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Treehouse of Horror VI

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<tr><th width="33%">Show Runner(s)</th><td>Bill Oakley
& Josh Weinstein</td></tr> <tr><th width="33%">Couch gag</th><td>The family drops down from the ceiling one at a time with their head in a noose.</td></tr><tr><th width="33%">Guest star(s)</th><td>Paul Anka as himself</td></tr>
The Simpsons episode
"Treehouse of Horror VI"

<tr><th style="font-size: 100%;" align="center" colspan="2">Image:Homer3d.gif</th></tr>

Episode no. 134
Prod. code 3F04
Orig. Airdate October 29th, 1995
Writer(s) Scary John Swartzwelder, Steve Tombkins, and David²+S.²+Cohen²
Director Bedlam Bob Anderson
SNPP capsule
Season 7
September 17 1995 – May 19 1996
  1. Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part Two)
  2. Radioactive Man
  3. Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily
  4. Bart Sells His Soul
  5. Lisa the Vegetarian
  6. Treehouse of Horror VI
  7. King-Size Homer
  8. Mother Simpson
  9. Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming
  10. The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular
  11. Marge Be Not Proud
  12. Team Homer
  13. Two Bad Neighbors
  14. Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield
  15. Bart the Fink
  16. Lisa the Iconoclast
  17. Homer the Smithers
  18. The Day the Violence Died
  19. A Fish Called Selma
  20. Bart on the Road
  21. 22 Short Films About Springfield
  22. Raging Abe Simpson and His Grumbling Grandson in "The Curse of the Flying Hellfish"
  23. Much Apu About Nothing
  24. Homerpalooza
  25. Summer of 4 Ft. 2
List of all Simpsons episodes...

"Treehouse of Horror VI" is the sixth episode of The Simpsons' seventh season, as well as the sixth Halloween episode.

Contents

[edit] Opening Sequence

Krusty is the Headless Horseman from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, holding his laughing head, and hurling it at the camera, which makes "The Simpsons Halloween Special VI" appear on screen.

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

[edit] Attack of the 50-Foot Eyesores

When Homer goes to Lard Lad Donuts to get a "Colossal Donut", he denounces their advertising when he realizes that the "colossal donuts" aren't very colossal. So, in revenge, he steals the Lard Lad's donut, and in the midst of a freak storm, Lard Lad, and other giant advertising statues come to life to terrorize Springfield. Homer eventually returns the donut, but Lard Lad and his friends simply keep right on destroying. Finally, Lisa goes to an ad agency, and an executive suggests not to look at the monsters. He tries to write a song, but suggests it would actually sound better coming out of Paul Anka, who performs a song with Lisa. The citizens of Springfield do not look at the monsters, who lose their powers and become lifeless.

In a comical twist of the typical scenario of a tempter portrayed as a "devil on your shoulder", the segment shows a devil's statue destroying Springfield Elementary School, while being tempted by Bart on its shoulder.

[edit] Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace

Bart has a nightmare that Groundskeeper Willie is out to kill him. He is slashed with a rake, and the scratches are still on his body after he wakes up. Many other people at Springfield Elementary School also say they were terrorized by Willie in their nightmares, and what he did actually affected them. When the students take a test, Martin falls asleep and is killed by Willie. Martin dies in class, and Bart and Lisa tell Marge about the monster. She says that Willie was killed in a furnace explosion in the school's basement, and burned to death while the parents of the students looked on and did nothing, and that he told the parents he would get his revenge by killing the children in their dreams. Bart decides that he's going to go to sleep and dream of fighting Willie. Lisa is supposed to stay awake and wake him up if he seems to be in trouble. Bart appears in his dream and attempts to get Willie, who can also transform into other things. Willie turns into a bagpipe spider and is about to kill Bart, when Lisa enters, trying to wake him up. But since she's in the dream, that means she has also fallen asleep. They're about to lose the battle when Maggie appears and uses her pacifier to seal the vent on the spider, causing Willie to explode. Now Bart and Lisa hope they are free of Willie forever. (He does show up again, but just as a normal person with no dream-powers.) This segment is an obvious parody of Nightmare On Elm Street with Willie playing the part of Freddy Krueger. Nightmare on Elmstreet was parodyed earlier in Cape Feare.

[edit] Homer3

When Homer desperately tries to avoid Patty and Selma during a visit, he hides behind a bookcase and stumbles upon a gateway to the third dimension. Homer explores the peculiar area while searching for a method to escape it. Marge calls around Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, Professor Frink, Chief Wiggum and Dr. Hibbert to help Homer get out of the dimension. Because of an accident involving one of the many cones flying around, the third dimension starts to collapse into a black hole, taking Homer closer to it with increasing force, while Professor Frink outside explains to the others that Homer was in the third dimension. Chief Wiggum, enraged, shoots the wall that Homer passed into when entering the 3-D universe, but the bullets just get sucked into the black hole after narrowly missing Homer. Bart goes into the dimension to save him, but Homer falls with the singularity and Bart ends up back in the house thanks to his safety rope. Homer finds himself in an even more terrifying place: the 'real world'. He then sees a shop named "Erotic Cakes" and he forgets his troubles.

This contains the first live-action sequence in a Simpsons episode. The only other live-action sequences are

[edit] Awards

  • This episode was The Simpsons' submission for the 1996 Emmy Awards. The show would eventually lose to Pinky and the Brain. The reason this episode was submitted was because of its 3D animation and the writers felt it would be a lock-in. In several DVD commentaries, the writers and producers talk about how they had many different emotionally driven episodes during the seventh season that probably would have "destroyed Pinky and the Brain" and won the Emmy, episodes such as Mother Simpson, Lisa the Vegetarian and Bart Sells His Soul.

[edit] Goofs

  • The parents' meeting to discuss the misprinted calendars appears to be at night. However, Marge says the meeting was held at the 13th hour of the 13th day of the 13th month. The 13th hour of the day is 1:00pm, early afternoon.

[edit] Math equations

The codes and easter eggs that appear in Homer³ are:

    • P = NP; this is a reference to the famous P = NP problem, and similarly contradicts the general belief that in fact P ≠ NP.
    • 46 72 69 6E 6B 20 72 75 6C 65 73 21; an ASCII-hexadecimal string that decodes as "Frink rules!"
    • eπ i = -1; Euler's identity where i is the imaginary unit.
    • 1 + 1 = 2; This is perhaps one of the most basic and easiest mathematical equations one can understand. This fact can act as a building block to all the other mathematical concepts seen in the episode providing an interesting contrast.
    • 734 are the numbers that correspond to the letters PDI (Pacific Data Images, the animation studio) on a phone keypad.
    • ρmo > 3 H0² / 8 p G; appears shortly after the universe collapses. It defines the critical density of the universe above which the universe would collapse. It is part of Einstein's general theory of relativity. G is the universal gravitational constant, H0 is the Hubble constant.
    • 178212 + 184112 = 192212.
      • Although a false statement, it appears to be true when evaluated on a typical calculator with 10 digits of precision. If it were true, it would disprove Fermat's Last Theorem, which had just been proved when this show first aired. Cohen generated this "Fermat near-miss" with a computer program. [1]
      • That the formula is false is apparent by inspection: the left side is the sum of odd and even numbers, which produces an odd result, but the right side is even.
      • Using exact arithmetic, the left side equals 2,541,210,258,614,589,176,288,669,958,142,428,526,657 and the right side equals 2,541,210,259,314,801,410,819,278,649,643,651,567,616.

[edit] Cultural References

  • In "Attack of the 50-Foot Eyesores" the radio announcement "Astronomers from Tacoma to Vladivostok have just reported an ionic disturbance in the vicinity of the Van Allen Belt. Scientists are recommending that necessary precautions be taken." [2] is an homage to the "announcements" near the start of Orson Wells' Mercury Theatre radio play The War of the Worlds broadcast on Halloween 1938. In that play, the music of "Ramon Raquello and his orchestra" is interrupted by radio reports of astronomers at Princeton observing disturbances on Mars prior to the Martian invasion [3].
  • "Attack of the 50-Foot Eyesores" is a parody of the 1986 movie Maximum Overdrive, where a similar stellar cloud causes all machines, including cars, to move on their own, and attack mankind.
  • The Lard Lad's roar when he first comes to life is actually Godzilla's roar.
  • "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace" is a parody of A Nightmare on Elm Street. When Willie shows the shadow of his rake, it is a homage to Freddy Krueger's famous clawed glove. Willie is also dressed as Freddy would be, in a red and green striped sweater.
  • "When Willy explodes from Maggie's Pacifier being shoved into his exhaust vent, the word 'SATAN' is visible within the cracks of the crater along the top edge."
  • "Homer³" is inspired by the 1962 The Twilight Zone episode called "Little Girl Lost". Homer even explicitly mentions "...that twilighty show about that zone..."
  • The film Tron (the first major film to use computer animation) is also mentioned by Homer as a means of describing his surroundings, as it featured similarly-styled vector-like computer graphics. In what appears to be a sly allusion to the film's lack of success at the box-office, none of the other characters are familiar with the reference.
  • The ornate building Homer encounters inside the third dimension (and is subsequently sucked into the black hole) is a recreation of the exterior of the library players encounter in the popular PC game Myst. The calm strings-based music throughout this segment similarly evokes the The Last Message (Imager Room Theme) from this game.

[edit] External links

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