Call me old fashioned but I expect comedy to be funny. The Simpsons failed to deliver.
Marc
The Homer-as-Blob segment was titled “Married to the Blob”, which was lifted direct from Mad magazine (back in the 90s, when “Married to the Mob” and the remake of “The Blob” were new movies). Homage or theft?
I thought the Krusty on HD was frickin hilarious… My wife especially loved it because her biggest complaint with TV these days is you can see everone’s defectcts pores and, in teh case of men stubble.
I had a few laughs. I love the gross out stuff. Favorite line:
“I’ll need a shoebox full of blow to get through this dreck!”
This one pretty much fell flat for me. Though I don’t know how much of it was the show’s fault, and how much was because the show was spoiled by FOX’s incessant promo-ing of it throughout the month of October.
I was pretty annoyed by the political message on the Simpsons. I watch cartoons to be enterained, not to be told what I should think about the war. I don’t recall any other episode that was so political. I hope this isn’t the start of a trend.
On a different note, I loved Chief Wiggums line about being Jared from Subway. “I’m only a little overweight and sexually ambiguous.”
I thought the ending was one of the most fantastic things I’ve seen on the Simpsons in a long time. It’s a Halloween episode, so it’s supposed to be “scary.” (Yes, I know the Simpsons TOH is usually not scary, but the concept of Halloween itself is supposed to be, dig?) And what is scarier than an unneccessary war that’s destroyed the human race? The Simpsons writers totally turned the concept of the Halloween episode on its head in a Dr. Strangelove type way (I think the final song was from Strangelove) and made a powerful political statement (which one may not agree with, but they have their right to say it) as well. I was very impressed and surprised that the Simpsons did something so shocking, and did NOT follow it up with a dumb joke or undercut. You just get that final shot of the ruined Springfield, stark and spooky. Brilliant and I hope they keep on experimenting with things like this. Of course, just MHO. I also doubt that we’ll be seeing this one uncut on Fox again.
Everything else about the episode sucked though. But the last two minutes made it worth it.
After seeing the screener, was kind of surprised the original last line in the episode didn’t make it-- “This sure is a lot like Iraq will be.” I thought it was hilarious since the references leading up to it were hardly subtle. originally I thought they’d bowed to pressure from Fox (not so, apparently)-- then I saw the 100x more offensive episode of Family Guy that followed.
All in all, I thought it was a pretty great episode. They should just do Treehouse(s) of Horror from now on.
Which was from last year’s show.
I thought we were going to get to see the Movie trailer Sunday.
Personally, I’m glad they cut that line out. It would have made the allegory too obvious. There have been a number of good Simpsons gags over the past couple of years that have been ruined by an obvious kicker. There was one recent one in which Bart mentions something involving that he doesn’t have enough room for “Bart Junior.” He then reaches into his pants…and pulls out a frog. It would have been a good irony gag if it wasn’t for the next scene- a close-up of the frog, who croaks, subtitled “I thought he meant his penis.” Jokes shouldn’t be explained easily like that. The Simpsons is too smart for that.
That was a really, really great episode! I thought all three segments were funny. I especially liked mining the golem legend; they got good laughs out of an unusual, spooky subject matter. And the end was absolutely one for the ages. Gave me chills all over.
Yeah, it was a bit too obvious, thus not funny. 
Well, there was Sideshow Bob Roberts, in which the evil Sideshow Bob ran for mayor as a Republican.
That episode showed a meeting of the Republican Party in a Transylvania-style castle. The meeting included Montgomery Burns (of course), and Ranier Wolfcastle (McBain), and the crazy rich Texan, but also Dracula and FrankenReagan.
That show aired a month before the 1994 elections.
The song (used to perfection) in the episode was the Ink Spots’ lovely “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire”. The song at the end of Strangelove was Vera Lynn’s version of “We’ll Meet Again.”
I liked that they had the Golem (looking exactly like he did [url=“Latest Stills - IMDb”]back in 1920[/url), though the last segment was the only one that really worked.
:smack: Damn. Botched the coding.
If I can keep down Arby’s, I can keep down this!
Awww geez, now it’s come to this. The Simpsons is trying to be oh so serious and insightful. Give me a break.
Satire is great, and the Simpsons has always been a great source for it. But satire is funny and that’s why it can be entertaining even if you don’t agree with the message. But this was just two Martian invaders telling me that ummm, war is bad, and the Iraq war is bad, and ummm, it’s just like if Martians invaded and destroyed the world, and that’s bad… and not a damn joke anywhere. And was that somber fade out supposed to leave me stunned with the writers’ insightful commentary? Please…
I guess this was the first “very special episode” of the Simpsons.
Wasn’t there an episode where the entire family got thrown in jail for political reasons? Or am I imagining things?
Sort of. Bart accidentally mooned the flag, and the Simpsons ended up in jail as enemies of America.
Very political, much less blatant.
It was Bart-Mangled Banner.