It’s good that Bart did that. It’s very good. — Football announcer guy, “Treehouse Of Horror II”

Happy Halloween-ish! It’s been five spooky weeks since I’ve posted an update! Oooo-oooo!

Bart’s “Treehouse” foray into omnipotence parodies a classic Jerome Bixby tale, “It’s A Good Life”, which depicts the horrors produced by another little boy’s nightmarish powers. You can check out the full text of the story here [.pdf pop-up] — it’s quite good and quite unsettling.

Though Bixby’s story was a success in its own right, it really came to life as an episode of The Twilight Zone. Let’s skip to the good part:

That same scene, as depicted in Bixby’s book:

“Bad man,” Anthony said, and thought Dan Hollis into something like nothing anyone would have believed possible …

… a jack-in-the-box! Thanks, television! “Good Life” is generally regarded as a pretty decent Twilight Zone ep, so it has seen various interpretations over the years, including as one of the segments in Twilight Zone: The Movie, in which Nancy fricking Cartwright happens to play the kid’s sister. Now that’s spooky.