Review: The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XVII
11/03/06 05:07 PM
By ED BARK
Halloween's best aftertaste is The Simpsons' annual fright night, which usually bides its ghoulish time until after the costumes and candy are consumed. So here comes Sunday's Treehouse of Horror XVII with guest voice contributions from Dr. Phil McGraw, Richard Lewis and Fran Drescher. Trick or treat it at 7 p.m. central, 8 eastern on Fox.
Drescher's laugh, beautifully utilized in the "You Gotta Know when to Golem" segment, is more than enough to haunt a skeleton or even scare Freddy Krueger. But the visual delight is "Married to the Blob," in which Homer devours a glob of meteor-delivered green goo and then bloats to epic proportions. His prodigious appetite now demands human edibles such as Dr. Phil, who first tries to lecture him.
"It's time to open up a can of honesty," says Phil before Homer opens up a can of him. This leads to the episode's most delicious line. "It's amazing," says Homer. "He tastes just like Jeffrey Tambor."
As with most Treehouses of Horror, these short stories tend to end abruptly. Never more so than with "Blob," which is great fun and then abruptly done.
Sunday's third piece, "The Day the Earth Looked Stupid," is both a parody of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio-cast and an allegory about invading someone else's country. Sepia-toned and set in Springfield, circa 1938, it ends with those drooling martians from Treehouses past wondering why they weren't greeted as liberators. Instead it's turned out to be "Operation Enduring Occupation."
The Simpsons has endured all the way into its 18th season, with a big-screen movie coming soon. It virtually defined pop culture before pop culture was cool. What would we do without Homer, Bart, Marge, Maggie and Lisa? That's the scariest thought of all.
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