I find it hard to believe its already been twenty-five years since the Simpsons premiered their first (in)famous Treehouse of Horror episode.  This year, the writers bring a few interesting things to the table…

What do you mean it’s no longer relevant to review new Simpson’s episodes! Has Fox canceled the Simpsons yet? No? Then someone must still be watching it. (And we all know how cancel-happy Fox is.)  Is it not Halloween season? And are the Treehouse of Horror episodes not some of the most consistently funny episodes in the Simpsons repertoire? Not to mention, I recall quite a number of friends getting quite pumped about FX marathoning every single episode ever last August.  Admit it, we still need the Simpsons.  We still long for the glory days of yore when we stopped what we were doing every Sunday evening to tune into Fox for pants-peeingly good times. Well, my good people, we will never know if the old Simpsons charm has resurfaced without watching new episodes from time to time.

So without further adieu, here I bring you The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXV.  Like its predecessors, Treehouse of Horror has a funny cold-opening followed by three short segments.  Once again, the opening is hosted by our favorite world conquering aliens, Kang and Kodos.  They promise Treehouse of horror as a star studded event…meaning the logo is composed of dead celebrities studded to a wall.  I hate to admit it, but I’m kind of a morbid person who fancies this type of humor.

The first segment, “School is Hell”, is about Bart and Lisa accidentally getting sucked into Hell while at school….only to find out Hell has its own school that they are forced to attend.  Bart finds out he is far more gifted in Hell school than he is at regular school, and once he finds a portal back to the mortal world, begs Marge and Homer to attend on a permanent basis.  I did appreciate this segment for not using any popular films as its basis and coming up with an original story based on a classic horror theme. However, I still feel like it was a combination of a few themes already seen in past Treehouse of Horrors, namely the Bart and Lisa cope at a magical school theme (XII’s “Wiz Kids”) and the Simpsons experience Hell theme (IV’s “The Devil and Homer Simpson.) All in all, it was a good segment with some decent chuckles, but nothing revolutionary.

The second segment, “A Clockwork Yellow”, was the reason why I made sure to watch this episode.  Basing its plot around A Clockwork Orange, the titular Alex Delarge character is played by Moe, with his droogs being represented by Homer, Lenny and Carl. While it starts fairly similar to the original film’s plot, the segment later rails off into a loving homage to other Kubrick film tropes including Eyes Wide Shut, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Barry Lyndon, (excluding The Shining as it was already beautifully represented years ago.) While this segment was one of many Simpsons parodies, I have absolutely no complaint about it.  Kubrick will always be hands down my favorite director and I appreciate anything that draws attention to his brilliance.  It even poked lovingly fun at Kubrick himself and his frustrating tendency towards perfectionism. Needless to say, I loved this segment.

The last segment, “The Others” was the biggest surprise of this episode.  It starts out that the Simpsons are yet again haunted by ghosts.  However it turns out that the ghosts are the “ghosts” of their past selves…in other words, what they looked like in their earliest animation.  It becomes immediately apparent how different the Simpsons have become as compared to when the series first began.  Past Homer is angrier, Marge is more loving and sexual towards Homer, and Bart is more early 90’s “radical”.  This of course, causes conflicts with their current selves.   The brilliance of this segment is not only the meta look at the evolution between characters, but also in the metaphor the writers have put in towards the audience.  This segment is basically the current Simpsons writers telling us, “Yes, our show is different from what it used to be. No, we are never going back to exactly how it once was.  But perhaps if we closely studied and paid respect to our past, we can further evolve into something even better.”

And this, my friends, is why you should never completely dismiss the classic institution The Simpsons remains to be.