Rate/Review "Treehouse of Horror XVI" (GABF17)

How would you rate this year's THOH?


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Mike Scully

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"GABF17 Treehouse of Horror XVI - Written by Marc Wilmore - Confirmed Airdate: November 6th, 2005

Season 17's annual trio of Halloween stories, featuring guests Dennis Rodman and Terry Bradshaw as themselves.

- The fright-fest begins in “B.I.: Bartificial Intelligence” when the Simpsons adopt David, a newly developed artificial robot son, to replace Bart after he falls into a coma.

- In “Survival of the Fattest,” Mr. Burns invites Homer and his friends to his gigantic estate for a hunting tournament, but Homer and the gang learn they are the ones being the hunted on “The World Series Of Manhunter” hosted by Bradshaw.

- In the final Halloween scare, “I’ve Grown a Costume on Your Face,” a costume contest goes awry when a real witch turns all the Springfieldians into real-life versions of their costumes, leaving Maggie dressed like a witch with the only real power to reverse the spell."

preview/speculation thread

tonight 8/7C!
 
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Just watched it.

Cold opening: B-
Bartificial Intelligence: B
Survival of the Fattest: B-
I've Grown A Costume on Your Face: C

Underwhelming to say the least. Every joke in this episode you could pretty much see coming or hear the writer giggling "I'm so clever" while pitching/writing it (when it fact the joke was hokey).

Premises of the first and second stories were good and executed well though, both in terms of characaterization and plot. Just again, laughs were low. The last story was really stupid. There was really no story whatsoever, and no resolution, and I think the writers knew that very well (and Dennis Rodman's spot was awful and tacked on).

Funny jokes:
- everything at Burns' manor
- A few of the costume jokes in the third act
- the artistic direction on Homer's expressions

B- final.
Expecting mediocre reviews from you guys.

PS: Don't care what anyone says, the writers DID steal a joke tonight, from Clerks: Animated Series. You'll know it when you see it. (it is visual)
 
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This was the first THOH that didn't have any great segments. Very boring, I barely laughed. D+
 
Bartificial Intelligence: 4
Survival of the Fattest: 1
I've grown a Costume on your Face: 1
Overall: 2

Kang and Kodos part was pretty good. BI was alright, but the rest seemed too short and not all that funny. I think the only good laugh I got out of the last 2 acts was Moleman.
 
Cold opening. (C+)
T'was good, but ran a little TOO long.

Bartificial Intelligence. (B+)
Best of the three, but it was way too short. I LOL'd at the ice cream nose scene.

Survival of the Fattest. (C)
Okay, but nothing special.

I've Grown A Costume on our Face. (C+)
The plot was non-existant, but the jokes were great! The two best jokes/parodies was "Mayor McCheese" (does anyone remember him?) and the "Jared" (I hate that guy) one.

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Not the greatest thing ever, but I did have the urge to rewatch it again. Oh, yeah and the Al "Family Guy" Jean joke...LOL!
 
I enjoyed it for the most part, with the exception of "I've Grown a Costume on Your Face", which felt like it went by way too fast.

I didn't however enjoy how my local FOX station (WNYW in New York) screwed up the color on the FOX prime time feed. Though it could've also been the cable co.'s fault.
 
i'll just rate all three at once, since my opinions don't really vary from segment to segment. my thoughts aren't too different from tomacco's. the stories (especially the first two) were great ideas, but the laughs just really weren't there, aside from a few good moments (the scenes at burns manor especially). the third segment was pretty weak, and it was obvious that it was just there to fill time, since nothing really happened. not to mention it was really short, which is just as well i guess.

overall, decent. could have been better, but it was fairly enjoyable. 3/5
 
I liked it a lot!

Opening: A
B.I. Bartificial Intelligence: B+
Survival of the Fattest: B
I've Grown A Costume on Your Face: B+
 
Thought it was okay. I'm always overrating ones that actually are Halloween-ish, but this did have a more "classic" feel. This gets a 4 from me, would've been 5 if they had made the last one longer. It had a lot of potential but didn't develop at all.
 
4/5 The intro was pretty great. I thought the episode was pretty good overall, I didn't really like the ending of B.I. but it's probably the best that could have been done with 6 or 7 minutes. Survival of the Fattest was pretty good, I enjoyed seeing the cast get brutally murdered as disgusting as it may be and as I already said on the speculation thread I like the fact that it was based on The Most Dangerous Game. I thought Costume on Your Face was the best only because it was a pretty original idea. I liked Moleman saying he wasn't wearing a costume and the Blackula joke. Overall pretty good episode.
 
I think this was better than other Treehouse of Horrors in the Jean era. The basic plots were there, and there were some good jokes. C+
 
Well, it didn't meet my expectations, which were actually very high. The opening segment was pretty good (not great), but I thought the first segment was the best. "Survival of the Fattest" had the best direction and was really good until they started overusing Terry Bradshaw. "I've Grown A Costume On My Face" had a lot of great costume gags, but it had alot more potential and the ending was terrible. Overally, I think I liked this year's THOH better, especially since it had a more Halloween-feel, but again, it didn't meet my expectations.

4/5
 
4/5 - I loved every single segment, and enjoyed the Clerks reference (Mayor McCheese). Gorgeous direction as well. The third segment's ending was a bit wonky, but at least they got rid of the Rodman guest shot in a Halloween ep.
 
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"Bartificial Inteligence" 3.5/5
An okay segment, and excellently directed. Didn't like the ending, though.

"Survival of the Fattest" 4/5
Best of the three.

"I've Grown a Costume on Your Face" 3/5
Weakest. Not much plot, but had some funny moments.

Overall, a pretty good episode. The Kang and Kodos opening was hilarious, and I loved the animation in all three stories.
 
I thought every segment was great and the only thing I didn't like was the ending to I've grown a costume on your face. My favorite parts were "You wanted to believe the lie!", "He still thinks that hobo was a bird." and Al "Family Guy" Jean at the end.
 
opening: A
B.I.: B-
Survival of the Fattest: C+
I've Grown a costume on your face: C-
overall: C
meh. I loved the opening, and act 1 was alright, but for the most part it was the same old. And did anyone else find the last act to be way too short? Wiggum as Jared had me laughing.
 
I must say, this did exceed my expectations.

The opening was fairly funny. I did like some of the jabs at how boring baseball games can be.

The best segment was the first one, by far. There were some pretty funny jokes, I actually did laugh. Best of all, this segment wrapped up so much more neatly then the others. "Survival of the Fattest" had some funny shots, as did "Costume," with all of the characters together. However, neither of those segments really seemed to end in a good position, but rather end abruptly.

Overall, I enjoyed it. I would say a 4/5, just for exceeding my expectations. By the numbers, though, about 6.8/10.
 
I thought the first and second ones were ok, but third one dissapointed me, mainly because of the ending. The GI Joe/Skinner joke was great, though.

Overall
3/5
 
Well, I've said it before, and I'll say it again... they should have stopped doing THOH's years ago, because every single year they're a big disapointment. Each year I get the feeling that the THOH is just slapped together because they feel they have to do one.

Opening - Wow, how witty and clever! Take that, world series! Take that, Fox! This won't be dated at all!! And it certainly wasn't too long or anything, depriving time that could have gone into giving the 3rd segment a plot...

1st segment - Lame idea, even worse execution. I hate THOH's even more now because they make everyone way out of character just for the sake of the ill-thought out idea for a segment, and this is segment is a prime example of this.

2nd segment - Awesome concept, terrible execution. This could have been a great segment with very dark humor and a "Saw" feeling to it. Instead it was just stupid and wacky in a typical "lets rely on each character's one-liners instead of attempting real writing" dealy. Seriously, it was mostly just a series of Burns shooting the character followed by the character delivering a "funny" line that character says before he dies. And then the whole thing being broadcast... just plain stupid.

3rd segment - the best of the bunch, but nothing special at all. Good concept - how gruesome it would be if people really were what they dress up on Halloween as, but after that it didn't do much else. The designs of the characters as their costumes were interesting, but other than that there was absolutely no point to it.

So, I'd give this a 2/5, another lame, half-assed effort at a Halloween special.
 
huh? said:
And did anyone else find the last act to be way too short?
yeah, i mentioned that in my post. the longer cold opening really cut into the time for the segments themselves, though sadly the cold opening was the part of the episode that provided the most laughs.
 
Opening: A
Bartificial Intelligence: B
Survival of the Fattest: B-
I've Grown a Costume on Your Face: A-

Pretty good episode. 4/5
 
It was a middle-of-the-road Halloween ep, nothing too spectacular, but enjoyable. I actually liked Costume the best, but maybe it's just the fact that for once there was actually something in the body of the show that had to do with Halloween. And that ending was awkward even by THOH standards.

Also liked the opening, the "Rockit" video tribute in B.I., and the ending of Survival.

3.5/5, or B.
 
inrto - I share the same feeling about baseball, and i liked "Smooth move, space-lax" (something I haven't heard since Salute Your Shorts)

B.i. - Good parody for the short time they allowed for a story (comparied to the endless movie). The stem cell line seemed forced, but nothing to put a damper on the ep. Also it's nice to see Marge show some emotion in a Halloween ep. Finally, I'm glad they left in the robots in the woods stuff to parody.

Survival - I loved the Dangerous Game theme. It was unfortounete that they had so little time to do the story and so many characters to kill, but they managed to get in some hilarious deaths; like Apu, comic book guy, and Krusty.

Costume - Pretty much all costume and character gags. There wasn't much story at all to this segemnt, just endless jokes about characters and their costumes. I liked the ending. Classic Simpsons move to pull out a totally different style at the last second.

4/5 - very enjoyable, not a classic, but each segemnt was a lot of fun and had a great mix of parody / violence / and halloween that I come to expect from a THOH.
 
Another thing I forgot: Is anyone else disappointed by the lack of good Halloween names nowadays? I saw that Harry Shearer decided to not do one altogether, but the others sucked.
 
I found this Halloween edition to be very entertaining. I'm not at all surprised about the opening segment; we all have FOX to thank us for YET ANOTHER November Halloween special. :snooty:

Onto the segments:

Part 1 was pretty decent. It had a nice conflict between Bart and David, although the ending didn't make too much sense. Is David by any chance named after David Silverman (who directed this special)?

4/5

Part 2 was the funniest of the three segments. Of course we ALL knew in advance what was going to happen, but what I saw was better than expected. The animation here was especially expressionistic and energetic, including one bit when Homer was being chased by Burns as it was shown on television. The actual deaths were mostly random and hilarious. At least they covered the part about Mr. Burns' homicide game for the sake of covering what little plot hole there could've been.

4.5/5

Part 3 was in the same vein as THOH XIII's "Island of Dr. Hibbert". Most of the mutant instances, like Ned the flower and Grampa the gorilla were very funny. There was no real resolution, but it's the first time in a long while where the family got to close out the Halloween edition.

3.5/5

As for the scary names, I'm sure Al Jean's alias is going to piss off a lot of Family Guy fans. :-/
And yeah, they're still bashing the Republican Party. :)

And speaking of Korean animators, the animation here was just brilliant. Probably thanks to Silverman's direction, the characters' expressions and actions in this episode just seemed much looser and more natural than usual.

Overall, this was a nice Halloween edition. Possibly the funniest since the 13th edition.

Total: 4/5
 
J-Rod said:
Another thing I forgot: Is anyone else disappointed by the lack of good Halloween names nowadays? I saw that Harry Shearer decided to not do one altogether, but the others sucked.
Wasn't Yeardly's I Am the Lizard Queen? That was great meta-reference
 
Gotta ask - is there ONE person here who did not see the turn-of-expectations "Peacock Habitat" sign joke coming a mile away? Seriously.
 
Like a few people stated before, I felt I've Grown a Costume on Your Face was way too short, like they got the footage back from Korea, and it was the one picked to have the most cut out. Had some good jokes, and I love Quimbey as Mayor McCheese. Jake, I do remember him; not a whole lot, but I do remember him.

I also felt like the opening dragged a little. We know baseball can be somewhat long and tedious. Get on with it.

I liked "The Most Dangerous Game", and having a segment based on that was a good idea, but, they could have gone with a little less people. It seemed like too many hunted.

B.I. was good, though I was not a fan of the ending, seemed kinda tacked on. They could have stayed with Homer having stubby little robot feet.

Overall: 3/5

EDIT - as for Al "Family Guy" Jean, I did laugh at it.
 
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