("The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXVI." Screen Shot, Property of Matt Groaning and Fox.)
Show: The Simpsons.
Season: 27.
Episode: 5, “The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXVI.”
Directed by: Steven Dean Moore and John Kricfalusi (Couch Gag).
Released: 2015.
Running time: 22 min.
This is Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXVI written by Joel. H. Cohen, featuring a special Couch Gag and 3 segments: “Wanted Dead: The Alive”, “Homerzilla,” and “Telepaths of Glory.”
After last year’s interesting Treehouse of Horror, I had been expecting something along similar lines, but it seems that…well, the best I can say about this episode was ‘Meh.’
To explain what I mean, lets break it down segment by segment.
Couch Gag:
The opening was perhaps the better part of the episode, a nice little homage to The Ren and Stimpy Show style of animation which was fittingly enough directed by Michael John Kricfalusi, creator of The Ren and Stimpy Show. It utilizes a bit of the gross-out humour without going overboard, and the poke at Matt Groaning was entertaining with a fun colour pallet and great character designs.
Segment 1: Wanted Dead: Then Alive:
This one had the most coherent plot out of the three, and it was interesting to see the various ways that Bob utilized his murderous creativity. Kelsey Grammer did an excellent job as usual in his voice work of Bob.
The hang up with this segment was that the death was somewhat expected, both as a Halloween episode, and through the promotions. It was hard to get invested with the gag when you know the punch line, and said punch line was hammered out throughout the entire time allotment. I would have liked to see a segment surrounding sideshow bob in a Halloween episode that didn’t use the tired out him trying to kill Bart, like a “Sideshow Bob vrs. The Evilish Dead” or something, it would have functioned as a segment so much better, and have been much more creative because Bob is an excellent character that shouldn’t be wasted in recycling.
Segment 2: Homerzilla:
The visuals were well utilized, I liked the return to spoofing an old Black and white classic, but then it quickly degenerated into spoofing the franchise also as a remake though Homer as Godzilla was an obvious, though good choice, and his design and depiction was at least interesting.
It would have benefited it if had chosen one of them, say the original material to spoof and stuck with that. It would have been a nice nod to some classic Godzilla and an earlier Treehouse of Horror episode.
This segment suffered, ironically enough, the same amount of disappointment felt on viewing the 1998 Godzilla.
Segment 3: Telepaths of Glory:
Milhouse going mad with power in a Chronicles spoof was vaguely interesting. I liked the poke at the cinematic style and story line from the film, and some of the creative visuals were interesting from the times when Milhouse abused his power. But they didn’t really do much else with it.
Milhouse on a power high could have been taken a lot further, such as going on a creative power pumped rampage through out Springfield or even the world. They didn’t do much with the prime opportunity to actually have everything coming up Milhouse.
Over all the episode had some strong points in some of the visuals, characterizations, the opening and a coherent plot moment here and there, but in the end they didn’t punch the potential that they gave themselves in the premise of the segments, leaving one somewhat dissatisfied with the end results.
The Couch Gag: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB03kM8kbHs
Original post: https://screensquinty.wordpress.com/2015/10/26/the-simpsons-treehouse-of-horror-xxvi-a-review/
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