helps telegraph that)

it's kinda shocking how consistently watchable these original segments are in the hd era, the sd jeans couldn't often even be saved by a unique story, but it almost feels like all the actual effort is funnelled into these. take this one for example, despite some usual issues with exposition and tension hurting gags, it's mostly a solid and creepy lisa character story. there are movies with premises about dead friends who torture from beyond the grave, but if jean and friends arent seeing the blockbusters they aren't seeing those more obscure flicks. naw, this actually suits lisa, whose friends remain so fairweather and distant in most of lisa's notable snapshots of her life that it's no wonder she would have to conjure her own pal, not that imaginary friends aren't common among youngsters anyway, but lisa especially could use one, and they establish that the bond clearly meant something, and while lisa isn't responsible for the deaths, her attachment to what is happening is maintained to keep her inexorably linked to what's unfolding.

rachel feeling betrayed and vowing to eliminate everyone lisa holds dear and making sure she is held accountable works on multiple levels, there's a psychological bend created by her behaviors, a frenzied killing spree using whatever nearby objects will suffice, which is thrust upon lisa who is basically pointing fingers at a phantom. sweetie, wiggum can barely arrest physical bodied criminals, it's not gonna end well. we build up the body count and keep lisa being seen as accountable, it works, its snappy and to the point, and most importantly we get a full understanding of what this is lisa has created, and how she can eventually uncreate it. the loophole is that in this scenario, imagination being the tool that conjured this idea, it can be the weapon that undoes it.

i only wish they did a little more with this aspect, the mental warfare bit is creative but it just becomes wishing rachel into looking like her mom, which works as cute backstory against the horror - a consistent benefit to this segment - but leaves the resolution a smidge underwhelming. still, beyond all i've already complimented, the show hasn't gotten this creative with kills in awhile, the milhouse suffocating scene is actually pretty shocking for example. i wouldn't say this one excels at any one thing, but it's as evenly sturdy in telling a human story with a chilling twist, having fun with its concept, and keeping its writing tight and moooostly not extraneous as any segment i've seen in awhile, a balanced segment in a sea of lopsided disasters, refreshing.
 
#81

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The fifteen quintillionth Great Value brand Simpsons parody. Who knew clowns were such good mimes? What really makes this one stand out, aside from nothing, is that it's a blatant false advertisement. This isn't a Bond parody, if it was it'd have at least the wealth of it's novels and films to work off of for its characters and scenarios. Some elements are so derivative by now as to feel like general spy movie tropes, but again borrowed not satirized. No though, this is The Kingsman, and wouldn't ya know it, it looks and smells and tastes just like the real thing, if the real thing tasted like digital ink and smelled like boomer writer's room sweat, and looked like more bloodless cartoon violence nonsense. I don't have jack skellington to say about this non-starter of a segment, I'm feeling as repetitive as they are, so I wanna try to understand the title.

Moefinger. Why? It's not really Bond, but beyond that, why Moe? They sure do try to give Moe alot of Halloween segments lately come to think. Too bad they're all trash, but its not poor Moe's fault. Ok but why Moe really, is it just because he's unexpected? Did they come up with Moefinger first? Sure wouldn't be the first time, but it's not even that good a pun, and if the Bond pun comes first, why all the Kingsman! The most Goldfinger part of this is the terrible 600 episodes parody of the original Goldfinger theme, which has one joke and its calling other shows it outlasted terrible, which even with naming The Critic and Futurama rings classless to me. Family Guy revival did this bit way better, much funnier, much less like bullying, better payoff. Here it's just gloating atop your distant pedestal, and for what honestly? You can produce 600 episodes. I can produce 600 burps, but the volume isn't gonna make their unpleasant nature impressive all of a sudden. Anyway shitty segment. Please stop making these kinda segments I know you wont but do it anyway for me for my hard work.
 
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#82

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Maggie is possessed, kills some people, and then is unpossessed. Y'know I really have to wonder what the point even is here, because while The Exorcist in its advent allegedly inspired much revulsion and astonishment, though the heart attacks and miscarriages stuff is clearly false, the movie has lost alot of its inherent bite, followed by franchise upon franchise of infinitely more disturbing horror, because penetrating beyond the previously understood limits is a large part of genre development as such certain works of importance become mere relics. Does anyone still think The Exorcist is the scariest film of all time? Perhaps the same types of people who still believe Abbey Road is one of the best albums, people who let their own history be written by history, but I digress. The Exorcist does not on its own have the impact to be frightening anymore, so to just reenact The Exorcist with Maggie would fail on the Halloween level, it misses so much context beyond being the usual empty repeat. Guess what they do?

There's such an abundance of these knuckle-dragging copycats but one like this just feels uniquely baffling to play straight. Like really, you got nothing new to say? Just Maggie doing the rude demon voice and performing some kills. If that's the totality of the tools in your belt, then your belt is good for as much as the Simpsons is good for: Jean support. The fact is, this one just demonstrates a stunning lack of awareness of how horror shifts in context, the kinda keen eye that helps you know how to satirize which thing when, what has aged poorly and what has aged well so maybe parody it instead by making it something like "The Shinning". I'm not expecting that degree of quality in s29 by any stretch, but its telling is all. Every parody is treated exactly the same, so when rare opportunities to do something valuable are plucked, they're wasted all the same. Parody how not scary it is now, parody how it compares to a genre it built and then was buried by, parody its shock factors and how cheap it is despite its reputation. Say anything at all. Nah, lets just draw Maggie with red eyes and call it a day.
 
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#5: BART'S NIGHTMARE
make prank phone calls from school where moe just openly insults himself

i realize i'm extremely late reading/replying to these, but i just wanted to point out one of my favorite jokes of that episode is that at the end moe says "wait a minute!" implying that this wasn't simply him going along with it because of bart's powers and that he really did fall for it just like the usual calls
 
'Treehouse XXVIII' is probably my favorite HD era TOH. 'The Exor-sis' is a fine segment to me, simplistic and on the short side but still fine.

(Also, I'm guessing you don't have an high opinion of 'Abbey Road', [MENTION=38730]tyler[/MENTION]).
 
#83

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in the movie coraline, the titular character is whisked away to a mysterious other world with other parents that attend to her much better than her real ones, but ultimately seem to be seeking to have her for themselves, attempting to convince her to put buttons on her eyes like them and even going as far as kidnapping her real parents to lure her to them. as much as i whine about faceless parodies, lisa is a suitable stand-in here, so i at least get why they would choose this somewhat more recent film at a time when it feels a bit of a strange choice, though it was most likely for the animation which uh more on that in a sec. there's a moment here mirroring the original movie where lisa is offered the option of the buttons and runs in fear, but as soon as she resumes her normal life with family, we smash cut to her accepting the buttons. while this veers into levels of dysfunction i find unpleasant in the family dynamic, it at least offers an alteration to the story in just how willing our protagonist is willing to escape her insufficient reality. then there's a moment when snowball who can talk nbd just whimsical dark kid's movie magic essentially tells homer everyone has left him.

this made me think a good nugget of an idea was here where increasingly the whole family could seek to run away to this magic world, but because their escapism is increasingly petty, the intent of the other families would begin to wane as they'd push each other away. we do get all of the family through the portal but we dont get alot of character humor out of it past lisa taking the buttons, a shame. oh yeah and the animation. its uhh bad, it's hard to describe but rather than incorporate stop-motion, essential to coraline's tone and mood not that they'd know what that means, they use cgi. not a surefire death knell but the result is rather unsightly and feels off, it never captures the eerie undercurrent it needs. maybe the core issue is that the other family here never feels imposing or ominous, and thus they don't have anything to even play against, and this mid 00s apple jacks commercial cgi is not helping, though moreso i just think mirroring a character design philosophy and calling it a day without adhering to context sensitivity makes your whole experience pretty boneless. please don't do laika and not use stop motion, it's an insult to the art.
 
Good segment overall with a nicely executed parody. Could've probably been more but worked well enough.

Also, maybe it's just me but the stylized animation is great, not bad. To me, it's obvious that making it true stop-motion with claymation puppets would've been too expensive and time consuming and settling for stop motion-looking CGI was understandable and an good alternative (some animated movies even employed that technique, such as for example 'Flushed Away'). I don't see it as an insult to the art or Laika Studios at all, more like an affectionate homage.

I really liked the CG designs for the family, both when seen as parodical of those in 'Coraline' and by themselves. They do feel off and sorta unsightly but that's intentional and I've got no problems with that. Just my take on it.
 
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#84

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with the wretched memory of "married to the blob" still slithering through my mind, the prospect of another homer eats segment can't help but give me the homer shakes, but while homer being such a food monster he eats himself seems so obvious it's redundant, it could at least lead to some twisted cannibal shock and gross out, which would elicit the long-lost sensation known as...a sensation. homer slowly learning to delight in the taste of homer is certainly deranged, though not as deranged as saying medium rare is undercooked! once again the static tameness of the visuals refusing to change even when we are slicing and dicing toes leaves the sensation lacking though, bloodless cartoon violence, even when he starts devouring so many parts of himself in a montage that veers slightly on disturbing in the delusion of its glee, ending with him only being a skinner self feels like no payoff. what does kinda work is homer's all-too-chipper demeanor about it all, which makes scenes like his lunch with flanders or meeting back up with marge and the kids upon so much weight loss interesting at least in how little he sees anything wrong, for him its the succulent dish he has so long searched for, barely minding the bodily damage for a moment.

there's a psychological detachment factor that seems like its gonna drum up some disturbing results as homer can't be stopped from eating himself until he is nothing. could be fun and rightly disturbing as an extrapolation of the food monster, gun turned on self. instead...it becomes a marriage crisis, and they really try to play up the emotions, like it's tearing the marriage apart. like ok i'm sure it would but is this REALLY the time for it? everytime a story turn baffles me to this degree i have to question if this is the subversion to them. instead of treating homer's clear illness seriously first and foremost we take this absurdity and create another weird petty therapy session scene, and look not everything on the show has to be literal, you can use swerves into the trivial to maximize the point of your joke, but here it seems kinda like its meant to be a real story since it takes itself seriously and offers a farewell from homer, but it doesn't feel sincere. we are getting mighty close to my holy retribution on this god forsaken treehouse so allow me to speak broadly: the simpsons did not build its mansion on a hill of complete sincerity, but it bought its acres of irreverence and cheekiness and edge by having enough of it, and by getting the foundation enough to get away with straying.

you don't treat homer's illness deadly serious, but you look at it as if its real, because in-universe, it is. even thoh shorts aren't just cartoons, they are microcosms of worst case scenarios and bizarre happenings for these people, and they work often with remembrance that they are people who exist as much as the story does. for how i evaluate that, i just try and go with honesty at the core. even exaggeration has to have some accuracy somewhere in there, and marge wouldn't look at this nightmare and treat it like a problem with their marriage, she would see it as her husband being out of his mind. where you take the comedy from there is up to better joke writers than me (or these guys) but if you fuck up the core, you lose the believability of these characters and it all feels like well, a tv show, and then what reason have i to care in the first place? when you're this inconsistent and inattentive, it hurts the halloween aspect and it fails on a character level, leaving potential for creepiness undersold, and this a key example of those factors caving in on a decent disturbing conceit. six left.
 
#84

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with the wretched memory of "married to the blob" still slithering through my mind, the prospect of another homer eats segment can't help but give me the homer shakes, but while homer being such a food monster he eats himself seems so obvious it's redundant, it could at least lead to some twisted cannibal shock and gross out, which would elicit the long-lost sensation known as...a sensation. homer slowly learning to delight in the taste of homer is certainly deranged, though not as deranged as saying medium rare is undercooked! once again the static tameness of the visuals refusing to change even when we are slicing and dicing toes leaves the sensation lacking though, bloodless cartoon violence, even when he starts devouring so many parts of himself in a montage that veers slightly on disturbing in the delusion of its glee, ending with him only being a skinner self feels like no payoff. what does kinda work is homer's all-too-chipper demeanor about it all, which makes scenes like his lunch with flanders or meeting back up with marge and the kids upon so much weight loss interesting at least in how little he sees anything wrong, for him its the succulent dish he has so long searched for, barely minding the bodily damage for a moment.

there's a psychological detachment factor that seems like its gonna drum up some disturbing results as homer can't be stopped from eating himself until he is nothing. could be fun and rightly disturbing as an extrapolation of the food monster, gun turned on self. instead...it becomes a marriage crisis, and they really try to play up the emotions, like it's tearing the marriage apart. like ok i'm sure it would but is this REALLY the time for it? everytime a story turn baffles me to this degree i have to question if this is the subversion to them. instead of treating homer's clear illness seriously first and foremost we take this absurdity and create another weird petty therapy session scene, and look not everything on the show has to be literal, you can use swerves into the trivial to maximize the point of your joke, but here it seems kinda like its meant to be a real story since it takes itself seriously and offers a farewell from homer, but it doesn't feel sincere. we are getting mighty close to my holy retribution on this god forsaken treehouse so allow me to speak broadly: the simpsons did not build its mansion on a hill of complete sincerity, but it bought its acres of irreverence and cheekiness and edge by having enough of it, and by getting the foundation enough to get away with straying.

you don't treat homer's illness deadly serious, but you look at it as if its real, because in-universe, it is. even thoh shorts aren't just cartoons, they are microcosms of worst case scenarios and bizarre happenings for these people, and they work often with remembrance that they are people who exist as much as the story does. for how i evaluate that, i just try and go with honesty at the core. even exaggeration has to have some accuracy somewhere in there, and marge wouldn't look at this nightmare and treat it like a problem with their marriage, she would see it as her husband being out of his mind. where you take the comedy from there is up to better joke writers than me (or these guys) but if you fuck up the core, you lose the believability of these characters and it all feels like well, a tv show, and then what reason have i to care in the first place? when you're this inconsistent and inattentive, it hurts the halloween aspect and it fails on a character level, leaving potential for creepiness undersold, and this a key example of those factors caving in on a decent disturbing conceit. six left.

Don't forget about Mario Batali. As if his advice to Homer to cook his remaining body parts as ingredients sold at Chez Homer and several other restaurants across Springfield wasn't bad enough, the sexual allegations against Batali a few weeks after the episode aired is now making his appearance not just creepy, but also as downright uncomfortable as Homer's autocannibalism. :eek:
 
MMM Homer has some strong problems, as the unnecesary marriage conflict at the middle of the segment and the focus deviate or lame guest appearence of Batali. But was I always HATE of that segment is the lack of reality in Homer's pain and the insensible reactions of their own family to a terrible situation. Anyway, it was not a bad segment overall: it had an interesting beggining, a good original concept at least and a terrific previous advice, and some perturbing moments inside. But it's easy the weakest of a good Treehouse of Horror.
 
I liked "Mmm... Homer" for the most part (and I guess more than most of you).

I enjoyed the originality and the darkly humorous cartoonishness (such as Homer not being in any pain despite losing more and more of his body & how the family seem to take it relatively lightly) is so absurd it gets funny. The marriage crisis things is pretty meh and kinda forced but thankfully just a minor part and I found it amusing in an tonally jarring sense (the prospect of having an marriage crisis plot element in an cannibalism story is bizarre & it does kinda feel like a parody of a marriage crisis). The ending is so silly it works (don't care for the guest star chef though). There are some flaws and issues but none that outright ruins it.

I think it's one of those segments that shouldn't be taken seriously at all or be looked into too deeply (if you start to analyze it it obviously starts to crack). Maybe the most memorable of the three segments as well as of the entire HD era.
 
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Still don't get why the hell bbf rip gets so much praise... especially when it's just the same as other segments that get criticized only it's also something that could have come from fanfiction.net. A transparent revenge-fic but also trying to use a halfassed excuse to pretend Lisa has no accountability while also acting like the biggest jackass possible. Considering her reaction to Janey's death was "This will make a great college essay!" she loses any sympathy in yet another story that tries to force sympathy for her. Oh and then she wonders why nobody *real* likes her enough to murder the people she supposedly holds dear (yet couldn't care less about, unless it's to her benefit, see: Janey). And it's not really creative, it's just "some people die with 'funny' timing" even using the same "thing suddenly falls on someone" kill twice in a row.

But hey, it's a pretty good metaphor for a lot of the modern era: Characters with actual potential and interesting designs getting shoved aside for yet another bland looking guest-voiced nobody (seriously, she barely looks any different from that one kid that made fun of Lisa for being blonde) while Lisa acts like an iredeemable asshole with no negative consequences (Hell, the people she supposedly holds dear are brushed off with "I'll have friends in college", yeah) and instead gets to show off how amazing she is. Oh, and of course, the "everything sucks, multiple people are dead but it's a happy ending because Lisa's happy!" ending.

I miss THOH's where they didn't have to use "x dies" as a constant crutch. Maybe if Lisa gave half a shit about the victims outside of crocodile tears this might have actually had some meaning (like, I dunno, the victims getting conjured as imagination-specters and putting a stop to Rachel with them... or maybe things settle down, Lisa meets someone new but then a ghostly Janey kills them) but nothing it's supposedly praised over is true, it's the same "people die and that's it" with a heavy dose of Mary Sue and killing those mean poopy-heads who don't worship Lisa enough.

And that one of Russi's last performances on the show was for this makes it all the more depressing.
 
I actually thought Mmm.. Homer was better than Coralisa. Coralisa had so much potential and they just resorted to a boring cop-out.
 
#85

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Pod. iPod. Genius! Wow even that's an Apple reference, or sorry, a Mapple...meference. Allow me to me essentially steal from the tremendous Mike Amato's tremendous meblogwritegood, because it offers me an opportunity to tangibly prove my ongoing point about these film farce facsimiles. In his notes section for this segment, he mentions a Body Snatchers parody from one of the Simpsons comics' THOH stories. I'm so unfamiliar with the comics that i didn't even know they followed the THOH tradition, but their Body Snatchers parody is...a parody! It's a Homer centric story, a classic style inspection of what horror is specifically to Homer himself, subjective horror for comedy's sake is long past in the series, but in this comic the pod people exhibit their mindless behavior by...preferring tap water to beer.

Now I don't know the details here, but I do know that fits the Homer I know like a glove, to exist in a world where everyone prefers tap water to beer, the potential end result is beer ceases production, and the creature of habit loses one of his core comforts. Add to this how absurdly frivolous a reason this would be to assume people are being replaced by husks and send Homer to the asylum and boom, parodied, not a spoof of the thing directly but a character story made of its skeleton. Parody can blossom in many different ways, but the key is to be mindful of both the thing being parodied and the world parodying it, and what those can ultimately say together.

"Pod-y Switchers" does not do this, because while it does sport some nice visual and character design and an appealing if out-of-place 2001 sequence, the main point seems to be uh well, phone bad. Just when i thought i was out they pull me back in! The problem beyond being peak boomer culture, is it's hard to reconcile it with the source premise. The joke seemed to be that iPods and phones and what have you render people pod-like as is, but they don't really use it beyond them being distracted before being Podded. Is it meant to say they're just as good as pods in this state perhaps? If so you'd be forgiven for forgetting as once the pod peeps start sproutin' we just roll through the motions as always, and sadly there's zero character to spare here when such a thing happens. No subjective horror, no subversion, no satire, just Body Snatchers with the same jokes from the same jokeboxes. Also Otto is a weed plant lmao fuckin drugs bruh.
 
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I hate Pod-y Switchers, but my biggest gripe is everyone talking about MyPads and MyPods in the first scene, and the final scene has the aliens talking about iPods. At least try and remember your fake name for things in your five-minute segment.
 
#86

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another segment named after a totally different movie for the not-even-that-good pun that results in a baffling choice of central character, and as much as i've been numbed by the relentless gnawing of this zombie, i viscerally hated this one. scaling split back to largely it's introductory scenes for the beast not only serves us another platter of gruel that tastes like movie trailer and yellow food coloring, it also reveals just how irritatingly quippy these are. it's been a problem since jean took the helm but this is a good opportunity to really tear into it. the framework is threadbare, we got milhouse, bart and nelson kidnapped by lisa, how she managed to do so is unknown but fine, all we need from these three is visceral and genuine concern for their situation. shamalyan's flick is no masterpiece - shocker i know - and its three gal leads aren't top shelf but they sell the situation's tension well enough, they are clueless and frightened and overwhelmed. our yellow boys however? can't stop makin' them goofity goofs!

milhouse in a confrontation with a furious lisa remarks she shouldn't yell or she'll get vocal polyps like adele. he also spends his time being a prisoner talking about how he's allergic to his own skin, how dorky his glasses are, and that he dislikes the tradition of encores in music. we also get a famed ay carumba when we cut to uhhh literally murdered groundskeeper willie, and nelson continuing to bully milhouse. like guys, can we not take a fucking break? this thing is wall-to-wall with lines that belong nowhere near a halloween special, they annihilate the tone or what's left of it, and their presence serves no valid purpose. we just haaaad to have more jokes about how milhouse is a dweeb so that took the place of believable character reactions. maybe at least if they were funny, but the thing is this is systematic. we are existing on the surface level, we do surface jokes for the immediate stereotypes because that's the show's home now, and the surface cannot conjure character stories, and thus cannot create density in their narratives to even find places for jokes. it's a vicious cycle, and its eaten away at this whole series but the thohs are now suffering harder than ever for it.

ah but guess what, it gets even worse! lisa's version of the beast spends about four or so minutes doing the three-ish voices yeardley is capable of before we reach our conclusion. mcavoy in the original is disturbing due to his performance but also because of how his psychosis is contextualized, lisa here is an interesting choice because she's so inherently calm and good-natured so seeing her go wacko could be fun but it's just too cartoony and lisa never stops feeling like lisa, maybe shoulda picked a character with a more versatile va. then there's the ending which goodness me, no actually. first there's the twist, that lisa loses her mind and assembles a bunch of different personalities because bart changes one of her test grades to an F. again, living on the surface, and i get it, simplifying the conflict for the same result of protagonist goin' bonkers is what "the shinning" did, but a couple problems there.

first, "the shinning" truncated but did not dilute, the arc is still told and the horror is still intact, unlike this which is the first half hour and then the ending smashed together with no care for the psychological aspect to have any weight. it doesn't have to be complex it just has to be believable, which brings me to the second problem of lisa is not homer, so watching her devolve over the little things rings false, but it figures they'd begin to write every character as if they were homer, because writing? hard. i refuse to even dignify the treacle drenched faux sincerity of bart's speech with analysis but suffice to say fuck off. oh and if you needed your fix of social commentary dont worry because lisa when back to normal exposits that it's just a thing women do. bitches be crazy!!! absolutely abysmal segment, nothing of value.
 
Huh, so it was a parody? Still ended up feeling more inventive than most. Maybe because I hadn't heard of Split til recently. Still, it was more the same "Lisa does incredibly terrible things, faces literally no comeuppance for any of it" but compared to the shitfest in 2016's it at least had the nads to cut out the middle man that was still technically her doing. That and I remember Nelson being really funny in this one, particularly his telling of his story going against what he actually did, it was a nice simple gag that stuck with me.

That said, it's yet another reason why there really, really needs to be at least one bit in a future THOH where Lisa dies, possibly spectacularly. I mean, they're more willing to kill Maggie, who is a baby. And way more likeable as a character at that.
 
These Joel H. Cohen penned Treehouse scripts really are especially egregious. I knew there was something about Multiplisa-ty that rubbed me the wrong way more than usual and Tyler has articulated what that was very well.
 
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That said, it's yet another reason why there really, really needs to be at least one bit in a future THOH where Lisa dies, possibly spectacularly. I mean, they're more willing to kill Maggie, who is a baby. And way more likeable as a character at that.
man you got issues
 
that may be pushing it. at least, i havent seen 50 different "lisa needs to fucking die" threads on the front page of simpsons general discussion. maybe im just fucking blind??
 
Plus I said THOH. As in non-canon. It's happened to just about everyone else including Maggie, so it's only fair that she shouldn't be an exception. Especially in segments where she outright murders people herself.
 
#87

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jurassic park, but with old people. yep. you know you'd think with the copious explaining this show does they'd have explained why the elderly even become dinosaurs, but if they do i missed it, and if i did i peacefully accept my incompetence. this is my last review written in september before xxx airs in a few weeks and i tackle it. i am very tired, and frankly im outta ways to describe jean's catatonically dull five-minute references, and i'm tired of his and his crew's title-first philosophy that makes shit like this happen at all, and i'm tired of being fed the same exact jokes in new costumes. there is literally nothing about jurassic park here besides the jurassic world bubble vehicle and a flyover of the closed parks. it's the tragic inverse of a parody, its using a source material to perpetuate its own jokes in what they'd deem a clever context, and maybe it would be if there was anything there. there isn't.

old dinos stomp around and make old old jokes until they don't, and then it ends when they lisa decides to listen to abe's talking thus leading all the dinos to lead peaceful old people lives but as dinos. we have reached peak dressup segment, we cant even make dinosaurs fun now, wanna ruin something else cool like xenomorphs? call it xenomoe...xe-moe-morph…i know you'll do it, you insatiable fiends! honestly why does mr burns even wanna open an advanced retirement home? apparently it'll make him billions. billions from who, are abe and hans moleman and Old Jewish Man shelling out their hidden fortunes for this, and why? i don't think there is an answer, because the answer is they came up with a pun and they didn't think any further, and if there's anything more to say about it i don't intend to look. i'm tired, and i apologize if it shows, a few weeks of break should help me make xxx a solid wrap up when written. for now, i'm gonna try and remember what good things are even like.
 
Treehouse of Horror XXIX is such a disappointingly messy TOH. 'Geriatric Park' is not just a bland and literally toothless segment, but it even comes off as a rip-off of a joke from 'Naked Gun 3'.

On another note, now that you mention xenomorphs, I'm surpised they never did an Alien parody segment (I imagine it could've been an good one, especially in the classic era, given it just didn't mash all the films together in one segment like they so often do in the HD era).
 
#88

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and we're back! or i'm back, for you it's been but a day since the telegraphing of my fatigue with jean and his cull of dullards and their channel-flipping borne trailer takeoffs, but i've had about three weeks to rest and refocus the ol' bloggin' noggin and i'm positively pumped to present you a finale to remember. three more goddamned flimsy parody segments, knuckle crack noise, let's do this. well first off, the beastly brazen balls on these chumps, honestly. as if i haven't beared witness to parody far beyond lazy, beyond autopilot or beyond pure reference, but in recent years so lacking even in the basic details that the contour is left naked, it's like reading simpsons versions of children's books of the source material, extremely simplified for quick ingestion. a show that could once do its own thing and proper homage in 6 minutes can't even read the wiki article in detail in said time, and that show, in its 31st hell-birthed season, thinks it's ready to take that wonderful formula to a full three-season series. forgive me for doubting this one out of the gate, or really even before it reached the gate, but good heckin' luck.

first of all i never bring up the cold opens but the one here is a whopping three minutes of demon maggie jokes, some of which are cute like nemo/omen admittedly but hardly worth the chewed up and swallowed runtime that could've been oh so precious for a segment that should demand the maximum time it can be granted for all it needs to get done. this alone raises a whole lotta red flags, how can you expect them to do such a massive task justice succinctly when they let this opening just drag on and on all for their heelarious mark of the beast mickey mouse jokes. i get by the way that the simpsons has always displayed an irreverence towards its overlords whoever they are and it isn't their fault disney purchased fox, but i just have no room for patience for softball teehee evil disney jokes when disney is legitimately evil. i have a feeling i'll have to engage this again eventually with the simpsons so i'll cut it short for now.

truly, this segment's duty is so overwhelmingly impossible that i didn't for a picosecond consider the infinitesimal notion that they'd have time to awkwardly squeeze in their own commentary let alone fully tell the story they're ahem, "spoofing", and hey wow i was right. okay so i haven't seen stranger things, so i went and did a little cursory research, quite possibly more than our delightful writer's room, and while i didn't get into the complexities because why overwork, there are some fundamentals that seem mismanaged. a huge gaping wound in the proceedings here is how immensely diluted our ensemble is, stranger things seems to make substantial use of a vital ensemble of characters all of who in one way or the other find themselves dipping their toes into the surreal world of the upside down and the mysteries and conflicts surrounding its history and the manipulation of it. this segment for reasons that elude cuts the ensemble down severely to where we only focus on lisa and milhouse, our proxies for the gal with gnarly powers and the kid taken to the upside down.

the rest of our kids spend their screentime showcasing how 80s stranger things is by doin' stuff like playing e.t. the video game and enjoying it as all the 80s kids did, and never become involved heavily with the plot, which im pretty goddamn sure they were in the show so? again if the best i'm gettin' outta you is a retelling, blanking out vital parts seems to defeat the purpose, i feel like i can imagine this entire written story as jean or someone else in the room regaling the others with their experience watching this show but their brittle boomer synapses couldn't consistently fire if their brain was an m14, so pieces are lost, and it shows. furthering on the baseline 80s worship prodding, i honestly wish i could give some credit because i agree that 80s nostalgia fetishism has huge issues and the way shows like this sell themselves aesthetic first can be a fiendish mechanism, but they're more interested in throwing wayward dirty mind by prince vinyl from kirk's cabinet cuz y'know, 80s.

as for the main plot, to my reading's best assumption we gun through the major beats of s1 and possibly s2, cbg lampshades their lack of s3, and its annoying but i honestly cant imagine them fitting one more season into this segment. most of this seems to be mirror imagery, but the ending where they decide to live in the upside down just bewildered me, and i think i have to wave my white flag on that. as usual, the art department's imitation art is the only notable effort on display and its for such microscopic value, but kang and kudos on them for trying. otherwise, as far as these "parodies" go it doesn't feel quiiiite as empty as say "dry hard" or "multip-lisa-ty" but given the wealth of material it better not, and ultimately it still suffers a severe lack of detail that makes it another perfunctory rehash.
 
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