I’m starting late, but here’s a countdown/selection of my favourite stories from the Simpsons Halloween collection. I’m choosing to focus on the individual stories instead of full episodes for this list because a lot of episodes are mixed and picking any episodes after my personal favourite, “Treehouse of Horror V” is tough. Anyway, here begins the countdown, going until Halloween, of stories from the Treehouse of Horror series.

Send in the Clones

From the fourteenth season of The Simpsons, “Send in the Clones” was the first “Treehouse” I saw as it aired and not in repeats (late bloomer to Simpsons, unfortunately), but for me I was catching something new. “Send in the Clones” is funny and works because it’s concept was fresh and well executed: let’s give Homer clones and watch him exploit them. Through a magic hammock, which he only realizes is magic after he’s created four clones–“This must be a magic hammock!” (the vendor himself said it was cursed), he creates a staff of Homers to do his bidding and take care of all those things that Homer doesn’t want to do.

It’s hard to tell if the Homer clones have some genuine intelligence or if their glazed over expression is just an autopilot mechanism; it’s never stated why the Homer clones are clueless, but in some way they seem less intelligent, but very capable compared to Homer’s rampant selfishness and ignorance; they’re more like innocent children eager to please Homer. Homer makes these clones do all sorts of things he doesn’t want to do: talk to grandpa, listen to Lisa, play catch with Bart, be romantic with Marge…all up until the real Homer steps in to take credit for their work. The terrifying thing about “Send in the Clones” isn’t the clones who decapitate Ned Flanders, it’s that Homer gives them the impression that this is what he wants done. Even if they confuse Homer’s odd signals, like his nod of the head to return Flanders’ hedge trimmers into an order to cut off his head, there’s nothing inherently evil about the Clones, they merely reflect Homer.

However the problem with Homer, a naturally lazy person, creating clones and exploiting them, is that the clones will naturally be lazy, and Homer’s plan of making the clones do all the work makes them a tad resentful and through a painful bout of mathematics–“It would take 2 Homer’s to stop the real Homer” he says/Two Homer’s look at each other, realizing they ARE two Homers/Homer: “Uhh..I mean THREE Homers!” /The Homers look down, disappointed, while Homer laughs away, “Haha…suckers”–they eventually rise up against Homer. Homer eventually catches on and drives the Homers out to the middle of nowhere to strand them…with the magic hammock–D’oh! indeed.

Surprisingly, adding the intelligence of all these Homers together yields some clever thinking. Even though the Homer clones aren’t the most intelligent, they’re not stupid, either; they can put two and two together better than Homer can (as seen earlier). Rather quickly they utilize the magic cloning hammock to create an army of Homers, creating two of the greatest sight gags of the entire episode: first a Homer “clone” that IS Peter Griffin from Family Guy, commenting on the plagiarism claims of the time, and the Homer from The Tracy Ullman Show, saying everyone should go out for “Tall frosty milkshakes.”

Eventually the Homer’s become a nuisance with their large numbers and childlike disregard for manners–separated from the total influence of Homer they’re still rude, but it again seems more like childlike innocence than the rude obnoxious Homer. They still like beer and they still like to have Lenny pick up the tab, but they still can’t stay around because they’re spreading like locusts–as seen when they devour Gill’s entire crop for the year…then devour Gill.

So the military steps in and like any government agency’s attempt to stop their villain they use an underground war room and the plan is decided to lure the Homers to a cliff with giant helicopter carried donuts. With no surprise the plan works and the clones are dead leaving one…a Homer clone while the real Homer was “first over cliff.”

Being ten years old this is the most recent Treehouse of Horror that I like. It captures the fantastic elements and is horrific but still manages to be funny in a sick way–as all of the good ones do. I’ll admit I’m a Simpsons classicist so the earliest seasons are my favourites because every time I watch them I belt out a loud guffaw like the best, and “Send in the Clones” was among those classics. It’s funny on its own merits, the humour is story driven and it’s not a full on parody of anything, managing to be one of the best segments they’ve had.

Tomorrow: “Citizen Kang”