The season opener, “Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part Two” (S7, E1) gets us off to a great start. We’re told Mr. Burns was rushed to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. However, he’s then taken to a better hospital where his condition is upgraded to living. Chief Wiggum investigates several suspects. Guest star Tito Puente vowed revenge on Mr. Burns, but he didn’t intend to shoot him, just write a slanderous mambo titled “Señor Burns”. A great musical number. Principle Skinner has an alibi in the form of Superintendent Chalmers, however, he accidentally put on his mother’s make-up when Chalmers saw him, so he tells the chief that Chalmers is his alibi, but anything else he says is a lie. Wiggum hooks the bartender Moe up to a lie detector. Moe says he doesn’t deserve this shabby treatment, but the machine goes off, so he’s apparently lying about that. Great stuff.

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I loved The X Files back when it was on the air. It was a super-popular show, getting much higher ratings than streaming shows do today due to the fact The X Files didn’t have as much competition back in the pre-streaming era. It asked the question: What if all the conspiracy theories are true? This had the unfortunate side effect of popularizing obscure conspiracy theories like vaccines containing tracking devices which lead to the modern anti-vax movement of today. But for those of us who recognized that it was a work of fiction, it was a lot of fun. I’d joke with my friends about it being the “flashlight show” since nearly every episode features a scene of Mulder and Scully walking around in the dark with only the light from their flashlights to guide them.

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Yellowjackets is a TV show I should like. The theme song and opening credits are pretty cool. It features a lot of 90s songs and actors who were popular in the 90s, triggering my nostalgia. The image they use to advertise the show of someone wearing antlers and a veil is pretty cool and makes you think the show will be pretty wild. However, by the end of the first season, I wasn’t planning on continuing to watch it.

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In “Bart of Darkness” (S6, E1), there’s a scene in which Bart falls from a tree. Nelson points and laughs with his characteristic “Haw Haw”. When another child says Bart’s really hurt and has probably broken his leg, Nelson replies, “I said Haw Haw.” It’s funny because it’s so horrible. My brother really liked this line and would quote it often.

“Lisa’s Rival” (S6, E2) is pretty funny. A new girl in school is smarter than Lisa which causes her to sabotage her Tell Tale Heart diorama. Ralph Wiggum gets a couple of good lines. “I crushed my Wookie” and “My cat’s breath smells like cat food” are hilarious. The funniest part of the episode is the subplot in which Homer steals sugar from a crashed truck. He keeps the pile of sugar in the backyard and guards it, paranoid that someone will steal it. He mangles a quote from Scarface, claiming that in America, first you get the sugar, then you get the money, then you get the women. His monologue in which he impersonates the blue bloods wondering what is to be done about this Homer Simpson was great.

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Sideshow Bob returns yet again in “Cape Feare” (S5, E2) and this time he wants to kill Bart. There’s a scene in which Bob repeatedly steps on rakes that smack him in the face that went on way too long. This was done to pad out the episode which was originally too short. It was hilarious to me that the scene went on so long when it first aired, but on a rewatch, this sort of thing is less funny.

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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.

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For season 3, the opening credits change again. This time, the tune Lisa plays on the saxophone is different from episode to episode. Season 3 continues to have a lot of famous-at-the-time guest stars. There’s sports stars such as Magic Johnson and Darryl Strawberry, musical stars like Michael Jackson, Sting, and Aerosmith, and actors like Neil Patrick Harris, Jon Lovitz, and Steve Allen.

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The first episode of the second season is the highest rated episode of The Simpsons overall, getting 33 million viewers when it originally aired. I remember “Bart Gets an F” (S2, E1) being the last episode of the first season. Since it takes place at the end of the school year when seasons typically end, this would make sense, but I guess my memory is wrong. I was fully expecting Bart to go on to the fifth grade the next episode and was surprised when he remained in the fourth grade. I was Bart’s age when the first season aired, so I thought Bart and I would always be the same age. Alas, I have continued to age while he has remained a permanent fourth-grader.

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The Simpsons is the longest-running American primetime TV show. It may also be the most influential in terms of phrases and memes. Several new words invented by The Simpsons such as d’oh, meh, embiggen, cromulent, yoink, and craptacular are now in the dictionary. It’s probably influenced every comedy show that’s come after it in some way. Merchandising was hugely successful from the beginning, with as many as one million Bart Simpson t-shirts selling on a single day.

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