Treehouse of Horror

"Hello, everyone.  You know, Hallowe'en is a very strange holiday.  Personally, I don't understand it.  Mm mm...  Kids worshipping ghosts, pretending to be devils.  Oooh, things on TV that are completely not appropriate for younger viewers.  Things like the following half hour.  Nothing seems to bother my kids. 

''But tonight's show, which I totally wash my hands of, is really scary. So if you have sensitive children, maybe you should tuck them into bed early tonight instead of writing us angry letters tomorrow. Thanks for your attention. Enjoy the show."''

-- Marge Simpson on Halloween--

"Treehouse of Horror" (also known as "The Simpsons Halloween Special") is the third episode of Season 2 and the first Halloween Special. Kang and Kodos make their first appearance in this episode. The events of this episode are non-canon.

Synopsis
The first of the annual Halloween spook-fest. In 'Bad Dream House', the family move into an old haunted house, and are possessed to kill each other. In 'Hungry are the Damned', the family are abducted by Kang and Kodos, and fattened up to the extent that Lisa questions their motive. Her nosiness results in the Simpsons being dropped off at home again. In 'The Raven', a poem by Edgar Allan Poe is recited with the family as the characters.

Opening Sequence
In a parody of the original Frankenstein film, Marge warns viewers that the following program (The Simpsons) may give their children nightmares, so she suggests the adults to "tuck your children into bed tonight instead of writing us angry letters tomorrow." However, the viewers ignore her and let their children watch it anyway.

Wraparound
When Homer comes back from trick-or-treating, he notices Bart and Lisa are telling ghost stories in Bart's treehouse. He climbs up and eavesdrops while Bart comments on Lisa's first story. Bart starts telling his own story called:

Bad Dream House


In a parody of The Amityville Horror The Simpsons move into a new home at a great price. Lisa and Marge are scared there is an evil presence lurking in the house, though Homer says there's nothing to worry about despite there being a vortex in the kitchen, Homer throws in an orange into the vortex then the ones who live in the world throw it out with a note that asks them not to throw in stuff. Bart being strangled by lamp cord, the house threatening the family to leave, and being thrown up to the ceiling. When everyone tries to settle in to sleep, the house brainwashes everyone to kill each other. Luckily, they stop what they are doing, thanks to Marge not being brainwashed. The family then finds out there is an ancient Indian burial ground in the cellar. Suddenly, the house threatens that they will die horribly. Marge becomes furious and ends up angrily telling the house to shut up and telling it off, and after a few moments, hurt by Marge's words, it complies. After a few harrassments by Bart & Lisa, Marge then explains that since they are living in the house, the house is going to have to accept this. The house asks them to leave for a moment as it decides what to do. It determines it would rather die than live with the Simpsons, and the house implodes into nothingness. The Simpsons' whereabouts remain unknown afterwards.

Hungry are the Damned




In a parody of Twilight Zone's episode called To Serve Man, The Simpsons are having a barbecue in their backyard when an alien spaceship suddenly abducts them. Then when they arrived on the ship, they meet Kang, Kodos and Serak the chef, who treat the Simpsons extremely well by giving them countless amounts of food to hold them over, until the great feast at Rigel 4. The three aliens call themselves Rigellians.

After the whole family is weighed on a giant scale and the Rigellians constantly make references to food, Lisa becomes suspicious and thus thinks to herself about the alien's true motives. One night, she wanders around the spaceship and heads into the alien's kitchen, when the chef Serak cooks something to "give the humans the perfect flavor".

After he leaves the room, Lisa grabs the book called "How To Cook Humans", runs to her family and accuses the Rigellians of feeding them all up to eat the humans... However, it is then revealed that Lisa didn't see the whole title of the book, which is actually called "How To Cook For Forty Humans". The Rigellians feel sad, disappointed and angry at the family, so the green aliens send the family back home to live the life of "Not gods, but normal human beings." Lisa then speculates that they, the Simpson family, may be the true monsters after all... as everyone else gets furious at Lisa for saying that.

The Raven
In A Simpson's pardy of the Edgar Allan Poe's classic poem, "The Raven". The narrator (Homer) reads a book to forget the lost lover of his, Lenore (Marge). He hears a knock, but there is no one in front of the door. Knocking keeps on and he finds out it is the Raven (Bart) behind the window. And As he opens it, the Raven flies into the room, sits on the bust of Pallas above the door and says "Eat my shorts" (actually said by Bart to interrupt Lisa telling him that the Raven says Nevermore and nothing else). But as the story continues, the Raven keeps on repeating "Nevermore", driving the narrator crazy. He tries to catch the Raven, only to provoke it to drop books on him. At the end, the mad narrator lies in the middle of the room, surrounded by books, and the Raven laughs.

Epilogue
Later as the whole episode comes to a close, Bart and Lisa consider the three scary tales before going to bed, not knowing that Homer was freaked out by all of the stories. Everyone suddenly goes to bed, but Homer has trouble sleeping this Halloween night...he hears and sees the Raven staring at him right outside his bedroom window! Homer finally decides that he "hates Halloween."

Production
The episode was written by John Swartzwelder, Jay Kogen, Wallace Wolodarsky and Sam Simon. Wesley Archer, Rich Moore and David Silverman directed. The episode is considered to be non-canon and takes place outside the normal continuity of the show. Part of the series' attraction to the writers is that they are able to break the rules and include violence and kill off characters, which they would not usually be able in a regular episode.

Reception
Since it first aired, the episode has received very positive reviews from television critics and is almost always included in the lists of "best episodes" of the show.