The second is The Love-matic Grampa, a sitcom featuring Moe Szyslak who receives dating advice from Abraham Simpson, whose ghost is possessing a love testing machine.

The episode was written by David X. Cohen, Dan Greaney and Steve Tompkins, with Ken Keeler coming up with the story and the general idea of intentionally bad writing.

He receives advice from the ghost of Abraham Simpson, who was crushed by a store shelf containing cans of figs that toppled on him and subsequently "while travelling up toward Heaven…got lost along the way" and now possesses Moe's love tester machine.

After Kearney, Dolph and Jimbo whack the machine because it said they were gay, it malfunctions and advises Moe to tell his date that "her rump's as big as the Queen's, and twice as fragrant."

Moe returns with a bowl of snails dumped on his head and his dependence on the machine is revealed, so he confesses to receiving advice.

After the introduction there is a sketch, where the family are portrayed as beavers living in a dam with Tim Conway as a skunk and Homer's boss.

The show ends with a medley of songs about candy sung by the family, Jasper Beardley and Waylon Smithers.

Troy ends the special with a look at the upcoming season of The Simpsons, filled with ridiculous plot twists, such as Homer turning Lisa into a frog using magical powers, the discovery of Bart's two long-lost identical twin brothers (one African-American, the other a cowboy), Selma marrying Lenny, Bumblebee Man, and Itchy (in succession), and Homer meeting an alien named Ozmodiar whom only he can see.

[3] Creator Matt Groening was uneasy about the idea, feeling that it could be mistranslated as actually bad sitcom writing.

[6] One of the "crazy" ideas was the inclusion of the character of Ozmodiar, who was originally included in the script for an earlier episode but was considered too ridiculous for the time.

[3] Three guest stars appear in the episode; Phil Hartman as Troy McClure, Tim Conway as himself and Gailard Sartain as Big Daddy.

Conway, a comic veteran, was known for his work on The Carol Burnett Show, which has a similar format to The Simpson Family Smile-Time Variety Hour.

He and Michael Weithorn[13] wrote a pilot script where Krusty moved to Los Angeles and got his own talk show.

"[13] Groening also expressed a wish to make Simpstasia, a parody of Fantasia, but it was never produced, partly because it would have been too difficult to write a feature-length script, although a similar idea did appear in the episode "Itchy & Scratchy Land".

[17] Before his murder, Phil Hartman had said he had wished to make a live-action film based around his character of Troy McClure, and several of the show's staff had expressed a desire to help create it.

When McClure mentions that Fox can only fill up three slots for the next season, the three series are Melrose Place, The X-Files, and The Simpsons itself.

[20] The Love-matic Grampa is a parody of fantasy sitcoms such as Mister Ed, I Dream of Jeannie, and Bewitched[2] as well as having similarities to My Mother the Car.

[5] The Love-matic Grampa machine singing "Daisy Bell" in a distorted manner when its electrical circuits are failing is a reference to HAL from the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

[11] The songs parodied during the third segment are: In the planned future for the show, Homer meets a green space alien named Ozmodiar that only he can see.

[5] The writers of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood called it, "A very clever spin on the alternates offered by the Treehouse of Horrors run.

[26] Additionally, The News Journal staff writer Gary Mullinax picked the episode as part of his top-ten list.