The Simpsons to dedicate part of 2020's "Treehouse Of Horror" to the Trump presidency
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It’s established Simpsons canon that Homer likes to talk through his thought process while voting, and also that he makes absolutely no decisions about who to vote for until he has his ballot in his hand, and the show is going to keep that tradition alive when Homer enters the voting booth in the opening scene of this season’s “Treehouse Of Horror” episode. Variety has an exclusive clip from the episode, and in it Homer is stumped when he gets to the presidential election part of his ballot. As it turns out, he doesn’t remember anything from the past four years except “Faye Dunaway gives Oscar to wrong movie and is never seen again” (which is a solid pull), but thankfully Lisa is there to remind him of the awful, awful, awful things Donald Trump has done since 2016 that—in classic Simpsons fashion—gradually scroll across the screen as Homer becomes increasingly shocked. Well, he starts out thinking it’s pretty funny, but then he’s ultimately horrified enough to vote for… actually, they don’t show it. And they also don’t refer to Trump by name, which is a little odd. Maybe it’s like when they overdubbed the names of the football teams the characters were talking about based on whoever was in the Super Bowl that year? Except the opposite?
Either way, here’s the full list that Homer sees, including a curiously vague reference to “the worst one” going unmentioned. Some are obviously more terrible than others, but hey, they had to fill a big list in order to have the impact they were going for.
Made it okay to shoot hibernating bears
Put children in cages
Called Mexicans rapists
Imitated disabled reporter
Looks lousy in a tennis outfit
Can’t get wife to hold hand
Called third world countries ****holes
Called Tim Cook ‘Tim Apple’
Said Jewish people who vote Democrat are disloyal
Showed top secret documents at Mar-A-Lago restaurant
Called white supremacists ‘fine people’
Leaked classified information to Russian ambassador
Asked the president of Ukraine to investigate the Bidens
Called for China to investigate the Bidens
Walked into the dressing room at Miss Teen USA pageant
Pressed the Australian prime minister to help Barr investigate Mueller
Talked about grabbing *****
Lied about the size of his inauguration
Refused to release tax returns
Gutted the E.P.A.
Confiscated and destroyed interpreter’s notes after meeting with Putin
Tweeted classified photo of Iran missile site
Called Baltimore a ‘disgusting, rat and rodent-infested mess’
Described Meryl Streep as ‘over-rated’
Leaked information to the press about the 2017 Manchester arena bombing
Did not attend any White House correspondents’ dinner
Said Megyn Kelly had ‘blood coming out of her whatever’
Called Carly Fiorina ‘horseface’
Ruined impeachment
Brought Ivanka to the G7 summit
Corrupted Congress
Appointed and didn’t fire Betsy DeVos
Put Jared in charge of Mideast
Served McDonald’s to Clemson football team
Destroyed democracy
Lost Hong Kong
Threatened Marie Yovanovitch
Pulled the U.S. out of climate agreement
Allowed bounties on soldiers
Invaded Portland
Withdrew from W.H.O.
Bragged about knowing the date
Commuted sentences
Said to swallow bleach
Person, woman, man, camera, TV
Destroyed post office
Paid $750 in taxes
Wants third term
Wanted to be on Mount Rushmore
And we haven’t even said the worst one
Variety says the full episode (“Treehouse Of Horror XXXI,” if they bothered to try teaching you Roman numerals in school) will feature timely parodies of Toy Story, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, and Russian Doll. (We’re only being sarcastic because we care about you, The Simpsons.) The episode will air this Sunday on Fox.
61 Comments
“Imitated disabled reporter”Um, imitated? Talk about euphemistic.
Imitation is the sincerest form of mockery, that’s how that goes right? He was very sincerely mocking a disabled person which is why a never feel bad mocking his physical appearance as an ugly as hell old fat fuck.Normally I shy away from insults about people’s physical appearance. The choices they make fashion and make-up wise are fair game though since it is a choice.
I remember reading someone who once posted in “defense of Trump” how Trump imitated other people like that before, even if they weren’t disabled. It went something like:“He wasn’t mocking the guy because he was disabled! He was mocking the guy as if he was disabled, without knowing he was disabled, but also mocks people who are not disabled by pretending that they are!”I wouldn’t be surprised if someone from the White House read their post in defense of Trump and hired them.
But think of all the ugly as hell old fat fucks who are perfectly decent people. They don’t deserve that association!
I am looking forward to an orderly election which will eliminate the need for a violent bloodbath.
I’m sure a journalist could ask Trump if he would promise not to start a violent bloodbath if he loses and he wouldn’t be able to.
Don’t blame me. I voted for Kodos…….
Don’t blame me, I voted for Velocity Girl.(obscure, I know, but kudos to those that get it)
B-
did they stop reviewing the simpsons? and bob’s burgers?i usually remember to watch when i see a review pop up, but i haven’t seen any.
They did, yes. The reason being their wasn’t a large enough readership or “clicks” to warrant continual reviews of either series, apparently.
Which is a little hard to believe, since some of the ongoing reviews have comment sections in the single-digits. Not that I’m complaining about those reviews, but man, it’s a little depressing.
They got Woke, now their reviews are broke.
That’s why this is the only place on the site to make the following point: the first 4 eps of this season are/will be:— Undercover Burns [normal episode]— I, Carambus [Simpsons as ancient Romans]— Now Museum, Now You Don’t [Simpsons as various classic artists]— Treehouse of Horror…you think maybe they’re having trouble coming up with stories?
I was initially annoyed to have two historical episodes in a row, but the second one was not bad.
I actually liked both of the last two, but still.
But I was told they had stories for years and years!
But now it’s been years and years and years and years and years.
“the worst one” – I’m going with “killed 210,000 people and counting”
I’m sure the jokes will be all kinds of original and not at all something we’ve heard 500,000 times at this point.
Funny how 30 years ago the show felt like relevant commentary on the culture and happenings of the early 90s, without necessarily calling anything out by name. Yet now the show is more rife with pop-culture analogues and presidential depictions, and it feels like every joke comes out of the package stale as veggie straws.
Part of the blame goes to South Park. They can literally make an entire episode from script to screen in a week, allowing them to stay topical, whereas Simpsons needs several months lead time like other cartoons.
That’s always been their production turnaround though. I think the cultural reference is the 90s in general, while most of the pop culture references in the early run are 70s-adjacent, through both Homer/Marge and the writers’ sensibilities. I think these days it’s a bit more “There’s a Joe Exotic joke in this Fall ‘21 episode.”
Hey! I like veggie straws!
I remember one of the episodes that turned me off of the Simpsons included a huge Matrix reference. I think Bart was Neo and did the slow motion bullet dodge to Matrix music.I know the Simpsons have always done some pop culture references and one of my favourite Simpsons episodes was the Lucy Lawless/Xena one“But wait a minute, Xena can’t fly..”“I’m not Xena, I’m Lucy Lawless”“oh…”But for what ever reason, the Matrix reference really started to kill the Simpsons for me.
Don’t be so cynical. This year they’re doing one with multiple versions of Homer! Dare we hope for a frosty milkshakes callback?
Frosty chocolate milkshakes…
I don’t know whether it says something about how lazy Simpsons is or how recognizable Spider-verse is, but as soon as I saw that header image I thought “oh they are doing a Spider-verse bit.”
There better be Spider-Pig.
Spider-Pig made the entire Simpsons Movie.
What’s weird is I still consider myself a Simpsons fan and I still watch episodes fairly frequently, but barely anything after season 7 and 3 or 4 episodes of season 8. Those first, 8 I guess, seasons were foundational for my brother and me. I don’t know that we could have a conversation without at least one Simpsons’ reference. And I haven’t liked an episode they’ve produced for over 2 decades. It’s like SNL, I guess, you like it whenever you start watching it, and it’s a resume builder for Harvard grad writers.
For all the talk (some of it from themselves) about how Fox lets them say more of what they like attacking the positions of Fox because they helped make them in the early days …About that, if the success of The Simpsons financially helped Fox become as successful as it was, I’d be all for a world that never had it … and by extension Fox as it is without its pernicious reach and influence.
I understand they couldn’t actually list everything, but they left off the time he used a sharpie to alter a weather map, rather than admit he’d made a mistake.
Low hanging fruit for sure. 45 is easy enough to laugh at on his own. Treehouse is the last decent thing Simpsons does. Would prefer to enjoy it without being reminded of how awful things are in the real world.
“Many people are saying that they don’t like Homer Simpson, with his bad hair and weird skin color, believe me!”
Lost Hong KongI realize this is a reference to how the US was said to have “lost China” when Mao took over in 1949, but neither China nor Hong Kong were or are ours to lose, and it is only the holdover of the colonial mindset that ever suggested they were.
Possessions are illusory. Nothing is ours to hold or keep.
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!
Is it too late to have Trump aborted?
No.
don’t forget the twirling!
The entertainment-media complex really does itself no favors, when it insists on lumping ridiculous and false things in with the real. ‘Destroyed Democracy’, ‘Lost Hong Kong’ or ‘Allowed Bounties on Soldiers’ are all either embarrassingly hyperbolic or outright false. And it makes it much easier to dismiss the stuff that’s true.
Yes, I’m sure that a lot of persuadable centrists got mad about that. (In reality, people who were going to vote Trump stayed with Trump.)
So it’s ok to lie, gotcha.
“Person, woman, man, camera, TV”This one is over my head. What’s being referred to here?
The insane interview he gave about acing that dumb cognitive test.
Of course it’s a fool’s errand to identify a “worst one” when considering Cheeto-in-Chief’s grotesque litany of offenses, but I’d wager it might be “sending the military to attack peaceful protestors and deploying glorified secret police to abduct them.” Considering that’s not on the Simpsons list, I’m going for that as the “worst one.”
Is it that, or is it “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by, but I tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left.”After 4 years of this shit show I can’t tell anymore.Edit: Probably it was murdering countless Americans with his Coronavirus advice.
I always thought the worst thing he ever did was rape a 13-year-old girl. But his lack of action on COVID, allowing 215,000 (and counting) people to die is definitely worse.So there you have it. Raping a little girl isn’t the worst thing the President of the United States has done in his life.
I don’t understand it, but somehow that is not considered to be credible. I don’t really get how we dissect sexual assault claims, but very few people even discuss that allegation, as horrifying as it was.
Few people discuss any of the 20+ accusations against him. Do we need Hannibal Burress to talk about it before people will start taking it seriously? Cosby’s in prison, so maybe there’s some hope to get Trump on these rape charges.Unless he has all of the victims killed, like he threatened to do to the little girl he raped.
Variety says the full episode (“Treehouse Of Horror XXXI,” if
they bothered to try teaching you Roman numerals in school) will feature
timely parodies of Toy Story, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, and Russian Doll.
Sigh. Already know this one is gonna be bad. All the Treehouses where they don’t even bother to do anything remotely Halloween related but instead just spoof pop culture turn out to be awful.
Citizen Kang would like a word
Alien invasion + body snatching, I’ll allow it.
Oh no doubt that’s great, but I meant when all their segments are focused on stuff in pop culture like movies or other popular shows. The Treehouse with Citizen Kang still had the story where Bart’s evil twin monster brother Hugo was living in the attic. And the story where Lisa creates a civilization from her tooth was based on a Twilight Zone episode. I’m just saying when they move away from those horror, mystery, sci-fi based stories for most of the episode in favor of spoofing other genres, the episode tend to be a lot weaker.
We watch them all every year, good and bad. This year we started with the most recent and went backward. It was a much better experience.
That is a top tip!
The worst one has to be the pandemic response, right?
Lost Hong Kong??
Hilarious. I didn’t even vote for Trump in 2016 but about 95% of the s*** on that list is Total b******* and we all know it period Trump couldn’t get his wife to hold his hand? What kind of joke is that? Who cares? What a bunch of petulant Petty childrenEdit and I would probably censor comments on this kind of stupid pointless article too if I were you LMAO
Most of these things are fake and/or stuff that happened before he won that no one but libtards gave a crap about.