As a kid, one of the cartoons I watched was Tiny Toon Adventures, which featured younger versions of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and other Looney Tunes characters. Around the same time season 4 of The Simpsons premiered, Tiny Toons featured an obvious Bart Simpson analog named Blard Simpleton. Blard came from a realistic cartoon and was unprepared for wacky things like anvils falling from the sky. Ironically, The Simpsons largely decided to abandon realism in season 4, opting for a lot more Looney Tunes style gags.

When I first watched “A Streetcar Named Marge” (S4, E2) I didn’t think it was that funny, but that’s largely because I lacked context. I knew nothing about A Streetcar Named Desire. Now that I’ve seen the play, it’s hilarious that The Simpsons turned it into a musical when you know how depressing the original is. Matt Groening has named this one of his favorite episodes, and it’s also one of mine.

The opening song describes New Orleans as “a city that the damned call home” and “home of pirates, drunks, and whores.” New Orleans is also described as stinky, rotten, vomiting, vile, putrid, brackish, maggoty, foul, crummy, lousy, rancid, and rank. I think the over-the-top nature of the insults is hard to take seriously, (and is obviously a reference to the opening song to Sweeney Todd describing London as horribly foul) but according to Wikipedia, the song was so controversial, the president of Fox had to issue an apology and in the next episode, Bart had to write “I will not defame New Orleans” on the chalkboard during the opening credits.

Apu’s song about being a simple paper boy is hilarious since he’s a minor character and it doesn’t make sense for him to get his own song. Ned yells “Stella!” as in the original play, but then turns it into an upbeat song which is so inappropriate, you have to laugh. The closing song about the kindness of strangers so completely misses the point of the original play, once again, you have to laugh.

“A Streetcar Named Marge” also contains the subplot of Maggie trying to get her pacifier back from the woman in charge of the Ayn Rand School for Tots. (I didn’t know who Ayn Rand was at the time either.) I didn’t pick up on this originally, but Jon Lovitz does the voice of both the director of the play and his sister who runs the school.

The Simpsons is often accused of being a liberal show and it often is, however it’s also one of the most conservative shows on TV. It’s the only TV show I can think of which features a stay-at-home mom as a main character and one of the few that features church as a prominent part of the character’s lives. At the same time, it also acknowledges religious diversity. In “Homer the Heretic” (S4, E3), Christian, Jew and Hindu (in the form of Flanders, Krusty, and Apu) all work together to put out a house fire. While it was problematic to have Apu voiced by a white man, The Simpsons should get credit for presenting a Hindu character on American TV at all. I certainly can’t think of any other Hindu characters on American TV in the early 1990s.

Further evidence that The Simpsons began as a conservative show is evident in their references to presidents. In “Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington” (S3, E2), Republican president George H. W. Bush is presented as a hero, while “Marge in Chains” (S4, E21) refers to Democratic president Jimmy Carter as “history’s greatest monster”. I’d say the fact Jimmy Carter has saved millions of lives through disease eradication efforts and diplomacy makes him one of the best people to have ever lived, but apparently Simpsons show runner Al Jean didn’t like Carter. The Simpsons do take a liberal turn and start ridiculing Republicans in later seasons, but as of season 4, the Simpsons are a firmly Republican family.

I was surprised on rewatch how funny “Lisa the Beauty Queen” (S4, E4) was. It’s full of so many rapid-fire jokes, it feels like an evolution has taken place. It seems like The Simpsons decided to be less realistic and use more non sequiturs for this season. Almost every episode of season 4 is so funny, it will be hard to pick my favorites.

Despite being called “The Simpsons Halloween Special III” in the opening credits, it appears the official name of the episode is “Treehouse of Horror III” (S4, E5). This is the episode which turned Groundskeeper Willie from a background character into a star. He arranges the dirt on a garden and says, “Pretty as a picture.” Zombies erupt from the ground causing him to exclaim, “Ach! Zombies.” He then rearranges the dirt and again pronounces, “Pretty as a picture.” Kids of my generation referred to this joke for years afterward. I remember a kid in my high school creative writing class wrote a poem about the moment. One of the best lines from The Simpsons occurs after Lisa tells Homer he just shot zombie Flanders. Homer is surprised and exclaims, “He was a zombie?” Dark. But hilarious.

There’s some breaking the fourth wall in “”Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie” (S4, E6). Lisa says Michael Jackson and Dustin Hoffman did voices in the movie, but didn’t use their real names, a reference to both celebrities doing voices on The Simpsons using aliases. Lisa refers to Herman’s Head in “Duffless” (S4, E16), a TV show I used to watch back when it was on. Yeardley Smith (who does the voice of Lisa) appeared as a regular character on Herman’s Head.

“Mr. Plow” (S4, E9) is one of the top episodes this season, perhaps one of the best of the series. Homer makes some extra money with a snow plow until his best friend Barney starts his own competing plow business. Homer’s jingle is memorable and his commercial is funny, but Barney’s commercial in which he (and guest star Linda Ronstadt) accuse Homer of being a boozer in their song is hilarious since Barney is more of a boozer than Homer is. Linda Ronstadt even sings a Spanish-language version of the song. In addition to Linda Ronstadt, Adam West also guest stars. Apparently, so many famous people wanted to be on The Simpsons, they had to start putting more than one famous person in each episode.

Homer claims to have a ten-thousand-dollar bill featuring all the presidents having a party, with Jimmy Carter passed out on the couch! At the end of the episode, Homer and Barney decide to join forces and Homer declares that when two friends work together, not even God Himself can stop them. This prompts God to say, “Oh yeah?” and melt all the snow. The news anchor blames the greenhouse effect, which surprised me, since in my memory, the general public didn’t seem to be aware of global warming until Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth came out in 2006. This episode was made all the way back in 1992 when the only people talking about global warming were the climate scientists. The Simpsons does seem to predict the future sometimes.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Conan O’Brien’s name appear in the credits as a writer on several episodes as his Late Night show was my favorite back when it aired. Now that I think about it, I probably like his style of humor because it’s so similar to The Simpsons sense of humor.

The Simpsons doesn’t always hold up all these years later. “Lisa’s First Word” (S4, E10) contains a transphobic joke that doesn’t work anymore. Unfortunately, “The Otto Show” (S3, E22) also contained a transphobic joke. I think any TV show that’s over thirty years old will have some problems, though. Discovering (or being reminded of) the problems with a show you loved as a kid is always a danger when you rewatch old favorites.

When “Lisa’s First Word” (S4, E10) was being advertised, they made a big deal out of the fact that Elizabeth Taylor would do the voice of Maggie, so it was disappointing when she only said one word. It was also disappointing that Maggie didn’t continue talking in subsequent episodes. It was a sweet moment, though.

“Marge vs. The Monorail” (S4, E12) is one of the best episodes from this season and it was written by Conan O’Brien. It opens with a spoof of The Flintstones opening credits in which Homer hilariously describes himself as the greatest guy in history. The town of Springfield gets some money and Grandpa Simpson sarcastically says they can use the money to repair Main Street and everyone thinks he’s being serious and the Mayor even refers to it as Grandpa Simpson’s plan!

Phil Hartman does the voice of monorail salesman Lyle Lanley. He sure does a lot of voicework on The Simpsons, doesn’t he? His song and dance routine to convince the town of Springfield to buy a monorail (even though they don’t need one) is great. He’s able to smoothly and succinctly answer everyone’s questions, and even solves the problem of the ring breaking off Chief Wiggum’s pudding can without missing a beat.

When the episode originally aired, Salt Lake City was considering putting in a light rail system. It’s since proven to be a big success, but at the time, my dad was against it and claimed it was as bad an idea as Springfield’s disastrous monorail! Like many episodes in the fourth season, the realistic, situational-based comedy is replaced by non-stop one-liners and non sequiturs, making it more surreal, but in my opinion, more funny.

“I Love Lisa” (S4, E15) is the first episode in which Ralph Wiggum gets more than a passing line. Ralph’s last name was revealed to be Wiggum back in the season 4 opener, but this is the first episode to make it clear that he’s Chief Wiggum’s son. It doubles as both a Valentine’s episode and a President’s Day episode, which makes sense as the two holidays are typically close together. Ralph’s line, “My doctor said I wouldn’t have so many nosebleeds if I kept my finger out of there” is comedy gold. I didn’t remember Principle Skinner was originally portrayed as a traumatized Vietnam vet before being transformed into his later boy scout persona. This episode making light of the trauma he experienced watching a friend die is pretty horrifying. This is another way in which The Simpsons doesn’t hold up after all these years.

“Last Exit to Springfield” (S4, E17) has some fun parodies. While under the influence of dental anesthetic, Lisa has a Beatles-style hallucination. Mr. Burns impersonates The Grinch while dealing with striking workers, including speaking in rhyme and making up words. It was also hilarious when Burns told Homer the bathroom was the 21st door on the right. When Homer returns, no longer needing to go to the bathroom, Burns asks if he found the bathroom alright. Homer says “yeah” in way indicating he didn’t. Good stuff. The dentist showing Lisa the horrifying tools he’s going to use on her teeth to “keep her from being afraid” was hilarious, as was the evil laugh Lisa made when she looks in the mirror after getting her braces put in.

“So It’s Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show” (S4, E18) is The Simpsons‘ first clip show (unfortunately not their last). Many shows at the time did clip shows in order to save money, including Star Trek: The Next Generation. Even modern shows such as Blackish reuse previously filmed scenes, although I think modern shows do it more as a quick way to remind the audience of previous events rather than a cost saving measure. The Simpsons at least poke fun at themselves for doing a clip show, including in the episode title itself. The new material, in which Bart shakes up Homer’s beer as an April Fool’s joke, is really funny, but unfortunately, all the clips drag down the episode as a whole. It was pretty funny when they showed all the times Homer said “D’oh!” in quick succession, though.

Season 4 is the best so far. The jokes are more rapid-fire, off-the-wall, and non-sensical in a good way. In my opinion, the best episodes this season are “A Streetcar Named Marge”, “Treehouse of Horror III”, “Mr. Plow”, “Marge vs. The Monorail”, and “Last Exit to Springfield”. Searching this online, many people seem to be of the opinion that season 4 is the best season of The Simpsons. Hopefully, it’s not all downhill from here.