Review: The Simpsons “Thanksgiving of Horror”

 

Overview:

“A-gobble-ypto”

The Simpsons and their friends are living the good life as wild turkeys. Their community turns to chaos when pilgrim Chief Wiggum and crew show up and start slaughtering their brethren. Capturing Homer, he witnesses them murder his friends and father before Milhouse lights the whole village aflame. Narrowly escaping, the turkey Simpson family look on with horror as the dark age for turkeys begins.

“The Fourth Thursday After Tomorrow”

In a Black Mirror parody, Homer buys Marge a new artificial intelligence kitchen. The catch is he has implanted his wife’s memories into the robot. Feeling like she is the true mother, the AI provides for the children and even seduces Homer. As Marge feels like the robot has stolen her life, she demands that Homer destroy it, but not until after Thanksgiving. However, with time to plan, the AI manages to put together a great escape, but not without the help of Maggie.

“The Last Thanksgiving”

With Earth fallen into another ice age, humans have sent their last survivors to space in hopes of colonizing a new planet. Before the adults are woken up, the children are left with the reign of the ship. Bart thinks that the children should all be spending their time making a great Thanksgiving feast and he gets everyone on board to help. However, with a mix-up with some cranberry sauce and a matter replicator, the fruit gelatin comes to life and begins eating the children’s bones. Thankfully, Bart and Lisa are able to outsmart the monster and land the ship safely on a new hospitable planet in time for the first Blargs-giving.

 

Our Take:

To be honest, from my chilly home in Canada, I had no idea it was Thanksgiving in the USA. Having feasted on my turkey well over a month ago, this slipped my mind. Plus, it seems a little late in November for the holiday. Is that a thing that moves around a lot?  Or, is it just me? Anyways, Thanksgiving is typically a holiday with specials that involve family, togetherness, and all that joyful junk. Television specials for the annual event are usually heartfelt and loving. So, this was an exciting new take. One that I would be happy to have become a tradition for years to come.

The episode starts with an introduction from Marge. She indicates that this year one holiday just wasn’t enough for all the spooks and thrills that they wanted. Thus, Thanksgiving of Horror. But, to make it even more special, the episode begins with a couple of beloved cameos. Kang and Kodos get to make an appearance in the first Thanksgiving special. Which only adds to their list of brilliant cameos including 30 “Treehouse of Horror” episodes. If you want to see all of those, we recently put together a list of every Halloween appearance from the alien duo, check it out.

Let’s start in on the great segments we got in this particular episode.  First up was “A-gobble-ypto”, a parody of Apocalypto, but involving the turkeys of the first Thanksgiving. Listening to these turkeys gobble their way around was getting pretty dull until turkey Maude Flanders got her head blown off. This cute little segment took a dark turn with some massive violence. It almost makes you feel terrible eating these birds for the holidays. And, it makes it worse when you realize that this whole thing was not that far off from the truth.

“The Fourth Thursday After Tomorrow” was The Simpsons Black Mirror parody we never knew we needed. The Netflix series is so well written and thought-provoking that you would never expect an animated sitcom to attempt a rip-off. But, if there were any show on Animation Domination that could pull it off, it would have to be The Simpsons. There were many ways that this could have been executed, but having Marge combat her own AI was a stroke of genius. The multilayered plot worked so well with the dynamics of the Simpsons mother, and the standoff for Maggie’s affection at the end was so Black Mirror-esque it might as well be a part of the anthology.

Finally, I may be a sucker for space survival movies, but “The Last Thanksgiving” was the perfect topper to the episode. Again, this was brilliant writing with a masterful plot. Taking the sometimes overused sci-fi trope and adding in some Thanksgiving fun was something never done before. Often, peoples quips with modern Simpsons is that they reuse old material. However, this episode proved over and over that they still have it. And, even under the House of Mouse, the violence and gore was out there for the world to see. I mean, this cranberry sauce monster sucks out the bones of children leaving them as empty skin packs to be tossed aside. That’s pretty badass and as gory as you’ll be able to find on Disney+ when season 31 is added to the streaming service.

Each segment was packed full of relevant humour and solid storytelling. There was no dull moment, and the whole episode got better as time went on. There has to be a lot of credit to The Simpsons creatives for doing something new and redefining what a Thanksgiving special could be.

I absolutely loved this holiday special.  We went through time from the first Thanksgiving, to the not too distant future, to the last Thanksgiving. The Simpsons not only gave us something exciting and engaging, but they also did something unexpected and unheard of. They tossed away with the thanks and went straight to the giving. This was so unique and fun that it blew “Treehouse of Horror XXX” out of the water, even when that was expected to be the best episode of the year. The only thing left to hope for is that “Thanksgiving of Horror” becomes a new tradition. If not, then I hope they would consider doing an Easter or Christmas version. Or, even better, let’s see them make Valentine’s a gory spookfest.