This season starts with one of the funniest episodes, “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson” (S9, E1). It starts with Moe the bartender telling his customers that 91% of all traffic accidents are caused by the six of them, so they need to start having a designated driver. Barney draws the black egg and can’t drink. He’s even unable to party with Duffman in his first appearance, but he goes on a bender afterward, leaving Homer’s car illegally parked between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. I’ll admit the sight of the Twin Towers brought a tear to my eye. (This episode was made before the towers were destroyed on 9/11.)

There are non-stop laughs in this one, including the musical about checking in to the Betty Ford Clinic. It was pretty funny when Homer had to choose between Mountain Dew and crab juice. He reacts with absolute disgust and says, “I’ll have the crab juice.” The flashback to Homer’s first visit to New York was pretty funny with everyone in the city being a criminal, including the police officer stealing his luggage! Good stuff.

This is also an episode that’s cited in support of the theory that The Simpsons predict the future since there’s an ad for a $9 bus fare to New York that has a picture of the Twin Towers looking like the number 11 next to the 9, making a 9-11 reference before the fact. The Simpsons did correctly predict the Superbowl winner several years in a row, had an episode about global warming before it was on the radar for most people, and had an episode about a flu coming to America from China before Covid-19. They also predicted video calls and smart watches before the fact. There will be more unintentional predictions in future episodes with The Simpsons predicting Donald Trump will become president and Fox will be purchased by Disney amongst others. I think these are all just coincidences. The Simpsons have so many episodes, there’s bound to be a few lucky guesses in there. If we counted all the things from The Simpsons that didn’t come true, it would be a much longer list.

“The Cartridge Family” (S9. E5) is the one where Homer gets a gun. Lisa points out that if you own a gun, it’s statistically more likely to be used against a member of your household than against an intruder. Homer is hilariously irresponsible with the gun, but his fellow NRA members are responsible gun owners, so it’s not an anti-gun episode. At the end, Homer saves his family from Snake by having the gun and Marge, who’d previously been against the gun, decides to keep it because she looks cool holding it. (She was pretty good with a gun in an earlier episode in which she became a police officer, after all.) In the end, it presents guns as dangerous in the hands of an irresponsible person, but okay if a responsible person has one. The staff of The Simpsons were divided on the issue themselves, so it makes sense they’d present both sides.

“Lisa the Skeptic” (S9, E8) is the one in which Lisa discovers the skeleton of an angel. She doesn’t believe it’s actually an angel, but Marge does. Lisa turns out to be right, but Marge’s belief is respected, so it’s not an anti-religious episode. There’s another dig at Jimmy Carter when Homer drinks a Billy Beer and declares, “We elected the wrong Carter.” There’s some funny lines in this one. Ralph tells his dad he’s too scared to wet his pants and Chief Wiggum tells him to relax and it will come. When Moe tells Lisa to go home, she replies that she is home. He then says, “Good. Stay there.” Flanders complains that science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends. “Well there’s some things we don’t want to know. Important things.” And Homer saying, “Facts are meaningless. You can use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true.”

The guest star this episode is Stephen Jay Gould, a paleontologist. The judge orders a restraining order in the case of religion vs. science in keeping with Gould’s non-overlapping magisteria idea. Usually guest stars are actors, musicians, or sports stars. In season 9, we start getting celebrity guest stars who are less famous in pop culture, being only celebrities to more niche groups.

The Simpsons become more self-referential in season 9. Mr. Burns being shot is mentioned in “The Cartridge Family” and Bart previously owning an elephant is mentioned in “The Two Mrs. Nahasapeemapetilons” (S9, E7). Apu’s marriage in this episode also carries over into future episodes. There are several easter eggs that make callbacks to earlier episodes. The unemployment line in “Realty Bites” (S9, E9) features the writer that got fired in the Poochie episode, Mr. Burns’ son, and President George H. W. Bush. A cannister of Little Lisa Slurry appeares in “Bart Carny” (S9, E12), the Plow King appears in “Miracle on Evergreen Terrace” (S9, E10), and a Kamp Krusty poster appears in “The Last Temptation of Krust” (S9, E15). There was a Pin Pals reference in last season’s “Homer’s Phobia”, but I feel like the call backs are much more plentiful this season than last.

I just have to note “Realty Bites” (S9, E9) contains Homer’s great line, “Trying is the first step towards failure.”

“Das Bus” (S9, E14) is a Lord of the Flies parody. The children are stranded on an island together. Chief Wiggum has a great line when he tells Ralph, “If your nose starts to bleed you’re picking it too much… or not enough.” The subplot involves Homer starting an internet business even though he doesn’t have a computer. While reading an Internet for Dummies book, he exclaims, “Oh! They’ve got the internet on computers now!” He names his business Compuglobalhypermeganet. (My roommate named our WiFi this as an homage.) James Earl Jones is the narrator and tells us the kids “were rescued by… oh, let’s say Moe.”

Moe spends extravagantly to impress a woman he’s dating in “Dumbbell Indemnity” (S9, E16). At a fancy restaurant, he orders their finest food stuffed with their second-finest, which turns out being lobster stuffed with tacos!

Homer joins the Navy in “Simpson Tide” (S9, E19). This episode features a major clue regarding which state Springfield is located in. Homer’s submarine leaves Springfield harbor and winds up in Russian waters, indicating Springfield is located on the east coast. We already know Springfield is meant to be located in Oregon, but if we didn’t, this episode would have narrowed it down to one of three states. There’s also a presidential reference in this one with JFK saying “Ich bin ein Berliner” in a flashback that makes Grandpa think he’s a Nazi.

Another presidential reference appears in the next episode “The Trouble with Trillions” (S9, E20) with Truman printing a trillion dollar bill to “make good on a drunken boast” to help Europe recover from World War II. Did Truman have a reputation for being a drunk? I don’t know enough about him to say.

“Girly Edition” (S9, E21) is the episode in which Bart and Lisa become newscasters. It’s not as funny as I remembered, but the debut of the Crazy Cat Lady who speaks gibberish and throws cats at people was amazing the first time I saw it.

“Trash of the Titans” (S9, E22) is the 200th episode of The Simpsons. U2 and Steve Martin guest star. This is the one where Homer becomes the sanitation commissioner for Springfield. Unlike most episodes this season, it had laughs all the way through, including Homer’s great line, “I never apologize. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way I am.” This episode also won an Emmy. I didn’t realize until looking it up, that the Sanford and Son song playing for Steve Martin’s character was a reference to Redd Foxx walking on stage, seeing a small audience, and walking back off without performing. When Toronto was considering using a mine to dump trash (which Homer does in this episode), councilors played this episode as a rebuttal!

“King of the Hill” (S9, E23) is the one where Homer becomes a mountain climber. It’s pretty good. It opens with the family watching a Rainier Wolfcastle movie (an Arnold Schwarzenegger parody) in which he’s fighting Commi-Nazis. One of them surrenders, to which Rainier replies, “Not so fast” and breaks his neck. Marge jokes about break-neck speed, but Bart chastises her for making a joke after a movie character has just died. Grandpa says he once fell 8,000 feet, but people were tougher back in those days. When Homer fires the Sherpas who were helping him climb the mountain, his PowerSauce bar sponsors sadly report that Homer has switched to a competitor against medical advice. It’s pretty funny overall.

My favorite episode this season is “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson” (S9, E1) with honorable mentions going to “Lisa the Skeptic” (S9, E8), “Trash of the Titans” (S9, E22), and “King of the Hill” (S9, E23).