Mine’s gotta be Marge on the Lam. It’s got Ballet as bears driving little cars, it’s got Homer about to have his arms sawed off cause he didn’t let go of soda, it’s got good waffles sticking together, it’s got moonshine straight from your own still, it’s got ghost cars, it’s got Miguel Sanchez, it’s got Sunshine and Lollypops and Raibows, it’s got precious antique cans, it’s got suspects in a…red car who are passing directly beneath the earth’s sun…now. it’s hilarious and really encapsulates season 5s ‘fuck it, we ball’ attitude.
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Kinda corny to choose since this is Hexbear buuuut I really loved Crepes of Wrath from Season 1 with the transfer student Adil Hoxha lol. The jokes are top notch in my opinion and nothing I could’ve understood til I started lurking here, tbh. I do think that all of Season 1 is underrated though. I liked that it was rough around the edges, Really enjoyed the creative plots and it had a more serious side
“Please, please, kids. Stop fighting. Maybe Lisa’s right about America being a land of opportunity, and maybe Adil has a point about the machinery of capitalism being oiled with the blood of the workers.”
We actually ended out watching that upside in 10th grade French class (I was in french immersion so all of school was learning french until Jr high when it became about half and then high school it was whatever amount of French language classes needed to cover my certification, which was conveniently exactly how many they offered. So my French class by then wasn’t like…learning French, it was like English class but French, I also took English class in English from grade 3 on and that was the only time we were allowed to speak English in elementary). It was supposed to show us that even a dumbass like bart could learn French if stuck in France. This teacher was found to have her water bottle be partly vodka when she left the room and someone went and smelled it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivo3FPEm4vk
“When I first heard about the operation, I was against it. But then I thought, if Homer wants to be a woman, so be it!”
Barney is a comrade, sometimes.
In the commentary they talked about how this was their darkest episode so far which is absurd cause Homer’s Odyssey, and I guess one of the writers had a doctor dad who he asked about the details of a triple bypass and he said ‘there is nothing funny about that.’. My grandfather had a quadruple when I was pretty young and I didn’t get how serious that really was at the time. He died of his 4th heart attack
Damn, I’m sorry to hear about your grandpa, Comrade.
I do imagine it’s something that hits home for a lot of people in the US. But, I agree, Homer’s Odyssey is pretty fucking dark. I still laugh so hard every time he crashes that cart though.
It was over a decade ago.
ally barney
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The problem with this is I’m not sure how to gauge whether an episode is underrated.
I know there are some famous episodes but pretty much all S1-S8 episodes are great, I rewatch them regularly on nights I’m not watching kino. And all of the Simpsons is so much better now as an adult, there was so much I could not have understood when I watched them as a kid when they came out.
Homer’s Enemy (S8) is still my favorite though. "Suuure. You’ve never been?” was always an unforgettable line for me.
I CALL HIM GAMBLOR!!
I call it the Spruce Moose! Hop in!
But sir-
I said, “hop in”
FREEMASONS RUN THE COUNTRY!
“Get my razor! Draw a bath! And get these Kleenex boxes off my feet!”
“Certainly, sir. And, uh, the jars of urine?”
“Oh, we’ll hang on to those.”
The classic era are all classics and I may be a bigger simpsons nerd than many here so I sorta know what the classics of the classics are. I think $Springfield or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling would count. It’s I’m the mix but not making top ten lists in clickbait articles.
What would you say are the top 3 clickbait list episodes?
Last Exit to Springfield, Marge Vs the Monorail and Mr Plow
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I’ll have a random scene or line from the Simpson’s in my head for years and later find out it’s everyone’s favorite thing.
I would guess it doesn’t count as underrated, but yeah, Homer’s Enemy is the episode for me too. The B-plot doesn’t even do a lot for me (okay, Grimes including “A son who owns a factory!” when angrily listing off Homer’s blessings was pretty great), but every scene with Grimes is pure gold. The scene where he’s laughing maniacally watching Homer drive off after tricking Homer and then stops laughing once Homer backs up into his car is amazing slapstick comedy, and the contest scene is perfection.
“Could you explain your model young man?” “Well, basically I just copied the plant we have now.” Burns is immediately impressed.
Yeah, that’s the best part of it. It’s such a great tragi-comedy.
What is it about grimes that so grabs the american cultural focus? I’m not trying to joke or anything, but everyone who is a Simpsons fan is obsessed with Grimes. Obsessed is too strong a word, but you know what I mean. It’s probably the single episode that has the most written about it.
Is it because it’s more “realistic”? Do Simpsons fans actually want wild fantastical adventures about the Simpsons dealing with everyday problems? (I can’t remember the exact quote from that focus group scene from The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochy show. Incidentally the scene right before lives rent free in my head. Just a guy asking a kid if he’d like to come with him to see some cartoons)The episode is pretty dark for a Simpsons episode and Homer acts a little out-of-character (he acts dumber but more earnestly than he usually does). It’s a huge contrast if you compare Homer in this episode and Jerkass Homer during the Skully years. That rubs some people the wrong way. This episode is one of the few Simpsons episode with a permanent death, so it’ll always be talked about relative to other episodes just like how the episode where Maude dies gets talked about and even referenced in later episodes even if the actual episode is meh.
It’s also a season 8 episode, so there’s the wider context of people pointing to it as the end of the classic era and people not liking season 8 for being too meta. I don’t think the episode would get this much attention if it were a season 6 episode. In general, a lot of season 8 and season 9 episodes get the spotlight pointed at them because there’s a faction of the Simpsons fanbase who thinks that this episode marks the end of the classic era. Homer’s Enemy and The Principal and the Pauper get the most heat.
I honestly don’t really know. I hadn’t realized it was popular until this thread.
I just like it because it’s such a silly dark comedy. Homer has this genuinely good intention to befriend Grimes but Homer ends up just torturing him until he accidentally kills himself out of total frustration. If anything, though, I feel like it’s making fun of the typical privileged and oblivious American middle class which is represented by Homer. Grimes is a working class person with a hard life who got lucky enough to get ahead, but no matter how hard Grimes works, Grimes realizes he can never compete with the life that Homer just accidentally falls ass backwards into and takes for granted.
As an adult, I can really relate to Grimes with his sobering realization that his upbringing will never be cast away and where he comes from will always determine how far he gets no matter what he does, especially in comparison to some idiot like Homer who will never understand struggle. But, I can also really relate to Homer and how his good intentions in a situation are not only are misinterpreted in the most negative light possible but they actually lead to absolute disaster. It’s kind of Larry David-esque or similar to Curb. Although the difference is that Larry would just get annoyed, or I would laugh at myself, but Homer just falls asleep and snores at Grimes’s funeral indicating he never learned anything or even cared that much which makes it even darker (and funnier) that Grimes took it that hard.
Either The Lemon of Troy (because how often do we get to see Shelbyville?) or Raging Abe Simpson and His Grumbling Grandson in “The Curse of The Flying Hellfish”
YouTube guy I really like Patrick H Willems uses Lemon of Troy as his example episode for how classic simpsons nailed comedy from a structural perspective. It’s really good and so is his other other stuff.
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“Separate Vocations,” where Bart becomes drunk with hall monitor power and Lisa calls him a fascist. And when the cops hand Bart a gun and ask him to cover them.
The Simpsons had cops figured out from the start.
Ooh, good call! That one is good.
The Mike Reiss episode of Chapo where he goes something like “Cops have come up to me and asked if we had a cop on the writing staff because the depiction of a bumbling Police chief is too accurate. I reply “no” and then find it deeply depressing”
The one where skinner gets turned into a weather balloon, or the one where Homer keeps burning breakfast even when it’s cereal.
Or that one where Bart tries really hard and gets a D minus. Shit was relatable as a kid with ADHD.
A more serious answer would be the strike episode or the Frank Grimes one but I don’t think those are underrated.
Bart’s comet and Homer the Smithers are what you’re thinking about. Bart’s Comet really does get lost in the shuffle, it’s a really great episode with a lot of fantastic jokes,a nice heartfelt moment and one of the best end of episode jokes of the damn series. That is a really good call.
Homer the Smithers is one I’d have to rewatch, I’d consider around average for classic simpsons which is still legendary status, even at their worst they wetr better than most. But it’s been a little while since I’ve watched it and can only remember a few of the gags.
For the one where Bart gets a D minus, it’s called Bart gets an F. Ms. Krabapel was a fantastic character and that’s the episode where it really kicked off. When re-runs aired on cable 6 times a day if you had a decent cable package in the early 2000s I’d often not watch the season 1 episodes but I was glad I caught that one as a kid.
Ah, I almost forgot to include the one where they go to Australia. They spend the whole episode roasting Australia and it’s great.
That one is borderline classic and the basis of soooo many of my jokes around Australians.
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Nine hundred dollarydoos!?
Homer the Smithers has one of my favorite underrated jokes:
Burns: Here, tell me how my stocks did yesterday.
Homer: Uh… they all won.
Burns: What about my options?
Homer: Well, you can either get up or go back to sleep.
Burns’ genuine consideration before saying 'I think I’ll get up" is absolutely perfect delivery. Homer and Burns on sorta friendly terms is always magic. On that note Mointain of Madness is similarly great. Burns and Homer as allies is a fantastic pairing that it’s kinda odd they never caught on to it that much.
Graphic of comet hitting Springfield with only MOE’S BAR and nothing else labeled in the blast zone
Moe: Oh dear god, no!
Scale model of Springfield with a rocket intercepting the comet
The model comet explodes in real flames for some reason and Moe’s catches on fire
Moe: Oh dear god, no!
I love the union plant strike song. “They have the plant, but we have the power” is such a strong line
Or that one where Bart tries really hard and gets a D minus. Shit was relatable as a kid with ADHD.
This might be my choice too. There’s a sort of serene quality to those early episodes that they never quite managed to reach again (and probably didn’t try to).
Lisa on Ice
“Now Homer, don’t you eat this pie”
HACK THE BONE!
I say every single season 1 episode because there are still people who insist on excluding them from classic era Simpsons.
What about Lisa’s Rival? Everybody remembers the B plot, but how many people actually talk about the main plot? There’s character development in Lisa being a big fish in a small pond, there’s funny lines (“Here’s the grapes, and here’s the wrath!”), Milhouse getting chased by feds. I guess it’s underrated in that sense.
Bart’s Inner Child is kinda the same thing. The entire episode gets overshadowed by the trampoline B plot.
I get the exclusion cause it’s a different beast almost, but season one kinda slaps in a way that the other seasons don’t. Lisa has the best characterization early on. She’s just depressed and clever but still 8.
I fucking love the tramampolone I mean trambopaline stuff, but you aren’t wrong. However things not being double bolted was the reason for every failure at work for a while cause of that episode.
I’m a fifth level Simpsons fan, I only watch the Tracey Ullman shorts
Last Exit to Springfield Season 4, Episode 17
DENTAL PLAN
I said underrated. That one was the highest rated episode for a while until contrarianism happened. It’s Monorail popular
i knew it was the best episode when i watched that baby when it first aired when i was 9 and i know it’s the best one today
i dont care
Do you have an episode that fits the question?
dental plan
Lisa needs
s
LISA NEEDS BRACES
Marge Be Not Proud, ”Buy me Bonestorm or go to hell!” alone should make it more highly regarded than it is.
That one hits me in the ‘I’m six and my mom is upset with me’
Simpsons fans can be contentious. I’m surprised there aren’t any arguments yet.
To spice things up: the one with musk perfectly highlights how long running franchises become a parody of themselves. The main joke on that episode is the writing room, and they’re fucking hilarious.
Is Homie the Clown underrated? Great episode. The “you people have stood in my way long enough” line is one of my favorite gags.
Tongue sticking out making a mashed potato big tent
I think that’s pushing classic territory but damn it’s a good one
I don’t know if it’s underrated but “The Boy Who Knew Too Much” (s05e20) by far my favorite episode.
The Boy Who Knew Too Much (The Simpsons)
…In the episode, Mayor Quimby’s nephew Freddy is wrongly accused of assaulting a waiter, with Bart (who is playing truant from school) being the sole witness to the true course of events. Since Bart cannot reveal what he knows without admitting that he skipped school, he faces the dilemma of either testifying on Freddy’s behalf and facing punishment himself, or staying silent and allowing a miscarriage of justice.
I took some notes for each episode for myself when I was watching the first seven seasons. I’m disappointed that the only thing I wrote about this episode was…
I loved this episode.
Shau-Dere
Skinner’s Sense of Snow, or Grift of the Magi.
Both are so so good, full of good quotes, and great character moments
Winter episode episode guy here. Those are both good later ones.
I had a dvd of Christmas episodes so I watched both a lot.
Plus Miracle on Evergreen Terrace. Love that one too
I used to have that dvd!
I still have one of the two I had back then! Good collection of episodes
I still have some vhs collections but once I got the full seasons I ditched the dvd collections of my youth.
Underrated? No idea. My all-time favorite is Duffless
That’s be an underrated fave for sure, I’ve never heard that as anyone’s favorite. Could you elaborate? I’m legit curious, this is a New Opinion for me
Barney ratting out Homer for drunk driving to the cops before drunkenly running over Chief Wiggum is always hysterical to me.
Alcohol has ruined my life. I’m 31 years old.
I remember from the commentary that they had a lot of network pushback on it because beer commercials and ad money. They could dunk on tobacco cause they can’t advertise on TV, as much as they wanted but booze criticism always had pushback
That honestly makes sense. They got away with a lot, it’s amazing watching it now.
Fox needed them DESPERATELY cause they were a new network when they hit big and they got a no studio notes deal. Futurama didn’t get the same from fox.
Damn, that’s awesome! I didn’t know that. They got so lucky. Honestly, Fox was slop at the time.
I wonder how many of the anti-Fox jokes were genuine. I always figured they were self-humbling jokes that Fox allowed but maybe they were actual jabs.
Genuine but really permitted. They got Rupert Murdoch on and had him refer to himself as a billionaire tyrant bit also he owned Fox, so it was never outside of what the overseers allowed but they allowed any Fox bashing quite well from what I heard from the dvd commentaries from dvds released by fox but a lot of people kn them weren’t under contract anymore and they didn’t pay as much attention to commentary content in the early dvd days when the classico seasons came out. So it does seem like Fox at the time was totally fine with it as long as the money came in, Disney seems way less willing to allow that.
Nostalgia plays a factor but it hit the right beats for me: Lisa’s science project sabotage by Bart who then becomes the subject (“is my brother dumber than a hamster?”), Homer’s escape from the power plant to go to the Duff Brewery (“if the plant ye wish to flee, go to sector 7-B.”) then him getting caught after leaving the brewery (Chief Wiggum is in a beer stein costume, gets hit by Barney’s car and Wiggum rolls away saying “weeeee!” then hits a tree and bursts into flames for no reason), and the way it ends is wholesome with Homer and Marge riding a bicycle into the sunset singing Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head.
Things exploding when they shouldn’t is low-key one of my fave running gags. Molemans car bumps into a tree at a snails pace? Explodes. Wiggum as a beer Stein? Explodes. A man’s appendix that’s about to burst? Explodes. Corn flakes + milk? Burns. A model rocket hitting a model comet? Explodes and ignites a model of Moe’s Tavern. Pop rocks and soda at a candy convention? Explodes into a fireball.
I love those types of gags
