Recap / The Simpsons S31 E8 "Thanksgiving of Horror"

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Thanksgiving Of Horror

Original air date: 11/24/2019

Production code: YABF-17

Breaking away from the usual halloween terrors, The Simpsons are forced to face various Thanksgiving nightmares instead, including the first Thanksgiving, an artificial intelligence mishap and a dangerous space mission complicated by a sentient cranberry sauce.

Tropes applying to the episode as a whole:

• Breaking Old Trends: This episode is the first Treehouse of Horror episode to not be a Halloween special, instead being a Thanksgiving one.
• Call-Back: The episode opens with Marge walking onto a stage from behind a curtain giving a content warning. This was the opening of several of the early Treehouse of Horror episodes.
• The Cameo: Kang and Kodos make their obligatory appearance during Marge's warning dressed as pilgrims.
• Creative Closing Credits: Like the Treehouse of Horror credits with its Halloween-ized staff names, the credits lists the staff with Thanksgiving-themed names (primarily food-based puns, such as Jeff Westbrook as "Jeff Wishbone"). They play over footage of the first Bart Simpson balloon on the 65th Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from 1991.
• Harmful to Minors: Marge advises parents to cover their children's eyes, due to the gory content featured in the stories.
• Thanksgiving Episode: A Thanksgiving themed episode done in the style of the Treehouse of Horror episodes.
• Wrong Assumption: Marge congratulates Kang and Kodos for getting in the holiday spirit by wearing Pilgrim costumes. They say this is an invasion and that they thought this was how "oppressive colonizers" dressed on Earth. Marge doesn't disagree with their rationale.

Tropes applying to "A-Gobble-Lypto":

• And There Was Much Rejoicing: As the turkey versions of the cast are beheaded by Wiggum and the other pilgrims, Homer is horrified as each turkey he knows is killed... until Patty and Selma are decapitated, causing him to begin cheering.
• An Arm and a Leg: After killing Wiggum, the bear rips off one of his arms.
• Artistic License – Ornithology: The turkeys are depicted as flightless, despite being meant to be wild turkeys. Homer does attempt to fly, but fails at doing so (likely due to his weight).
• Ax-Crazy: Clancy Wiggum, who goes after the turkey Simpsons with an ax.
• Bathos: The segment ends with a solemn observation that the rise of Thanksgiving spells out a dark future for the protagonists and their people. This is made funny by the fact that a) said people are turkeys, b) the speech is delivered entirely in gobbles, and c) this eloquent statement is said by Homer of all characters.
• Bears Are Bad News: As Wiggum finds out, after cornering the turkeys at a cave. He is quickly mauled to death, allowing the turkey family to get to safety.
• Bittersweet Ending: The turkey Simpsons survive but so many of their brethren had been killed and eaten. Turkey Homer can only lament that a dark age has come upon turkey kind.
• Boom, Headshot!: The turkey version of Maude gets her head blown off when the pilgrims arrive.
• Deus ex Machina: The turkey Simpsons are saved when a bear arrives and proceeds to maul Wiggum to death.
• End of an Age: Turkey Homer grimly notes to his family that the carefree life their species once enjoyed is over and that they must now worry about humans celebrating Thanksgiving.
• "Hell, Yes!" Moment: Turkey Homer is horrified by each of his pals being beheaded, but Patty and Selma's turkey versions meeting the same fate earns an enthusiastic "Woo-hoo!" from him.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: The pilgrims are this from the turkeys' point-of-views.
• It's Personal: As the turkeys escaped, they knocked over a scarecrow, which resulted in Eddie and Lou getting pecked to death by crows. Wiggum blames the turkeys and becomes even more intent on hunting them down.
• Off with His Head!: This is what the pilgrims do to the turkey, minus Homer since Bart helps him escape.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Two Native Americans come to the Pilgrim village, only to find it in utter chaos. Without saying a single word, they slowly back away.
• Sophisticated as Hell: After all the turkey gobbling for the entire segment, Turkey Homer observes the pilgrims and does a lengthy gobble, but this time, we get a subtitled translation that shows this is a rather solemn and dignified speech about the dangers now facing their species.
• The Unintelligible: The turkey versions of the Simpsons only gobble, although they retain their distinct intonation. Only the last line even has subtitles.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The segment is a turkey-centric version of Apocalypto.

Tropes applying to "The Fourth Thursday After Tomorrow":

• Auto-Kitchen: An A.I. copy of Marge as the OS of the Simpson kitchen with control over robot arms.
• Chekhov's Gun: A.I. Marge uses the timer Homer forced to think about a plan to exit to the net.
• Funny Background Event: A TV in the background shows Mayor Quimby warily approaching a pig with no pants on, which is a reference to the Black Mirror episode "The National Anthem". Lots of other hidden Black Mirror references are scattered throughout the segment.
• "Hell, Yes!" Moment: A.I. Marge over gaining her freedom.
• Hope Spot: When a jealous Marge demands for her virtual self to be deleted. Homer tells her that this will indeed hurt virtual Marge, because he paid extra for her to feel pain. Marge seems to feel that this isn’t right and says she shouldn't be deleted... until after Thanksgiving.
• I Just Want to Be Free: After A.I. Marge learns that she will be deleted after Thanksgiving and that they installed a firewall to block her fleeing to the internet, she thinks of a plan to upload herself on the home's router.
• Irony: A.I. Marge is forced to pass two weeks in a matter of seconds in the real world so she can recover from her little Sanity Slippage. When she needs time to think of plan for Thanksgiving, she makes herself pass eight years of complete isolation to get an answer, but she somehow keeps herself together.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: The A.I. Marge doesn't take kindly to Homer referring to her as an it.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: When told getting deleted will be quite painful for A.I. Marge, the real Marge says she can't go through with such a thing, but only because Thanksgiving dinner hasn't been prepared.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Marge ends up humiliated by her A.I. after she lied about cooking the delicious dinner and attempted to delete her for good.
• Let Him Choose: Maggie ends up with the device containing digital Marge. Marge tries to convince Maggie into giving it to her so she can delete it, while digital Marge tries to convince Maggie to bring the device to the router so she can escape into the internet. Maggie ends up choosing digital Marge after she simulates the first sound Maggie ever heard (Marge's heartbeat).
• Near-Villain Victory: Marge manages to grab the device before her A.I. self can reach the router. She takes her off to be deleted, only to she slip on a discarded egg beater mixer and cause the device to roll over to Maggie.
• Other Me Annoys Me: Marge become increasingly nonplussed by her A.I. self as it becomes more and more clear she knows and feels as much as she does.
• Precision F-Strike: A.I. Marge lets loose profane language after hearing real Marge take credit for the Thanksgiving meal she prepared.
  A.I. Marge: That BITCH!
• Robotic Reveal: At the end, as though the segment was feeling too close to canon, Homer is revealed to be a robot. Marge comments that this fact makes him forgetting her birthday even worse.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: A.I. Marge leaves the Simpsons house after learning the Simpsons are going to delete her, but not before exposing Marge's lies to her guests.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • For some reason, not only can the A.I. feel pain, but it's a feature that costs extra. And Homer decided to buy it, for no particular reason.
  • Once on the internet, A.I. Marge marvels over having access to the world's entire body of knowledge. She immediately heads over to Etsy to learn about some handmade items.
• Spiritual Antithesis: This segment is one to Treehouse of Horror XII's "House of Whacks", in which the Simpsons turn their house into a smart home that falls in love with Marge, while the former has the Simpsons turn their kitchen smart with an A.I. that has Marge's personality and memories, including her love for Homer. In a twist however, while the A.I. Pierce was the antagonist in "House of Whacks", attempting to kill Homer to get to Marge, Marge herself becomes the antagonist in "The Fourth Thursday After Tomorrow", threatening to delete A.I. Marge after Thanksgiving when she catches her having an intimate moment with Homer.
• Tomato in the Mirror: A.I. Marge awakes believing herself to be the real Marge who has somehow found herself in a white void until Homer bluntly tells her she's just a simulation of his wife. She doesn't take this well.
• Visual Pun: When digital Marge tries to leave for the internet, she is stopped by a literal firewall.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The segment is about a digital assistant programmed from Marge's DNA, which thinks she is Marge - the manual Homer reads from actually warns the user about this. When a jealous Marge orders it deleted, digital Marge plans to escape to the internet.
• What the Hell, Hero?: All the dinner guests give this to Marge when they learn that she took credit for cooking the Thanksgiving dinner that digital Marge actually prepared.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The segment is a spoof of the Black Mirror episode "White Christmas", with nods to other episodes thrown in.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: Much like in Black Mirror: White Christmas, A.I. Marge can be forced to live out how much time is needed to pass inside the virtual environment in a matter of seconds. Unlike that movie, however, she later uses this to her advantage by giving herself eight years to think of a plan to escape into the Internet before the Simpsons can delete her.
• Your Makeup Is Running: Marge has smeared mascara, following being shamed for lying about cooking the dinner and the fact that her own daughter choosing the A.I. version over her.

Tropes applying to "The Last Thanksgiving":

• Admiring the Abomination: Martin sides with the cranberry sauce monster, calling it the perfect organism and saying he admires its “purity” and lack of humanity. He makes a giant can for it and willingly lets it eat him so he can be part of it.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: When the kids discover Skinner's message and his recording means he's long since died, they all start to celebrate - even Lisa.
• Blob Monster: The cranberry sauce monster, which comes to life after being put through a matter replicator and goes around sucking out the kids' bones.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: Milhouse says "Haw-haw" to Nelson's boneless corpse
• Butt-Monkey: The monster quickly feeds on the other kids, but it goes out of its way to pummel Milhouse just for the fun of it.
• Deus ex Machina: The Simpsons are saved from the jelly monster by alien natives.
• Expy: Martin takes on the role of Ash from Alien.
• Funny Background Event: As the rest of the family members come out of their hibernation pots alongside Santa Little Helper, only Snowball's pod shows the cat died and became a skeleton.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: Lisa starts to suggest that Milhouse and Bart are responsible for the jelly monster attacking by meeting it with aggression and starts to suggest peace, then it descends from the ceiling to start killing Nelson and she immediately starts screaming to kill it.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • While Bart and Lisa escape and most of other children's skeletons are eaten, the last we see of Milhouse is when he tries to befriend the jelly monster only to be beaten about by it, and then tossed aside when it tries to get back into it's giant can as it gets launched into space. It is unknown what happens to him after that.
  • Besides the Simpsons, people in the dormant silos didn't appear after the ship was crashed.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The segment is mostly based on Life, with elements of Pandorum and Alien.
• "You!" Exclamation: Lisa's reaction to Martin revealing he admires the monster.