Treehouse of Horror 2

Series: The Simpsons
Season: 3
Episode: 7

We return to the Treehouse of Horror for the second time this year, but the question is this: Is it better than last time? Well. For me, not so much. To backtrack a bit, I did enjoy this episode but not quite as much as the first installment of the Treehouse series. So lets take a look at the episode itself and see why.

The beginning starts off the same way as the first, where Marge pleads with the audience to send the kids to bed early, but gives up and says "Well you didn't listen last time." This is a rather fun opening, it adds a bit of continuity to the series, and references back to the original opening's dialogue. From here we move into the wraparound story that fills in between each segment. This time around, Lisa, Bart, and Homer all eat far too much candy before bed, and one after another have bad dreams. Again, this is actually a rather fun way to fill in the time between segments without having to rehash the treehouse filler from before.

Lisa's dream follows the family as Homer buys an old monkey's paw which is said to grant wishes, but at a price of twisting them around. Ignoring the warning, the family begins to use the paw for wishes. Maggie makes the first one, which oddly gets overlooked for the twist. Perhaps she's smart when it comes to wish making? Following Maggie's wish, Bart decides to wish for the family to be rich and famous. With the new found wealth, comes the price of having everyone annoyed with the family and their antics. Lisa then wishes for world peace, which backfires as the world becomes enslaved by Kang and Kodos. Annoyed with all the twisted wishes, Homer decides to use his last wish for a sandwich and winds up getting rather dry turkey. The segment ends with Kang and Kodos suggesting that humanity might doom themselves with war.

Following her dream, Bart's dream revolves around himself as he has the power to not only read minds, but to also change people and animals into whatever he wants. This puts the entire town on edge as they have to constantly think happy thoughts and cater to his whims. When Homer goes too far, Bart changes his father into a Homer-in-the-box. Through the rest of the segment, Marge turns to Dr. Marvin Monroe for help, who in turn manages to get Bart and Homer to bond, eventually saying "I love you" which makes Bart wake up screaming.

Our final dream is Homer's, as he drifts off thinking about work in the morning. Unhappy with his lazy workers, Mr. Burns fires Homer for sleeping on the job, forcing the man to find a new job as the local gravedigger. When Homer falls asleep at that job as well, Mr. Burns kidnaps Homer, thinking him to be dead. With Homer in his secret lab, Mr. Burns reveals that he's going to use Homer's brain to power a giant robot worker which will change the labor industry. This backfires, however, when the robot ends up as lazy as Homer was.

While the entire episode as a sum is rather funny, each of the dream sequences doesn't really stand out to me. All three seemed to really lack a larger horror aspect like the first installment, though these segments do prey on the fears of each family member. In a respect, the segments do have that element of horror to them but the concept doesn't feel fully realized in the end.

3/4