I am both old enough to remember a time before The Simpsons and still young enough not to have understood its impact on television or, eventually, on the show itself. At the time, anyway. Now it's easy to look back and understand why I stopped watching the show around season 12, then would check in sporadically, only to eventually give up around season 17 or 18. The show just wasn't that funny anymore. A brief flirtation with The Simpsons Movie and the show's shift to HD collapsed midway through the Blu-Ray of season 20, and I'm fairly content saying that I don't watch The Simpsons anymore. They recycle their own jokes now, unironically aware of what South Park already knew: "The Simpsons did it!"You can actually trace the downward trajectory through the first ten Treehouse of Horror's (which, oddly enough, are all called The Simpsons Halloween Special on the title card, but not on IMDB or the boxed sets). For those not familiar with the concept - in season two, The Simpsons introduced a yearly Halloween special. It was always a triptych, and they all typically involve the following: 1) a Twilight Zone redo, 2) a film parody, 3) a literary interpretation, 4) Some variety of social commentary (this happens increasingly as time goes by).
People tend to be hard on the first few seasons of The Simpsons, but the first Treehouse of Horror isn't actually all that bad: there's "Bad Dream House," a Poltergeist/Amityville homage; "Hungry are the Damned," a Simpsonized twist on "To Serve Man," and an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," wrapped around by a story of Bart and Lisa trying to scare each other.
From there on out, there are a number of great moments: send-ups of King Kong, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Shining, Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Fly, The Omega Man, Godzilla (kind of), and The Indestructible Man; versions of The Monkey's Paw, Frankenstein, The Devil and Daniel Webster, Dragonwyck; and Twilight Zone episodes Little Girl Lost, It's a Good Life, Living Doll, Terror at 20,000 Feet, and The Little People.
What I noticed though is that there's a steady decline starting with Treehouse of Horror VII (season 8), which stands out for an otherwise pretty stellar season (Hank Scorpio, Mr. Sparkle, Larry Burns, the Insanity Pepper episode): I could have sworn the "Hugo" evil twin segment happened later in the series' run, the "Little People" segment runs out of steam, and the Bob Dole / Bill Clinton Kodos and Kang story is a non-starter. It hints at the dull-witted political commentary to come, reaching a nadir in the late 2000s with a "War of the Worlds" / Iraqi Invasion segment.
Treehouse of Horror's VIII, IX, and X are all hit and miss, but indicate a downward trend: for every "Homega Man" and "Fly vs. Fly," there's a pointless cameo by Jerry Springer or Regis Philbin (the Springer being a serious low point in the show's pop culture commentary), and things just fall apart in season 11. Again, I'm a little surprised by this because while it's nowhere in the same league as season 8, the next-to-last season of The Simpsons I watched entirely had at least given up on a semblance of plot, instead trying to out-surreal itself with each successive episode.
After Treehouse of Horror X, I can only say I remember parts of XI and XII: I'd honestly thought "Day of the Dolphins" came sooner than it did, the Ghost Dad parody doesn't stir much other than Homer dying on a piece of broccoli twice, and I have vague memories of Pierce Brosnan as the voice of a house that hates Homer. I don't recall the Harry Potter parody at all. From there on out, I understand they've spoofed Transformers, 28 Days Later, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, The Dead Zone, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Most Dangerous Game, A.I., The Blob, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Twilight. Mmmhrm...
Believe me, I'd love to jump on them for more movie parodies, but going back and looking at it, the Bram Stoker's Dracula send-up was right after the movie came out, and they weren't wildly removed from A Nightmare on Elm Street's sequels at the time either. What I can say is that I laughed less and less from Treehouse of Horror VI to X, and I laughed quite a bit during VI. The episodes are a fine time capsule of where The Simpsons was, what the writers found amusing, and which elements were emphasized - story, character, parody, or randomness.
Things get off to a shaky start in Treehouse of Horror XI with a parody of the Bill Cosby movie Ghost Dad, but evens out with the final segment, the aforementioned "Night of the Dolphin," which manages to fit in nods to Jaws and The Birds and has a fitfully dark ending. The middle segment, "Scary Tales Do Come True," is symptomatic of a problem that plagues the latter Treehouse entries: many of the parodies are tangentially (at best) tied to horror.
A Hansel and Gretl meet other fairy tales would make sense in the context of other Simpsons anthology episodes (which have covered works of literature, myths, or Biblical stories), but it begins a trend of moving away from Twilight Zone stories and horror films to other parodies - some of which don't even make sense. But Transformers? Mr. and Mrs. Smith? The Harry Potter spoof doesn't even get a pass because if you took that, "Scary Tales Can Come True," and "Four Beheadings and a Funeral", a Sherlock Holmes / Jack the Ripper story, and put them into their own anthology.
I'm more willing to give the Mad Men-esque spoof "How to Get Ahead in Dead-vertising" because it at least continues the trend of zombie celebrities, even if it is just a variation on the Homer the Grim Reaper segment from XIV. However, "Bartificial Intelligence" doesn't make any sense in a Treehouse of Horror, and a Golem story (like "Hex in the City") eventually shifts from possibly horror related to cheap ethnic jokes. A Fantastic Voyage (really?) spoof turns it self around into a variation on Treehouse of Horror II's "Homer and Burns share a body" joke, followed by a song-and-dance vaguely reminiscent of the "Bart Simpson's Dracula". "The Ned Zone" never really goes anywhere, and "Married to the Blob" starts great but falls apart long before Dr. Phil appears as himself. A Tales from the Crypt-style opening sequence falls apart as soon as Smithers appears, which is a shame.The nadir of the latter Treehouses is"The Day the Earth Stood Stupid," a segment that seems to be a take on Orson Welles' infamous "War of the Worlds" hoax, but then devolves into a boneheaded (and woefully unfunny) critique of the War in Iraq, with Kodos and Kang arguing about who said they would be "greeted as liberators" and ends with an awful "hearts and minds" gag. Of course, if you like Kodos and Kang, then stay away from "E.T.: Go Home" which seems promising but quickly goes south.
The closest thing other than the Hitchcock segment is an almost perfect send-up of Charlie Brown cartoons called "It's the Grand Pumpkin, Milhouse." For a while, it sustains the animation style, but overuses a few obvious gags (Marge's trombone, for example) and breaks the tone with Nelson and the bullies before halfway redeeming itself with a racist pumpkin ("all pumpkins are racist; the difference is I admit it!"). The Grand Pumpkin and Tom Turkey's screams of "Revenge!" still make me chuckle.
fuzzily.
Watching the back stretch of the Treehouse of Horror episodes, I can see many of the things I've noticed while popping in on The Simpsons over the years after no longer being a regular viewer - jokes are periodically funny, but often are followed by something that reminds me of a better Simpsons episode. The "jerkass" phase of Homer Simpson is abundant in many of these episodes, and it's more grating than hilarious. The pop culture references become more obvious and get lazier as time goes on, and much of the sharp writing of earlier years is undermined by lazy shortcuts or, worse, an inability to stick the landing. While I don't plan on watching the show regularly again, it was nice to catch up on what used to be a Halloween institution, and I'll try to catch XXV (airing this weekend) to see if an upswing is ever in the cards. Call me hopeful - it might be...
