Why there hasn’t been a good Simpsons Halloween Special in 20 years

In the early 90s, the the Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” episodes were a major highlight of my year, enhancing greatly the strong and unique Halloween themes emotions by presenting pseudo-scary stories with decidedly Halloween stylization at multiple levels. Over the years however, the Specials became and stayed strongly generic, losing the magic they once had, and it wasn’t because I was getting older – it was because the show deviated from the formula’s that made the original opening episodes so great both as comedic entertainment and as Halloween styled presentations.

1990 – 1995 were gold
1996 – 2000 were severely watered down, barely passable
2001 – 2015 have just been garbage

In tragic irony, the Halloween specials did exactly the opposite of what the rest of the series did, in that while the series has fallen out of pop-culture favor by failing to evolve to the tastes of the times, the Halloween Specials did exactly that and both suffered greatly. Instead, the show should have evolved and the Halloween Specials should have stuck rigidly to their original formula’s celebrating the holiday. Here are 5 reasons in which they deviated from that plan and took something once-special down a path of uninspired commonality:

 

1- Airing after Halloween

For a holiday to be celebrated after its calendar date, it can’t involve a unique feeling, atmosphere or ritual. Birthdays, St Valentines Day, St Patricks Day, Presidents Day, Arbor Day, etc can all be celebrated after their calendar passing without loss to the significance to the celebration because the nature of those celebrations are commemorating themes instead of being built around date-essential communal rituals. A media production celebrating a holiday has more pressure because unlike the real-life organizing of festivities and event planning that a person has some control within – the airing of a production is relying on those festivities and planning to be relevant and be enjoyed to full degree by its viewers. This makes the timing crucial and Halloween is the #1 most crucial holiday to time right in its airing due to the unique combination of the ritual with the spirit of the holiday, with only New Years Eve coming close to such timing-importance. Other ritual-based holidays such as Thanksgiving, and Christmas (and to a lesser extent, Independence Day) have full weeks of vacation time, travel, family gathering, preparation and lingering days afterward where semblances of the holiday spirit remain – Halloween is a uniquely build-up and one-shot event. Unlike the resettling to normal life after the few days following Thanksgiving and the entire week following the rest of the year after Christmas day – the spirit of Halloween is completely and totally gone by November 1st. The entirety of Halloweens magic, mischief, and fun is a strictly October affair culminating on All Hallows Eve, the last day of the month. By morning, the magic is gone, meaning that all movie and television specials capitalizing on the feelings and atmosphere of Halloween must take place before that hard-deadline of October 31st.

There is no reason for this to be a difficult proposition for any production team or broadcast outlet. And yet… In a scarier Y2K disaster that no one predicted – the 11th Simpsons Halloween Special released in the year 2000 aired on November 1st, starting a consistently disappointing run where ever consecutive Special would unforgivably do the same for 8 years thereafter. Finally, the 2009 Special correctly aired in October – only to be followed by 2010’s Special airing on November 10th.

Those other 9 misses were devastating to the franchise. That’s nearly an entire decade of brand diluting, completely ruining the spirit of the production beyond the damage that the productional aspects discussed in the rest of this list already has the dishonor of achieving. While the past 5 year airings have all occurred in October and hopefully all future ones do too, the spirit of the releases have yet to recover from those 9 misfires.

 

2- Kang and Koddos demoted to cameos and gags

The helmeted green blob cyclops aliens only appear in the Simpsons Universe on the Halloween Specials and used to be utilized the way they should every year which is to add a recurring comedic-horror touch to science-fiction based stories – yet for 15 years they have been relegated out of meaningful storylines, only appearing as cameos like actors that a producer didn’t want to include but had to due to contractual obligations.

The characters are so ripe for diverse arrays of Halloween-themed usage that there is no excuse for this. Their initial appearances capitalized on this unique presentation in both their inclusion in the storylines and the events surrounding their depiction. The characters are a delightful meld of contradictions: Their toothy perpetually drooling mouths suggesting unevolved savagery is juxtaposed by their intelligence and use of advanced technology, their constantly flailing tentacles suggest volatility while their monotone and calculated literal speech is always deliberate and controlled, and their vast knowledge of space and time is constantly undermined by their autistic misunderstandings of social cues and rudimentary situations. These characters are horror parody comedic gold and yet have not been used in this regard since the initial Golden-Five. Specifically, their usage should be quasi-terror, capitalizing on their alien-monster genre in the mold of 1950’s B-movies that they are derived, but instead, even in the off years in where they are given a storyline it is merely a joke entirely consisting of “oh hey. look. aliens”.

The dilution of the characters significance began in 1996’s “Citizen Kang” in where the duo were not menacing in any kind of horror way. Instead, the entire segment was merely a political parody of the election between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole using the aliens as a foil to make political jokes. Same deal 14 years later in 2010’s closing segment “War and Pieces” which was a loose War of the Worlds parody attempting to satirize the 2nd Gulf war against Iraq. Kang and Kodos should be in alien-terror stories that make the usual social and political commentary gags indicative of The Simpsons within those constructs – not the reverse.

The absence of these characters in roles as funny/scary space monsters and replacement of them as generic alien one-liner deliverers severely detracts from the Specials.

 

3- Homages replaced by references

The golden first-five included award worthy Simpson versions of Dracula, Twilight Zone Episodes, and short stories like the Monkeys Paw or Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven”. This president should have never been abandoned but was replaced for the most part with stories that weren’t parodies of anything and weren’t based on anything. These kinds of segments aren’t crimes on their own if done the right away, and rather could potentially add a new flavor to the Specials and in a sense be a Simpsons version of Tales from the Crypt stories – but they have to have the veneer of being scary for that to be pulled off. Instead, potentially eerie science fiction disaster parody original tales like 2000’s environmental propaganda short “night of the dolphin” in where dolphins march on land in revenge for ocean pollution is completely devoid of anything science fiction-esque or scary at all.  The sin of these kinds of shorts the Special has been airing for 15 years is that there is just nothing “scary” about the presentation of these episodes. The music doesn’t mock-creep you out, the characters don’t experience fear – it’s just a series of violence-for-laughs that are no different from an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon. It cheapens the whole venture and robs it of its otherwise unique qualities.

The first offender was the 7th Special which opened up with a short titled “Attack of the 50-Foot Eyesores” in where giant mascot statues come to life and wreak havoc. I remember watching it thinking, “WTF is this?”. It was an okay sketch I guess, but there was nothing Halloween related about it and it wasn’t a parody of anything except an in-name-only reference to the 1958 B-movie “Attack of the 50 foot woman“. Unlike the previous golden-five, there was no sense of danger or horror whatsoever. The eerie music and suspense parody was completely missing and replaced with regular run-of-the-mill sight gags.

Ever since then, the act of making parodies of Halloween and horror related popular media was completely abandoned and replaced by mere references and cameos of non-Halloween or horror related pieces of media like the episode featuring guest star Lucy Lawless playing Xena in a plotline where Comicbook Guy captures heroes for permanent preservation in plastic seals.

In the rare events that one of the 3 stories in the Specials does end up parodying something – it’s been bizarrely non-Halloween related. Sometimes with a premise that could be a stretch to make Halloween-ish only to see the show not even try to bridge the gap such as stories parodying Harry Potter (2001), A.I. (2004),  Twilight (2010), or 2009’s “Untitled Robot Parody” (that’s the name of the segment…) but also completely and totally non-Halloween movies with no attempt to Halloween-it-up in the Simpsons version of them like Mr and Mrs Smith (2004), E.T. (2007), Dr Seuss (2013), and James Camerons Avatar (2011).

 

4- They stopped being “specials”

The golden first-five knew what it meant to be a Special. They were uniquely and distinctly set apart from every other episode of the season in style, tone, look, feel, presentation, music, type of humor, and subject matter that was all circled around Halloween as a holiday and/or Halloween related monsters, paranormal activity, or horror suspense thriller.

In Episode I, the only episode to actually use the treehouse motif, the Simpsons kids tell stories of horror from the treehouse on Halloween night after trick or treating.

In Episode II presented its 3 stories as being nightmares by Bart, Lisa, and Homer.

In Episode III was introduced by Homer in a parody of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and depicted its segments as stories told by Lisa, Bart, and Grandpa at a Halloween party.

In Episode IV is hosted by Bart in a parody of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery.

In Episode V has Marge introduce the episode by warning that it’s so scary that children should not watch it.

These made the episodes unique. different. “special”…

For 15 years, the only thing differentiating the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes has been a death themed couch-gag (sometimes replaced with a death-themed cold opening not involving the couch), green slime font used in the credits (that also contain punny/spooky versions of the names within) and an increase of comedic violence. That’s it and it’s not enough.

Not even the fact that they are non-cannon stories to the rest of the series makes them different because The Simpsons has always used that episode structure throughout its history. Whether it’s telling stories about history or the potential future or alternate histories – there is nothing uniquely special about seeing the Simpsons characters in roles other than their family life storyline.

 

5- They stopped being about Halloween

The biggest crime of all that destroyed this sub-brand and disgracefully never even attempted to repair: After the golden-first-five, the Simpsons Halloween Specials dropped all pretenses about being what they claimed to be: HALLOWEEN SPECIALS. It’s one thing to imply a show will be a “special” when it isn’t one, but it is a bridge too far to masquerade it under the moniker of “Halloween” only to completely ignore the holiday. Instead, for 15 years the Treehouse of Horror episodes have all just been excuses to display non-cannon supernatural or large scale events and/or include death and comedic gore. This is not what Halloween is or is all about and has been a 15 year insult to the original 5 that executed the task of a Halloween Special so well. What The Simpsons have been doing for 15 years has been akin to if they had been running yearly “Christmas Specials” that would scarcely (if at all) even *reference* Santa, Christmas trees, gift giving, and Christmas holiday folklore in offhanded ways once every 4 to 6 years and instead just made episodes telling stories of good tidings and snow and that’s it. Just as Christmas is more than pleasant feelings and snow – Halloween is more than violence and supernatural occurrences. To be a Halloween Special, a production can’t just tell stories about murder or magic. That’s not what Halloween is.

Halloween is about trick-or-treating, costumes, ghosts, jack-o-lanterns, witches, black cats, black magic, creepy occurrences, candy, monsters, scary stories, mischief, and scary situations involving the dead, re-animated dead, Death Himself (grim reaper), or the witnessing of/retreat from dying due to super natural elements. To be a “Halloween Special” you must include at least half of those and instead the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror series has sluffed by for 15 years barely averaging 1.5 per episode.

The first 5 years were on-point. They are quintessential Halloween episodes from top to bottom.

The failure to continue the tradition of format, quality, and tone set by the first 5 is a shameful disgrace that underserves the long running series and does a disservice to those who grew up with it like myself. Businesses get dissolved and marriages get annulled over bait-and-switches not half as egregious. It is time that The Simpsons, which has been on for 25 seasons, return to its roots represented in its first 6 years on the air that made it a special icon in American media history in the first place.