Tonight saw the debut of the latest in a grand tradition of The Simpsons Halloween specials, entitled “Treehouse of Horror XXXIV” (34 because we’re in the 35th season of the long-running animated sitcom, and every season has had a “Treehouse of Horror” except the first). Below are my recap and brief thoughts on this installment.
“Wild Barts Can’t Be Token”
I already talked last week about how odd it is that FOX and the powers that be at The Simpsons chose to air “Treehouse of Horror XXXIV” on the weekend after Hallowen instead of the weekend before it, so let’s just talk about the content of this episode, which as always is an anthology collection of three different spooky Springfieldian stories. The first segment opens at the Art Museum of Springfield, where Mayor Quimby (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) announces that the museum has been closed forever, and the art is being replaced by digital NFTs, “whatever the hell those are.” Now you may be thinking that NFTs as a premise already feels a little out-of-date, but you have to keep in mind (as I do) the long turnaround time for episodes of The Simpsons. Anyway, Bart (Nancy Cartwright) and Homer Simpson (also Castellaneta) sneak into the museum to turn their famous sailboat painting into an NFT, but Bart jumps into the scanning machine first and gets digitized and physically destroyed, though Homer isn’t that upset when he sees that his son’s value skyrockets up to over a million dollars. Soon socialite Kylie Jenner, football player Ron Gronkowski, and talk-show host Jimmy Fallon show up at the Simpson home to convince Marge (Julie Kavner) to enter the blockchain and save Bart’s life. There, she meets a bunch of other NFTs who introduce her to the concept of the “Block Train,” at which point the segment becomes a parody of Snowpiercer. The train is fueled by FOMO, and Marge has to fight her way to the front car by gaining value as an NFT herself– which she does by murdering her fellow near-worthless non-fungible tokens. But in the real world, Mr. Burns (Harry Shearer) offers to purchase Bart’s NFT for 100 million dollars, and the joke that actually makes this segment feel timely is Homer worrying that he’ll miss out on the “current tech bubble.” The story ends with Homer choosing to sell himself to Mr. Burns, doomed to spend “eternity on a super-swanky train” eating “Twerked Chicken.” But when the FOMO runs out, Homer’s value crashes, and the NFT craze ends unceremoniously, burying the Block Train in an avalanche of snow.
“Ei8ht”
The second segment begins with a flashback to the fifth-season Simpsons episode “Cape Feare,” which this time ends with Sideshow Bob (recurring guest star Kelsey Grammer) killing Bart aboard that boat– you remember the one. Then we cut to 30 years later, where Lisa Simpson (Yeardley Smith) has become a professor of Criminal Psychology at Springfield University. She is enlisted by police officer Nelson Muntz (Cartwright again) to solve a new serial-killer case, in a mash-up parody of procedural detective movies like Se7en, The Silence of the Lambs, and Saw. It seems the killer left a message for Lisa at the crime scene, which is proven positive when we cut to “Hi, Lisa!” spelled out in intestines. Victims include adult versions of Rod Flanders, Martin Prince, Dermott Spuckler (son of Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel), and more, all with messages spelled out in blood reading “______ is the first.” Lisa seeks help from an incarcerated Sideshow Bob, Hannibal Lecter-style, and Bob is impressed by the killer’s efforts in setting up the crime scenes with careful detail. When Terri’s twin Sherri is murdered, Lisa discovers that she was the “big sister,” having been born first, and this leads Lisa to make the connection that all the victims were the first-born of their respective families, like Bart. She uses a clue Bob dropped to find the killer’s lair, and there Nelson is killed as well. Lisa finds a replica of her childhood bedroom in the warehouse, and on a surveillance monitor she discovers that she herself has been the killer all along. After her arrest, we come to find that Lisa has developed an alternate personality, and used the murders to become imprisoned alongside Sideshow Bob to enact her revenge for Bart. The segment ends with the reveal that Maggie Simpson is a guard at the prison, and has led Bob to his doom at Lisa’s hands.
“Lout Break”
The third segment in my opinion is the funniest of the three “Treehouse of Horror” stories this year, and serves as a parody of viral-pandemic movies like Outbreak. It opens with Homer eating a box of donuts at work, when Mr. Smithers (Shearer) forces him to stop. Homer complains about the “Nanny State,” and when he accidentally drops a donut it rolls down the power plant hallway, gathering nuclear ooze until it comes to rest in another area (the “Life Extension Laboratory”), where eating is also prohibited. Homer eats the donut, which is covered in all manner of disgusting things, and that night he suffers a terrible stomach ache. “Stupid radioactive garbade donut mutating my DNA while I sleep,” he murmurs. The next day he burps next to Ned Flanders (Shearer yet again), who gets sick as well and then spreads the burping disease at church. Soon everyone in town is sweating green ooze and transmogrifying into bumbling facsimiles of Homer, both in personality and appearance. “Citizens of every age, race, and catchphrase are mysteriously transformed into bald, pear-shaped doofi,” reports Kent Brockman (you guessed it– Shearer), who quickly becomes afflicted with this illness as well thanks to Mr. Largo. No sooner do Bart and Lisa figure out what’s going on than their house is raided by government agents in hazmat suits and they’re given a lecture by Professor Frink (Hank Azaria) about burp-born transmission.
I particularly liked the Kang and Kodos cameos here among the wide shots of everyone having become Homer-ized, but the point is that those sharing Homer’s DNA are the only ones impervious to the virus. So the Simpson kids search for Homer at Moe’s Tavern, where the usually-hapless proprietor (Azaria too) is cleaning up with his new onrush of clientele. But the real Homer is nowhere to be found, but they finally track him to the car wash bathroom, which is evidently where he always spends the day after eating an entire bucket of chicken. But Homer doesn’t want to contribute his DNA to the cause of setting everything back to the way it was, now that he’s enjoying a world where everyone thinks the way he does. “It’s a utopia– no, a me-topia!” he exclaims, to Frink’s frustration. The professor thinks he has one last “Earth-shattering reveal” up his sleeve, opening the doors to a van to unveil a Homer-ized Marge, but the real Homer just loves her even more. “You’ve never looked more beautiful!” Frink resorts to calling in a nuclear airstrike to obliterate Springfield, but he’s interrupted by Homer using his bathroom back-scratcher to tear open his hazmat suit. And the episode ends with a Homer-ized Frink starting a sing-along to David Lee Roth’s “Just Like Paradise,” with all the Homers around the town joining in. We then see a montage of some of the ways in which the world changes under this new Homer-centric society, including Guy Fieri elected president, as the nuclear burp virus spreads around the globe. All told, it’s another very fun “Treehouse of Horror” in the books for The Simpsons.
New episodes of The Simpsons air Sunday evenings on FOX.