By the way, nice melons.
Hey, welcome back everybody.
Thank you so much for tuning in to the mmm donuts podcast.
I'm your host, Justin Metcalf, and I have a special treat for all eight of my listeners.
This I know seriously though, there's there's been like over 100 downloads as of this recording.
Thank you so much.
Like people are actually listening to this.
It's not a lot of people, but that's fine.
I don't care.
Um, it makes me really happy.
So I decided a couple of episodes.
I talked about how if, if I do one a week, I won't finish this podcast series until
like for like 15 years.
And that's if they stop making more episodes right now.
Um, I don't want to be doing this for 15 years because I don't want to wait that long to
talk about them.
So I thought of ways to cut it down.
Like maybe I can cut it in half, but that would mean doing two episodes a week.
I'm not sure I'm going to commit to that yet, but for now I thought of something cool.
So it's Halloween, one of my favorite times of the year.
And as you know, it's a very famous favorite time of year for the Simpsons and they have
the longest running Halloween special of any TV show ever.
Um, and in the tree house of horror series.
So I thought I'll review three episodes, the first three tree house of horror episodes,
and I'll drop them all for Halloween of 2024.
Because my gift to you, the listener for listen during, thank you.
I really appreciate it.
Truly.
I make lots of jokes, but for real, I'm glad that you're listening and I appreciate it.
So this first tree house of horror episode is from season two, episode three.
If you ever want to know what tree house of horror number we're on, it's whatever season
it is minus one because in season one, they didn't do one.
First one was on season two.
And in this one, when it came out, you can see it in the credits.
It's called the Simpsons Halloween special.
And then of course was later changed to the tree house of horror one.
And then all future Halloween episodes were the tree house of horror, whatever, two, three,
whatever.
We really looked forward to these when these came out every year.
It was like one of our favorite times of the year.
We'd get a new Simpsons episode and it would be macabre.
And they could take the show in different directions and they'd kill people off and
have all sorts of things happen that they couldn't do in normal episodes.
Because in this one, you could just start all over.
It's just a Halloween special.
So it's okay if we murder Flanders and then the next episode.
That's all right.
That was just Halloween.
No harm done.
It was really brilliant and a lot of entertainment for over the years.
So some pretty cool stuff happened in this first tree house of horror.
We're still within the first two seasons.
So there's some things missing.
Animation is a little better than season one, but still not quite there.
There's some character development that's not quite finished, but still there's a lot
that we get out of this episode.
So yeah, like I said, October 25th, 1990 is when it came out and it has one of the most
amazing actors on the planet as a guest star and it's James Earl Jones.
James Earl Jones plays the mover, Serak the preparer and the narrator.
Because this episode's broken up into three different sequences.
So I forgot to do the Troy McClure.
James Earl Jones, you might remember him from movies like, I mean, where do I begin?
The first movie I ever saw him in was The Sandlot.
Loved that movie.
He was the blind neighbor where the ball goes with the big dog.
The ball goes over the fence.
Let's see, of course, Star Wars, he played the voice of Darth Vader.
He played Simba, no, the Lion King, Mufasa, he played Mufasa's voice.
He was in so many movies, but his voice is absolutely unmistakable.
So I hope you enjoyed as much as I did.
Let's get into it.
Okay.
Welcome back.
Thank you again.
I've said that enough.
Sorry, no more.
You understand that I'm grateful, blah, blah, blah.
Let's do trivia.
Okay.
Starting off with what are the names on the tombstones in the opening credits?
Ah, but there's so many, that's mean.
Shut up.
All right.
First of all, just shut up.
You get one point for every correct answer.
All right.
Now, we're on the honor system.
If you didn't do your homework, that's not my problem.
I don't care.
And I know I didn't tell you last episode that I was going to drop this episode, but
I don't know.
A true fan would just know.
Sorry.
I'm not sorry.
Ah, this next.
Now I'll talk about that in a minute.
Second.
Okay.
What is the full name of the cookbook on the alien spaceship?
Dun, dun, dun.
All right.
And third, who plays the Raven in the third sequence?
Okay.
Let's get into it.
So, the concept of the Treehouse of Horror episodes was just to be a Halloween special.
Whether or not they wanted it to be something they did every single season when they first
came out with it, I don't know.
There might be some DVD commentary that I missed from way back when that clarified that.
But what we do know is that it came out as the Simpsons Halloween special and then was
later changed to the Treehouse of Horror one.
And then all future ones were just the Treehouse of Horror with the number in the sequence.
The Halloween episodes don't begin like other episodes.
Most of them start with somebody coming onto the screen with a red curtain behind them,
like they're in a theater.
And they have a discussion.
Usually it's to implore adults to not let their children watch the show.
And Marge says something hilarious.
This is my favorite joke of this episode.
Marge says, so if you have sensitive children, send them to bed early instead of watching
the show.
And don't let them watch the show rather than writing us angry letters in the morning.
I butchered that so hard.
Oh, I'm embarrassed.
I got over it though really quickly.
It was still funny.
Go watch it.
There is an abundance of written jokes in the beginning credits of these episodes.
So in this one, it's on the tombstones.
And that's the trivia question.
We'll talk, we'll, we'll, I'll go through the names later, but there's names on the
tombstones that are funny.
And then in future episodes, they change the names of the credits.
So like, it's also a different theme song.
It's like an eerie theme song and the credits are in like a green melting font.
You all know what I mean.
It's the same every year and it's become kind of quintessential for the tree house of horror.
But what we know now is that the opening sequence has funny names like James L. Brooks.
His name is James Hellbrooks.
And Matt Groening is Matt Groening.
Funny clever stuff.
But in this first one, they were regular credit names.
Still the right, the font that we know, but the jokes were in the tombstones.
Ah, lastly, the episodes, they're inspired by an old EC comics, not, not DC.
I'm not saying it wrong.
It's called EC comics, a comic book or a comic strip called Tales from the Crypt.
There was also a stint for several years of Tales from the Crypt on, I think HBO back
in the nineties too.
So that inspired more than one show.
Pretty good stuff.
Okay.
It's broken up into three segments.
So it starts with Homer.
He walks up into the tree house to listen to ghost stories and the three stories are
the three sequences.
So the first one, it's kind of like Poltergeist.
It's called Bad Dream House.
And there's, there's a lot of comedic elements to this.
And the house is frustrated with the family.
He doesn't want it there.
The house talks back to him.
There's this portal to another dimension.
Homer throws something in there and then a piece of paper, rolled up piece of paper gets
thrown back and says, don't throw your garbage in our dimension.
Lots of funny jokes like that.
There's lots of satire of the classic haunted house tropes.
You know, like the, I say kind of based on Poltergeist because there's elements of Poltergeist
in this, but there's a lot of, there's a lot of movies and shows that this episode is making
fun of.
I think the most prominent is Poltergeist, but so the house is going crazy.
The cabinets are bleeding.
Walls are melting and changing.
And Lisa opens the door and says, Oh no, look at this.
And she finds an Indian burial ground just down some stairs through one of the doors,
which again is, it's, they're poking fun at that.
The trope of you should look up trope.
I did.
And of how that was just, it was like a scapegoat almost, you know, like we want to tell a horror
story.
Well, how do we, how do we connect it to something sinister?
Ah, an Indian burial ground.
This was built on an Indian burial ground.
You know, like it's, it was played out a lot and I'm, I'm fairly certain that's why the
joke was there.
And I, I think it landed perfectly and it's still funny today.
There's some dark humor in this too.
So after a few minutes, the, the house is yelling at them and telling them to cut each
other and do all sorts of nasty things and Marge starts almost looking like she's going
to hyperventilate and then just screams, shut up, yells at the house and then gives it an
ultimatum.
So they tell the house that, you know, we got to live together.
Right.
And so the house takes a moment to think about it because it's a house with a mind like a
robot and the house, this is the dark humor.
It chooses to self-destruct rather than live with the Simpsons.
It was, that's, I mean, you think about it, that's dark humor.
And it was hilarious.
I loved it.
Damn.
Love it now.
Okay.
Segment two, it's called Hungry are the damned.
And Bart tells the story.
The Simpsons are abducted by the aliens, King and Kodos.
This is one of the best segments ever with King and Kodos.
Maybe even my favorite of all time.
There's they typically are only in the Halloween episodes, but, um, just when this one's great.
Okay.
So they plan to serve the humans a delicious feast or do they?
Ha ha.
There's a, some cloak and dagger here, which is funny the way they do it.
There's this classic sci-fi horror theme of an alien abduction.
And then they put Homer on a scale and they're foaming at the mouth and drooling, uh, as,
as he's weighed cause he's like super fat.
And what we learn later is they're, they always drool.
That's just a normal thing.
But at the time it's making you think, Oh yeah, they definitely want to eat this dude.
And the visual style, uh, which is, you know, play pays homage to homage, homage.
I'm not going to get hung up on how to pronounce that to a lot of classic horror films, but
it also kind of sets the stage for some funny interpretation.
So Lisa's walking around the ship and she sees, uh, James Earl Jones, who, who plays
Serac the preparer, he's making a meal and he's looking at a cookbook and the cookbook
is called how to cook humans.
Dun dun dun.
Such a dumb joke, but it's so freaking funny.
They confront the aliens and the aliens say, Oh, there's dust on this book.
And they blow dust, space dust off the book and it missed a word, how to cook for humans.
And then Lisa, I know I'm giving away one of the trivia questions, but it's a big bit.
Lisa's like, wait, let me see that.
And she blows more space dust.
And then the book says how to cook 40 humans.
Oh, dun dun dun.
And then because you can never get too many attempts out of a gag, the alien takes it
back and says, wait, there's more space dust.
Which is when we do finally see the full title of the book, how to cook for 40 humans.
And then they get super offended and Serac the preparer cries and it's so funny.
And they kick the humans out and Simpsons lose the opportunity of a lifetime to be able
to live in luxury and have all their needs met because they didn't trust the aliens.
Very, very funny.
Uh, very well done.
I thought that was great.
The third is the Raven.
And this is the poem from Edgar Allen Poe.
I think beautifully done.
It's narrated by James Earl Jones as the narrator and then Homer, he's still Homer.
He's, you know, Homer's voice and he has some mannerisms, but he's saying the lines from
his character of his character from the poem, which is funny, but still pretty well done.
And then show some depth and Dan Castellaneta, my absolute favorite Simpsons, uh, voicer,
bowl voice or voice actor.
She's, uh, did a great job.
I loved it.
Uh, the adaptation of the poem into the Simpsons universe was very clever and the visual style
here again plays homage to some classic horror films.
The way that it's set up with the roaring fireplace and the high back chair and, you
know, on the bust over the door.
Um, I'm, I didn't give enough thought to these, uh, to these trivia questions.
I made them questions about very prominent scenes.
So now I'm going to give away the third one too.
But so eventually the Raven comes in, you know, as he does in the poem and it's played
by Bart and all he says is nevermore.
And then something funny later on, but I think they did a great job connecting the theme
of the story of that poem into the Simpsons Halloween special, you know, and that, um,
that style.
What do you think?
How do you think they did?
This is, we're seeing some evolution from season one into season two, not quite to where
we know it now or to where it really hits its stride and continuity in season three.
But I, what do you think?
Do you still like this episode?
I thought it was great.
What about the lasting impact on the Simpsons in pop culture?
So this is more for like the people my age, the Gen Xers, um, again, not boomers.
I don't, I've always, I don't like boomers.
I'm sorry.
I'm not sorry.
I'm just not allowed to.
I'm just a generational thing.
And then consequently, I also don't like millennials because they want, they pretend that I'm one
of them.
And it's such an argument that I just, my whole life I was a Gen Xer and then some Yahoo
says, Oh, but you were born in this year.
So you're actually a millennial.
That's not how that works, bud.
All right.
Shut up.
Where was I?
I have got to stop with this generational bashing.
It's just, no, I don't know.
I'm going to power through anyway.
So older people really are going to be better at, in my opinion of answering those questions
because what is the lasting impact on the Simpsons and pop culture for this Halloween
special?
Like it is lasted.
They've done it every single year.
What do you remember year after year growing up?
Did you anticipate it?
Did you get excited for it?
Were you, were you surprised by what you saw in the episodes?
I'm pretty sure they almost all have the three segments too.
You know, like for the commercial breaks, but they're all, they're always three segments,
but they're like three different stories.
You know what I mean?
In, in the, in that format.
I think it was a great anthology format that the Halloween special, I think it was very
effective.
Again, though, what do you think?
Why do you think it held up?
Consider this, the, the show writers and the show runners ability to balance horror and
comedy was very telling.
We've already talked about a few episodes where they balance humor with other things,
you know, like certain emotions, sadness and tragedy and things like that, but to balance
horror and comedy so beautifully, I think was, was definitely a something that propelled
them into wanting to do this every single year.
I know it got great reviews.
I know it was very well received.
And I think, you know, some people could argue they missed the mark some years, but for the
most part, I mean, it's still, it's still a very popular episode, a very popular time
of year.
They just gave Disney Plus just early, well, yeah, early mid November or October dropped
there.
It's the one or best or the most wonderful time of the year.
It's like a three minute song with Kelsey Grammer and it's about Halloween.
So like the Simpsons are synonymous with Halloween and they're special for this year.
By the time you're listening to this may already be available.
Who knows?
But I'm excited for it.
I think it's going to be terrific.
So as you know, I'm alone right here.
I'm not talking to anybody.
I'm going to have, I'm going to start having guests with me in the near future where we
discuss and we have back and forth.
So there's going to be more than just my voice, but you also know, even though it's just me,
that I still try to engage.
I've said it before.
I like to have open dialogue.
I like to have conversation that's hard to do with a microphone and a computer.
So that's why I set up that, the Twitter account so that you can engage with me.
I absolutely still plan to reply to tweets and to have that open dialogue with you, whether
you're just, you're going to send a tweet and make fun of me or send me a tweet of a
correction of something that I did wrong.
I'll reply depending on how I feel at the time.
It could be a real repier.
It could be a saucy reply.
But I still will reply because I told you, I like that back and forth in that dialogue.
I love being engaged in conversation about things that I'm passionate with.
And I'm very passionate about The Simpsons.
I'm pretty sure I've made that pretty clear.
So tell me which of these segments was your favorite and why.
Do you have a favorite tree house of horror moment in general?
I got all the tree house of horrors.
Is there one that's your favorite?
I do.
And it's coming up soon.
It's the, it's one of the very first ones where Homer is, he goes to hell and he's awaiting
trial and while he's awaiting trial, he spends a day in hell and Flanders is the devil, which
is so freaking funny.
And they feed him like a billion donuts and it's this torture machine that's supposed
to torment someone by overfeeding them.
And of course in classic Homer fashion, he can't get enough.
He's calling for more by the end.
I won't ruin it, but there's the goblin or demon that's administering the torture says
a very funny joke.
He says, I don't understand.
And then it's a funny joke.
You should look it up.
I don't want to ruin it.
But tell me what your favorite ones are.
Favorite moment, favorite sequence, favorite tree house of horror.
And how do you think this episode holds up compared to later Halloween specials?
I told you my opinion.
I think that this one was so well done that it set the stage for them to know this is
going to be a regular thing.
This is something that we need to do.
This format isn't going to work.
Let's do it every year.
So that's my opinion.
But what's yours?
Do you think it holds up?
There might be people out there who think this was a horrible one.
Fortunately, people like that are probably not listening to this podcast, so we won't
have to hear from them.
Thank you so much for listening.
Let's get to the trivia answers.
I'm going to go backwards because I already ruined them.
But three, I told you Bart is the Raven, and two, the final name of the book was How to
Cook for 40 Humans.
How to Cook for 40 Humans.
Yeah, I got that right.
Okay.
Sorry.
I'll try to do better with trivia and make it.
I like the really obscure ones.
Like if you're not really paying attention, you're going to miss it.
But on this episode, these are the ones that stuck out to me that I liked.
Okay.
Question one, the names on the tombstones.
There were quite a few actually.
It was clearly a Simpsons area, or Simpsons Cemetery, at least initially.
The first names are Ishmael Simpsons, Ezekiel Simpsons, Cornelius V. Simpsons, and then
the jokes start.
Garfield.
This is funny because at the time Garfield was dying, kiddo, because never mind, because
it was animated and it didn't last nearly as long.
Anyway, The Grateful Dead is the next one.
Casper the Friendly Boy.
Get it?
Because he's Casper the Friendly Ghost, but when he died, he was Casper the Friendly Boy.
No?
No.
I thought it was funny.
Okay, then Elvis.
And then the next one is Your Name Here, and then Paul McCartney, who ironically is the
only Beatle still alive today, and then the last one is Disco.
I believe that's 10.
So you have the possibility of getting 10 points on that question alone.
How'd you do?
Did you make me proud?
Well, I'll never know if you don't tweet me.
Send me your scores.
Tell me what you got.
And be honest.
Or don't.
I'm not your mother.
You do what you want to do.
But I'm a fairly disbelieving person, mistrusting person, distrusting person.
So I probably won't believe you either way.
Hey, listen, thanks again for listening.
I really appreciate you spending 25 to 30 minutes with me every week, or in this case,
maybe three times.
That's a lot to have to listen to me for that much time.
I want you to know genuinely, I appreciate you spending that time, which is our most
valuable resource, with me.
It means a great deal to me.
I'm grateful.
I hope that you're as passionate about The Simpsons as I am, and I hope that you'll continue
to listen, and we can continue to have lots of fun together for several years.
All right?
Be good.
Take care.