4/6/2023 0 Comments Simpsons alien invasion![]() ![]() But the swerve into a werewolf story is basically just the show hitting the eject button on a story with no center. The Ned Flanders-centered riff on I Know What You Did Last Summer at least rustles up a little tension as the supposedly run-over and dead Ned stalks the family down a lonely lane. Plus, the commitment to the horror part of Treehouse Of Horror is essentially tossed out the window, as two of the three stories contain no horror elements at all, while the first simply slams two horror premises together and calls it a day. The cracks started to show in the previous season's shaky outing but the three stories here feel less like a chance for the writers to air out some great ideas that wouldn't fit into the series already elastic continuity, and more an exercise in cynical formula and terribly-aged topicality. The 10th anniversary of the Treehouse Of Horror franchise sees this once-inventive goof of a yearly premise succumb to slapdash laziness so fast it's unnerving. The whole Avatar thing had been done to death, even then, and while there are a couple of amusing embellishments (I liked the planet-defending pterodactyls dropping eggs filled with piranhas), lines like Bart's, "How dare you betray the planet I got laid on!," and Bart's mate revealing she got "space warts" from sleeping with a traitorous Milhouse are enough to make one space-barf. ![]() Follow that? The episode concludes with yet another Avatar parody, only with 10-year-old Bart having deceptive and copiously procreative sex with a Rigellian. The Ned Flanders becomes a murderer piece starts out feinting toward a Taxi Driver riff, then switches to Dexter, before God shows up to kill Homer for tricking Ned into killing Homer's enemies thanks to a speaker-gimmicked bible. The mid-segment switch to a Spider-Man parody (but, you know, keeping the whole fart motif) does nothing to redeem things. Raise your hand if you were clamoring for a Simpsonized take on the touching and completely non-horror-related The Diving Bell and the Butterfly centered on the paralyzed Homer only being able to communicate through farts. That the segment ends with a nihilistic, Bart-driven twist worthy of one of those Jim Thompson, nobody-wins desert scenarios is especially and impressively dark. It's probably not a great sign when the abbreviated cold open is the best part of a Treehouse of Horror, but the 127 Hours manner in which Homer (spiriting off the kids' Halloween candy thanks to that switch-witch bullcrap) is trapped under a boulder and chews through all four limbs to get to his purloined treats. ![]()
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