Episode 4 - Treehouse of Horror XXI
23 February 2012
Synopsis: "War and Pieces" sees Bart and Milhouse unleash old board games on Springfield after opening a Jumanji-like board game. "Master and Cadaver" sees Homer and Marge's cruise interrupted by a castaway (Hugh Laurie). "Tweenlight" sees Lisa fall for pretty boy vampire Edmund (Daniel Radcliffe).
The Good: Only the Twilight parody had anything good in it. I liked Homer listing off things he wasn't allowed to say to his vampire guests "Don't serve Garlick. Don't stab your guest in the heart with a wooden stake. Don't ask him if he knows Frankenstein. It's racist somehow!" His best line though was when he threatened Edmund with a cross: "Pretty ironic, a cross being used to kill someone." Sadly that was a lone moment of wit amongst a sea of garbage.
The Bad: The writers have forgotten how to tell any kind of story and the Halloween episodes are no exception. The opening story made literally no sense. Bart and Milhouse play "Satan's Pathway" (a Jumanji parody) which promptly brings to life all of the other board games. The story is such a mess because some of the games terrorise the residents of Springfield, while others incorporate people within their structures and some characters simply participate in the life size games. This mess of ideas means there is no plot, it's just a random collection of ideas. Milhouse is even killed during his escape with Bart and Bart doesn't care. Then Lisa suggests the obvious plot from Jumanji where the only way to end the madness is to finish the game. So Bart finishes Mouse Trap instead and that ends things! It makes no sense and is an utter indulgence for writers who think that coming up with an idea is enough justification to put it on air.
The next story sees Marge and Homer suspect Hugh Laurie's castaway of murder so they try to kill him. There's literally nothing more to the story than that and then Homer brutally murders all the living witnesses to his crimes. There's practically no story just a bunch of humourless killings.
Finally the Twilight\vampire parody was as lazy as can be. The best satire the writers can come up with is having Edmund rescue Lisa from a school bus crash (as in the first Twilight movie) and then have a bunch of other cars all rush in to get stopped too. Hilarious. When Edmund's father turns out to be old fashioned Dracula the plot loses all satire and just becomes an excuse for a string of bad (and some good) jokes about vampires in general.
Best Joke: Milhouse looks set to turn into a were wolf (the other supernatural half of the Twilght stories) and transforms instead into an effeminate looking poodle.
The Bottom Line: The Halloween episodes used to be so fun because they allowed a relaxation of the usual storytelling rules. But now that those rules don't really exist the Halloween stories are just collections of ideas. The list of alternate board game titles (adapted versions of original games e.g. "Ravenous Ravenous Rhinos") which Bart and Milhouse reeled off are a perfect example. The writers probably had a lot of fun coming up with those titles but they aren't funny to people hearing them in a quick list like that. There is no context to make that a funny joke. They just don't understand the job they are supposed to be doing anymore.
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