35x05 Treehouse of Horror XXXIV

[7.5/10 on a Selman era Simpsons scale] Another good year! Some wild swings with all three of the stories this year, and some measured successes as well.

The first segment, riffing on NFTs, is probably the weakest, which is a good sign for the episode because even it was fun. I wouldn’t say there’s a ton of trenchant observations about the NFT market, just the usual “crypto bros stink”, “these dumb things used to be valuable” type shtick. But I actually love the conceit of Marge going into the virtual world to rescue Bart after he’s become an NFT. There’s a real Tron/Matrix/Snowpiecer vibe to the whole thing, which is a neat mash-up for a Treehouse of Horror segment.

Plus, the animation here was surprisingly good. The NFTs Marge runs into aren’t the cleverest takes on the genre, but there’s some extra expressiveness and fidelity when she fights them. Little details like Mihouse and Ralph getting mixed together when Kirk and Clancy try to push their kids into the digitizer at the same time makes it feel appropriately horror-esque. And I like the sort of Twilight Zone twist of Homer selling himself as an NFT to Mr. Burns for a hundred million dollars. The closest thing to an incisive observation here is the whole idea that the train runs on FOMO, but as a pure romp, this one is quite entertaining.

My favorite segment was probably the middle one. As someone who enjoys Fincher-esque flicks, a combination of Seven, Silence of the Lambs, and another film for an omnibus gritty killer movie parody is a winning idea. Putting Lisa at the center of it in an alternate timeline follow-up to “Cape Feare” only ups the ante, especially when she has to partner with Sideshow Bob in the future.

MMy only gripe is that this one isn’t especially funny. (Though I got a kick out of the fact that Homer choked on a tennis ball.) But I’ll take interesting, scary, and even clever in a Treehouse of Horror segment, even if the laughs don’t flow freely. Lisa as a grown-up profiler, tracking down a series of murders of grown-up Springfield Elementary students, and enlisting Bob for help, is a premise that sets up a nice riff on the investigatory thriller genre.

I appreciate how the twist has its cake and eats it too. On the one hand, it’s implausible that Lisa would have a second personality doing all the killing and eluding her notice and the whole scheme is pretty baroque. But it’s also a spoof of those kinds of neat but implausible twists, and so can be credited for lightly spoofing that sort of crazy twist. And god help me, something about her getting revenge on Bob with the help of a grown-up Maggie. Plus, the tableau the killer leaves make this one impressively (and artistically) gory.

The final segment is the most high concept, but it wins on that concept alone. The whole notion of the entire town turning into Homer-esque versions of themselves becomes more of a gimmick than a story, but I don’t really mind. It’s fun to see the designers and animators going off and Homerifying everyone in Springfield. The twist of Homer being enchanted, rather than repulsed, by the Homer-y version of Marge is amusing. And there’s even a touch of social commentary on how doomed the world would be with a population that’s anti-expert and against intellectualism of any sort. Honestly, it feels like more of a commentary on the pandemic than last season’s lockdown episode.

Overall, a good batch of spooky stories this year, with each one having a creative idea at its core, and each having plenty of fun and inventiveness with the execution.