Treehouse of Horror XVII

"**Treehouse of Horror XVII**"
"Treehouse of Horror XVII"
The Simpsons episode
	The episode's promotional image, featuring all three segments.
Episode no.	Season 18; Episode 4
Directed by	David Silverman; Matthew Faughnan
Written by	Peter Gaffney
Production code	HABF17
Original air date	November 5, 2006
Guest appearances
	Richard Lewis as Male Golem; Fran Drescher as Female Golem; Dr. Phil McGraw as himself; Sir Mix-a-Lot sings "Baby Likes Fat"; Maurice LaMarche as Orson Welles;
Episode features
Commentary	Al Jean; Max Pross; David Silverman; Yeardley Smith
Episode chronology
← Previous; "Please Homer, Don't Hammer 'Em"	Next →; "G.I. (Annoyed Grunt)"
	The Simpsons season 18
	List of episodes

"Treehouse of Horror XVII"^[1] is the fourth episode of the eighteenth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons, and the seventeenth Treehouse of Horror episode.^[1] It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on November 5, 2006. In "Married to the Blob", Homer eats green extraterrestrial slime and morphs into a rampaging blob with an insatiable appetite; in "You Gotta Know When to Golem", Bart uses Krusty's golem to wreak havoc on his tormentors; and in "The Day the Earth Looked Stupid", the residents of a late-1930s Springfield refuse to believe news of an actual alien invasion after being duped by Orson Welles's The War of the Worlds radio broadcast.^[1]

It was written by

Dr. Phil McGraw and Sir Mix-a-Lot guest star as themselves, Richard Lewis and Fran Drescher guest voice as the male and female Golems, respectively.^[1] In its original run, the episode received 10.43 million viewers.^[2]

Plot

In a dungeon, a crypt opens, revealing a coffin containing Mr. Burns as the Crypt Keeper. Moe interrupts him as he introduces himself, and is consequently killed in an iron maiden, his blood spilling onto the floor and spelling out the title of the episode.

Married to the Blob

While

homeless

shelter, but the homeless people are quickly devoured by Homer upon entering.

You Gotta Know When to Golem

At the end of an episode of

latkes

.

The Day the Earth Looked Stupid

Springfield is fooled by

Sideshow Mel encouraging his fellow townspeople to cavort naked in the mud to support the ruse. They do this until the following day, when Lisa tells the citizens that it was all a hoax. Angry at being fooled, the citizens of Springfield vow to never fall for such a trick again. Meanwhile, Kang and Kodos, observing the entire event from their spaceship, decide this is the perfect time for a real invasion, and begin destroying what is left of the town. True to their word, the town does not believe that it is a real invasion and ignores it, even as Orson Welles himself comes to Springfield and admits it is not a staged act. Three years later, Kang and Kodos look over the ruins of Springfield and contemplate on why they were not greeted as liberators, while the camera pulls away from the ruins of Springfield as "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" by The Ink Spots

plays.

Production

"The Day the Earth Looked Stupid" was originally supposed to end with Kang and Kodos making a direct reference to the Iraq War as they observe the ruined remains of 1938 Springfield. While the Fox censors had no objections over the line, the producers and writers felt the reference was too obvious and had it cut to make the joke more subtle (though the leaked Internet version has the line that ended up being cut).^[3]

Once again Maurice LaMarche voiced Orson Welles, doing his impression of Welles used earlier for The Brain on Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain.

At the end of the episode Al Jean is credited as "Al July 27, 2007 Jean" predicting the release date for the then in production and upcoming Simpsons Movie.

Reception

"Treehouse of Horror XVII" received mixed to positive reviews from television critics. The episode was declared by Matt Zoller Seitz of New York magazine as being one of nine later Simpsons episodes that was as good as the show's classic era.^[4]

Dan Iverson of IGN gave the episode a score of 7.6/10, commenting "...The dialogue was really quite good - even if the stories weren't the best (and in comparison, they were better than the past four years of Treehouse episodes)... And in typical Simpsons fashion the celebrity appearances were hysterical", concluding "We can totally overlook any other issues the episode had and recommend the episode to anybody who likes random comedy".^[5]

In the article 'You said we'd be greeted as liberators!': 10 anxiety-reflecting Simpsons Halloween segments, The A.V. Club singled out The Day The Earth Looked Stupid, noting that while "the show was awfully quiet during the darkest days of the Bush presidency—which is even more surprising how blatantly left it had been in the past...the show nearly made up for it with its most political—and bleakest—Treehouse segment ever", concluding "The Day The Earth Looked Stupid was The Simpsons at its most pointed".^[6]

When listing the 66 segments of the first 22 Treehouse of Horror episodes in order from worst to best, Joshua Kurp of Splitsider gave this episode's segments (in order of appearance) rankings of #52, #47, and #59. He "saw this episode screened at an event where Matt Groening was present". Kurp said "Blob" was done better in "King-Size Homer", Richard Lewis did not have enough screen time in "Golem", and "Day"'s "conclusion bombed".^[7]