Treehouse of Horror X
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"Treehouse of Horror X" is the fourth episode of The Simpsons' eleventh season, as well as the tenth Halloween episode. The episode aired on October 31, 1999, which was also Halloween, and as of 2007 is the last Halloween episode to have aired in time for the holiday due to FOX's coverage of the World Series.
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[edit] Opening sequence
Announcer: Live from fabulous Centauri City, it's The Simpsons Tenth Halloween Special! (curtains reveal a pumpkin-shaped spaceship with two eyeballs in the eyeholes) Now, please welcome your hosts - if you haven't been probed by these two, you haven't been probed - Kang and Kodos! (the eyeballs are revealed to be Kang and Kodos's eyeballs as they emerge from the spaceship)
Kang: Thank you, thank you.
Kodos: Yes, thank you ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our tenth anniversary show. Oh, we've got a great -- (notices Kang wearing a welders' mask and lighting an acetylene torch) Kang, what are you doing?
Kang: You said we were going to warm up the audience. (cut to a shot of the audience, which is entirely consisting of aliens including one that resembles Grampa) (Canned laughter is played, but audience appear unamused)
Kodos: Ladies and gentlemen, I have to apologize for my partner. He had to borrow a human brain! (more canned laughter)
(cut to Simpsons' living room, where the family sits on the couch, with Homer appearing as the jack-in-the-box from "Treehouse of Horror II", Marge as the witch and Bart as the half-fly mutant from "Treehouse of Horror VIII". Maggie is the alien/human mutant from "Treehouse of Horror IX" and Lisa is an axe-attack victim.)
Lisa: What do aliens have to do with Halloween?
Maggie: Silence! (she uses her ray gun to disintegrate Lisa)"
[edit] Plot
[edit] I Know What You Diddily-Iddily-Did
This sequence parodies I Know What You Did Last Summer, taking place after Bart Simpsons's Dracula. On a foggy evening with a full moon, The Simpsons are driving down a road until Marge accidentally smashes into a jogging Ned Flanders, killing him. The next day, Homer climbs to the top of his house with Ned's body, calling down to Maude in her front yard "Hey Maude! Look who's helping me clean the chimney! (a buzzard lands on Ned's limp head, pecking at him, Homer brushes it away)" Maude replies "Oh, I'm so relieved! Whenever you go on one of your late night fog-walks I get so worried" Homer voices Ned, moving him like a puppet "relax, I'm fine, but when I do die, I don't want any autopsies!". Maude then goes indoors when her pies are finally done. At the same time, Homer throws Ned off the roof, whose corpse lands on the kennel, Homer mutters "Oh, she missed it!". Homer dumps Ned's corpse on his own porch, waiting to hear Maude's horrified scream. Shortly after Ned's funeral, a mysterious cloaked figure begins terrorizing the family. After a confrontation, the Simpsons flee their house, eventually discovering that Ned Flanders was their assailant. Ned was not killed by the accident and he tells them, by an incredible coincidence, he had been bitten by a werewolf moments before Marge hit him, and werewolves are near impossible to kill (except with silver bullets). As the clouds drift past the moon, its luminous light engulfs Ned's body and he becomes a werewolf. The family flees down the street while Flanders mauls Homer, who still mocks him: "Ooow! Ah... (Flanders struggles to pack Homer into his mouth) Eyes bigger than your stomach, eh, wolfie? Heh heh... OWWW! Oh God, no!"
[edit] Desperately Xeeking Xena
Marge takes Bart and Lisa to Springfield Elementary, where Chief Wiggum is running a portable X-ray machine to inspect children's candy. Whilst inspecting his son Ralph's candy, he tells them what the candy really contains "safe, safe, razor blade, syringe, oh white chocolate!" As Nelson's extremely bulky pillowcase of goodies is being scanned, the X-ray machine inevitably explodes. The subsequent exposure to radiation gives Bart the ability to stretch his body like rubber and Lisa gains extraordinary strength. They become a superhero duo, calling themselves "Stretch Dude & Clobber Girl". In their first "adventure" (presented as if they had their own television series), Lucy Lawless (dressed as Xena) addresses fans at a science fiction convention. Comic Book Guy, who has styled himself as a villain called "The Collector", kidnaps her using a magnet to attract her metal breast plate. Lawless goes to remove the breastplate, but when hundreds of fans raise their cameras to photograph her exposed breasts, she stops with a statement of "Maybe later." He takes her to his lair, where he puts her in an aluminized PET film bag for "safekeeping" and imprisons her in a room of other similarly-captured celebrities such as Yasmine Bleeth and Tom Baker. Stretch Dude and Clobber Girl burst into The Collector's hideout. Clobber Girl is stunned by a worker phaser that had been fired only once before; to prevent William Shatner from releasing another album. The other shots miss Strech Dude, however he is knocked out when the phaser is thrown at him.
He suspends the drowsy duo over a vat of bubbling Lucite, slowly lowering them towards certain doom Lucy Lawless, still in her plastic restraint, lures the Collector over by pretending to be attracted to him. When he's close enough she grabs his lips and then attacks him with Kung Fu moves. Stating that he fell for a "ruse so hackneyed, it would make Stan Lee blush!", the Collector grabs his limited edition double edged lightsaber from Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and ignites the blades. Lucy reminds him that he has removed it from its original packaging and it is now no longer a collectible. He backs away in horror and plummets into the vat, eventually emerging to strike a dramatic death pose (imitating a Lorne Greene pose from Battlestar Galactica) before the plastic hardens around him. Lawless flies Stretch Dude and Clobber Girl home to safety on her back. Clobber Girl is confused, and points out that Xena can't fly. Lucy stresses that while Xena can't fly, she is Lucy Lawless.
[edit] Life's a Glitch, Then You Die
On December 31, 1999, Dick Clark celebrates his New Year's Rockin' Eve in Springfield instead of Times Square. Homer, the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant's Y2K compliance officer, confidently declares that he fixed every computer at the plant. Unfortunately, Homer didn't fix his own computer, which creates the computer virus that spreads rapidly to other systems all over the world. As Dick Clark's New Year's ball drops and hits "2000", the computer display reads "1900". Within minutes, Dick melts to death (he is shown to be a robot) and chaos breaks out as airplanes crash, appliances explode, malfunction and turn evil, including the Springfield Revolving Restaurant's Sit 'n' Rotate room dislodging from its stand and flying off, presumably into space. Widespread looting soon begins and as the family roams the streets observing the damage (including traffic lights that shoot multi-coloured beam blasts and a mailbox that walks around), Krusty's pacemaker sets itself to hummingbird speed and he collapses in front of them. A letter in Krusty's pocket states that a rocket is being populated with humanity's "best & brightest" and will be launched shortly in an effort to preserve human civilization on Mars. When they reached the shuttle, Homer unsuccessfully attempts to bluff his way on board, but the armed guard recognizes Lisa as having a seat reserved on the craft, knowing that she's the spaceliner's proofreader. Lisa is only able to take one parent with her, and she quickly chooses Marge, who then takes Maggie along. Homer and Bart soon find a second, unguarded rocket nearby and climb on board just before it launches. However, they quickly notice that this spaceliner is filled with the likes of Ross Perot, Dan Quayle, Tonya Harding, Al Sharpton, Courtney Love, Spike Lee, Tom Arnold, Pauly Shore, Rosie O'Donnell and Dr. Laura: it is deliberately set for a collision course with the sun. Unable to bear the short trip to oblivion with the B-list celebrities, Homer and Bart eject themselves into the vacuum of space, where they sigh in relief as their heads swell up onscreen and explode offscreen, while the rocket heads towards the sun.
[edit] Cultural references
- Life's a glitch, then you die is a reference to the catchphrase "Life's a bitch, then you die."
- "Desperately Xeeking Xena" had the coining of the term "A wizard did it", a catchall excuse for a plot hole or animation error that can't easily be explained.
- Homer tells the guard of the rocket that he is the piano genius from the movie Shine and that his name is Shiney McShine, when the name he should have used is David Helfgott.
- The second part of this episode parodies the film "Desperately Seeking Susan"
- The third segment parodied the Y2K panic as well as When Worlds Collide.
- The Band playing at New Year's Rockin' Eve is actually Ratt according to the drumset, though the band members thought they were either Quiet Riot, Poison or Whitesnake.
- After dumping Ned's body in the first segment, Homer says, "That's the end of that chapter." which was the catch phrase of Police Cops' Homer Simpson in Homer to the Max.
- When Bart and Lisa (as Stretch Dude and Clobber Girl) run off to help Xena, Marge shouts at them, 'Remember, you're vulnerable to Kryptonite!' This is a reference to the substance that is harmful to Superman.
[edit] Horror film references
- The first part of this episode is a parody of the 1997 film I Know What You Did Last Summer.
- Homer telling Bart to hide from the psycho in that "abandoned traveling circus where that clown went crazy" ("spooky roller disco" in some airings) and saying he'll hide in "that deserted lake summer camp where those teenagers were killed 20 years ago tonight" is a reference to horror films It and Friday The 13th respectively.
- Moe's phone call meant for Maude (but misdialed to Marge) is a reference to the movie Scream.
[edit] External links
- "Treehouse of Horror X" episode capsule at The Simpsons Archive
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