About Christmas TV History

Thursday, October 25, 2012

The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Crossovers

The Simpsons couch gag from Treehouse of Horror X

Throughout the month of October, I'm blogging about horror movies and Halloween and Christmas crossover entertainments.  This is all a part of a series entitled Countdown to Halloween which is a group of participating blogs also covering horror and Halloween-appropriate content throughout the month of October.  Please check out the other blogs participating by clicking on this link.

The Simpsons' annual Halloween episode "Treehouse of Horror" is a must-see tradition in my house.  Did you know that there are two Halloween/Christmas and New Year's crossover episodes?

The 1999 Halloween episode entitled "Treehouse of Horror X," includes a segment that takes place on New Year’s Eve.  In the third segment entitled “Life’s A Glitch, Then You Die,” the Simpson family suffers the consequences of the computer age on January 1st, 2000 when Homer’s computer at the nuclear power plant suffers a Y2k dysfunction, shutting down the world’s computers.  All the world’s computers register the date as 1900 and anything with a computer chip goes on a dysfunctional deadly attack! 

The family learns of Operation: Exodus and heads for the rocket to make their escape from the doomed planet Earth.  Anyone else reminded of the Twilight Zone episode "Third From the Sun?"

While the other Springfield residents are busy looting, the Simpsons seek their escape from planet Earth on rocket ships.  Lisa and Marge are able to join the best and brightest on Earth headed for a new civilization on Mars--while Homer and Bart join the D-list of survivors (think Tom Arnold, Pauly Shore, Ross Perot, Tonya Harding, Rev. Al Sharpton and Rosie O'Donnell) on a rocket headed for the sun.

A New Year's institution, Dick Clark appears in this Y2k horror story.
This New Year’s episode includes the voice of Dick Clark as himself hosting his New Year’s TV special, and the voice of Tom Arnold as one of the escapees on Homer and Bart’s rocket.  This episode's story seems quite dated, however it captures the hysteria of the anticipation of the year 2000.  The final joke is that Homer and Bart would prefer to eject from their rocketship and die a gory death in outer space rather than continue their journey surrounded by losers.

Ejected from the rocket, Homer and Bart begin to distort before exploding in outer space. 

The 2008 Halloween episode entitled "Treehouse of Horror XIX," includes a segment that takes place on Christmas.  In the first segment “Untitled Robot Parody,” Bart buys Lisa a Christmas present from a discount store.  The Malibu Stacey toy automobile turns out to be an alien robot involved in an intergalactic battle with other robots (a.k.a. Transformers) and all the electronics in Springfield begin to wage war amongst themselves and destroy the town. 

The Simpsons are caught in an intergalactic robot war!

Marge successfully pleads with the transformed alien robots to end their war, however the robots put their efforts into enslaving the humans of Springfield in a life-size foosball game.  This segment is overshadowed by a far superior segment in the same episode entitled "It's the Grand Pumpkin, Milhouse," a fun parody of the animated TV special It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Are you familiar with these segments from past "Treehouse of Horror" Halloween episodes? 

1 comment:

  1. Vaguely remember these, definitely recall the Y2K one more than the Transformers. Fun stuff!

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