Simpsons Halloween Special XVIII

Simpsons Halloween Special XVIII

Matt and his gang just don’t have the punch they used to. The Halloween Special is the one Simpsons episode I look forward to all year long and they used to be great. The earlier episodes were a lot of fun with crazy spoofs, lots of hacking and slashing and plenty of juvenile pranks centered on Halloween. The Treehouse of Horror disc that has been released is great with everyone narrowly escaping death at every turn. Now the stories are lame spoofs that have nothing to do with Halloween, not that the episodes would even be considered scary, but they aren’t even trying to spoof horror movies or pick interesting stores to tell.

The 3 episodes tonight were just plain dumb. E.T. Go Home, Mr. & Mrs. Simpson and Heck House weren’t funny, satirical, or enjoyable in any way. They completely lacked the creativity of years past. Sadly, this has been the trend for the last couple of episodes. Episodes 15, 16 and 17 were terribly pathetic.

What happened to the cool episodes like The Shinning, The Island of Dr. Hibbard or The Raven? The past episodes have just been spoofs of movies (and not good ones either) and have nothing to do with Halloween. They’re just regular episodes that really don’t seem to have a whole lot of thought behind them. I have to say this year was a complete disappointment. Having Ned turn into the devil is always funny, but this year it was weak. Where are the books of the occult? Where are the skeletons rising from the grave? Why are the main characters not turning into zombies, or other characters? Where is the evil hairpiece that is controlling Homer’s mind?

Where are the episodes where Milhouse is gets churned up in a blender after the other kids have been eaten by Skinner? Why don’t we have James Earl Jones voicing some bizarre characters whose main motivation is to eat humans? Where are the Twilight Zone styled episodes? Egad, it’s supposed to be a Halloween episode, where’s the devil, the witches, zombies and all the other terrors? Come on, Moe didn’t even try to hang himself this year…

Through the help of the released box sets and TiVo I have managed to watch all the episodes from years past and they used to be funny with lots of satire, puns, and references to all sorts of movies and characters. The first 13 are worth watching over and over again. But now the material is weak at best. Matt needs to get some new material, this year didn’t even warrant a chuckle…

Technorati : fox, halloween, simpsons, treehouse of horror

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