Back to this again. It's a bit of a short thing, given I only have 25 minutes of TV to work with, but I'm on a deadline due to other things going on tonight. That and I'm a little burnt out from this spooky month. I am looking forward to tomorrow's view, though, as it's something I've never seen before. You can probably guess what it is, but in the meantime here's the second Simpsons Halloween Special, from 1991. Somehow it has been three years since I did a Simpsons Halloween special. That was the first one. It managed to give me a lot to talk about, and I even worked in some personal Simpsons history. Again, as with Beetlejuice, my insistence on doing things in order means we hit a Halloween special that never was my favorite. It's fine for golden era Simpsons, sure, but just doesn't stand out in the nostalgic mind compared to the later ones. Still, we're going to take a crack at it. What's fun about these early specials are both the Marge warnings at the top, and the idea that they have a framing device. Both of these get dropped pretty early on, but the former at least makes me remember that pearl-clutching people lost their shit at the Simpsons being a bit irreverent and rude. For fuck's sakes, I think there's one scene with blood in this entire thing. It's goddamned tame by today's standards. Our framing device is simple, almost perfunctionary. "Oh no the Simpsons ate too much Halloween candy and had nightmares". Let us delve into some of these nightmares.They're not titled segments or anything, but Lisa's nightmare is just the Monkey's Paw. The Simpsons get a cursed monkey paw and make wishes that backfire. Actually, that's not even entirely true. The subtle subversive comedy of it is that the wishes only backfire if they would benefit the Simpsons in some major way. We see this when Maggie makes the first wish for a golden pacifier, and Ned Flanders gets the paw at the end. That's the gag. It works fine for them, but for any other substantial benefit it's curse time. This is evident in the wish to make the Simpsons rich and famous, which also serves as a little meta-commentary for Simpsons mania. The Simpsons are a big name, they're on fucking everything, and people are sick to death of them. Oh. Oh you sweet summer children of 1991. You have no fucking idea. Even Lisa's wish for world peace gets shit on with a Kang and Kodos invasion. There's a lovely bit with Homer's last wish, and then everything goes fine for Flanders. It's a fun retelling of the Monkey's Paw, and it's actually saying some things which resonate with the state of the Simpsons now. Wild. What's next?
Oh it's just that one Twilight Zone episode with the spooky kid that sends you to the cornfield, but it's Bart with the powers. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the anecdote connecting the Simpsons with this specific Twilight Zone story. Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart, previously had a part in the Twilight Zone movie during the segment remaking that spooky psychic kid story... and her character dies by being trapped inside a cartoon. Ha. Ha ha ha. Holy shit. Despite a few cartoonish existential horrors, for the most part this one plays its joke simple enough. Ha ha ha it's Bart doing wild shit with his unlimited psychic powers, and everyone's acquiescing to him. (Okay, but the Bonerland callback gag is something else entirely.) Then it becomes a story about... taking Bart to therapy? And bonding with Homer, who he'd previously turned into a jack in the box? And this is the nightmarish part which makes Bart end up screaming. Wow. Fucked up. Uhhh let's go to the last one?
It's Frankenstein. But with Mr. Burns. Pure capitalism at work, as he hopes to make robot workers who will work harder for him, presumably to make him richer. I got a chuckle out of "Behold, the greatest breakthrough in labor relations since the cat-o'-nine-tails!" because ha ha ha capitalist hell world. Anyway they steal Homer's brain for the thing, and what should be a violent dissection of his brain becomes utterly comedic and yet not lacking at all in grotesqueness. The top of his head rolls off like a ball once it's cut off, and Mr. Burns severs the spinal cord and puts the thing on his head, with the immortal line "LOOK AT ME, I'M DAVY CROCKETT!". Of course the plan for unfettered capitalism is ruined because Homer is the laziest thing alive, even in a robot body, and we get a big twist of Mr. Burns grafting his head onto Homer's, ha ha ha special end. Yeah. It's fine. A few good jokes, a general fun time. I honestly don't have any more to say. Only one day left, and then we're free. See you tomorrow for spooky times.
Ah, good times. I tend to forget which shorts go with which year, so looking back really helps put the series's history in perspective.
ReplyDeleteThe monkey's paw is probably the best parody, since it's only tangentially a parody. The Homer-in-the-Box is more line-by-line retelling, without the panache that made Poe's The Raven work.