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mfunk9786 wrote:I think it makes a lot more sense to vote for full ToH episodes - that's what I did (though only one made my list), but does liking one segment more than another create a more unique issue than, say, thinking an episode goes too far off the rails in its final act?

The idea was, apart from the episodes list (for which individual segments of episodes are not eligible), to do a mini-list devoted to just Treehouse of Horror segments.

I understood that for the main list a vote for a Treehouse episode = a vote for a full three-part show.
But didn't realize there was a mini-list suggestion where each ToH segment could be voted on separately.
That works pretty well, as there should be 75 or so mini-episodes to rank.
Actually I missed that Treehouse mini-list suggestion post.
Think it's a good idea and then I can shovel out the many Treehouse episodes from my main list of full episodes.
______________________________________
Send in the Clones:
"Anyone remember the way home?"
(one Homer clone raises his hand -- Homer blows him away with a shot gun blast)
"Anyone else?"
(a pause, then another Homer raises his hand)

Marge: "Homer is there anything you like to tell us about this horde of clones?"
Homer: "You'd think so -- but no"
(well that last one depends a lot on vocal inflection and pace)

I voted for three Halloween episodes in my top fifty, two of which are back to back in my top ten, and would not change my votes even with a mini-list, buuuuuut an additional mini-list would enable me to vote for a couple great outliers apart from those episodes too (well, I guess really just the Nightmare on Elm Street and I Know What You Did Last Summer segments, but still)

Well I'm just going to go ahead and say that the mini-list is on. I'll accept any top 10s that are submitted, so long as you also submit a top 50 episodes list. Please do not let this prevent you from voting for any entire Treehouse of Horror episodes in your main list. If one of those is among your favorites, then it should probably rank on both your main list (as a whole) and on your mini-list (in pieces).

Haven't received any mini-lists yet so I'll put this out there--would people rather have it encompass all shorts and not just Treehouse of Horror? This would add in segments from the 22 Short Films episode, the Spinoff Showcase, Simpsons Bible Stories, etc., plus I suppose the Tracey Ullman shorts, where they're more likely to receive a vote.

EDIT: I think this is a no go, since no one responded and I've now received some shortlists that only cover Treehouse of Horror.

I'm not against it but i personally don't really feel like going back and combing through old ToHs, etc. to try and pull another list together. I've had a hard enough time with this one. If an episode was good enough to make your cut, great. if not leave it off.

I guess if I'm going to spotlight an episode I'll have to go with the John Swartzwelder penned Mountain of Madness (S8, Ep 12). Quite simply, every joke here lands. To begin, Mr. Burns decides on a lark to have a fire drill. It takes more than 15 minutes for anyone to exit the building. Homer is somehow the first one out and he naturally barricades the door shut to prevent anyone else from escaping. By the time everyone has made it out, the front of the building looks like this:



This sad display prompts Mr. Burns to organize a team retreat for his workers on a snow-covered mountainside. Homer explains this turn of events to his family over dinner, where Bart is apparently the voice of reason: "Teamwork is overrated. Think about it. What team was Babe Ruth on? Who knows?"

The family arrives at the retreat just as Mr. Burns is explaining how brutal the trek up the mountain will be. "I cannot overemphasize the dangers which--did you bring your family, Simpson?" Marge and the kids are satisfied that they'll still be able to have fun staying behind, since after all they are at a national park, but a ranger is quick to inform them that this will not be the case. Then comes this perfect bit of comic timing.

The employees are split up into pairs and told that the last team to arrive will be fired. No one seems to like who they are paired with. Among the last pairs selected are Homer with Mr. Burns and Smithers with himself. But after being disappointed by the digs at the visitor's center, Bart and Lisa soon give Smithers company. Bart is eager to help ("I have a watch with a minute hand!") but as it turns out, he hasn't yet figured out how to use it. Meanwhile, Mr. Burns gives a long speech to convince Homer of the merits of cheating to make it up the mountain first. It works: "Mr. Burns, I insist that we cheat." "Excellent."

Marge begins to wonder where her kids are and asks the ranger for help finding them. "We'll take the chair lift. It'll give us an eagle-eye view...of the area directly beneath the chair lift. But I won't lie to you. Our chances of finding your children are slim to nil." They of course immediately pass over the kids with Smithers and Lisa says hi. Marge asks to get off at that point, but is informed that there's no way to dismount until they get to the top...and even then it's a little tricky.

Homer and Mr. Burns easily make it to the cabin well ahead of the others and enjoy a rare bonding moment. They try to outdo each other at sitting low in their chairs and Homer impresses with his ability to stomp on the table until something on the opposite end of it bounces within his reach. They toast champagne glasses. Unfortunately, all the noise they're making sets off an avalanche which completely buries the cabin in snow. They send an S.O.S. by telegraph but it is chillingly revealed to be connected at the other end to a museum display for Samuel Morse. Lenny and Carl arrive at the location of the cabin but, not finding it, reason that it must have been metaphorical ("the place inside each of us created by our goodwill and teamwork"). "Aw," says Lenny, "they said there'd be sandwiches." They soon find a small lookout post and assume that it must be the cabin. Others eventually join them.

Homer and Mr. Burns continue to try to escape but keep being submerged by more avalanches. Once they have given up, it doesn't take long for them to lose it. Homer suggests that they could pass the time by building snowmen. Burns has a better idea: "We could build real men out of snow." Homer reluctantly agrees. Once complete, Burns marvels at his creation: "206 bones, 50 miles of small intestines, full pouting lips--why, this fellow is less a snowman than a god... Well, we've managed to stave off cabin fever for a few hours... I think we should dress the snowmen." Without hesitation, Homer concurs.



Burns of course immediately suspects that the snowmen are plotting against them. Meanwhile, the main park ranger comes upon all the employees crowded in the lookout post. We are momentarily led to believe that the ranger that is supposed to be manning that post is a drunk who was just happy to have the company, but then the real ranger steps into frame. The two rangers quickly surmise that avalanches have buried the cabin after checking the seismometer: "Look at all these avalanches. Do you think they could have buried the cabin?" "Well I'll tell you one thing--they didn't come here for the Mountain Music Festival, March 14th to 18th." One of the rangers assures Bart and Lisa that their father is going to be just fine before instructing everyone to put on their corpse-handling gloves.

Finally, Homer and Burns get in a fight that somehow ignites a propane tank that thrusts the cabin out of the snow to safety. All the employees rush inside, but Lenny is slowest and so he is fired. (Or is he?) As the credits roll, Homer and Burns alternate between laughing the whole thing off and casting suspicious glances at each other. Mountain of madness indeed.

Yay, spotlights!

As a reminder, lists are due in two weeks, on the night Season 28 premieres.

I've been trying to give the later seasons some kind of a fair shake, by going through this list as well as all the Vitti and Swartzwelder episodes that I had yet to see. Some were terrible, others not half bad, though it's hard to muster up too much enthusiasm for episodes that I didn't personally discover during more formative years. If I'm picking highlights from the Al Jean solo era, I kind of liked Simple Simpson (S15, Ep 19), in which Homer becomes a pie-throwing superhero (though it lamely reuses the island/peninsula joke from Lisa on Ice), and the beginnings of Hunka Hunka Burns in Love (S13, Ep 4, in which Homer becomes a writer of fortune cookies), I Am Furious (Yellow) (S13, Ep 18, where a school assembly prompts all the students to start their own cartoon strips), and The Frying Game (S13, Ep 21, where Homer has to care for something called a screamapillar). Also, Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind (S19, Ep 9) was kind of clever if overwrought. And I liked this line from How I Spent My Strummer Vacation (S14, Ep 2): "We're doing a gig tomorrow night to benefit the victims of tonight's gig." Oh and finally, I watched Once Upon a Time in Springfield (S21, Ep 10) which I had asked about earlier. It was mostly fine but Anne Hathaway sports a terrible New York accent in it (so of course she won an Emmy) and it actually ends with a message from the show's writers to the effect of "450 episodes...but the best is yet to come" as a unicorn flies across the screen. I am not making that up.

One later season joke of a similar ilk I really liked was in the Season 24 finale, Dangers on a Train, where Homer and Marge are celebrating their 20th anniversary and, at the very end, Lisa asks, "do you think you'll make it to 25 years?" and Bart explains, "Nothing should."

My hopes of being the person spotlighting later season episodes fell by the wayside and my latest to make my list as of right now is in Season 10.

The problems with any late era episodes I did watch was a lack of any sort of feeling that it was even the same show. I find it hard, even if a sort of admirable effort to keep this corpse dancing is made, to even compare those late episodes to the first 10 years or so of this show. It's a very different thing now, and it's hard to even tell who the target audience is, let alone how it stacks up to the "golden era." If we all had enough time and watched every episode from Season 13 to present, how many of them would've actually been good enough to crack our lists? It might be mere supposition on my part, but I would not be surprised if the answer to that question was still zero.

Think I've finally settled on my list, and it breaks out like so:

Seasons
2 - 4
3 - 5
4 - 10
5 - 11
6 - 10
7 - 4
8 - 3
9 - 2
11 - 1

Showrunners
Brooks/Groening/Simon - 5
Jean & Reiss - 16
Mirkin - 19
Oakley & Weinstein - 7
Scully - 3

Writers
John Swartzwelder - 13/59
Jon Vitti - 8/25
Conan O'Brien - 4/4
Greg Daniels - 4/8
Mike Scully - 3/12
Bill Oakley & Josh Weinstein - 3/13

I've actually seen the episode with Anne Hathaway as well. It's not bad. As someone who grew up on Long Island it's always fun to hear accomplished actors mangle the LI dialect. The accent being so fundamentally ridiculous in the first place, i don't think it's possible to do it badly-see every episode of Mike Myers' "Coffee Talk With Linda Richman" from SNL.

I think the latest episode i've seen is The Squirt and the Whale (S 21.-Ep.19) and it really was the last nail in the coffin in that if there was even the slightest possibility of ever having watch an episode of The Simpsons as horrible as this again, i wouldn't take the chance.

Here's my Season-based breakdown now I've finished my list (I'm still not happy with it, but c'est la vie):

Season - # of Episodes:
1 - 1
2 - 11
3 - 8
4 - 8
5 - 3
6 - 6
7 - 5
8 - 6
9 - 1
10 - 1

I'm probably a crazy person, though.

Only voting for three episodes from Season Five is recognized as a mental illness in seventeen states

I have the ballot and I see five from Season 5. Still though...

Yes, I was going off memory in labeling the seasons and mislabeled two of the S5 ones as S4. I *was* feeling good about my representation of Season 4 but apparently I didn't do very good there either.

You still have eight from S4. All of your counts were off!

1 - 1
2 - 10
3 - 7
4 - 8
5 - 5
6 - 6
7 - 4
8 - 7
9 - 1
10 - 1

Thank you for doing my work for me, I apparently just have an absolutely terrible memory.

Here's my list of episodes that just missed the cut. One could make a case for any and all of them:

BART THE GENIUS (SEASON 1- EP. 2)
GRANDPA VS. SEXUAL INADEQUACY (SEASON 6- EP. 10)
A FISH CALLED SELMA (SEASON 7- EP. 19)
YOU ONLY MOVE TWICE (SEASON 8- EP. 2)
IN MARGE WE TRUST (SEASON 8- EP. 22)
HOMER’S ENEMY (SEASON 8- EP. 23)
THE JOY OF SECT (SEASON 9- EP. 13)
HOMR (SEASON 12- EP. 9)
MISSIONARY: IMPOSSIBLE (SEA. 11- EP. 15)
PYGMOELIAN (SEASON 11- EP. 16)
TREEHOUSE OF HORROR IV (SEA. 5- EP. 5)

List by seasons:

season 2- 11
season 3- 12
season 4- 11
season 5- 14
season 6- 1
season 10- 1

I just submitted my list of top fifty episodes and my list of top ten Treehouse of Horror stories. I hope more people are also submitting Treehouse of Horror short lists.

Season Breakdown
1. 2
2. 4
3. 8
4. 12
5. 8
6. 5
7. 3
8. 6
9. 2

Askew wrote:I hope more people are also submitting Treehouse of Horror short lists.

As I give my reminder that there's just one more week until the deadline, I'd like to put in a plug for this as well. I've only gotten three mini-lists so far (including my own) and it's going to take a lot more than that for the results to be very meaningful. Speaking for me personally, there were only even like 15 segments in contention, and they each average about 7 minutes in length, so I was able to revisit everything in less than two hours.

Without even much effort I have 12 on my Treehouse Top 10 already.

As for the full show, I have a list of 50 but it seriously needs ordering.
The breakdown as of now is basically a bell-curve with a peak in Seasons 5 & 6:
S1 1
S2 4
S3 3
S4 6
S5 8
S6 8
S7 4
S8 4
S9 4
S10 2
S11 1
S12 2
S13 1
S14 1
S15
S16 1

Really curious what you picked from the latter seasons Lemmy. Looking forward to the results..