Top Ten Episodes of "The Simpsons"

(Note: lots of YouTube clips in this article, and they may not show up if you're browsing from a phone. At least I was having trouble with it)

I've written almost exclusively about movies in this blog, and while this post isn't technically about movies, I reserve the right to do whatever the heck I want on my own blog. So there. Anyway, I have undertaken the arduous task of ranking the best episodes in the history of The Simpsons. Now when I say history, I actually mean Seasons 1-11. I'm in the camp of Simpsons fans that think the show started to lose its quality somewhere in Season 9, and went into full-on tail spin mode in Season 12. I've watched every episode of Seasons 12-14 and have not seen a single one that was memorable. I quit trying to keep up with the show after that, save for a few more tries in the past couple of years. Suffice it to say, The Simpsons just isn't what it used to be, and after 500+ episodes how could it be? However, the first 9 seasons of the show are better than just about any comedy television show created (Seinfeld being its only other rival). The Simpsons first 9 seasons are witty, insightful, heartfelt, and entirely hilarious. My favorite episodes have a mix of some evidence of genuine love between the Simpsons family, something that was the heart of the show early on, and downright gut-busting laughs. I will never forget watching the "Cape Feare" episode for the first time in my room while my brother was sleeping. Trying to not audibly roar with laughter was no small feat. The Simpsons is one of my favorite shows of all time, and if you're looking to get into the show, here are my 10 favorites:




1.  Homer at the Bat

This episode wonderfully mixes two of my favorite things: The Simpsons and baseball. Loaded with MLB player cameos, this episode was a landmark for the show, besting The Cosby Show for the first time ever in the ratings. When Mr. Burns makes a bet with the Shelbyville nuclear plant owner that his softball team will prevail in their upcoming game, he decides to bring in a few "ringers". The ringers are a 90's all star team featuring Ken Griffey Jr., Don Mattingly, Jose Canseco, Ozzie Smith, Roger Clemens, Darryl Strawberry, Steve Sax, Mike Scioscia, and Wade Boggs. Later in the series, The Simpsons relied too much on their guest stars as merely gimmicks, but the baseball players work so well here. The ringers all befall untimely fates and are unable to make it to the game, except for Strawberry, who is starting in right field over poor Homer.

Homer ends up saving the game in a manner that only Homer could do, but the star of this episode is really Mr. Burns. From his suggestions for the ringers all being stars from the late 19th century including someone named "Three Finger" Mordecai Brown (one of the best running gags on the show, Burns liking things that make him seem so hilariously old), to his Tony La Russa like decision to "play the percentages" by subbing Homer for Strawberry to get a righty-lefty matchup (side baseball note: as a lifelong Cardinals fan, La Russa's insistence on righty-lefty matchups would be absolutely maddening sometimes. Don't get me wrong, I love La Russa and he brought the Cards two World Series titles, but taking out a far superior hitter to play the right matchup always seemed boneheaded to me. But I digress). Homer at the Bat also signifies where the show really took off. Seasons 1 and 2 had some great episodes, but this Season 3 gem is a classic that stands up to any in the best years of the show.

2.  Cape Feare

As I mentioned above, I'm not sure if I have ever laughed harder at a single half hour of television than I did the first time I watched Cape Feare. A Sideshow Bob episode, Cape Feare plays exactly like, well, Cape Fear. Bob is in the Robert De Niro/ Robert Mitchum role, stalking the Simpsons to once again try and kill Bart. The most brilliant gag of the episode came as a mistake. The episode was running a few minutes short, so the writers decided to just loop a gag where Bob is stepping on rakes over and over.

It's a joke that goes from funny, to tired, to hilarious. There are several more moments that are super funny including:

And:

Kelsey Grammer does a magnificent job voicing the annual episodes featuring Sideshow Bob, a maniacal genius who is somehow always bested by one of the Simpsons. Cape Feare is the best of those.

3.  Last Exit to Springfield

Last Exit to Springfield is a great episode that I had almost forgotten about, except that I hadn't. There are several ALL TIME classic lines in this episode that I have always quoted, but forgot were in this one:

But last but not least, one of the most annoying and funny bits in the show (this clip loops it a bunch, but the actual bit in the show lasted a good minute):

This episode pits Homer as the Union president facing Mr. Burns to get back the Nuclear Plant's dental plan. Homer stumbles his way through the negotiations, but ends up coming off as a brilliant tactician to Burns. The Burns and Homer stuff is pure gold, and Carl and Lenny really have some funny moments, including this exchange after Homer is elected president of the union:

Homer: What does this job pay?
Carl: Nothin'.
Homer: D'oh!
Carl:... Unless you're crooked!
Homer: Woo-Hoo!



4.  Homer Goes to College

Famously written by Conan O'Brien, Homer Goes to College crams every college cliche into one "zany" episode. In order to keep his job at the plant, Homer must pass one class at the local college.

Homer expects college to be like Animal House, and every other college romp. He immediately thinks that it will be all about pranks and fighting with the cantankerous dean, but is shocked by the reality.

Homer just ends up taking the lazy way out and cheats, but Marge insists he do it the right way to set an example for his kids. Homer is dumb, stupid, fat, and lazy, but he generally makes some strides to be a good dad. I'm not really a fan of how the show depicts gender roles within the family; Marge is the leader and the rock, cleaning up Homer's messes and setting the example for the family. This should be a role filled by Homer as the dad, but that's another argument. Homer Goes to College has tons of laughs, and that's really what it's all about!

5. The Cartridge Family

This episode shows that Homer and guns are a terrible and dangerous mix. After buying a gun, Homer generally uses it in every horrible way possible, appalling his family and even the NRA. His flippant regard for guns is funny because it's in a cartoon; in any other context it would be horrifying. Homer ends up choosing his family over the power of the gun, but only after some heavy consideration. Homer purchasing the gun at the gun store is one of my favorite bits of the series:

Also included is a great send up of soccer starting with this ridiculous commercial for an exhibition game to be hosted in Springfield:

Season 9 was hit and miss, but this one was brilliant.

6.   Homer's Triple Bypass

Homer has always treated his body badly, and this episode highlights his dangerous overeating. Opening with Homer in bed gorging on a ridiculous amount of food, his heart turns from bad to worse as he needs a transplant. Lots of great Dr. Nick stuff, and some genuine emotion and love between the Simpson family.  The scene where Homer is being fired by Mr. Burns is great:

7.  Duffless

Another episode focusing on Homer's sinful indulgences, this one zeroes in on one of his greatest loves: beer. After Homer is arrested for DWI (NOT found DOA as Wiggum first states), his keys are taken away and he is sent to alcoholics anonymous. Marge pleads with her husband to stay away from beer for one month, in which Homer is tortured going through life without beer. The episode has a very sweet ending between Homer and his wife, where he realizes his family is much more important than beer (but then again he's back to swilling booze in the very next episode). Duffless introduces us to Homer's first experience with beer, a hilarious song in which Homer uses a fake ID:

Homer on beer is funny, and Homer without beer is equally so.

8.  The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson

Another season 9 gem, this one shows Homer at his most enraged. After being forced to be the designated driver (and in the process being tortured by Duffman), Barney goes on a two month long bender that ends with Homer's car being parked between the World Trade Center towers. Homer has a deep hatred for New York, and despises having to go there. The physical comedy in this one is off the charts hilarious. When Homer decides to drive his car with the parking boot still on it, I completely lose it.

This one has no real sentimental or deeper value, it's just really really funny. This Luke Perry look-a-like in a musical about going into rehab won a Primetime Emmy.

Also, Homer really hates Mountain Dew:

9. Homer's Enemy

Homer's Enemy is one of the darker episodes of the series (along with another Season 8 episode called A Millhouse Divided, in which Millhouse's parents get divorced). Frank Grimes is a hard working man who can't really catch a break, which is the opposite of Homer. Homer is lazy and stupid, but seems to catch every break. Grimes is appalled by how much Homer has and all the things he's done. Homer tries to become friends with Grimes, but it continues to annoy Grimes to no end.

Grimes eventually goes insane at how Homer bumbles his way to a successful life, and it leads to his untimely death. It's totally dark, especially the "change the channel, Marge!" quip from Homer, at Grimes' funeral. This episode proved that The Simpsons could do dark comedy as well. Homer will drive you insane, and you will end up laughing at how oblivious he truly is.

10.   Homer Badman

There might be some funnier episodes than Homer Badman, but the genius of this one forced me to put it in the top 10. After dropping off the kids babysitter, Homer reaches to grab a gummi bear that was lodged against her butt, causing her to claim sexual harassment charges against Homer. The media is absolutely roasted for the sensationalist embellishments they claim on a daily basis. Homer is treated instantly as a monster by TV and the newspaper, when his side of the story is actually true. This includes a made for TV movie released before any facts have even come out, depicting Homer as a total animal.

Don't get me wrong, the commentary is great but it's also extremely funny. Grandpa not wanting to recognize Missourah is something I often quote (especially now with Arkansas playing Missouri every year).

The list could go on and on. Generally any episode between seasons 3 and 8 is super funny. Most of these honorable mentions could easily make the top 10.


Honorable mentions:

Stark Raving Dad
When Flanders Failed
Lisa's Pony
Flaming Moe's
Burns Verkaufen der Draftwerk
Mr. Plow
Marge vs. the Monorail
Homer's Barbershop Quartet
Homer and Apu
Deep Space Homer
Bart of Darkness
Lisa on Ice
Itchy and Scratchy Land
Homer the Great
Bart vs. Australia
Radioactive Man
King-Size Homer
Team Homer
Homerpalooza
You Only Move Twice
A Milhouse Divided
Mountain of Madness
The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show
Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment
Bart Star
King of the Hill
Homer to the Max
The Mansion Family

Taking off the Kid Goggles

Have you ever watched a movie or TV show many years after loving it as a kid only to realize, "Man, what was I thinking back then?" This is a phenomenon that I refer to as wearing "kid goggles". This is a term that I've been tossing around for years, which I may or may not have come  up with (sometimes if you say things long enough you think that you started it). Taking off the kid goggles and realizing that one of your beloved favorites is actually horrible can be a traumatizing experience. And I'm not talking about watching a movie that's directed at kids as an adult and thinking it sucks, because there have been plenty of "kid" movies that are incredible (see: almost all Pixar movies, Disney classics, The Sandlot, Hook, etc.). I'm talking about watching a movie or show as an adult and wondering why in the world you ever liked (and in some instances absolutely adored) the piece of utter crap on the screen before you.

I think my most embarrassing examples are two Fox afternoon action TV shows, Power Rangers and Big Bad Beetle Borgs (yes, that second one is a real thing). From ages 7-11 I tried to watch these every time they came on after school (I know that age 7 was the starting point because both shows were rated TV-Y7, a recommendation that 6-year-old Drew felt was legally binding). One day after reminiscing upon my after school routine, I decided to at least look up the theme song to both of these. What I am about to show you may shock and horrify you, so proceed with caution:

OK a couple of things. First, how totally rad is that guitar riff on the Power Rangers intro? Was it recorded by Eddie van Halen or something? I'd like to also point out that Billy was always my favorite, being the "smart one", I guess I identified with him (he was also the nerdy one, which probably helped mold me into the movie blog writing nerd I am today). Big Bad Beetle Borgs is so astonishingly bad that I don't even know what to say. The line "BIG BAD BEETLE BORGS" as sung by the chorus from hell still rolls around my head every once in a while.

What's so funny about all of this is that I was in love with these two shows as a kid. After perusing some more clips of the actual show, it became abundantly clear that  these two shows are the absolute lowest common denominator. Cheesy, stupid, somewhat offensive (you're telling me that it wasn't on purpose that in Power Rangers, the black ranger was black, the yellow ranger was Asian, and the red ranger had Native American heritage? Come on!), these shows had it all. Why was I so in love? Only one explanation. Kid goggles. As a kid, you really only require two things from a show or movie: slapstick humor, and the ability to identify with a character. That's pretty much it. You don't care if the dialogue is cringe inducing, or if every joke is as lame as watching Arkansas basketball road games, you just like it. In fact, I don't know that there was anything I watched that I didn't like.

In college I stumbled across Rookie of the Year, a movie I loved as a kid. It fulfilled both kid requirements to a T: abundant slapstick humor, and an identifiable character (a kid who gets to pitch in the majors? Yeah, 9-year-old me is way in). But after watching Rookie of the Year as an adult, or what I could sit through of it, I began to wonder what I was thinking back in the day. My kid goggles had been taken off, and Rookie of the Year will never be the same.

Here's another one: 3 Ninjas. Every boy around my age has seen this one, and has at one point wanted to actually become one of the 3 Ninjas. The movie has three kids being taught karate by their grandfather and using it to beat up the adult bad guys. Basically any 8-year-old boy's dream. I saw this one again in college on Netflix, and cruelly had my kid goggles ripped off. First off, if there is a record for saying "ay-ah!" in a movie, 3 Ninjasblows the competition out of the water. Every single punch, kick, or any other bodily movement is accompanied by this noise. The scene you're about to watch is what might be the most insane (not in a good way) movie scene ever, yet it didn't even stick out to me as a kid. Here it is:

The blocks, the dialogue, the dunking (dunking by a 5th grader?!) are all so insanely bad it's hard to fathom. Again, kid me loved this with all my heart. Wow.

Every once in a while you'll be pleasantly surprised with your tastes. I got The World Is Not Enough (James Bond movie with Denise Richards) for Christmas one year and probably watched it 50 times. Watched it again the other night, and despite the fact that Denise Richards is indeed the worst actress of all time, the movie is pretty good. Same goes for Batman: The Animated Series. This was appointment television as an 8-year-old, and after watching a bunch of the episodes again in college, I can say that my love was not misplaced. The writing and voice acting are really good, and any Batman fan will love them. 

If you have a beloved childhood movie or TV show that you haven't seen since youth, I urge you to proceed with caution. Your childhood may come crashing down after realizing that hey, maybe the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles TV show on CBS isn't the greatest show ever. In fact, it's actually really, really bad. Dang it. There are the rare times that the nostalgia power is too strong; you might secretly know that Saved by the Bell is not exactly Seinfeld, but your emotional ties are just too strong to realize it (but let's get real, Saved by the Bell is a bad example because that show is one of the greats ever made. Mark-Paul Gosslear deserved an Emmy every year that show was on, but got totally snubbed. Bunch of hacks giving out those awards I tell ya). If you've ever had the thought, "Man I loved (insert show/movie) as a kid, maybe I should look it up on Netflix and watch it again!", I only have one piece of advice for you: just be careful when taking off your kid goggles.

Has anyone else had a movie or show ruined by taking off the kid goggles?

Zero Dark Thirty

As one of 2012's most controversial and talked about films, Zero Dark Thirty is not exactly what you'd expect, but still impressive. ZD30 is VERY well made, so much so that it feels documentary like. Just like two other big movies of 2012, Lincoln and Argo, ZD30 is telling a story that the audience already knows. Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in May 2011, and everyone is familiar with what happened. But director Kathryn Bigelow does a great job keeping the intensity high, and the audience on the edge of their seats.

In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, U.S. intelligence was able to pin point that bin Laden and the al-Qaeda terrorist organization were behind the strike. ZD30 is the story of tracking down bin Laden and killing him. At the head of the search is Maya (Jessica Chastain) a young woman whose whole career becomes devoted to finding bin Laden. From 2003-2011 she is completely consumed by the search, at the expense of everything else in her life. The movie spans from initial intelligence in the wake of the attacks to the raid on bin Laden's compound in Pakistan.There are no spoilers to warn about because the story is out there, and happened very recently.

The first hour of the movie shows how the U.S. was able to obtain the initial leads on bin Laden, and it was largely done through the use of torture. The torture scenes are brutal. Not brutal in the way that the Saw movies depict torture, but I could feel the psychological effect it had on the men being tortured. Bigelow pulls no punches in showing water boarding, physical brutality, and psychological torture through the use of sleep and sensory deprivation. After the movie premiered, the buzz was around the use of torture in the film. Many thought that it glorified its use; the Americans use it to gain information, and the information leads to the killing of bin Laden, plain and simple. I didn't feel like the movie was taking a stand on torture either way. It felt to me like the filmmakers told the story that they had from descriptions of first hand accounts. Whether or not you agree with the use of torture to gain information, you have to accept that it was a means to an end in tracking down one of the world's most evil villains. It's hard for me not to take some sort of stand on the issue, but I felt like the people using it were doing so in a "war time" context, and I didn't find myself so appalled by their actions. But luckily I've never been faced with the choice of torturing another human being for information, or using other more humane, and possibly less effective, interrogation techniques when lives are at stake. I think that if I were faced with the issue head on, my perspective would probably change. In a perfect world, torture would never enter the conversation, but that is just not where we live.

Jessica Chastain is great as Maya, the woman who was largely responsible for finding bin Laden. She never gives up in pursuit of finding him, and her tenacity is what convinces her superiors that the search needs to continue. Chastain is great, and while I still think that I like Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook better, Chastain's performance is incredibly real and equally deserved of a nomination for Best Actress. The rest of the cast is made up of mostly unknowns or character actors (actors who you know you've seen but aren't big enough for you to remember their name; in ZD30 there's Harold Perrineau, Kyle Chandler, and Jason Clarke, all actors whom you will recognize when you see, but probably didn't recognize their names as I just listed them). I thought that the two biggest faces were James Gandolfini (The Sopranos) as one of Maya's superiors, and Christ Pratt (Parks and Recreation) as one of the soldiers in the team that took down bin Laden. After his portrayal of Andy Dwyer on Parks, it's really hard for me to take Pratt seriously. He is so goofy in the show that every time he said something in the movie I felt like he was about to say a classic Andy line ("Wow, sounds like you're going some tough stuff right now. Too bad there's not doctors for your mind."). The relative anonymity of the cast works in the favor of the film's documentary-like feel, in that you're never taken out of the movie by seeing recognizable faces. They all seem like the real people, and in a movie like ZD30, that's a very good thing.

At a run time of over 2 and a half hours, ZD30 is long, but is paced relatively well. It slows a little bit in the middle, but once the location of bin Laden is exposed, the movie really takes off. The last 30 minutes are as intense as you'll see, and you know the ending! Kathryn Bigelow was majorly snubbed for not getting a best director nomination, probably having to do with the controversy surrounding the torture depicted in the film. She won for The Hurt Locker in 2010, but her work is about the same in quality on ZD30. The Hurt Locker was more intimately focused on a few soldiers fighting in the Middle East, while this film is more about the story than the characters. Characters come in and out quickly throughout the entire film; I honestly think that Maya was the only person whose name I remembered. I could have used a little more connection with the people involved with the hunt, but the story is so engaging that the movie is still very good.

When this film was first announced, I was heavily expecting it to be a very politics driven film designed to help President Obama win re-election. Bigelow does an incredible job of staying almost completely clear of politics and telling a story that is incredible on its own. ZD30 is yet another fantastic 2012 film. The more I catch up on the very best of last year, the more I'm blown away at the depth and quality of films it produced across many genres. I keep giving high ratings to these films, but it's because they're all deserved! Maybe I should go see that terrible looking magician movie with Steve Carrell and Jim Carrey to get a little perspective. Oh well.

4/5