Treehouse of Horror XVIII

"Treehouse of Horror XVIII" is the fifth episode of The Simpsons' nineteenth season and was first broadcast on November 4, 2007. In the eighteenth annual Treehouse of Horror episode, Bart finds Kodos in their garden shed, Marge and Homer are both assassins with the same mission, and Ned Flanders gains supernatural powers from God, which he uses to punish the kids. It was written by Marc Wilmore and directed by Chuck Sheetz.^[1]

1 Plot
2 Production
3 Cultural references
4 Reception
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Plot

[edit] Opening Segment

In the opening sequence, Marge talks about Halloween being "last week" and suddenly various logos pop up on the screen, including the mini logos for American Idol, Fox Sports, Prison Break, Cops, House and 24. Marge winds up killing several miniature characters that pop up from the logos and bakes them into meatloaf, which she serves to her family. When she cuts it, the other characters' body parts are shown to spell out the titles and opening credits.

[edit] E.T., Go Home

In a spoof of E.T., Marge tells Bart to get butane from their "butane shed" in the back yard and as he does so, he finds Kodos there. Kodos states his desire to return home and that he had come to Earth in peace, though he hints that he was really sent there to destroy mankind. Bart, however, is oblivious to this, and decides to help him return home. Lisa arrives and is happy with the alien in their home and decides to help Bart and Kodos obtain devices that he can use to contact his home planet, though this appears to be part of his diabolical plan. Homer discovers Kodos when the two accidentally share a shower, but he and Marge decide to let the kids help Kodos anyway, after Kodos hints it would be racist to turn him away. When NASA agents arrive at the Simpsons home, Homer distracts them while Bart sneaks Kodos out. However, when Kodos kills several agents along the way, Bart begins to think Kodos's intentions are not as friendly as he was led to believe. Finally, Kodos reveals that the devices he had the Simpsons collect were for a portal-generating device so that others of his planet can come to Earth and wipe out the human race and eat their heads. When the aliens (including Kang) invade, the rest of the Simpson family shows up, along with military. A brief war is waged, though this time Earth has the upper hand. When Bart is given the option to board a helicopter and shoot Kodos, Bart inexplicably decides to spare his life, though Homer shoots him instead. In the end, Earth emerges victorious and the world is saved. The Simpsons are invited to see Kodos's dissection, where they reflect that since Kodos was an evil-looking alien who turned out to be bad, it must be good to judge a book by its cover. It is revealed that Kodos is still very much alive, but he is smothered by Homer with a pillow.

[edit] Mr. and Mrs. Simpson

In a spoof of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Homer and Marge appear to attend marriage counseling and recount a brief moment of tension between them. In the flashback, when arriving home, Homer locks himself in the bathroom and communicates on a hidden flat screen television, where it is revealed Homer is an assassin assigned to eliminate news reporter, Kent Brockman, by order of Homer's boss, Mr. Burns. Before he leaves, he tells Marge he will be coming home late from midnight monkey madness; Marge also states that she is busy turning over wheelbarrows, making up an equally farfetched excuse. When Homer prepares to shoot Brockman at his rooftop party from a faraway platform, a woman with large blonde hair (who Homer dubs "the Mystery Skank") however, stabs Brockman in the chest, killing him instead. After Homer attempts to repeatedly shoot the woman (ending up with several civilian deaths), he manages to shoot the wig off her head, revealing it is Marge, also an assassin. Arriving home, the two avoid each other's eyes, and Marge makes an excuse for the blonde wig. Not long after, the two attempt to kill one another with various weapons such as grenades, rifles, and a minigun, all the while arguing why the other was an assassin. After killing Chief Wiggum with a crossbow, the two realize they are more attracted with one another when they kill someone together. For this, they soon begin having sex over Chief Wiggum's body and, back to where the episode started, they both realized that they did not need any marriage counseling, but to kill people together. In the end, it turns out that they were not talking to a marriage counselor, but to Principal Skinner regarding Bart's misbehavior on the school bus. Both Homer and Marge turn a blind eye to Bart's misbehavior and simultaneously shoot Skinner instead.

[edit] Heck House

On Halloween night, Bart, Lisa, Milhouse and Nelson become frustrated by how some of the locals refuse to give them candy. Deciding to honor the true meaning of "trick-or-treat," they begin to pull pranks on everyone. Soon, however, their pranks turn into vandalism and everyone begins to complain. Ned Flanders then offers his services to teach them a lesson and fashions the church into a "heck house." This attracts their attention and they decide to give it a try. Ned tries to simulate what could happen to them for their sins through the use of crude roleplaying, but they scoff at his attempts. Ned then turns to God to give him the power to scare them straight and subsequently transforms into the Devil, sending the kids to Hell. There he brings up an enormous crystal ball revealing Springfield to be full of the Seven Deadly Sins, and shows them simulations of how they may suffer; the first clip shows Homer suffering through gluttony, where he transforms into pasta; the second shows Groundskeeper Willie beating up his tractor in wrath, only for his tractor to transform and cut his head off; the third has Doctor Hibbert with a bumper sticker that brags about his son in pride, where he becomes crushed in between his car and a van; the fourth has Homer suffering sloth, where he is chopped up by a hammock, despite the fact that he had been killed already "by that magic spaghetti"; lust, greed, and envy had Moe in lust for a stripper, greed for all her money, and envy "for the crotchless" after he gets kicked in the groin by the stripper. Then, he shows Krusty getting his head grinded for stealing jokes, Apu getting chased by devils simply for not being Christian, Mr. Burns as a frog, and the school bullies as a Cerberus in Hell. The kids resolve to change their ways, and Ned returns them back to the surface, reverting back to his original form. The episode ends with Ned telling the viewer that they will go to Hell for watching FOX, its affiliates and reading The Wall Street Journal.

[edit] Production

On July 27, 2007, creator Matt Groening and the producers attended a panel which encompassed the topics of both The Simpsons Movie, and the nineteenth season. The panel revealed that Peter Griffin from Family Guy would be one of the miniature characters featured in the opening sequence, although the scene was deleted.^[2]

[edit] Cultural references

The segment "E.T., Go Home," parodies the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, with Bart in the role of Eliott and Kodos as E.T.^[3] The "Mr. and Mrs. Simpson" segment is a parody of the 2005 film Mr. and Mrs. Smith.^[3] In the final segment, "Heck House", Groundskeeper Willie's tractor transforms into a robot and kills him, parodying Transformers.^[3] The song played when Bart, Nelson, Millhouse and Lisa are pulling pranks is Blitzkrieg Bop by The Ramones.

[edit] Reception

In the USA, the episode averaged 11.7 million viewers and a 5.7 overnight Nielsen Rating and a 13 percent audience share, making it the highest rated episode of the season.^[4] Combined with a new episode of Family Guy, it tied for first in the 8:00 PM hour with the NFL Pregame show on NBC. Despite this, the FOX Network finished the night fourth overall in ratings.^[5]

Robert Canning of IGN called the opening segment, E.T. Go Home, "the weakest segment because it just wasn't really all that funny", and thought the end of the segment was the weakest part of the episode, writing "watching the military decimate the aliens and then seeing Homer use a pillow to suffocate Kodos at the end was really off-putting. The deaths weren't funny, just uncomfortable." Canning, however, described the final two segments, as well as the opening as being solid segments. He gave the overall episode a rating of 7.4/10.^[3]