The recent "Treehouse of Horror XXII" represents the 22nd annual Halloween installment of America's longest-running scripted television show, "The Simpsons."
Fans of the show likely found this an excellent addition to the series, keeping pace with the intelligent comedy and political satire viewers have grown to love.
But it's not an episode for children and teenagers. While classified as TV-PG, there is plenty of offensive material.
Especially disturbing is the amount of sexual content. A big deal is made out of the camera zooming in on a woman's cleavage in one shot, while frequent specific anatomical references are made throughout the episode.
In another scene, a woman is shown heading toward the "Yale School of Prostitution" after a verbal exchange that occurs with a passerby. Later in the episode, sex between Bart Simpson and a female alien is implied through a symbolic on-screen representation and discussed extensively after the fact.
There are also vain references to deity and other swear words being freely used by children and adults. Disrespectful attitudes are interspersed into the plot, and a common undercurrent is the disobedience of children to parents and other figures of authority.
Then there's the violence. Ned Flanders believes he is being instructed by God to perform random cold-blooded vigilante murders. In one scene, Ned cuts off a man's head and throws it into a lake.
While the level of blood and gore is comical enough to be easily brushed off by a more mature audience, it is disturbing enough that a younger viewer who fails to comprehend the farcical nature of the story line might be unnerved.
What parents might find most alarming, though, is that the characters are lauded by their peers as a result of inappropriate actions.
There is a unique connection to Utah in this episode. An early scene portrays Homer falling into a canyon and becoming trapped by a boulder. Aron Ralston, who survived the same amazing predicament and whose story was chronicled in "127 Hours," lends his voice to a character in this episode.
Joseph Irvine is a self-employed contractor for ClearPlay from Madison, Alabama. Aspiring to study law at BYU, Joseph hopes a recruiter will one day stumble across one of his articles and invite him in for an interview.