Rednecks and Broomsticks (S21, E07-448)

Snowball isn't gonna deal with this freaky nonsense.

Plot Summary
The Simpsons drive home from a ski resort.  Bart, Lisa and Maggie try to pass the time on the very long drive by playing a knock-off of the once-notable Bop It game.  This goes on for hours, and eventually Homer has enough, grabbing the contraption and stomping it right under his seat.  Predictably, pieces of the toy get under the brake pedal, while at the same time the distracted Homer is unaware he's driving in the wrong lane.  He is forced to drive off the road, and after a rocky ride, the car eventually winds up in the middle of a frozen lake that has since cracked open, and the family as a whole falls unconscious.

Cletus is able to rescue them and bring them back to health.  To further this, Cletus shows Homer a moonshine operation he has in the backyard, then is amazed when Homer is able to accurately detail what is inside the booze.  Cletus now insists he take Homer around the area and have him taste other moonshine.  Meanwhile, Lisa accidentally stumbles upon three girls who refer to themselves as Wiccans, some code word for witches.  Ever the skeptic, Lisa doubts they'd be able to cast a spell to get Lisa out of the pipe cleaner project due the next day, but to her surprise Ms. Hoover suddenly gets sick and Lisa is saved.  Lisa returns to the women to learn more, and becomes interested when she learns they care about nature as well.  Lisa starts practicing being a Wiccan in her room, which the ever cautious Ned Flanders spies, calling a hotline to take care of the problem.

Back in the woods, Homer and some other redneck are having some kind of moonshine tasting competition, but they hear police coming and everyone is forced to dump their booze.  Meanwhile, nearby, Lisa is about to be initiated by the women when the police stop them, having arrived not for the moonshiners but for the Wiccans, who are arrested for witchcraft.  Just before the trial, one of the Wiccans, angry over the predicament, curses the town to become blind.  Crazily enough, half the town does go blind, causing some panic.  Despite that, Judge Snyder believes this case to be too flimsy even by flimsy standards, and dismisses the case.  However, Moe leads a mob that capture the witches and hold an old fashioned witch trial of their own.

Going back out to the woods, the mob, now with the mayor's backing, acquire an old device that is meant to dunk the accused in the water, with the surviving being proven to be a witch.  Before the women are forced to the machine, Lisa arrives to tell them what really happened: when the rednecks ditched their moonshine when they thought the police were arriving, a lot of it ended up in the river, which flows into the town's reservoir.  Therefore, people who drank from there after the fact ended up temporarily blind from the moonshine.  Homer tastes the water in the river to confirm it, and the women are set free.  Moe tries to get the mob to get angry about something else, only succeeding in getting them mad at him.  Still, Lisa is glad to open her mind to a new set of beliefs, and Homer finds a new way to have fun with his redneck buddies by playing with the witch torturing machine.

Quick Review
I probably should've expected this.  For the first time since Season 14, there was a string of three episodes where two of those three scored an eight or higher.  There was no way that string of quality could continue in this era of Simpsons, and sure enough this clunker comes along to bring that streak to a crashing halt.

Homer's story with Cletus had minor potential and I suppose it was reached despite the fact that it fizzled out toward the episode's end.  The Wiccan story which ends up becoming the episode's main plot was just boring, mostly unfunny and at times painful to watch.  If it wasn't for the moonshine subplot this could've been one of the worst episodes of the series just from how bland it was.

Final Score: 6.0

Treehouse of Horror VIII (S09, E04-182)

Well clearly Marge isn't the same person after the nuclear bomb.  Those eyes...

Plot Summary
A FOX censor attempts to tell the audience that he has done such a fine job censoring the Halloween special, its got a TV rating of 'G'.  However, the rating then stabs the censor repeatedly, going up to PG, then 14, MA, 21 and finally '666'.

The HΩmega Man
After hearing that Mayor Quimby not only made a frog joke at the expense of the French, but won't let down from it, the Simpson family worries that a war could break out.  While Homer goes to check out some bomb shelters, the French decide to retaliate, by nuking the hell out of Springfield of course!  Having unwittingly enclosed himself in a bomb shelter, Homer spared himself from the blast, though he is initially unaware that everyone else in town are nothing more than charred skeletons.  He soon does find out, though, and though saddened that he has lost his family, Homer regroups and knows that, as the last man in town, he can do whatever he wants.

Homer's fun spree winds up at the church, where he's enjoying himself in one way or another.  Just then, he is met by cloaked individuals.  Turns out, these people didn't die in the nuclear blast, rather, they just horribly mutated, gaining a taste for human flesh.  They chase after Homer, who makes a mad dash for home.  There, he finds his family is both alive and unmutated, as the house has so many coats of lead paint on it, it become a bomb shelter of its own.  The mutants are touched by the family reuniting, and ask the Simpson family to help them build a new utopia.  However, Marge knows better than to trust filthy mutants, and she and the kids reveal shotguns they've been holding, and shoot the mutants away.  Homer loves his family even more, and they all go out to grab some cars.
Individual Score: +1.7

Fly vs Fly
Professor Frink is holding a yard sale which the Simpson family goes to.  Homer becomes interested in a matter transporter, and is able to buy it off Frink for 35 cents, despite Frink's warning of possible catastrophe.  Still, Homer uses it to make his life even lazier.  Despite his irresponsible use of the machine, Homer refuses to let Bart have a crack at it.  Early one morning, Bart tries to see if he can use it to have the cat rob a bank, but the dog accidentally goes in with the cat at the same time.  The matter transporter can't handle it, and the two come back with the cat's head as the dog's butt, and the dog's butt as the cat's head.  A fly lands on Bart's hand, and he realizes that if he goes in with the fly, he'll become some kind of fly-like superhero.  As such, he goes in with no hesitation.  However, the malfunction only puts his head on the fly's body.  Still, he goes out of the house to cause some mayhem.  Left in the transporter, and found by the family, is Bart's body with the fly's head.

The family quickly adapts to the new situation, and as Bart returns he gets offended that the fly has essentially taken his role.  He tries to get somebody's attention, but is chased away by the fly.  That night, Bart sneaks into Lisa's room, using her saxophone to become audible to her.  He tells her what happened, and while she promises to help, she's attacked by the fly.  Chased into the kitchen, Bart tries to distract the fly, but the fly grabs and eats Bart.  Lisa takes the momentary distraction to push the fly back into the matter transporter, which unscrambles the fly and Bart back to their original forms.  Homer realizes what should've been done a long time ago, grabs an axe, and chases after Bart for messing with his transporter.
Individual Score: +1.5

Easy Bake Coven
We go back to Springfield circa 1649, where a witch hunting craze is amuck.  After several women are burned to the stake, another round of accusations occur.  Marge tries to stop the accusations, but is then accused of being a witch herself.  She undergoes a test where she's given a broom then pushed off a cliff.  Sure enough, it turns out Marge was a witch after all, and after pulling off some magic, flies off to a distant cave where her two witch sisters Patty and Selma reside.

Plotting what to do, they spy on ye olde Flanders home, where they hope the witches don't come to eat their children.  Finding children to be a rather tasty treat, they fly off.  They reach the Flanders' home, and as they bag up Rod and Todd, Maude desperately tries to offer them gingerbread men instead of the boys.  The witches like the gingerbread men, and agree to not eat the children.  They go around other houses and scare people into giving them non-children treats and find they enjoy this activity and hope to do it again soon.  One year later, Halloween is an annual tradition, as traditional as witch hunting.
Individual Score: +1.0

Quick Review
For Treehouse of Horror VII, a showing I felt was less than expected, I pondered if I had seen the last really great Treehouse of Horror with number V (VI wasn't much better than VII, really).  As it turns out, I was mistaken.  The eighth Halloween installment turned out to be quite excellent.  The first two segments in particular were superb and though I didn't find the witch story as funny, I still appreciated what it tried to do.  So, perhaps number VIII will be the last truly great Treehouse of Horror.

Final Score: 9.4