This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.
The Simpsons Season 31 Episode 4
The Simpsons, season 31, episode 4, “Treehouse of Horror XXX,” is the 666th episode of the series. This bodes well for their annual Halloween extravaganza. Not because it proves they sold their collective souls to a devilish cooperative to have lasted this long. But because it promises the most evil of offerings. Sadly, the episode gives us a very happy ending, which works as diabolical subversion.
The segment is a takeoff of The Omen which, we realize in a mirror scene reminiscent of The Shining, is Nemo spelled backwards. It is loaded with visual gags, one of the best is that her dolls’ heads spin and puke stuffing, and her talking clock says “your mother sets clocks in hell,” which references The Exorcist. After Ned reveals her devilish nature by showing the mark of the beast, the beast is Mickey Mouse, and Marge tries to find solutions in a book called “What to Expect When You’re Expecting the Antichrist.” The segment works and, as short as it is, it is fully satisfying, frightening and funny.
Danger Things
The section assumes a familiarity with Stranger Things, or at least that Millhouse’s parents, transformed into Yuppies, saw the first season because Kirk assumes the alternative dimension premise immediately. Comic Book Guy is little changed as he critiques the goings on as behind the times as far as binge-watching. The details are finely tuned, and skewered into working spoof. The Over Under, their version of the Upside Down, includes a very dark and foreboding Springfield inhabited by the most frightening of replicas: the Simpsons as they were originally drawn when they were part of The Tracey Ullman Show. Moe, however, is completely unchanged and contemporary, easily fitting into any alternative twist.
The alternative Springfield isn’t so bad. Housing is more affordable and the school system is pretty good. It makes you wonder where The Simpsons make a better fit. In the inside out of a perfect world, the “Treehouse of Horror” reality would outweigh standard episodes. The series hasn’t done a historical or biblical recreation in a while, which would count.
Heaven Swipes Right
When Hairy Met Slimy
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The little world Selma destroys with her cigarette ash reminds me of Lisa’s science project in the “Treehouse of Horror VII” segment “The Genesis Tub.” Kang the Conqueror is the perfect match for Selma, the available. He can smoke four times the cigarettes she can. The best exchange of the sequence is Burns hastening Kang’s dissection because the alien life form boasts the secret to clean energy. Another piece of social commentary is that there is another earth where the south won the Civil War and there are less Confederate monuments there.
Julie Kavner excels in Patty’s pleas for Selma to stay on earth and not be shackled like a lion to a Sagittarius. For a horror entry, “When Hairy Met Slimy” ends the episode on a very optimistic note. Not only because both Selma and Patty find happiness in a galaxy far, far away, but because Kodos boasts 32 sexual identities. The roll call of interstellar intercourse which closes the segment is one of the best pun factories of the series. Kodos is Klingon-curious, always up for Wookie nookie and an R2-threesome, and is no stranger to deep space nining.
“Treehouse of Horror XXX” was written by J. Stewart Burns (as J. Stewart’s Urn), and directed by Timothy Bailey (as Grimothy Bailey).
The Simpsons episode “Treehouse of Horror XXX” aired Sunday, Oct. 20, on Fox.
Culture Editor Tony Sokol cut his teeth on the wire services and also wrote and produced New York City’s Vampyr Theatre and the rock opera AssassiNation: We Killed JFK. Read more of his work here or find him on Twitter @tsokol.
