The best Simpsons episodes aren’t only hilarious—they’re also poignant,
showcasing the big, beating heart beneath the series’ occasionally
caustic satire. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the show’s early
flashback episodes, including ”The Way We Was,” ”I Married Marge,” and
”And Maggie Makes Three”—the latter of which ends with what may be the

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A two-part comedic homage to Dallas‘s ”Who shot J.R.?” stunt, ”WSMB?”
is perhapsThe Simpsons‘s most grandiose pop moment ever. An atypical
outing, too: Satiric potshots (O.J. Simpson, Madonna, and Twin Peaks)
and gut-busting randomness (Moe’s marathon lie-detector session is a
classic) are subordinate to a methodically plotted murder mystery that,

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Airdate: March 11, 1993
This episode is virtually flawless, the product of a series at the
height of its creative powers—when the satire was savage and relevant,
when names like John Swartzwelder, George Meyer, and Conan O’Brien were
relatively unknown, when Maude Flanders lived. So it is that we find

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braces/DENTAL PLAN!”); Grampa rattling on about wearing onions on his
belt. ”Last Exit” is a glorious symphony of the high and the low, of
satirical shots at unions and sweet ruminations on the humiliations of
adolescence (as evidenced by Lisa, who copes with a medieval mouth
contraption), and, of course, all those ”D’oh!”s. The things, in other