See Barney get chomped by Pennywise Krusty in Simpsons parody of It
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Before The Simpsons chills you with its annual Treehouse of Horror trilogy of terror on Oct. 30, It will do some serious clowning around.
The Oct. 23 installment of the animated Fox comedy will parody Stephen King's It and offer up its take on a murderous clown that bears more than a passing resemblance to Krusty. And the episode was partly inspired by some disturbing fan art. "I was like, 'We should just start writing to the tattoos people already have of Pennywise Krusty," executive producer Matt Selman recently told EW. "Let's go in that direction. Give the people what they want." (The winner of the show's Krusty fan-art contest, by the way, will wind up with a showcase at the end of the episode.)
Titled "Not It," the episode joins the past with the present, giving viewers in one 30-minute episode winks at It's children-centric story as well as its sequel, It Chapter Two, which saw Pennywise resurface when those traumatized kids were adults. Here, a supernatural clown named Krusto starts murdering the children of Kingfield, prompting young Homer to join forces with his fellow middle school outcasts to take down this terrifying creature. Decades later, though, Krusto is back on the prowl, and Homer & Co. must conquer the painted face of fear once more.
FOX
It should be noted that in this particular episode, the adult versions of the characters as you know them live in an alternate reality. "As a kid, Moe has a fear of ventriloquist dummies, which the evil clown takes advantage of," Selman says. "As an adult, he conquers his fear by becoming the Criss Angel of ventriloquists." (It should also be noted that The Simpsons tried to recruit King — who played himself in a 2000 episode — for a role as a magical gravedigger, but, alas, "he passed," notes Selman.)
In the exclusive clip above, young Barney burps up some milk while heading into the flooding street to play with his paper boat. When his paper boat goes into the gutter — a place that adult Barney became no stranger to — he sees in the sewer none other than Krusto, who calls himself "the funniest clown in the whole wide world." That is concerning to Barney, who notes that "people who have to tell you they're funny usually aren't." Still, as instructed by Krusto, he reaches his hand into the gutter to retrieve his boat. Krusty's hungry, razor-sharp teeth spring to action, as you will see.
Even though it unspools a single scary story, "Not It" is the first of two Treehouse of Horror episodes airing this fall, as it is in "the same Halloween universe of murder and mayhem and blood and being scared and human frailty and all that stuff," according to Selman. The following Sunday brings the traditional Treehouse of Horror trilogy. (Number XXXIII, for those keeping track.) One segment will pay tribute to anime classic Death Note, and Selman hints that the final segment "breaks one of [creator] Matt Groening's cardinal rules: the Simpsons must never know they're characters in a television show."
The Simpsons airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
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