Another year, another The Simpsons Halloween special.

"Treehouse of Horror XXIV" started off with a wonderfully delightful opening created by Guillermo del Toro. The filmmaker weaved allusions to some of the greatest horror, mystery and science fiction masterpieces - including his own Hellboy and Pan's Labryinth. Also featured were references to Stephen King and Hitchcock, with some Futurama Hypnotoad thrown in for good measure.

What was your favorite easter egg in the opening credits?

The rest of the episode was pretty standard Treehouse of Horror fare, although it was slightly less impressive than last year's installment.

Homer's Seussian adventures as "the Fat in the Hat" was a disturbing interpretation of the children's classic. Instead of your usual mischief, Homer's "Fat" enjoys mayhem, murder and theft. It' wasdefinitely a spooky rendition, and the rhymes were pretty funny (see The Simpsons quotes section). But the story was mostly creepy.

At least it wasn't as yawn-inducing as "Head and Shoulders." Bart and Lisa's sibling rivalry got a new twist when they had to share the same body. There wasn't much humor in the short, though.

Perhaps the best installment of the evening was the episode's re-imagining of Tod Browning's Freaks. The sinister and disturbing chanting of the freaks ("One of us. One of us.") was nicely balanced with the freak-ified Homer alluding to How I Met Your Mother by ending the story with: "And, kids, that's how I met your mother."

It was an enjoyable episode, but still, the necessity of scheduling the Halloween special so early makes it hard to get into the spooky spirit of things.