The 10 best Simpsons episodes ever

Few television shows remain continuously in production for 20 years. A couple of soaps perhaps, The Sky At Night, and the news and weather. That’s about it. The Simpsons, however, has grown from a few filler animations on The Tracy Ullman Show to an entertainment behemoth – with a feature film, hit records and innumerable lunchboxes bearing the Simpsons brand.

What has sustained The Simpsons over two decades of television success has been the strength of its much-imitated characters, the multilayered sassiness of its scripts and the cracking songs.

Also, it’s one of the few adult-skewed animations that can be safely watched by a family audience.

To mark the show’s 20th birthday, we have selected the most memorable Simpsons episodes ever.

10. King-Size Homer

Although much of the early publicity around the world’s favourite cartoon family centered around the perennially 10-year-old anarchist Bart Simpson, it’s his father that has become the most versatile character. Slothful, shallow and suffering from poor impulse control he’s the most realistic TV role model for the modern man. In King-Size Homer the yellow patriarch makes his sinecure at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant even easier by piling on the pounds and obtaining permission to work from home.

Resplendent in his Pavarotti-inspired ‘fat guy dress’ and ‘fat guy hat’ he thinks he has the perfect life. Until he tries to make it better. Cue an insane race against time in an ice cream van and a comically neat conclusion. Incidentally, it’s another episode about Homer’s problem weight that features the single best line in any Simpsons episode. Disappointed with the results of his self-hypnosis weight-loss tape (which has been switched for a build your vocabulary course by lazy dispatchers), Homer belows, “Disingenuous mountebanks with their subliminal chicanery!”

9. Marge vs The Monorail

With a cracking song from one-off character Lyle Lanley, “Marge vs The Monorail” is packed with the brilliant little details and ‘blink-and-you’ll-miss-it’ sight gags that make The Simpsons such a pleasure for all ages. Homer achieves yet another of his lifelong dreams by becoming the conductor of a defective monorail sold to the townspeople by smooth-talking huckster Lanley. The solar-powered death trap almost immediately goes out of control (with a brief interruption from a handy eclipse) and is only saved by the neat use of an improvised anchor which prompts yet another splendid Homer one-liner: “Donuts. Is there anything they can’t do?”

8. Lisa The Iconoclast

Delving into the origins of Springfield, this episode introduces us to Jebediah Springfield (aka nefarious pirate Hans Sprungfeld), whose state stands in the town centre. When Lisa discovers the town founder’s secret history she is tempted to expose the ugly truth, depite entreaties from museum curator Hollis (Donald Sutherland). The episode features two quotes that have enriched the English language (or at least internet English): “A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man” and “I don’t know why; it’s a perfectly cromulent word”. It’s a legacy which few other half-hour episodes of cartoon comedy shows are likely to equal.

7. A Streetcar Named Marge

If this episode only consisted of baby Maggie’s ingenious attempt to reclaim her confiscated dummy, it would rank as one of the funniest episodes of the show. That her wordless struggle is just a subplot to punctuate the story of Springfield’s attempt to stage a musical version of A Streetcar Named Desire is a measure of just how rich and detailed the best Simpsons episodes can be. It’s one of a handful of episodes that hint at a raw masculine physique beneath mild-mannered Christian Ned Flanders’s homespun clothing. Add in throwaway references to Hitchcock’s The Birds, Citizen Kane and Ayn Rand and you have a half-hour cartoon that will reward repeated viewings.

6. Last Exit To Springfield

Hapless Homer inadvertently becomes a firebrand shop steward for the International Brotherhood of Jazz Dancers, Pastry Chefs and Nuclear Technicians in an industrial dispute at the power plant. In a classic ‘wrong man’ plot Homer pulls off a negotiating master stroke through sheer incompetence. The cultural references squeezed into this half hour include The Beatles, The Godfather, Batman, Moby Dick and (again) Citizen Kane.

5. Homer The Great

When Homer discovers that his colleagues Carl and Lenny are members of the quasi-Masonic Stonecutters he resolves to join. Once in the lodge he proceeds to antagonise the strictly ritualistic secret society by using a sacred parchment as a towelette. Just as he’s being drummed out of the lodge, it’s discovered that he has a birthmark identifying him as the Chosen One of the Stonecutters and he becomes their new leader. Unfortunately he takes advice from his terminally worthy daughter Lisa about a new direction for the society. When every member of the society secedes to a new, Homer-free sect, Homer replaces them all with monkeys. With an unforgettable song, a magisterial cameo from Patrick Stewart and the single best Raiders Of The Lost Ark gag ever, it’s a worthy No 5 in our countdown.

4. Cape Feare

The singular incompetence of Springfield police chief Clancy Wiggum is at the fore of this parody of the twice-filmed Cape Fear. Clown turned criminal Sideshow Bob (unforgettably voiced by Kelsey Grammer) returns to Springfield, swearing revenge on Bart, whose testimony sent him to jail. The extended ‘rake gag’ that was inserted to fill space in a too-short script has become one of the best-loved slapstick sequences ever. The episode also features Sideshow Bob’s phonetically correct finger tattoos and shows off Grammer’s fine talent for comic opera. Best moment: When Bob explains away his “Die Bart, Die” tattoo by asserting that it’s a perfectly harmless German phrase and the judge replies, “Nobody who speaks German could be an evil man.”

3. Bart The Daredevil

Simpsons creator Matt Groening’s personal favourite episode betrays the deep love that Homer harbours for the son he strangles at least once a week. Inspired by Evel Knievel type Lance Murdock after a visit to a monster truck show, Bart wins the admiration of his peers with a series of increasingly dangerous skateboard stunts. His crowning achievement, though, a leap across Springfield Gorge, is prevented by Homer. In an extended slapstick sequence Homer accidentally jumps the gorge himself, resulting in a seemingly endless series of injuries. It’s the broadest possible comedy, but when it’s done this well it hits that universal funny bone that made Chaplin and Keaton revered the world over.

2. Mr Plow

Homer, against all the odds, comes up with a winning business idea. A snow-plough business. Naturally his dysfunctional drinking buddy Barney Gumble comes up with the same idea and the two become bitter rivals. Barney wins out, in part because of a cracking TV jingle sung in English and in Spanish by country star Linda Ronstadt. There’s hubris, there’s divine intervention and there’s another cavalcade of cultural references including Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Godfather, various pretentious perfume ads and (of course) Raiders Of The Lost Ark. What lingers in the memory though is the story of Homer, Barney, and a can of Duff lager.

1. A Fish Called Selma

The townsfolk of Springfield stage another unlikely musical: this time it’s Planet Of The Apes. The show features an extended appearance from washed-up actor Troy McLure, who normally only appears in educational films that Bart is forced to watch. Through a series of improbable events, Troy marries Selma, the slightly more marriageable of Marge Simpson’s abrasive sisters. When Selma discovers that Troy only married her to deflect adverse press gossip about a mysterious sexual escapade involving a fish, he placates her with the promise that he will make her “the envy of every other sham wife in town”. The dialogue fairly crackles with oddball one-liners like that, but the highlights are the musical numbers, which represent the most inspired of Simpsons composer Alf Clausen’s always fertile imagination.