Soon to start its 34th season, it’s fair to say that The Simpsons is immortal. Words can not do justice to how much influence Matt Groening’s seminal cartoon has had on comedy and animation over the last 4 decades. Most fans agree that the “Golden Age” of The Simpsons was between Seasons 3 and 9. The annual Halloween specials, “Treehouse of Horror,” each containing three non-canonical spooky stories, have remained a staple of the long-running sitcom.
Although The Simpsons is far from its glory days, there are the occasional nuggets of gold still hidden in the “Treehouse of Horror” episodes. Even these special eps are not immune from their fair share of derivative segments. The following list features the Halloween sections that barely even scrape the bottom of the barrel, and act as a morbid reminder of just how far The Simpsons has fallen.
11) “Nightmare on Elm Tree” (XXXII)
Fed up with Bart scaring Lisa and Maggie with spooky stories in the Simpson’s treehouse, Homer starts chopping it down. Lightning strikes the tree and turns it sentient. The tree then awakens every other tree in town, so they can take revenge on Springfield for its abuse of Tree-kind. It quickly escalates into a war between the residents of Springfield and the killer foliage. The trees win without breaking a sweat. The end.
The perfect word to describe “A Nightmare on Elm Tree” would be “unsubstantial.” It is a Frankenstein’s-monster amalgamation of elements from the previous “Treehouse of Horror”episodes. If you chucked the “Night of the Dolphin” (XI), “Attack of the 50 ft Eyesores” (VI), and “It’s the Grand Pumpkin, Milhouse” (XIX) in a blender, then watered it down, this would be the result. It’s the TV equivalent of backwash.
10) “Tweenlight” (XXI)
Even by 2010, jokes at the expense of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight had been stale for some time. There was no other franchise in the 2000s more compulsively mocked and ridiculed than the Twilight Saga. Even with this being the case, The Simpsons Writers jumped at the opportunity to pick some low-hanging fruit. Lisa becomes infatuated with a cute vampire at her school, Edmund (Daniel Radcliffe), and she soon starts to contemplate becoming a nightwalker forever, much to the chagrin of Homer and Edmund’s father. There have already been great vampire parodies in Halloween episodes of the past, but Tweenlight pales by comparison (pun intended).
This episode was released months after the Friedberg and Seltzer spoof flick, Vampires Suck. There’s a joke where Milhouse starts transforming like a werewolf, but he instead morphs into a toy poodle, an exact joke made in Vampires Suck. This is not to say The Simpsons in any way copied Vampires Suckas they were in production at the same time, but when you’re making the same low-grade jokes, it’s not a great sign.
9) “Be 9 Rewind” (XXXI)
The premise for “Be 9 Rewind” is centered around a tried and tested gimmick. It follows the time loop rules of Groundhog Day, Happy Death Day, Edge of Tomorrowand most notably, Russian Doll. On Lisa’s 9th birthday, she is sitting at her desk when she’s called to come downstairs by Marge. Seconds later, Ol ‘Gil accidentally rams his car into the Simpson’s house, killing Lisa, who wakes up back at her desk. She soon finds herself dying again and again in a variety of goofy ways, resetting the day each time.
The resolution of the time loop is about as blunt and lazy as possible and does not make any sense if you think about it. Where the Halloween episodes used to be a showcase of the most intelligent and wildly creative writingThe Simpsons had to offer, it’s now devolved into an excuse for the writers to get away with the bare minimum.
8) “Moefinger” (XXVII)
“Moefinger” is the final segment in the 600th episode of The Simpsons, which may be a contender for the worst episode of the series. Running out of thriller and horror properties to lampoon, “Treehouse” often resorts to spoofing whatever movie or TV show is popular at the moment. Moefinger is a mix of Kingsman and James Bond films, with Bart as the hero, Moe as his advisor, and Homer as “Blofeld.” The jokes are worse than your average dad joke. For example, while informing Bart how the spy game works, Moe says “let me introduce you to Q”, then hands Bart a pool cue. Truly the height of comedy.
Parodying Kingsman does not work, becauseit’s already a satire of the spy genre, so when “Moefinger” makes a jab at the expense of spy flicks, you can bet Kingsman did it better. The episode ends with a self-aggrandizing Bond-style song celebrating their 600th episode, a fine reminder that The Simpsons could have ended a long time ago. One similarity you’ll notice in late-stage “Treehouse of Horror” episodes, is how so many segments devolve into hordes of people getting gunned down, eaten by dinosaurs, killed by aliens, etc. The writing is not clever, and they often can not think of a satisfying conclusion to the segment, so they resort to thoughtless killing sprees to keep the viewers entertained. It’s the animated equivalent of jangling keys in front of a baby.
7) “Dry Hard” (XXVII)
“Dry Hard” is a spoof of The Hunger Games that abruptly turns into Mad Max: Fury Road. Mr. Burns is an overlord who hoards all the water in a dystopian Springfield. After briefly being put through a battle to the death, Lisa inspires all Springfieldians to rise up against Mr. Burns.
The writing in “Dry Hard” is pretty much what you’d expect from a bad Cleveland Showepisode. Almost every joke is one where they need to explain to you why it’s supposed to be funny. A lot of the success of the episode also hinges on the viewer’s excitement at merely recognizing famous things “Look! It’s that character from that famous movie, only this time, it’s Otto the bus driver! GEDDIT ?! ”
6) “Multiplisa-ty” (XXIX)
“Multiplisa-ty” is a cringeworthy take on the M. Night Shymalan movie Split. Lisa kidnaps Bart, Milhouse, and Nelson after they mess with her grades. Lisa has a psychological breakdown, fracturing her psyche into multiple personalities, like James McAvoy’s Tragic villain, Kevin Wendell.
The Simpsons boasts the greatest cast of supporting characters in TV historyso it’s absolutely baffling that the writers chose to make Lisa the stand-in for Wendell. Yeardley Smith does a variety of foreign accents, mixed with puns and play-on-words, and this schtick gets old quickly. The comedic potential of any other character inhabiting the Wendell role is so much greater.
5) “War and Pieces” (XXI)
In an homage to Jumanji, Bart and Milhouse start playing a magical board game, which sucks them into a world comprised of giant board games. They need to defeat all of them to win. “War and Pieces” quickly ignores the rules it sets up, instead opting to focus on non-sequiturs and indolent references, “Hey! Remember these famous board games! They’re big and scary now! ”.
There’s not much else that can be said about this portion. Bart and Milhouse stumble upon a famous board gamethe board game kills or maims some random Simpsons character, then they move on to the next game. Wash, rinse repeat.
4) “Dead Ringer” (XXXII)
A common trait shared by the worst “TOH” stories is that they are often rehashes of concepts and jokes better told in previous works. “Dead Ringer” is a parody of The Ringa movie franchise that was last relevant in 2002. The Simpsons are almost 20 years late to the party. The premise revolves around a haunted TikTok which will kill the viewer in 7 days. Lisa sets to end the curse by befriending the haunted Ring girl.
Scary Movie 3 may not be a masterpiece, but not only did it successfully parody The Ring Back in 2003, it also features jokes far superior to “Dead Ringer.” There are jokes here that have the exact same punchline as the David Zucker parody flick. “Dead Ringer” is the last segment of the most recent “Treehouse of Horror,” (XXXII), and yet another reminder that The Simpsons has run out of ideas.
3) “Untitled Robot Parody” (XIX)
Lisa is gifted a Malibu Stacy Convertible for Christmas that turns out to be a transformer. The convertible gifts sentience to every machine in town, and they team up to enslave humanity. That’s it. The lack of storyline or interesting twists and turns would not be such a flaw if this portion elicited laughs. It does not. There are only so many ways to criticize these segments for not being funny, but in most cases, it’s just that simple.
Treehouse of Horror X already did a much funnier segment about evil machines gaining sentience, when they spoofed the Y2K panic in “Life’s a Glitch, Then You Die” all the way back in 1999. “Untitled Robot Parody” feels like it was written in 5 minutes, mostly through a game of adlibs and word associations.
2) “Telepaths of Glory” (XXVI)
Remember the movie Chronicle? “Telepaths of Glory” is like Chronicle but worse! Lisa and Milhouse stumble across alien goo, which gives them superpowers. Milhouse goes mad with power and Lisa needs to stop him. Milhous’s reign of madness is literally 5 seconds. There are no stakes in “Telepaths of Glory.” Equipped with the premise alone, anyone familiar with The Simpsons would be able to write a funnier segment than this one.
The Simpsons have done way better superhero spoofs in previous TOH segments like “Desperately Xeeking Xena” (X) or even “The Diving Bell and the Butterball” (XXII). Like most of the awful late-stage Simpsons “Treehouse” segments, there isn’t a satisfying climax, it just fizzles out and stops. Again, like Family Guythe writers opt more often than not to end on random, non-sequitur gags to distract you from the fact that they can not give the audience a clever, rewarding conclusion.
1) “Dead and shoulders” (XXIV)
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There’s a running gag in the Simpsons that the middle segment is usually the worst one, and XXIV is a testament to that fact. The episode is actually pretty great, by late-stage Simpsons standards. “Dead and Shoulders” is proceeded by a visually delightful intro by Guillermo Del Toro that is jam-packed with Easter eggs, a creative first segment homaging Dr. Seussand followed by an amusing tribute to Freaks.
“Dead and Shoulders,” however, is a big nothing. Bart is decapitated during a kite accident, and to save his life, his head is grafted onto Lisa’s shoulder. All the jokes are basic. It feels like the episode is on autopilot until the much better final story. The narrative of the segment is once again, borrowed from a previous episode, this time, the end of “Treehouse of Horror II,” where Homer has Mr. Burns’ head grafted onto his shoulder. That 20-second gag has more laughs than the entire runtime of “Dead and Shoulders.”