The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror XVIII
By fred | November 5, 2007
(S19E05) This was the awaited Halloween-special episode from our beloved Simpsons family, and because in the past such specials have regularly been quite hilarious, as well as a little scary on the side, I was really waiting for this one. Many people have complained over the years that this show wasn’t as good or funny as it used to be, but while I agree it had some pretty lame/weak episodes from time to time, which can happen to any show (Hell even South Park had some of those…) I used to think quality was still there, not always, but still.
Yet to be honest, I’ve been disappointed by this season, and on what may be a unrelated note, the movie was good and funny, but not great and hilarious. Not that those shows should be compared, but South Park had a movie once, and it was freaking awesome, it left you wanting to go back again, and again, and again… Just like (almost) every episode.
Anyways, despite all this, the “Treehouse of Horror” are usually quite funny, and have their own ways of being done & existing, so chances are it would be great despite what you think of the show, or this season.
Or so I thought. But to make it concise : what the Hell was that !?? Jesus, what happened the our beloved Treehouse of Horror ??
It didn’t started bad, actually, quite the contrary. I laughed a little at the introduction, as well as dreaming that I could do what Marge did there : to kill all those stupid ads from the screen !! There’s never been anything as annoying as those stupid things. Really, I’m not sure what piece of crap “Phenomenon” is, but it’s gotta be huge, because it kept eating half my screen over & over for months now in pretty much any shows on NBC !
Marge’s “Can’t anyone just watch the show they’re watching !?” was not only echoing what I believe every viewer feels, but also the hilarious bit Lewis Black did at the Emmy. Now if only network executives were able to realize those aren’t just jokes, but mirror a reality.
But I digress. Anyways, the introduction was pretty cool, and watching Marge killing all those ads, putting Jack Bauer on the fridge and Dr House on the microwave and have him explode, yeah that was funny, you probably smiled at that.
I really hope you did, because that was the last thing funny of the whole episode.
From this point on, the show picked three movies to parody. The problems here is that they did not really do any parody, they simply “rewrote” them using Simpsons characters. The greatest example of this was the “Mr & Mrs Smith” one : this had nothing to do with Halloween, there were no monsters or evil force or anything, sure they’re killing people but so what?
And if you can forget about that, when was it ever funny ?? It was pretty much the same plot as the movie, there were no parodic elements anywhere !! Neither were there any funny ones, for that matter.
Before that was the E.T. take. Parody of the original movie, not the “20 years anniversary” one, because cops actually had guns. Not that it was actually made fun of or anything, I just happened to noticed that. Would this be a South Park episode, the movie would have been made fun of, in any way possible and then some, and you would have laughed out loud for quite some time, at least.
But not here, this was simply a cute “parody” with the appearance of Kodos and a few jokes, but really not that funny.
Then finally we had something Halloween like, with Heck House. Bloody pranks, a guest appearance of Spider Pig (was I the only one who started to sing “spider pig” when he showed up?), and even the evil version of Ned Flanders. It was alright, thought not great, and I kinda wished they had used Homer for all seven sins.
In the end this was a very disappointing episode, and I almost fell like adding a “as usual now with this show”.
Posted in Reviews
Shows: The Simpsons
dude, lighten up.
when south park hits 404 episodes talk.
they have just barely over 150 at 165.
and the fact is this too south park is really cheap to make and is produced and put on quickly to make the jokes topical and relevant. the simpsons episodes it takes a year to produce.
i thought last night episode was fine. it was great or hilarious. but there were enough gags, the animation was decent, and it was entertaining enough to say that it wasn’t boring and was good watch.
so lighten up. try to enjoy it.
most people watch the show are trying to hate. and you know what if you do that, you will hate it.
and it should say “it wasn’t great or hilarious”
I didn’t watch this episode willing to hate it, dislike it, or anything like that, quite the oposite in fact.
But it was not great, or that good, or funny. And when watching an half-hour sitcom whose aim is to make its audience laugh, that’s a problem I would think.
I’m not mad, and it wasn’t the worst thing ever, but surely it was disappointing.
And yeah, I know South Park is different & far younger that The Simpsons are, and SP had a few bad/unfunny episodes as well.