Last night on your local Fox affiliate, the newest edition of The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror, the series’ twentieth, aired, bringing with it another 3 tales of horror comedy starring your favorite television family.  As much as I look forward to Treehouse of Horror every year, the last couple of specials have been relatively uneven, and this year’s was no different.  I really expected something super special for the twentieth anniversary of what has become a television mainstay, but really we just got another regular ToH episode, without really anything special about it.

• The first story, Dial M For Murder (Or Press # to Return to the Main Menu) has Bart and Lisa deciding to pull a “criss cross,” where they’ll help get revenge on each other’s teachers. Lisa “ding dong ditches” Mr.s Krabapple, but Bart cuts off Ms. Hoover’s head. This part of the episode gave me hope for a great episode, as it contained many great Hitchcock references, and was really fun.
• The second story is inspired by 28 Days Later and is actually really damn good, despite being something that The Simpsons has already done…multiple times.  Though not quite as violent as this one – there’s plenty of people munching and head exploding and, other than a lackluster ending, was even better than the first story.
• The final story seemed to be inspired by Sweeney Todd, but fell SUPER FLAT.  In fact, I’d venture to call this story an epic fail.  I mean, it was pretty damn horrible.  Homer dies, and Moe uses his blood in his beer to get Marge to fall in love with him.  But it’s all done as if it is being performed on a stage.  Just…weird.

It’s a shame that, twenty years later, The Simpsons didn’t do an episode that called back to the original that started it all.  Would it have killed them to do another Edgar Allen Poe story?

What did you think?