13. Radio Bart

• Lisa’s dancing is some pretty fun animation, and has been gif’d hundreds of times over, but I really love the reflections of the TV off Homer’s drool coming out of his mouth.
  
• Just like the infomercial from “Saturdays of Thunder,” Homer is exactly the kind of uncritical blind consumer who would trust some garbage product being peddled on TV, as we see with him watching the Superstar Microphone commercial, where he falls hook, line and sinker for each and every marketing trick. This culminates in the great “supplies are limited” bit, where he frantically calls the number afraid their stock has run out, when we see the gigantic warehouse full of microphones.
• Anytime I need to send a birthday message to somebody, I always go for the Wall E. Weasel clip. You’re the birthday boy or girl indeed. Semi-related, there’s a great documentary on YouTube about the Rockafire Explosion, the robotic band of Showbiz Pizza, the forebearer to Chuck E. Cheese. It’s about both the creator and manufacturer of the robots’ rise and fall of their empire, and crazy devoted superfans who have bought old robots and refurbished and reprogrammed them to perform new songs in their backyard sheds. I have absolutely no nostalgic memories of any of this stuff, but I was fascinated by it all the same. Give it a watch.
• Bart bamboozling Rod and Todd as the voice of God is such a wonderful scene. It also displays a great acting challenge for voice artists to perform their character putting on a different voice and still having it sound like the same person. Nancy Cartwright does this twice, with Bart as God and as Timmy O’Toole (although the latter ends up basically a slight variation of Todd Flanders.)
• After getting a glimpse of him in “Principal Charming,” Groundskeeper Willie makes his grand return here, feeling more or less like the rough and tumble Scotsman we know him as today: taking a swig from his flash before driving his slow tractor right in the middle of traffic (“Look out, ye horse’s arse!”)
• “With this hook, and this hunk of chocolate, I’ll land your boy, and I’ll clean him for free.”
• I talked about “Old Money” and its parade of Springfieldians all after Abe’s money that we’re finally at the point where the show has gotten a decent sized pool of recognizable faces to highlight. This gets showcased once more with the “We’re Sending Our Love Down the Well” benefit song, where we see Springfield’s brightest stars out to shine. It’s a bit of a hodgepodge mix of local celebs (Krusty, Kent Brockman) and out-of-towners (Rainer Wolfcastle, the Capital City Goofball), but it’s still nice to see them all in one place for a good cause. I love Krusty talking about what they’ll do with the royalties from the song (“We’ve got to pay for promotion, shipping, distribution… you know, those limos out back, they aren’t free! Whatever’s left, we throw down the well.”)
  
• This is the first of several times the “Axel F” music from Beverly Hills Cop is used as Bart prepares to descend down the well. I always figured it was because it was from a FOX movie that they didn’t have to pay the rights for, but actually Beverly Hills Cop is from Paramount. Also, these early seasons of the show sit right in the middle of the gap between Beverly Hills Cop II and III (1987-1994), so it’s not like those movies were huge at the moment. They were probably played a lot on TV and were big on home video at the time.
• More shit I don’t think I ever noticed: among the items Homer brings Bart to toss down the well is a big fish tank along with two goldfish in a baggie of water.
• Only on this show would the emotional climax of a parent reaching their breaking point and moving heaven and Earth to save their child, would said parent do so while imitating Popeye (“That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!”)
• “It’s an old fashioned hole digging! By gum, it’s been a while!”
• Continuing the trend of mocking celebrities who were nice enough to do their show, not only do they have Marge tell Sting that Bart doesn’t even listen to his music, but he gets promptly shoved aside by Homer after he finally breaks through to free Bart.

14. Lisa the Greek

• The opening with the traditionally animated rendition of primitive early-90s 3D animation is really spectacular.
  
• I love how proud Lisa is of the shoebox apartment she makes for Malibu Stacy. It also has such a great callback at the end where she rejects her piles of ill-gotten accessories and play sets in favor of her homemade toy (“It may not be pretty, but dammit, it’s honest.”)
• Similar to Marge and Lisa talking while folding laundry in “Lisa’s Substitute,” here we get them having a conversation while Marge is giving Maggie a bath in the sink, which, again, gives the characters some physical action to do and makes them feel more like real people living their lives. We also get a great final joke to the scene where Marge gets pissed that Bart drops his dirty dishes in Maggie’s bathwater.
• The extremely slow Coach’s Hotline is one of the best jokes in the whole season. The timing is just so perfect, I always laugh at how it just gets more and more drawn out by the time we get to “Cin… ci… na…… tti…”
• It’s a little strange that the dressing rooms at the Springfield Mall have cameras in them. But I guess not as strange as the squinty eyed psychos manning them grabbing their guns to presumably execute a little girl for allegedly stealing socks.
• “And when the doctor said I didn’t have worms any more, that was the happiest day of my life.” Probably the first sign of the real Ralph slowly coming into view.
• I love dream sequences featuring the grim futures of the Simpson children. I like to view this in the same reality as Bang-Bang Bart the stripper (“Don’t tell me what to do, sonny. I’ve been gambling since I was eight, and I’ve been hocking jewelry since I was twelve! Now gimme some chips!”)
  
• More dynamite line readings: the scorn-filled, yet exasperated tone Yearley Smith gives to “Put me down.”
• The third act has always felt kind of weird to me, with Lisa’s love of her father hinging on who wins the Super Bowl. She “knew” Washington would win (evidenced by her reaction, “I suspected as much,”) so it comes off as this weird mind game to make Homer fret and worry for an entire day. It supposes too greatly that Lisa is this football savant who can perfectly predict the outcome to every game, which might work pushed to the limit on a more absurdist show, but not so much here. But I dunno, I guess that was kind of the point.
• “Troy, made you want to do a situation comedy?” “Well, I fell in love with the script, Brent. And my recent trouble with the IRS sealed the deal!”
• Outside of the Halloween versions, we get our first variation of the ending theme, an fitting marching band version, which is just great. I had the two Simpsons CDs when I was a kid that had all the songs from the first nine seasons, which also included the different end credit remixes, and I remember those being my favorite to listen to.

15. Homer Alone

• I wonder how much of Bart, Lisa and Homer’s incessant dialogue over Marge was scripted and if the actors added in some ad-lib. Either way, I always laugh at Homer’s “Double baloney! Double baloney! Don’t forget to make it double baloney!”
• Marge shifting to one side as Homer puts the bowling ball in her hand is a deceptively simple but fantastic piece of animation.
  
• A very nice little detail that the other Nick’s has a portrait of Jacques on the wall.
• The Bill & Marty prank call is not only incredibly funny (their braying, ghoulish laughter at their poor target’s very real anguish is so great), but it’s also the perfect instigator to begin to drive Marge over the edge, such a cruel and callous “joke” presented as entertainment that would really push the woman who tried to get Itchy & Scratchy banned too far.
• As we saw in “Bart the Murderer,” I really do like the slightly more competent Wiggum, and here we see his combative back-and-forth with Mayor Quimby, a dynamic that I wish was kept around for longer. I love the attention to detail that when we cut to Quimby making his public declaration with a pardoned Marge, having come out on top in the argument, Wiggum is in the background with an annoyed look on his face.
• In addition to his sense of shame, another big factor of what makes Homer so endearing is that he knows he’s a lucky son of a bitch for having such a sweet and forgiving woman as Marge for a wife. When Marge says she’d like to take a vacation by herself, Homer immediately thinks they’re getting a divorce and begs for forgiveness. When Marge clarifies what she means, Homer is okay with it, as long as she swears that she’ll come back.
• “See? Got her on the first bounce.”
• I always liked this simple visual of Homer clasping his fingers over the family portrait leaving just himself and Maggie uncovered.
  
• “Baby Come Back” is my favorite of this season’s trilogy of inappropriate hold music jokes.
• I really like the somewhat subtle buildup that Marge’s ultimate release is being able to make decisions for herself. Arriving at Rancho Relaxo, she goes along with the in-room instructionals with Troy McClure and checks all the activities off her checklist, but her calming catharsis only finally comes when she calls up room service and makes up her own relaxing night of chocolate chip cheesecake and a bottle of Tequila.
• Wiggum’s appearance at the end also rides that line between semi-serious and comedic. He has Homer describe his missing baby before presenting Maggie behind his back with a “Bingo!” It’s very sweet, like he wanted to make a little show of it and was thrilled with himself for reuniting this father and daughter. He shifts back into work mode by telling Homer he’s up on charges of parental neglect, but after an overwhelmed Homer kisses him over and over in gratitude, Wiggum’s heart melts and he decides to let him off easy (“Just don’t do it again, you big lug.”) Really cute stuff! There’s plenty of classic moronic Wiggum quotes to come, but part of me wishes he could have stayed at this semi-competent level.
• Recalling the beginning with Homer and the kids bombarding Marge all at once with their demands, we get it again at the end with them expressing their appreciation for her (I love Homer’s desperate “Never leave again! Never leave again!”)

16. Bart the Lover

• The zinc film may have been the spark of my interest in watching old 50s and 60s instructional videos, and they pretty much nailed the parody right on the head. I don’t really know why, but I love that the handgun in the final scene fires twice, like it wasn’t enough to just show it, it actually has to fire.
• Mrs. Krabappel, who up to this point was just Bart’s irritable teacher, is completely humanized in just a few short scenes at the beginning: driving home in the rain, buying soup-for-one and desperately playing the lottery (“Still teaching?” “Let’s see… Another day at least.”) “Sugar in the gas tank. Your ex-husband strikes again” is so fucking brilliant, it’s maybe the best example of giving the audience important exposition, where it’s a great joke but in one line of dialogue we get an explanation of Krabappel’s marital status.
• Todd’s “Ow! My eyeball!” always makes me laugh. I don’t know why it’s “eyeball” and not “eye,” but that’s why it’s so funny. This is also a rare instance of showing Rod and Todd at Springfield Elementary.
• The sad, sad lives of professional yo-yo-ers. At least Sparkle seems to be mildly content.
  
• And lo, we get our very first Donald Trump reference in the series, where Homer tries to think of a person who got rich doing yo-yo tricks (he’s in “good” company with Bill Cosby in Homer’s list of candidates.)
• Mrs. Krabappel is best known for her “Ha!” but I love Marcia Wallace’s other exclamatory noises as well. When Bart responds that he would give back his yo-yo if their roles were reversed, Krabappel’s mocking “Pffft!” is so damn good. What an astounding performer Marcia Wallace was.
• This photo makes me want a spin-off featuring young Jasper.
  
• “You’ve got a date with the Xerox machine!” Bart distributing scandalous photos of his teacher to his classmates feels like it plays a little bit differently nowadays, as does the scene later with this exchange: “Alright, Bart, who’s your girlfriend?” “My teacher.”
• Watching these episodes again in 2020 is unique in revisiting certain scenes that have been made even more famous thanks to the rise of Simpsons Shitposting. Here, we have Todd Flanders’ “I don’t want any damn vegetables,” which has lent to so, so, so many great memes, the most darkly hilarious interpreting “vegetables” as comatose people, such as Todd mercy-killing the bedridden Homer from the “So It’s Come to This” clip show. It’s also the subject of this glorious Dankmus remix.
  
• Dan Castellaneta reading this postcard is one of his funniest performances of the series.
  
• “All of us pull a few boners now and then, go off half-cocked, make asses’ of ourselves… I don’t want to be hard on you…”
• It’s sweet and salty at the same time as Marge gives Homer the exception that he can curse when they snuggle.
• I’d love to hear the montage of Homer swearing uncensored. Apparently Dan Castellaneta recorded the session with the lines uncut, so it must exist somewhere. I love that he gets more incensed by Flanders getting good news more than anything else (“YOU DIRTY BA-”)
• “Three simple words: I am gay.” These lines are funny enough, but I like that Homer provides the actually serious ending line to the letter (“With a love that will echo through the ages.”)

17. Homer at the Bat

• Homer in mid-choke is another heavily rotated image, mostly used as a reaction to something grotesque or revolting. Him choking out the donut is such a quick bit of animation, but it’s just so wonderful, one of hundreds of examples of small, fun animated acting bits from the show.
  
• I always laugh at Homer’s homemade football, and at this exchange between him and Bart (“How many home runs are you gonna hit with that?” “Let’s see… We play thirty games, ten at-bats a game… three thousand.”)
• Slow motion is really laborious to do in animation, but when it comes to animating Homer’s immense girth jiggling around as he swings and hits the ball, complete with actual sloshing sound effects, I’d say it was worth it.
  
• It’s great that when Burns tells Smithers he’d like to cheat to win his bet with Amodopoulos, Smithers immediately asks him who he’d like killed.
• I’m not a baseball fan in the least, and there are definitely little in-jokes about each of the nine players sprinkled in throughout the episode, but it’s great how most of the players are given enough characterization that reads to non-fans like me and are still really funny. My favorite is probably Mike Scosia, who is thrilled to live out his dream of being a blue-collar worker (“It’s such a relief from the pressures of playing big-league ball.”) I also like how a balance is struck between showing the players being really great and our characters being in awe of them without becoming too fawning and making the episode into a puff piece for them. Darryl Strawberry is the perfect example, presenting himself as an almost superhuman athlete (hitting nine home runs in one game, leaping up hundreds of feet into the air to catch a ball), but this is only to make him stand in contrast with Homer and make him feel inadequate. I also love how he’s a humongous kiss-ass to Burns for no real reason (“Some players have a bad attitude, skip!” “They sure do, Strawberry.”)
  
• “No matter how good you are at something, there’s always about a million people better than you.” I un-ironically think back to this advice from time to time, how you shouldn’t strive to be “the best,” but just to be good and honest as you are, as there’ll always be someone who technically “knows” more than you.
• “What are you going to do with the million dollars, sir?” “Oh, I dunno. Throw it on the pile, I suppose.” I love this throwaway line that feels like it negates the importance of the plot, but it just makes it even better and is perfectly in line with Burns’ character. He doesn’t give a shit about the million dollars, making this bet, or making himself coach to all these pro ball players. This is rich person playtime to him and he’s treating it as such.
• Balancing nine guest stars is a lot of work, but the episode feels like it devotes ample time to all of them. Not only that, but all nine (or eight, rather) of their ridiculous tragic incidents that prevent them from playing are all incredibly memorable, even the stupider ones like Jose Canseco staying up all night carrying household appliances and furniture out of a never-ending burning building.
• “Homie, you’re good at lots of things.” “Like what?” “Like… snuggling?” “Yeah, but none of my friends can watch me.”
• The music in this episode is really great throughout, playing off the theme from The Natural in several places. Mr. Burns’ “rousing” speech to his loser players is really funny, but thanks to the music and Harry Shearer’s performance, it’s bizarrely kind of moving.
• The crazy vendor tossing peanuts everywhere is one of my favorite weird one-off jokes of the whole series. It’s so simple and strange and goes by so fast, I just love it.
• It’s great that in the ending, we have Homer winning without actually winning. He gets his hero moment as we the audience would like to see it, but as usual with him, his final success is thanks to dumb luck as he gets brained in the head and knocked unconscious.

18. Separate Vocations

• Mrs. Krabappel mentions that she has a Master’s, which is pretty impressive, and a pretty hard piece of trivia from a really quick line of dialogue.
• Milhouse the Military Strongman! I love that ‘military strongman’ was the actual occupation listed on the form.
• “The Army said I was too heavy. The police said I was too dumb.” Such an impressive line of dialogue that shoots at two different targets at the same time.
• “I’ll be frank with you, Lisa, and when I say frank, I mean, you know, devastating” is one of my favorite individual lines of the entire series. I also love Yeardley Smith’s read of “My God, they are stubby.” You can just hear the crushing realization in her voice.
• Lou talking about Mayor Quimby “polling the electorate” is yet another dirty line I’m surprised got by the censors. This establishing shot really stuck out to me: the Who’s To Know Motel with the half-lidded owl is a great design, and the Mayor’s arrogant I RULE U vanity plate.
  
• It’s such a great touch that we see the cops stop at a light by the Kwik-E-Mart and keep on driving, not noticing Snake robbing the place. The joke with Eddie talking about how being a cop isn’t all exciting car chases before immediately entering into one could have worked just as well if that were the first time we saw Snake speeding by. Instead, they layered it in early with a joke (the cops ignoring an obvious crime occurring) and built off of it.
• “Damn boxes!” is another random line my friend and I would quote to each other from time to time.
• The ending of act one is really beautiful, with the dramatic lighting and kinetic action of Snake’s car rushing toward Bart and Bart firing off the gun.
  
• Marge is really great throughout this episode in her attempting to be supportive of Lisa. Initially being understandably hurt by Lisa decrying her future as a homemaker (“I might as well be dead!” “Lisa, it’s not that bad…”), she tries to show Lisa that being a caregiver of a family can be rewarding in its own way, evidenced by her personally crafted breakfasts. This of course backfires immediately when Homer and Bart scarf them down without a moment’s thought. Later, Marge tries to lift up a despondent Lisa that she shouldn’t listen to what others say is or isn’t possible, relating it to her own memory as a kid insisting to her sisters that women can be astronauts, and that there would be colonies on the moon. Realizing her example kind of got away from her, Marge uses this as shining proof that anyone can be wrong. I feel like I rambled through the explanation a bit, but it’s a really fantastic scene.
• More great design work in the Laramie Jr. spokes-boy on the carton. That’s one cool kid.
  
• “Sure, we have order, but at what price?!”
• The library scene with the battering ram is so perfectly timed. The fact that it cuts away mid-action just as it bursts through the front door with wood shaving spraying everywhere makes it all the funnier.
• “In your pre-fascist days, you knew the giddy thrill of futile rebellion!”

7. Treehouse of Horror II

• The wrap-around segments in this and next year’s special make me wish they had made a full in-universe episode set on Halloween, since what little we see in these two episodes is so great. Of course, we did eventually get “Halloween of Horror” much, much, much later, and surprisingly it turned out to be an admirable effort, but it’s interesting to think what a classic era Halloween episode might have been.
• Act one features the most scathing depiction of the hyper-commercialization of The Simpsons to date, where we see the new world of the family being rich and famous populated by lots of annoyed people sick and tired of seeing them (“If I hear one more thing about the Simpsons, I swear, I’m going to scream.” “At first they were cute and funny, but now they are just annoying.”) These lines feel like they could be direct quotes from TV viewers at the time growing a bit weary of the omnipresence of our favorite family. They even throw “The Simpsons Sing the Blues” under the bus with “The Simpsons Do Calypso,” an equally absurdist creative endeavor.
• “Come to think of it, the guy that sold me this thing did say the wishes would bring grave misfortune. I thought he was just being colorful.”
• Is that Agnes Skinner with a mustache as a delegate at the UN?
  
• It always bugs me that Kang and Kodos are painted a much different shade of green in this episode. In their first appearance they’re a much lighter green, as they are in every future appearance. It’s a weird error.
  
• It’s great when we see the establishing shot of the Simpson house, you can see the door is still plastered with egg residue.
• I love that Otto yells “We’re gonna die, aren’t we?!” while thrusting down on the accelerator.
• “May I suggest a random firing? Just to throw the fear of God into them?”
• Burns humming “If I Only Had A Brain” as he yanks Homer’s brain from his opened skull is such a beautiful touch.
• Just as in the opening of “Homer Defined,” I love seeing extended scenes of just Burns and Smithers shooting the shit with each other. Hell, that’s basically almost all of act three, which is probably why it’s my favorite segment (“His family might appreciate it if you returned his brain to his body.” “Oh, come on, it’s 11:45!”)
• When Homer gets out of bed to go to the bathroom, he says he has to go “shake the dew off the lilly.” He says it kind of quietly and mumbled that it took me many viewings to actually understand what he said, and even when I did, I had no idea what it meant. “Shaking the dew off the lilly” is slang for when if you’ve got a penis and you’re nearly done peeing, you shake it a bit to get out the few droplets of urine you’ve got left. That makes enough sense, but if you had to go pee, why would you announce it with a phrase referring to the act at the conclusion of your urination? Wouldn’t you just say, “Gotta take a leak,” or any of the other hundreds of pissing euphemisms there are? Was this an ad-lib? I remember the bite being featured in the legendary fan-made “D’oh Song,” which if you were trawling Simpsons fan sites in the late 90s, you’re in for a blast from the past.

8. Lisa’ Pony

• I love Homer’s Miss Atomic Pile calendar at work. One of the hallmarks of this show was the incredible attention to detail to everything, including the backgrounds. Homer could have just looked at a regular calendar, but every moment like that is an opportunity for a joke.
• Perfectly playing into his strict authoritarian character, it’s great that Skinner hates the children’s performances backstage, but has to put on a smiling face onstage. He views the school as a reflection of him, so of course he’d be pissed that the kids aren’t that good.
• That “My Ding-a-ling” kid is a national treasure.
• I played the saxophone through elementary and middle school (of course influenced by the show, which I denied in the face of other kids who teased me for it), and yeah, there’s nothing worse than having a chipped reed, or even just an old, worn one. You just sound like absolute shit, even if you’re playing “correctly.”
• Great animation on the wobble of the Mount Bellyache being hoisted onto the table. I also love the speed at which Lisa quickly takes one bites and drops the spoon with absolutely zero expression.
  
• An early sign of Homer’s latent homophobia: “Marge, if I spend any more time doing these girl things, I’m gonna, you know, go fruity.”
• “Where’s the hyperspace?!” is a line my best friend and I would quote, sometimes when we were playing video games, but a lot of times just for no reason at all, much to the annoyance of those around us. My parents never played video games with me, but my grandmother played Mario Party with me a couple times, and as a kid, I remember being surprised at how quickly she took to it. She definitely fared better than Abe.
• I love the bizarreness of hearing proto-Ralph’s deeper voice saying a relatively mature line about Lisa (“What man could tame her?”)
• On an establishing shot of the Fiesta Terrace (hey, Apu and Jacques are neighbors!), we hear a woman telling Apu to loosen up, followed by him groaning very loudly. I guess he’s supposed to be distressed, but honestly, it just sounds like he’s having an orgasm, and I feel like there’s no way they didn’t intend it to come off that way. Also, hey, good for Apu for getting with Princess Kashmir. I like that now that he’s finally free from the store during the night time hours thanks to hiring Homer, he makes up for lost time by bedding an exotic dancer. What a guy.
  
• Homer’s Li’l Nemo in Slumberland-inspired dream sequence is one of the best fantasies of the entire series, both visually and musically. I usually try to play it in my brain when I had trouble sleeping.
• “Homer sleep now” is another overused quote by my best friend and I, again mostly used at completely random moments.
• “All the years I’ve lobbied to be treated like an adult have blown up in my face.”

9. Saturdays of Thunder

• The Spiffy infomercial with Troy McClure and Dr. Nick might be a series high for the amount of jokes per scene. Calling the tombstone “a depressing eyesore,” “you’ll think the body’s still warm!,” the Kansas Jell-O mold… there’s at least ten jokes within the minute-long commercial, and that’s without including the absurdity of the premise: not only in why would they be testing a cleaning product on a tombstone, but that they apparently absconded with Edgar Allen Poe’s tombstone just to hawk their cheap wares on TV.
• Speaking of cramming as many jokes into a scene as possible, that applies just as well to the McBain clip. There’s at least four overtly ironic lines leading up to Scoie’s murder (“live a litte,” “Got me a future,” “Two days from retirement,” the Live-4-Ever,) as well as Scoie eating a healthy salad versus McBain scarfing down a chili dog. All of this is within twenty seconds. This show really was incomparable when it was firing on all cylinders.
• Poor Galloping Gazelle. The animation, combined with the single bone crack, makes this feel incredibly brutal.
  
• The Fatherhood Institute mural is such a wonderful design.
  
• Bart’s unaffected reaction to seeing his father hauled off to the nut house is made all the funnier considering he’s already been to one this season.
• I always laugh at Dave’s reaction of “Dear God, not again!” to the shark attacking the father in the underwater fathering experiment. The concept is absurd on its face, but the inclusion of “not again” implies that this predictable yet horrific shark attack incident has happened before, yet they continued to test anyway. Just two simple words beyond the horrified “Dear God!” makes it even funnier.
• I love how quickly we breeze past Homer’s collapsed birdhouse killing the poor bird inside.
  
• Putting aside all recently revealed information concerning Bill Cosby, his “role” in this episode as the ideal father figure Homer strives to live up to is really great (“Thank you, Bill Cosby, you saved the Simpsons!”) Starting season 2, FOX moved the show to Thursday nights to directly compete with primetime big dog The Cosby Show, but the writers had nothing to do with this schedule change. I like the idea of them taking the piss out of this manufactured “war” by having characters on their show passionately praise the other.
• Martin catching on fire and the firefighters only extinguishing the car always makes me laugh. I love the complete disregard to children’s safety that’s often depicted in this show (kind of odd writing it out like that, but it’s true just the same). It’s made even better with Martin’s long, loud scream of terror as the Honor Roller shoots down the hill directly into the wall. Russi Taylor really gave her absolute all to this role.
• My favorite moment of the whole episode is Homer dramatically calling Martin a homewrecker, followed by Martin, a young boy, channeling a sympathetic mistress in assuring Homer that his son still loves him and he has every right to be mad. What a great show this is.
• I like that three-time soap box derby champion Ronnie Beck was name dropped just enough to perfectly set up his surprise appearance at the end. And once more, the show compounding jokes: his reveal that despite having three big wins under his belt, he’s even younger than Bart, him talking like a hardened veteran (“Seeing you out there brought back a lot of memories,”) and Bart calling him “Mr. Beck.” Again, that’s three jokes in less than ten seconds.

10. Flaming Moe’s

• More things I’m surprised they got away with in 1991: Drederick Tatum clearly saying “fuck” albeit bleeped, and Bart walking by the TV commenting, “Wow, T & A!” To be fair, I’m not super familiar with the TV landscape of the early 90s, but these feel like things that wouldn’t fly on other shows. Hell, even today you’d probably have problems with it. Like for whatever reason, Brooklyn Nine-Nine couldn’t do jokes involving characters being bleeped until they moved from FOX to NBC.
• The sleepover girls pursuing Bart is such a great sequence, as Bart flees and hides in terror like in a horror movie. It’s inherently comical, but is visually played completely seriously, like this scene where the girls unscrew the hinges on Bart’s door, and you see the screws falling as Bart is shrouded in a blood red shadow.
  
• I’ve never seen a single frame of Cheers, but it was a hugely successful show at the time, so it makes sense they would lampoon it with Moe’s. However, they smartly do so in a successful way by playing off the will they-won’t they teasing banter with Moe and the unnamed waitress. The bar crowd even hoots and hollers like a studio audience when the waitress gives her innuendo-laced punchline. I assume this is directly based on the interplay between Ted Danson and Shelley Long’s characters, but this slap-slap-kiss relationship is a universal constant in most sitcoms and movies that you still get why it’s funny even without knowing the source material. The only real overt reference (I think) is at the end when Moe mentions the waitress left to pursue a movie career, just as Shelley Long left Cheers, but even not knowing that, I just read it as an absurdist joke explaining why she left Moe.
• “I don’t know the scientific explanation, but fire made it good.” All of the flames in this episode look absolutely fantastic. I don’t know how they pull off making something look “brighter” in cel animation, but they’re really gorgeous.
  
• Another scene where the jokes just compound: Bart brings alcohol to school so he can demonstrate how to make a “Flaming Homer” (1), then he assures an outraged Mrs. Krabappel that it’s okay, he brought enough for everyone (2). Edna tells Bart to take the bottles to the teacher’s lounge (3), and that he, a ten-year-old, is more than welcome to take whatever booze is left by the end of the school day (4). Four separate jokes in ten seconds.
• Quimby’s “It can be two things!” is a line I still use to this day.
• It’s great how Bart takes off his Flaming Moe’s shirt and casually starts eating dinner shirtless, and it’s just like this understated side action as Marge is giving her next line.
• This animation of Steven Tyler’s “Are you ready to rock?!” has always stuck out to me. Speaking of, Aerosmith is a pretty huge guest, probably the biggest for the series so far to be playing themselves, but this show quickly sets the precedent that yeah, you can be kind of cool showing up on The Simpsons, but we’re still going to make fun of you. The band begrudgingly agrees to perform for pickled eggs, Joey the drummer acts like a meek wuss being trapped by hungry groupie Mrs. Krabappel, and in the end, Homer falls from the rafters and crushes the entire band, leaving their fate unknown.
  
• The second act break is so incredibly well done, with Homer getting gradually drowned out more and more by the boisterous crowd, the flaming drinks and the ringing of the cash register, further undermining his threat to Moe that he just lost him as a customer.
• We get one of many great tragic endings in this series, where if Homer had just held it together just a few more hours, Moe would have signed the Tipsy McStagger deal and he’d have had half a million dollars. Hell, Moe could have quickly just signed the damn paper while Homer was giving his lengthy prelude before revealing the secret ingredient and they could’ve been set.

11. Burns Verkaufen Der Kraftwerk

• Mr. Burns is very publicly anti-outsourcing, even xenophobic-ly so (“I want to look Uncle Fritz square in the monocle and say, ‘Nein!’”), but like all good American capitalists, he goes to the meeting and makes the deal anyway. But who could blame him? Just look at that clean German penmanship!
  
• I love that Homer frets at night by saying, “Oh, woe is me!” We also get our first instance of Marge sleeping in bed nude, which is a character touch I kind of enjoy, a subtle way of showing she’s not as straight-laced as she seems.
• The Land of Chocolate is of course an all-time great scene. I want that music playing at my funeral.
  
• “We regret to announce the following lay-offs, which I will read in alphabetical order: Simpson, Homer. That is all.”
• Maybe I’m just obsessed with seeing as much Burns as possible, but I think this episode would have benefited with showing another scene or two of Burns feeling listless and out-of-sorts in his new semi-retirement. The episode opens with him lamenting about the things he doesn’t have time to do while running the plant, I feel like it would have helped that story to show him attempting more of these things and finding that it leaves him empty all the same.
• Marge tells Bart to go on down to Moe’s to pick up his drunk father (in and of itself, a pretty sad joke.) But that begs the question, where is Moe’s relative to the Simpson house? Considering Homer always drives to Moe’s, I figure it’s at least a couple miles away. It could just be right outside the little residential area that they live in, I guess. I also remember the episode “Brake My Wife Please” had a joke where Homer actually walks to Moe’s for once, and it’s revealed to be just a few houses down from the Simpsons. But ultimately, none of the geography shit matters since the map of Springfield changes constantly. Those kinds of jokes live or die based on whether you’re fine with hand waving it not making sense (the greatest example being the power plant parking lot being right up against the Simpson backyard in “Homer the Great.” Makes absolutely no sense, but I still love it.)
• We’re only in season 3 and the show is already making fun of their running gags, here with Bart’s prank phone calls. Last episode had the infamous “Hugh Jass” appearance, and now we get Bart coming face to face with Moe, who thankfully is too dim to realize his tormentor is right in front of him. This is the point where the joke should be phased out, which it more or less was, with only a few more subversive appearances from here (Moe thinking the prankster is Jimbo, Mr. Burns calling Moe’s asking for Smithers.) After a six year absence, the prank calls came back around season 13 and recurred every now and again, except by that point, the joke was as stale as month-old bread.
• Mr. Burns going to Moe’s is such an illuminating scene for him in two respects. First is his utter joy at the idea of “going slumming,” the concept of simply going to a normal bar with regular working class people being a hilarious lark for him. It’s a perfect portrayal of elitist detachment, showing how Burns operates on a completely separate level than everyone else. He can barely even pretend to act like a normal human, just like all rich people. Second is Homer confronting Burns. Yes, money does cheer Burns up when he’s blue, but it can never love him back like he loves it. The emotional music plays as Burns is a bit affected by this revelation, and is promptly jeered and teased right out of the bar. But ultimately, the message for Burns isn’t the futility and emptiness of immense wealth, it’s how it can be used (“What good is money if it can’t inspire terror in your fellow man?”) That’s who Mr. Burns is, the money doesn’t mean anything if it’s not used to actively prop up his superiority and wield direct power over those he views as lesser. This is the crowning characterization moment for Mr. Burns; any time in future episodes they would portray Mr. Burns as meek, willfully conversing with other townspeople, desperate for their favor (“Monty Can’t Buy Me Love” being the biggest early offender), I always think back to this scene.

12. I Married Marge

• “If the water turns blue, a baby for you. If purple ye see, no baby thar be. If ye test should fail, to a doctor set sail.”
• Homer and Marge camping out in the castle is pretty adorable, but that’s gotta be a real uncomfortable place to get busy.
  
• There it is, the greatest pamphlet ever written. Using Frinkiac to find these framegrabs, apparently the episode “Jaws Wired Shut” stole this gag, with Dr. Hibbert giving Marge the slightly varied “So Your Life is Ruined” flyer. I’m sure I didn’t care for that episode, but now I don’t care for it even more.
  
• More of Abe being a supportive father: complimenting Homer for knocking up Marge since he’ll never do any better (“The fish jumped right in the boat, and all you gotta do is whack her with the oar!”)
• Watching this ten years later, I don’t know if the fact that Homer and I both proposed to our wives in the car is a good or bad thing. I didn’t lose my card under the seat at least.
• Lisa and Bart’s suggested baby names are a bit of an early 90s time capsule: Ariel or Kool Moe Dee Simpson.
• “I’d be lying if I said this is how I pictured my wedding day, but you are how I pictured my husband.” “I am?” “You may not look like Ted Bessell, but you’re just as nice.” Ted Bessell played the boyfriend on That Girl, and, as a nice inside joke, also directed many episodes of The Tracy Ullman Show.
  
• I’m having some difficulty imagining Smithers as a frat boy, let alone a “keig-meister” as his fraternity brother calls him. Then again, we don’t really know much about Smithers’ history. He could have had a wild youth before deciding to straighten up and fly right as a corporate bootlicker. It certainly would lend itself to an interesting episode, but alas, the days when that could actually be pulled off effectively are behind us…
• I always laugh at the overdramatic tourists in Olde Springfield Town (“What a crappy candle!” “You’ve ruined our vacation!”)
• Krusty Burger is kind of a dump, but I have to imagine Gulp ‘n Blow is even worse. The name itself implies you’re going to throw up after eating it. Or it’s something even more dirty… Yeesh.
• I absolutely love Homer’s “Pour vous” when he puts the onion ring on Marge’s finger, echoing his words when he put the corsage on her all those years ago. It’s both a callback to us, and a sweet little in-joke within their own relationship.
• More determined than ever, Homer storms into Mr. Burns’ office and gives a dynamite speech, selling himself as a sniveling yesman in the most alpha way imaginable (“You can treat me like dirt, and I’ll still kiss your butt and call it ice cream! And if you don’t like it, I can change!!”)
• The ending is another of those great have-it-both-ways moments where Homer fondly waxes on about how much joy his three kids have brought to his life, but upon hearing Marge is not pregnant, he leaps off the couch, dumping the kids onto the floor in the process, to high-five his wife. It’d be so easy to play this as a mean, snarky moment, but this ending doesn’t undercut Homer’s sincerity in the slightest. It’s really amazing how they can pull these kinds of moments off.

1. Stark Raving Dad

• Ah, the forbidden episode. I don’t really have much to say about the specifics of this show getting pulled, but its omission from Disney+ poses a larger question as to what exactly streaming services are. They’re not really media libraries or archives; at this point more than ever, they’re a replacement for television, and as such, their content “needs” to reflect the concerns and sensibilities of a modern audience. But if you’re watching an older movie or TV show, you kind of have to be cognizant of the time of which it was made, and to some extent, accept it. But I could argue back and forth with myself about this forever, so I’ll just say it’s a bummer in the case of this episode, since it’s really, really good.
• “Something’s wrong. Dad died!” “No, no, he’s fine!” “Well, whaddya know, I’m relieved.” The opening exchange between Bart and Lisa is so charming, where Bart teases his sister about the horrors of getting older (“Your legs start to go, candy doesn’t taste as good anymore…”) while Lisa innocently browbeats him into submission to agree to actually get her a birthday present this year.
• I love that you pay two bucks for the Krusty Hotline to listen to a clown laugh and laugh and laugh and that’s it (“Thanks for calling, kids! A new message every day!”)
• What a shot.
  
• Marvin Monroe appears once again to promote his personal psychiatric brand in the form of his specialized personality test (“Twenty simple questions that will determine exactly how crazy or ‘meshuggeneh’ someone is.”) The good doctor has another season or so left in him before he fell off the face of the series, which is a shame because I’ve enjoyed all of his appearances thus far. I don’t know if Harry Shearer complaining how hard the voice was to do was the catalyst for writing him off, but either way, it’s a bit of a shame.
• There’s a quick bit where we see Marge at her vanity using hairspray on her enormous beehive. She empties a can, then opens a drawer filled with more, and starts on a new can. We also see several emptied cans strewn over the top of the counter. It’s a really solid joke that doesn’t draw too much attention to itself, which almost makes it better, as this is just a regular routine for Marge that we’re looking in on.
• Casting Michael Jackson, the biggest celebrity in the history of anything, as a deluded mental patient is absolute brilliance. Given the chance to get the King of Pop on their show, any other series would have turned it into a fawning celebrity jerk-off fest, but not The Simpsons. Well, not yet anyway (see “Lisa Goes Gaga,” and hundreds of other episodes.)
• I remember thinking the joke with the Chief was funny long before I even saw One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, back when the show knew you had to make parodies funny in and of themselves, instead of just copying popular movies shot for shot and calling that a joke.
• “I’m with your father in a mental institution.” “Uh huh. And is Elvis with you?” “Could be. It’s a big hospital.” Michael Jackson isn’t much of an actor, but his flat, almost innocent (so to speak…) delivery ends up helping some of the punchlines (“You’re nothing but a big fat mental patient!” “You’d be amazed how often I hear that.”)
• Pretty dark joke with Bart fondly fantasizing about his drooling lobotomized father (still wearing his pink shirt, a nice touch.) But to his credit, he snaps out of it (“Well, there’s probably a down side I don’t see.”)
• Bart playing with the phone cord is another of those little acting moments I really appreciate. What kid hasn’t twanged that cord while on the phone? (except kids born after 2000 or so who have no idea what a landline is.)
  
• It’s so funny hearing one of the upset crowd members react to “Michael Jackson”’s reveal with “He’s white!” Not only is this years before Jackson’s, shall we say, “pigment transition,” but the man is clearly yellow. It’s always strange when characters on this show are referred to as “white.” I get it when they’re making a joke about “white people,” but it does kind of break the reality of the show a little bit.
• It’s a great touch that Bart wakes Lisa up by plugging her nose in her sleep, just as she did to him to wake him up at the beginning of the episode.

2. Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington

• Of course Homer is the sort of dunce who would believe a phony sweepstakes check is real (“See where it says VOID VOID VOID’ and ‘This is not a check’, ‘Cash value one twentieth of a cent,’ ‘Mr. Banker, do not honor’…”)
• I love the drawing of the Reading Digest cartoon. It’s always so interesting whenever this show depicts what comics, cartoons and animation looks like within an already animated show. Also great is the title, Motoring Ms.-Haps, a cartoon seemingly entirely about how women are awful drivers. It’s like The Lockharts, but worse.
  
• The first act is a shining example of how Homer’s mind works. When he takes an interest in something, not only does he become completely obsessed with it, it’s almost like he can’t remember a time without it, as we see him admonishing the kids for being glued to the TV, something he himself was surely doing mere days ago. All of this also makes it all the funnier when Homer is just as quick to jettison his new love, as he tosses his Reading Digest in the trash upon being ineligible for the essay contest, despite spending every waking moment of the last few days fawning over the magazine.
• There’s a very lovely scene where Marge tries to help Lisa, who’s frustrated with her essay. She suggests she take a bike ride, but is unsure whether that’s “cool” anymore, or even if saying “cool” is cool. Lisa chuckles while assuring her mother that those things are in fact cool. It’s just so sweetly acted between the two characters with Lisa politely humoring her mother.
• “We the purple? What the hell was that?”
• “Brevity is… wit” has got to be one of the greatest sight gags of the entire series.
• The VIP badges scene between Homer and Faith, the editor of Reading Digest, is so funny, but also really serves to show how damn good Maggie Roswell is, her increasing level of frustration at Homer’s questions is just perfect. Around the time FOX fired her, Tress MacNeille would later slip in to perform a bulk of the show’s one-off female characters, and she is a tremendously accomplished voice actress in her own right, but her characters are typically a lot more blunt and caricatured, missing some of the more subtle nuances of Roswell’s voices.
  
• The ending of act two is really powerful with Lisa sobbing and tearing her essay up as she witnesses blatant government corruption play out before her own eyes. Sadly, all I could think about while watching it, at the time I’m writing this, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo posted the gif of Lisa in that scene in response to something at the DNC, I don’t really know what. Without opening up a political can of worms, I’ll just say something I hopefully believe everyone can agree: conservatives are not allowed to use Simpsons memes. I remember in 2016 when I tragically watched forty seconds of that video of Ted Cruz doing Simpsons impressions, that disgusting little worm made me want to puke. But as I said, I don’t want to get political…
• Lisa’s jaded fantasy of the fat cats and swine in government is so beautifully animated, with the cross-hatched New Yorker style played against “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”
  
• The ending where Lisa’s scathing essay gets Bob Arnold expelled from Congress within a day was intentionally absurdist in depicting how quickly, efficiently and righteously the US government operates (“You work fast.” “I work for Uncle Sam!”), but watching it in 2020, it almost feels sad how completely alien the scene feels. You can just imagine the upswing of support that Arnold would get by his colleagues, screaming about how people are trying to “cancel” him.
• “Imprisoned Congressman Becomes Born-Again Christian.”
• “Cesspool on the POTOMAC” was robbed. Trong Van Din can suck it.

3. When Flanders Failed

• “Look, I don’t care if Ned Flanders is the nicest guy in the world, he’s a jerk, end of story!” From the get-go, this really does feel like a sequel to “Dead Putting Society,” featuring Homer’s blind hatred toward Ned. I don’t think it’s quite as good as “Putting,” but hey, it’s a high bar.
• Homer is such a huge prick in the first act, but at least some of it is excused by being motivated to come to the BBQ in the first place by sheer gluttony, as he grabs a plate of burgers and goes to eat them under a tree like a child. I love that at the end of the act, when he laughs maniacally with his mouth full of food, Ned and Maude look on and then turn away, looking visibly concerned at their crazed neighbor.
  
• The random French waiter dog tripping on Scratchy’s severed head at the end of the I&S cartoon always makes me laugh.
• One of the game cabinets in the background at the mall arcade is Robert Goulet Destroyer, another game I wish existed in some real-world form.
• “No, I do not know what Schadenfreude is. Please tell me, because I’m dying to know!” An absolutely perfect line reading from Dan Castellaneta, just dripping in sarcasm. Also he mispronounces it of course, sounding more like schaden-frawde.
• Homer’s war against vending machine apples lends itself to such a great scene: his sternly written note, the fact that there’s only two notes in the complaint box, suggesting regular employees don’t dare rock the boat and risk upsetting old man Burns (the other note being a plant from Smithers, “Keep that handsome owner out of sight, he’s distracting the female employees,”) and Burns mocking Homer on his way out (“Tell my secretary that you could have a free apple!”) It’s just so damn petty, but perfectly in line that Burns would ridicule such a ridiculous request from a lowly subordinate.
• “I’m sure you did nothing to discourage this, you scavenger of human misery.” Damn, Lisa don’t play.
• I love the Barney’s Bowl-O-Rama jingle on the TV (“For entertainment and exercise!”) It feels like they had to kill a few seconds without animating anything and just came up with it on the fly.
• Homer comes off as pretty cruel through a lot of the episode, but what makes the episode work is that we see him slowly come around to considering helping Ned out before he reaches his lowest point. When the bill collector erroneously comes to his door instead of Ned’s and complains about his right-handed ledger, Homer is about to tell him about the Leftorium before he gets interrupted. Later, he returns all the stuff he bought from Ned only to find their house has been foreclosed. So when Homer vows to finally help Ned, it was actually built to that point.
• “Hello, Jerry? Homer Simpson. Remember last month when I paid back that loan? Well, now I need you to do a favor for me!”
• I love how quickly this guy springs to life off the couch after hearing the call to action (“Ned Flanders is in trouble?!”)
  
• The ending is already pretty schmaltzy in its tribute to It’s a Wonderful Life, but closing with the big “Put On A Happy Face” sing-a-long is pushing it too far. I actually shut it off right when the song started.

4. Bart the Murderer

• From the very first time I saw it as a kid up till now, I love the Chocolate Frosted Krusty Flakes slogan, “Only Sugar Has More Sugar!”
• Just a wonderful piece of animation of Bart running to the bus. The POV from inside, the bounce in his run, the pitch perfect timing of it slamming shut just as he gets up to it… brilliant.
  
• “Bart Simpson, you’re late. Go fill out a tardy slip.” “But I’m only five… ten, twenty… forty minutes! That’s pretty damn late!”
• Love this shot.
  
• Regarding the horse race scene, it’s great that this early in the series, the show is making fun of its own popularity and its more gimmicky elements, like Bart’s various catchphrases, which polluted commercials and merchandising far more pervasively than they appeared in the actual show.
• I remember from the audio commentary of this episode, they mentioned how the FOX censors forbade them from showing Bart mix drinks on camera, so they staged him hidden behind the bar, which honestly I think is much funnier, as you see just the top of his spiky head whipping up a drink.
• I kind of miss the slightly more competent Chief Wiggum who would angrily go toe-to-toe with Mayor Quimby and who sort of, kind of knew what he was doing. Sometimes characters are funnier when they’re brazen and confident, while simultaneously being distracted and kind of clueless (“Fat Tony is a cancer on this fair city. He is the cancer, and I am the… um… What cures cancer?”)
• Flowers By Irene. That’s all.
• On a similar note as Wiggum, Principal Skinner also used to be more serious and authoritative, which made him a much greater foil to Bart. Hell, in this episode, he doesn’t even flinch when the goddamn mafia walks into his office (“You Skinner?” “I’m Principal Skinner, yes. And how, may I ask, did you get past the hall monitors?”) Again, a grown man way too invested in the marginal amount of disciplinary authority afforded by his job is far more interesting and funny than the spineless little turd he’d eventually devolve into.
• It’s really wonderful how the kids of Springfield Elementary immediately cheer upon hearing Skinner is missing, presumed dead, and later speculate on his cause of death on the playground, acting exactly like shitty little kids would.
• Bart’s nightmare is a really fantastic sequence, and as always, pulls no punches in making jokes about the execution of a small child, placing a couple phone books on the electric chair seat to get Bart at the proper height. We’re at episode 30 and we’ve seen Bart get killed, what, three times? Four times if you count the “Deep, Deep Trouble” music video?
• “Did you kill my principal?” “Uh, Chinese guy with a moustache?” I like that no bones are made about the fact that, yes, Fat Tony does indeed kill people. A lot of people.
• Great newspaper art.
  
• Skinner’s ridiculous story always cracks me up in how exhaustively detailed it is, and how proud he is to recount each and every one of those details. The best is how he talks about making a game of how many times he could bounce the basketball, just as he tied to sell Bart at the beginning of the episode on a game of how many envelopes he could lick in an hour. Skinner really is that fucking boring.

5. Homer Defined

• The Krusty card is one of those jokes that gets funnier and more absurd the more you think about it. How did this get produced? Was Krusty hungover and horny when he approved it? What did Bart think when he bought it? I also love that it’s specifically a card for a ten-year-old, just to make matters clear that, hey, this nice pair of bongos is just for you, kid.
  
• I love love love the scenes of Burns and Smithers chit-chatting about their respective weekends. It was pretty uncommon this early in the show’s life to see a couple of non-Simpsons just living their lives and talking amongst each other. We get an insight into Smithers’ sad but content bachelor life with his ironically named Yorkshire terrier Hercules, and we get to hear Burns’ critique on modern day cinema (“Call me old-fashioned, but movies were sexier when actors kept their clothes on. Vilma Banky could do more for me with one raised eyebrow…”) We get a similar scene when Otto high-fives Apu walking into the Kwik-E-Mart and the two have a brief back-and-forth. Even this early into the series, Springfield is filled with colorful characters, and seeing how they react to one another is all part of the fun.
• “Simpson, eh? Good man? Intelligent?” “Actually, sir, he was hired under Project Bootstrap.” “Thank you, President Ford.” Definitely a joke I didn’t understand as a kid, for obvious reasons. I remember reading it quoted in the Simpsons Complete Guide and doubly not understanding it, as it’s hard to read Burns as sarcastic when it’s in print.
• Here’s another great additive acting moment: when Marge is praying, Maggie mimics her mother’s prayer hands and quickly falls to the floor in a thud. It’s never addressed, and I don’t even know if I really picked up on it before, but now that I have, I love it.
  
• “Will I ever see you again?” “Sure, baby. Next meltdown.” Ahh, now that’s good sleaze.
• “This reporter promises to be more trusting and less vigilant in the future.” Pretty much sums up most of the major new outlets.
• The key component of this episode is that Homer feels tremendous shame and knows he’s a fraud, something that would barely register in modern depictions of Homer. He’d wolf down that prize ham without a second thought, but here, it’s even funnier that he’s so overwhelmed with self-loathing, not even food can cheer him up (“How are you enjoying your ham, Homie?” “Tastes so bitter, it’s like ashes in my mouth.” “Hmmm. It’s actually more of a honey glaze.”) I also like how his guilt is pushed even further by Lisa’s newfound admiration toward him, making him more embittered with himself (“What is it? What are you doing?” “Looking at you with quiet awe.” “Well, as long as it’s quiet.”)
  
• “Mrs. Van Houten? I’m Bart’s mother. We met in the emergency room when the boys drank paint?” I like that Marge’s plea to let Bart hang out with Milhouse again is openly admitted to his mother that their sons are misfit losers who don’t have any other friends besides each other. Also, the ending of this subplot is the absolute perfect example of this show having its cake and eating it too in regards to balancing earned sentimentality with raw comedy. Bart is thrilled that Milhouse wants to hang out again, and knows it was his mother’s doing (“Thanks for sticking up for me.” “What makes you think it was me?” “Who else would?”) It’s an honestly sweet and heartwarming moment. Then Marge tells Bart to play nice, and we all know where this is going. Bart unboxes his BB gun from under his bed, cocks it with very loud and ominous sound effects before he bolts off to cause some godforsaken mischief. Truly great stuff.

6. Like Father, Like Clown

• I always get a little curious the incredibly rare times we see Krusty’s other sidekicks, Corporal Punishment and Tina Ballerina. What are their roles on the show? Considering how great a character Sideshow Mel is off-camera, who are these people? What are they like?
• Speaking of Krusty’s people, we get to meet his lovesick yet beleaguered assistant Ms. Pennycandy, who is just great with her limited screen time. She’s clearly fed up with her boss (“How can he hurt someone who loves him so?” “Oh, Mrs. Simpson, I’ve wasted my womanhood asking that same question.”) But when she lays down an ultimatum and Krusty begrudgingly caves, she goes right back to fawning over him.
• I like that we had a direct callback to “Krusty Gets Busted” in that Krusty agreed to have dinner with Bart in thanks for helping clear his name, but we’re also told this is the fifth time he’s canceled that engagement, so it’s almost like the year and a half between the airdates of “Busted” and this episode has actually passed, even though of course it hasn’t since nobody’s aged.
• “I always suspected that nothing in life mattered. Now I know for sure.”
• I laugh every time when Krusty does his “Shave and a Haircut” knock, horn honks and laughs, Homer dumbly asks, “You think it’s him?”
• Another gag I never got until years later was the good Rabbi catching his son spraying himself with seltzer in the bathroom. I haven’t seen The Jazz Singer, but I assume this isn’t a parody of the scene where the father catches his son jacking off and shooting a money shot all over himself.
• “A rabbi would never exaggerate! A rabbi composes. He creates thoughts. He tells stories that may never have happened. But he does not exaggerate!”
• What a miserable scene at this bus station. The conceit of a rich and powerful celebrity feeling empty inside isn’t exactly novel, but it feels a little more potent when it’s a guy who never takes off his clown makeup.
  
• I love this bit of animation of the DJ when the first “Gabbin’ About God” caller asks the panelists if they still firmly believe in God despite all the hurt and suffering in the world. Just in his reaction, you get the sense that he fields this same dumb question almost every single show, and he’s just tired of it. Also bonus points for his Foghat T-shirt.
  
• I never noticed it until now, but the shop where Bart gets his Rabbi costume is Yiddle’s, the same joke shop that enamored Krusty when he was a child. The owner (Yiddle, presumably) is even shown to be a much older man, presumably having this store for decades. As he admits, he loves his work.
• “What’s the one thing rabbis prize above everything else?” “Those stupid hats?”
• I love that Krusty introduces the Rabbi as his “estranged father,” followed by the kids cheering wildly for this elderly holy man appearing behind the curtain. They’re as excited about this serious family reunion as they would be for any of Krusty’s goofy pratfalls.

15. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

• “You Have The Right To Remain Dead” really feels like it should be a Bond title.
• I love all the small interfamilial moments in these early seasons, when the show was a bit more leisurely and could make the time for it. Bart and Lisa bicker at the dinner table, Homer tells them to knock it off, so the two pantomime (or “panta-ma-mime” as Homer puts it) their insults to each other. That alone is great, but what’s even better is that they both laugh about it. They’re just little brats trying to annoy their dad a little, and it works. Such a pure moment.
• There’s a lot of risque material in these early years, but explicitly showing Abe paid for sex and impregnated a prostitute has got to be the craziest example. I also love that Abe doesn’t even try to sanitize the story, openly talking about how he “dunked the clown” with this carnival floozy. Also, baby Herb has a beard line, because of course he does.
• Danny DeVito is an absolute powerhouse right out of the gate, just nailing the opening boardroom scene. And as belabored as it gets by the end of framing the scene to explicitly not show his face, it still works pretty well. And finally, I love that at the end when Herb deflates and admits he’s just a lonely guy, we cut back to this dumb guy’s dumb face for no real reason.
  
• “All born in wedlock?” “Yeah, though the boy was a close call.”
• One of the biggest sins of post-classic Simpsons is the change in Homer’s self-esteem. He became an absolute maniac who believed he could do anything and be praised for it, but what made him so likable and relatable was how insecure and vulnerable he could be. This is evidenced by Herb trying to build Homer up to get him to take control of building his own car. When Homer mumbles that he “sort of” understands Herb’s pep talk, Herb demands, “Say it like you mean it!” to which Homer loudly repeats, “Sort of!!” Then he proceeds to go nuts on Herb’s build team, but this is only after he’s been riled into it, so it feels appropriate.
• I love how openly Unky Herb digs his own grave in letting his empty-headed half-brother have free reign, brought to the ultimate degree by ignoring his head engineer and forcing him to lie to Bart and Lisa (“Homer Simpson is a brilliant man with lots of well thought out, practical ideas.  He is ensuring the financial security of this company for years to come. Oh yes, and his personal hygiene is above reproach.”) It’s actually really sweet how Herb does Homer a solid by making him look good to his kids like that. Also at the end of this scene, he looks like he’s got Bender teeth.
  
• The moral of the story is that what the common man wants is usually very stupid and probably should be ignored. I love how expertly the episode is geared toward building to the point where Herb views Homer as the solution to his problems, but ultimately becomes his undoing.
• The Homer costs $82,000, which is roughly $150,000 today. I guess considering we’re told early on that Powell Motors is getting killed in the marketplace, this might be enough to bankrupt the company. But to bankrupt Herb personally? It seems like a bit of a stretch, doesn’t it? Ah, who cares. Also, the turntable animation here is really excellent, given the complex design of the car with Homer waving inside it all having to be tracked.
  
• “As far as I’m concerned, I have no brother!” “Maybe he just said that to make conversation.”

18. Bart’s Dog Gets An “F”

• Great visual of Santa’s Little Helper digging a perfect circle in the radius his chain will allow him.
  
• “Not that I’m angry, but how did you get my home number? …I see. Quite ingenious.”
• Homer getting angrier at Mrs. Winthrop on the phone is one of Dan Castellaneta’s greatest performances. I love how his irritation builds as he’s just so sure that the dog is out back, only to be swiftly proven wrong. The fact that there’s barely a pause between his rantings and the “D’oh!!” upon seeing the empty yard is just perfect.
• Sick Lisa calling Homer at work is a really cute scene, with him teasing Lisa about having “the kissing disease” and her laughing, and Homer agreeing to get her her slightly scandalous reading material (“Teen Steam Magazine? Well, okay, you’re the sicky.”) It’s so sweet to see Homer be an actually good dad.
• Marge turning her hand to show off her sewing finger has always stuck with me. The hands on this show are pretty simple shapes, but the turn is just so fluid and perfect.
  
• It goes by really quick, but I love the slogan for the Assassins sneakers: “Join the Conspiracy.” It feels like such a solid joke that perfectly encapsulates the projected brand attitude, the idea that you’re part of a secret club railing against “the Man” by buying a product, and such a gag goes by in the blink of an eye.
• Right on the heels of DeVito last episode, Tracy Ullman delivers her own tremendous performance, just owning every scene she’s in. I assume she did a lot of characters on her sketch show, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything she’s done, or honestly would even recognize a photo of her, despite being an instrumental person responsible for my favorite show of all time. What a surreal position to be in, where you decide to give airtime on your TV show to these weird little cartoon bumpers, only for them to later be this monstrous hit and cultural phenomenon. I know she initially sued FOX to get a bigger cut in the merchandise, I think, but I’m pretty sure she still gets a yearly check to this day. And hey, why not? She deserves it.
• The dog-vision throughout this show is really well done, with that great fisheye lens effect and the limited color scheme.
  
• Ah, nothing like watching a nice animated family sitcom where a man gropes a dog’s genitals, with the mutt yelping in reaction.
• I feel like this episode suffers a bit in that it doesn’t feel like there’s enough focus on Bart and his relationship with Santa’s Little Helper until the back half, and then he has to fight screen time with Homer trying to sell the dog. But there’s one moment that rings incredibly true, after Bart still can’t get the dog to obey and uses the choke chain after Winthropp bellows at him, he hugs the poor mutt and says, “I’m sorry, boy. You can’t help being dumb.” Considering “Bart Gets An F” earlier this season, and with this episode’s title riffing off of it, this feels like very meaningful, where Bart sympathizes with the dog since he’s a fellow screw-up like him. A moment or two more like that, and this episode would have been all the stronger for it.

17. Old Money

• Abe starts out the episode as ornery as ever, but softens upon laying eyes on Bea. But I love that even with him attempting to be more congenial, the crotchety fire still burns deep (“I was wondering if you and I you know, might go to the same place at the same time and… jeez,you’d think this would get easier with time!”)
• “Nothing says ‘I love you’ better than a military antique. Let’s look at the bayonet case.”
• It’s great that the first act is mostly Abe’s story, as we see a microcosm of his month with Bea (like “Principal Charming,” it’s great seeing a side character operating solo from the Simpsons.) Everything seems to be going fine until that pesky Simpson family shows up to ruin everything.
• The scene at Grandma’s World where Abe buys a wool shawl, prompting the clerk to call in a price check on “active wear” goes by so damn fast. I’d say this is another pause-your-VCR moment, but I say it goes by too fast, the scene starts with VO from Herman, then goes right into the check-out line, it’s literally only a few seconds long, and the way it’s phrased makes it more challenging to put the joke together. Or maybe I’m just dense, I don’t know.
• I love how pissed Abe is during the whole Discount Lion Safari trip, even when it becomes clear that they’re in real danger. This shot in particular is awesome, the composition of Abe’s irritated head bouncing in the center of frame is so great.
  
• “Has it ever occurred to you that old folks deserve to be treated like human beings whether they have money or not?”  “Yes, but it passes.”
• Whelp, this hasn’t aged well.
  
• This episode is a great example of how Homer’s attitude, and the audience’s feelings towards him, can effortlessly change on a dime. We see him mock and tease Abe about his “imaginary” girlfriend, unintentionally making him miss her last day on Earth, but then once Abe “disowns” him as a son, he’s absolutely devastated, and despite him being kind of a dick earlier, we really feel bad for him. Even though this episode is all about Abe, we still get in this little arc with him and Homer that wraps up rather quickly, but still feels sweet and earned.
• The cavalcade of characters begging Abe for his money feels like a pivotal moment in the series. We’ve developed to the point that we have a small stable of lovable side characters populating this town that we can have a series of scenes featuring the likes of Otto, Moe, Mr. Burns and so forth, and as an audience, we love to see these familiar faces. We also get our first appearance of Professor Frink (my favorite character as a kid, tied with Comic Book Guy), who is flummoxed when Abe asks if his death ray can actually be used for good (“Well, to be honest, the ray only has evil applications. You know, my wife will be happy. She’s hated this whole death ray thing from day one!”)
• “I’m looking for Abe Simpson. It’s important I get a hold of him. I have to tell him that I don’t care about his money and I love him!” “We get that a lot.”
• What a great shot, and I love how Homer runs to camera, getting down to eye level with the roulette wheel as it settles, his eyes tracking the chips as they cross the table.
  
• It’s great that the very end of Abe using the money to renovate the retirement home is perfectly teed up by making the place look like even more of a dump throughout the entire episode. But it’s never too overt that it feels weird, or that you can too easily predict the ending.

18. Brush With Greatness

• Krusty’s plea to the kids about coming to Mount Splashmore (“I told them you would! Don’t make me a liar!”) leads into the Kroon Along With Krusty song, which I love so much (NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW!) Lisa even openly identifies it as a “rather shameless promotion,” but admits it worked on her anyway, a sentiment I feel in more advertising than I care to admit.
• The sign gag is literally on screen for a second. Now this is a pause-your-VCR moment. I remember this image more from being featured in the Simpsons Guide to Springfield book, which was a fake travel guide with write-ups on all the great things to do and see if you were to visit Springfield. Does anyone remember that book?
  
• I love this bit of animation of Homer going down the tube, since it’s just a static image of him jittering about the frame. Combined with his warbling excited sounds, it’s so damn funny.
  
• “Am I just a little bit overweight? …well, am I?” “Forgive us, Dad, but it takes time to properly sugar-coat a response.”
• We don’t even get to the main plot until act two, which is a criticism levied at the show mostly started in the Mike Scully years, but here, we see the two plots (Homer’s diet and Marge’s paintings) living side-by-side with Marge’s award winning painting being of an exhausted Homer on the couch, and her breaking point with Burns being his vicious insults lobbed at an excited Homer reaching a new goal weight.
• Professor Lombardo may not be as legendary as Artie Ziff or Llewellyn Sinclair, but I still love how simple a character he is, a man who is endlessly positive about everything, even announcing he’s got to take a leak (“Now if you’ll excuse me, nature calls!”)
• Another fantastic piece of animation, set to wonderful faux-Rocky music. I love that the cat gets spooked twice in a row by the falling weights before fleeing the room.
  
• I remember for my last re-watch, season 2 is where I really fell in love with Mr. Burns, and I’m experiencing the same feelings now. He’s just such a fucking great character, you can tell that the writers just love coming up with material for him to say. And as with all the characters, he’s multi-faceted; as despicable and evil as he is in all other regards, there’s the killer line in this episode where he earnestly and honestly looks Marge in the eyes and asks, ”Can you make me beautiful?” And you really feel it, he means it.
• Ringo’s “Gyeeaahh!” was worth whatever they had to pay him to guest star.
• The reveal of the Burns portrait is just phenomenal, in one of the best endings of any episode. It’s perfectly exemplary of the show’s best quality, of being able to have its cake and eat it too in regards to balancing thoughtfulness with humor. Marge’s defense of her portrait is genuinely touching, and completely in line with her character, but we still get our final line where she admits she purposefully mocked an old man’s genitalia in her depiction. I feel like I love this episode a little more each time I watch it. It might be my favorite of the whole season, and there are a lot of contenders.
  

19. Lisa’s Substitute

• It’s really hard for me to picture Mr. Bergstrom bursting through the classroom door firing off blanks now. All I can imagine is children screaming, the police being called, Mr. Bergstrom getting arrested and the episode being over after two minutes.
• Dustin Hoffman of course is great as Mr. Bergstrom, but Yeardley Smith gives such an incredible performance in this episode. Her first line to Bergstrom, her quieted “I know the answer,” really strikes me: timid, humble, slightly taken aback by this strange new thing called engaged learning. I also love her little giggle after Bergstrom compliments her for getting her first point right. Their interplay is full of moments like these. I don’t know if Hoffman and Smith recorded together, but it sure feels like it.
• Ladies and gentlemen, the singing dorkette!
  
• My wife is a teacher and she has literally pulled a Mrs. Krabappel and sent irritating kids to the principal to keep them busy, or have them run a lap around the field to blow off some steam. I also love that the kids cheering for Bart eventually just devolves into mindless hooting.
• I love that not only are Marge and Lisa folding laundry during their conversation, making the scene more visually interesting and believable, that we also get the little bit of Snowball II leaping up and rubbing on the sheets, with Marge picking up the cat annoyed. Such a wonderful little addition.
  
• More asbestos! More asbestos! More asbestos!
• In high school, I helped make posters for a friend running for student council, and I considered replicating this poster for longer than I probably should have.
  
• Another landmark first: Homer’s first time fighting with his brain, which admonishes him for being stupid (“You’re trapped! If you were smarter, you might think of something, but you’re not!”)
• Homer’s absolute glee at the baffling concept of a “suggested donation” at the museum always cracks me up. I also love that this is Mr. Bergstrom’s first exposure point to the father of his most esteemed pupil, being cheerfully urged not to give to charity (“You don’t have to pay! Read the sign!”)
• Homer is a clueless oaf, but once again, it’s funnier, and more sympathetic, that he knows it and is ashamed of it. I love how quickly he breaks under Bergstrom’s delicate inquiries about Lisa’s lack of a male role model (“She looks around and sees everybody else’s dad with a good education, youthful looks, and a clean credit record, and thinks, ‘Why me? What did I do to deserve this?’”)
• Psychosomatic: one of many, many words I learned from this show.
• I remember seeing the Dewey Defeats Truman photo in a grade school history book and it blowing my mind. What a great gag to close out the B-plot.
  
• Mr. Bergstrom’s greatest lines to me come in his last scene, with him talking about his life as a substitute (“He’s a fraud. Today he might be wearing gym shorts, tomorrow he’s speaking French or pretending to know how to run a band saw, or God knows what.”) Also when he just flat out tells Lisa that yeah, I’m the best teacher you’ll ever have, I know this for a fact.
• “You are Lisa Simpson” is one of the most fondly remembered emotional scenes, but Homer making up with Lisa is the scene that really gets me. Him feebly trying to cheer Lisa up as the music box plays always tears me up a bit. Him pretending to be a monkey as Lisa giggles at her dad’s silly antics, and then the two do eskimo kisses? Fuck, that’s adorable.

20. The War of the Simpsons

• The opening of Homer drooling over “hors doo-vers” warped my mind, that the first time I saw hors d’oeuvres written out, I had no idea what I was reading.
• This image of Homer “having fun in bed” always cracks me up. I love that expression.
  
• “Anybody mind if I serve as bartender? I have a PhD in mixology!” “Pfft. College boy.”
• Homer’s memory of the party as a classy Algonquin group is so beautiful looking, with the Al Hirschfeld-inspired designs and limited color palette. I also love the 360-degree rotation that goes faster and faster as the stylized characters slowly morph into their normal forms. This art was all done by hand, so I wonder how long that cel was for the entire long pan, and whether it would fit on my wall (probably not)
• I always laugh at Bart smiling, sitting patiently, patronizing his father as he attempts to sugar-coat and explain his drunkenness from the night before, before bluntly admitting he gets it (“I understand why, you were wasted.”)
• Is that old Hitler sitting in church?
  
• “Queen of the harpies!! Here’s your crown, your majesty!!”
• “He blows his nose on the towels and puts them back in the middle!” “I only did that a couple of times!”
• I love how brutal the impact of that hole in the wall is. This is probably my favorite McBain clip, it just perfectly encapsulates the ethos of the lawless renegade movies they’re parodying (“Bye, book.”)
  
• “As a trained marriage counselor, this is the first instance where I’ve ever told one partner that they were 100% right. It’s all his fault, and I’m willing to put that on a certificate you can frame.”
• Yet another line I can’t believe they got away with, from Otto (“Cherry party, Bart. Any chicks over eight?”)
• The ending never quite works for me. I don’t really get why Homer gave that much of a shit about catching General Sherman. I understand he fancies the idea of succeeding where others failed, and it’s his selfishness vs. caring for Marge, but it never really clicks with me. He tosses the fish back when Marge gets upset, and him using that as his only point of argument that their marriage is fine doesn’t hold much water considering the joke where Marge literally lists Homer’s faults for hours until her voice is hoarse. There are plenty of episodes where Homer is a dick, but believably makes good by his wife and family by the end, but this isn’t one of them.

21. Three Men and a Comic Book

• The Casper/Richie Rich connection is a really brilliant observation, as is Lisa’s dark explanation (“Perhaps he realized how hollow the pursuit of money really is and took his own life.”)
• It’s a great little touch that Bart throws a crumpled bill on the ticket counter rather than hand over the bill.
• Comic Book Guy makes his first glorious appearance, sucking the nacho cheese off his fingers before presenting our heroes with the object of their desire: Radioactive Man #1. Also, a rare act of compassion that he brings the price down to $100 for Bart (“Because you remind me of me.”) Although considering he was bringing it down from Bart’s exaggerated “million dollars,” this might just be a sales tactic. Also, I wish “Freakin’ kids” took off as his catchphrase.
• There’s two “twister mouths” in this episode, where a character will jerk their head one way but their mouth will stay the opposite direction while talking. I feel like this was a somewhat common animation flair in the early seasons, but this is the first one I noticed.
  
• I don’t know how many people actually use the expression T.S. for “Tough shit,” and I’m guessing the censors also didn’t know it, because there’s no other explanation how they got away with saying it at least two times (“Kamp Krusty” being the other episode, at least that I can remember.)
• I love the juxtaposition between the smiling, clean and professional Krusty Burger employee on the sign, and his haggard, smoking real-life counterpart.
  
• At the exchange counter, Bart drops his handful of coins on the counter as well as a bunch of bits of broken glass from the smashed case. One, how was he carrying that without cutting himself, and two, how have I made two separate observations about Bart giving someone money in one episode?
• Another first: Nelson’s “Haw haw!” He did a similar laugh in the last episode after hotfooting Abe, but this feels like the first real “Haw haw!” It’s also one of the greatest; I love how leisurely Nelson bikes by in dead silence before letting out his instantly iconic guffaw for the first time.
• Not only do Eddie and Lou take beer from a child while on duty, they happily chuck their cups on the street when they’re finished.
• What a nice family friendly cartoon, featuring an old woman admitting a soap opera is getting her horny (“Filthy, but genuinely arousing.”) Her reaction is quite similar to Martin watching porn from “Homer vs. Lisa and the Eighth Commandment,” actually.
• “I fished a dime out of the sewer, for God’s sake!” I always loved this briefly crazed animation from Martin, combined with Russi Taylor’s great line reading. Any time Martin gets upset and his hair gets ruffled is very funny to me.
  
• The boys not knowing the true origin of Radioactive Man feels like an innocent little time capsule. I was a kid during the early days of the Internet, and even in those primordial years, you could still look up pop culture spoilers on Geocities fan pages and stuff. But back then, an out-of-print or elusive comic book would be the stuff of legend. Now, you can pull up anything you want in a microsecond.
• The third act is absolutely beautiful, everything feels incredibly cinematic. Sequences like these are an absolute tribute to the production that they could get animation at such a high quality on a network TV budget and schedule.
• “We worked so hard, and now it’s all gone. We ended up with nothing because the three of us can’t share.” “What’s your point?” “Nothing. Just kind of ticks me off.” And we end on a nasty skewering of moralizing in kid’s cartoons. Just great.

22. Blood Feud

• Core Explosion, Repent Sins.
• In the last two episodes, we’ve seen Mayor Quimby start to be characterized, specifically as petty and vindictive in defense of his cushy job title (“Nobody leaves Diamond Joe Quimby holding the bag!”)
• “Bart, it’s not like I’m asking you to give blood for free. That would be crazy!”
• It’s such a dumb joke, but I love the guy holding the blood bag in the elevator forgetting to hit the button. It’s timed just long enough to break the flow, and I love his humming to himself before he finally realizes what’s happening.
• I love the close-up cut on Burns’ face when he says “the blood of a young boy.” It really makes it seem like he absolutely relishes the idea of harvesting more blood from young children to revitalize him more.
• What a beautiful mural. Now more than ever, we stand by our USPS.
  

• “You always told me I was going to destroy the family, but I never believed it.” “That’s okay, Bart. Nobody really believed it. We were just trying to scare you.”
• Simple details make all the difference: I love how disheveled and distressed Smithers looks here. I also love that Burns’ hired goons are just working schmoes doing a job, as we see that Joey and Homer are on name basis with each other when the former throws the latter out (“Homer, I don’t tell you how to do your job, okay?”) It’s just business. They play poker with each other, but he will beat the crap out of him if Burns requests it.
  
• “Judas!!” The Burns/Smithers scene is one of those perfect tonal balances where they exaggerate a scenario to comedic levels without sacrificing or undermining the characters or the story. It’s so hard to dissect scenes like this because they just make it look so easy.
• Bart’s prank calls were so funny to me as a kid, but as an adult now, they’re more charming than anything else, except I guess for the subversion in “Flaming Moe’s” with Hugh Jass. The one in this episode “Mike Rotch,” the audio was used in “Weird Al” Yankovic’s parody of TLC’s “Waterfalls,” entitled “Phony Calls.” Listening as a kid, I remember being delighted hearing, after the second chorus, all of a sudden, it was Bart and Moe! Ah, memories.
• I like that when Burns comments, “What did you think I was going to do, have you beaten to a bloody pulp?,” he smiles and winks at Smithers, like it’s a fun in-joke between the two.
• No better way to finish an episode than the characters openly admitting there was no point to the story. “It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened,” indeed.

8. Bart the Daredevil

• I love how the one wrestler pulls a huge wrench out of his shorts, kept in place… somehow. It’s also great how this is called back later by Dr. Hibbert mentioning a child in the hospital whose brother hit him on the head with a wrench imitating that very move.
• I don’t know if I blame Homer for getting antsy to leave a three hour elementary school band concert. The ending where he’s lifting Lisa out of her seat to leave, but still cares enough to dart back on stage so she can bow, is very adorable.
  
• Homer’s frantic driving to the truck rally is pretty neat, with the colored lights in the background and the Simpson car darting to and from camera. The Bleeding Gums cameo is an additional nice touch.
  
• Why hasn’t there been some crazy millionaire Simpsons fan who made their own life-size Truckasaurus yet? Also, this is one hell of an act break.
  
• Speaking of the builder of Truckasurus, it’s great how the freak that built it refers to his creation as real, telling Marge that “Truckasaurus feels very badly about what happened.” He’s also a cheapass, offering the Simpsons a half-bottle of their branded champagne. Even better is you can see the foil has been torn off the neck, like this was a used bottle that was just sitting around the office that some dingus grabbed in order to placate this family into not suing. And it worked!
• Lance Murdoch’s crew quickly extinguishing him and running off as he starts to address the crowd while still on fire is so goddamn funny.
• “I never realized TV was such a dangerous influence.” “Well, as tragic as all this is, it’s a small price to pay for countless hours of top-notch entertainment.” “Amen!”
• It feels very realistic throughout this entire episode that Bart just continues doing his stunts despite all the warnings he repeatedly gets. Seeing how many dumb kids get hurt imitating stuff off TV only incentivizes him to do it more.
• The reveal of Murdoch’s illegible scribble of an autograph is fantastic. The message he orates with the pen in his mouth is long and thought out enough to make the punchline really hit, along with Bart’s awed reaction.
• We get one of the first wild mood shifts from Homer, as he goes from stern authority figure laying down the law on Bart, but when it proves to be ineffective (“The minute your back is turned, I’m grabbing my skateboard and heading toward that gorge!”), Homer immediately falls apart (“He’s got us, Marge, there’s nothing we can do! He’s as good as dead!”)
• On paper, Homer effectively threatening to kill himself by attempting to jump the gorge to get Bart to stop sounds disconcerting, but in the episode itself, it completely reads as merely his last ditch effort after exhausting his other options (“I tried ordering you, I tried punishing you, and God help me, I even tried reasoning with you!”)

9. Itchy & Scratchy & Marge

• Itchy & Scratchy segments would later become more elaborate with subversions or movie parodies, but I love how all of the bits we see here are just so simplistic in their brutal depictions of violence, which of course best serves the plot of the episode. Itchy igniting TNT on Scratchy’s grave and shooting him point blank on his doorstep with a ballistic missile launcher are so damn funny, but my favorite short is at the very end as the two whip out larger and larger handguns until they’re larger than the Earth, resulting in a giant explosion propelling Scratchy into the sun. It’s just so dumb that it’s great, but also, being the last bit of I&S we see in the episode, serves to drive home how absolutely nothing has changed, and the show is just as violent as ever, if not more so.
• We get telling glimpses at Homer’s collection of how-to books and his hammer with a price tag on it, that he’s never used any of this shit, presumably having bought them from some home shopping network with the intention of using them, but of course never did. And this all goes by without a joke explaining it further, as the audience is left to fill in the gaps with the ingredients given. What a concept!
• The Psycho scene is a great example of how well executed the show’s usage of parody was. In addition to recreating an iconic movie scene in a ridiculously absurdist fashion, it feels even more appropriate given Maggie is mimicking something she saw on television, as the show itself is doing with this very scene.
  
  
• So many I&S scenes of Marge’s list I want to see the examples of. “Brains Slammed in Car Door” is a big one, but “Dogs Tricked” is so great, and feels very appropriate that Marge would note down such mean behavior.
  
  
• “…and the horse I rode in on?!” Just the show casually alluding to the F-word in 1990, no big deal.
• “Twenty million women in the world and I had to marry Jane Fonda.”
• After the loud protest overtakes his latest show, we see Krusty nervously laughing before an irritated Roger Meyers, Jr. It’s odd how over the years these two have kind of flip-flopped regarding who’s “the boss” or not. Presumably Krusty should be in better standings, as the I&S cartoons run on his show, although I feel like it’s been referenced that I&S is such a huge draw that it’s almost keeping Krusty’s show afloat. But it’s funny either way seeing those two bicker with each other.
• “You know, some of these stories are pretty good. I never knew mice lived such interesting lives.”
• The Smartline segment is just top-to-bottom brilliant. The seemingly objective topical show is clearly biased in one direction from the start (“Are cartoons too violent for children? Most people would say, ‘No, of course not, what kind of stupid question is that?’”), and we even get Marvin Monroe live via satellite to lend some kind of “credibility” to the whole affair. Roger Meyers’ dismissive attitude toward Marge’s protests is fantastic, as is his counterargument which Kent Brockman plays into perfectly (“I did a little research and I discovered a startling thing. There was violence in the past, long before cartoons were invented!” “I see… Fascinating.”)
• A pretty sweet touch that we see Marge using the spice rack Homer made, as horribly crappy as it is.
• I’ve always loved this piece of animation of Krusty bursting through the banner. It’s almost like it’s in slow motion.
  
  
• “It’s filth! It graphically portrays parts of the human body, which, practical as they may be, are evil.”
• This episode really feels so ahead of the curve in taking down rabble rousing media watchdogs. This was surely made in response to the criticism the show itself was getting from such complaining viewers in its first season, but in terms of dangerous imitable behavior, I associate that more with people crowing about violent video games in the 2000s, or later crude animated fare like South Park and Beavis and Butt-head (especially the latter, with that case of a boy burning down his trailer home after allegedly imitating the cartoon, even though it was later revealed the family didn’t even have cable.) Ultimately the episode ends on an purposefully ambiguous note, where Marge acknowledges her own hypocrisy without recanting any of her actions. Even though the episode slightly villainizes her, it doesn’t go too far where you don’t feel sympathetic toward her plight and viewpoint. It’s a fine line the episode teeters on, and it pulls it off so well.

10. Bart Gets Hit By A Car

• I still don’t know why this episode has an on-screen title. It is funny that mere seconds after reading the title, we actually see Bart get hit by a car, but it feels weird to me.
• The tire tracks on Snowball I’s body is a great touch.
• What other show takes you to Hell and back within the first few minutes of an episode? Speaking of, I love the depiction of the Devil as this little shrimp who keeps track of souls on his Mac computer. And of course, Bart thinks this is the coolest thing ever, even as Satan gives him a parting farewell (“Remember: lie, cheat, steal, and listen to heavy metal music!” “Yes, sir!”)
  
  
• Great quick joke as Bart ascends through the various floors of the hospital, we see Jacques looking quite concerned as a doctor puts on rubber gloves. Gay panic seemed to be the theme of his random post-season 1 appearances; in the “Do the Bartman” music video, we see him dancing with a series of morphing female side characters before finally ending up with Karl, much to his surprise.
• We’re introduced to Lionel Hutz, and man, does Phil Hartman just instantly knock this character out of the park. The friendliest sleazeball you ever did see, his phony smile and sweet talking manner makes rubes like Homer easy prey for him. I also love how he’s literally a shameless ambulance chaser, as we’re told he was doing that while Bart was taken to the hospital, and then later we see his ears perk up as he hears sirens in the distance from his law office in the mall.
• I really love these two shots, with the staging alone making it very clear that Homer is the submissive party in this meeting to get a paltry sum from the powerful man that injured his son.
  
  
• Speaking of, I think this is the first instance of showing Burns’ incredible physical weakness, struggling to punch down on the check and straining to crush a mere paper cup. I love his pure satisfaction when he’s finally able to do so.
• “Clogging Our Courts Since 1976.” Before we had Saul Goodman, we had Lionel Hutz.
  
  
• Dr. Nick also has a great first appearance, just as competent a doctor as Hutz is a lawyer, both with offices full of phony degrees (Female Body Inspector, I Went to Medical School for Four Years and All I Got was this Lousy Diploma)
• I love this sequence of Burns imagining the fawning headlines after firing an ungrateful employee. His little satisfied “Hmm” noises make it even better. Sometimes, obvious ADR lines feel unnecessary or like filler, but in this instance, it really enhances it.
  
  
• “Your honor, my client has instructed me to remind the court how rich and important he is, that he is not like other men.”
• The sequences of Bart and Burns’ sides of the story are both so great, really fun and well animated. I love that Mr. Burns doesn’t even try to hide that he’s reading his account off a piece of paper. Also great is that he even throws Smithers under the bus in his manufactured tale (“It’s not important, sir, let’s drive on.” “Why, you despicable, cold-blooded monster!”), that even he is pissed alongside the entire court when Burns is finished (“What are you looking at me like that for? You believed his cock-and-bull story!”)
• Alone in Burns’ lavish study, I love that Homer angrily spits on his fancy chair, but then in the next shot we see him dutifully wiping it off. Even trying to be defiant, Homer is spineless as ever.
• Dan Castellaneta and Julie Kavner give great performances as Blue-Haired Lawyer grills Marge on the stand. The overlapping interplay between the two as Marge slowly recounts Bart’s “mental anguish” and the Lawyer quietly riffing off what she says as it’s all playing to serve his agenda is just wonderful.
• I’ve always thought the ending of Homer not knowing if he loves Marge anymore is kind of silly. It plays it straight enough that it feels like we’re supposed to care, but all-in-all it comes off as weirdly rushed and tacked on, especially given a lot of the build-up is told through Homer and Marge’s inner thoughts played over freeze-frames. Even then, it’s not without its moments: immediately after telling his wife he doesn’t think he loves her anymore, Homer clarifies, “But don’t worry, I’ll never let on, I’ll still do all the bed stuff. Maybe it won’t be so bad…”

11. One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish

• “You’re always trying to teach me to be open-minded, try new things, live life to the…” “What are you talking about? Nobody’s trying to teach you that!” Lisa’s pleas at the dinner table in the opening scene is a great example of the show striking the balance of having her wise beyond her years, yet still just a little kid. She waxes poetically about wanting some variety in her life outside of greasy American cuisine, but only convinces her father after repeating “Please, Dad” over and over again.
• “Fugu me!!”
• I guess Bart and Lisa singing the theme to Shaft is itself the joke, but cutting back to it three times for them to sing the whole song feels a bit like filler.
• It really is pretty damn risque they made Mrs. Krabappel into such a… liberated woman, as she appears here furiously making out with the head sushi chef in a car parked behind the restaurant. And lord help you if you disturb him (“My skilled hands are busy!!”)
• “No need to panic. There is a map to the hospital on the back of the menu.”
• I love this quick bit of animation of Homer in the “anger” stage. Later, we get a similarly great Homer freakout when he puts on aftershave.
  
  
• “So You’re Going to Die” is only second to “So You’ve Ruined Your Life” for best pamphlet joke on the show.
• It’s really cute how Homer innocently asks Marge her term for them having sex. “When we’re intimate?” And then of course he misspells it (“Be intimit with Marge.”)
• I love this moment when Homer taps his knee to beckon his son for a heart-to-heart, Bart naturally figures he’s getting spanked and assumes the position. The animation is so damn funny, he just looks so nonplussed by it, swiftly drops his shorts and goes limp across Homer’s lap just wanting to get it over with. So fucking funny.
  
  
• I can’t remember when I even heard the real song last, but it’ll always be “When the Saints Go Over There” to me.
• The harmonica wailing inmate in the cell purely for atmosphere. Just great.
• Originally Barney was positioned as Homer’s best friend, but the pair really only had a handful of moments together outside the bar before he just became a permanent fixture of Moe’s, with jokes solely based on him being a drunk. Here, Homer calls him for $50 to bail him out of jail (“Fifty bucks?! What’d you do, kill a judge?”) I like the small glimpses of his character we see in the early seasons, like his novelty answering machine and his filth-ridden apartment. I don’t know what other greater stories you could have told with Homer and Barney, but it definitely feels like a minor “what-could-have-been.”
• Gotta hand it to Smithers, despite being a gay man hopelessly in love with his boss, he does his best to hype up Burns’ ogling at women’s legs at the park (“Ring-a-ding-ding, sir!”)
• It’s such a simple look, but I love this expression when the weight of Marge’s poem finally hits Homer. The versatility of these simplistic character designs is really amazing at how many different expressions they can do with so few lines.
  
  
• I always thought it was funny that Larry King gives his NBA picks at the end of the Bible book-on-tape, which would immediately date itself the year after he recorded it. But I’m probably thinking too much into this.

12. The Way We Was

• McBain really is the perfect movie parody. Despite “specifically” referencing Schwarzenegger and Stallone movies, the parody still works now over twenty years because the big dumb action movie starring a loose cannon who plays by his own rules is an evergreen genre. Sure, you’ve got plenty of movies that do their own takes or subversions or outright mockeries of the tropes of such films, but there’s still plenty of media that continues to play them straight, making the McBain segments still play perfectly even now.
• A bit on the flip side of that, you have the Siskel & Ebert parody, which is still funny, but the idea of watching movie critics on TV give their reviews in 2020 is kind of weird. I guess the spirit of it lives on with online movie discussion videos like Red Letter Media’s Half in the Bag, but it’s different. But as a young teen, I remember loving Ebert & Roeper, and reading through all the negative blurbs of shit movies on a very early version of Rotten Tomatoes. I guess I loved schadenfreude, I don’t know. It was so intense that I remember I burned a CD of audio files of Ebert & Roeper’s most scathing reviews and listened to it probably way too many times. I was an… odd child.
• The magazine cover feels like it’s straight out of one of Matt Groening’s Life in Hell comics. I also don’t know if these jokes would fly nowadays.
  
  
• It’s a nice touch that the flashback begins with Homer scoffing at “Close To You” playing on the radio, and the first act ends with the song playing when he first lays eyes on Marge and falls in love. I also like that the motif is played right at the start of act two before Homer introduces himself. I don’t know why, but the song feels very appropriate as “their” song, as we see in a callback much later in The Simpsons Movie where we see Homer and Marge use it as their first dance.
• “I reached step one: she knew I existed. The only problem was, she didn’t care.” I remember cryptically posting this quote on my Xanga page in high school, referring to a girl I didn’t have the guts to ask out. Boy, this episode is reminding me of a lot of cringey shit I did as a kid.
• I love how absolutely shitty a father Abe is, which explains a lot about adult Homer’s insecurities and shortcomings. He imparts upon his son a very important lesson (“Don’t overreach! Go for the dented car, the dead-end job, the less attractive girl. Oh, I blame myself. I should’ve had this talk a long time ago…”)
• I love this little bit where Homer haphazardly wipes the hair out from his eyes. It’s a very true teenager thing.
  
  
• The “makeout music” Homer plays is this great faux-Barry White track “Don’t Be A Baby, Lady.” I wish I knew who was singing it. But then it’s followed later with the real “Do the Hustle,” so I guess between that and “Close to You,” they may have blown their music licensing budget for this episode. It’s also funny since Barry White would appear on the show two seasons later.
• I love the Shelbyville Forensics Meet flyer, the crude school spirit drawing also feels very setting appropriate.
  
  
• “Where to now, Romeo?” “Inspiration Point.” “Okay, but I’m only paid to drive.”
• Artie Ziff: the original “nice guy.” I love that Marge compliments Homer for being unpretentious, which contrasts perfectly with Artie, who is incredibly full of himself, the ultimate example being him urging Marge not to tell anyone about his “busy hands” (“Not so much for myself, but I am so respected, it would damage the town to hear it.”)
• I love that throughout and after the prom, Homer is always holding the corsage in his hand, like a tortured reminder of what he lost. But then, when Marge picks him up, he finally pins it on Marge, repairing her dress strap that Artie ripped. I never really thought it through like that, but that’s really, really sweet.
  I also wore a powder blue tux to prom. It wasn’t retro-70s style like Homer’s, but it 100% was the inspiration for it.

13. Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment

• This episode has three just perfect line readings, the first being in the opening flashback, Jacques/Zoar the Adulterer when Moses kills his line of work with “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery” (“Well, looks like the party’s over.”) He just sounds so bummed and defeated.
• “Myth: It’s only fair to pay for quality first-run movies. Fact: Most movies shown on cable get two stars or less and are repeated ad nauseum.”
• “So what you’re saying is, there’s a downside to the afterlife. How does one steer clear of this abode of the damned?” Martin’s Sunday School question prompting the teacher to introduce the Ten Commandments sounds like it was written on a card by Mr. Burns’ campaign manager.
• We get our first glimpse of Troy McClure, who of course would host many more hilarious infomercials to come. It also feels very appropriate that Dr. Nick is his partner in crime, as was Lionel Hutz, cementing these two Phil Hartman roles as affable con men in their own unique ways.
• The living room turning into Hell before Lisa’s eyes is such a beautiful sequence. It really drives the point home of Lisa’s moral dilemma, while not feeling too over-the-top or preachy, as it’s through the lens of a young child who isn’t cloying or annoying. 
  
  
• The second perfect line reading: the grocery cashier when Marge asks him to charge her for the two grapes she ate (“Two grapes? Who cares?”) I love that Marge shoots Lisa an annoyed glance for making her do that; I like the instances where we see despite her being eternally loving, even Marge can get fed up with her kids every now and then, just like any parent.
• “If you didn’t watch it in the theater, or rent it, or see it someplace else, we’ve got it on the Blockbuster Channel!”
• I love Mr. Burns’ colorful description on how he thinks the other half lives (“The screen door rusting off its filthy hinges, a mangy dog staggering about, looking vainly for a place to die.”)
• So many great newly impure faces of the children watching “Broadcast Nudes.” I can’t decide whether Ralph’s or Martin’s is my favorite. The latter gets in a great line, seeming to enjoy what he’s seeing a bit too much (”Gross!” “Yet strangely compelling…”)
  
  
• It’s a bit funny that the gag where Apu shows up at the house after Homer tells Marge he only invited a few of his closest friends doesn’t work so much anymore, since we consider the two of them friends nowadays. But back in episode 26, why the hell would Homer invite the guy who runs the convenience store over?
• The third perfect line is Mr. Burns instructing Smithers to give Homer “the Cheet-O’s.” Very natural.
• Further making Lisa a one-woman island of morality, and speaking to how corrupt the entire town is, the police don’t give a shit about Homer’s stolen cable, since they want to watch the big fight as much as anybody.
• Another crowd shot that makes me laugh. My eyes are always drawn to Otto’s gigantic maw. It’s mostly open in motion, as the upper lip just kind of flaps up and down a bit. Very strange, but I love it.
  
  

14. Principal Charming

• This is the first episode where we get some kind of personality distinction between Patty & Selma. While the former is turned off by intimacy, the latter yearns for it, or as Marge perfectly puts it, “It’s Patty who chose a life of celibacy. Selma simply had celibacy thrust upon her.” You really feel for Selma right away, with the tragically on-the-nose wedding and her somberly singing Brandy to Lisa.
  
  
• “Since I’m sure you’d only resent the pity of an eight-year-old niece, I’ll simply hope that you’re one of the statistically insignificant number of forty-year-old single women who ever find their fair prince.”
• While he would later become more and more of a spineless wimp, I really like seeing Principal Skinner wield his authority. This episode illuminates the clearest that he’s really just a big stuck-up nerd who revels in his position of power. The Bart/Skinner dynamic lost a bit of its potency when Skinner’s edges started to get sanded off, it only works if Bart can actually be punished for something. Last season we saw him reveling in deporting the boy, now he yearns to be able to use the “Board of Education,” a paddle kept being glass in his office.
• There’s several scenes in this episode that are just Patty & Selma talking back and forth that I just love. We see them go to the Kwik-E-Mart for smokes, Selma grills Patty about her date, these mundane things where we get to learn more about these characters. When Patty asks how she looks before her date, Selma sadly compliments, “Achingly beautiful.” She’s still bitter that it’s not her who got her man, but she’s also deeply insecure about herself and still loves her sister more than anything, which ultimately becomes the crux of the episode that neither sister can leave the other one behind. As we get more episodes featuring secondary/tertiary characters, it’s only going to make me wish we got more interesting character explorations like these, instead of the five thousandth Homer-gets-a-job episode.
• I love that the Australian Space Mutant has a little Joey mutant in its pouch.
• Considering these are two characters we barely know much about, the Skinner-Patty relationship still seems to work. Skinner is just a lovestruck dork with a bumbling sense of courtship, while Patty initially is barely putting up with this guy for her sister’s sake, but comes around to him a bit over time. Their first date involves complaining about the restaurant they went to and the movie they saw (“Isn’t it nice we hate the same things?”) Patty laughs at this, then quickly catches herself, trying to purposefully extinguish this rare moment of joy.
• Kissing really is kind of gross when you think about it, isn’t it?
  
  
• There’s a great moment when Selma is at her lowest, grabbing her nephew with the hopes that some kiddie nonsense he says will cheer her up. But when he tells her Skinner is planning on asking Patty to marry him, she’s freezes, and a bit of ash falls from her cigarette. I don’t know why, but that makes the moment even more powerful than just silence.
• Barney is the perfect disaster of a man to compel Patty to save her sister from. I love his bewildered reaction to his own bottle he brought with him (“Schnapps?”)