The Simpsons: "Treehouse Of Horror XIX"

Premiered November 2, 2008.

"I believe in the Grand Pumpkin, almighty gourd, who was crustified over Pontius pie plate and ascended into oven. He will come again to judge the filling and the bread."

-Milhouse Van Houten

This special Halloween episode opens on Election Day of 2008.  Homer Simpson (Dan Castellaneta) goes into a voting booth with a touch-screen and tries to vote for Barack Obama.  However, the machine registers it as a vote for John McCain.  Homer presses Obama's name several more times, but the machine keeps counting votes for McCain.  Suddenly, Homer is sucked into the voting machine...

...it kills him and spits out his mangled corpse.

Like earlier Simpsons Halloween episodes, "Treehouse Of Horror XIX" features three short segments, beginning with:

"Untitled Robot Parody": 

Bart Simpson (Nancy Cartwright) visits a toy store in search of a Christmas gift for his sister Lisa (Yeardley Smith).  When a toy truck flashes its headlights at Bart...

...he tells it that girls don't like trucks.  When his back is turned, the truck transforms into a pink Malibu Stacy Convertible and Bart knows he's found the perfect gift for Lisa. 

On Christmas morning, Lisa is very excited and grateful when she receives the the car.  

However, the Simpsons soon discover that the convertible is actually an alien robot, which transforms all of the Simpsons' electronic household gadgets into killing machines!  Springfield becomes the epicenter of a war between two robot armies! 

"How to Get Ahead in Dead-Vertising":

Marge and Homer take their youngest daughter Maggie to a new daycare center.  When she's nervous about her new surroundings, her parents encourage Maggie to look at the daycare's mural, which features Maggie's favorite TV personality Krusty The Clown (Castellaneta).  

Unfortunately, Krusty himself shows up and orders the mural to be sandblasted since he never authorized its construction, which makes Maggie cry.  Homer visits Krusty to confront the clown about the mural and accidentally knocks Krusty into a wood chipper, killing him. 

After this, an advertising agency gets Homer to kill other celebrities so they can use their likenesses to promote their products.  Homer does what they want and murders several celebrities.  

In Celebrity Heaven, Homer's victims decide to visit Earth (and Springfield) to take revenge on companies for exploiting their images. 

"It's The Grand Pumpkin, Milhouse":

When every kid in Springfield is preparing to go trick or treating, Milhouse Van Houten (Pamela Hayden) announces that he plans to spend Halloween in a pumpkin patch waiting for the arrival of the Grand Pumpkin.  Milhouse tells Lisa that the Grand Pumpkin is a giant pumpkin that appears in pumpkin patches and brings candy to all children who believe in him.  Bart scoffs at this and says he made up the Grand Pumpkin just to mess with Milhouse.  

When Halloween Night arrives, Milhouse waits in the pumpkin patch while the other kids go trick-or-treating.  Lisa decides to wait for the Grand Pumpkin with Milhouse.  

Eventually, she gives up and departs for the school Halloween dance.  Milhouse cries for the Grand Pumpkin to show himself and his "childlike belief" turns a pumpkin into the Grand Pumpkin (Hank Azaria).  However, when Grand Pumpkin learns that humans carve pumpkins for jack o'lanterns and pumpkin bread, he goes on a killing spree!  It seems that Springfield is doomed!  However, hope arrives in the form of another holiday symbol...Tom Turkey (Azaria)!

J.A. Morris says:

This is a great Halloween episode.  My favorite editions of "Treehouse Of Horror" are the ones that have "literal" connections to Halloween.  I mention that because some "Treehouse" epeisodes are just horror stories that don't mention actually All Hallows' Eve or trick-or-treating.  "It's The Grand Pumpkin, Milhouse" is the strongest segment.  

I'm a huge fan of Peanuts and "Grand Pumpkin" pokes fun at both It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and A Charlie Brown Christmas.  Milhouse, like Linus, is often his own worst enemy, so it's appropriate that he's the one spends Halloween waiting in the pumpkin patch.  "Grand Pumpkin" is also more directly connected to Halloween than the other two segments.  Kang and Kodos, who regularly appear in Simpsons Halloween episodes, also make a cameo appearance at the Halloween dance.

"Untitled Robot Parody," which pokes fun at the Transformers franchise, is also good.  It takes place during Christmas, so it's nice to get two holidays featured in one episode, something that rarely happens.  

I thought "How To Get Ahead In Dead-Vertising" was the weakest part, but only because it's not particularly related to Halloween, other than the murders Homer commits for the advertising likenesses.  Its homage/parody of Mad Men's opening montage is great.

Some viewers might watch "Treehouse Of Horror XIX" and think it's dated because it contains references to the 2008 election and Mad Men.  I think these references make this episode a nice snapshot of the pop culture of 2008.  Speaking of which, Homer kills Prince in "Dead-Vertising" and Rip Taylor is part of the "posse" that comes down from Celebrity Heaven.  Prince and Taylor are sadly both now deceased in real life. 

"Treehouse Of Horror XIX" is very funny and should be appreciated by all fans of All Hallows' Eve programming.  The inclusion of Christmas and Thanksgiving elements makes it even more enjoyable.

J.A. Morris's rating: 

4 jack o'lanterns!

RigbyMel says: 

I look forward to The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror anthology episodes every Halloween season.   Anthologies tend to be hit-or-miss, but generally Treehouse of Horror delivers enough spooky seasonal goodness and humor to be satisfying.  Overall "Treehouse of Horror XIX" works pretty well. 

That being said, as J.A. Morris mentions above,  I think the Mad Men parody portion of Treehouse XIX is the weakest link in this episode.   It's just not that funny, and could have made MUCH better use of its source material -  although some of the dead celebrity ads are memorably crass.  

The best bits of it are the homage to the title sequence to Mad Men and the random "dead celebrity" cameos, including an irate John Lennon astride a Yellow Submarine, but overall it just doesn't quite come into focus.  

Simpsonized John Lennon with Bob Denver (aka Gilligan) and Babe Ruth in the background

The satire of the Transformers movies in "Untitled Robot Parody" is much sharper -- skewering holiday commercialism and last minute gift purchases via alien robot battle mayhem.  We also get some amusingly naughty sight gags like Homer and Ned Flanders being trapped in ... interesting positions within their transformed cars.  

"It's the Grand Pumpkin, Milhouse" is most definitely the highlight of this installment,  partly because of the loving homages to the original Peanuts specials from 1960s that it riffs on.  There are some particularly clever bits  including a cameo appearance of Santa's Little Helper in Snoopy v. Red Baron mode, Marge keeps making use of a muted trombone a la the speech of adults in the original specials and the dance scene from A Charlie Brown Christmas recreated with Simpsons characters...and an iPod. 

Santa's Little Helper as Snoopy! 

The Simpsons is certainly not the first TV show to play with the notion of what might happen should the Great... errr...Grand Pumpkin actually show up, but the Grand Pumpkin's outrage at learning that his kind are sliced and carved and cooked is both hilarious and also understandable.  

I also appreciated that Thanksgiving gets mashed up into the Grand Pumpkin stew when Tom Turkey is called upon for assistance! 

"Treehouse of Horror XIX" is not my favorite Simpsons Halloween episode,  but "It's The Grand Pumpkin, Milhouse" is a segment that I do enjoy revisiting seasonally. 

RigbyMel's rating:

.5

2 and a half jack o'lanterns.