The Simpson’s annual Treehouse of Horror Halloween Special had its 31st edition this year, one year shy of the 32 years that the series has been running. It has produced some of the best episodes of the entire series and, over the years, let the writers and performers explore stories that they couldn’t get away with during the regular season.

As any child of the 90s, I watched many of these episodes as a child but gave up sometime around the end of the so-called “golden age” of the series. This year I am stuck indoors, though, and 29 of the 31 episodes are on Disney+, so I spent the last few weeks watching (or re-watching) every Treehouse of Horror they have made, including the 31st edition, which aired this past Sunday and ranked all 93 segments, from my least favourite to my most favourite.

Note: due to the number of images in this post, it has been broken up into FIVE pages. You will find navigation buttons at the bottom of each page.

93. The Diving Bell and Butterball

• Treehouse of Horror: XXII
• Year: 2011
• Synopsis: In a loose parody of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Homer gets bitten by a spider and paralyzed.
• Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
• Best Gag: Homer: “On the floor, can’t move, so far a normal Sunday morning.“

There’s only one good joke in this entire segment, and it’s one of the first ones out of the gate. But, unfortunately, it’s otherwise a super shallow parody of a great film the devolves into a silly Spider-Man thing at the end.

92. It’s the Grand Pumpkin, Milhouse (XIX)

• Treehouse of Horror: XIX
• Year: 2008
• Synopsis: Milhouse bring to life the Grand Pumpkin through the power of childlike belief
• Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
• Best Gag: No gag, but the stylistic parody of the Peanuts aesthetic is spot on.

The Grand Pumpkin is a spot-on recreation of the Charlie Brown Christmas Special style, right down to the dancing scene toward the end, but it failed to grab me for anything beyond nostalgia. It also has Nelson calling Milhouse “gay” for having feelings and then calling someone else out for being racist, which is a little… incongruent.

91 . You Gotta Know When to Golem

• Treehouse of Horror: XVII
• Year: 2006
• Synopsis: Krusty has a Golem, which Bart takes control of.
• Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
• Best Gag: Krusty, standing in his prop room: “This isn’t a museum, that’s a museum! <points at prop museum> “$50 entry, $49 for kids!”

There is one great joke in this right before Skinner dies where Superintendent Chalmers does his trademark “SKINNNNERRRR!” and follows it up with “I wish we had been closer”, but this segment basically comes down to a bunch of Jewish stereotypes. Your mileage may vary, but this didn’t work for me.

90. I’ve Grown a Costume on Your Face

• Treehouse of Horror: XVI
• Year: 2005
• Synopsis: A witch turns everyone in Springfield into their Halloween costumes.
• Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
• Best Gag: Sideshow Mel: “Burn her! Gift certificate!”

Look, I don’t know what to tell you. This one has a decent concept, but basically nothing happens, and none of the jokes land.

89. Married to the Blob

• Treehouse of Horror: XVII
• Year: 2006
• Synopsis: Homer eats a mysterious space goo and becomes a ravenous monster.
• Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
• Best Gag: Two germans after being eaten: “What did we germans ever do to deserve this? Oh, right.”

Married to the Blob should be right up my alley as a parody of a 1950s sci-fi b-movie, but whatever goodwill it builds up is lost on me when they decide to use Homer wanting to eat people as a way to solve the homelessness problem in Springfield.

88. Bart & Homer’s Excellent Adventure

• Treehouse of Horror: XXIII
• Year: 2012
• Synopsis: Bart goes back in time and meets his father as a teenager
• Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
• Best Gag: Professor Frink: “This is the most fantastically powerful invention in mankind’s history! Here hold my keys while I grab lunch”

Despite the title, this segment parodies Back to the Future rather than Bill & Ted. This sounds great, but it’s mostly just forgettable, except for one other line from teenage Homer when he is brought forward to the present: “The globe feels so warm!”

87. Stop the World, I Want to Goof Off

• Treehouse of Horror: XIV
• Year: 2003
• Synopsis: Bart and Milhouse order a stopwatch from a 1970s comic book that can stop tie.
• Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
• Best Gag: Sideshow Mel: “Let us kill them before learning of the magical secret they possess!”

I can’t say that this segment is bad, exactly; it’s more that it’s entirely forgettable. I watched it less than 24 hours ago as of this writing, and I barely remember it.

86. Scary Tales Can Come True

• Treehouse of Horror: XI
• Year: 2000
• Synopsis: A send-up of Grimm’s Fairy Tales that casts Bart and Lisa as Hansel and Gretel
• Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
• Best Gag: “Hello, I’m George Cauldron.”

This is another surprise to me, I would have thought that a riff on Grimm’s Fairy Tales would be right up my alley, but there’s not much going on despite the three good laughs here.

85. In the Na’Vi

• Treehouse of Horror: XXII
• Year: 2011
• Synopsis: A direct parody of Avatar
• Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
• Best Gag: Alien: “In Rigellian, we have no words for yours or mine, that’s why we didn’t enjoy the film ‘Yours, Mine, and Ours.'”

Look, it’s a bigger sin to me for these things to be boring than wacky and bad. I watched this earlier today and barely remember what happened in it now. Ugh.

84. I Know What You Diddily-Iddily-Did

• Treehouse of Horror: X
• Year: 1999
• Synopsis: The simpson’s accidentally kill Flanders. Or did they?
• Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
• Best Gag: “Growl. Diddley”

This riff on I Know What You Did Last Summer only made me laugh one time, and it was when the finally revealed Werewolf Flanders growls and then says diddley.

83. Oh the Places You’ll D’oh

• Treehouse of Horror: XXIV
• Year: 2013
• Synopsis: It’s the cat in the hat, and
• Rating: ★★☆☆☆
• Best Gag: “The fat in the hat has some anger issues and some unconventional political views”

A send of Dr Seuss and The Cat in the Hat, more specifically, that is stylistically on point but not very funny.

82. Un-normal Activity

• Treehouse of Horror: XXIII
• Year: 2012
• Synopsis: The Simpson’s are tormented by a demon with a connection to their past.
• Rating: ★★☆☆☆
• Best Gag: The demon’s safe word being “cinnamon”.

Stylistically a great parody of the Paranormal Activity films that has a few good moments but none that stick with you beyond the one really great gag at the very end.

81. Master and Cadaver

• Treehouse of Horror: XXI
• Year: 2010
• Synopsis: Homer and Marge are on a romantic sailboat trip and pick up a castaway
• Rating: ★★☆☆☆
• Best Gag: Homer: “The pie isn’t poison.  Well it is rhubarb”

Another one with a strong premise that ends up being somewhat forgettable. Sure, a big guest star in Hugh Laurie but other than Homer’s inappropriate cell phone alert noises, this one doesn’t really capitalize on enough to elevate.

80. Survival of the Fattest

• Treehouse of Horror: XVI
• Year: 2005
• Synopsis: Mr Burns invites a group of people to his mansion for dinner, so that he can hunt them.
• Rating: ★★☆☆☆
• Best Gag: Terry Bradshaw: “That’s the kind of showboating that will turn people off the sport!”

I feel like this one should be funnier. There are two or three good jokes, but it mostly falls flat.

79. Geriatric Park

• Treehouse of Horror: XXIX
• Year: 2018
• Synopsis: The Simpson’s check Grandpa into a retirement resort where the residents are mutated into dinosaurs
• Rating: ★★☆☆☆
• Best Gag: Lisa: “Grandpa, I want to hear your opinion about everything.” Marge: “She’s making the ultimate sacrifice”

A few solid gags (like the map in the picture) but not much else. I watched this today, and I only have three notes, and I can’t even for sure remember if it was Marge or Homer that says that Lisa is “making the ultimate sacrifice” in that best gag I listed.

78. BFF R.I.P

• Treehouse of Horror: XXVII
• Year: 2016
• Synopsis: Lisa’s imaginary friend starts murdering her real friends.
• Rating: ★★☆☆☆
• Best Gag: Lisa: “Why did my best friend have to die? I mean it’s a great college essay but it’s not worth it.”

What a waste of a major guest star. Sarah Silverman is good, and the premise is good, but it’s just not that funny.

77. The Fright to Keep and Scare Harms

• Treehouse of Horror: XIII
• Year: 2002
• Synopsis: Lisa gets guns banned in Springfield, and then zombie cowboys armed with guns take over the town.
• Rating: ★★☆☆☆
• Best Gag: Lou: “This gun always made me feel like a man. Now all I have are my enormous genitals!”

While this one does indulge in some delightful wackiness (such as Kaiser Wilhelm being a zombie cowboy alongside Billy the Kid, The James Brothers, and the Sundance Kid, it doesn’t have enough solid laughs to elevate its premise.

76. Four Beheadings and a Funeral

• Treehouse of Horror: XV
• Year: 2004
• Synopsis: A series of grizzly murders plagues Victorian London and Detective Lisa is on the case.
• Rating: ★★☆☆☆
• Best Gag: Victorian steampunk Kang and Kodos

This segment is ostensibly a parody of the 2001 film From Hell but it seems confused about whether it wants to be that or a Sherlock Holmes riff, and it doesn’t quite work as a result.

Still, there are a few solid gags, such as the “summer hanging series” and Kang and Kodos with muttonchops.

75. Dial D for Diddly

• Treehouse of Horror: XXII
• Year: 2011
• Synopsis: Flanders kills a number of people, be believes, at the behest of God.
• Rating: ★★☆☆☆
• Best Gag: The reveal of who has been running the world.

I know that there are a limited number of titles, but there are many titles in this series that seem to indicate that the show is about to parody one thing, and then it parodies another. Anyway, this is ostensibly a Dexter parody that has very little to do with Dexter.

74. How to Get Ahead in Dead-vertising

• Treehouse of Horror: XIX
• Year: 2008
• Synopsis: Home has a talent for killing celebrities.
• Rating: ★★☆☆☆
• Best Gag: The one true religion being “a mix of voodoo and Methodist.”

Here’s one that, in hindsight, I might have underrated because it does have a few memorable gags, but at this point, I’m committed to the list, so there it is. I particularly enjoy the moment pictured where Homer tries to give CPR to Krusty’s exposed heart.

73. Life’s a Glitch, Then You Die

• Treehouse of Horror: X
• Year: 1999
• Synopsis: The one with the Y2K bug
• Rating: ★★☆☆☆
• Best Gag: Homer, to Bart: “We’ve both lived long full lives.”

Remember the Y2K bug? The world was genuinely scared by it for a hot minute back in the late 1990s. So who’s to say this isn’t what would have happened if it had gone as far south as some thought it might?

Anyway, this segment cashes in on that, and while it has a couple of weirdly prescient gags (everything has a computer in it now!), it still ends up relying a little too much on mean jokes and guest stars.

72. Danger Things

• Treehouse of Horror: XXX
• Year: 2019
• Synopsis: It’s Stranger Things and Lisa is Eleven.
• Rating: ★★☆☆☆
• Best Gag: Milhouse, having lost a leg: “Now I have the power to skip gym.  Booyah!”

The visual style of Stranger Things is spot on in this one, but what jokes there are feel lazy and obvious. But it looks great.

71. War and Pieces

• Treehouse of Horror: XXI
• Year: 2010
• Synopsis: Bart and Milhouse get sucked into board games. All the board games.
• Rating: ★★☆☆☆
• Best Gag: There’s not one but all the unlicensed game titles are great.

You have probably put together that this is a riff on Jumani, but instead of being pulled into one game, Bart and Milhouse are pulled into every nearby game, and they have to win all of them. Again, shockingly few laughs (though Homer playing Chutes and Ladders is pretty great), but there’s enough here to be interesting.

70. Dead and Shoulders

• Treehouse of Horror: XXIV
• Year: 2013
• Synopsis: Bart has his head cut off while flying a kite, and Doctor Hibbert attaches it to Lisa’s body.
• Rating: ★★☆☆☆
• Best Gag: Pilot 1: “Kite at 2 o clock!” Pilot 2: “I don’t know what that means, I have a digital watch!”

Once Bart figures out that he can control Lisa’s body while she’s asleep, this story gets moving, and I liked the old fashioned setting of a sawmill to try to resolve the conflict.

69. B.I. Bartificial Intelligence

• Treehouse of Horror: XVI
• Year: 2005
• Synopsis: Bart dies and Marge and Homer replace him with a robotic boy.
• Rating: ★★☆☆☆
• Best Gag: Lisa: “Mom! Remember how you wished we’d never grow up?”

Bartificial Intelligence is a parody of Artificial Intelligence in as much as there is a robot boy, but I don’t really remember the part of that movie where the boy becomes a killing machine. Still, this one opens with a super dark joke, and that elevates it to where it is in this list.