The upcoming 26th season of The Simpsons already has a bunch of crossovers slated, with the Futurama crossover that we’re all generally excited about and the Family Guy one that we’re not so much. Also, lest we forget the Bob’s Burgers cameo that’s going to happen during the Family Guy crossover episode.
So it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that The Simpsons are planning yet another crossover, and so far I’m cautiously optimistic about this one. The 25th annual “Treehouse of Horror” is going to include a crossover with none other than The Simpsons former selves, as depicted on The Tracey Ullman Show.
When the The Tracey Ullman Show originally aired, I was too young to really understand the humor but used to watch in earnest every week for the brief Simpsons clips, so this is fairly exciting news. The Ullman-style Simpsons have made brief appearances before (most recently in the Guillermo del Toro-directed couch gag in last season’s “Treehouse of Horror”), but according to Entertainment Weekly, this will be the most extensively the characters have ever been featured — in this cool-sounding premise:
Airing Oct. 19 on Fox, the annual “Treehouse of Horror” Halloween episode contains a segment that parodies The Others, in which the Simpsons are haunted by another ghostly family living in the house. These ghosts turn out to be none other than their crudely drawn former selves.
As far as the difference between the voice work of the present day characters and the original ones, the cast had to do some work to recreate the characters’ original voices:
“People remember Dan’s, but Nancy’s is different too,” executive producer Al Jean tells EW. “It was lower-register, and you can see in the difference in this segment. It was really funny to get the interplay [between the two versions of the Simpsons] and for the actors to see the voice evolution. The great thing is we didn’t have to ask—we already had the cast hired for the Tracey Ullman Simpsons.”
Here’s a few of the Tracey Ullman era clips, to refresh your memory. Don’t screw this up, Simpsons.
