Other people. They exist, and some of them are fun to play games with.
While the world has made many forms of social gaming impractical for the foreseeable future, video games still allow for us to have fun with our friends without the looming threat of infection & death. On a less depressing note, playing a game with friends can make just about anything fun. There have been countless games that I’ve found tedious on my own, but a great joy when played with another person. Over the years, designers have learnt how to hone their multiplayer mechanics to make the most enjoyable experience for people playing games together, so I’d like to take the time to discuss some of the best.
Before I start, I should clarify the kind of multiplayer games I play. For the most part, I prefer the easy-going games that you can just bust out at a social gathering and play a few quick rounds of. There are exceptions to this on the list, but I’m not big on competitive multiplayer, so don’t expect to see games like MOBAs or Halo on this list. They’re not bad games, of course, they’re just not what I enjoy playing.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Overcooked – It’s lots of fun, I just never played enough of it to fall in love with it. Trivial Pursuit – A personal favourite, but at the end of the day, it is just a trivia game, and it was a board game first. Rocket League – An absolute blast that I am utterly terrible at.
9 – Portal 2
Co-op modes are hard to get right. So often they’re just the regular singleplayer mode with an extra person. This is a fine way of doing it, but it doesn’t get the most out of what a co-operative gaming experience can be. It’s very rare in a co-op video game that I really get the feeling of proper teamwork and collective achievement as we move towards our goals. Here’s where Portal 2 comes in.
Firstly, it’s a puzzle game, which is great in terms of the ‘sense of accomplishment’ factor. Humans are better at solving a problem together, and the ability to bounce ideas off each other as you work your way through the puzzles. Additionally, it doesn’t assume you know anything about how to play Portal. If you want to introduce someone to the game, they don’t have to go through the singleplayer to understand what’s going on, and because the game explains everything, it removes that barrier where you have to awkwardly try and explain it to the other person.
Most importantly, it lets you be absolute arseholes to each other…in a fun way. There’s no consequence for death in Portal 2, other than having to run through the level again, which usually takes just a few seconds. That lack of consequence means that dying isn’t frustrating, which means that when your friend pulls a dick move on you, it’s funny, not annoying. The light-bridges are the perfect example of this. Your friend is walking along the bridge over a pit of death, while you and you alone hold the power to remove the bridge. You know you’re going to do it, they know you’re going to do it, but it’s still hilarious when you send them plummeting.
It gives you the tools and lets you mess about with each other to your heart’s content, but once you want to get serious, there’s plenty of puzzly goodness, that makes the most of the co-op portal mechanics.
8 – Nidhogg
As you’ll see throughout this list, the kind of multiplayer games I tend to connect the most with are the ones that I can play with someone in the same room as me. Playing games online is great when it’s the only option (see: 2020) but to me, nothing beats the joy that comes from a room bursting into enthusiastic shouting and laugher all around you as you play something.
Nidhogg is great at getting those kinds of reactions out of people. As only a 2 player game, it might not seem the best thing to bust out at a party, but honestly, it’s just as gripping to watch as it is to play. The tug-of-war style of gameplay makes for insane levels of intensity, especially when games get dragged out for a long time. The excitement levels never drop as one person breaks through, only to be stopped inches from victory and be slowly pushed back to the centre of the map.
You find yourself going through phases, as the game progressed. You’ll have some fast-paced kills as you run back and forth, maybe make some progress, until you both suddenly slow down and have a stand-off. The mechanics are simple enough that you can determine the pace of every game and almost tell a story during your fight. Then, when the match finally ends, you feel that emotional sigh of relief, which is an incredibly satisfying feeling, and you want to just right into another game.
7 – Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
Confusion and chaos are the order of the day in the best way possible.
A co-operative game where the distribution of information is heavily asymmetrical is a style of game that we haven’t seen much in the video game sphere as much as I would’ve expected. Maybe that’s just because this game got it spot-on first try and nothing could ever compare.
Whenever I play this game with someone for the first time, it’s always a joy to watch them struggle their way through the manual. It plays so well with how people communicate, that the experience is always very different depending on who I play it with. With some people, it’s a relatively calm puzzle-solving experience, while with others it becomes a hilariously panicked shouting match, and both are just as fun to play. Every person develops their own little code for how to describe the weird shapes or a method for communicating each puzzle, it’s great fun.
What’s great is that it’s the kind of concept that you can introduce to anyone. It’s easy to understand even if you’re completely computer illiterate. I’ve given the manual to plenty of people who don’t play video games and we’ve still had a fun experience thanks to the simplistic nature of it. It succeeds as both a unique feature of co-operation and communication in games and as a social game.
6 – Super Smash Bros
Ultimate is my personal favourite, but any of them could fill this slot.
If you have a look through my 100 favourite games series from the summer, one thing you’ll notice a distinct lack of is fighting games, I just don’t play them. Smash Bros is the exception, as it’s the perfect fighting game for someone completely inexperienced in the genre. Many use “kid-friendly” as a negative, but the fact is, Smash Bros is a family fighting game, which is a rarity for a genre that usually has quite a high skill floor.
Straight out of the gate, there’s the appeal of all these characters, from just about every corner of gaming’s past and present. Nintendo characters dominate the scene, but there’s a huge handful of characters from elsewhere, especially with Ultimate’s DLC fighters. There will be a for just about anyone to connect to in there somewhere, even those who don’t play video games. In fact, it’s arguably a good gateway to get people interested in franchises they haven’t tried. People who don’t know the characters will just pick one they like the look of, and then slowly form a connection with them, maybe eventually going on to play some of their games. It’s almost the gateway game for other games in that way.
Outside of that, every match is simply madness. Yes, if you learn what the buttons do, you’ll do better than those who don’t, but you can still have a lot of fun from hitting attacks at semi-random. When a screen is full of a bunch of characters doing all their flashy attacks and moves it’s a sight to behold, and things get even crazier when items are added into the mix. What’s great though, is that there are enough advanced techniques in there for people to play at an insanely high skill-level too. I’m not one of those people, I’m a filthy casual, but for a game to be able to balance both of those types of players is an incredible feat.
5 – Jackbox Party Pack
When a game presents itself as “fun for all the family” what that normally means is that it’s designed for kids, and adults can play it if their kids bug them about it enough. Jackbox though really is fun for ALL the family, and it can be played in any environment. I’ve spent evenings playing Jackbox with my family, with everyone participating in the games and it’s been a lot of fun, but equally, I can sit around with a bunch of friends the same age as me and still get a great kick out of it.
Thanks to all of the games relying on the answers entered by the players, you can perfectly tailor your jokes to the room, meaning everyone always gets to enjoy the jokes. What’s more, is that the player-based responses allow you to form in-jokes during your group. I’m sure all of us who’ve played Jackbox can think of at least one time where one answer that particularly tickled people got repeated later in the night to an even bigger laugh.
I think that’s what makes Jackbox so fun for a group setting, the fact that every game doesn’t overbear too much on the interactions in the group. Instead, it carefully crafts different scenarios that allow the players to make the jokes themselves. This means it works as just about whatever you want it to be, whether it’s an ice breaker, a drinking game, or just some laughs with some friends. With only one person needing to actually own the game, it’s the height of accessibility.
4 – Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout
Up until now, I’ve been talking about playing all of these games in the context of playing with someone you know – because that’s how I play them – but here’s a game where the fact that you primarily play with strangers is what makes it so brilliant.
The controlled chaos of Fall Guys is something completely unreplicated in video games at the moment. I thought I’d lost interest in battle royale as a genre, that everything that could be done had been done, but then Fall Guys comes along and shows us just how far the genre still has left to go. The light and bouncy aesthetic is a breath of fresh air and fills the whole thing with hilarity. When your bean is being bounced around the place by giant rubber hammers, it’s impossible not to laugh about it.
Every level has such a brilliant sense of variation to it that even when I’ve done it a hundred times, I still enjoy playing through it. Partly because it very rarely goes the same way twice, but also because the simplistic gameplay of ‘jump, dive, grab’ is incredibly satisfying. The simplistic gameplay also means that even when you get good at it, you can never get THAT good at it. No matter how skilful you are at controlling your bean, there’s still every possibility that an unlucky bounce or another player getting in your way could send you tumbling to your death. As such, it really is a game where anyone has a chance of winning every game, another thing that I don’t think any other battle royale game achieves.
Even when you don’t win though, there’s still plenty to enjoy about the match. The gameplay is so intrinsically rewarding, that making it all the way to the finals, only to lose isn’t a slow, agonising journey to defeat like in other battle royales. It’s one of the few competitive games where I genuinely don’t play for winning (even if it is a very good feeling when I do), I just play because the levels are so much fun.
3 – Minecraft
While it’s true that Minecraft’s multiplayer doesn’t actually do anything different to the singleplayer in terms of design, it’s a game where the experience is undoubtedly improved by playing with friends.
When you’re just playing a regular world in survival, adding a friend to the mix makes the whole thing way more engaging. Yes, I still like to play in singleplayer when I want to chill out and build worlds, but adventuring and building while chatting to people brings the true joy out of the game. You can bounce creative ideas off of each other to come up with designs far beyond what you could’ve come up with on your own, and it allows anyone you play with to flourish in exactly the way they want to.
I’ve played Minecraft with just about every close friend that I’ve had at some point in my life and it’s always an enjoyable experience, and we always come up with something new depending on who it is I’m playing with. It’s the perfect game to play when you want to hang out with someone, but don’t want a very intense experience. Over the course of these months in lockdown/isolation, being able to hop on and virtually hang out with friends while building an impressive world has been an absolute God-send.
What’s more, is there’s still plenty of fun to be had playing with strangers. Plenty of game-modes that were innovated on large Minecraft servers eventually got big enough to become their own games, many would even argue Minecraft Hunger Games is the true progenitor of the battle royale genre. To this day the biggest servers allow you to hop online and play hundreds upon thousands of different styles of gameplay. Be it parkour, anarchy, battle royales or even regular survival Minecraft, no game is as expansive for multiplayer opportunities.
2 – Among Us
Before everyone says it, yes, I know Among Us did not innovate this style of gameplay, nor was it the first to bring it to the video game sphere, however, it is the best.
I’ve always loved social deduction games. My personal favourite was Secret Hitler, which I have played A LOT of over the years. There’s a great thrill that I get from hiding my true identity, lying through my teeth and manipulating the scenario so I can execute my master plan. I also have loads of fun being one of the good guys and working with the information at hand to track down the traitors and eliminate them from the game. Once again, it’s a style of gameplay that is entirely driver by the players and their interactions. The fun comes from those debates (sometimes shouting matches) and mystery-solving sessions, so much so, that even when the game ends and you find out you’ve been outplayed & manipulated the whole time, you still look back on the experience positively.
What Among Us does is it takes the most important elements of those games and sees exactly what advantages doing it in a virtual space can afford it. Now, the gameplay becomes more than just having discussions with your fellow players, now you get to wander around a virtual spaceship and do a bunch of fun mini-games. You get to actually run around a big space rather than sitting on your sofa looking at cards; not that I’m saying looking at cards isn’t fun, but doing it this way is making the most of what a virtual space can give you.
Even outside of a pandemic, getting 10 friends in the same room can be quite difficult in the real world, and for just £4 (or free on mobile) this is the perfect way to get around that problem. It keeps the core of makes social deduction games so fun and just adds to it in great new ways. What’s great is that the developers are still looking to improve the game, and hopefully, its success will encourage other developers to make more with their own twists on the gameplay.
1 – Towerfall Ascension
I mean, come on, did you really expect anything else?
Towerfall Ascension placed third in my 100 Favourite Games series, and one of the main reasons for that is because the local multiplayer battling is hands down the most fun experiences I’ve had playing games. It’s easy enough to learn that anyone I’ve played it with you is at least somewhat video game literate picks it up within their first few times playing and from there the possibilities are endless.
The game moves at such a fast pace and yet the level of tension can reach a fever-pitch when a match is close. The precision you can achieve in terms of movement and shooting is incredible and will lead to some of the most exciting near-misses you’ve ever seen. Each different arena design gives you new tactics as you find the best way to place yourself at an advantage. You can stay still and try to outsmart your opponent and they come for you, or you can keep constantly on the move to come at your opponent from as many angles at once as possible. All the while you’ve got to be thinking about your opponent’s positioning, and also where you’re shooting your arrows, as you’ll need to pick them up again if you miss.
On top of that, the game offers a huge amount of variants to mix the game up and keep it fresh, even hundreds of hours in. You can create some crazy and hilarious matches using them that will keep you laughing even watching the replays long after the fact. It’s able to make me laugh hysterically, feel like a God of gaming and create fond memories all in one package. It’s something truly special and easily the best multiplayer mode I’ve ever played.
And there you have it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this. Please, let me know what your favourite multiplayer games are, either in the comment below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Finally, make sure to come back this time next week, where the end-of-year lists begin with my favourite AEW matches of the 2020!
While it certainly happened a lot later than we all would’ve liked it to, over the past 5 years, WWE has finally allowed women’s wrestling to take its place as the featured attraction we’ve always wanted it to be. While things still aren’t perfect, women’s wrestling is largely treated as being on par with – and sometimes greater than – whatever the men are doing.
While the depth of the women’s division is a huge factor in this becoming the case, a good indicator for how the women’s division has been treated in recent years is to look at the championships. Since the horribly named, horribly designed, and horribly horrible Diva’s Championship was abolished in 2016, there have been 11 different women to hold either the Raw or Smackdown Women’s Championship at least once. Today, I’m going to rank these women based on what they did during their time as champion.
There are a number of things that play into it. First of all, the pure numbers. How many times have they won a championship, and how many days did they hold it? However, you also have to consider other factors like the calibre of opponents they faced with the belt, or the more subjective factors, like were their storylines and matches any good? Then, lastly, I’ll throw in a little personal bias and we’ve got ourselves a list.
Let’s get ranking.
11 – Natalya
Number of Reigns: Raw – 0; Smackdown – 1 Total Days as Champion: Raw – 0; Smackdown – 86
I honestly forgot Natalya had even won a women’s title, which isn’t a great sign.
Truth be told, I really can’t stand Natalya as a wrestler. I think her promo style is lifeless and boring, and I think her style in the ring is lacking any kind of special shine. Sure, she was one of the best wrestlers during the ‘Diva’s’ era, when there were very few legitimate wrestlers on the roster, but I think that time has passed her by and she can’t compete with the incredibly talented women of WWE today.
Unfortunately, Natalya’s time as champion was equally boring. She won the title from Naomi at Summerslam 2017 in a 10-minute match that was ok. She retained the title on Smackdown a few weeks later in a 7-minute match that was also just ok. Then Charlotte Flair stepped into the picture and the writing was on the walls. They had a match at Hell in a Cell where Natalya deliberately got herself disqualified, which will always be a super lame finish. Then, with Survivor Series on the horizon and a champion vs champion match against Alexa Bliss on the card, she lost the title to Charlotte clean as a whistle in 12 minutes.
Natalya had her rematch against Charlotte at Clash of Champions, lost, and that was that. Natalya would never sniff the title scene again. It did nothing to elevate Natalya, or even Charlotte, as she was already the biggest thing in the women’s division by that point. It didn’t even serve as a nice “thank you” present for Natalya’s decade of serivce to WWE because she was made to look weak and ineffective at almost every turn. None of her storylines were interesting and all of her matches were average in quality, not what you want from your top woman.
10 – Naomi
Number of Reigns: Raw – 0; Smackdown – 2 Total Days as Champion: Raw – 0; Smackdown – 148
I feel bad putting Naomi this low because I remember really rooting for her at the time, but when you look at her time with the title, there really isn’t a lot to shout about.
In the build to her title win, Naomi was a good foil for Alexa Bliss. She’s very easy to love, and her personality clashed with Alexa’s in such a way that I enjoyed the build. Their match at Elimination Chamber should’ve been better than it was, but unfortunately, it was only given 8 minutes, which is not enough time to have the amazing match they were able to. However, it was ok, because Wrestlemania was on the horizon, and it was happening in Naomi’s hometown, so that’s where the real money match could happen, right?
No, of course it didn’t.
Sadly, Naomi suffered an injury and would have to relinquish her title after just 9 days, making it unlikely she would be able to compete at Wrestlemania 33 that year. As it happened, Naomi’s injury wasn’t too severe and she was healed in time for Wrestlemania, but it was so late that she has to be awkwardly crowbarred into the plans WWE had already made. This meant that instead of a big one-on-one match with Alexa, Naomi won the title for the second time in a Six-Pack Challenge. What’s worse is the match was only given 5 minutes and was slotted in between the two main events of the evening, so the exhausted crowd couldn’t have cared less.
Naomi’s second title reign was much longer, at 137 days, but it was no more interesting. She had a rematch with Alexa Bliss that was ok, and a 9-minute match with Charlotte that ended in a no contest. Then, things fell off a cliff and WWE decided they were going to push Lana as a title contender. Lana would have three matches with Naomi. One was a 7-minute snooze fest that consisted of Naomi desperately trying to get something out of Lana, and failing. The second was a 1-minute squash match, and the third was a 10 SECOND squash match. To put it plainly, it was shit.
Then she had a fairly boring feud with Natalya, lost the title and that was that.
As much as I love Naomi, she pretty much only avoids the bottom spot because she held her title for more days than Natalya. What sucks is that I don’t think many of the issues with her reign were her fault. Her matches were constantly being put in bad spots and being given nowhere near enough time on shows. Then, she got thrown in there with Lana, a competitor who even the best of the best would struggle to get a decent match out of.
Here’s hoping she gets a proper chance to shine in the years to come.
9 – Carmella
Number of Reigns: Raw – 0; Smackdown – 1 Total Days as Champion: Raw – 0; Smackdown – 130
Carmella is another woman that I hope gets another chance to run with the title someday because her first go-around wasn’t as good as I believe it could’ve been.
Things started about as well as they possibly can start. Cashing in her first-ever women’s Money in the Bank contract, Carmella rode a wave of momentum into the start of her title reign. She’d cashed-in and taken the title away from Charlotte just two days after Charlotte had ended Asuka’s undefeated streak and pissed everyone off. The problems started to rear their heads right away, however, as her character started to lose the unique charm she had before winning the title. Almost immediately she fell into the template of any heel champion who won thanks to the green & gold briefcase, which didn’t make for exciting TV.
She beat Charlotte cleanly in the title rematch, which sounds like a good thing, but it actually felt pretty underwhelming, especially considering Charlotte left for a while almost immediately afterwards. Next, she entered a feud with Asuka, which seemed specifically crafted to make the unstoppable Asuka look like as much of a chump as is humanly possible. In every instance, Carmella only retained thanks to interference from James Ellsworth, a man who WWE presented as the single most pathetic human being to ever live. It was a nice twist the first time it happened, but quickly became played out and horrendously boring.
Before we knew it, the time had arrived for Carmella to lose the title. This is the most historically significant part of Carmella’s reign, but not because of anything Carmella did. When Charlotte beat Carmella & Becky Lynch to win the Smackdown Women’s Championship at Summerslam, it set in motion the chain of events that would lead to the insane rise of Becky Lynch. I’d love to Carmella’s role in the story some credit for this, but she really didn’t make a difference. It could’ve been any heel champion in that role and it would’ve worked out just the same. Charlotte still would’ve been unnecessarily crowbarred into the match, and Becky Lynch still would’ve ‘turned heel’ only for the fans to cheer her as they’ve never cheered anyone since Daniel Bryan in 2013/14. Carmella was just the spare part.
She rises a few places from the bottom purely through the virtue of having a couple of memorable moments under her belt, but there was sadly very little to enjoy during her one and only title reign.
8 – Nia Jax
Number of Reigns: Raw – 1; Smackdown – 0 Total Days as Champion: Raw – 70; Smackdown – 0
While the numbers aren’t in Nia’s favour, what she did during her run as champion was a lot better than I think many remember.
The story going into Wrestlemania 34 between Nia & Alexa was an odd one. They pressed pretty hard on the anti-bullying stuff, but it always felt pretty disingenuous. The writing wasn’t very nuanced and it felt like they were just trying really hard to make Nia into this amazing role model for little girls. Of course, having role models for little girls isn’t a bad thing, but when you try to force it with a woman like Nia, who is SO much better as a villain, it tends to fall flat. It wasn’t all bad though, the fact remained that Alexa Bliss was an incredible heel, so her work was good enough to make the sympathy roll Nia’s way.
The problem comes in with her matches. The Wrestlemania match was mostly just Nia beating Alexa down with her huge size advantage, which didn’t exactly make her seem like a sympathetic bullying victim. Still, the moment where she won the title was a good one, and the emotion on Nia’s face made the whole thing feel extremely heartfelt. The feud didn’t need to continue from there, but it did, and it was boring. Thankfully, once it was out of the way, we got to the highlight of Nia’s title reign, her match with Ronda Rousey.
Nia has never been the most incredible wrestler, in fact, I find very little to enjoy in the majority of her matches. Her match with Ronda Rousey, however, was an exception. It was, interesting, impactful and an all-round joy to watch. I finally felt like I was seeing Nia’s true potential, and it was an amazing showcase for Rousey too. Things ended in excitement as well, as Alexa Bliss would show up with the Money in the Bank contract she had won mere hours ago, and challenge for the title. A Money in the Bank cash-in is one of those events in wrestling that is always exciting, even when something you don’t like is happening because of it. Bliss won the title back from Nia and that was the end of it.
Her reign wasn’t all that long and didn’t make a lasting impact on the women’s division as a whole (hence why it’s low), but it did begin and end in rather spectacular fashion, which counts for something.
7 – Sasha Banks
Number of Reigns: Raw – 5; Smackdown – 1 Total Days as Champion: Raw – 106; Smackdown – 20+
By far the weakest ranking of any of the four horsewomen, Sasha has always got the raw end of the deal when it comes to title success. Sure, five title reigns is an impressive number, but when you consider that the longest of these reigns was a pathetic 34 days, you’ve got to realise something is wrong.
Her first three title reigns all came and went within the space of 5 months, as it was during her extended feud with Charlotte. These two would hot-potato the title like no-one ever had, with things averaging two title changes every month. The pattern that played out on our screens for half a year was that Sasha would win the title on an episode of Raw at some point during the month, then when the Pay-Per-View rolled around, Charlotte would win it back. I was an extremely odd decision that didn’t do a great deal to raise the stock of either woman, however, it did create a lot of good-great matches.
That’s the thing with Sasha’s title reigns. They were often short and somewhat pointless, but they were almost always surrounded by either good matches or good stories, which I personally value more than the pure numbers.
After Bayley debuted on Raw, Sasha would play a supporting role for the next 6-8 months, backing up Bayley in whatever her endeavours were. One such endeavour was a feud with Alexa Bliss, in which fortune would favour Sasha. The original plan for the match at Summerslam was to be Bayley vs Alexa Bliss, however, Bayley suffered an injury during the month, so Banks was substituted in as a replacement. As WWE always like to pull for shock value Sasha was given the title for no reason. I can prove that it was for no reason too, as Banks would lose the title back to Alexa just 8 days later on Raw.
Banks wouldn’t sniff the title scene again for almost three years, however, her alliance and subsequent heel turn with Bayley turned her fortunes around. Banks & Bayley had already banded together to claim tag team gold, and after the two had spent most of the year ruling the roost over on Smackdown, they set their sites on Raw Women’s Champion, Asuka. The storyline surrounding this was great. Although the duo has recently broken up as of the time of writing, their run as ‘schoolyard bully’ style heels has been one of the biggest highlights to come out of the WWE product this year.
The title win wasn’t perfect though, as it happened in a weird finish where Bayley put on a referee shirt and counted the pin, then a week later, Stephanie McMahon rescheduled the match, and Sasha won the title anyway. Next up was Summerslam, and there, Sasha continued her pattern of not being able to successfully defend a title and lost it back to Asuka. However, Bayley betrayed Sasha at the start of the autumn and this led to what has to be her strongest title win yet. As the reign is still less than a month old, I can’t really judge it very much, but given that she’s already successfully defended the title on Smackdown, it seems she may have finally shaken her curse and is in for a fantastic reign.
Ultimately, Sasha Banks did a lot of great things surrounding her time as champion, however, she held the belt so briefly in almost every title reign, that they don’t feel very meaningful or prestigious.
6 – Asuka
Number of Reigns: Raw – 2; Smackdown – 1 Total Days as Champion: Raw – 154+; Smackdown – 99
For many years, it felt like Asuka was yet another NXT star that got totally destroyed by creative on Raw & Smackdown, but eventually, it seemed like WWE came to appreciate what they have with her, and are finally running with it.
Asuka’s first title reign began in extremely grand fashion. Coming at the tail end of Becky Lynch’s feud with Charlotte Flair, Asuka found her way into a TLC match for the Smackdown Women’s championship. To put it simply, this match was excellent, and most certainly one of the best WWE produced that year. The finish came when Becky & Charlotte were atop a ladder, ready to grab the gold, when Ronda Rousey came down to the ring, pushing the ladder over and allowing Asuka to win her first title. Many would say this cheapened Asuka’s win, as she didn’t do it all herself, but given that the Becky/Ronda/Charlotte story was the hottest thing in the company during that time, I’d say it just amplified the spotlight.
Asuka had several strong defences against, Mandy Rose & Naomi, but her biggest was against Becky Lynch at the Royal Rumble. This was the night that Becky would eventually win the rumble and stake her claim for Ronda Rousey’s title, so for Asuka to get a 100% clean win over Lynch that night was HUGE. Sadly, things would end in disappointment, as Charlotte would beat Asuka for the title in March, as WWE wanted to promote the Becky/Ronda/Charlotte triple threat match at Wrestlemania as being for both belts.
Fast forward a year and a bit to 2020, and things in the world are going a bit mental, and WWE followed suit. Asuka won the Money in the Bank briefcase in a match that I’m still not entirely sure wasn’t some weird fever dream I had, and things seemed to be exciting going forward for Asuka. However, the next night, things took a shocking turn. The champion Becky Lynch appeared on Raw with Asuka’s Money in the Bank briefcase in tow, during a promo, she revealed that she was relinquishing the Raw Women’s Championship, and handing it over to Asuka voluntarily. After some moments of confusion, Becky Lynch would reveal she was pregnant in an extraordinarily heartwarming moment.
Asuka’s title reign following this wasn’t the strongest, but she did get clean wins at almost every turn. Sadly, her first title defence Nia Jax wasn’t one of these, as it ended in a double countout, but Asuka would later defeat both Nia Jax & Charlotte Flair clean as a whistle. In the summer, she entered a feud with the duo of Bayley and Sasha Banks which produced some great matches, even if there was a small case of overbooking here and there. Sadly, moving into the autumn, Asuka has almost vanished completely from WWE TV. She had a short match at Clash of Champions against Zelina Vega, defended the title on Raw in 2-minutes against Lana and then missed Hell in a Cell completely. Her reign is still going strong, there just doesn’t seem to be a lot going on for her right now.
5 – Alexa Bliss
Number of Reigns: Raw – 3; Smackdown – 2 Total Days as Champion: Raw – 396; Smackdown – 109
When the ‘women’s revolution’ kicked into gear around 2015, there were certain women that were virtually guaranteed for stardom. The four horsewomen come to mind for this, and others like Asuka & Nia Jax held qualities that WWE would very clearly value in a main event talent. Alexa Bliss wasn’t one of these women, but she went ahead and did it anyway.
Alexa Bliss wasn’t a huge star in NXT. Her biggest accomplishment on the yellow brand was being the most entertaining member of the Blake & Murphy tag team. This meant that when she was drafted to Smackdown in the 2016 brand-split, I don’t think I was alone in thinking she wasn’t going to go super far. However, Smackdown branded itself as the land of opportunity, and it proved time and time again in 2016 that it was true. Case-in-point: Alexa Bliss.
Bliss wasn’t treated as much of a threat to Becky Lynch’s title reign in 2016, but the somewhat lucky (but ultimately, clean) circumstances surrounding a tables match gave Bliss the title. Bliss then proceeded to show everyone that she could hang with the best. She cut promos like few other women could at the time and created a truly despicable heel persona. Her two reigns with the Smackdown Women’s Title aren’t very significant in the grand scheme of things, but they served as a platform for her to establish herself as a real player in the division by the time she moved to Raw.
After switching the Raw in 2017’s Superstar Shakeup, Bliss wasted no time establishing dominance, beating Bayley for the title at Payback almost immediately. This feud was critically panned for some horrible segments like “Bayley: This is Your Life” and a match at Extreme Rules where Bayley lost because she was scared of a stick, however, you can’t deny that Bliss looked dominant during all of this. Bliss moved onto a feud with Sasha Banks, losing via Count-out at Great Balls of Fire, before losing the title the next month at Summerslam.
It wasn’t over for Bliss though, as she won the title back just 8 days later. Her 2nd run with the Raw title would be her longest, and she beat a great variety of opponents during this time. Defending the title in all sorts of different matches, including five-ways and even the very first Women’s Elimination Chamber match. Bliss felt virtually untouchable during this period, but it’s worth mentioning that for various reasons – including Survivor Series & Royal Rumble getting in the way – Bliss didn’t defend the title at all during November, December or January during this reign, which is a large contributor to her dropping a few places on this list.
She would eventually lose the title to Nia Jax at Wrestlemania 34. She did win it back later that year, but it’s barely worth talking about, as she only won it so Ronda Rousey had a heel to destroy at Summerslam.
At the end of the day, Bliss is the biggest example of someone breaking free of their low expectations and turning themselves into a star. Although it’s been a good few years since Bliss won a singles title, she’s always a feature-player of WWE’s women’s division and will go down as one of the greats.
4 – Charlotte Flair
Number of Reigns: Raw – 4; Smackdown – 5 Total Days as Champion: Raw – 242; Smackdown – 189
I can understand how some may see this as an odd placement. It’s always felt like Charlotte has been CONSTANTLY sniffing around the title scene since her main roster debut. It’s true that she has the most title reigns out of everyone on this list, and her contributions to the women’s revolution in WWE can never be denied. However, when you actually look at the content of her title reigns, it’s not as impressive as you might think.
For one thing, despite having almost double the number of title reigns as Alexa Bliss, she’s spent less total days as champion by quite the margin. Arguably her best title reign was her first one, especially if you include her time as Diva’s Champion before the new women’s title was introduced. Winning the title in what was inarguably the best match of Wrestlemania 32, Charlotte was a ready-made star from that moment onwards. She continued to retain the title with the help of her father, putting away Natalya on several occasions (including a rehash of the Montreal Screwjob, because Bret Hart was in the building).
Come mid-2016, it was time for the brand split to begin anew, and Charlotte’s epic feud with Sasha Banks began. As I’ve already discussed, these two traded the title A LOT, bringing Charlotte’s total number of reigns with the championship to 4. After many excellent matches, Charlotte came away as the winner, cementing her place at the top of the food chain, only for Bayley to come sniffing at her heels. She successfully repelled Bayley at the Royal Rumble, but wasn’t so lucky in their rematch, losing the title for what – as of the time of release – would be the final time.
In 2017’s Superstar Shakeup, Charlotte was traded to Smackdown. It took her a good chunk of the year, but she would eventually win the Smackdown Women’s Championship in November, and here she would have an excellent run with it. She spent a large chunk of the reign feuding with Natalya again, which could’ve been better, but it ended on a high. Then, after tearing through Ruby Riott at Fastlane, she would face down with the then-undefeated Asuka at Wrestlemania 34, and she came out victorious. I and many others view this as a horrible booking decision, but for the purposes of this list, it works in Charlotte’s favour, as the match was amazing & the queen of WWE gained a huge amount of prestige from the win.
Then two nights later, Carmella cashed-in the Money in the Bank briefcase and she lost the title. This is where Charlotte drops some places, as despite winning the title four more times past this point, they were reigns with absolutely no substance.
She won the title back from Carmella at Summerslam, but lost it to Becky Lynch a month later, won the title from Asuka next March, but lost it just two WEEKS later at Wrestlemania 35 (in a match where her presence arguably took away from the quality). Following Wrestlemania, Charlotte beat Becky to get the title back (after Becky had already fought a match against Lacey Evans) and this time, she would lose the title in less than five minutes thanks to Bayley cashing-in her newly won Money in the Bank contract. October rolled around and it was time for Charlotte to win the title back – this time at Hell in a Cell – where she managed to hold onto it for a whopping 5 days before losing it back to Bayley.
During only one of those title reigns did she ever eke out a successful defence of the title, and even that felt more like a formality than a proper feud.
Charlotte seems to exist purely to lose titles to people to get them over. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can get quite tiresome after it’s been going on for so long, and really puts a downer on Charlotte’s status as one of the best.
3 – Ronda Rousey
Number of Reigns: Raw – 1; Smackdown – 0 Total Days as Champion: Raw – 231; Smackdown – 0
I’m sure the internet will want to crucify me for making this placement, and it looks like the numbers don’t support it. However, the cold, hard fact of the matter is that Ronda Rousey’s title reign did more for Becky Lynch, the women’s division, and even WWE as a whole than anyone outside of the company is ever willing to admit. The main event of Wrestlemania 35 would not have been a women’s match for the first time ever without Ronda Rousey’s involvement. There, I said it.
After putting on the best match of Wrestlemania 34, and a match at Money in the Bank that was far better than anyone expected, it was time for Ronda to be crowned champion like everyone knew was going to happen. Her dismantling of Alexa Bliss was expected and did the necessary job of establishing her as a very dominant champion. Plus, after Bliss had been a very despicable heel for the past couple of years, it was good to see someone properly pick her apart for a change.
Rousey dispatched of Bliss again at Hell in a Cell, and then the Evolution Pay-Per-View rolled around. The first (and to date, only) WWE PPV to run only women’s matches. You don’t need me to tell you how big a deal this was, and while it probably would’ve gone ahead anyway, Rousey’s huge star power was a big factor in bringing it to life. There, Rousey faced Nikki Bella, the woman who, to many, was the distillation of everything that was wrong with the ‘Diva’s era’ which held women’s wrestling back in WWE for over a decade. The match wasn’t incredible, but it was still good, and better than people like me thought it was going to be, and it established Rousey as a huge face of WWE’s women’s division.
Rousey was set to compete against Becky Lynch at Survivor Series, but unfortunately (or perhaps, fortunately, if you look at the larger picture) Nia Jax broke Lynch’s nose and Charlotte Flair was swapped in instead. This lead to what I believe to be Rousey’s best one-on-one match she ever had in WWE. It told a brilliant story with some brilliant wrestling, and the DQ finish only built the desire to see the match happen again later down the line.
From November through until March Rousey tore through the Raw women’s division. She put away Mickie James, Natalya, Nia Jax, Ruby Riott & Dana Brooke in matches that weren’t a huge deal, but were a lot of fun. She also had some featured matches with both Sasha Banks & Bayley, both of which told extremely compelling stories and were a joy to watch.
Finally, there was the climax to her story, Wrestlemania 35. The build was flawed, but none of that was Rousey’s fault, and even though there were flaws, I still thought it was really cool, and a lot of fun. She took the loss and passed her title onto Becky Lynch in a Wrestlemania moment that will live on in time immemorial. The first women’s match to ever main event a Wrestlemania is a huge deal, and Ronda Rousey was a huge part of what made that possible. Not just through her name value, but through the work, she put in over her 8 months as champion to build up an aura of an untouchable badass, butting heads with a cool character like Becky Lynch to create lightning in a bottle.
2 – Bayley
Number of Reigns: Raw – 1; Smackdown – 2 Total Days as Champion: Raw – 75; Smackdown – 520
For the longest time, Bayley seemed like a hopeless case on the main roster. After being easily the biggest star the NXT women’s division had ever produced up until that point, Bayley absolutely floundered for her first couple of years on Raw.
Her first title win came and went in a flash. It held some good moments but is sadly only remembered for the bad. Beating Charlotte Flair on an episode of Raw in early February, Bayley defended the title on two occasions. The first was a rematch against Charlotte which is barely worth talking about, while the second was at Wrestlemania 33 in 4 way match against Charlotte, Sasha Banks and Nia Jax. The Wrestlemania match was fine, but it was far from the best thing on the show, so it’s sadly been forgotten by history. Then, before we knew it, Bayley had lost the title to Alexa Bliss. Then, in the rematch, Bayley lost again because she was scared of a stick. I’m never letting that go…unlike how Bayley let go of the stick.
For the rest of 2017 and all of 2018, nothing interesting happened with Bayley. The only thing I even vaguely remember from that time was Bayley screaming “You ain’t shit!” in Sasha Banks’ face, and then going to couples therapy with her. 2019 is when things started to turn around. Her & Banks became the first-ever WWE Women’s Tag Team titles…and then lost them a couple of months later. This wasn’t a good thing, but it turned into a great moment for Bayley just one month later at Money in the Bank, where she won the titular briefcase.
Bayley cashed-in that briefcase mere hours later, taking advantage of a worn-out Charlotte and crowned herself Smackdown Women’s Champion, and getting wildly cheered by the audience for the first time in ages. Bayley took that momentum and ran with it. Her face persona suddenly felt renewed and she capitalized on it by reigniting her old feud with Alexa Bliss, this time coming out on top. She defended the title again against Ember Moon at Summerslam, then again against Charlotte at Clash of Champions. Then, things looked like they were going to get a lot worse. In yet another rematch with Charlotte at Hell in a Cell, Bayley lost and was without a title once again…
…for 5 days.
To the shock & relief of many, Bayley regained the championship from Charlotte on Smackdown. However, that wasn’t all. She also turned heel for the first time in her WWE career. Helped by old friend Sasha Banks, the two of them thoroughly beat the shit out of Charlotte and began the most incredible run of Bayley’s career. Alongside Sasha Banks, Bayley created a heel persona that has been wildly entertaining to watch for almost a year now. Dubbing herself a role model and acting like an annoying school-yard bully (in the best way possible), Bayley has beaten everyone there is to beat.
Not only did she tear through ever women on the Smackdown women’s roster over a year, but she even went over to Raw and beat their champion while she was at it. She added to her collection by regaining the Women’s Tag Team Championships and helped Sasha Banks win (and then lose) the Raw Women’s Championship. Her sudden but inevitable betrayal of Sasha Banks came at the start of the Autumn, which led to her losing her title at Hell in a Cell, in one of the best matches on the show.
To put it simply, Bayley has been second only to Becky Lynch over the past year on WWE TV, and after Lynch left in the spring, she stepped up and proved that she could carry the entire company on her own if she needed to. For so long it seemed as if all hope was lost with Bayley, but the past year of her career has undone all of the damage and then some. She tore down every barrier in her way and created really entertaining television along the way, what more could you ask for?
1 – Becky Lynch
Number of Reigns: Raw – 1; Smackdown – 3 Total Days as Champion: Raw – 398; Smackdown – 216
A lot of times with these lists, I try to avoid the ‘obvious’ number 1 pick. I try to give a new perspective and offer a view you might not have considered. However, there’s absolutely no way I could argue anyone being ranked higher on this list than Lynch. When you look at the pure facts, there’s a pretty clear parallel to be drawn between Lynch & Bayley’s career paths. Starting out with a lot of lows, but eventually reaching incredible highs. What separates them is the fact that Lynch’s highs were so, SO much higher.
Becky’s first run at the gold wasn’t anything worth talking about. While she always can lay claim to being the first-ever Smackdown Women’s Champion, she only successfully defended the title once in that reign, and it wasn’t even on Pay-Per-View. Lynch lost the title to Alexa Bliss in 2016, and for almost two years, there was nothing worth talking about in regards to Becky Lynch.
2018 rolled around and it seemed like things weren’t going to turn around for her anytime soon. Then, on Smackdown she started winning on a fairly regular basis. She wasn’t involved in any major storylines, but she was having good-great matches and winning week in and week out, and the fans took notice. In the build to Summerslam 2018, Lynch was announced as Carmella’s opponents and people were very excited to see Lynch inevitably be crowned champion. Then Charlotte returned suddenly and was thrust into the match. People were not happy about this, but it would surely be ok as long as Becky still won, right?
Charlotte won…oh dear.
After the match is when history was made, as Becky Lynch attacked Charlotte in what was supposed to be a heel turn (no matter what Road Dogg claims). However, it was met by mammoth cheers from the crowds, who were sick of Charlotte ‘being shoved down their throats’ (even though, as we’ve already covered, she wasn’t, but that’s not the point). Becky completely transformed her look & persona into that of an absolute badass and people loved it, no matter how much she tried to insult them.
Lynch eventually won the title back from Charlotte. She would then successfully defend the title against Charlotte…three times in a row. It got a bit tedious after a while, but the matches were almost always great, especially their Last Woman Standing match at Evolution, which was a far better match than I gave it credit for at the time. During this reign, Lynch would continue to build her persona and get more and more over with the audience, but she was yet to reach her peak.
In the build to Survivor Series that year, Lynch was gearing up to fight Ronda Rousey in a champion vs champion match that everyone was very excited for. Here is where Lynch reached the white-hot level that she would maintain for the next 6-months or so. Lynch tore into Rousey at every available opportunity and could banter with the best of them. Lynch would school Rousey on the daily over on Twitter, and the pops just kept getting bigger and bigger. In a cruel twist of fate, however, we never got to see that match. A stray punch from Nia Jax broke Becky’s nose and caused her to have to pull out of the event, however, it would turn into a blessing in disguise, as the image of Becky standing up in the rafters, standing tall with a bloody face has lasted in the memory for a long time since.
Lynch was back in action very soon after Survivor Series and lost the Smackdown Women’s Championship to Asuka at TLC. However, there was no stopping Becky’s momentum by this point, especially with Wrestlemania 35 on the horizon. Lynch wasn’t just the most popular female wrestler in the company by this point, she was the single most popular wrestler, gender was irrelevant. She won the Royal Rumble that January in yet another epic moment for her career and the match was set between her & Ronda Rousey at Wrestlemania 35.
Then Charlotte showed up again.
The storyline in the build to this match wasn’t anywhere near as good as it could’ve been, but it was still great. Charlotte’s presence was unnecessary, but I don’t think it detracted too heavily from what was going on. In the end, that match would become the main event of Wrestlemania 35, and while I put a huge chunk of the credit for that on Rousey’s involvement, Becky Lynch was the wrestler who put that epic story on the table. So it was done, and Lynch walked out of Wrestlemania that year with BOTH the Raw & Smackdown Women’s Championships over her shoulders.
The next year belonged to Becky Lynch. She lost the Smackdown Women’s Championship fairly quickly, but she held onto the Raw Women’s Championship for very nearly 400 days and did loads of great things in that time. She had a feud with Lacey Evans that put Evans on the map, had a feud with Sasha Banks that re-established Sasha as one of the best, and had an extended feud with Asuka that made for rivetting TV. Even though she had to vacate the title, how she did it was still extremely memorable, announcing her pregnancy before passing the title on to Asuka.
Lynch has become a truly iconic wrestler over the past couple of years, giving us some incredible memories along the way. Whenever she returns (if she decides to do so) I’m sure her star will only rise even further with more amazing moments & matches.
And there you have it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this list. Please, let me know what you think of these women’s title reigns, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure to come back here this time next Saturday, where I’ll be covering WWE Survivor Series!
A couple of weeks ago, I dived into the sewer containing the worst of what a Simpsons’ Halloween had to offer, but now the spookiest night of the year has arrived, I think it’s time to take a look at the best. These episodes capture the height of the writing team’s creativity and hilarity. Even standing up as some of the best Simpsons episodes out there, Halloween or otherwise.
10 – Treehouse of Horror XIII
Original Airdate: 3rd November 2002 Segments: Send in the Clones; The Fright to Creep and Scare Harms; The Island of Dr Hibbert
Send in the Clones is an absolute classic. I never thought that watching Homer interact with himself could be so fun to watch, but it’s absolutely perfect for this segment. Homer hits the right level of stupid here, still feeling competent enough to make some of the more complex jokes work. The supporting cast does a great job at framing the problem and gives Homer more to bounce off of so his star shines all the brighter.
The Fright to Creep and Scare Harms is the least interesting of the bunch, but it’s not bad by any stretch. It focuses quite heavily on the plot, which means that there aren’t many grand jokes or parodies. Speaking of, as this isn’t a parody of anything, most of the jokes are quite simple, but a handful of them still got a giggle out of me. It’s certainly not making any remarkable satirical statements about gun violence, but I don’t think it needed to either, The Simpsons’ has covered that topic far better elsewhere.
The Island of Dr Hibbert is one of those segments that always stuck out in my mind growing up, but no-one else seemed to remember all that fondly. What I find funniest about this is how deliberately oblivious they play all of the characters, especially Homer. It might be pretty obvious writing, but I still find it funny that all of this clearly suspicious stuff is going on around then and Homer seems to meet it with willful ignorance, asking instead about timeshares. The animal thing is a bit of a weird gimmick, but they get some good jokes out of it and know when to call it quits. It rounds out an episode that might not be totally incredible but is definitely worth a rewatch.
9 – Treehouse of Horror VIII
Original Airdate: 26th October 1997 Segments: The HΩmega Man; Fly vs Fly; Easy-Bake Coven
The HΩmega Man is definitely the best segment of this episode. The set-up is dumb, but they throw in enough good jokes along the way that I’m willing to overlook the problems. Sure, Homer becomes a selfish arsehole the moment he realised he’s the last man alive, but let’s be honest here, you would, wouldn’t you? I know I would. They even managed to make Homer grieving over his family funny with the baseball bat joke. Overall, a super memorable segment that you should definitely seek out.
Fly vs Fly is just as funny, if a little less memorable. The yard-sale at the start was a good way to cram some quickfire jokes into minimal space, all of which land. I’d even argue this is the funniest Professor Frink has ever been. The transporter opens the door for another round of quickfire jokes which are even funnier than the first set. Marge telling Homer off for using it to pee will always make me giggle. The stuff with Bart and the fly is the weakest part of it, but even that has some good jokes, leading up to the final joke of Homer chasing Bart with the axe, which I think may be the funniest joke in the whole thing.
Easy-Bake Coven is a lot weaker in my eyes, but the strength of the other two segments is what keeps the episode on the list. There are some funny jokes at the start about the Salem witch trials, but it loses me after that. It’s not a bad segment by any stretch of the imagination, I just don’t think the ‘candy instead of children’ punchline is all that interesting. You should still go back and watch this episode, but maybe skip this last segment if you’re short on time.
8 – Treehouse of Horror I
Original Airdate: 25th October 1990 Segments: Bad Dream House; Hungry are the Damned; The Raven
Bad Dream House is a segment that seems to have been largely forgotten compared to the other two, but it’s definitely still a very good segment. It has fewer out-right jokes than we’re used to in these episodes, instead choosing some subtle warpings of the ‘haunted house’ formula to bring the laughs, something it does to great success. Something like Marge scolding the house like it was a misbehaving child is just a really funny joke that plays to the strength of the characters.
Hungry are the Damned is far and away the funniest segment of the episode, with a whole bunch of iconic jokes thrown in there. Homer needing two tractor beams to pull him up, the ominous double-talk of the aliens, the bit with the space dust on the ‘How to Cook Humans’ book, all of them are hilarious jokes that don’t lose any of their sting on a rewatch. Given that after this, the aliens would be mostly relegated to cameo roles, this is a solid segment to introduce them in. It understands the stereotypes and how to subvert them perfectly to great comedic effect.
The Raven is an odd one. I wouldn’t say it’s at all funny, which is what I want from a Treehouse of Horror episode, but it’s undeniably iconic. Sure, it’s essentially just an animatic of an Edgar Alan Poe poem, but A) It’s the only reason I ever learnt of the poem in the first place and B) It’s really good. While it does throw in comedic tones with Bart complaining about how unscary it seems in the modern-day, the animation used to tell the story is quite beautiful. It’s able to capture the dark and ominous mood of the poem, while still throwing in some comedic beats with how Homer and the raven move and act. It’s an oddity compared to everything else in this series, but it’s quite a pleasant one.
7 – Treehouse of Horror IX
Original Airdate: 29th October 1998 Segments: Hell Toupée; The Terror of Tiny Toon; Starship Poopers
Hell Toupée is the kind of segment that I never remember, but always enjoy whenever I see it. Snake is a character with so much untapped comedic potential. Even his spotlight episode(s) don’t really make the most of what this character has to offer, and I think this is the closest her ever got. We get some classic Chief Wiggum jokes right at the start, alongside the world’s double-standard when it comes to smoking. From there it’s a lot of murder-humour and visual gags, which aren’t my favourite, but I still find them funny here. I don’t know why it doesn’t stick in my mind very much, but it’s still worth seeking out.
The Terror of Tiny Toon, to the contrary, is one of the most memorable segments the show has ever done. Despite being a cartoon, The Simpsons odes it’s best to stick to fairly realistic rules (at least during this era of the show), so removing those restraints was a great move. The writers have used Itchy & Scratchy to take the piss out of kids cartoons before, but this was a step up. Actually taking us into that world, we see not only a deep understanding of what made cartoons like Tom & Jerry funny, but also a clear love from the animators for their style. It comes across as a love letter to those old cartoons, and it really funny to boot.
Starship Poopers is a bit of weird segment because, by all rights, I feel like it shouldn’t work, but it just does. Homer is what makes it to me. The alien stuff is funny, but it’s been done better before or since. Homer’s initial obliviousness to the situations (“Maggie lost her baby legs!”) followed by his righteous indignation is excellent stuff. The Jerry Springer scene is definitely the highlight, he plays a ridiculous kind of straight man that gives a good parody of those types of shows. You could argue those jokes have long since been played out, but I still get something out of them.
6 – Treehouse of Horror XX
Original Airdate: 18th October2009 Segments: Dial ‘M’ for Murder or Press ‘#’ to Return to Main Menu; Don’t Have a Cow, Mankind; There’s No Business Like Moe Business
As the most recent entry on this list, it’s rare to see such brilliant episodes come out of the later seasons. Yet, for this one, they managed to nail it.
Dial ‘M’ for Murder or Press’#’ to Return to Main Menu, is an excellent parody of Hitchcock films (even if I don’t know a huge amount about them) while still standing up as a funny segment, even if you don’t know anything about the source material. The “Criss-Cross” joke might be a bit simplistic, but it gets a giggle out of me every time. The tenseness in the music compared to the juvenile actions on the screen give the whole thing a wonderfully comedic tone, and even the way Lisa ends up killing Bart is funny.
Don’t Have a Cow, Mankind, is a segment that has remained fresh in my mind ever since I first saw, and I’m not entirely sure why. The Simpsons have done zombie parodies before, but they made sure to do this one differently to before. It feels like they’re breaking out to tread new ground rather than imitating their greatest hits. The idea of the burger-squared is so stupid that I can’t help but laugh, and there’s something ironically funny about what it does to people. It’s definitely not very smart humour, but it’s still done in a way that I find funny. Just about everything Apu does, for example, gets a giggle out of me, even though they are fairly obvious jokes.
There’s No Business Like Moe Business is utter genius writing. Not only does it have a strong sense of plot where jokes are crammed in at every opportunity, but it expands the scope to that of a stage play, and makes a bunch of meta-jokes about theatre, all of which are brilliant. Stuff like Homer’s makeup not being ready in time, so Moe has to stall; the set being incredibly janky or anything any of the audience members had to say was laugh-out-loud funny. Then, of course, there are the musical pieces which give the whole thing a fun tone that translates so well with the jokes being told. It’s one of those segments that I firmly believe that had it been in one of the early seasons, would be seen today as an all-time classic.
5 – Treehouse of Horror VI
Original Airdate: 29th October 1995 Segments: Attack of the 50-Foot Eyesores; Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace; Homer³
Attack of the 50-Foot Eyesores is one of the weaker segments on this list. It’s very plot-heavy, and many of the jokes are visual gags of the monsters destroying stuff, which is fine, but it’s not really for me. There is still a bunch of funny stuff in there though. Homer’s non-reaction to the whole situation is out of character for him in one of the funniest ways possible. At the same time, the solution of creating a catchy jingle is a surprisingly intelligent and accurate takedown of the advertisement industry. This is a good segment, but it’s definitely not the main reason to watch this one.
Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace is most certainly one of the main reasons to watch this episode. As easily one of the show’s most easily comedic characters, Willie is a great villain in this one. He’s violent and savage-looking enough for it to be believable, while his character comes with an inherent patheticness that makes so many of his jokes work. The backstory scene is easily the highlight here. We’ve got “Do not touch Willie”, the Smarch joke and the taking turns to speak joke. The fight at the end isn’t all that interesting, but they still throw in a bunch of jokes to keep us going until the end, even managing to take the piss out of the ‘killer isn’t actually dead’ trope of horror films.
Homer³ is easily the most memorable segment on this list, purely because of how different it looks. Even before the 3D stuff happens, we get some brilliant jokes as Homer make a mad dash to find a hiding spot. Then, we get to the 3D world and hilarity ensues. Homer’s reaction to seeing his ass in 3D for the first time is brilliant, and the meta-joke about how expensive the 3D area is one of my favourites. We get a quick cascade of secondary characters in to try and solve the problem, and finally, we top the whole thing off with a trip to the real world. It’s got plenty of amusing moments throughout, along with being a genuinely iconic moment in Simpsons’ history.
4 – Treehouse of Horror IV
Original Airdate: 28th October 1993 Segments: The Devil and Homer Simpson; Terror at 5 & 1/2 Feet; Bart Simpson’s Dracula
The Devil and Homer Simpson is one of the all-time great segments. Flanders as a cheery version of the devil is utterly hilarious, and Homer’s interaction with him is perfect. It’s the kind of segment where all I can really do to describe it’s greatness is list jokes. Jokes such as: Homer claiming to be smarter than the devil; Homer eating all the doughnuts in the world; THE TRIAL SCENE. It’s a Treehouse of Horror segment with Lionel Hutz in it for God sake, it’s just brilliant. It doesn’t try to do anything overcomplicated, it just creates a simple premise and stuffs it to the brim with hilarious jokes.
Terror at 5 & 1/2 Feet, on the other hand, is one of those segments I never really got. There still some great jokes in there, don’t get me wrong, pretty much anything Skinner has to say is worth watching the whole thing, but other than that, I just find it a bit uncomfortable. I don’t know why, because I’ve never been in this situation, but the idea of desperately pleading with someone to believe you, only for everyone to think you’re crazy is just quite distressing to me. I still enjoy this segment, but it comes with a bit of baggage I can never cast from my mind.
Bart Simpson’s Dracula is another one of the greats. Burns being evil is always comedy gold, and now we get to throw some vampire humour over the top of it. Once again, the family’s complete obliviousness of the danger of the situation is an extremely fertile ground for jokes, and it’s used to its full potential. Other than that, once again, it’s just a list of hilarious jokes. Grampa wanting to kill the boy; the super happy fun slide, and the fact that the whole thing ends on a Christmas carol. I know they’d pull this joke out too many times in the later seasons, but this was the first time they did it, and it was still funny.
3 – Treehouse of Horror VII
Original Airdate: 27th October 1996 Segments: The Thing and I; The Genesis Tub; Citizen Kang
The Thing and I is prime Simpsons’ Halloween material. It gives us an actual mystery that feels like it pays off, before turning into a tense action scene and shoving as many funny jokes as possible along the way. Homer & Marge’s suspicious acting is ripe for comedy and the kid’s insistence on knowing what’s going on plays of it great. The over-curiousness that we all know children can have is played for laughs in an amusing way that still serves the further the mystery. The resolution & ending is classic stuff too. The “left twin” always being evil, the revelation that it was actually Bart the whole time, and then the flipping of the scenario to end things off. It’s tense, it’s funny, and it’s an absolute classic.
The Genesis Tub was the segment I always remember liking the most as a kid. I don’t know why, but something about the premise really appealed to my child-self. We get plenty of funny interactions between Bart & Lisa, with Lisa eventually having the kind of funny moments we don’t often get from her. Her delight at creating Lutherans, or the indignation with which she treats Bart. They even manage to squeeze in a completely irrelevant joke about a waffle iron and make it hilarious. Lisa very rarely gets a chance to shine in the Halloween segments, her character doesn’t really fit with their tone, but this was the perfect way to make use of her.
Citizen Kang is another all-time classic. Homer rules the roost in this one, and he shines like you wouldn’t believe. His determined, but utterly incompetent, drive to stop the aliens makes for all kinds of hilarious moments, and this is where the aliens get all the chance in the world to shine. Their misunderstanding of Earth culture and the ease with which they sway the masses is funny in a way that feels oddly more relevant in the modern-day. Then, the final gag about it being a two-party system is some really on-the-nose satire that is as funny as it is depressing. Then, of course, we cap things off with the iconic line “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos,” which sums up politics better than years of satirical cartoons ever could.
2 – Treehouse of Horror III
Original Airdate: 29th October 1992 Segments: Clown Without Pity; King Homer; Dial ‘Z’ for Zombie
Clown Without Pity brings the laughs in all the right places. Homer at the evil store is a hilarious scene, featuring the “That’s good, that’s bad” bit, which is genuinely one of the most well-structured jokes I’ve ever heard. The rest of the segment isn’t quite as funny, but they still get a lot of good jokes from the doll trying to kill Homer, and Homer trying not to die. Then, the thing wraps up in another great joke with the doll’s switch being set to evil.
King Homer is the second-best film parody the show has ever done. As where the Godzilla parody that I talked about in the ‘worst’ list took the easy way out with its jokes – taking some outdated shots about Japanese films & then swerving into a Hollywood satire – this one is a lot more clever with what it does. For one thing, it’s a lot more faithful to the source material and actually commits to the bit. For another, instead of making wide-stretching jokes about the film industry, it relies on the characters to do the heavy lifting. Things like Smithers saying that “women and sea-men don’t mix” or Marge finding King Homer’s oafishness weirdly attractive is the kind of character-based humour that the show is brilliant at and should always be at the core of the writing.
Dial ‘Z’ for Zombie is just a 7-minute long list of great jokes. There’s technically a plot, but after about 2 minutes it ceases to matter and is just a vehicle to get the characters to places where we can make jokes. Sure, it’s not a super-strong segment, but when you’ve got jokes like Homer shooting Flanders, Zombie Shakespear and anything Bart does, who cares? It’s hilarious, and that’s all that matters.
1 – Treehouse of Horror V
Original Airdate: 30th October 1994 Segments: The Shinning; Time and Punishment; Nightmare Cafeteria
Let’s be honest, there was never any question as to number 1.
The Shinning is not only the single best Treehouse of Horror segment, but it may also be the best thing The Simpsons have ever produced. For one thing, I really like The Shining, and this absolutely nails the parody aspects. So many of the jokes in this are absolutely iconic. The “all work and no play” bit, the “urge to kill bit” and anything Burns & Smithers have to say to one another. Ultimately, Homer is the star of the show in this one, and he’s perfect as the Nicholson character that slowly goes crazy, with just the right amount of Homer oafishness mixed in. However, the other characters are on great form too. Marge, Burns, Smithers, Willie, even Chief Wiggum all have some of their best jokes in this segment. It really is an all-time classic.
Time and Punishment takes us from the best segment of all time to the second-best. Homer once again dominates the segment and brings an endless string of laughs. The pacing is excellent and makes the 7-minute long segment feel like a fully fleshed out episode of the show. Homer’s visits to the past serve not only to break up the action but also give us a brief insight into Homer’s deteriorating mental state. Then, the alternate dimensions that Homer visits all have something hilarious to offer us. The longer sections like the Flanders’ universe and the perfect universe are broken up by quick little looks into ones like the giant universe, or the one where Willie knows. It makes the most of its concept and packs it with as many jokes as possible, leaving it to stick in the mind forever.
Nightmare Cafeteria is the weakest segment of this episode, but it’s still top 5 of all-time levels. Firstly, it’s genuinely quite creepy. The glee with which the teachers seem to consume the segments is disturbing, especially when combined with how weird they look as fat-slobs. While this is technically a segment about the kids, Skinner is undoubtedly the MVP when it comes to bringing the funny, with how calmly he tells the teacher about cooking Jimbo, or the big rant about Uter. Outside of that, we get the payoff to the running joke of all three segments, with Willie failing to save the day. Then the whole episode wraps up with that inside-out gas segment which I find really uncomfortable to watch, but it’s still funny in that kind of way.
To put it simply, Treehouse of Horror V is the only instalment in the series that I think is flawless and easily ranks as one of the best Simpsons episodes of all time.
And there you have it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this. Please, let me know what your favourite Treehouse of Horror episodes/segments are, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure you come back here this time next Friday, where I’ll be covering AEW’s Full Gear Pay-Per-View!
Series 8! A new Doctor takes the reigns of the show, which means that the whole dynamic of the show tends to get thrown on its head. This goes doubly so this time as Capaldi gives us a departure from the young men of Tennant and Smith. Gone are the days of bouncing around like a goofball, instead giving us a grumpy, cynical and sarcastic style of comedy.
Personally, this was the series I was most dreading because it’s the only one that I haven’t actually rewatched since it originally aired. My memories of a lot of these episodes have faded in the years since 2014. There’s even one episode in here I’m relatively sure I’d never actually seen before.
Still, there’s no time like the present, so let’s get reviewing.
11 – In the Forst of the Night
In the Forest of the Night is the worst episode of modern Doctor Who. It’s really that simple.
Children actors are bad and annoying at the best of times, so it doesn’t help that A) They’re one of the most critical factors of this episode, and B) They were explicitly written to be the most insufferable, stereotypical arses I’ve ever seen. On top of that, all of the adult characters seem to act like children too. There are attempts at comedy, but they are DIRE. Jokes that are so unfunny they’d even be too bad for an episode of The Big Bang Theory.
The ‘drama’ in Clara & Danny’s relationship about how much she’s been seeing The Doctor is laughable, and wholly forced into scenes where they have no place being. Speaking of Danny, I have no idea why the writer decided he should be completely inept in this episode, but it turns him into the most unlikable character in the whole thing. I can get behind his motivation of protecting the kids, but he isn’t even good at it, for one thing, he steps up to tiger, with atorch, after which, we NEVER see that tiger again. THAT’S NOT HOW TIGERS WORK. Not to mention that not nearly enough attention is paid to the fact that Danny manages to lose a child at a sleepover. It’s not like she just wandered off either, she’s fully dressed and out in the forest, which means she’s been missing all night, and neither he nor Clara, nor any of the kids noticed.
All of that, all of it pales in comparison to this episodes biggest sin. The one time while watching an episode of Doctor Who that has made me physically angry that it was ever allowed to be broadcast. That is the moment where Clara tells The Doctor not to bother saving all of the children, and The Doctor just agrees. Clara makes this decision, not just to let the human race become extinct, but to let all these innocent children die, without consulting anyone, she simply tells it to The Doctor as a statement as fact. The fact that The Doctor doesn’t spend the remaining 10 minutes of the episode verbally eviscerating her for even suggesting it is a disgrace and a complete failure to understand anything about any of these characters.
Oh, and what’s Clara’s reasoning for letting the children die? Because, if they lived…they’d miss their parents…which is the dumbest justification for anything I’ve ever heard. It spits in the face of anyone who’s ever lost a parent too because Clara’s essentially just said that there’s no point in living without your parents. She says this, by the way, in front of Danny Pink, who is an orphan. Even putting all that to one side, if I was the parent to one of those kids, and you told me that you could’ve saved their lives, but chose not to, I would never stop being furious about it.
And before you say it, I don’t care that it turns out to all be fine in the end, because Clara still made that decision, believing all of the kids were going to die, and THAT’S what matters. Even during their most unlikable periods, I could never possibly believe that Clara or The Doctor would even consider such unbelievable bullshit for a second. It quite simply goes against the entire ethos of the show.
Oh also, making a joke about how they just call the kids ‘gifted & talented’ so they feel special, and it’s actually meaningless? Congratulations on completely shattering the self-esteem of any school kid who gets put in a ‘gifted & talented’ class. I don’t care if it’s a stupid joke on a TV show, kids pick up on this stuff, they will remember it, and it will hurt them.
10 – The Caretaker
Whenever I’ve seen people criticise Moffat’s writing, I’ve never understood where the ‘misogyny’ point comes from, then I rewatched this episode, and I get it now.
This episode treats Clara like an object rather than a character as all the men have a big fight over her. Danny & Clara’s relationship is the focal point of this episode, and it’s absolutely terrible. I know they couldn’t dedicate tonnes of time to establishing their relationship before this, but skimming over it in a montage doesn’t help us feel the connection the show keeps telling us they have. When Clara proclaims that she loves Danny, all I could do was wonder why? We’ve shown them being vaguely flirty and the show keeps telling us that they’re in love, but I’ve never actually seen them make a real emotional connection.
I think the problem comes from perspective. The entire episode is written from Clara’s perspective. On paper, this seems like the smart decision as she’s the bridge between these two worlds. However, the episode never actually focuses on her thoughts and feelings on the conflict between The Doctor & Danny. We get the sense that she wants them to get along, because of course she does, but we never get a real sense of the stress of her worlds colliding. Personally, I think the episode could’ve been a lot better if written entirely from Danny’s perspective, then you could’ve had a proper look at the emotional trauma he goes through when discovering all of this. Not only would it make Clara seem more like a real person, but it would’ve helped up connect to Danny because as it is, I have no reason to like him.
The conflict between The Doctor & Danny shows hints of being good, but more or less just devolves into them being petty little school children to each other. Maybe that idea was the point, but it just comes across as annoying. Danny flips out in the TARDIS for no reason and seems like an arsehole because of it, and The Doctor just seems bitter that Clara didn’t like the guy who looked like him. The Doctor comes across as unbelievably childish for discarding Danny because of his past as a soldier. I know they’ve never liked military organisations or those in them, but The Doctor is always the kind of person to reach out and try to show them the better way, not just bat them away like they’re the scum of the Earth. Neither Danny nor The Doctor comes out of it looking sympathetic or likeable, and Clara is just treated like a little damsel who needs the men to protect her. I know I’ve criticised Clara for never struggling before, but this is too far in the other direction.
At its core, this is an episode that fails to understand its characters,.fails to understand interpersonal relationships, and fails to have any kind of exciting plot. It just wanted to be a drama-based episode, but still had to throw in a monster of the week because it’s Doctor Who. As a result, both suffered.
9 – Listen
Listen is two different types of episode pressed together into one. One half of it is a slow and tense mystery surrounding a very interesting concept. It knows what it’s doing had carries a solid plot. The other half is a character study between The Doctor and Clara, focusing on how it’s shifting with the inclusion of Danny Pink. This fails to understand the established dynamic between these characters, has no idea how romance actually works and tries to wrap it all up with a completely meaningless speech about fear.
I’ll start with the good stuff. First of all, the hook is great. The concept of something under your bed is immediately understandable by absolutely everyone, and I’m surprised it took this long for the show to use it. I loved the idea of how you talk to yourself sometimes to reason that there might be something there. I, for one talk to myself ALL. THE. TIME. And I’d be thrilled to know that all of my genius thoughts didn’t go to waste when I verbalised them.
The scenes where we get teased as if we’re going to see the creature are great. They build so perfectly to their climax. The bedroom scene is the best example of this. It starts with Clara calming Rupert, seeming to diffuse the situation. It’s a sweet scene, but the atmosphere remains tense because we know that something’s really there. The tension then takes a huge spike when something sits on top of the bed. There’s then the whole build with The Doctor, talking things out to Rupert, but simultaneously trying to work things out for himself. The Doctor’s slightly panicky tone as he hopes the creature will go away makes the thing feel genuinely quite scary. The same goes for the scene in the space base later on.
Where things fall apart, though, is the character stuff between Clara & Danny. The dating scene is fine, although I didn’t really buy into their connection. I’m not saying I wanted to see the whole scene where they found common ground and started getting along – I’m totally cool with the episode yada-yadaing over that stuff – but it felt like we so quickly went from them awkwardly trying to find common ground, to them falling out that I didn’t have any time to digest their connection. In fact, it didn’t feel like they had any at all. I understand what they were trying to say about Danny’s mental state by having him flip out with the idea of killing, but the argument makes him seem so unreasonable. A perspective that isn’t helped by the fact that we only follow Clara.
I like that the situation flips a couple of times – they both get a chance to be wrong – but again, not nearly enough time was dedicated to it to be worthwhile. I know they tried to establish a connection between the adventure & the date, but it fell relatively flat for me. The Doctor’s investigation played into the date very little, and I’m sorry, but I just didn’t care about someone who we assume is Danny’s descendant connecting with Clara. Danny is such a focal point around Clara’s internal conflict here, and yet I don’t feel like I know who he is. I grasp the idea of being a soldier that hasn’t quite gotten over his days in the war, but that story has been told so many times that, unless you have something interesting to say about it, you just shouldn’t bother. What we get here from Danny is the most basic version of that archetype.
I didn’t enjoy the stuff between Clara & The Doctor either. I know that it was sowing the seeds for later in the series, but it escalates so quickly that I just don’t buy it. I understand that when The Doctor snaps at Clara, it’s because he’s desperate to solve a mystery from his childhood, but there was no build to it. The Doctor doesn’t seem any different than normal until he suddenly starts forcefully ordering Clara around. Sure, he disregards Clara’s date, but from what we’d seen from this Doctor so far, that’s nothing out of the ordinary for him. It meant that all of the character-based drama (both in this episode and the series at large) feel extremely unearned because no-one bothered to give it any proper build.
It’s such a shame that I’ve had to rank this so low because there’s some great stuff in here, but the character drama that is supposed to carry the episode utterly fails.
8 – Time Heist
If you were wondering which episode it was that I hadn’t seen before, it was this one. I feel it’s important to clarify that, because this is an episode with a lot of twists to it, so I need to impress upon you that I didn’t already know what was going to happen going into this episode. The reason this is so important for me to clarify is because all of the twists were really obvious.
Seriously, there was only one twist that I didn’t see coming, and it was the only one that wasn’t foreshadowed until about 30 seconds before it was revealed. Usually, I wouldn’t think much of a secondary character dying in one of these episodes, but it happened so quickly after they were introduced that I knew there was no way they were dead. Their deaths were given no fanfare and no time to breathe, with exposition about their character crammed into the 10 minutes each of them had before vanishing briefly.
Secondly, I cannot stress how painstakingly obvious it was that The Doctor was the architect the whole time. As soon as they had their memories wiped I knew there was going to be some kind of ‘gotcha’ moment when it came to the identity of the architect, and as soon as The Doctor realised it was a time travel heist, it more or less confirmed my theory. Sometimes, solving a mystery before it’s revealed is a fun experience that makes me feel smart, but in this instance, it felt so obvious to me that I couldn’t help but feel bored as The Doctor ran around trying to slowly figure it all out.
There was a nice variety of stuff to enjoy here, though. The first 30 minutes or so was very tense and enjoyable. The episode didn’t spend too much time introducing us to the world, but it didn’t really need to. Bank, heist, mysterious person behind it all; that’s all we need to know. This meant the heist action got to shine, which was where this episode was at it’s strongest. I still wouldn’t call it anything extraordinary, but I had fun watching the team break into the vault while evading the monster that could sense their guilt. Speaking of, what a brilliant concept for a monster, bravo to the Thompson & Moffat for putting that concept together.
The last 15 minutes leave all the excitement behind, though, which felt like a bit too much of a change of pace. They reach the private vault ridiculously easily when I was honestly hoping we’d get at least one more scene of tense heist shenanigans. It left me wanting more, but not in a good way, I just felt like it had short-changed me on the action and totally killed the pace. The sequence where The Doctor works everything out and confronts the monster is good, but the fact that I’d already worked out the solution took something away from it. The fact that the thing in the vault was another one of the monsters though was a brilliant way to end it and, as I said, I didn’t see that coming.
This is one of those episodes that I can’t really conjure up any strong feelings for. It didn’t do anything terribly, but it didn’t do anything spectacular either. I enjoyed it, but I doubt I’ll remember much about it in a few weeks.
7 – Into the Dalek
This is an episode that I keep going back and forth on. I think it succeeds in telling its self-contained story, but when it comes to the long-term, series-length plots, it leaves a lot to be desired.
This was the episode that kicked off the “Am I a good man?” storyline and, in theory, I can see that this would be a very good episode to help that story along. I’ll touch on it in a bit, but there are plenty of moments throughout the episode where the Doctor’s morality is questioned in a meaningful and effective way. The problem with it was that the scene where The Doctor posed the question, was at the start of the episode, not at the end. The Doctor hasn’t done anything in the previous episode(s) that caused this doubt in the mind of the audience, so it just feels like we’re being told what to think.
If instead, The Doctor had asked Clara that question at the end of the episode, it would’ve felt like a natural culmination of the story that was being told. It’s a minor change, but I think it makes a huge difference. One way tells the audience what they should be thinking, while the other allows the audience to come to these doubtful thoughts themselves before the show starts to press on the issue.
Next up, we had the introduction of Danny Pink. Now, I’ve already touched on what I think of him and his story, but, for an introduction, I thought this was quite effective. It felt totally out of place with the episode, but in a bubble, this was an excellent way to give us a bit of a taste of Danny and his budding relationship with Clara. I did find it a bit weird that they seemed to be hot for each other the moment they made eye contact, but whatever.
Looking at the plot, it definitely landed for me. The whole dilemma of a ‘good Dalek’ was an interesting plot thread that I don’t think has been done before. It didn’t feel like a gimmick either, it actually felt like there was a point to this story, that was trying to evolve the Daleks as villains. I think the fact that there was actually a reasonable explanation as to why the Dalek had shifted its perspective went a long way to bringing me into the story too. If the Dalek had just randomly changed its mind, then I wouldn’t have bought it, but the explanation of the damage it had sustained, allowing it to open up its mind was a great touch.
The progression of the characters in this story works well. I genuinely got the sense that Clara was someone who knew and understood The Doctor’s mind when she called him out on his bullshit this time, rather than just her usual ‘generic strong woman sass’. Why we couldn’t have seen this side of Clara in Series 7, I will never know, but I’m thrilled that we’ve got it now.
The finale was near-perfect in its execution. The tension of Clara restoring the memories was a nice segment to have running through everything, but the best moment was when The Doctor went inside the Dalek’s mind. The fact that the main thing the Dalek took on board from The Doctor’s mind was his hatred for the Daleks was a brilliant twist; because we’d seen it bubbling throughout the episode. It adds so much to the “Am I a good man?” discussion too, because we’ve been shown how hate-filled The Doctor’s mind can be, but also, Daleks are born and raised to embrace hatred, so maybe it’s not The Doctor’s fault. That’s why I think the question should’ve come up after the fact, not before.
Fortunately for this episode, the stuff I didn’t like takes up minimal time at the beginning and end, while the stuff that’s in between it is an exciting adventure. It knows exactly the story it wants to tell and tells it in a compelling manner, which is all I ask for from this show.
6 – Robot of Sherwood
I was very pleasantly surprised by this one. I’d managed to convince myself it was a terrible episode. I think all I really remembered is the general goofiness of the thing, which isn’t entirely representative of the episode. Not to mention, it was written by Mark Gatiss, who doesn’t have an exceptionally high hit-rate when it comes to writing good Doctor Who.
The tone of this one is played relatively light, but I don’t mind that. The whole concept of meeting Robin Hood and having him fight robots is an inherently ridiculous one, so there’s no way trying to play it off as serious would’ve worked. The first half of the episode is filled with a lot of genuinely funny stuff. The scene where The Doctor and Robin first meet is hilarious. Capaldi wouldn’t get nearly enough opportunities to show off his comedic side in this series, but here is a gleaming bastion of funny. I’ll admit, the bickering between The Doctor and Robin does become tiresome pretty quick – the scene in the prison cell should’ve been way shorter – but there were still a fair few lines that got a laugh out of me.
Looking to the plot, I think it was about as good as it could’ve been given the concept. A light-hearted romp with Robin Hood and his merry men was never going to be a revolutionary story, but I struggled to find any major complaints with it. We spend enough time with The Doctor questioning how this could all be real that it builds suspense, but it doesn’t go on and on too much. Then, a large chunk of the episode is spent unravelling the mystery, arguably more so than usual.
The guest stars did a fantastic job here too. Tom Riley was able to capture the over-the-top atmosphere that Robin Hood gives off in his stories (much better than Jonas Armstrong’s portrayal of the role, I must say). The way he gave every line this kind of casual, yet slightly posh touch was very endearing. Ben Miller does a beautiful job as the Sherriff too. If you’ve ever watched Armstrong & Miller, you’ll know that he’s able to pull off ‘posh & manacing’ like few others, which made him great for a cartoonish villain like the Sherriff. He carries the serious stuff too though. The scene with him and Clara could easily have been a bore, but I’d argue that his performance makes it interesting to watch.
The climax wasn’t the greatest. A middle of the road sword fight over a pit of lava isn’t a very ‘Doctor Who’ way to solve things, but sod it, this episode was just an excuse to bring back memories of the old BBC Robin Hood series, which had sword fights way stupider than this.
I really didn’t expect to enjoy this episode, but I was proven so very wrong. It’s absolutely not to everyone’s tastes, but I think that as long as you don’t try to take it too seriously, there’s a lot of fun to be had.
5 – Deep Breath
Following The Eleventh Hour, Moffat was going to be hard-pressed to top himself when it came to writing another brilliant ‘first story’ for another new Doctor. Did he nail it? For the most part, I’d say it did.
The thing that stood out to me most in this episode was the humour, which was a bit of a mixed bag. At the start of the episode, most of the jokes landed, and the tone worked for the jokes. The line “Don’t look in that mirror, it’s furious!” got a huge laugh out of me. The problem I had with the humour was that it persisted throughout the episode even once the tone had drastically shifted. Scattering in jokes during serious moments can be good, but they still need to be consistent with the tone of the scene and most of the jokes here were much too goofy to fit in the more serious scenes.
For example, the scene following the interrogation where Clara calls in the Paternoster gang to help them. This was the point in the episode where the action burst into the forefront of the scene and having Strax comically crash into the floor with a thud only for Jenny to make a quip about it didn’t fit at all. Speaking of Jenny, the jokes between her & Vastra were clearly written by someone who has only ever seen lesbians in porn films. All of the jokes between the two of them were had some form of sexual connotation or innuendo behind them, and while that is funny in small doses, it really got tiresome by the end.
That said, I thought the dramatic and serious side of the episode was fantastic. The scenes underneath the restaurant where Clara is forced to hold her breath to escape is incredibly tense, and I loved it. The following scene where she confronts the villain was also a standout moment for the character. The performance was excellent, and I really bought into the feeling of Clara being absolutely terrified but using everything she’s learnt from The Doctor in her travels to keep herself safe.
The way the inner conflict of Clara adjusting to this new Doctor was well told and I liked how it shifted throughout. She starts off with a very clear denial of the situation, and I enjoyed the scene where Vastra confronted her about it. It was the first time since her introduction that I actually felt Clara’s integrity as a character was challenged by other characters in the show. After being a void of personality in Series 7, some attention is finally being paid to Clara’s flaws and facades to make her more of a person. This conflict remains, where she takes a leap of faith on the fact that The Doctor didn’t actually abandon her in her most dire moments. It culminates beautifully in the final scene where she receives a phone call from Matt Smith’s Doctor to guide her towards acceptance. It’s a bittersweet scene and all three actors involved did a fantastic job of performing it.
That’s the perfect segway to talk about the whole point of this episode: Introducing us to the new Doctor. On that front, it was really good – not Eleventh Hour good, but still good. The shifting in tone from comedic, to dramatic, to heartfelt at the end gave Capaldi the chance to show off his full range for the role in just one episode. All of his comedic lines were great, and he was even able to bring the subtlety to the performance in the form of how he slowly grew out of his post-regeneration daze throughout. It seemed like every scene he was just a little bit less crazy, culminating in the final scenes where he confronted the villain and spoke plainly with Clara.
This episode did an excellent job at what it was supposed to do, and regardless of how well the rest of the series capitalised on what it did, the things it set in motion were great. We saw a wide range of what the new Doctor can do, along with getting a good sense of his personality; Clara got challenged and developed as a character for the first time since she was introduced, and it told a compelling story with a satisfying conclusion.
4 – Dark Water/Death in Heaven
So, this finale was a lot better than I remember it being, but I’m still not entirely sure I like it.
Starting with Dark Water, this is a really good episode. It’s not the most amazing depiction of grief (that happens next series), but I definitely think that the numbness that transitions into anger as Clara processes it is good. I definitely felt it hit a genuine place, it doesn’t feel the need to rush through it either, it gives over about a third of the episode to Clara processing her grief, and that’s good. I especially like how The Doctor responds to it, the line “Do you think I care about you so little that betraying me would make a difference?” is pure brilliance.
The tension builds ok, but it definitely reveals the Cybermen a little too early. I know that you won’t get the door & musical sting thing if you didn’t watch Series 2, but for those of us who did, it just spoiled the reveal that happened 5 minutes later. Speaking of Series 2, why does no-one remember the Cybermen? The whole ‘Army of Ghosts’ thing only happened 8 years prior to this, and don’t give that “everyone just forgot” bullshit, because that’s just not how the real world works. We don’t just forget cataclysmic events like that. As it stands though, there was really no reason for these to be Cybermen, especially when they’re just going to play second fiddle to The Master. The only thing the Cybermen actually add over some random monster (other than marketability) is the whole ’emotions’ thing at the very end. Still, surely it wouldn’t have taken much effort to find another way to do it. All it did was serve to continue the decline in threat or interest in the Cybermen.
Those gripes aside though, I still liked the episode. We don’t get a lot of Missy’s antics here, but I think that’s a good thing, just gives us a taste of what we want to see in part 2.
Then we move onto Death in Heaven, which…is ok. There’s definitely some stuff to like in there, but there’s a lot that I really didn’t enjoy.
Missy is a bit from both groups. Her being crazy was fun, and if you enjoyed that side of John Simm’s performance like I did, then you’ll definitely get a lot out of it. The problem is that the craziness is all she has. There’s no menace, no threat. Yes, she’s doing evil things, but she doesn’t actually feel evil or scary. I think what makes The Master so brilliant is how they mix the crazy & sinister sides to create someone who makes you uncomfortable because of how truly wrong they feel. Missy would eventually become a very different (but much better) character, and this feels like we’re just getting to grips with her.
The plot is definitely the weakest part of the episode, mostly because it never feels like it gets going. I’m glad that the character elements were the main focus of the episode, but the plot really suffers because of it. The scenes on the plane don’t feel anywhere as tense or exciting as they were probably meant to, and the rest of it just gets explained to us at various points.
The character stuff though, that’s where this episode (mostly) gets it right. Even though Clara has a minimal role in this episode, I’d say she’s the character that Moffat got the most right with here. She’s playing a much more reactionary role, but her reactions finally feel reasonable and realistic. I keep feeling her pain. Danny’s story has its problems, but on the whole, I still liked it. The revelation that he accidentally killed a kid was good in theory, but in reality, it plays basically no part in the story and doesn’t feel like it affects his story all that much. It gives him a chance to redeem himself, but honestly, sacrificing himself to save the day felt like it was enough. Maybe if it had been built up to a little more, then I’d have been more invested, but outside of a few hints, it wasn’t ever referenced. It was just backstory, not a character trait.
The Doctor is where the episode lives and dies though, and in classic Doctor Who fashion, it does a bit of both. The “am I a good man?” plot thread is not a good one, and while I see what they were going for, it didn’t end well. Missy giving The Doctor an army is all well and good, but she doesn’t actually give him any reason to use it. Sure, there’s the promise of being able to generally bring justice to the universe, but the man’s already got an infinitely powerful time machine and a basically infinite lifespan, what would he need an army of his weakest villains for? There should’ve been some immediate pressing threat that was forcing The Doctor to use the army.
What I thought was this episode’s strongest scene though, is when Clara & The Doctor are sitting in the cafe at the end. Lying to each other. Just 10 minutes (screentime) that Clara declared he was the one man she would never lie to. They’re so bare with each other, and yet we know how it’s dripping in lies and feelings they’re hiding from each other. Genuinely, if that had been the last time we saw Clara (which apparently, it was meant to be until Jenna Coleman signed on to do another series at the last minute), I think it might’ve been one of the best companion exits we’ve seen. This series showed us how the relationship between the two of them is fundamentally flawed. Some reasons are their fault, others are just the nature of their lives, and I think that would’ve been the perfect end. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be, and next series we’d get the real end and…oh boy…it’s….sure something.
3 – Flatline
Flatline is an odd episode, and I’m surprised I ended up ranking it this high, and how much you like it will depend on what aspects you chose to focus on. When I look at the writing of the characters in this episode, I see clear examples of some of the biggest flaws there are in this series. However, when you look at it from a plot-based standpoint, it’s an absolutely thrilling episode.
I’m going to talk about the negatives first because I want to leave a positive lasting impression about this one. First up is Clara. After progressing very well as a character up until this point, here she regresses back into the ‘smoother’ version of her character. She becomes the flawless, more perfect version of the character we saw in Series 7, the character with no real substance. Despite having to handle basically the entire situation alone, she never feels like she’s being challenged. She goes in with a head of steam and fixes every problem almost immediately, with only a little assistance from The Doctor. She literally figures out how to bring the TARDIS back to life in about 20 seconds. I’ll accept that of a two-millennium old super-being, but not of a human who’s been consistently shown to not be on The Doctor’s level this series.
The side characters are pretty paper-thin. Rigsy gets a couple of glimmers of hope, but the episode doesn’t invest in him anywhere near as much as it should’ve. I get the impression he was supposed to be a make-shift companion to Clara, but outside of the beginning & end of the story, he just fades into the background. The old guy is just a lazy stereotype. He’s not even close to a real person and exists purely, so there’s a vague sense of conflict in the group.
Now, onto what I love. Most importantly, we get a proper breakdown of The Doctor’s mind. Through his explanations to Clara, we get to fully understand how The Doctor thinks, and how he’s able to solve mysteries like this so quickly. When you look back at older episodes, you can clearly see them going through the steps outlined in this one. It shows a strong understanding of what makes the show great, and exactly why The Doctor is a hero, an understanding that feels lost throughout many episodes in the series.
The whole thing is exceptionally well-paced. I wish they hadn’t shown us what the monsters were doing right in the cold-open, but the mystery still worked regardless. I liked how the episode gave its audience enough credit to connect some of the dots themselves. Things like the weird texture on the wall in the flat is what I’m talking about. Sure, it gets explained eventually, but for that whole scene, it’s just sitting there in shot, with very little attention being drawn to it. It gives us the breadcrumbs we need to make those kinds of connections and feel more like The Doctor.
The ending put a smile on my face too. Yes, The Doctor’s speech is a bit cheesy, and the way he points out the sonic to blast them all away is quite over-the-top, but it feels earned. This was such an incredibly dark and tense episode that to have a big heroic moment like that felt like a huge sigh of relief. It was a bit much, but it wrapped the episode up nicely and left me with positive feelings.
2 – Kill the Moon
Kill the Moon is the example of how brilliant this series could’ve been if it was done properly. Everything that all the other episodes get wrong, this episode hits the mark perfectly. The conflict between Clara & The Doctor, The Doctor’s faults, even Clara & Danny’s relationship is done exactly how I wanted it to be done in this episode.
The plot is very well-paced. There isn’t a lot of action in this episode, but the one or two scenes we do get are well-placed. The mystery unfolds satisfyingly, and every scene gives you just a little clue as to what’s going on. The scene where The Doctor explains it is a little long-winded, but that’s more or less the only problem I have with how the story was told. One thing I do have to have a go at though is how stupid ‘turn your lights on or off’ is as a way to get the Earth to vote. Apparently, Clara only cared what Europe & the east coast of America wanted to do, because they’re the only places she could actually see.
Courtney Woods was an element of this episode that I didn’t particularly care for. She wasn’t bad, or even that annoying, she just felt kind of unnecessary. Her input into the big debate at the end didn’t affect much, it would’ve been nice to get more of an opportunity to see the situations through her eyes. I wouldn’t say her presence made the episode worse though, so it’s not a huge issue.
Ok, now onto the things that actually make this episode the brilliance that it is. Firstly, this is the best showcase of The Doctor’s arrogance and failures we get all series. He steps to one side and ‘allows the humans to make their choice’ in a way that felt incredibly condescending, especially when you know that he’s already got a plan to save the day. When it all finally comes out, and The Doctor explains it, I couldn’t help but feel like he manipulated Clara in a significant way. If that fact had just been allowed to skate by, I would’ve been furious about it, but instead, Clara calls him out on his shit.
This brings me to my other point, which is that this is the best version of Clara I’ve ever seen. She’s not a plot device, or a perfect caricature, or some damsel in distress, she’s a real person with real emotions. It’s incredible how rare it is for Clara to actually be written like this because it’s utterly brilliant. The performance from Coleman was top-notch, not just in her outburst, but the panic and confusion that she goes through the decision she’s making. The Doctor gets his arse kicked because he deserves it, and the fact that he can’t understand why she’s so upset about is the perfect way to make us doubt whether or not he really is a good man.
It ends on a great note too. Danny’s response to Clara’s outburst is perfect. He doesn’t say a word while she vents, he doesn’t go on about how ‘I knew this would happen’ or anything like that, he just listens and then tells Clara what she needs to hear. That 30-second scene gets me more invested in the connection the two of them have that ANYTHING else in the series. He’s not ‘protecting’ Clara, or trying to make a point, he’s doing the right thing for someone he cares about, and that’s all you needed to make him likeable.
If anything, I’d say the biggest problem with this episode is how well it highlights the failings of the rest of the series when it comes to these areas. It’s like someone read all of my complaints in the rest of this article and fixed them in one fell swoop.
1 – Mummy on the Orient Express
As one of the few episodes in this series that is largely unburdened by the overall series arc, Mummy on the Orient Express was allowed to flourish to become one of the purest and most exciting mysteries the show has ever produced.
What makes this episode so brilliant is that The Doctor is in his element from start to finish. The entire thing feels like one big stream of consciousness from The Doctor. He’s constantly thinking on the move, talking to himself at a million miles a minute and clevering his way out of the situation. This is a version of The Doctor we don’t get to see nearly as often as we should in this series, and it just proves how entertaining it can be to watch.
The mystery of the mummy is so well-paced. The use of the timer in the bottom corner of the screen right from the start is absolutely perfect for building suspense, as well as giving us some clues as to what’s really going on. We start seeing each encounter with the mummy the same as The Doctor, an opportunity to learn more, to get a little bit closer to solving the mystery.
This also continues to poke away at The Doctor’s identity as a good man in a meaningful way. As he says at the end of the episode, he would’ve just kept letting people die until the mystery was solved. Not out of arrogance or malice, but because it’s the only way to save everyone that’s left. It’s the kind of higher thinking that puts The Doctor above you or me, it may seem cold-hearted on the surface, but he’s just doing what has to be done. As The Doctor said: “Sometimes the only choices are bad ones, but you still have to choose”.
While the series arc stuff is there, it doesn’t dig its teeth too heavily into the episode like with The Caretaker. Instead, it serves more as bookends to tie everything together. Clara’s slow realisation that she would never be able to give up travelling with The Doctor isn’t addressed directly until the end, because it doesn’t need to be, we can see her processes as everything unfolds. You can feel the awkwardness between the two of them in the early scenes, as neither of them can say what they really want to. A friendship fading is different from a relationship ending, and I think this is a good representation of the fragile balance The Doctor has with some of his companions. While you could argue that Clara’s U-Turn at the end was a bit cheap, I think just enough was sown throughout the episode that we can understand her thought process.
Regardless, what makes this episode brilliant is the thrill and the mystery. It knows exactly when to accelerate and let off the gas, and knows the best ways to build up tension. Even when you already know the solution on a rewatch, its still an exciting prospect because of how well its told. It’s one of the purest Doctor vs Monster stories we would ever get in the Moffat era, and it’s all the better for it.
And there you have it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this post. Please, let me know what you thought of this series, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure to come back here this time next week, where I’ll be covering WWE Hell in a Cell!
Every year, when Halloween rolls around (or sometimes over Christmas depending on when that year’s season starts) The Simpsons’ writers get a chance to flex their creative muscles a bit more than usual. As much as the show slowly gets wilder & wilder each year, it does its best to stick to the universal laws that govern the real world. However, for one episode every year, those rules are thrown out of the window, and the writers go wild with crazy stories that are at least tangentially related to Halloween (sometimes).
We’ll cover some of the brilliance this has given us later on this month, but tonight, we look at the crap. As with any creative endeavour, there are bound to be missed, especially over the course of over 30 years. So today, we’re running down the 10 worst ever episodes of The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror series.
NOTE: I haven’t yet seen Treehouse of Horror 30, as while it has aired in the UK already, it’s not available on-demand, so I won’t be including it in this ranking.
10 – Treehouse of Horror XV
Original Airdate: 7th November 2004 Segments: The Ned Zone; Four Beheadings and a Funeral; In the Belly of the Boss
This is one of the episodes that falls into the “just fine” category. It’s nothing exceedingly terrible, but I’m never going to go out of my way to watch it, or even really remember it.
The first, best, and most memorable segment – The Ned Zone – is a fun concept that I don’t think the writers got as much out of as they could have. Flanders is always a fun character to play around with in a horror setting, as his uptight nature allows for plenty of more risque jokes at his expense. The highlight of it is undoubtedly the Homer/Ned interactions which carry a large chunk of the segment. However, it’s far from their best work.
Four Beheadings and a Funeral is easily the most forgettable of the three. It’s a story set in Victorian England that assumes it can just pull elements from all sorts of different stories set in that era and just get away with it. It’s technically a parody of 1990s graphic novel From Hell, but it takes most of its jokes and tropes from Sherlock Holmes. You then pile on a title stolen from a romance film that has nothing to do with anything, and it creates a bit of a mess. No-one even dies via beheading in it.
In the Belly of the Boss is incredibly dull. It’s a parody that has already been done so much better by Futurama. All of the jokes are basic, and not all that amusing. It’s a kind of story that needs some tension to properly work, but this is a Treehouse of Horror episode, we’re all fully aware that there are no stakes during this. Not to mention, the ending doesn’t land at all. I get the gruesome imagery they were going for, but it just feels a bit uncomfortable to look at. It’s not even slightly funny.
It comes out as an episode that’s an ok watch if it happens to come on the TV late one night, but there’s absolutely no reason to seek it out.
9 – Treehouse of Horror X
Original Airdate: 31st October 1999 Segments: I Know What You Diddily-Iddly Did; Desperately Xeeking Xena; Life’s a Glitch, Then You Die
The earliest episode on this list (and one of only two to actually air on Halloween), this episode was more of a precursor to the steep dive some of these episodes would end up taking.
I Know What You Diddily-Iddly Did is a pretty funny segment with a terrible ending. Most of the jokes got a good laugh out of me, and the plot moves at just the right pace to make things feel meaningful. I can easily imagine a modern version of this episode where they spend almost the entire thing on the ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ stuff and throw away all the other opportunities. The ending with Flanders becoming a Werewolf is pretty dumb though. Partly because it’s completely out of nowhere for the plot, but also because I really hate the way Werewolf-Flanders was drawn. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it just looks wrong.
Desperately Xeeking Xena is definitely the weakest of the three segments. There are some funny jokes at the start surrounding nerd culture and the shows they like (and yes, I’m well aware of the irony here), but once it gets going, there’s not a lot to love. For one thing, Bart & Lisa are entirely irrelevant to the plot. Everything important that happened would’ve happened with or without them. It seems like such a waste to take the concept of those two going on superpowered adventures just so you can give your celebrity guest some more lines. Most of the superhero jokes this segment made were already played out, even by 1999, which leads to a segment that just isn’t very funny.
Life’s a Glitch, Then You Die is pretty much the definition of ‘alright’. Doing a segment on the 2K virus was a good call, and weirdly on-time for The Simpsons. It has a handful of good jokes but definitely doesn’t get as much out of the concept as it could’ve. Between the pop-culture references at the start and all of the plot stuff at the end, we don’t get much of technology going crazy, which is where I felt all the funniest stuff was. I know that you don’t want to go to the same well too many times, but surely there was more ground to cover there?
8 – Treehouse of Horror XI
Original Airdate: 1st November 2000 Segments: G-G-Ghost D-D-Dad; Scary Tales Can Come True; Night of the Dolphin
G-G-Ghost D-D-Dad is the saving grace of this episode, and I’d honestly say it’s worth seeking this one out on its own. Its brisk pace keeps the jokes coming thick and fast, with the writers knowing just the right amount to get out of each subject. Highlights include the ways in which Homer almost dies, the way in which he actually dies, and the segment’s portrayal of Saint Peter.
Sadly, I can’t be as complimentary of the other two segments. The first of which is Scary Tales Can Come True, which is just an awful title. The ‘get in, get out’ pace was a good idea, and it would’ve worked if the jokes were anything worthwhile. Unfortunately, it’s the most basic humour you could possibly think of to mock any of the ‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales‘ stories. Hey, what if the three bears behaved like real bears? Wouldn’t it be excruciating for a full-grown man to use your hair as a rope? What if the troll under the bridge just wanted to make friends? Why aren’t you laughing? The jokes aren’t creative, and the plot is a threadbare excuse to fit in way too many parodies.
Night of the Dolphin isn’t much better either. This is technically a parody of a film where Dolphins are trained to kill the president (don’t ask), but you won’t actually find any jokes in here to do with that. Instead, the writers did their own thing with it. This sounds like a good thing, but honestly, a parody of dolphins being trained into assassins probably would’ve been funnier than what we got. Instead, the joke is just dolphins killing people in generic and uninteresting ways. The joke where Homer pulls a big speech to get people to fight back, only to be instantly shut down by the horde of dolphins staring at them in silence is utterly hilarious, but that’s the only good joke in the whole thing.
7 – Treehouse of Horror XVIII
Original Airdate: 4th November 2007 Segments: E.T. Go Home; Mr & Mrs Simpson; Heck House
An E.T parody that’s at least a decade too late, this show’s first segment seems desperate to explain all of its jokes to you before it makes them. It feels terrified that no-one watching is going to have seen or remembered anything about E.T, so they make a point of having the characters more or less directly point out when they’re parodying famous scenes from the movie. The joke that none of The Simpsons realises that Kodos’ plan is obviously evil gets overplayed, and then no-one even pretends to care when it gets put into effect. I find it so strange that, despite all being roughly the same length, some segments feel so rushed, while others feel lengthy and deep.
Mr & Mrs Simpson is actually a pretty good segment. The gimmick wears itself out almost immediately, and I don’t care for the big fight scene, but almost all of the banter between Marge & Homer got me laughing. The final ‘they have sex’ joke was quite an obvious and unexciting punchline, but everything else was pretty enjoyable to watch.
Heck House is bland and forgettable. The first half is spent setting up the kid’s downfall, but it’s not funny in the slightest. They just got an upbeat track and had the kids destroy stuff while Lisa shakes her head. There aren’t even any jokes in it, at least not funny ones. It goes hard on the horrific imagery for the next part, but it’s not even slightly entertaining. I don’t get much out of that stuff at the best of times, but this isn’t even a good version of it. Then it wraps thing up on a ‘FOX is bad’ joke, which had been overplayed for about a decade by the time this episode aired.
Maybe watch the middle segment if it sounds like your thing, but the other two are definitely not worth your time.
6 – Treehouse of Horror XVII
Original Airdate: 5th November 2006 Segments: Married to the Blob; You Gotta Know When to Golem; The Day the Earth Looked Stupid
This is an otherwise fine episode pulled into the mud by one awful segment.
Married to the Blob absolutely terrible. There are barely even any jokes in it, it just makes one joke over and over. That joke being ‘Homer eats someone’, and it’s not even funny. Eating the random space blob is a very ‘Homer’ thing to do, and that’s about the only funny thing in the whole segment. Call me a prude, but I don’t see how Homer eating every resident in Springfield is in any way fun to watch. They throw in the world’s most basic Dr Phil cameo, and then end the whole thing on another ‘Homer eats someone’ gag, only now it’s institutionalised. Way to make the hard-hitting political satire there.
You Gotta Know When to Golem is alright, but a lot of the jokes go right over my head. This is probably one of the segments with the strongest sense of plot, but that actually turns out to be more of a negative when it takes precedent over the jokes. Ultimately, this is one that I just forget about, and am mildly entertained by when it comes on.
The Day the Earth Looked Stupid is a good segment, and it’s a shame I have to lump it into this list. However, this should go to show just how much I hate Married to the Blob. There’s a lot of good jokes in this one, it nails the tone of a 1920s Springfield, and I can totally believe that town is dumb enough to believe a radio hoax. The only thing that I didn’t like was the ending, which I think was supposed to be a dig at the Iraq war, but it was so out-of-nowhere that I honestly can’t be sure.
5 – Treehouse of Horror XVI
Original Airdate: 6th November 2005 Segments: B.I.Bartificial Intelligence; Survival of the Fattest; I’ve Grown a Costume On Your Face
B.I. Bartifical Intelligence is an interesting one. This is one of the longer segments, at just under 10 minutes, so there’s a much broader scope when it comes to the plot. Events actually feel like they have time to breathe, and there’s more room for the writers to get out the jokes that they want. So it’s a shame that very few of those jokes land. A couple of the one-liners are pretty funny, but most of it is ground that other comedies have covered better before and since. Then, to end it, it hits us with an “all a dream” ending and the world’s laziest Exorcist parody.
Survival of the Fattest isn’t much better. The downside of the first segment getting 10 minutes becomes clear throughout the next two, as the whole thing feels extraordinarily rushed. There’s very little in the way of interesting jokes here. The whole thing is just a murder followed by a quip. Maybe it would’ve worked if the jokes were funnier, but it’s all just some basic jokes based on things we’ve known about the characters for years. It’s not terrible, but you won’t get much out of watching it more than once.
I’ve Grown a Costume On Your Face barely feels like it should even count as a segment. The shortened length becomes a problem here, as nothing gets a chance to breathe. The whole thing is crammed to the brim with mediocre jokes about various Halloween costume. We don’t get a chance to take anything in because the segment is so desperate to rush us to the finish, we only get about 90 seconds to enjoy the humour of everyone having turned into their costumes before the episode hands us the solution. The ending is just awful too. If it was meant as a joke, then it doesn’t land, but if it was meant to be serious, then it’s even worse.
I still wouldn’t go quite so far as to say this episode is a properly terrible one yet, but we’re definitely getting there.
4 – Treehouse of Horror XXIII
Original Airdate: 7th November 2012 Segments: The Greatest Story Ever Holed; Unnormal Activity; Bart & Homer’s Excellent Adventure
The Greatest Story Ever Holed is just desperate to explain all of its jokes to you. Thankfully, it’s relatively light on the pop-culture references, but it goes for the base-level humour where the writers don’t seem to have to confidence that the audiences will get their jokes. Instead of letting Homer wrap his long fingers around Bart’s neck and leave it as a visual gag, they have to have Homer exclaim that he’s nature’s choking machine. It’s an extra joke which is a very thinly veiled attempt at explaining the visual gag we just witnessed. It’s the kind of trope that I despise shows like The Big Bang Theory for, and it feels like the writers just didn’t have confidence in their jokes.
Unnormal Activity is definitely the best segment of this episode, but it’s still not great. The opening is quite funny, and Homer generally fooling around while trying to record everything going on was a good series of gags, but that’s pretty much all there is to like about it. As a parody of Paranormal Activity, it’s ok and hits all of the beats you’d expect it to, but it doesn’t go beyond that to create anything super memorable, which, as we’ll discuss in a couple of weeks, is what makes the best segments.
Bart & Homer’s Excellent Adventure is just plain boring. There was so much potential in a time-travel story, especially with a show like The Simpsons which has so comprehensively covered all of the significant historical events of its characters. I can see a version of this segment that plays wonderfully off of classic Simpsons’ moments in a loving, but fresh nostalgia trip for all of us. Sadly, we only got one scene of that, and then it devolves into how Marge’s life would’ve been so much better if she never married Homer. Which is a joke that wasn’t funny in the first place because of how obviously true it is, and it hasn’t gotten any funnier being constantly repeated. Making a joke out of your show’s flaws isn’t witty comedy if you do nothing to fix those flaws.
3 – Treehouse of Horror XXVI
Original Airdate: 25th October 2015 Segments: Wanted: Dead, Then Alive; Homerzilla; Telepaths of Glory
Wanted: Dead, Then Alive is one of the biggest wastes of potential I’ve seen in one of these segments. Giving Sideshow Bob his own segment was the chance to go truly off the rails with his schemes, give him something really out there and horrifying. Instead, it’s mostly the same joke over and over. I don’t see what I’m supposed to get out of watching Bart get murdered in a bunch of gruesome ways. What’s supposed to be the entertainment value there? Sure, these characters are pretty loose by this point, but he’s still a child. Plus, murder isn’t actually a punchline unless you set it up to be one, which this segment definitely doesn’t do.
Homerzilla feels like an attempt to recapture the magic of segments like King Homer but fails to understand what made a segment like that so funny. Yes, there’s a big element of parody in those things, but that isn’t all that’s there, we still have character-based jokes and a lot of clever punchlines. This segment focuses purely on the concept of parody and doesn’t look any further than that. I even rolled my eyes at a couple of the jokes in here because of how dumb they were. Then, because the writers just can’t help themselves, they go and make a satire of Hollywood remaking things, which is so unbelievably lazy and feels more like an excuse to pad the runtime.
Telepaths of Glory is fine, I guess. There just aren’t many jokes involved. The montage is a bit of fun, but that’s really it. The ‘Maggie did it’ punchline has been done before, and so much better, even on this very list. Ultimately, I just don’t have a lot to say about it, and probably will forget about it again once I end this sentence.
2 – Treehouse of Horror XXV
Original Airdate: 19th October 2014 Segments: School is Hell; A Clockwork Yellow; The Others
School is Hell is all the proof you need that original ideas don’t work for these kinds of episodes. Yes, I’ve moaned about a lot of the bad parodies these episodes have given us, but almost all of the best segments are parodies too. The same cannot be said for the original concepts like this. Bart being evil is a very played-out punchline, but I can appreciate that they tried to take it to its logical extreme here. There were some funny jokes about what a school would be like in hell, but there was a lot of lazy visual gags and jokes that explain their punchlines.
A Clockwork Yellow is perhaps the laziest pun-name they’ve ever come up with for one of these segments, and the parody doesn’t get much more interesting from there. The parody of the sped-up sex scene where Homer just eats a lot was a very funny joke, but that’s the only time I laughed during the whole thing. Everything else just hits all the beats parodies like this need to. They spoof the most famous scenes and vaguely hold onto the direction of the original plot. Also, there’s a bunch of terrible cockney accents, but I’m willing to overlook that, as I’m not petty. Sometimes.
The Others didn’t even bother to come up with a pun-name, which is somehow worse than a bad one. In terms of content, its a nice trip down nostalgia road, and it’s nice to see a show acknowledge its roots, but there’s not much to enjoy in the way of laughs. The episode seems to favour the plot over the jokes, which isn’t the way you want things to go in these segments. Unless you count all of the family members killing themselves as jokes…which I definitely don’t.
1 – Treehouse of Horror XXII
Original Airdate: 30th October 2011 Segments: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly; Dial D for Diddly; In the Na’Vi
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a fart joke. For 5 minutes. That’s it. There’s literally nothing else to it. The joke is that Homer farts, over…and over…and over. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a prude, I still find farts funny, but a fart on its own isn’t a joke, it’s just a bodily process. Oh, and it becomes a Spiderman parody at the end for reasons I still can’t even begin to comprehend. Literally the only nice thing I have to say about it is that it’s incredibly short.
Dial D for Diddly is mostly fine. Which should go to show you just how awful the other two segments are to drag this episode down to the worst. The opening segment of Ned doing evil-looking things only for them to turn out to be innocent is well done if a little cliche. The rest of the episode feels just a little below average, Homer & Flanders interacting is always a good thing, the only real problem is the ending. It’s not necessarily bad, it’s just upsettingly predictable. God shows up, then the Devil shows up, then it turns out God is the Devil’s bitch, then just to put the cherry on things, Maud is sleeping with the Devil. Great, who cares?
In the Na’Vi is the worst parody The Simpsons has ever done, plain and simple. Despite being the highest-grossing film of all time until 2019, Avatar left a minimal cultural impact on the broader scope of pop-culture, which is a massive problem for a parody like this, especially when it’s coming in two years late. I didn’t laugh once during this. Every joke is either boring or dumb. They’ll go from referencing the wrong movie to making a joke about the different plug shapes around the world for no reason, and then quickly throw in all the essential plot beats to wrap it all up. The big fight scene at the end is ridiculous, and the whole thing ends on a word-play that makes me roll my eyes every time. It’s almost the perfect distillation of everything I dislike about modern Simpsons and an absolute failure of a Treehouse of Horror segment.
So there you have it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this. Please, let me know what you think of these episodes, either in the comments below, or on Twitter 10ryawoo. I’ll be counting down my favourite Treehouse of Horror episodes on Halloween night in a few weeks, but until then, make sure you come back this time next week for my rundown of Doctor Who Series 8!
The Strong Style Smark 