Monday, August 19, 2013

Treehouse of Horror XXII (S23, E03-489)

Even in movie parodies Bart gets pushed around by his girlfriends.
Plot Summary
In the opening act, the kids are forced to relinquish their Halloween candy to Marge, who plans on giving it to the troops.  For some reason, she tasks Homer to do this and, of course, Homer decides to eat the candy himself.  He goes to a faraway rocky area to do so, but trips and falls, his right arm crushed under a rock and his left unable to reach the bag of candy.  With help 20 minutes away, Homer can't wait that long and chomps off his arm (eventually), but learns that that bag is filled only with vegetables - Bart had made the switch at an earlier point and now the kids are enjoying both their candy and their ruse against Homer.

The Diving Bell and the Butterball
Homer awakes one day to learn he's fully paralyzed - he can't even speak.  He recalls that the previous day he was setting up Halloween decorations when he was bit by a rather poisonous spider, quickly paralyzing him.  Thankfully for Homer, Marge is still as faithful to him as ever.  A short time later, Lisa is boring him with a story, and Homer tries desperately to get her to stop.  Eventually he does do something: pass gas.  Lisa realizes that Homer can do this at will, and thus his flatulence can be used as communication.  Using a system where Homer releases when Lisa reaches a certain point in her alphabet recitation, Lisa helps Homer write a letter to Marge thanking her for her love and dedication.  After also writing a popular book, Homer is content with his new life... until a radioactive spider comes down and bites him too.  Homer gains the powers of a spider, but remains paralyzed.  Even so, he becomes a skilled crimefighter who still has the greatest blessing: Marge's love.
Individual Score: +0.3

Dial D for Diddily
Flanders narrates a tale where he sees Springfield as not quite perfect and though he's as nice as ever, he starts receiving messages from God to kill Springfield's lesser men.  Although Flanders is happy to be helping God at first, he starts questioning orders once God tells him to kill Patty and Selma.  It turns out the orders are coming from Homer, who rigged the bible Ned always carries around with a radio which he talks into and is using Ned to kill Homer's enemies.  After Ned kills Patty and Selma, Homer tries to give him an even odder target to kill.  That, combined with Bart blowing Homer's cover, and Ned figures out the truth.  Having killed so many, Ned figures he has nothing left to lose and tries to kill Homer.  Homer retorts that there's no such thing as hell or God anyway, and burns Ned's bible to prove the point.  God - the real one - intervenes, and chokes Homer to death for his defiance.  Marge tries to get God to just put things back to normal, but God refuses, insisting the 'big man downstairs' wouldn't go for that.  Just then, the devil along with his mistress - Maude - appear to confirm as such, much to Ned's dismay.
Individual Score: +0.6

In the Na'vi
In an obviously late parody of Avatar, Chalmers gives orders to his military group tasked with acquiring a substance known as hilarium, needed by comedians because their material is otherwise not funny at all.  The military has found it on the planet Rigel VII, but to exact its location, several soldiers have their consciouses transplanted into Rigelian constructs - avatars - and sent to the planet to mingle with its inhabitants.  As the mission demands utter loyalty, Chalmers decides that the resentful guy in the wheelchair - Bart - is an excellent candidate for the task.

Bart tags along with Milhouse as the two have difficulty with the planet's lifeforms.  Just then, a female Rigelian swoops in to help, and she quickly becomes infatuated with Bart.  Bart is unwilling of course, but the female quickly shows Bart what Rigelian sex is like, and Bart likes what he feels.  As Bart stumbles over keeping his mission secret, it turns out he got the female pregnant.  Village leaders Kang and Kodos congratulate Bart on his fertilization and take him to the Rigelian village.  They reveal that the female will now require plenty of hilarium for her childbirth, and that the hilarium is the excretion of the Rigelian queen.  Milhouse sends in the location to the military though Bart tries to stop him, and the military storms in to grab it.  The planet's wildlife is basically animals who look like and fight like military weaponry, and quickly the wildlife defeats the military while Bart is able to get Chalmers to defeat himself.  In the aftermath, the Rigelians reveals they would've just given the hilarium if asked
Individual Score: +0.1

Quick Review
What a shame.  Looking at the scores for previous Halloween installments, this ends up as the lowest rated Treehouse of Horror thus far.  There wasn't anything really Halloween-related in the bits besides the opening sequence.  The first story was just Homer dealing with full paralysis that for some reason included a bit with him as paralyzed Spider-Man to conclude it, that was just weird.  The second story was the best of the three, though the bit at the end with the devil and Maude was unnecessary.  The third story, an Avatar parody that's years too late, wasn't very funny either.  Nothing really worked out this time around, and it makes for a terrible episode.

Final Score: 6.2

No comments:

Post a Comment