Yeah, the whole dreamquest for Homer’s soulmate thing was pretty bad. BUT, the show also contained one of my favorite bits:
Lisa tries to keep Homer from eating a poisoned eclair:
Lisa: “Dad! Don’t eat that! It’s poisoned!”
Homer: (shrugs) “Eh, I’ve had a good run.”
Lisa: (desperately) “Um…Er…It’s low-fat!”
Homer: (flinging the eclair away) “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…”
Whenever my wife tries to purchase low-fat ANYTHING, the kids and I always act out this scene
(By the way, the follow-up to this bit is pretty good, too: The flung eclair hits and explodes, destroying somebody’s chili booth. Chief Wiggum looks at the resulting disaster and says: “Boy! It’s sure lucky that that thing landed in this smoking crater!”)
I loved Saddlesore Galactica. The Chili one (“El Viaje de Nuestro Homer” IIRC) sucked but had its moments.
“There but for the grace of God goes Marge herself” - Helen Lovejoy
The beginning of the end was definitely “Homer vs. Dignity” aka the Prank Monkey episode aka Homer gets raped by a panda. There have been some good episodes since but that was an abomination.
Finally, some cracks appeared in the show’s hilarious facade.
“Yeah but he sells tickets!”
Compare the Baldwin/Basinger episode (still pretty funny) to the classic episode where Burns hires a team of professional baseball players to be ringers in the big plant softball game. Pure hilarity.
Officer Eddie [suspiciously] “I heard someone was killed in New York City and they never figured out who did it”.
Steve Sax “Lots of people have been killed in New York”
Officer Lou “You don’t know when to shut up, do ya Saxy-boy?!”
Yeah, the BBBQ/BYOBB thing is my favorite part. “I thumb through your magazines” being my second favorit part. But the moment that keeps getting funnier every time I see it is:
Lisa: You don’t even eat cheese? But you must think I’m a horrible monster.
Apu: Indeed I do. But I learned long ago not to impose my beliefs on other people…
The fact that Apu thinks Lisa is a horrible monster and isn’t afraid to tell her so, and indeed is able to maintain a pleasant conversation with her is hilarious.
According to the 2nd season DVD commentary, the chili episode was actually written to be part of the 2nd season, but it was thought too “out there”, so it was pushed off until later. So really, I don’t see how it could be when the Simpsons touched bottom.
IMHO, the Simpsons has been getting better the last few seasons, so if it did touch bottom a few years ago, it was more of a bounce then a splat.