I hadn’t seen “Treehouse of Horror XIII” (S14, E1) before and can’t recommend it. I just didn’t think it was funny. There was one scene in which Homer makes several clones of himself and one of the clones is Peter Griffin. This is likely a dig at the dad from Family Guy being too similar to Homer.

After last season’s cliffhanger in which Mulder was trying to save a guy who could heal his mother from a shapeshifting alien, “Herrenvolk” (S4, E1) starts with a scene of creepy clone kids watching a guy get killed by bees. I seem to remember the Fox network had a documentary about killer bees around this time similar to their sensationalist alien autopsy video. Mulder meets clones of his sister who are at the age she was when she was abducted. Weird.

At the end of last season, Mulder appeared to have died. Season 3 starts with “The Blessing Way” (S3, E1) in which a dead Mulder talks to his dead father and his dead father figure, Deep Throat. I like that we get a lot of minor characters in this one. Scully meets with Mulder’s mother who was strangely absent last episode. Krycek is also here and he shoots Scully’s sister. At this rate, neither Scully nor Mulder will have any family members left by next season. It’s too bad their family members exist merely to be killed off. We also get the first appearance of The Well-Manicured Man, another member of The Syndicate which keeps aliens a secret.

Up to this point, this has been a Simpsons rewatch, but now with season 13, we’re getting into episodes I haven’t seen before. Back when this was originally on the air, I did see most, but not all of the episodes this season. In future seasons, there’s going to start being more and more episodes that are new to me as we go forward. I’m predicting that the new-to-me episodes probably won’t impress me as much since I won’t have any nostalgia for them. Case in point, I hadn’t seen “Treehouse of Horror XII” (S13, E1) before and I wasn’t impressed.

The first episode this season is “Treehouse of Horror XI” (S12, E1). It’s not as funny as the usual Halloween episode. The only skit I liked was the one where Homer dies and tries to do a good deed to get into heaven, and that was only meh.

“Beyond Blunderdome” (S11, E1) features Mel Gibson who was presented as beloved at the time with Robert Downey Jr. and Hugh Grant presented as degenerates. Just goes to show how easy it is for actors to go from being loved to despised to loved again. Since I’m keeping track of presidential references, I’ll mention an unnamed monocle-wearing president is decapitated in the movie Mel Gibson and Homer make together.

At the end of Season 1, the X Files had been discontinued and Mulder and Scully have been assigned to other duties. Season 2 kicks off with “Little Green Men” (S2, E1) in which Mulder investigates an alien signal picked up by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. This episode feels very cinematic. There’s a lot of location shooting, a car chase, and Mulder and Scully are separate for much of the episode each doing their own thing. We also get a flashback to Mulder’s sister being abducted. It’s like a mini movie. I had forgotten about how much Mulder likes sunflower seeds until the opening scene depicts him with his feet buried in shells.

Psych (2006-2014) is a hilarious show about a guy named Shawn who is hyper-observant and has a perfect memory, yet somehow forgets a lot of things and often lacks common knowledge. He pretends to be a psychic and solves murders with his best friend Gus. There are a lot of eighties references and famous guest stars (many from the eighties). It doesn’t entirely hold up (there’s some scattered instances of homophobia and objectification of women in a few episodes here and there which I thought was old-fashioned even when it originally aired), but overall, it’s still watchable.

Since US Presidents are an interest of mine, I’ve been keeping track of presidential references in The Simpsons. For season 10, we have a reference to then-current president Bill Clinton in “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace” (S10, E2). A couple radio DJs joke that the President has a new website: http://www.[whistling noise].[boing noise]. This is a reference to Clinton’s womanizing ways. It’s interesting that The Simpsons is said to be a liberal show when, so far at least, they make fun of Democrats as much as, or more than, Republicans.

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.)