26x04 Treehouse of Horror XXV

[7.1/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] This is far from the best Treehouse of Horror outing for The Simpsons, but also far from the worst. It’s got a collection of fun premises, which do a lot of the work, and some decent spooky gags to go along with them. That’s the minimum you ask for from the show’s annual scare-fest, and this one checks the boxes.

The opening bit with Kang and Kodos torturing the various celebrities who’ve (presumably) said no to guest starring on The Simpsons is a good quick-hit gag to open the special.

The first segment was probably my favorite. It features Bart accidentally attending an equivalent to Springfield Elementary in hell and totally excelling there. The show comes up with a lot of fun designs both for the school itself and for its students and faculty. The notion of Bart finding a school where he can succeed, only for it to be the realm of damnation, is an amusing concept for a THoH installment, and the show comes up with a series of amusing wordplay and ironic punishment gags. Some of them veer a little dark, but it is Halloween after all.

The second segment quickly becomes less of a story and more of a grab bag of Kubrick homages, but they’re fun homages! I do like the way the segment manages to remix a lot of A Clockwork Orange to tell a different sort of story, about Moe getting out of the Moog game but then getting the old gang back together to teach the new kids how it’s done. A lot of it amounts to bouts of “Hey, remember this scene?” but there’s some fun twists here and there.

The last segment was, unfortunately, probably the weakest. This is a parody of The Others in name only, mostly a pretty trite and compressed Homer and Marge marriage troubles story with some dull death gags. But it gets by on the novelty of seeing the modern say Simpsons interact with their Tracey Ullman Show counterparts. The show does a really good job at recreating the look of the old designs, and it’s fun hearing Dan Casteleneta and Nancy Cartwright use the old character voices and see the original gruffer version of HOmer. There’s some fun mythology bits, like Marge finding “frosty chocolate milkshakes” and going back to the original family photo short, and the array of different Simpsons at the end (replete with John Ratzenberger for the Pixar-inspired one) is a treat.

Overall, there’s a mix of good and bad here, but each segment has at least something to recommend it, which makes this a successful Treehouse outing in my book.