Treehouse of Horror

I saw this episode as a kid and the final scenes stuck with me. The world has gone "Maximum Overdrive" apocalypse and people are lining up to go escape into space on a rocket. Lisa is the only person deemed valuable enough to be selected to survive, and she is allowed to choose a plus-one. She immediately chooses " Mom! " ... Homer and Bart are then left on earth to fend for themselves. But they find another rocket, a gray, ugly rocket for the shitty people of the earth. They think theyve escaped, but then they learn this rocket is flying into the sun to get rid of them all. Then Rosie O'Donnell starts singing and Bart and homer say " not fast enough " and eject themselves into space where their heads expand comically like popcorns and they die. This theme is actually repeated in Futurama , where there is an episode with roughly the same situation : a rocket to escape planetary doom and a line , where people learn whether theyll get to board the rocket and live. In the Simpsons episode , its based on merit. I think in the futurama one its random, but fry gives Leela his ticket because she doesn't have one and he loves her. This is idea seems kind of ... essential and enigmatic to Groenings body of work. It expresses something highly cynical that appears to have haunted him. Seeing this as a child certainly stuck with me because subconsciously I knew I didn't belong on the good rocket. It was just something I knew without thinking about it. You can see shadows of this deeply pessimistic , somber artist in his cartoons.