The recurring thing about this season seems to be how much it straddles the line between the great and awful sides of the show. I wasn’t expecting to like this episode much (especially when I saw it has the Homer … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Eight, Episode Seven, “Lisa’s Date With Density”

The strange thing about season eight so far has been seeing things that remind me of post-Golden Era episodes, but I end up liking them a lot more. The central plank of this episode is that two random background characters … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Eight, Episode Six, “A Milhouse Divided”

This is an episode I really like, because it’s near-impossible to pin down on any level. This show has always taken a wide scope with its themes, and what’s great is that, like Lisa’s perpetual motion machine, when it comes … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Eight, Episode Five, “Bart After Dark”

This episode has a lesser reputation than most Golden Era Simpsons – if people talk about it at all, it’s to complain about Rodney Dangerfield coming in and taking over the show. That’s how I remembered it, so, as often … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Eight, Episode Four, “Burns, Baby Burns”

One of the remarkable things about Golden Era Simpsons is how it’s simultaneously wildly creative and reliably entertaining; there are shows like the Law & Order franchise that deliver consistent entertainment but are also essentially telling the same few stories … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Eight, Episode Three, “The Homer They Fall”

I’ve been patiently waiting for this one, because it’s uncontestedly one of the most popular Simpsons episodes ever, one that’s in many people’s top three and definitely belongs in the top five most important episodes of the show ever… and … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Eight, Episode Two, “You Only Move Twice”

It’s funny how I always looked forward to the “Treehouse” episodes, long after the show started turning to shit, for the same reason I’m wary of them popping up in these reviews: they’re so fast and short that they convey … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Eight, Episode One, “Treehouse Of Horror VII”

There are several points that fans consider the ‘true’ finale of The Simpsons, and this is one of them. Partly it’s because after this point many consider the show to lose its consistency (which I understand even as I disagree, … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Seven, Episode Twenty-Five, “Summer Of 4 ft. 2”

There are moments in art where the work seems to access some kind of divine space, elevated above either genre convention or our petty real-world day-to-day nonsense, where it’s as if all the artifice has been stripped back and you’re … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Seven, Episode Twenty-Four, “Homerpalooza”

The thing that bothered me most about the Apu controversy (which, for those who don’t know, was when comedian Hari Kondabolu released a documentary called The Problem With Apu that highlighted both Apu’s effect on the Indian-American community as racists … Continue reading  The Simpsons, Season Seven, Episode Twenty-Two, “Much Apu About Nothing”

It seems like every Simpsons fan old enough to remember a time before home video and streaming has a personal white whale – an episode they heard about that always seemed to slip by them in reruns – and this … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Seven, Episode Twenty-Two, “Raging Abe Simpson And His Grumbling Grandson In “The Curse Of The Flying Hellfish””

It’s fairly common knowledge amongst Simpsons fans that the producers were considering either spinning off a show about the whole town of Springfield, or retooling the main show entirely to widen the focus beyond the family, and that this episode … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Seven, Episode Twenty-One, “22 Short Films About Springfield”

To me, one of the defining aspects of the show aging is its shift in tone. The animation, while always consciously rough and a little ugly, becomes cleaner; the pace of individual jokes becomes more casual; the plotting and sense … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Seven, Episode Twenty, “Bart On The Road”

One of the delightful things about doing this series is that I’m forced to engage with episodes that I couldn’t connect with and find new nuances and things to think about. I’ve never been a huge fan of this episode … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Seven, Episode Nineteen, “A Fish Called Selma”

Part of Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein’s vision as showrunners was to have about fifteen or so mostly realistic stories about the family, plus scattered yearly themed episodes, with one episode specifically set aside to be about Itchy & Scratchy, … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Seven, Episode Eighteen, “The Day The Violence Died”

We’re back to another Simpsons-style riff on a classic sitcom setup. I think the show has a really good sense of when it can lean in on a cliche and when it can’t; it can’t really pull off the ‘staying … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Seven, Episode Seventeen, “Homer The Smithers”

This must be the second-most controversial Golden Era Simpsons episode. I think most people just roll with it, but there is a significant contingent of fans who are outraged not only by the characters covering up the truth for the … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Seven, Episode Sixteen, “Lisa The Iconoclast”

I often say that this show’s most underrated virtue is its worldbuilding. Not only in the sense that so few sitcoms go out of their way to develop the feel of a specific place that Springfield does, but in the … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Seven, Episode Fifteen, “Bart The Fink”

I think there are very few Simpsons episodes where my reaction has so radically evolved over the years the way it has with this one. That’s the strange thing about art – you get older and change and it stays … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Seven, Episode Fourteen, “Scenes From The Class Struggle In Springfield”

We’ve talked about the increasingly sitcommy nature of the show this season, and much like Bob Dylan going full country on Nashville Skyline in 1969, this episode consciously brings that to the fore. It’s that old cliche of a popular … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Seven, Episode Thirteen, “Two Bad Neighbours”

As regular readers will know, I generally divide episodes of The Simpsons into one of three loosely defined and even more loosely named categories: heartwarming, satirical, and just funny. This feels like the first episode all season where the A … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Seven, Episode Twelve, “Team Homer”