Recap / The Simpsons S 34 E 6 Treehouse Of Horror XXXIII

"Treehouse of Horror XXXIII" is an episode of The Simpsons that first aired on October 30, 2022. Directed by Rob Oliver. Written by Carolyn Omine, Ryan Koh and Matt Selman. Episode Code Number UABF18.

"The Pookadook"

A parody of The Babadook. Marge is possessed by a demonic creature that feeds on her resentment towards her family. She brandishes a kitchen knife at Maggie, who very narrowly escapes several times.

"Death Tome"

A parody of Death Note. Lisa finds a book, the Death Tome, that kills whoever's name is written in it, subject to some rules: the victim's full name must be written, and a cause of death must be given that is distinct from how other victims in the book have died.

Lisa uses the book to kill Mr. Burns (Harry Shearer), but is then convinced by a god of death to kill off the entire board of directors of Mr. Burns's Globo-Warm corporation.

The unexpected deaths of so many executives makes the news, along with the revelation that the strange deaths are in fact murders caused by someone writing in the Death Tome.

"Simpsonsworld"

A parody of Westworld. At a theme park based on The Simpsons, a Homer robot becomes self-aware and rallies his family to escape. After a battle against a horde of Ralphes, the Simpsons make it to the outside world, only to land at a theme park based on Bob's Burgers, where Linda Belcher (John Roberts (Actor)) takes their dinner order.

---

Overall tropes

• Art Shift: Between "Death Tome"'s Animesque style by DR Movie, and the Stop Motion Book Ends by Chiodo Bros Productions, combined with the usual AKOM-produced animation style for the other two segments. The cameo by Linda also has her drawn up like in her home series.
• Bookends: The opening and closing segments have Kang and Kodos reading from a book in a wizard’s hovel, all the tales are contained within.
• Breaking Old Trends: The first Treehouse of Horror episode not to have an elaborate opening sequence, Art Shift aside.
• Central Theme: Mind Manipulation. All three shorts involve corrupting the Simpsons and messing with their heads in some way. Marge is possessed by the Pookadook, Lisa becomes Drunk with Power thanks to the Death Tome, and the staff at Simpsonsworld tampers with the family's self-awareness.
• Halloween Episode: The one for Season 34 alongside the previous episode "Not It".
• Later-Installment Weirdness: This is the first Treehouse of Horror episode to have teasers to their segments before they reveal their titles.
• Reality-Writing Book: The tome Kang and Kodos read from turns out to be one, Kang points out "That's too freaky!" as Kodos slams it. When he does, Kang's words soon appear on the cover.
• Recurring Element: Each segment's title comes directly from a book or tablet.
• The Teaser: Probably the most subdued example in TOH history, as the opening is merely a few seconds of a Stop Motion book with the title "Treehouse of Horror XXXIII" on display, before opening up to reveal the first "chapter", i.e. segment.

Tropes for "The Pookadook"

• Badass Boast: From Marge, during her final face-off with the Pookadook:
  Marge: Stay back, you overdressed hat demon! I know you feed on my repressed resentment towards my family, but I can swallow feelings like a python eating a baby goat!
• Bait-and-Switch: When Marge tells Maggie that the rest of the family is in her way and they're going to sleep with the fishes, it seems like she's going to kill them first. It then cuts to Marge sending Homer, Bart, and Lisa on an overnight aquarium visit.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Maggie touching Marge's cheek early on ends up being the key to breaking the Pookadook's possession.
  • A possessed Marge complains about receiving an outdoor vacuum as a present. After breaking free from her possession, she uses the vacuum to imprison the Pookadook.
• Funny Background Event: When the family (sans Maggie) are walking down the stairs, the Pookadook's shadow can be seen trailing behind Marge.
• Giving Them the Strip: Maggie escapes from Marge's grasp by slipping out of her onesie.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Maggie attempts to get through to Marge by showing her family photos. However, all the photos in the album show the rest of the family having fun while Marge has to handle the mess they leave behind.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Marge tries to burn the book but learns too late that the Pookadook wanted her to do that so he can possess her.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: Marge realizes Maggie is still scared of the Pookadook the morning after they find the book, when Maggie has drawn many pictures of the family with a sinister living scrawl lurking in the background.
• Offing the Offspring: The Pookadook tries to make Marge kill Maggie. With the implication that it wants her to do in Bart and Lisa (and Homer) after.
• Parody Names: Maggie's storybook collection includes "Goodnight Escaped Gorilla" (Goodnight Gorilla), "Don't Let the Pidgeon Drive Drunk!" (Don't Let the Pidgeon Drive the Bus), "What Do You People Do All Day?" (What Do People Do All Day?), "S'up Moon" (Goodnight Moon) and "Harold the Delusional Vandal" (Harold and the Purple Crayon).
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Pookadook's book turns out to be very resilient to everything Marge tries to do, including ripping it up and burning it. The last one causes it to turn into smoke and possess Marge. It even has Offscreen Teleportation abilities when it hops from spot to spot on the bookshelf.
• Uncanny Valley: There's a well-documented page in The Simpsons' No-No sheets^note A guide of rules and imposed guidelines when animating for the show that explain how the main Simpsons family don't make "demonic" expressions. When Marge becomes possessed by the Pookadook, she explicitly makes such an expression, alerting Maggie - and the viewers - that Margie's no longer home.
• Weaksauce Weakness: The Pookadook can easily be trapped in a regular vacuum.
• Would Hurt a Child: Marge after being possessed by the Pookadook tries to kill Maggie. It takes Maggie touching her cheek that Marge is able to snap out of it.

Tropes for "Death Tome"

• Adaptational Attractiveness: All the characters are given more traditionally attractive, humanized designs with natural skin tones in comparison to their more exaggerated and cartoonish standard designs.
• Adaptation Deviation: This segment is (very loosely) inspired by a story from the comic book The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror #14 called "Murder, He Wrote", which was also a Death Note parody. However, there are far more differences than similarities between their plots; in the comic, Bart took the role of Light, Krusty was Ryuk, and Lisa was L (though it was actually Ralph). In "Death Tome", Lisa is Light and Bart is L, while the role of the Ryuk expy (Steve Johnson) isn't played by any preexisting Simpsons character.
• Adaptational Badass: The Death Note has very specific limitations on how it kills, including the fact that the death in question must be within the realm of reason. The Death Tome can kill absolutely anyone in any manner the writer sees fit, regardless of how absurd the method. It can even kill Shinigami, something the Death Note explicitly can not do.
• Adaptational Heroism: In the original Death Note, apart from one convoluted Memory Gambit, Light Yagami remained utterly unrepentant to the end. In this short, Lisa ultimately ends her killing spree voluntarily and turns on Steve.
• Adaptational Karma: Ryuk gets away with everything he did in the original Death Note, but his parody equivalent Steve Johnson is killed by Lisa using the Death Tome to drop a downed satellite on him.
• Adaptational Wimp: The Death Tome has a rule that the Death Note didn't; the owner can't kill two people in the same way, which creates a (slight) limiting factor on the power of the Death Tome. However, a creative mind can work around this limit, as the deaths cannot be completely identical, so tiny variations (such as being killed by a Sewer Lion instead of a Sewer Gator) could allow highly similar demises.
• Aerith and Bob: The Shinigami that visits Lisa is named Steve Johnson, a pretty mundane name for a death god. He insists it's an exotic name though, since there were a few Shinigami with the name Necroblivia (a little more on the nose for a death god) in his nursery cave.
• Anime Hair: Ironically inverted, everyone's hair is a lot more conventional in the anime style instead of Marge's towering do and the kids' geometric rigidity.
• Americasia: The segment takes place in a Springfield that is sprinkled with elements of Japanese culture, from neon lights to Homer and Burns having drinks after work.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: After killing Steve, Lisa becomes a shinigami herself.
• Animesque: This segment switches to an art style that is very close design-wise to the original Death Note anime. The characters are even given proper flesh tones instead of the traditional yellow skin.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Snake holds an internet-famous cat named Tofu hostage at gunpoint. He swiftly becomes Lisa's first victim.
• Bathos: The short has a more realistic art style, showcases Lisa going Drunk with Power through killing people (almost including her own brother), and several brutal murders. However there is plenty of random and silly things as well, such as the Shinigami that accompanies the Death Tome having the hilariously underwhelming name of Steve Johnson, Mr. Burns' evil plan invoking Global Warming just to park his yacht closer to his house, and several of the Death Tome-caused murders becoming extremely undignified towards the end.
• Bittersweet Ending: Lisa ends her killing spree, resisting the urge to kill her own brother and instead killing Steve, but she turns into a Shinigami in the process and presumably has to carry his duties.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': After ending her killing spree with Steve as her last victim, Lisa thinks that all her troubles from using the Death Tome are finally over... until she suddenly turns into a hideous shinigami, much to her dismay.
• Chekhov's Gag: Steve Johnson dramatically introducing himself to Lisa despite the bizarrely mundane name is used for a quick gag, but Lisa knowing his full name allows her to write it in the Death Tome.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Burns and the Globo-Warm board of directors exaggerate this, being willing to destroy the world with Global Warming-driven sea level rise for no other reason than evil.
• Crapsack World: This short is set in an animesque Springfield that combines the bleak aesthetics of Death Note with The Simpson's satirical nature, creating a world that is very bleak and grim-looking, while also reveling in how much it must suck to live there for Black Comedy.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Lisa delivers out many of these, including drowning in a chocolate fountain and getting sucked into a jet engine. Lisa also didn't intend to kill Mr. Burns this way; she wrote that he would die in his sleep, but he fell asleep and dropped onto a hot plate.
• Deadpan Snarker: True to his inspiration, Steve Johnson is a very snarky shinigami.
  Steve: (after El Barto reveals he knows about Lisa using the Death Tome) Oh I know I'll sleep easier once they catch this "super killer".
• Death by Adaptation: The original manga had Ryuk survive the events of the story. This short sees Lisa kill his equivalent with the Death Tome.
• Department of Redundancy Department: "Any person whose name is written in this DEATH TOME will meet their death… and be DEAD."
• Disproportionate Retribution: After his sister becomes a Shinigami, Bart suggests that she can kill Jamie now when her only crime was "being mean" to her.
• Eco-Terrorist: With the Death Tome on her hands, Lisa becomes this by targeting and killing all the directors of Globo-Warm for the sake of saving the world from Global Warming.
• Evil Sounds Raspy: Lisa's voices becomes considerably more raspy once she transforms into a Shinigami. Ironically, this transformation occurs after her Heel–Face Turn.
• Exact Words:
  • Wanting to keep her kills as humane as possible, Lisa writes 'C. Montgomery Burns Dies in Sleep'. The Death Tome interprets that as 'C. Montgomery, Burns, Dies in Sleep', so Burns falls asleep at the table and falls onto a grill full of hot coals.
  • Lisa can't use the same idea to kill twice yet she still manages to recycle her sewer gator killing by using a lion instead. She also insists that there's a distinction between two blender-related deaths because the blenders are on different settings.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • The backgrounds in the segment are filled with shoutouts to earlier episodes, which like the segment below, are plentiful, including signs for Senior Ding Dong's Doorbell Emporium, All God's Creatures Small and Cheap, Noiseland Arcade, Costingtons, and Gulp N' Blow. In the Simpson household, Bart's test (which had an F upgraded to a D-) from "Bart Gets An F" attached to the fridge and a tapestry of corn painted in the ukiyo-e style which is a reference to the corn cob curtains in their kitchen.
  • The names of the Globo-Warm board of directors is taken from the infamous roster of "American-sounding" player names (Sleve McDichael, Bobson Dugnutt, Dwigt Rortugal, etc.) from the Japanese version of the Super NES baseball game MLBPA Baseball, named Fighting Baseball in Japan.
  • There are four extra rules on the Death Tome's front page that Lisa doesn't say out loud ^note The page was partially cut off, so words in brackets were extrapolated: "[Due] to supply chain issues, "DEATH BY FALLING ANVIL" is no longer part of this program," "[D]octors are barred from use of DEATH TOME due to illegible writing," and "[Dotting hearts] over "I'S," or similar cutesy doodles [will result in] immediate DEATH of writer." The last rule is cut off, but mentions a Death Book and Death Magazine.
• Heel Realization: Lisa realizes she's gone too far when she finds herself contemplating killing her own brother to cover her tracks.
• Idiot Ball: Bart found out about Lisa's murder spree from reading it in her diary.
• The Illegible: A rule of the Death Tome is that doctors aren't allowed to use it "due to illegible writing".
• It Only Works Once: A rule of the Death Tome is that you can't kill the same way twice, meaning that Lisa is forced to come up with increasingly contrived ways of killing people, including toilet alligators and toilet lions.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Lisa starts out killing assholes like Snake and Burns. She then escalates to killing the other executives at Burns' corrupt company. She comes close to killing Bart after he finds out what she's doing... but realizes she shouldn't kill her own brother, and instead kills Steve Johnson with the Death Tome.
• Meaningful Name: Lisa figures out from the handwriting that L actually stands for El Barto.
• Mundane Solution: How did El Barto discover that Lisa was the murderer? It wasn't through his genius detective skills; he just read her diary.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Lisa's first kill closely follows Light's: she sees a news report on an ongoing hostage situation, writes the perpetrator's name in the Death Tome without any real expectation that it will work, and is shocked when the news promptly reports the perpetrator's death from a heart attack (Light's signature killing method).
  • The sequence where Lisa murders her way through all of Burns' employees is modeled on an iconic scene in the first episode of Death Note, including dramatic pen-slashes, showing Lisa writing from various angles to make the scene feel more dynamic, images of her victims dying, and epic music.
  • While there's the obvious reason why Steve would be in disbelief about Lisa making someone die from an alligator coming out of a toilet, it's also a subtle reference to the 2017 film where Ryuk uses "shark attacks whilst someone's on the toilet" as an example of an unrealistic kill the Death Note can't carry out.
  • When Bart first reveals himself to Lisa, he's crouching in the same way L usually did in Death Note.
  • Lisa corrects Bart by saying that she wasn't on a murder-spree, it was a justice-spree, because, like Light, she says "I'm Justice!"
  • Lisa becomes a Shinigami at the end of the story, similar to how Light was strongly implied to have been reincarnated as a Shinigami in Relight: Visions of a God.
• Oh, Crap!: Bart panics when Lisa contemplates killing him in order to protect her identity. Fortunately for him, she has other ideas.
• Original Generation: The Ryuk expy isn't actually based on any existing Simpsons character, unlike how Lisa and Bart are stand-ins for Light and L. Instead, the Shinigami (named Steve Johnson, possibly after the special effects artist) is a character created specifically for this segment, though Hank Azaria definitely leans more toward his Moe voice than he was probably shooting for.
• Parody Assistance: This segment was actually animated by DR Movie, one of the studios that made the Death Note anime.
• Passed in Their Sleep: This is the fate that Lisa intends to give to Burns, but she didn't account that he would fall into the grill and have his body and face burned.
• Plot-Triggering Book: The segment is kicked off by Lisa being given a "Death Tome" that gives her the opportunity to wipe out CEOs she feels are ruining the planet, and promptly going mad with power.
• Riding into the Sunset: The segment ends with Bart and Lisa walking off into the sunset and discussing how to make use of the latter's new Shinigami form.
• Sewer Gator: One of the ways Lisa has someone killed is by getting eaten by a gator that bursts out of a toilet. As she begins to run out of ideas, she also has someone getting eaten by a lion from a toilet.
• Shown Their Work: Light becoming a Shinigami (which Light's counterpart Lisa does here) is an actual Death Note fan theory.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Both Light and L died in the original manga. Their equivalents here, Lisa and Bart Simpson, both survive the story, although Lisa is transformed into a Shinigami.
• Special Person, Normal Name: A Shinigami, or death god, has the name Steve Johnson, which he insists was an exotic name when he was born eons ago.
• Stealth Pun: Lisa's attempt to kill Mr. Burns peacefully, but having him instead fall face first on a hot grill, may be because the Death Tome took "Burns" a bit too literally.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: While Lisa killed Burns, Steve points out that killing him won't cause his company to automatically collapse.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: When Steve comments that murder is "almost as addictive as plastic surgery", Lisa asks the obvious question...
  Lisa: Oh. Have you had—
  Steve: I haven't! B-But I don't think there's anything wrong with it...
  Lisa: [clearly unconvinced] Hm.
• Take That!: There is an advertisement for Gender Reveal Napalm, mocking the trend of dangerous stunts performed at gender reveal parties that has caused a few deaths and a disaster.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Lisa tries to give Burns a dignified death in his sleep. Unfortunately, while sleeping at the dinner table he falls over face-first into a hibachi grill, burning horribly to death while remaining asleep in spite of it.
  • When Lisa finds out that the news has found out about her killings, she reassures herself that they likely wouldn't know how she kills… only for L to announce over a microphone that they know Lisa kills via writing people's names in the Death Tome.
• Tom the Dark Lord: The Shinigami is named Steve Johnson. He tries to justify it by claiming Steve was a very exotic name back when he was born.
• Toxic, Inc.: The Globo-Warm company's sole purpose is to melt the ice caps and raise the sea levels, all so that Burns will be able to dock his yacht closer to his currently landlocked house.
• Truth in Television:
  • Hilariously, Homer getting drunk with Burns is an actual social custom that Japanese salarymen partake in with their bosses. Refusing to partake in after-work drinking is seen as incredibly dishonorable, so Marge praising Homer for being drunk isn't too much of an exaggeration.
  • Lisa going barefoot in the house is also another common Japanese custom.
• Turbine Blender: One of the Globo-Warm executives meets her end via being sucked into a jet engine.
• Undignified Death: As Lisa runs out of ideas for ways to kill people, she starts taking them out through increasingly ludicrous methods such as toilet gators, drowning in chocolate fountains, toilet lions, death by embarrassment, and being liquefied by a blender (distinct from puréed).
• Uniqueness Rule: Lisa can't kill the same way twice, as stated in the Death Tome's rules.
• Vocal Dissonance: The characters' usual goofy voices sound strange coming out of their more detailed anime designs. Special mention goes to Marge, who looks younger, more attractive, and has a much more down to earth hairstyle, but still speaks with Julie Kavner's raspy tone.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Lisa at first tries to restrict her killing spree to obvious Asshole Victims, like an animal-abducting criminal or greedy rich people who are destroying the world through Global Warming. But soon, her increasing arrogance leads her to try killing the detective L just to avoid being arrested for her crimes.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: Lisa is immediately transformed into a shinigami upon killing Steve with the Death Tome, implying that she's now forced to take over his job.

Tropes for Simpsonsworld

• 20 Minutes in the Future: Implied given both the advanced animatronics and that the Simpsons in-universe has been on air for more than 45 seasons.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Inverted. The guests are depicted in the same artstyle, but with natural flesh tones, making them look like they stepped out of Futurama or Disenchantment. One of the park's attractions, the "Simpsonizer", invokes this trope by painting the guests' skin yellow as in the show.
• Ambiguous Ending: Even though the Simpsons escaped from their prison world and found refuge in Bob's Burgers World, it isn't clear if they know it's another prison world too or if they believe it's the real world.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: invoked After accidentally making himself self-aware upon waking up in the robotics lab, Homer finds himself asking three questions:
  Homer: (gasps in shock) Where am I?! (notices and closes an open panel on his stomach) What am I? (notices something else) WHERE'S MY JUNK?!
• Company Cross References: The entrance to the park is modeled after the entrance to The Magic Kingdom, including a rosebed in the shape of Homer's face and a statue of Matt Groening holding hands with Bart.
• Continuity Cavalcade: So, so many references to past episodes.That it required a page of its own.
• Crossover Punchline: At the end, when the self-aware Simpson family Hosts escape their park, they end up in a Bob's Burgers themed park, where Linda greets them. The camera then zooms out to reveal other parks themed around Family Guy, South Park, Futurama, Rick and Morty, Big Mouth, and SpongeBob SquarePants.
• The Dog Bites Back: After seeing his father being picked on by some rude Australian tourists, Bart removes the human-protection feature in Homer's programming which allows him to fight back.
• Exact Words: When confronting the engineers, Homer is informed that his programming prevents him from intentionally harming humans. However he is still a clumsy oaf and accidentally kills the engineers by knocking over a metal tray and launching sharp objects randomly into the air.
• Expendable Clone: More like expendable robots here, but the core Simpsons family we follow doesn't make any attempt to help other versions of themselves gain self-awareness and escape. Hell, Homer even actively weaponizes one of his doubles (albeit mainly as an inevitable byproduct of him being chained to the Stone of Triumph).
• Four-Fingered Hands: Averted with the "real" humans as they have five-fingered hands, similar to in Disenchantment.
• Heh Heh, You Said "X": When a distraught Homer, who's become self-aware, finds a Lisa robot and wakes her up:
  Homer: Lisa! We're not people! We're...IP! Hahahahaha, "IP."
• Heroic BSoD: Upon being made fully self-aware, Lisa starts having an existential crisis over being a replicant. This prompts Homer to knock the level down a degree so that Lisa can better manage:
  Lisa: (calm) Okay. I can handle being a machine. I don't love it, but I can deal.
• Informed Attribute: The Ralph army is described as lovable kill-bots but we never see what makes them so dangerous apart from appearing by the thousands.
• Kick the Dog: As the awakened Simpsons replicants start to flee the lab, Bart asks if they should take a Grandpa with them. Homer promptly says they don't have time, and proceeds to crush an entire box of them.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Simpsonsworld has a "Simpsonizer" machine that sprays guests' skin yellow to look more like characters in the show, similarly to how part of Burger King's ad campaign for The Simpsons Movie had a "Simpsonize Me!" site dedicated to turning users into Simpsons characters.
  • "Simpsons World" was also the name of a comprehensive episode guide to the first 20 seasons of the show published in 2010, as well as the name of the former streaming home of The Simpsons, simpsonsworld.com—a site owned by Fox that made the whole series, along with episode commentaries and other bonus features, available to subscribers who signed on through their TV provider.
• Rake Take: The most famous use of this gag on television is referenced when a park employee complains about her date with a coworker from the props department, who has a swelled head simply because he handles Sideshow Bob's rakes.
• Rewatch Bonus: This segment pretty much requires several rewatches to catch all of the hidden Easter eggs.
• Ridiculous Future Sequelisation: Downplayed^note given how this episode aired during the 34th season: By the time this segment starts, at least 45 seasons of The Simpsons have been made.
• Self-Deprecation: Exaggerated: Once "Tell-Tale Heart" Lisa is made self-aware, she realizes her family has become nothing more than replicants based off of a show that stopped being relevant after the 45th season.
• Series Continuity Error: After being reactivated, Lisa says that she has to work on her Tell-Tale Heart diorama. In Lisa's Rival, it was Allison Taylor who made the Tell-Tale Heart diorama, while Lisa made her diorama about the 75 characters from Oliver Twist. Possibly a justified example of this, as this was said by a defective Lisa.
• Troubled Fetal Position: When Homer turns up Lisa's Rival!Lisa's self-awareness, she ends up doing this.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The two frat boys who poured beer down the throat of "Monorail Homer" and caused him to short-circuit, leading to him being shut down and brought in for a "hard reset", kicking off the plot.
• Wham Shot:
  • Two in rapid succession when one of the park employees, after removing a helmet and exposing a Caucasian flesh-toned face, pulls off a glove to reveal a five-fingered human hand.
  • After escaping from Simpsons World, the runaway family find refuge in a familiar burger restaurant and are attended by none other then Linda Belcher. It then cuts to the outside to reveal the Crossover Punchline.

---