LADIES PINCH, WHORES USE ROUGE: The REAL Simpsons Season 2 Poll

'blood feud' has the justly famous 'hello, my name is mr burns' bit but it's also got the equally great bit where homer tells the story of 'hercules and the lion' (sic) and bart asks, reasonably, 'how could a lion have riches?' and homer says, smiling as if it's the most obvious thing in the world, 'it was the OLDEN DAYS!'

The olden days! My name is Mister Burns! Jesus, this season is full of riches.

(Again, some of my favorite episodes are the most absurd - "Deep Space Homer" and "Marge vs. the Monorail" are hardly quiet character studies in a realistic family setting! But there are different pleasures.)

when Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein were taking over as showrunners James L. Brooks screened 'Deep Space Homer' for them and when it was done said "no more episodes like this". It seems ridiculous but after 15 years of that vibe being extrapolated into worse and worse places I suppose JLB was onto something.

As for s2, aw man it's impossible already. Every episode has a good case for it. Maybe I should remind myself of all of the B-stories and decide based on that.

But..."our insect overlords"!

ikr

best moment ever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9lbyM0c51A

"Great plan, Bart." Gets me every time.

Didn't know that about "Deep Space Homer" but it makes a lot of sense. Would never want to give up "insect overlords" or the brilliant James Taylor cameo ("Now I'm gonna play, and you're gonna like it!") but...yeah. It's funny because there are still some out there episodes in season 7, like the stupid Australia one, but generally you are back to some much more ordinary situations. Some of them ("Lisa on Ice") are up there with 2-3 for me...but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

chronologically i think "Dead Putting Society" was the first all-time classic episode. can't beat the touching "let's call it a draw" moment from Bart and Todd being followed by the sight of Homer and Ned in their wives' dresses mowing the lawn.

Just watched "Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish." A bit slow in the middle (by later standards) but a few classic moments. Burns's attempts to deal with the plant inspectors are adorable: "Oh, now that shouldn't be!" Also think the conclusion is nicely handled, although as is often the case, it's irritating that Homer doesn't really have to learn a lesson or recant his behavior - Marge just gets one back and that's sort of it.

well, your re-zoom seems in order...

LISA'S SUBSTITUTE

I'm thinking now I might vote for "Bart v. Thanksgiving," which does a really great job of how thoughtless and mean kids can be to each other sometimes, and how much they regret it afterwards. And it's got such great little character moments: Patty and Selma bringing food, Mrs. Bouvier saving her voice only to tell Marge she never does anything right, Bill & Marty's banter about the Bullwinkle balloon, Burns throwing away an entire Thanksgiving feast . . .

And this, which is like a perfect Bart moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoptLoEj_tk

Jim Reardon mentions this on the commentary track for Itchy and Scratchy and Marge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A15v4tTab0Y

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

voted for uncle herb

OMG. No time, no time!

The blowfish one and the one with Herb did nooooothing for me, couldn't even finish the latter. Was bummed, as I was hoping it just bored me as a kid but would connect better now. Blowfish one had a few good moments, I'll admit. "The Way We Was" had a few good gags but also felt a little too heavy on plot and character, though without question I love the fix it puts on the Simpsons timeline. The idea that Homer and Marge are anything other than last-wave baby boomers will never fly with me.

Right now I would have to vote "Blood Feud" for lols and "Lisa's Substitute" for heart. "Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment" and "Bart's Dog Gets an F" also great I think."

Considering for rewatch: "Brush with Greatness," "War of the Simpsons" (just for the queen of the harpies bit), "Three Men and a Comic Book" (for reasons given on this thread, though I will say I started it and wasn't really drawn in), and "Bart Gets Hit By a Car" for Lionel Hutz and Doctor Nick. Not sure if time will allow. I've never really liked the "Treehouse of Horrors" but looking at the summary I do think the non-Raven bits of this one have some laughs...

Made a game time decision to vote for One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish just cause, y'know, satire at its finest, whether the bureaucrats in the state capital like it or not.

tossed a million coins and have settled on 'Blood Feud'.

Made a game time decision to vote for One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish just cause, y'know, satire at its finest, whether the bureaucrats in the state capital like it or not.

― Fiddler on a hot tin roof (ed.b), Sunday, October 20, 2013 8:48 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^ but this is the "homer eats a poison blowfish" episode... the one with Burns's gubernatorial bid is "Two Cars In Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish."

I love Blowfish if only for the line "poison... poison... tastyfish!" which I employ while cooking on occasion.

...er, the line, that is. I dont employ poison.

The idea that Homer and Marge are anything other than last-wave baby boomers will never fly with me.

I don't think "lol 70s nostalgia!" was even a thing in movies/tv/music at the time, at least not that I'd encountered. This episode, Lenny Kravitz's clavinet-funk, a jumpsuit-dressing bar band I saw performing Kool/KC numbers, Axl's "Vanishing Point" monologue on Use Your Illusion...1991 really feels like the year of the great "Two Decades behind" nostalgia-shift from that of regular boomers to the late-period ones

xpost today the writers would try to shoehorn in a poisson-poison Homer miscomprehension joke

prior to this i think it would've been the domain or yr redd kross types. for example this -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e4e1LIsv6E

- probably came out a couple of years too early

xxpost: Ahhh! I tricked myself into some sort of "one fish, two fish, three eyed fish" logic. Ahh, what the hell, that's a good episode too (if only for the Richard Sakai karaoke).

re: 70s, I remember being baffled by the references as a kid but absorbing that there had to be something significant about "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. The flashback episodes also do important work of establishing how young the characters are meant to be, which the animation (and Homer's premature baldness) can sort of obscure. Homer's about eighteen in 1974, right? If Bart's a ten-year-old in 1990, then they had him when Homer was maybe twenty-four, twenty-five...just kinda changes how I think about them and their little family unit.

Arrrgh everytime someone says "as a kid" in ref to the Simpsons I have this dreadful cognitive dissonance.

Esp because I think I tend to think of most ILXors as being 35+ for some odd reason.

just rewatched 'lisa's substitute' and uh yeah, that's getting my vote. even apart from all the obvious stuff it's got martin's awesome moment of supreme SF snobbiness ("what about ray bradbury?" "i'm AWARE of his work.")

tbh i love all of these episodes except 'simpson and delilah' (feels like a first season leftover) and 'dancin homer' (ditto). one that ought to get more love is 'homer vs. lisa and the 8th commandment.' kind of astonishing how much lisa changed over the years, no sign of the cynical atheist she'd become by, uh, whenever that stupid angel episode aired. plus it features my all-time favorite mr burns line, where he imagines what it must be like at homer simpson's house:

"oh, i can picture it now...the screen door rusting off its filthy hinges...mangy dog staggering about, looking vainly for a place to die!"

one cool thing about these early episodes is how often it basically is a (really great) show about what it's like to be a kid -- feel like they never really recaptured that in later episodes, except in the lemon tree episode.

i think simpson and delilah might've been the first Simpsons I ever saw (it debuted on satellite TV in the UK, and we never had it), and it blew my mind. on reflection, though, I'm voting Blowfish.

I ended up voting for "Bart's Dog Gets an F." Boy-and-his-dog stories tend to get to me (See also Futurama's "Jurassic Bark"), and Nancy Cartwright achieves some real pathos, from back in the day when the voice actors could really bring it.

("what about ray bradbury?" "i'm AWARE of his work.")

Wasn't that "I'm AWARE of the works of Pablo Neruda" or was that joke rehashed?

The latter was from "Bart Sells His Soul":

Bart: I know that's funny, but I'm just not laughing. [taps head]
Lisa: Hmm. Pablo Neruda said, "Laughter is the language of the soul."
Bart: I am familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda.

JD and everyone OTM about ''what it's like to be a kid.'' My favorite gag in ''Lemon Tree'' is Milhouse imagining how a camouflage outfit will make him invisible. Not OTT funny but just so, so, true.

Re: being a kid, I turn 32 next month so yeah, I was basically Bart's age when the show debuted. It was HUGE in the lunchroom.

Another similar gag in the lemon tree one: "I thought you could read lips?" "I assumed I could!"

And the ''spray cans as jetpacks'' logic!

Crammed in "Bart the Daredevil" and "Treehouse of Horror" last night. The latter had more laughs than I remember - the Raven bit in particular is legitimately cute and funny, with Castellaneta's and Jones's deliveries of the poem getting increasingly disconnected from each other. Could do without the framing stuff and the idea that Homer is actually scared to death by these cute little fanfics (though Marge's intro is worth a couple chuckles).

"Bart the Daredevil" is a solid episode front to back. I'd rank it alongside "8th Commandment." Favorite gag: "Don't miss it unless you're DEEEEAD or in JAIIIL, and if you're in jail, break OUUUUT." Also great how the daredevil just flagrantly encourages everything. I'd also totally forgotten Homer's logic in getting on the skateboard in the first place, which is exactly the kind of big-hearted, underthought thing that makes him work as a character: he's not just a temperamental moron, he's a temperamental moron trying to be a good father and deliver actually worthwhile life lessons.

Still down to "Lisa's Substitute" and "Blood Feud." I think the former is going to do pretty well regardless so I'm going to throw another one in for "Blood Feud."

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

surprised Principal Charming got no votes.

Bart Gets an F, too. If nothing else I'd figure someone would vote for SNOW DAY, THE FUNNEST DAY IN THE HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD!

Season 3 is up now: WE'RE SENDING OUR LOVE DOWN THE WELL: The Simpsons Season 3 Poll

Might've thrown my vote to "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" instead of "Lisa's Substitute" had I known the latter would get so few votes. But the same could possibly be said for everything that received zero votes, with the exception of "Dancin Homer'" which I'd argue is the only real dud in this bunch.

only 2 for 3 men and a comic gtfo

Shit I forgot to vote after all that! hahaha. I would ave voted for "Blowfish" I think, but it was hard to decide.

Suprsed at the no love for Simpson and Delilah tho! The whole weird sub-story with the Carl character! The strange homosexual subtext. HE KISSES HOMER.

yeah Bart Gets An F is incredible no question.

Not one person mentioned "Old Money" in this thread, which is a shame. Its an important epiode, because its where Grandpa comes into all that money and uses it to have the nursing home upgraded from the a shithole to the decent place it goes on to be from then on. And it was so sad!

Damn, now I wish I HAD voted for Bart Gets an F, because I just remembered a) the permanent contribution to my vocabulary of "amoria phlebitis" and b) my second-favorite Martin line: "Who would have thought that pushing a boy into the girls' lavatory could be such a thrill? The screams! The humiliation! The fact that it wasn't me!"

Voted Blowfish but am fine with this result. Delilah would have been my second choice. So many good episodes but only one single vote to share amongst them!

"It looks like Bullwinkle got a taste of his own medicine!" *laughs*

*laughs* "He sure did, Bill!"

"Did what I said make sense?"

"No, not really Bill!"

"Now I know how the Pilgrims felt" *laughs*

"What are you talking about, Bill?"

"Hello, my name is Mr. Burns. I believe you have a letter for me."

"Okay, Mr. Burns. What's your first name?

"I...don't know."

The delivery on the last line is sooo good.

Totally. The "great plan, Bart" afterwards a nice victory lap