‘The Simpsons’ Impressively Layered Tribute to ‘Black Mirror’ | EXPLORING SIMPSONS HORROR

By the time the 31st season of ‘The Simpsons' came around, in late 2019, it seemed that the show had well and truly run out of ideas, and that the writing staff had long since given up even trying to come up with original stories. Then came the 8th episode of the season, ‘Thanksgiving of Horror’, which first aired in November 2019. Like the standard ‘Treehouse of Horror’ series, this non-canon concept episode was broken up into 3 stories, which looked at the past, near-future and distant future of the holiday, in chronological order. In the 2nd segment, ‘The Fourth Thursday After Tomorrow’, Homer has some A.I. installed in the family’s house, in order to make Marge’s life easier over Thanksgiving, by having it help out with the cooking and cleaning. Ultimately, the entire segment is a parody homage to the anthology TV series ‘Black Mirror’, the result of which is an impressively layered tribute from one iconic show to another.