Homer Simpson turned into a hippopotamus this past weekend. And no, it wasn’t a Halloween episode.
That fever-dream detour came in the Season 38 premiere of The Simpsons, and it turns out the whole episode was built backward from it. Now co-producer Mike Price has shared how that sequence came together, plus what’s ahead in this year’s “Treehouse of Horror,” which borrows from The Nightmare Before Christmas and gets its opening from a stop-motion studio.
Spoilers for the premiere follow.
A stop-motion Springfield for Halloween
Start with the good stuff. Price said this year’s “Treehouse of Horror” has “a little bit of a Nightmare Before Christmas element in it.”
He didn’t mean a passing nod, either. “For the opening sequence, we got the Stoopid Buddy people to do a stop-motion recreation of our characters like the Nightmare Before Christmas characters,” Price said.
So you’re getting the Simpsons done up like residents of Halloween Town, in actual stop-motion. As for the three segments themselves, Price kept it vague but promising: “The three stories are all different, all fun, some really gory stuff, some really scary stuff.”
That’s all he gave up. Gory and scary is what the Halloween anthology is supposed to be, and it’s nice to hear a producer lead with it.
How Homer ended up a cartoon hippo
The premiere, “The Children’s Book Job,” was written by Dan Vebber. Emma Thompson guest stars as Constance Clavinger, a reclusive children’s author who comes to Springfield Elementary to debut her new book. Homer gets sent to pick her up at the airport and finds out she plans to kill off her most famous character, The Plucky Little Goat.
Homer tries hard to stop her. It ends in a car crash and a badly concussed Homer, who imagines himself as a Peppa Pig-style hippopotamus moving through a series of storybook worlds.
The sequence runs less than a minute, and it squeezes in nods to Eric Carle (The Very Hungry Caterpillar) and Richard Scarry (the Busytown series), among others. Price said it was the whole reason the episode exists.
“In a way, the whole genesis of the show centered around that sequence where Homer’s in all the various children’s books,” Price said. “We built the whole episode leading up to that moment. We knew we wanted that from the very beginning.”
Vebber had the idea and Price was brought on to co-run it with him. The rough template, Price said, was “a little bit of a replay of that movie Get Him to the Greek,” with Homer stuck chauffeuring a guest who goes off the rails. Matthew Nastuk directed.
Vebber pushed for some of the deeper cuts. “Dan was instrumental in getting in some of the ones that I wasn’t really familiar with, like Iggy Peck, Architect, Make Way for Duckings, and Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus,” Price said.
It almost ran longer. “That sequence was going to be longer, but we’ve got so many stories going on, so we did that sequence where we shouted out a bunch of them, with Moe as the Stinky Cheese Man and Skinner as Captain Underpants,” Price said.
Moe as the Stinky Cheese Man is perfect casting, and I won’t hear otherwise.
Moe’s dreams take over Springfield
Price said the writers don’t go into a season with a master plan. “Every episode is its own unique thing,” he said.
He gave credit to showrunner Matt Selman for pushing the room toward what they call “format breakers.” Selman is “so encouraging of us to take the big swings,” Price said, and “There’s a lot of those coming up.”
One of the stranger-sounding entries comes from writer Cesar Mazariegos. Moe goes through a sleep study, and his dreams start bleeding into everyone else’s dreams around town.
Price compared it to the Nicolas Cage movie Dream Scenario, with some homage to Nora Ephron movies like Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally. Meg Ryan guest stars. (Yes, that Meg Ryan, in a Nora Ephron riff. Somebody in that writers’ room knew exactly what they were doing.)
“I can’t quite explain it without giving the whole thing away, but it’s really fun,” Price said.
A chimp, a Krusty disaster and a Godfather scam
The season’s second episode has the family adopting a chimpanzee from a place where retired showbiz animals find new homes. Homer panics after learning that chimps are known to rip people’s faces off and go for the crotch. That’s about the most Homer reason to be scared of anything.
Brian Kelley wrote a Krusty episode about a disaster at Krustyland. Price didn’t say more than that.
Then there’s Fat Tony. His new hustle is working as a production consultant on a Godfather-type movie, and Owen Wilson guest stars in that one.
Price saved his warmest words for the guy who’s voiced the mob boss for decades. “Joe Mantegna is just wonderful as Fat Tony,” Price said. “He’s really, really funny in this.”
