A new Promotional Image and details of the 600th episode of the show, the upcoming 4th episode of season 28, “Treehouse of Horror XXVII“, have been released by FOX. The episode airs October 16, 2016.
In an interview with TV Insider, executive producer Al Jean shared more details on the upcoming 600th episode: “When we hit 100 episodes, we opened the show with Bart writing on the chalkboard, ‘I will not celebrate meaningless milestones’—so that must mean our 600th is six times as meaningless! Yes, this is a big accomplishment, but we don’t want to pat ourselves on the back about it. That would be against everything we stand for. Oh, who are we kidding? It’s incredibly cool.”
The co-executive producer Joel Cohen, writer of the episode adds: “Treehouse of Horror. here are no rules with our Halloween shows, but there are certainly times when we’ve gone, ‘Whoa! This is getting a little too gross!’ Then we pull back on the mangling a bit—just to the edge of bad taste.”
In the opening cutscenes, four bad guys, Sideshow Bob, Frank Grimes, Kodos and the Leprechaun opens off the show seeking revenge on the family. In the first story, “Dry Hard”, the kids of Springfield fight to the death in a parched town to acces Burns’ reservoir, in a Hunger Games parody. Cohen comments on parodying the movies so late: “But in a way it’s good we waited, now we can pay tribute to all four crappy movies at once!”
In the second story, “BFF”, Lisa’s imaginary friend Rachel (Sarah Silverman) gets jealous and is on a rampage to kill all of Lisa’s real friends. In the last episode, “Moefinger”, Moe’s bar reveals a secret base for a James Bond spoof. Al Jean says: “Moe and the other barflies are secretly running a high-tech spy network that’s trying to save the world. Some of the action takes place at a Steely Dan concert where everyone is on drugs. We actually got Donald Fagen to make a guest appearance and say, ‘Drugs at a Steely Dan concert? I never thought I’d see the day.’ When we want to meet a certain celebrity, we write them a part.”
Al Jean continues talking about special guests: “Jim Brooks has always been adamant that we take all points of view and never talk down to anybody. The idea that a Republican candidate for president would talk about the size of his penis during a television debate is beyond anything we would have come up with in the writers’ room.”
The voice of Lisa, Yeardley Smith, talks about the success of 600 episodes next: “We re-up your faith in humanity. While everything from the political scene to the weather changes drastically, we are a constant. We are a reminder that, no matter how crazy things get, love will last, families endure, values matter.”
And about the fact that in twenty-eight years, the characters never aged: “We are frozen in time. Homer will always be a slob and a jackass, and Marge will always forgive him. Bart will forever be a brat. And Lisa will never feel like she truly fits in. But they support each other. They hang in, no matter what.”
Concluding, Al Jean talks about a way the show would end, when time comes: “To my mind, the best way to go out would be to have the final episode conclude with the Christmas pageant at Springfield Elementary School that began our first episode back in 1989. That way, it won’t really be an ending at all. It’ll turn the series into one continuous loop that will play on forever.”
Source: TV Insider
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