Okay, yeah, I’m changing my vote. THIS is the funniest thing the Simpsons have done - ever.
Runner-up: From Treehouse of Horror III
Homer has just blown Flanders away with a shotgun:
Bart: Wow, Dad, you killed the zombie Flanders!
Homer: He was a zombie?
All time favorite is from Make Room for Lisa
Homer’s sensory deprivation tank lands in the middle of the road in front of the Flanders’ car:
Maude: Oh, Neddy, you almost hit that coffin!
[the family gets out of the car]
Ned: [gasps] Leaping Lazarus! Is this what passes for eternal
rest these days? Rod, go get daddy his burying shovel.
Rod: Yay! [runs to the car]
[a little later, the family has buried the tank]
Todd: You sure buried him deep, Daddy.
Ned: Not so deep the Lord can’t find him – and judge him.
Rod: This is the best birthday I ever had.
I like the little bits of slapstick and physical comedy that goes on.
From Homer the Heratic
The Simpsons’ house is on fire and Ned goes in to save Homer. The door is blocked, so he drags Homer upstairs, throws a mattress on the ground, and shoves Homer out the window. Homer bounces on the mattress and goes back into the house through the broken window. Ned sighs and jumps down on the mattress and back into the house.
From Bart the Daredevil
Homer attempts to go across Springfield Gorge on the skateboard. He falls down the gorge, tearing himself up on the rocks. After laying face first on the ground, the skateboard hits his head. Cut to Homer being airlifted on a stretcher. They bump his head on the way up, and put him in the ambulence. The ambulence goes maybe two feet into a tree and the stretcher slides out and Homer falls down below. The stretcher hits him on the head.
I always liked Episode 4F19, “Homer’s Enemy,” the Frank Grimes episode:
Grimes : “Good Heavens! Th-this is a palace! How c-- how can, how in the world can you afford to live in a house like this, Simpson?”
Homer: “I dunno. Don’t as me how the economy works.”
Grimes : “Yeah, but look at the size of this place! I… I live in a single room above a bowling alley and (muttering) below another bowling alley.”
Then, later:
Grimes : “I have had to work everyday of my life and what do I have to show for it? This briefcase and this haircut. And what do you have to show for you lifetime of sloth and ignorance?”
Homer: “What?”
Grimes: “Everything! A dream house, two cars, a beautiful wife, a son who owns a factory, fancy clothes, and (sniffs) lobsters for dinner!”
I’m sure it’s just me, but I thought it was hysterical when Homer kept calling Ron Howard “Potsie”. It’s just so quintessentially Homer.
Gotta go with the whole Guy Incognito/dog with a fluffy tail scene.
From the '96 Treehouse of Horror:
Homer, upon seeing Clinton and Dole naked in tubes on the spaceship: “Aliens, bio-duplication, nude conspiracies… Oh my God! Lyndon LaRouche was right!”
later in the same ep:
Kang: “Abortions for all! [crowd boos]
Very well, Abortions for none! [crowd boos]
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others! [crowd cheers]”
Funnier to me (any other Russian-born dopers here?) but probably not as good in general, from the Naval Reserve ep:
Russian: The Soviet Union will be pleased to offer amnesty to your wayward vessel.
American: The Soviet Union? I thought you guys broke up.
Russian: Yes, that’s what we wanted you to think! <laughs>
Tanks ride out from the bottoms of cheesy Russian parade floats.
A sign - “Berlin Reunited - And It Feels So Good” disappears as the Berlin Wall pops back up, complete with razor wire and guard towers.
Inside the Mausoleum, a zombie Lenin shatters the glass with his fist, gets up, says, “Must… crush… capitalism! Arrrr!”
One bit I’ve always liked is when the family has having financial troubles and Homer secretly goes to Patty and Selma to ask for money. They say they’ll give him money, and he then chuckle evily to themselves. Homer feels awkward, so he starts chuckling along with them, gradually advancing into laughter, eventually leading to him leaning against the door in hysterics. Patty and Selma have long sinced stopped laughing and are just staring at him with irritation. “Just give him the check and get him out of here!”
Oh Lisa, you and your stories, “bart is a vampire”, “beer kills brain cells”, now lets go back to that…building…thingy…where our beds and tv…is
“Kill my boss!?, do i dare live out the American Dream?”
"Strike? if you don’t like your job you don’t strike, you just go in every day and do it reeeeaaallly half-assed
(from “Time and Punishment”)
Homer’s in a time period where he has a great house, sisters in law are dead, well behaved kids, luxury sedan…
“Marge, dear, would you kindly hand me a donut?”
“Donut, what’s a donut?”
“AIEEEE!” <runs back down to the basement>
donuts begin to fall from the sky outside…
<Marge> “oh, it’s raining again…”
D’oh! forgot the punchline to “strike”…
“Strike? if you don’t like your job you don’t strike, you just go in every day and do it reeeeaaallly half-assed, that’s the American way”
A joke so good they repeated it the next year:
Grandpa, brandishing a stake and hammer: Quick, we have to kill the boy!
Marge: How did you know he was a vampire?
Grandpa: He’s a vampire? Aaah! [runs away]
The ep where homer isn’t allowed to swear: there’s a sequence of cut-scenes where increasingly hilarious things happen to him. (beehive falling out of tree is one of them) In the end he impails his foot on a spike. His next line is the icing on the cake, does anyone have an exact rundown of that sequence? Including the exact words??
My all time favorite is when Homer is going into the Witness Relocation Program. An abbreviated version:
Agent: Okay, your new name is Johnson. I’ll say “Hello, Mr. Johnson” and you say hello back.
Homer: Okay
Agent: Hello, Mr. Johnson.
::blink, blink::
Agent: HELLO, Mr. Johnson.
::blink, blink::
Agent: Okay, let’s try again. Your new name is Mr. Johnson. I’m going to stomp on your foot and say “Hello, Mr. Johnson”, and you answer me.
::stomp:: HELLO, MR. JOHNSON!
Homer, soto voce to the other agent: “I think he’s talking to you!”
“That guy looks just like me!.. That dog has a pufffy tail!!!”
I laughed the hardest at the episode where Apu gets fired from the Kwik-E-Mart and has to come live with the Simpsons. The scene where homer eats the expired lunch meat, flash to an ambulance with sirens wailing… Then Homer goes back to complain and Apu gives him two buckets of rotten shrimp… Flash to ambulance with sirens wailing. That made me laugh harder than any other Simpsons joke that I can recall. Just the repetition, it’s priceless!
There’s a scene where Homer is trying to get into the stonecutters HQ. He’s walking towards the guards, whistling, hands in pockets. As he gets near the guards block the entrance. Homer does a perfect u-turn without altering his whistling or impartial complete non-interestedness. Somehow that scene is subtlly funny
…
“Save meee Jeeebuuus!!!”
…
H"shuddarrafudererrerara!!"
M"repeat, more slowly"
H"shuddddaaaarrrrrraaafffuuuddeerreerreerraarraaa"
…
When lisa tears up the check for twenty million dollars. and homer collapses.
Later in hospital: “That’s ok lisa, we don’t need that 12 thousand dollars”
Lisa: “Um, dad, ten percent of two hundred million isn’t twelve thousand”
cut to outside of hospital
heart monitor:meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep
I love the one where Homer has been listening to a Lose Weight While You Sleep tape, not realising that it is in fact Improve Your Vocabulary While You Sleep. Discovering that he has actually put on weight, he throws the tape away in disgust:
Homer: Disingenuous mountebanks with their subliminal chicanery… a pox on them!
In the episode where Selma takes Bart and Lisa to Duff Land, I liked it when Homer wouldn’t let go of the two-week old sandwich.
“How can I stay mad at you?”
And in another episode, "Oh Lisa, vampires aren’t real. They’re made up, like leprechans and Eskimos.
The episode where Homer and Grampa sell their sex tonic is full of great lines.
Grampa: What’s wrong with your wife?
Homer: You’d never understand.
Grampa: Flu?
Homer: No.
Grampa: Protein deficiency?
Homer: No.
Grampa: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiooooosis?
Homer: No.
Grampa: Unsatisfying sex life?
Homer: N-yes! But please, don’t say that word.
Grampa: Seeeex? What’s wrong with seeeeex? I had seeeeeeeeeeeex!
And Lisa trying to rationalize everyone’s explanation of the adult’s bizzare behavior.
Lisa: sarcastically I dunno, maybe they’re reverse vampires and they have to get home before dark.
Kids: AAAAAH! REVERSE VAMPIRES!