• Directed by: Jim Reardon
• Written by: Greg Daniels, Dan McGrath, David S. Cohen, Bob Kushell
• Airdate: October 30, 1994

     Hey, Marge is back! She warns us of the horrors of this episode before receiving a letter that tells her congress has canceled the episode. We cut to black as green radio waves showing Bart’s voice welcomes us. Homer interrupts and begins to annoy Bart until he sends his father away and is able to introduce the episode.

The Shinning
     The family are on their way to take care of Mr. Burns’ Summer Estate, arriving and being given a tour (one filled with distressing information and blood-letting elevators) before Burns cuts the cable and packs up the beer in his car to insure work is done over the winter, though Smithers speaks up that this may have caused the other caretakers to go insane. Bart meets Groundskeeper Willie outside by the hedge maze, who, once Bart reads his mind, tells Bart he has the shinning. Almost immediately beginning to lose his mind after realizing the lack of beer or working television, Homer distracts himself by going to the bar, where a ghost-Moe tells him he will get a drink if he kills his family.
     Marge realizes Homer’s insanity as he attacks, but she knocks him out and locks him up, which upsets Moe and the other ghosts, who let him out. Homer gives chase to the family (after killing an arriving Willie Bart summoned) but Lisa finds Willie’s discarded portable television, which calms him. The family sits to watch it, freezing, until the Tony Awards begin and Homer begins to feel his urge to kill again.

Time and Punishment
     Homer attempts to fix a broken toaster, which doesn’t go quite as planned once it takes him back in time to prehistoric times. Accidentally changing the future, he finds Flanders to be a dictator ruler. Speaking out against him, he is set up for a lobotomy but flees back home and transports himself back. Accidentally killing a fish causes giant Lisa and Bart to almost kill him. Sneezing on a Tyrannosaurus Rex cause mass death amongst the animals due to disease. This puts Homer in a time and place where his family is wealthy, his sisters-in-law are dead, and his kids are well behaved, but horrifically, there are no donuts. He screams and runs back into the basement as it begins to rain donuts.
     In another trip home, Groundskeeper Willie informs him he is still not back where he belongs but is killed by a James Earl Jones voiced Maggie with an axe. Infuriated, Homer begins destroying stuff with a club, making realities go crazy. Finally, he ends up in a universe almost exactly like his, but with the family having lizard tongues. He shrugs it off as close enough.

Nightmare Cafeteria
     The detention hall at the elementary school is becoming massively over-crowded and the school, due to budget cuts, has to use ‘Grade F’ meat. Lunchlady Doris accidentally dumps stew on Jimbo when he trips her. Skinner berates him until he tastes the sauce and instructs Doris to kill him and serve him. The school continues to deal with their over-crowding and lack of meat by killing and eating children, quickly gaining weight while also cutting down on almost all children.
     Lisa and Bart ask their mother for help, but she says they’re old enough to fight their own battles and they should tell the teachers not to eat them. Once Wendell is sent to detention, and Milhouse sees Krabappel reading a book on ‘Cooking Milhouse,’ himself, Lisa and Bart (the last 3 left) escape and are chased by teachers as they salivate about eating them. They are corned on a ramp above a giant blender. Groundskeeper Willie arrives to help but is killed by an axe once again. The children fall into the bender and….

     Bart awakens from his nightmare to his family in his room. They reassure him that there is nothing to worry about, except for that deadly fog that turns people inside out, which is seeping into Bart’s room. The family is turned inside out and, after screaming for a bit, end the episode on a dance number with Willie as Santa’s Little Helper eventually drags Bart away.

     Here we are, at one of the most talked about Treehouse of Horror specials. Though we’ll discuss the obvious later, it is worth remembering that, besides the segments, the opening is filled quite a bit with gags and jabs the same way the segments usually are. The creators were able to it in three stories, a reappearance of Marge, the intro-voice over, the cemetery/couch gag of the opening, and a hilarious ending sequence. There are two moments in particular from this opening stretch worth pointing out; Marge saying that Congress has canceled the episode is based in the fact that, yeah, Congress had some issues with the violence in the show and aimed for censorship. This jab at the Congress is particularly fantastic as David Mirkin wanted to add as much violence and blood in the episode as possible, almost to spite them.
     The second great moment for those familiar with behind-the-scenes on-goings is the tombstone reserved for ‘Amusing Tombstones.’ The tombstones, like the ‘spooky’ names for individuals on the show, were awful to write for them and took up more of their time than necessary. A tombstone to put the tombstone gag to rest is absolutely perfect.

     Time and Punishment is a delightful, fun time; one that starts with a gag that makes me laugh incredibly hard after all these years, and I still laugh harder once it’s repeated. One thing that should never be forgotten about these specials is that the creators do a wonderful job in putting in the creating new designs for time placements, from the dinosaurs to the carious styles of life and experiences Homer jumps between. The animation and directing is also fantastic, like always. The timing and animation on the sequence where all of the dinosaurs are taken out after Homer’s sneeze is brilliant, the single act of the pterodactyls suddenly dropping into frame being absolutely perfect.
     The segment also houses a phenomenal array of lines and gags, and while there are a couple that are oft-quoted (“Oh, I wish, I wish I didn’t kill that fish…”), there are some moments that I think still kind of fall by the wayside, or forgot. I still get a chuckle out of the joke involving Homer, attack dogs, and sausages. The calmly passing Megatherium shrugging at Homer questioning if something as small as crushing a mosquito would actually have any impact is so well timed and unexpected; a perfect example of how a simple noise can be hilarious. I’ve also always been a big fan of one moment in particular; Homer returns to prehistoric times, furious that things aren’t getting any better. Before he starts clubbing things like a madman, he punches a giant mosquito/fly/bug out of the air. I don’t know if it’s because of Homer’s manic yelling or the fact that it comes at the tail end of his outburst, but this one act always makes me laugh.

     I’ve always felt that Nightmare Cafeteria is a good and underrated segment, though, unfortunately, it happens to come after two segments that are loaded with gags-per-second, so, being a more steadily paced and not-as-manic few minutes, it feels as though it’s far weaker than it is. The set-up is perfect and simple; detention overcrowded, budget cuts equals grade F meat. Meet in the middle (or…meat in the middle hahahahaha pleasedontleave).
     There is still a lot to like and quote in this segment, from Skinner being an idiot that makes one obvious joke too many to Marge’s handling of the kids’ situation (this and her final line being amongst my favourite from the episode, Julie Kavner knocks the read out of the park). Though there may not be as plentiful quotable lines or gags as the previous two stories before it, Nightmare Cafeteria is an important segment to this special, as it creates a perfect blend for it as a whole. Yes, it’s more deliberately without a ton of laugh-out-loud hilarity, but it is genuinely creepy and unsettling, telling a story that is, well, actually more horror than anything else.

     While Time and Punishment has found itself getting quoted more and more, the last two segments are generally overshadowed by the first, and for good reason. It’s also the reason I saved talking about it for the end.
     The Shinning is relentless, and ranks high as one of the greatest parodies ever created. It’s a (7) minute piece that covers most of the possible major aspects of the 2 ½ hour film. It makes jokes about famous scenes (“I thought the blood was supposed to get off at the second floor”), has one-off lines that are great on their own (“Now you stay in here until you’re no longer insane! Hmm, chili will be good tonight.”/”Uh-oh, the little fat kid and his family’s in trouble!”), split-second jokes you may miss if you blink (‘break in case of spousal insanity’), to throwing people and events under the bus (*shudder* “John Denver”/”It’s the Tony Awards!”), along with hilarious animated moments (“Go crazy?”)
     What’s always been interesting is that there are quite a few Treehouse of Horror segments that load as many jokes into it as this one (Dial Z for Zombie and Bart Simpson’s Dracula are two good past examples), so what has made The Shinning stand the test of time as one of the absolute benchmark moments of the series?
     I’ve always felt that the segment has an air of desperation to it, for lack of a better word. Though it does have moments of more quiet and ‘down’ time, you can almost feel the segment about to burst at the seams, the writer’s frantically attempting to cover and fit as much of a parody of something they love in as possible. Yes, that’s usually said of Treehouse of Horror episodes (they’re notoriously tough, obviously due to time constraints), but here the entire thing comes off as a comedic force to be reckoned with. It’s the perfect example of the level of dedication, love, wit and fantastic direction that made so many people fall in love with it and hold it on such an enormous pedestal. It’s deserving of every bit of praise it has gotten over the past two decades.

     Treehouse of Horror V is constantly regarded as one of the greatest ever, if not –the- greatest. Though personal taste and choices may make folks choose otherwise, it’s easy to see why it has the reputation that it does. One of the greatest parodies of a film from any kind of medium, a hilarious sci-fi set story sticking Homer in a great situation, and a genuinely unnerving finale featuring kids, all wrapped up with a clever jab in the opening and a horrific-incident-turned-great-dance-number finale. To say that it’s an absolute must watch would be ridiculously obvious but, well, it’s an absolute must watch.