On the annual spooktacular Halloween special, Bart and Lisa are transported to a demon-filled alternate universe after Bart reads a set of Aramaic symbols he finds on the underside of his desk; Moe’s “Clockwork Orange”-style gang is disrupted when Dum (Homer) falls for a girl (Marge) who wants him to give up the thug life; and, in an homage to “The Others,” the Simpsons are visited by their former Tracey Ullman-era versions of themselves
Happy almost-Halloween everyone, it’s time for the annual installment of THOH. This is the 25th such episode, which I guess could be celebrated as some sort of milestone, if one wished to do so. I’m not going to, but I am a bit of a jerk.
charliesweatpants.com
(The crotch really does wear out too fast.)
I am embarrassed to admit I found the last segment good by ZS standards. Sad to say it will be the only bright spot this season.
I was only interested in the final segment, thinking it would be super meta and explore what happened to the Ullman-era Simpsons and them clashing with their modern counterparts. But alas, after some good stuff with Walter Matthau Homer at the beginning, it just turned into another goddamn Homer-Marge marital strife story. Le sigh.
The Simpsons had memorable sequences from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest integrated into a story that itself made sense and was funny without the audience needing to watch the original movie.
Zombie Simpsons probably just retold the story from A Clockwork Orange, minus the violence, with Homer being stupid/jerkass/getting hurt for no reason anyway.
And now I’m going to get wasted (mandatory step) and watch it in order to find out.
Sorry, I meant The Shining. I just messed up.
Need a glass of screwdriver milk.
They kinda did a parody of Clockwork Orange then it fell apart into a nonsensical all purpose Stanley Kubrick parody. I realized I pretty much just described every ZS Treehouse of Horror segment.
Not a Kubrick film but The Simpsons have done quite a few funny One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest jokes. My favorite being Stark Raving Dad where Homer goes up and greets the Chief Bromden character and is immediately greeted back.
Was that the one the quote “Forgot my hat” was from?
no the forgot my hat was when lisa goes to the old folks home for some reason. i’m thinking it’s the one where she tries to get the residents to “live a little”.
The Chief Bromden one was where Homer says hi to him and he responds and all the doctors freak out because he hasn’t said anything in years, but it was because no one had ever spoken tom him first
to him
Also the classic scene where Barney, in his confused way, “saves” Homer by suffocating him with a pillow and busts through the window to “freedom” with a sad Moe stating “He really needs a girlfriend.” Barney played the Bromden character in that spoof.
The “forgot my hat” line was actually said by one of the churchgoers (the last one I think?) from “Selma’s Choice” during Aunt Gladys’ funeral when all of them ended up leaving one by one during Selma’s speech about how she wasn’t rich but rich in spirit.
Ah, of course! That’s been bugging ever since it was mentioned here.
Yeah, like I said below, it devolved into hollow tribute. This time of Stanley Kubrick. It seems that always happens whenever ZS is incapable in integrating the source material well with the script. Cue Miyazaki tribute, Hitchcock tribute, tribute to famous Jews, etc. Nothing wrong with tribute per se, but ZS often relies heavily on them as a crutch without really earning them.
Also I’ll beat Charlie to the punch on pointing out there were some decent jokes undercut by literally spelling them out before they are shown (as is standard ZS practice now). Like the eyeclamp bit where Moe vocally says he needs these eyeclamps to watch today’s TV, then shown watching TV. It’s a funny concept but because Moe spells the joke out, his reaction afterwards isn’t surprising at all and Moe explaining the joke isn’t really funny. Why not just simply reveal Moe forcing himself to watch TV with them, then casually removing them when someone’s at the door without the unnecessary verbal explanation?
Who is Moe talking to when he says that anyway? Seems the joke explanation was so necessary they went so far as to having him break the fourth wall to make sure EVERYONE would get their oh-so-clever joke…which isn’t funny or clever if you have to explain it ahead of time.
I don’t think the show will ever bring back the exposition-less candid joke showing from 1990s. No matter how much it improves.
I am glad that I missed this doozy.
“School Is Hell” is probably the best segment, which is not saying much. Pretty lame but it seemed the most cohesive and is the only one that actually fit the Halloween theme.
“A Clockwork Yellow” stacked up against “The Shinning” is absolutely no contest. Creativity is the key difference, and this one was really a one-joke premise that got stretched way too thin until it devolved into tribute of sorts. Same problem that the Hitchcock segment years ago fell into.
“The Others” segment was a complete waste both as a segment and as a tribute. As a tribute it did nothing but make the old Ullman-era shorts seem worse than they were, and that whole “marriage crisis” nonsense is so shopworn that I can’t pretend to care about it.
Lastly, why did 3-D Simpsons look so much shittier than what we got in Homer3? Almost 20 years have passed and the CGI craftsmanship that went into the latter short blows away what we got here which only required about 10 seconds of animation. And come on, they could put the extra effort to do a true South Park style?
Effort? Craftsmanship? Simpsons staff members don’t understand those.
I did think the Archer style Simpsons was done well. That’s about the only positive thing I can come up with for this episode.
I preferred the Sylvain Chomet/Triplets of Bellevue style, though that was recycled from a couch gag.
I sort of enjoyed the reproduction of the toothy, elastic facial animations from the Ullman/Season 1 era, but gratuitous self-referential callbacks ≠ good writing—especially when it reminds one of when the Simpsons wasn’t so visually sterile.
That was actually the first Zombie Simpsons anything I’ve watched in three years. Don’t plan on doing that again for a good long while.
Congrats dude, you have the will of steel.
If they can reproduce the old, cruddy way the show used to be, why can they do that more often. And the end with all the different animation styles of The Simpsons are shows you could be watching right now instead of this dream. I recommend Archer, South Park, Adventure Time, and Sylvain Chomet’s work.
It appeared that trying to emulate the Ullman animation was the only interesting thing about the episode. Though in Bart’s case it seemed they were more inspired by his Season 1-2 animation and catchphrases than actual Ullman-era Bart.
And it was sure disappointing that they did absolutely nothing with Ullman-era Lisa considering she clashes so heavily with modern ZS Lisa (she was almost a female Bart).
And they still ripped off Family Guy’s Back to Pilot (except, as always, FG still did it funnier).
That’s because Seth and the writers are aware of what most critics say about the show, mostly the claims t hat it’s a wannabe Simpsons and that its cutaway jokes have no plot relevance, though The Simpsons had its share of plot irrelevant jokes sand was compared to The Flintstones when it came out, so…
I watched it…and it was boring and unfunny. I did kind of like the ending seeing The Simpsons done in different styles but that was it.
What was with the sherry or terry voice at the very end with the camera?