Death, Taxes,…. and The Simpsons!
By Sameer Bajaj
A&F staff writer

Quick! Guess what the longest running TV sitcom of all time is.

Cheers? Mash? Dawson’s Creek? Clarissa Explains it All? Wrong! It’s The Simpsons! For the last 14 years, America’s favorite family has philosophized on life, death, and everything in between through their unique brand of cynicism. And every season, the annual “Treehouse of Horror” Halloween episode provides some of the most thought-provoking, innovative, and well-done television you will ever watch. From inter-dimensional travel to sex-crazed aliens, the Simpsons Halloween specials cover topics that other shows would not dare think about, and this year was no exception. The show was an amalgamation of three mini-episodes with distinct themes and senses of humor.

The first episode, entitled “Reaper Madness,” begins with the Grim Reaper showing up at the Simpsons’ household, asking for the life of Bart. One thing leads to another, and Homer eventually kills Death with a bowling ball and becomes the Reaper himself when Homer dons the ghostly robe. The humorous possibilities were endless: what would the beer-drinking, fart-producing embodiment of the prototypical middle-aged American man do with such vast power? The answer was obvious: find his way to the front row of a baseball game by killing all the fans in front of him! It was all fun and games, until inevitably, his duties requires him to kill Marge. So Homer carries the corpse of his wife up a mountain and places it in front of God to be taken to heaven. As the body slowly ascends towards the clouds, its cover falls off to reveal the corpse as Marge’s hated sister Thelma! Homer then jumps on a Harley and races away from the furious light of God, who eventually stops chasing because He is “too old and rich for this!” Ah, nothing like the Simpsons to deconstruct modern religion. Personally, I loved this episode. It is not that I disrespect Christianity or any other religion; it is actually quite the opposite. But like in most great Simpsons episodes, Homer Simpson shows us that you have to learn to laugh at yourself. The Simpsons is one of the few shows that has the ability to take a topic like death and make it humorous; like it or not, you have to respect that talent.

The next mini-episode was a parody of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece, entitled “Frinkenstein.” It is centered around uber-nerd Professor Frink’s knowledge that he is going to be awarded the Noble Prize. Frink has been holding his deceased father in a chamber so he can resurrect him for just this very situation. When he does, his father goes on a rampage, killing other people and using their body parts to make himself as powerful as he can become. This episode was a little slower, and the whole Frankenstein spoof has been done a thousand times over, but I still laughed my head off when Frink Sr. began untwisting heads and stealing scientist’s brains at the Noble Prize ceremony. This was clearly the weakest of the three mini-episodes, but it still managed to take a huge swipe at the power of modern science and its tendency to mess with the fundamental fabric of human existence, all while remaining funny and lighthearted.

The third episode,’“Stop the World, I Want to Goof,” asked the question,”“What would you do if you could stop the world around you and do whatever you wanted, without anyone knowing?” When Bart and Millhouse stop time with a 49 cent pocket watch, they proceed to wreak havoc on the world, playing all kinds of practical jokes on the residents of Springfield. I thought this was the second best of the episodes. It humorously laid out a very interesting theoretical test of morality. With such power, would we act with vice or virtue? Whatever the case, we would not act nearly as funny as Bart and Millhouse.

In typical Simpsons fashion, the fourteenth Halloween episode covered a range a topics and viewpoints. Yet, through it all the show managed to be funny as hell. This episode further showed why the Simpsons is the best show on television.