Aha - there's mine!
I bloody love the Simpsons. I grew up on it, used to watch it on BBC Two then followed it to Sky One, waited for new episodes, dug out all the repeats... I can match it to moments in my life; I distinctly remember having hayfever for the first and only time in my life when You Only Move Twice premiered over here. Big deal, huge deal. But there's only so many times you can watch the repeats, and we spent a few years without cable too, so I took a bit of a sabbatical over most of my teenage years. Didn't watch the new ones cos they were rubbish, didn't watch the old ones cos I knew them inside out, and by the time I started watching again, there was a new freshness to them. Which is still enduring, actually; it's still like seeing them for the first time. There are plenty of great episodes I've not seen since I was ten years younger. I couldn't match quotes to episodes for toffee. While I know all the plots, characters, and love Springfield to bits, I don't know the episodes' names, don't know their seasons, and I love it all the more for it, because it means the jokes genuinely catch me off guard. It's as close as I'll get to watching them for the first time again - there's always loads of material I either didn't remember, or just plain didn't appreciate at the time.
For this reason, I'd never be able to cobble together a top ten list. I don't know which ones make me laugh most, which ones have the best plots, couldn't tell you. Not to mention that now I'm in my twenties, I'm laughing at completely different jokes than I did in my teens, so the ones I've got listed as "funny" up here probably aren't the ones I'm laughing at most on repeats. But Last Exit to Springfield in particular, I couldn't have told you a thing about. I know this, cos when I had some mates around one of them saw it on Sky Plus, and told me to wap it on. I didn't know which one it was, didn't really fancy it, he told me it was the "Lisa needs braces" one. I vaguelly recalled the plot, and didn't remember it being particularly outstanding, so he told me that it had the highest density of jokes per minute of any Simpsons episode.
I don't know if that's technically true but I bloody hooted with laughter. Fantastic. So rare that when someone tells you "it's the funniest thing ever," it actually turns out to be the funniest thing ever. I don't know for sure whether it's my favourite episode - and I've forgotten all the jokes in it again, what's more - but it's the one I reach for whenever the discussion comes up. Along with You Only Move Twice, and - possibly - $pringfield!
Ace list, been following from the start. Keep it up.
Topic: El Barto's Top 20 Simpsons Episodes (Read 19870 times)
