Treehouse of Horror XXI

"They should call this one recipe for murder."

- Homer

"What do you mean "this one?""

- Marge

"Never mind."

- Homer

"Treehouse of Horror XXI" is the twenty-first Treehouse of Horror episode and the fourth of season 22. For this episode Alf Clausen was nominated for an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Music Composition for a Series (Dramatic Underscore)".

Opening Sequence
Bart and Homer are carving pumpkins and Bart slices a smile into Homer's pants. Homer chokes him, so Bart puts a flaming pumpkin on his head. Professor Frink then introduces the show, giving a warning about the content and telling those concerned to skip forward. He skips forward too far and says he has ruined the show. He points the remote at himself until he dies and turns to dust. This blows away to say "Treehouse of Horror XXI". The monster picks up the remote and mentions The Office. This leads to a parody of the opening, set in the monsters work place.

War and Pieces
Marge, worried about the effects of excessively violent video games, encourages Bart and Milhouse to give the wholesome, classic board games in the attic a shot. The best friends discover a board game called Satan's Path. Upon playing it, it causes all the games to come to life and alter reality as the two must beat all the games' challenges to restore everything to normal.

Master and Cadaver
Homer and Marge set sail on a second honeymoon, but is interrupted by a castaway, who they rescue. was a chef on the Albatross who was knocked out after trying to prevent an attempted poisoning on the ship. Convinced that Roger poisoned the passengers and plotting to murder them after seeing a dead shark with a recently made pie pan in its mouth, Homer and Marge take matters into their own hands as they seemingly killed Roger and knock his body overboard. However, finding the Albatross, they realized Roger was telling the truth. Roger appears again and Homer then kills Roger, and the surviving bankers, which shocks Marge who eats the poisoned pie. It would all turn out to be Maggie's imagination.

Tweenlight
Lisa Simpson falls in love with a vampire named Edmund. After Edmund reveals that he is a vampire, Lisa invites him round for dinner. Homer and Count Dracula embarrass them to the point that they run away to Dracula-la Land. After Homer and Dracula find them, Dracula and Edmund try to force Lisa to become a vampire and Homer gets in the way. His high blood cholesterol kills the vampires. Homer then turns into a fat bat and tries to fly away, falling to his death as he is too fat to fly.

Production
Daniel Radcliffe, the main star of the Harry Potter franchise, guest starred in the third segment which parodies the Twilight novels and movies. Radcliffe said that he is a fan of the show and guest starring is "a huge honour". Hugh Laurie guest starred in a segment that parodies Dead Calm.

The episode aired November 7, 2010.

Reception
The episode was up 23% in viewership compared with the previous episode, "MoneyBart", which aired October 10.

The episode received mixed-to-negative reviews. Us Weekly said: "the three oddball tales run from mildly amusing to flat-out inspired. In one goofy vignette, Homer and a bikini-wearing Marge pluck a scary mystery man from the sea. However, watching Lisa crush on a brooding vampire in a dead-on poke at Twilight is the hilarious treat here."

USA Today said about the episode: "It is possible that The Simpsons has worn out the Treehouse franchise. The three installments just seem to be reaching for jokes that aren't there, and falling in the attempt. As you'd hope from The Simpsons, the segments all boast a few clever moments that will make you smile if not laugh. But they're not scary, they're not particularly funny, and outside of some tepid Twilight jokes, they're no longer even trying to be real parodies of the original stories."