Thanksgiving of Horror

"Thanksgiving of Horror" is the 8th episode of the thirty-first season of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons, and the 670th episode overall. It aired in the United States on Fox on November 24, 2019. The episode was written by Dan Vebber,[1] and was directed by Rob Oliver.

"Thanksgiving of Horror"
The Simpsons episode
Promotional poster
Episode no.Season 31
Episode 8
Directed byRob Oliver
Written byDan Vebber
Production codeYABF17
Original air dateNovember 24, 2019 (2019-11-24)
Guest appearance(s)

Charlie Brooker as Social Media App voice

On February 1, 2020, Dan Vebber won the Writers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Writing in Animation at the 72nd Writers Guild of America Awards for his script to this episode.[2]

This is the final episode featuring Russi Taylor, who had been with the show since the first season voicing characters such as Martin Prince, Sherri and Terri, and Uter, due to her death on July 26, 2019.

Plot

A Thanksgiving take on Treehouse of Horror looking at the past, present and future of the holiday. Turkeys are slaughtered by pilgrims during the first Thanksgiving, Homer purchases an A.I. based on Marge that resents the real one, and an already dangerous space mission escaping a doomed Earth becomes worse when Bart's attempts to replicate cranberry sauce turn it into a sentient monster.

A-Gobble-Ypto

In a parody of Apocalypto,[3] the Simpson family and some other Springfield residents are depicted as turkeys, while others are depicted as Pilgrims. When the latter hunt for their Thanksgiving dinner, Homer is among the turkeys captured; Bart escapes but follows them back to their settlement. Several turkeys are bloodily killed, but a panic erupts when the turkey version of Grampa continues to run around with his head cut off. In the confusion, Bart rescues Homer and they reunited with their family as Marge lays an egg, but are chased by Chief Wiggum until a bear mauls him to death. The egg then hatches to reveal a turkey version of Maggie. Upon watching some Pilgrims eat turkey dinner, Homer comments that times will be dark for them as Thanksgiving becomes a new human tradition.

The Fourth Thursday After Tomorrow

In a parody of the Black Mirror special "White Christmas",[3] to help Marge with the Thanksgiving cooking as the Simpsons are holding a dinner party for many of their friends, Homer orders an A.I. with all of her memories, who acts as the protagonist of this story. Marge becomes jealous as the A.I. proves better at running the family than her. She decides to delete her after the holiday. A.I. Marge finds out and, after cooking a huge and delicious meal that Marge takes credit for, tries to escape into the internet. She is nearly stymied by Marge, but convinces Maggie to help, showing that she is better at mothering than Marge herself. She also reveals to the guests that she cooked the meal before escaping, causing Marge's social rating to plummet. Things are made worse when Homer tries to comfort her and inadvertently reveals himself as a robot. Now free, the A.I. happily decides to spend some time in various places on the internet, starting with Etsy.

The Last Thanksgiving

In a parody of Alien and Life[3] while on a spaceship years after the Earth's destruction, the kids are awoken from hibernation to do some work before landing on their new planet. Bart and Milhouse try to create a Thanksgiving dinner, but they can only find one can of cranberry sauce which they try to replicate and accidentally bring to life. The creature eats bones, being made of gelatin, and soon kills every child except Bart, Lisa, Milhouse and Martin, the latter of whom betrays the others before being killed himself. Milhouse decides to befriend the monster, but is thrown aside by it instead, prompting Bart and Lisa to trick it into releasing Milhouse and launching itself into a large space can. The two release the can into space, only for it to arrive on their new planet. Thankfully, the humans are aided by some native aliens who make the monster into food, ending with an extraterrestrial version of the first Thanksgiving. Lisa then narrates that the monster happily found its true purpose: being fed to others, as the title card is renamed to "The First Blargs-giving".

Credits

During the credits, footage of the Bart Simpson balloon at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is shown.

Production

The run time of this episode is 24:52, making it the longest single episode of The Simpsons ever aired. While The Great Phatsby was advertised and aired as a double-length episode three seasons ago, it was actually produced as two separate episodes and then merged into one.[4] The Fox press release for the episode stated that filmmaker Werner Herzog was going to guest star in the episode once again as the character Walter Hotenhoffer, but he was not featured in the final broadcast.[5]

The idea of doing a Thanksgiving version of a Treehouse of Horror episode was that of executive producer Matt Selman starting with the concept of doing Apocalypto with turkeys. The voice cast came up with the turkey's gobble language and the producers thought it would be funnier to just have them gobble without subtitles, believing the audience knew the characters well enough to more or less understand what they were saying. "We wanted it to feel like if you’re a turkey, Thanksgiving is pretty much a horror movie where you’re being hunted down and slaughtered," writer Dan Vebber stated.

The idea for the second segment was to make the audience root for the fake A.I. Marge over the real one and to try and cram as many Black Mirror references and easter eggs in as they could. Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker was asked to voice a social media app in the episode. Vebber said of the cameo, "I came up with the idea of having him voice a computer at the end to say ‘Firewall activated’ but Matt Selman lobbied for ‘social rating: falling.’ We disagreed on this until the day we recorded the voices, which was when I came up with the ‘nosediving’ reference from the show. It was the perfect compromise between what we both wanted."

For the final segment the idea of the cranberry creature that sucked out the skeletons of the crew was inspired by the Star Trek episode "The Man Trap" that featured an alien creature that sucked salt from the bodies of its victims. Vebber directed voice actress Russi Taylor for what would be her final performance as Martin Prince in "The Last Thanksgiving" segment, of which he said "She was so into it she was really just laughing her head off. She thought it was so funny that at the end Martin's entire skeleton just gets sucked out of him, and she really got into it, asking what the noises would be as he’s getting his skeleton sucked out. She was having the best time."[6]

Reception

Dennis Perkins of The A.V. Club gave this episode a B, stating, "'Thanksgiving of Horror' represents the show's writers tossing out a 'Why not?' non-canonical scary story do-over. And, oddly enough, I'm fine with it, especially since this second, Thanksgiving-themed horror outing is scarier, meaner, grosser, and all-around better than this year's original."[7]

On July 28, 2020 this episode was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program.

gollark: Nope. It's a local to the functions handling it.
gollark: It won't be in the scoreboard, but stuff *will* play against it.
gollark: So I rechecked, and adding stuff while your submission runs *does* kind of work.
gollark: Oh, it does things, just... odd things.
gollark: So it appears that while I can add to the strategy list at runtime, it doesn't do very much.

References
  1. Jean, Al (2018-10-18). "I won't reveal the title; the writer is Dan Vebber". @AlJean. Retrieved 2019-11-26.
  2. "WGA Awards: 'Parasite,' 'Jojo Rabbit,' HBO Among Top Winners (Full List)". Variety. Retrieved February 1, 2020.
  3. "Thanksgiving of Horror: Breaking Down the Many Movie References in the Latest Episode of 'The Simpsons'". /Film. 2019-11-27. Retrieved 2019-11-29.
  4. "Simpsons producer drops 10 hints about 'Thanksgiving of Horror' trilogy episode". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 2019-11-22.
  5. "(SI-3017) "Thanksgiving of Horror"". The Futon Critic. Retrieved 2019-11-22.
  6. "Thanksgiving of Horror: Breaking Down the Many Movie References in the Latest Episode of 'The Simpsons'". SlashFilm. Retrieved 2019-11-27.
  7. "The Simpsons does better Thanksgiving horror than Halloween horror". TV Club. Retrieved 2019-11-26.
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