Episode 2F01
Written by Jon Swartzwelder
Directed by Wes Archer
Also starring: Pamela Hayden, Maggie Roswell

Premise: The Simpsons take a vacation in Itchy & Scratchy Land - 'the violentest place on Earth' TM where nothing can possibly go wrong apart from the robot Itchys & Scratchys becoming rampaging killers.

Features: Krusty, Grampa, Dr Frink, Hans Moleman.

Couch: The Simpsons are beamed on to the sofa a la Star Trek.

Trivia:

• In the mid-eighties, the Itchy & Scratchy show included the characters Disgruntled Goat, Uncle Ant and Ku Klux Clam.

Homage: Where to start? Principally this episode quotes freely from Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) and Westworld (Michael Crichton, 1973), but there's also a shot-for-shot reconstruction of a sequence from The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963), and Homer's flashback to his holiday in Amish country re-creates a scene from Witness (Peter Weir, 1985).

Itchy and Scratchy in: The Last Traction Hero, Scratchtasia and Pin-itchy-o.

Notes: Theme park turns nightmare; an untypical episode, with an especially thin plot. But anyone that's been to Disneyland will get the point.