Eighth grade. I was in eighth grade when the first season of The Simpsons premiered. I’m 39 years old now, and I’m still watching The Simpsons with the same main cast of voice actors. That is pretty amazing. I would have been a freshman in high school in 1990, when they decided to do a Halloween special called “Treehouse of Horror” that steered away from the typical Simpsons episode pattern and instead have three fantasy mini-episodes where anything can happen.
The three segment recipe started out with the Simpsons moving to a haunted house, that tries to turn them crazy, but instead the house decides it would rather destroy itself than try to live with the Simpsons. It was pretty funny thinking back to when this show started and how some parents were so upset with this show, which seems pretty tame now – but back in 1990, were pretty risque.
The second segment sees the Simpsons being abducted by Aliens that seem to constantly want to feed and fatten the Simpsons up. They accuse the aliens of doing this because they want to eat the Simpsons – but the twist there is that they just wanted to cook for them. With their feelings hurt, the aliens return the Simpsons to Earth ending their chance at eternal paradise. It was cool to see Kang and Kodos for the very first time.
The third segment is a reading of The Raven, with Homer acting out the story. It was actually a pretty straight-forward reading of the poem, but with some funny visuals and Homerisms.
It’s funny looking back and seeing how the show has changed over the years, from the voice delivery being slighty different, the quality of animation changing dramatically, but one thing hasn’t changed in all that time. Around this time of year, the Simpsons are always going to give us another “Treehouse of Horror” where, as I’ve said already, anything can happen.
In fact, where only a couple weeks away from it happening again, and according to WikiSimpsons, here are the three stories for this year:
- Sideshow Bob will finally kill Bart and won’t know what to do with his life.
- Homer wakes up with short-term memory loss
- Lisa, Bart and Milhouse get super-powers from radiation.
Quoth the raven, “EAT MY SHORTS!”
