User:Theleftorium/Sandbox3

Plot

It is Christmas Eve in Springfield, but while Marge gets into the holiday spirit, the rest of the Simpson family are not feeling cheerful. Bart, angry that he did not receive the dirt bike that he wanted last Christmas, stays up late to shoot Santa Claus. While waiting by the fireplace, he falls asleep and dreams that the Polar Express lands in front of the Simpsons' house and takes him to the North Pole. Bart is employed in the Christmas present workshop and after working his way up the corporate ladder, he is able to meet with Santa. He takes a gun with him to the meeting, planning to threaten Santa into giving him a dirt bike. Santa tells Bart that he has run out of money, since giving out presents in return for cookies every year is not a sustainable business model. Feeling pity, Bart decides that Santa no longer has to give him a dirt bike and leaves. Once he is gone, it is then revealed that Santa was lying as he throws a party and lights a cigar with a bill of money.

During the evening of Christmas Eve, Lisa wraps the family's Christmas tree in police tape and tells her mother that she objects to Christmas trees on ecological grounds. When she goes to bed and falls to sleep, she dreams that it is December 1944 and that Marge is a soldier in World War II. When Homer takes a Christmas tree home to the house, she becomes saddened. Due to Marge being taken suddenly for overseas deployment while buying a Christmas tree the previous year, Lisa had sworn to never see another Christmas tree until Marge returns home safely. Homer tries to comfort his girl, but they soon after get a telegram saying that Marge is missing in action. After hearing the news, Lisa runs away to the place where she had last seen her mother, the Christmas Tree Farm. The owner of the place says that last year Marge had paid for a tree but never took it home, and then trims the tree to make it look like Marge. Lisa, believing the tree to be a symbol that Marge is alright, takes it home and decorates it together with Homer and Bart. Marge is then seen assassinating Adolf Hitler in a movie theater in France as he watches a propaganda film of an evil Dumbo bombing London. As she walks away from the scene, the theater explodes behind her. When Lisa wakes up, she declares that she will never take her stuffed elephant toy and the book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich together to bed again.

Martha Stewart is featured in the episode, helping Marge with Christmas decorations.

Meanwhile, disappointed that she is the only family member spreading the holiday cheer, Marge dreams that she has sent a letter to Martha Stewart asking for her help in saving the family's Christmas. Martha promptly arrives and fills the house with the Christmas decorations Marge has always dreamed of, but the other family members end up as part of the decorations instead of being able to enjoy it with her. Martha places black tubes on Bart and Milhouse's heads and cover the two with red tape, preventing them from speaking and making them appear like nutcracker soldiers. She also has Lisa making snow angels alone, and places a white textile over a sleeping Homer so that he can be used as the foundation for a miniature Christmas landscape featuring a model train. When Homer is about to wake up, Martha chloroforms him back to sleep. Marge quickly realizes that it is Homer and the children that make Christmas special for her, so Martha gets rid of all the decorations with a magic wand. Marge then wakes up on Christmas Day to find that her family has brought her the ingredients for breakfast in bed. Their attempts to cook it go awry, so they go out for breakfast instead.

When Maggie falls asleep on Christmas Eve with a "Fluppet" Christmas video in her hand, she dreams that the entire family has become puppet characters in a Muppet-style show that features a laugh track, with Grampa and Jasper Beardly heckling them from a box seat in the manner of Statler and Waldorf. As the Simpsons prepare for a trip to Hawaii and ask Moe to house-sit for them, Homer's boss Mr. Burns pays a surprise visit. He says he was visited by three ghosts the night before and wants to be happy and cheerful during the holiday season. He soon learns that Homer has feigned a neck injury to get time off work for the trip and calls his attack hounds. However, only one arrives (represented by a crude sock puppet), since the show has spent its budget on Katy Perry (appearing as herself in live-action), who is Moe's girlfriend. Noticing that Burns is disappointed bu the lack of his attack hounds, Katy decides to give him a hug and a kiss. Touched by this, Burns decides to forgive the Simpsons and allows them to enjoy their trip in Hawaii, and everyone sings a rendition of "39 Days of Christmas" which plays during the credits. At the end of the credits, Moe attempts to kiss Katy but is not tall enough to reach her mouth, so he opts to "kiss [her] belly button" instead. Katy retorts that he is not kissing her belly button, meaning that he is actually kissing her vulva, but also says she does not want Moe to stop.

Production

Katy Perry appeared as herself in a live-action segment in the episode.

"The Fight Before Christmas" was written by Dan Castellaneta (who provides the voice of Homer on The Simpsons) and his wife Deb Lacusta. It was directed by Bob Anderson and Matthew Schofield. The episode contains a live-action segment featuring characters from the show as puppets and a guest appearance from singer Katy Perry as herself. This was the second time that a segment of The Simpsons was shot in live-action, the first being the "Homer³" segment of the 1995 episode "Treehouse of Horror VI" in which a 3D computer-animated Homer ends up in the real-life world.

The live-action segment, which parodies The Muppet Show, was inspired by the announcement that Perry would appear as herself on the television series Sesame Street that features the puppet characters The Muppets. This appearance, which sees her performing a child-friendly version of her song "Hot n Cold" with Elmo, was originally to appear on the forty-first-season premiere of the educational children's program on September 27, 2010. However, on September 23 it was announced that it had been cut from the show because some parents who had seen the appearance online complained about the revealing clothes worn by Perry. Sesame Workshop said in a statement that "In light of the feedback we’ve received on the Katy Perry music video which was released on YouTube only, we have decided we will not air the segment on the television broadcast of Sesame Street, which is aimed at preschoolers. Katy Perry fans will still be able to view the video on YouTube."

The Simpsons segment was filmed in mid-September 2010, before the controversy began, and thus it was not inspired by the decision to cut Perry's appearance from Sesame Street. Executive producer Al Jean announced to Entertainment Weekly on September 25 that the singer would guest star on the show, commenting that "In the wake of Elmo’s terrible betrayal, the Simpsons puppets wish to announce they stand felt-shoulder-to-shoulder with Katy Perry." She wears a cleavage-showing, tight red dress in the episode that features characters from the show on it. Entertainment Weekly writer Dan Snierson noted that this dress "probably wouldn’t have been Street-approved either", and a writer for Metro commented that "the Simpsons' producers were certainly not worried about Katy looking too raunchy". Perry was a fan of The Simpsons before guest starring. In a video interview, she commented that she "thought it was an honor to be asked to be on The Simpsons. The Simpsons, they are kind of like a national treasure when it comes to, you know, America and the whole world." She also stated that she considers it to be one of the highlights of her career, and that she saw it as a sign that she had "made it".

American media personality Martha Stewart guest starred in the episode as well, as an animated version of herself. This was announced to the press in April 2010. Stewart commented in an interview that she she enjoyed recording her part, which she described as "pretty true to life". She also noted that "The writers are excellent. They worked very hard with me to make sure I wasn't too bad." Stewart has expressed interest in guest starring on the show again in one of the Treehouse of Horror episodes, since her favorite holiday is Halloween.