24x02 Treehouse of Horror XXIII

[5.8/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] This is one of those episodes that starts off well enough and then just falls off a cliff. It’s amusing now to think back at folks legitimately worrying the world might end in 2012 thanks to a supposed Mayan calendar prediction. The opening bit plays off that of-the-moment phobia nicely. There’s not a lot of wit or insight to it, but there’s a lot of chuckles to seeing Springfield reimagined in the Mayan style, and the Mayan gods wreaking havoc in the present was amusing as well. It might have shortchanged the other segments, but it’s a good quick little gag machine of an opener.

The first full segment, about Springfield accidentally creating a miniature black hole, is the strongest of the three. It’s not a home run, but it’s a fun and novel concept for a THoH segment (and again, a timely one since the Large Hadron Collider was in the news at the time). The Simpsons, and eventually all of Springfield, making it bigger by tossing assorted bric-a-brac into it was good fodder for comedy, and I like the reveal that they were actually shutting all of it to an alien planet, who viewed the garbage as gifts. Again, not the world’s greatest segment, but a solidly built and decently funny one.

Were that the same could be said for the other two segments. The Paranormal Activity spoof was pretty abysmal. I’m not sure I laughed once, and the whole thing was just super rushed. Homer in particular wasn’t funny at all, and the reveal that Marge made a deal with a demon was a weird place to take it. The whole riff was so aimless and forgettable.

The Back to the Future parody was almost as bad. It kills me because it’s a great premise, and with a little more time, the show might have been able to have some real fun with it. But this segment trades that for a very abbreviated trip to the past and a lot of time with an alternate future where Marge married Artie Ziff. There’s a few solid jokes like Bart’s fro and Lisa’s ach-em. But the array of Homer’s from history was pretty lame, and Marge falls in love with them them for essentially no reason.

Overall, if you stopped this one at roughly halfway, you’d have a solid post-classic Treehouse of Horror installment. But the latter two segments drag it down a lot.