Okay, so it’s been done before, but that was almost two years ago, and there’s going to be a slight difference this time.
Name your ONE favorite Simpsons episode of all time. Not your Top Ten, Top Five, or Top Two. ONE. If there’s a tie, break it.
For those for whom it would matter, this is your favorite episode, not necessarily what you think is the greatest episode.
As for me, I’d have to say Cape Feare, the classic fifth season parody of some movie whose name escapes me. I love the Sideshow Bob episodes, I love any episode where there’s a bit of adventure and danger, and this episode has it all. I also love the FBI Light Opera Society, Marge’s visit to Wiggum, “The Bart, The,” and the houseboat. I even love the rake scene. Great episode.
Bart Sells His Soul. So many of the best gags come from this episode: “In the Garden of Eden”; Uncle Moe’s Family Feedbag; “Dial nine-one, and when I say so, dial one again”; “He’s back! In POG form”; “Thanks, chum…p.” Plus, it’s one of the best Simpsons episodes to deal with a weighty topic (the concept of the soul) without losing its humor.
This is going to be tough. I’d have to look through a list of all 393 episodes to refresh my memory, but you might have nailed it. Cape Feare was damn funny, and holds up to multiple viewngs.
Off the top of my head…Last Exit to Springfield.
“Look at them all, through the darkness I’m bringing.
They’re not sad at all. They’re actually singing!
They sing without juicers.
They sing without blenders.
They sing without flunjers, capdabblers and smendlers!”
“Some Enchanted Evening,” a.k.a. The Babysitter Bandit. “Lord help me, I’m just not very smart.” If they have to put just one episode in a time capsule/one-way satellite trip into the void, this is the episode.
The Casino Episode, easily.
“You blalksidlksd asdnfsd”
“Homer, slow down.”
“You broke a promise to a little girl and made her cry. Then I cried. Then Maggie laughed. (weeping) She’s such a trooper.”
“A Streetcar Named Marge,” if I have to pick just one. The Ayn Rand day care center puts it over the top, especially the background signs: “A is A” “Helping is Futile.” The songs are pretty funny too.
Easy. The one (I don’t know what it’s called) where they went to Austrailia.
I watched since Tracy Ullman. I like animation. But thought “Well ok” And then I was sat there watching that one…In Rand Mcnally the hamburgers eat you. The montage of phone calls to the southern hemisphere. And when then they got to Vishnu at the centre of the Earth and I suddenly thought, this show is brilliant. And then it got better. The frogs. The American toilet. I’m impressed you could write that well on your own butt.
Easily, the one where Homer has to quit his dream job at the bowling alley and go back to the nuclear plant because Maggie is on the way.
Homer is just so goddamn sad and depressed. But upon returning to Mr. Burns he obscures the words in his demotivational plague from “DON’T FORGET, YOU’RE HERE FOREVER” into “DO IT FOR HER.”
Sigh, remember when The Simpsons wasn’t a fuckin mediocre sad shell of its former self? I do.
I saw this one yesterday, it’s definitely an upper-echelon episode. It’s one hilarious joke after another.
Lovejoy: I know one of you is responsible for this. So repeat after me: If I withhold the truth, may I go straight to Hell where I will eat nought but burning hot coals and drink naught but burning hot cola –
[all the kids recite in unison]
Ralph: [scared] …where fiery demons will punch me in the back,
Bart: [bored] …where my soul will be chopped into confetti and be strewn upon a parade of murderers and single mothers,
Milhouse: …where my tongue will be torn out by ravenous birds.
[a crow outside looks right at him an squawks]
Bart did it! That Bart right there!
Bart: [angry] Milhouse!
Lovejoy: Milhouse, you did the right thing. Bart, come with me for punishment.
[goes back for Milhouse]
You too, snitchy.
“Whacking Day”. Much as I admire “Deep Space Homer” “The Cartridge Family” and “Homer’s Enemy”, it’s got to be the Snakes.
“You’re all a bunch of fickle mush-heads”
“Yeah! Give us hell, Quimby”
“Avert your eyes, Children - he may take on other forms!”
"Inside every man there is a struggle between good and evil that will never be resolved… cut to Homer imagining the Devil dancing on the grave of the good Homer, chanting “I am evil Ho-mer, I am evil Ho-mer!)”
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