Top 5 Treehouse of Horror Episodes: #3

Treehouse of Horror VI
What top 5 list would be complete without this gem of an episode? With quite possibly some of the best segments along with 3-D Homer, this episode is one of the better ones in the series.

Attack of the 50 ft. Eyesores
We see Homer driving to "Lard Lad Donuts" where he's disappointed that his donut isn't as big as the one the Lard Lad is holding. He decides to come later that night to steal the donut, after successfully stealing it, lightning strikes the mascot and brings it and many other mascots to life. After a few scenes of the advertising mascots wreaking havoc upon downtown Springfield (I particularly like the scene where Bart is a devil's shoulder devil, I think that speaks for itself there), the Lard Lad goes to get his donut back from Homer. After Marge tells him to give the donut back, the Lard Lad continues his destruction and Homer mocks Marge for being wrong. Lisa then notices something in the footprint and heads over to the advertising corporation to find out how to defeat them. Lisa finds out that if they stop paying attention to the advertisements, they will simply go away (How simplistically convenient). Lisa is given Paul Anka to write a jingle to tell the people of Springfield to ignore them. During the jingle, the citizens start ignoring them and they start to crumble and die. The only one left is the Lard Lad mascot, but he dies after Homer is dragged away from him. After the obligatory Kang and Kodos cameo, Kent Brockman (Didn't he get eaten in this episode?) warns the audience that the next advertisement could destroy their house.

You wanna get a beer?

Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace
After a cartoony scene of Bart and Santa's Little Helper, we see Groundskeeper Willie (Dressed as Freddy Krueger) take a swipe at Bart with a rake. Bart then wakes up only to reveal that the rake swipe happened to him in real life (Okay, I feel that Freddy Krueger is perhaps the scariest villain of all time, I'll touch on that later). At school, Bart tells his friends about what happened to him as they all reveal that Willie tried to kill them in their dreams as well. After Skinner tries to convince them nothing happened, we see Martin finish a test very early allowing him to take a nap. While in the dream, Willie comes out and strangles Martin with his Gene Simmons tongue. Martin then dies in real life as he's carted to the morgue (After accidentally being shown to the class and the kindergartners). After Bart and Lisa tell Marge and Homer about Martin's death, Marge accidentally slips about who could have killed him. Marge then decides to tell the kids about how they accidentally killed Willie and Willie vowed vengeance against the parents by killing their children in their sleep. Back to Freddy here, he is the scariest to me because he can kill you in a place where you should feel safe. When you can't even feel safe about going to sleep, that is one creepy villain, he literally kills you in a place where you can't be protected but you must go in order to live. Back to the story, Bart and Lisa determine that they can't try to stay awake forever so Bart decides to go face Willie one-on-one in his dream. After Bart tricks Willie into driving into quicksand, Bart thinks that he won and enjoys the rest of his dream. Willie however returns and grabs Bart to drag him to his death. Lisa comes in to try to wake him up but realizes that she's asleep as well. As they are dragged to their deaths, Maggie plugs up the air hole of the bagpipe that's Willie's body. Lisa and Bart thanks Maggie as the next day they see Willie across the street in an attempt to kill them (But left his gun on the bus).

Willie sees you in your nightmares *Evil laugh*

Homer^3
Homer tries to hide from Patty and Selma but is unsuccessful in finding a place to hide. After Homer moves the bookcase, he finds a portal that leads to another dimension, a dimension of not only sight or sound but of... wait, wrong show (I like how they don't even hide what the homage is to). After Selma finds the kids in the closet, she reveals that they came over with shells for them to help clean up. After hearing that, Homer decides to take his chances in the alternate dimension. He finds out that the dimension is the third dimension *Dramatic gasp*. Homer starts talking and the family hears him as he tries to figure out where he is (A fun thing to do with this episode is to identify the stuff in the background, they all have significance and makes for some nice 3-D trivia). After Homer admires the landscape a bit more (Okay this is the only time where I will say admire the background, it is very nice and that is intentional for you to admire) a cone gets into his ass and he throws it into the floor, which causes the floor to exponentially grow into a black hole. Back in the real world, more people come over to try to help Homer but cannot do anything. Professor Frink then tells everyone about the third dimension and how everything not only has height and length, but depth (Whoa, you just blew my mind there Frinky). After the hole almost swallows Homer, Bart goes in with a rope tied as he goes 3-D as well (Creepy). Bart tells Homer to jump, but he fails and falls into the hole. Bart is pulled back as Homer falls into the real world and tries to find his way around.

So pretty, I should take advantage of this great technology *Scratches butt*

This is a great Treehouse of Horror episode. It was really between this one and THoH VII, this just barely edged that one out with the Nightmare on Elm Street homage. Just consider VII as 5a on this list. The first segment is pretty memorable, the idea of giant mascots coming to life and destroying the town is pretty creepy. The last segment is pretty good as it captures the fear from the Twilight Zone episode it's referencing, plus the image of Homer in 3-D is pretty cool. But the 2nd segment takes the cake, it is a great homage to Nightmare on Elm Street and is written very well.