For the 23th Special, Pretty Good

The Simpsons, S24E02

A black hole that Lisa had a hand in bringing about was sucking everything in Springfield into it.  Homer filmed some paranormal things going on in the house, revealing a demon that wanted to take Maggie.  Bart went back in time to buy a comic book for less and ended up changing the present to his benefit but to Homer's disadvantage.

Surprisingly, I enjoyed this Treehouse of Horror this year.  It wasn't one of my favorites of all time, but it was definitely good enough that I felt like I'd like to see it again to see what little things I missed in it.  My favorite of the three was probably the last where Bart went into the past and made it so that he was Artie Ziff's son.  However, I will say that the second story, where they spoofed Paranormal Activity was a close second.

The first story where a black hole was sucking everything had a lot of good parts.  In a way, I felt like it was kinda spoofing Gremlins because Lisa specifically told the family not to feed it and they all kept throwing things into it while knowing the danger.  My favorite thing thrown in was Bart's homework that kept getting spat out, and Bart finally gave up and threw Mrs. Krabapple (or should I call her Mrs. Flanders?) in there.  The best line of the story was when Homer said:

A black hole?! (whispers) I'm sorry, can we call it that?

Anytime someone says something like that, I pretty much enjoy it.

The second story was a pretty good spoof of the aforementioned movie.   In general, I just liked seeing Homer and Marge act like the couple in that movie, but putting their own funny spin on it.  Specifically, I liked when Homer tried to "comfort" Lisa when she asked why all these horrible things were happening in their house:

Oh, sweetie.  Sometimes a mysterious, invisible being from Hell waits for a family to go to sleep then kills them.  Now, go to bed.

I really like when Homer says things in a comforting way, but his actual words are doing the direct opposite.  I almost always laugh when he does that.

I also thought it was funny at the end that the demon wanted a threeway with Homer and another demon if he wanted to save Maggie from being taken.  That's not what I thought would happen at all!  Then Homer was sort of a little too into it to the point that the demon wanted him to stop whatever new sex thing he was trying out.  Gross, but damn funny.

The last story was probably my favorite because I like when they do stories in different timelines.  Also, this is the second time that Bart has met Homer in the past (another was in the episode that spoofed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and it was so easy for Bart to screw up his parents' first meeting.  I really liked how angry Homer got at Bart and how repulsed Marge was by his treatment of him.  Then it just got better when Bart easily accepted that Homer was out of his life when he returned to the present to find he was rich and a Ziff (plus he just looked so cute with that little afro).  It continued to be entertaining when teenage Homer traveled forward in time with Bart and met his older self and they worked together to beat Bart at his own game.  I guess I'm a sucker for happy endings because I liked that even though Artie and Bart beat the crap out of all the members of the United Federation of Homers Through History, Marge realized her mistake and took in all of those guys into her home (I don't know how she'd feed them and pay for all the destruction they would do, though).  I liked all the different Homers and how none of them could find the time to take out the trash in a whole day.  Marge has to love Homer because there is no way anyone could tolerate more than one Homer at one time.

The opening animation about the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar was a little interesting, but not that funny.  I just like how it could have been prevented if Marge didn't help Homer and hadn't had Moe sacrificed instead.

I'm pretty pleased with this episode, and I hope that they deliver more stories like this in the season.  After last week's disappointment of doing New York City again, I'm happy that there's a glimmer of hope for this season yet!  Maybe there will be a hilarious episode down the road if I'm lucky.