Rate And Review: Treehouse Of Horror XXIV (RABF16)

How would you rate Treehouse Of Horror XXIV?

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Jerkass Homer

Jerkass Homer

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October 6, 2013: The opener of the 24th annual “Treehouse of Horror” is from Guillermo del Toro and features monsters and classic characters from horror films throughout history. In “Oh The Places You’ll D’oh,” the first of three spine-tingling stories, Homer rides around Springfield wreaking havoc as “The Fat in The Hat” in a rhyming Dr. Seuss-ian tale. In “Dead and Shoulders,” Bart is beheaded during a kite accident, his head is attached to Lisa’s body and they must live together as one. The final terrifying tale, “Freaks no Geeks,” features Mr. Burns’ traveling circus, The Burnsum and Bailey Circus, which has stopped in Springfieldland in the 1930s. Trapeze artist Marge and Strong Man Homer are performers and things go awry when circus freak Moe starts to make advances towards Marge.

If you want to discuss the episode before airing, please use the speculation thread.
 
Not horrible. My least favorite segment was probably the second. Some funny jokes, I especially liked the Lorax joke. Probably a 4/5 for me.
 
Surprisingly good first act. Second act started off decent and got worse but wasn't horrible. Completely indifferent to act 3 but the animation looked cool. 2/5. At least the cat in the hat thing was good
 
3/5: beginning of the third segment was good, the first segment had some nice moments. Everything else was unmemorable. Probably will be downgraded to 2/5 eventually.
 
4 out of 5. Really solid. Really fun. Just didn't stand out enough to be a 5, but maybe that's just because I saw the opening so many times early.
 
Intro: Pretty awesome to watch but I'd gone through it several times before tonight.

Oh the Places You'll D'oh: Pretty easily the best of the three segments. The art style was very pleasing to the eye. A Seuss parody is hardly original, just a week or so ago John Stewart read from a book also called The Bore-ax referring to I think Boehner on the Daily Show. Still, it was a rather fun and humorous segment, 4.5/5.

Dead and Shoulders: Eh, this was pretty decent but it petered out due to time constraints. The whole Bart in control while Lisa's asleep angle had some decent potential I thought but they really went nowhere with it. 3/5

Freaks no Geeks: With the time left they did what they could I guess but it was pretty boring outside a few lines here or there. 2.5/5

Overall the front half was far superior. The second half, especially the second segment, coulda been helped by more time but you can only do so much in 20 minutes. I'll say 3.5 rounded up on a first viewing.
 
INTRO:

Wow, my first genuine praise for something this season! That was GREAT! Ranks up there with the classic era openings in terms of quality - NO JOKE!

SEGMENT ONE:

Holy crap, that was really good!

It was consistently funny with no cringeworthy joke in sight, and it did a great job in combining a non-horror story with a horror theme.

I was going into this one with a cynical additude, but my feelings on that were completely obliterated. (A+)

SEGMENT TWO:

Well, we're back to lackluster territory with this one.

I'll give them props for actually doing a horror-based story, but I was rather bored through what could have been a fantastic story. It also ended abruptly. (C+)

Oh, hey I got a prediction right: http://www.nohomers.net/showthread.php?102513-Speculate-amp-Preview-Treehouse-of-Horror-XXIV-(airing-10-6-2013)&p=3302615&viewfull=1#post3302615

SEGMENT THREE:

The worst of the 3 segments - barely any plot at all and another abrupt ending. Still, nothing horribly offensive. (C)

OVERALL:

Without a doubt, one of the best Treehouse of Horrors in years. Its best segment was great, and even its worst segment wasn't completely terrible. 4/5 (B)
 
sucked. nothing funny, scary or memorable.

oh i liked the mike myers jab. that's about it.
 
Wow! This was very good! The first segment was definitely the most creative, and they were very good with the rhyming, It wasn't necessarily horror-driven, but it was a very funny and memorable segment, so that gets a pass. 5/5!

The second segment was also very good. I always like it when Bart shows shades of his past prancing self, and he did here. I was really immersed in the story itself, which doesn't happen too often, and I think it was the funniest segment as well. Another 5/5!

The third one, unfortunately, was quite boring. Just not very funny nor original; the term "blah" comes to mine. 2/5.

Overall, this was a very good THOH, and my favorite in the past few seasons. 4/5.
 
Great THOH, one of the best ones I've seen in a long time.

Opening - we're spoken enough about this in the speculation topic. Despite the length, it was really enjoyable. Tons of horror references to spot, a fun little narrative for each of the family members. 5/5

Oh The Places You'll D'oh - This one was a real surprise, given very little of it was previewed. The animation style, rhyming, and Fat in the Hat song were all great. I liked the Halloween take on Dr. Seuss, with the Cat being psychotic. Because let's face it, he is a really creepy character. 4.5/5

Dead and Shoulders - Weakest of the three, but still really fun. I liked seeing a THOH story rooted in the usual Simpsons universe. Shame the previews spoiled the reveal of what became of Bart's head, but the Dr. Nick appearance was a nice surprise and a great end. 4/5

Freaks No Geeks - I think I enjoyed this one the most. I've been a fan of "Freaks" for a while, and rewatched it last week in anticipation of the THOH spoof. They did a good job casting the characters, Sarcastic Guy was a surprise, and did I see Maya from "Eeny Teeny Maya Moe"? Evil Burns was great as the ringmaster, and I liked that they played with the Moe/Homer/Marge triangle. The chicken man ending (direct from "Freaks") was funny, especially the How I Met Your Mother gag and the end credits images. Curious if those rating it poorly just didn't get the references? "Freaks" is a pretty obscure film. 4.5/5

This is definitely a THOH that I'll revisit in future Halloweens. Much better than last years, which itself was good. But this one edges it out with a stronger openings and each of the stories were well told (I felt that "Unnormal Activity" had a weak ending, and "bart and homer's excellent adventure" could have been tightened up a bit and adhere to the laws of time travel a bit more). 4.5/5 rounded up to 5/5
 
I have watched this 24th THOH (3) times so far, and i liked it the first time, and like it more and more every time, we all have laughed and enjoyed this one a lot. ;)

Here is my short review:

"Oh The Places You’ll D’oh" was Excellent.

"The Fat in The Hat" was Excellent.

"Dead and Shoulders" was Good.

"Freaks no Geeks" was Excellent.

So i give this 24th THOH ~ 4/5 ~ Gold Stars. :chug:
 
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Captain Scared said:
Freaks No Geeks - I think I enjoyed this one the most. I've been a fan of "Freaks" for a while, and rewatched it last week in anticipation of the THOH spoof. They did a good job casting the characters, Sarcastic Guy was a surprise, and did I see Maya from "Eeny Teeny Maya Moe"? Evil Burns was great as the ringmaster, and I liked that they played with the Moe/Homer/Marge triangle. The chicken man ending (direct from "Freaks") was funny, especially the How I Met Your Mother gag and the end credits images. Curious if those rating it poorly just didn't get the references? "Freaks" is a pretty obscure film. 4.5/5
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I dunno if that was supposed to be Maya but that's a very nice callback if so. AV Club seemed to like this segment most too, I guess seeing the film might help one appreciate it. I've seen clips so I got some of the nods but just didn't find it that interesting. The random How I Met Your Mother end mighta got me if I ever watched that show too.
 
I've never seen Freaks, but I am aware of it pretty well. I think the "gobble gobble one of us" quote was nominated for one of AFI's quote lists IIRC.
 
The couch gag was kind of fun and a little bit spooky, but I didn't really like that fantasy turn it took at the end. Didn't fit with what came before it.

The Cat in the Hat thing was mildly entertaining. The biggest laugh for me was the stab at the live-action movie. Aside from that and a few other things, none of the jokes were too memorable. At least the visuals were interesting.

The second segment wasn't very funny or interesting, and wasn't it kind of derivative of THOH II and that one episode of Futurama? Very forgettable.

Third one had some humor, but a lot of the jokes fell flat, especially the ending. Once again, the art style was more interesting than the story or humor.

Not the best Treehouse of Horror by a long shot. It was more visually intriguing than last year's, but it wasn't as funny, and that's why most people watch The Simpsons in the first place.

Final Rating: It was okay/10
 
I thought it was decent 3/5.

Cat in the Hat and couch gag were the best of the bunch. I laughed out loud at the Mike Meyers jab. The second story was meh not bad but not great and done MUCH better on Futurama, the last story was kinda boring but the animation looked nice.
 
One of the positives of hanging on to a show that's been on the air for so long is that they'll pull out all the stops to maintain relevance and to continue to put out some good ideas. This latest THOH featured a lot of that here. I don't care much for the extended couch gag, really; we've seen a "scary" version of the intro before, and I think it was better-done then. Perhaps it's just because I'm not very familiar with del Toro's work, or of the classic horror characters on which the couch gag is based, but I found it to have some pacing and editing issues. It looked great, though; I'll certainly give it that.

My favorite part, in fact, would have had to be the Cat in the Hat parody, but just by a hair. I liked the animation direction and the fairly consistent adherence to the rhyme scheme; it told a good story to boot. The Bart and Lisa story had some nice moments, I suppose, but it felt kind of S12-ish: slow-paced and choppy. I liked the Freaks No Geeks set-up until it evolved into a dialogue-heavy affair that reminded me more of a 17th-century farce than a Simpsons episode. Freaks No Geeks had a great look to it, too; much like The Day the Earth Looked Stupid (a segment which I feel is highly underrated), 30's-era Springfield looks wonderful.

This was an improvement over last year's; perhaps it's the best in years. I suppose I should take what I can get.
 
Best Halloween episode since XX. Animation of the first segment was subpar, gags of the second one were witty and fast as hell, and the third one was an amazing parody of Freaks, and the ending was fucking fantastic. Most I've laughed out loud at this show in a long, long time. 4/5.
 
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy our yearly THOH as much as any other non-Homer. However, I do kinda hope that they do a full length Halloween episode. Not because I'm sick of THOH, but just to see if they can.

Anyway, my newspaper reviewed this episode on Friday and devoted a section to the opening the day after that. The paper rarely reviews individual episodes of TV shows, so clearly this was important and I was hyped up as hell. Did it live up to my expectations? The opening? Yes. The rest? Not quite.

The opening - Awesome. By far the best part of the episode. Really was packed to the brim with details and homages to scary movies, and I loved every second of it. I think it's a fairly safe assumption they put the most effort into this particular part. 9/10

Oh, the Places You'll D'oh - Very nice idea, bad execution. The plot is just the Cat in the Hat with a twist. Dr. Seuss visuals were very interesting and fun, but they had to make it scary or else it wouldn't be in a THOH. So they randomly make him a serial killer. No attempt was made to explain why exactly The Cat, er Fat would be a serial killer. Sure, he was creepy, but that is a concept better left to fan fiction than Simpsons. There were good moments, of which the best were Fat punishing Apu with his wife and kids, killing the Bore-ax, who looks like Danny DeVito, for having his name sold on all sorts of products including a car, and the investable jab to that horrid live-action movie as Fat's last words. Could have done much more, but decent enough. 7.5/10

Dead and Shoulders - Worst out of the three. Even more squandered opportunities than OTPYD. Bart gets his head cut off by kite wire, and it is attached to Lisa. Just bickering and fighting from there with the occasional visual gag. It's just boring, boring, boring until they have to go to sleep. Lisa then mentions "Rainbow" and Bart quips "Oh great, the pony dream".

OH MY GOD, THE SIMPSONS MADE ITS FIRST MLP REFERENCE! (Second if you count the possible one in "Homerland")

So besides that, the only thing I liked was the twist ending of the heads being reattached to Patty and Krusty, considering you would be expecting someone like Homer. 3.5/10

Freaks, No Geeks - Starts out as the best one of the three. Mr. Burns starts a freak show, Marge falls in love with the equivalent of Homer, and she has to join the twisted freak league. Plenty of great visual gags, including Moe being the ugliest creature on Earth and a callback to DAS, and an interesting plotline. This starts off as the only genuinely scary story, not counting the opening, and a genuinely interesting one at that. Right when the freaks lunge at Marge and we look like we're getting a great ending, the creators realize they spent that minute on the opening, and so they take a shit on it in the span of five seconds with a How I Met Your Mother reference and the episode ends there. At least the infamous Treehouse of Horror XXI actually had an ending. 8/10

Overall, this would have been a bad episode in the classic era, but's it's pretty good now that we have other, worse horrifying houses built in trees to compare it to. All three have so many wasted opportunity, but I am glad they used some. The episode gets an overall 6/10.
 
Just finished it. The intro, as I stated when the clip was put online, is the best thing the show's done in years.

"Oh, the places you'll D'oh!" was a surprisingly strong segment. Nothing fantastic, but it was fairly well done in terms of putting a gruesome Halloween spin on it given the source material they were parodying. Also, it was pretty cute despite the violent tone.

"Dead and Shoulders" and "Freaks no Geeks" both suffered from their climaxes. "Dead and Shoulders" felt like it was the more rushed of the two, but that could have been forgiveable had the segment ended with Bart and Lisa being more horrified about their fates, rather than just having it be so casual. "Freaks and Greeks"....it was really proving to be the strongest segment in terms of laughs and overall tone, but then that got stopped dead in it's tracks by a stupid, albeit mildly amusing "How I Met Your Mother" gag which made no fucking sense in terms of the setting due to the fact that it suddenly jumped from the 1930's to modern day, with Homer and Marge married as opposed to Marge and Moe, and then back to the 1930's with the newspaper gags.

Overall, the episode gets a 3/5 from me.
 
The couch gag and the Dr. Seuss homage were uniformly excellent.

The main problem with the Dead and Shoulders segment was pacing. They had very little time to work with and still felt obligated to pad 30% of it with random gags involving Homer (his new den, oooh fixins, trying to get out of paying the shrink bill) and the tired retread of Agnes abusing Skinner instead of actually developing the story. It went straight from Lisa and Bart bonding to him trying to kill her to take over her body. And the conclusion with everyone's heads sewn on different bodies was just lame - with the exception of the Dr. Nick appearance which was legitimately funny.

The Freaks parody (while excellently animated - the animation was great all around tonight) suffered from the same issue as last week's Homeland spoof in that if you didn't have familiarity with the source material, the segment as a whole fell flat. I did appreciate the Maya cameo. That was inspired.

All in all I gave this uneven episode a 3 out of 5.
 
Alright, well, first off, that was a great intro. I laughed at a few parts, and...well, loved it all. Onto Act 1, to start off, I like the animation style they're using for this Cat in the Hat parody. Jokes are great, and that Amber Alert bit made me laugh. Overall, it was great.

Now for Act 2. Overall, it wasn't as good as Act 1, but it's still pretty good. I think I laughed the most at the part where Homer ate all of those sleeping pills, and suddenly collapsed on his way back to bed. Also, someone needs to make a GIF of Lisa playing the trombone/tuba/trumpet/whatever with Bart sticking his head down the hole. Also, Dr. Nick, yay.

Finally, Act 3. The animation was great, but the story was a bit confusing. I had this thought the whole way through that it was based off of something, so. Laughed at a few parts. Overall, it was probably my least favorite of the show, but it wasn't bad.

In conclusion, it's probably about a 3.75 for me. So, I'll cut it some slack, and give it a 4/5. Great THOH.
 
Brad Lascelle said:
The Freaks parody (while excellently animated - the animation was great all around tonight) suffered from the same issue as last week's Homeland spoof in that if you didn't have familiarity with the source material, the segment as a whole fell flat. I did appreciate the Maya cameo. That was inspired.
Click to expand...

Really? Because I've never seen that movie, nor do I have any interest in seeing it, but it didn't stop me from enjoying the segment nonetheless.
 
So yeah, this sucked pretty badly. Well, the opening sequence was cool, and the very first story was at least passable as it showed some decent creativity and offered a few memorable lines here and there. However the other two have to be in contention for the worst THOH segments ever. To not only go the well-worn route of having one characters head fused on anothers body, but doing it in such a shoddy and unremarkable way is pretty much unforgivable. It takes away from any angle of horror when you have the heads popping off at will like it's no big deal. I can't even think of a good gag from it either.

So while that one completely failed for feeling too played out, being rushed, and lacking a well-thought out story and good jokes, the third one fails for being as dull as such a thing could possibly be. Seriously that plot almost had me changing the channel. Ohhh so regular old Moe is the biggest freak of them all...Gee Simpson writers, how clever!

2/5
 
Thought it was kind of weak overall. Some interesting ideas throughout but it never fully formed for me.

I really enjoyed the visual style of Oh The Places You’ll D’oh and the care they put into rhyming everything. Still, the joke-writing was extremely by-the-numbers in its Dr. Seuss parody, basically just rattling off reference after reference, none of which were that clever or witty (the Bore-ax, really???). The spin on making the Cat in the Hat character the villain of the piece is very amusing, however, and his jab at Mike Myers was great. I dunno, though... There was something off about the whole thing. Maybe this was a segment that needed a narrator, like the Grinch or whatever? Not sure. 2.5/5.

I feel like it's difficult to evaluate Dead and Shoulders objectively after seeing the Futurama version of this story. The comparison isn't completely fair because they spin the general concept in two different directions, but it's just in the back of my mind. Overall, this segment was solid enough... Not really many highs or lows to it, just a solid little Bart/Lisa story. The implementation of the whole "Bart controls during sleep" element is a clever one, keeping the segment from becoming too dull and lifeless. His sudden turnaround to want to murder Lisa over it is definitely WAAAAAAAAY too rushed, but then again, it would be difficult to convey this sinister turn-around in a 7-minute segment. We just kinda have to buy it since there's a Halloween motif. 2.5/5.

Freaks no Geeks probably had the best jokes of the three segments. They really used the format to their advantage here to use a lot of visual humor in the backgrounds, as well as adding interesting character designs. The story, on the other hand, felt a bit rushed and over-complicated... The whole business with the emerald ring in particular. The only reason it is introduced is to get Homer to setup Marge/Moe and to setup a motivation for murder. But they could've just done that by having Marge pick Moe initially, and just done a Jealous Suitor story for Homer. The way it was done, Marge had to do a lot of emotional acrobatics, flip-flopping between Moe and Homer. And even if you want to keep the ring in the story, why didn't he just murder Moe and take his ring to begin with? He tries murdering him later, so why even go through the whole rigmarole of the marriage? If the answer is "Homer's stupid" then that works for me, but they should've at least lampshaded how cuckoo-bananas Homer's plot was to begin with. I realize analyzing the plot of a THOH is kinda self-defeating, but the second half of this segment was so focused on Homer's plans that it started getting in the way.

The joke at the end was really great, though. 2.5/5.

( (2.5/5) + (2.5/5) + (2.5/5) ) / 3 = 2.5/5
 
I'll give it 3/5. "Fat in the hat" was decent, probably the best segment as since "Milhouse and the grand Pumpkin". The other 2 were pretty unremarkable, but nothing really awful.
 
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