Halloween Special 12
Season 13 Episode 1, November… NOVEMBER! 6th, 2001
Hex and the City
House of Whacks
Wiz Kids
The episode opens with a spooky establishing shot of Mr. Burns’s mansion and Smithers hanging one solitary rubber bat up on the roof for Halloween. He falls to his death, causing a piece of the mansion to land on a mausoleum, which spits out some corpses, which cause the approaching trick or treating Simpson family to flee in terror, running through the rod iron gate and slicing themselves to ribbons as they do. It’s a nice little segment, very moody and macabre, no couch gag.
Hex and the City: The Simpsons are in Ethnic Town, where after they visit of Fortune Teller, whose business is ruined by Homer’s buffoonery, curses Homer. It being 2001, the stereotypical Romani Fortune Teller woman is referred to multiple times by a word we don’t use anymore.
The curse causes Marge to grow thick blue hair everywhere, Bart’s neck to become elastic, Lisa’s lower half to be replaced with a horse, and while she said she would remove the curse if he apologized, Homer refuses and after some council from friends at the bar, sets up to capture a leprechaun.
The leprechaun and the Fortune Teller fall in love, and the family goes to the wedding, and that’s where we get our annual Kang and Kodos sighting.
They drop the G slur A LOT in this episode, that was written and produced before 9/11, and aired two months after it.
This short has a lot of solid bits, some fun body horror, and Treehouse of Horror carnage.
House of Whacks: The family gets a robotic house that falls in love with Marge and is voiced by Pierce Brosnan, whom Marge identifies not as Bond but as Remington Steele. The house, which is very HAL from 2001 a Space Odyssey, tries to kill Homer, and wackiness ensues.
It’s fun, Brosnan is great, and there’s the request great animation to sell it all.
Wiz Kids: It’s a Harry Potter parody, there’s a great and disgusting moment where Smithes who is a giant snake starts to swallow the evil Mr. Burns “Montemort” whole, and it’s as silly as it is tedious, but there’s a ton of great sight gags not just the aforementioned snake one.
The shoe ends on the FOX set where the leprechaun and malformed prince creature that Bart conjures in Wiz Kids essentially car jack Pierce Brosnan. Like the opening, it’s a tight, and efficient, funny ending.
Funniest Bit:
Lenny: “You know what’s even better is Jesus, he’s like six leprechauns.”
Carl: “But he’s a lot harder to catch, you should go with a leprechaun.”
Jesus being the equivalent of six leprechauns is right up my alley.
Moment of Note: The surly, unintelligibly so, Leprechaun who would go on to appear in both more Treehouse of Horror shorts and even a regular episode or two first appears here. This is not to be confused with the leprechaun that tells Ralph Wiggum to burn things, that one speaks in full sentences, this one just makes noises.
In the season 20 premier the green Catholic leprechaun gets into a donnybrook with the orange Protestant leprechaun at a St. Patrick’s Day parade. Season 20, pretty different than season 1.
Treehouse of Horror 13
Season 14 Episode 1, November 3, 2002
Stories:
Send in the Clones
The Fright to Creep and Scare Harms
Stop the World, I Want to Good Off
Here we are in season 14, where the show is solidly on the decline, but not quite to it’s nadir of seasons 15-18. And while the season itself is not that great, the opening of its first episode is solid.
The Simpson family is having a seance to contact Ned’s dead wife Maud3 (season 11, episode 14), and while Bart pops out dressed as Maude at first, her actual ghost appears and turns into a terrifying, screaming ghost, reading from a book that… wait for is, says not Simpsons Halloween Special but…
TREEHOUSE OF HORROR 13.
We did it people, they’re Treehouse of Horror now.
Send in the Clones: Homer buys a cursed magic hammock that clones him every time he goes into it. It’s part Multiplicity, part zombie movie/The Blob because the clone Homers start duplicating themselves and eating everything in sight.
There are a ton of great visual jokes like all the different character models of Homer and Peter Griffen (implying he is a clone of Homer) in the big clone shot pictured above, and it being Homer-centric, with each clone being half as smart as the already dumb Homer, there’s just a lot of absurd “Homer is an Idiot” jokes.
Which are, as you may know by now, some of my favorite things.
This one is very good.
The Fright to Creep and Scare Harms: Lisa, after seeing Billy the Kid’s grave and not knowing it’s him, wishes for a world without guns. When she does, the zombie figures of Billy the Kid, Frank and Jessie James, the Sundance Kid, and the rootin-tootin-est cowboy of them all Kaiser Wilhem rise from the grave and menace the town.
This one starts off the rails, and goes even further when time travel is introduced. There’s some good bits, like Bart and Lisa being forced to dance and sing complimentary songs about cattle rustling and robbing a bank, but it’s just pure nonsense and chaos.
It’s fun, and truly inane.
The Island of Dr. Hibert: It’s a middling Island of Dr. Moreau homage, it’s about as bad as you can get and be average.
I’d say more about it, but there’s just not much to say
Kang and Kodos pop up at the end to say the skull shaped island looks like their number four, saying “It really makes you think” and that’s how the episode ends.
Funniest Bit:
Billy the Kid grabs Homer and throws him on the piano stool, pushe shim towards the piano, and says “Play us some pianee.” Homer starts to play some classical music and Billy stops him, “That’s piano! I said pianee.”
Some of the bits and punchlines in Send in the Clones are bigger laughs, but as stated last time, when you watch these as much as I have, your brain latches on to other beats and jokes as the truly stand-out funny things,
Moment of Note: The credits don’t have spooky names, but as state early we’re into these being formally called Treehouse of Horror.
And to think, none of these have had anything to do with a Treehouse since 1990, it really makes you think.