Top 10 Simpson's Episodes of All Time

With the economy in recession, a war in Iraq festering and the polar ice caps melting I figured I'd give the world exactly what it needs: another idiot's list of his favorite Simpsons episodes.

I compiled my list by writing down all of the funniest episodes I could think of off the top of my head and then reading through a brief synopsis of all 400 episodes, season by season. I tried to fit an episode from the last 10 seasons into my top 10 but I just couldn't. The Sunday nights of the mid-1990s when we watched Homer bowl with the Pin Pals and fail at the snow plowing business were so much funnier than the Sunday nights of this decade when we politely sat through a bunch of out-of-place guest star appearances and anthology episodes while waiting for The Family Guy to come on. Hopefully the writers from the last 10 seasons were just saving their best jokes for The Simpsons Movie, scheduled to hit theaters this July.

This list goes out to the guys in high school who tried to stump me with obscure Simpsons trivia every lunch period and to my cousins who could pick apart an episode more thoroughly than The Comic Book Guy. I'm sure they will agree these truly are episodes that should be inducted into the Simpsons Hall of Fame.

10. Homer the Vigilante - Season 5: A cat burglar is on the loose in Springfield. He swipes Marge's pearls, Lisa's saxaphone and Bart's stamp collection. Homer forms a vigilante group to catch the thief but the group is rendered ineffective by its desire to beat citizens with sacks of heavy doorknobs for minor violations of the law, like not presenting a permit to burn leaves. The cat burglar is a sport, though, and decides to inform Homer that his next mark is the world's largest cubic zirconia, which is housed at the Springfield Museum. Homer protects the museum all day and night, but he passes out and the cat burglar swipes the zirconia. The newspaper reports Homer was asleep at the switch, but he insists he was drunk.

What makes this episode great?: "Homer the Vigilante" has the air of a mystery, yet it still packs in the jokes. The part I always think of when I picture this episode is Grandpa explaining to Homer how he solved the mystery. "There was something about the way he walked, much more vertical than usual."

9. Bart the General - Season 1: Bart declares war on Nelson after one of his cronies ruins the cupcakes Lisa baked for her teacher. Nelson beats him up in a couple of fair fights, so Grandpa introduces him to Herman, a crazed Vietnam veteran with one arm who helps train Bart's friends to launch a full-scale water balloon assault on Nelson. After the blitzkrieg, Marge eases the tension by serving cupcakes.

What makes this episode great?: "Bart the General" begins the dynamic saga of Nelson Muntz. Sometimes he's a bully and sometimes he's one of Bart's best friends. I don't get it. Anyway, there is something intangible about the understated humor of the first season and this is its best episode. We are introduced to Herman by learning he lost his arm by sticking it out of a school bus window. Then we see him attack a human-sized sandbag with a bayonet. The best part was when he pulled out a map of Springfield to show Bart his battle plan.

"The key to Springfield has always been Elm Street. The Greeks knew it. The Carthaginians knew it. And now you know it," Herman said.

8. Homer vs. the 18^th Amendment - Season 8: Bart drinks a little too much green Duff at a St. Patrick's Day parade, prompting local officials to ban alcohol in Springfield. Homer starts a successful bootlegging company, but the town hires a grizzled untouchable named Rex Banner to stop him.

What makes this episode great?: Good storytelling and good character development of Rex Banner make this an exceptional episode. I also like the way the townspeople adapt to the new restrictions, like how Moe went into the "pet shop" business when he could no longer operate a tavern. "What kind of pet shop is filled with rambunctious yahoos and hot jazz music at 1 a.m.?"

"Homer vs. the 18^th Amendment" could have easily turned into one of those really corny episodes with a stupid "we couldn't think of a way to end this" conclusion that plagued the show in the 8^th season and beyond, but it didn't. Of course, it did have Rex Banner getting catapulted away, but the rest of the episode was devoid of cliches. I love when Homer and Bart walk out of their brewing room and Homer says "Wait, I forgot to check if the coast was clear. Oh well, it's probably clear." They walk one step and Marge is in their face with her famous "mmmmmmm" attitude.

7. Homer the Great - Season 6: Homer notices Lenny and Carl never want to go bowling on Wednesdays, which prompts him to follow them one night to a secret meeting hall. He discovers they are part of an ancient mystical society known as the Stonecutters and he wants in. The Stonecutters refuse him at first, but allow him to join when he proves his father is a member. A birthmark proves Homer is the chosen one the group has been looking for, so he is soon annointed as their leader. However, Homer loses his following after he tries to fit some charity and goodwill events into the Stonecutters' busy schedule of drinking and shooting pool.

What makes this episode great?: This is among the most memorable Simpsons episodes. The dialogue is hilarious and the plot follows a natural arc. I usually hate song sequences, but this one was catchy, clever and not too long. We also learn that "Number One" is a "stupid weiner name" and that you shouldn't bother calling 9-1-1 in an emergency. The real number is 9-1-2.

6. Three Men and a Comic Book - Season 2: After seeing a $100 comic book he must have at the Springfield Comic Book Convention, Bart sells lemonade and beer in front of his house and does odd jobs for an elderly lady to earn money. He still falls short, but convinces Martin and Milhouse to pool their money with him to buy it. The three 10-year-olds find they're bad at sharing, so they all sleep with the comic book in Bart's treehouse that night. They each become suspicious that the other two boys want to steal the comic and their suspicions ultimately lead to the destruction of the comic.

What makes this episode great?: The plot is ingenious and I love all the chores Bart has to do for Mrs. Quick to earn money. You can tell this is a well-written episode because when the lightning strikes the comic at the end you are genuinely upset. You think to yourself "how did they let it come to this?" That's non-comical, dramatic interest only a handful of Simpsons episodes can pull off. That's not to say the episode isn't funny. The satire of Superheroes at the beginning, Otto's terrible idea for a comic book and Homer's bad parenting layer the episode with humor.

5. Homer and Apu - Season 5: After selling Homer some spoiled meat and getting busted for it by an investigative reporter, Apu is fired from the Kwik-e-mart. He moves in with the Simpsons to help cook and clean for them in order to pay Homer back for wronging him. The family discovers how much Apu misses working at the Kwik-e-mart so Homer accompanies him on a journey to India where he must ask the head of the Kwik-e-mart to be reinstated. Homer blows their three chances to ask him, though, by asking if the man is really the head of the Kwik-e-mart three times. They return to Springfield unsuccessful, but Apu gets his job back after saving the life of his replacement, actor James Woods.

What makes this episode great?: The diversity of the jokes makes this episode stand out. One minute we're laughing at Homer eating smelly, unfrozen shrimp and the next we're laughing at the comedian Homer is watching on t.v. ("black guys drive a car like this: 'doooo doooo da doooo dooo do do' but white guys drive a car like this 'da dee da dee, dee da dee dee dee dee"). Homer is at his peak in this episode, just before the character started getting overly stupid and bufoonish.

4. Deep Space Homer - Season 5: Homer gets upset when a carbon rod wins the Worker of the Week award instead of him. Down in Florida, NASA officials are trying to figure out a way to boost the declining ratings of space shuttle launches. They decide to send a common man into space at the very time that Homer calls to complain about their boring launches and because he can't find any Tang. They recruit both Homer and Barney for the job and Homer beats Barney out after Barney goes on a bender. Homer goes into space with Buzz Aldrin and another astronaut, but jeopardizes their mission when he opens a bag of ruffled potato chips into the shuttle's low-gravity cabin.

What makes this episode great?: Did I say "Homer and Apu" was Homer at his peak? Perhaps this is a better example of Homer at his peak. He's funniest when there's some anger behind his stupidity and in this episode Homer is furious that nobody respects him. We also get to see him pull the plug on his t.v. to avoid watching an educational space launch, call NASA because he has a craving for Tang and try to explain the theme of Planet of the Apes to reporters. This is another textbook example of a proper plot arc, where he overcomes the source of his problems, a tiny carbon rod, only to be thwarted by it again at the end. (Non Sequitur: This is something the writers of Seinfeld were obsessed with doing.) I personally found the satire of NASA as a ratings-obsessed organization hilarious.

3. Homer at the Bat - Season 3: Mr. Burns makes a million dollar bet with a rival power plant owner that his company's softball team will win their upcoming game against each other. To ensure victory, he tries to hire his favorite ball players to play on the team, like Honus Wagner and "Three Finger" Brown. When Smithers tells him they are dead, he instructs Smithers to assemble a squad of current major league all-stars. This ticks off Homer, since he is having a great season using his lucky bat. Darryl Strawberry replaces him, but Homer gets one last shot to win it for the power plant, thanks to Mr. Burns' eccentric managerial style.

What makes this episode great?: This is the first episode that comes to mind when I think of the early seasons. When I was a kid, I thought the scene where Ralph Wiggum assembles a pickup team of Wade Boggs, Ken Griffey Jr. and Jose Conseco to take on Bart's team of Milhouse, Lewis and other scrubs was hysterical. Now I appreciate the episode for the beer-league style of softball Homer's team plays and for Mr. Burns' antiquated understanding of baseball. "Scour the American League, the National League, the Negro Leagues." All of The Natural references and the introductory scene where Homer is choking are pretty freakin' funny too. There's no comedic letdown in the entire episode.

2. Lemon of Troy - Season 6: A group of boys from Shelbyville steal a lemon tree from the ground in Springfield. Bart, in a fit of town pride and concern that the tree is the backbone of the kid economy, organizes a group of Springfield boys who will go into Shelbyville to reclaim the tree. Bart infiltrates the group of Shelbyville boys by wearing a "Beatles" wig and posing as one of them. He is discovered, but he escapes. He accidentally finds the tree in a walled-off junkyard. Meanwhile, Homer organizes an expedition of parents to look for their sons in Shelbyville. When the parents find their sons, they decide to join them instead of punishing them. Bart tells Flanders to park his RV in a hospital zone. The junkyard sees the illegally parked vehicle and tows it into the lot. When darkness falls, the Springfield crew loads the tree on top of the RV and carries it home to safety.

What makes this episode great?: This is an episode I would watch even if it wasn't funny. A group of school boys invading the turf of another group of school boys with revenge on their mind is good theater. It's a slice of Americana. Bart's plot to fool the Shelbyville kids into thinking he's one of them and Homer's coinciding plan to use "Flanders's's" RV to rescue the boys are hilarious. Brent Forrester, the author of the episode, brought his A-game for this one.

1. Homer's Barbershop Quartet - Season 5: Lisa finds an album cover with Homer on it while she is flipping through used records at the Springfield Swap Meet. Homer then tells her the story of his barbershop quartet, The Be Sharps. Homer, Apu, Principal Skinner and Chief Wiggum would get together once a week and sing at Moe's Cavern. Barney replaces Chief Wiggum after the band starts making it big. Homer writes the band a hit song, "Baby on Board", which catapults them to the top of the music world. They win a Grammy. Barney starts dating a Yoko Ono type character who orders a single plum floating in perfume served in a man's hat when she goes to Moe's. But when Us Weekly rates them a "not" in its "hot or not" column, the band decides to break up.

After telling Bart and Lisa the story, Homer calls up the members of the band and convinces them to do one last concert on the roof of Moe's.

What makes this episode so great?: If you are a Beatles fan, this has to be your favorite episode. Even if you aren't, you probably still get a kick out of the dozens of Beatles references.

"Homer's Barbershop Quartet" should be the paradigm for all other Simpsons episodes because it doesn't rely on just one character for humor. There are literally dozens of characters we laugh at, from Grandpa pretending Apu, not Homer, is his son to Flanders and his collection of biblical trading cards. The Simpsons has a wonderful list of supporting characters and it is at its best when it draws a little humor from several of them in an episode, instead of relying too heavily on Bart, Lisa and Homer. This episode struck the perfect balance. Even the song "Baby on Board" the production team wrote for The Be Sharps to sing was well done. It's an actual good song.

What just missed the list? These are some episodes I considered strongly before deciding on my final top 10:

One Fish Two Fish Blow Fish Blue Fish - Season 2: After eating a poisonous fish, Homer learns he has 24 hours to live.

Homer Goes to College - Season 5: Homer goes to college for a refresher course in nuclear physics and befriends three nerds.

Treehouse of Horror IV - Season 5: Homer sells his soul for a doughnut, a monster tries to crash Bart's school bus and Mr. Burns is a vampire.

Mr. Plow - Season 4: Homer and Barney become enemies and rival snow plow operators.

22 Short Films About Springfield - Season 7: There's no plot to this hilarious episode, just action.

Bart the Murderer - Season 3: Bart becomes a bartender for a Mafia boss and is ultimately accused of being the crime family's ring leader.