Recap / The Simpsons S12 E1 "Treehouse of Horror XI"

Original air date: 11/1/2000

Production code: BABF-21

Homer needs to do a good deed before he can go into Heaven in G-G-G-Ghost D-D-D-Dad, the Simpson kids get lost in a warped fairy tale world in Scary Tales Can Come True, and dolphins rise from the waters to take over Springfield in Night of The Dolphin.

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Tropes:

• Abusive Parents: Homer and Marge in the second story. Homer throws the kids away and Marge berates him for doing that instead of selling them. In the woods, the kids stumble on the skeletons of two older siblings they never met that Homer did the same thing to.
• Accidental Murder: Bart unwittingly caused Goldilocks' death when he used a chair to block the door. Neither he nor Lisa knew Goldilocks was in the bedroom.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The dolphins are this in the third story, especially after their king is freed, who then declares war on humans. Calling them evil might be debatable considering it was humans that caused them to suffer for thousands of centuries, though they are depicted as murderous and don't give two shits against attacking nice humans such as the one who saved their king in the first place.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • In the first act, broccoli is portrayed as one of the most poisonous plants on Earth. This is Played for Laughs, of course.
  • In the third act, dolphins have no trouble moving on land (by Tailfin Walking) and are not worried about dehydration or sunburn. Justified since the dolphins' backstory establishes that they actually used to live in the surface by the time of humanity was around, which leads to...
• Artistic License – Paleontology: Just the whole "dolphins used to live on land until humans banished them into the ocean where they suffered for millions of years" thing. While ancestors of dolphins and other cetaceans did live on land, they were still hoofed quadrupeds then and gradually evolved for sealife. By the time the first humans appeared, cetaceans have already become sea creatures.
• Asshole Victim: Homer dropping a person to their death would be horrifying, were the victim not the abusive and insufferable Agnes Skinner. He even tries to justify the act with the trope, in-verse.
  Homer: I'm pretty sure she was gonna be the next Hitler. Hello? Good deed done.
• The Bad Guy Wins: The dolphins win the war, and banish all of Springfield (and, presumably, the entire human race) to the sea. Although this may be subverted if you consider humans as the real villains for banishing the dolphins into the ocean in the first place.
• Bait-and-Switch: In "Scary Tales Can Come True", Bart comes across the Three Bears' porridge. He first tests Papa Bear's porridge and finds it too hot, then he tests Mama Bear's porridge and finds it too cold. He then looks over at Baby Bear's porridge, says, "Well, this doesn't take a genius."... and pours Mama Bear's porridge into Papa Bear's.
• Bears Are Bad News: The Three Bears, as Bart and Lisa quickly figure out and Goldilocks finds out the hard way.
• Breaking Old Trends: It's the first "Treehouse of Horror" episode not to air on Halloween.
• Brick Joke: A deleted scene showed that Abe would have exploded out of a dolphin after being swallowed by one earlier.
• Call-Back: The witch transforms Homer's head into a fish, resembling the corporate logo that formed half of Mr Sparkle in "In Marge We Trust".
• Curse Cut Short: Homer interrupts Lisa just short of calling the ungrateful baby dolphin that bit her a "son of a b...."
• Conveniently Timed Distraction: In "Scary Tales Can Come True" segment, when the witch tries to stuff Homer into her stove, she gets distracted when she hears a knock at her door allowing Homer to overpower her and shove her into the stove and lock her inside.
• Cooked to Death: At the end of "Scary Tales Can Come True", the witch (named Susan) is roasted alive in her oven.
• Deadline News: The dolphins take over the news while Kent Brockman's reporting, holding his cameraman hostage to make him change the story. Kent defies them, and is beaten to death with a volleyball for his trouble.
• Defiant to the End: Even when being eaten alive by a dolphin, Abe vows that "I'm gonna give your liver such a punching!"
• Devious Dolphins: In Night of The Dolphin, an aquarium dolphin named Snorky leads the rest of dolphinkind to rebel against the humans, take back the land for themselves, and force humanity into the sea to die.
• Disgusting Vegetarian Food: Discussed by Hibbert in "G-G-G-Ghost D-D-D-Dad" after Homer dies from eating the broccoli, calling it a deadly plant and even going so far as to tell Marge that it warns people with its terrible taste.
• Downer Ending:
  • "G-G-G-Ghost D-D-D-Dad": Homer succeeds in pulling off a good deed, only for St. Peter to miss it and banish him to hell regardless.
  • "Night of the Dolphin": the dolphins win the war and all of Springfield are banished to the sea.
• Drive-Thru Antics: When Homer orders a meal from Krusty Burger at the drive-thru, a dolphin chatters over the speaker. Homer then says "Yes, I will have fries with that.", and pulls-up to the drive-thru window, where a dolphin beheads the Squeaky-voiced Teen, whose severed head lands in Homer's lap. Homer then scoffs and says "Anything to get out of work."
• Epic Fail: Homer choking to death on a piece of broccoli is one thing, but Homer's ghost trying to eat the exact same piece of broccoli, choking and dying again is on a whole other level of failure.
• Exact Words:
  • In G-G-G-Ghost D-D-D-Dad, Homer is denied entry into Heaven by St. Peter (despite saving Bart from Nelson and saving a baby from death), which prompts him to deliver this gem:
    Homer: Well, I'll be damned.
    St. Peter: I'm afraid so, yes. (he pulls a lever; Homer descends to Hell)
  • In Scary Tales Can Come True, Homer told his children no child would starve in his home. Cut to the next scene with him ditching them at the forest.
• Forced Transformation: Homer in the second story gets transformed by the wicked witch into a fish-headed chicken with brooms for wings. After killing her, he is changed back except for his lower half, which can conveniently lay eggs.
• Foreshadowing: As Snorky escapes in a parody of the iconic scene from Free Willy, his tailfin strikes Lisa in the face. Given what happens soon after, it's safe to say it wasn't an accident.
• Genre Savvy: In "Scary Tales Can Come True," Lisa has a collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales, enabling her to figure out that she and Bart are in the Three Bears' house and beat a hasty retreat. She tries to apply the same thinking when they stumble upon what's clearly the witch's house from Hansel and Gretel, but winds up just following Bart's impulse instead.
• Grey-and-Grey Morality: "Night of the Dolphin". On one hand, the dolphins hold a vendetta because humans mistreated them and banished them to the ocean. On the other hand, their retaliation is murdering humans in droves, and they make no exception for innocent humans or even the one who helped them.
• Helping Granny Cross the Street: Homer (as a ghost) tries to carry Agnes Skinner across the street to get into Heaven, but ends up dropping her in the street.
  Homer: Um, I'm pretty sure she was going to be the next Hitler.
• Hope Spot: In Night of the Dolphin, the Springfielders start fighting back against the dolphins and winning, with Homer leading a counter-attack to "drive them back to the sea". Cue a Gilligan Cut to the population of Springfield floating in the ocean.
  Homer: You gotta hand it to those dolphins. They just wanted it more.
• Horrorscope: In the story "G-G-Ghost D-D-Dad", Homer reads a horoscope saying he will die that day. Not only that, Marge's horoscope says her husband will die that day. Homer doesn't believe it; instead, he's focused that he may get a compliment from an attractive coworker. Marge is scared though.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters:
  • The intro has this at full force, with an angry mob murdering the harmless Simpsons-as-Munsters family.
  • The reason why dolphins declare war against humans is that humans banished them into the ocean "where they suffered for millions of years".
• Killed Offscreen:
  • Bart and Lisa's "other brother and sister".
  • Goldilocks' death in the Three Bears' home.
  • Rapunzel losing her scalp.
• Losing Your Head:
  • The first half of the Sea Captain’s fate. The second half is a humiliating impersonation courtesy of a dolphin.
  • The Squeaky-Voiced Teen working at Krusty Burger suffers from this too.
• Line-of-Sight Alias: The witch is questioned on her boyfriend's name, to which she replies, "George..." before looking at her cauldron and adding "Cauldron, George Cauldron." It's subverted when George Cauldron later appears for real.
• Mandatory Line: Kang and Kodos appear at the end to complain about the fact that they weren't included in this episode.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Marge ends up causing Homer's death by insisting he eat his broccoli, which turns out to be bad for you after all.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Lisa frees an abused dolphin into the sea, but said dolphin later returns with an army of dolphins to take over the surface and drive humanity into the sea. Also, Lisa helps a baby dolphin by taking off a soda can ring that was stuck around its nose. It thanks Lisa by biting her hand.
• Noodle Incident: How a snake got onto Homer's arm during the "G-G-G-Ghost D-D-D-Dad" segment is never explained. Neither is the so-called "testicle incident" he brings up before dying from broccoli.
• Offing the Offspring: Homer deliberately attempts to sacrifice Lisa to the dolphins, possibly aware of his daughter's role in causing this mess.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Done by a crab of all beings in "Night of The Dolphin" after listening to the dolphins' plan to retake the land before getting out of dodge. Lenny gets one soon after during his night swimming before he finds out his soon-to-be assailants are dolphins, not sharks.
  • Goldilocks when the the Three Bears find her and maul her to death.
  • Rapunzel right before she loses her scalp when Homer tries to climb up the tower to save her.
• Papa Wolf: The first dolphin punched by Homer when the war between Springfield and the dolphins began was the baby dolphin that bit Lisa in the arm only seconds earlier.
• The Pearly Gates: Homer appears at them when he dies, where he's told by Saint Peter that he is unable to go to Heaven unless he does a good deed. They're shown to be electrified when Homer tries to climb over them.
• Police Are Useless: Finding Lenny's corpse bearing all the signs of dolphin-related injuries, Chief Wiggum declares the culprits are teenagers.
• Race Against the Clock: Homer will go to Hell if he misses the deadline.
• Real After All: The witch's boyfriend George Cauldron wasn't made up after all.
• Shout-Out:
  • The intro has the Simpsons as a parody of The Munsters.
  • The start of the dolphin attack on Lenny is a parody of the opening of Jaws.
  • The shots of the dolphins ominously surrounding the townspeople by sitting on power lines, cars, and rooftops while remaining eerily silent are a tip of the hat to Hitchcock's The Birds.
• Shown Their Work: When King Snorky speaks, his mouth doesn't sync to his words. This is because dolphins "speak" through their blowholes which is their only means of respiration (hence why cetaceans can eat underwater without drowning).
• Sole Survivor: In the opening, a mob (consisting of Lenny, Carl, Tim and Helen Lovejoy, Krusty the Clown, Sideshow Mel, Principal Skinner, Edna Krabappel, Otto, Groundskeeper Willie, Moe, Apu, Ned Flanders, Mr. Burns, and Dr. Hibbert) shows up and kills most of the Simpsons/Munsters, with Homer/Herman being burned, Abe/Vlad and Marge/Lily getting staked (with Marge/Lily getting a wreath of garlic clovers around her neck for good measure), and Bart/Eddie having a bear trap clamped on his head. Only Lisa, who portrays Token Human Marilyn, is spared.
• Stock "Yuck!": Homer is killed by broccoli, which is supposedly toxic in this story, and Doctor Hibbert says "It tries to warn you with its terrible taste!"
• Strangely Specific Horoscope: Homer's horoscope says that he will die today. Lisa lampshades the trope by saying it's unusually specific. Worried, Marge looks at her horoscope, which says that her husband will die! Oddly, Homer focuses on the second part of his horoscope which says that an attractive coworker may compliment him, and he immediately thinks of his friend Lenny. It's never explained why exactly those horoscopes were as specific as it was that day.
• Throw 'Em to the Wolves: Bart unknowingly did this to Goldilocks. He didn't know she was inside the bears' house when he locked it with a chair.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Lenny. Alcohol and night swimming in the ocean is a bad idea, even without vengeful dolphins.
  • Lisa removes a six-pack plastic ring from a baby dolphin, who then bites her in the arm. This was the last straw for Homer, and he punches it almost right away.
  • Homer takes this a step further by choking to death while he's already dead, because he just had to try eating the exact same piece of broccoli that killed him in the first place. When his ghost's ghost arrives at the Pearly Gates, he sheepishly admits his stupidity to St. Peter and gets sent back to Earth.
  • Goldilocks trying to open the jammed door instead of running in any other direction, which leads to a gruesome unseen death.
• Torches and Pitchforks: The intro features people using those to lynch the Simpsons featured as the Munsters (except for Lisa, who's portrayed as an Expy of Marilyn Munster and thus looked normal).
• Ungrateful Bastard: The Dolphins make repeatedly clear they don't make exception for Lisa in their war against humans just because she saved their leader. Repeated when she frees a baby dolphin trapped in a six pack ring, and it promptly bites her. By the end of the episode, Lisa openly regrets taking pity on them.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight:
  • Homer is rather ambivalent about a rattlesnake clinging to his arm.
  • At the Krusty Burger's drive-thru window, an employee's severed head falls into Homer's lap, and he simply scoffs at the idea of doing anything to get out of work.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • In Night Of The Dolphin, Lisa frees an abused dolphin, who turns out to be the King of the dolphins — and thus King Snorky begins the dolphin invasion of Springfield.
  • In Scary Tales Can Come True, Bart uses a chair to lock the door to the house, in case the bears saw them. However, he and Lisa weren't aware of Goldilock's presence inside the house and unknowingly left her to die by trapping her inside the house.
• Villain Ball: In Night of the Dolphin, Springfield is successfully cowed into leaving, until one baby dolphin attacks Lisa just to be a prick. This ends up their Rage Breaking Point and Springfield begins engages in battle against the dolphins. Played with since the dolphins still win, though endured a lot of violence and fatalities to do so just from that one moment of pettiness (especially in the full cut where Springfield brutally murders a ton of dolphins).
• Waiting Skeleton: In the Scary Tales Can Come True segment, Homer abandons Bart and Lisa in the woods and tells them to "Say hi to your other brother and sister". Bart and Lisa then notice a pair of skeletons resembling themselves.
  Lisa: Let's face it. They're not great parents.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Homer manages to do one good deed, only to go to Hell for missing the deadline, since St. Peter wasn't paying attention and didn't see it.
• Zipping Up the Bodybag: When Homer first dies.
  Medical Attendant: Sure is easy when they're stiff like this... (sees Bart and Lisa are upset) and very sad.

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