The Fight Before Christmas (The Simpsons)

Plot

The episode is divided into four dream segments, similar in structure to the Treehouse of Horror episodes but with four stories instead of three. In the first segment, Bart stays up on Christmas Eve intending to murder Santa Claus for not bringing him a dirt bike three years earlier. He falls asleep and dreams that the Polar Express, driven by Otto Mann, takes him to the North Pole. There he meets Santa, revealed to be Krusty the Clown, who explains he has run out of money because giving presents in exchange for cookies is unsustainable.

Bart decides Santa no longer owes him a dirt bike, and Santa throws a party. In the second segment, set in December 1944, Lisa dreams that Marge is a soldier deployed overseas during World War II. Lisa has sworn off Christmas trees until Marge returns, but the family receives a telegram saying Marge is missing in action. Lisa runs to a Christmas tree farm where the owner says Marge paid for a tree the previous year but never collected it.

Lisa takes the tree home and decorates it with Homer and Bart. In a spoof of Dumbo, Marge is shown assassinating Adolf Hitler in a movie theater in France, which then explodes. In the third segment, Marge dreams she has written to Martha Stewart for help saving Christmas. Martha arrives and decorates the house elaborately, but the family members become part of the decorations.

Marge realizes Homer and the children make Christmas special, so Martha removes the decorations with a magic wand. Marge wakes on Christmas Day to find her family has brought ingredients for breakfast in bed, but their cooking fails, so they go out to eat.

Production

The episode was written by Dan Castellaneta, who voices Homer, and his wife Deb Lacusta, as part of the twenty-second season. It was directed by Bob Anderson and Matthew Schofield. Like the Treehouse of Horror episodes, it features multiple segments, all set during Christmas, and was originally broadcast in December 2010. Several parts were inspired by popular culture: the train in the first segment references The Polar Express; Santa's office includes characters Schroeder from Peanuts and Bumble from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

The second segment references the film Inglourious Basterds, with Marge blowing up a movie theater containing Hitler, and the propaganda film features an evil version of Dumbo bombing London. Martha Stewart guest starred as an animated version of herself, announced in April 2010. Stewart said she enjoyed recording her part, describing it as "pretty true to life" and praising the writers. She expressed interest in appearing again in a Treehouse of Horror episode, as Halloween is her favorite holiday.

Reception

In its original American broadcast on Fox on December 5, 2010, the episode was watched by approximately 9.56 million people and received a 4.2 Nielsen rating in the adults 18–49 demographic, making it the highest-rated episode of the season at that point. It achieved an 11% share of the television audience and was the highest-rated program in Fox's "Animation Domination" lineup that night, beating The Cleveland Show and American Dad!. It became the fifth highest-rated program among adults 18–49 for the week and the twentieth highest-rated among all ages.

Critical reception was mixed to positive. Brad Trechak of AOL TV wrote that the episode "showed a level of imagination that the recent Halloween episodes have been lacking" and that it "started good and got progressively better." Emily VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club commented that the segments "got weaker as they went along" and that the quality was "decidedly hit and miss." Both critics praised Bart's dream and Lisa's dream for their humor and parody.

Trechak thought Martha Stewart "really shone" in Marge's dream and singled out the live-action segment as his favorite. VanDerWerff found Marge's visit from Stewart "one joke stretched too far" and the final Muppet segment "far too stilted."