The Simpsons at 500: your top 10 episodes
We asked you for your favourite Simpsons episode. Surprisingly the top 10 were made during the first decade of the show
The Simpsons episode you liked the most featured Homer unwittingly signing up to a Bond spoof. Photograph: AP
To celebrate the 500th episode of The Simpsons, which airs on 19 February in the US, we asked you to nominate your favourite episodes ever so we could put together The Simpsons Guardian Readers Top 10. Rather than deploy some complex Eurovision style ranking system, we kept it simple and each episode mentioned in the 1002 comments received one vote – and no that didn't mean people who nominated "the one with Dustin Hoffman" (Lisa's Substitute) were ignored. So here, in reverse order, is what you voted for …
Number 10: A Streetcar Named Marge (Season 4, Episode 2)
This episode has it all. Great songs ("you can always rely on the comfort of strangers"); dozens of film parodies (including a subplot involving Maggie's Great Escape at the Ayn Rand School for Tots); Marge channeling her anger at Homer into some top drawer amateur dramatics and, as @alitadepollo notes, "the revelation that Flanders is buff!".
Number 9: Homer Badman (Season 6, Episode 9)
Poor Homer is wrongly accused of sexual molestation and hounded by the press but is proved innocent when Groundskeeper Willie reveals that his hobby is secretly filming couples in cars. "I dinna come forward because in this country it makes you look like a pervert," he tells Homer. "But every single Scottish person does it!" It is "simply the most sublime 22 minutes of television ever," says @shellsuitwarrior.
Number 8: Homer the Heretic (Season 4 Episode 3)
According to @bunnymen this episode is "Homer's finest hour". He quits church, develops his own religion, invents moon waffles and gets to dance in his underpants like Tom Cruise in Risky Business.
Number 7: Lisa's Substitute (Season 2, Episode 19)
Dustin Hoffman voices Mr Bergstrom, a substitute teacher Lisa falls in love with. "As sweet and touching as The Simpsons was once funny," commented @powkin.
Number 6: Deep Space Homer (Season 5 Episode 15)
"The whole episode was funny," says @discobox, "but the super-smart chimp on roller-skates with the plummy Lord Haw Haw accent had me laughing until it hurt."
Number 5: El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (Season 8 Episode 9)
Homer eats a couple of "Guatemalan insanity peppers" and goes on a fantastical hallucinatory journey upon which his spiritual guide is the Space Coyote voiced by Johnny Cash. Brilliant. "Probably the most beautifully animated and realised sequence that they've done," thinks @Finkfloyd. "Homer as the big-shot chili taster is hilarious too."
Number 4: Marge vs. The Monorail (Season 4 Episode 12)
Simpsons fans are very passionate about this Conan O'Brien-penned episode. Possibly because it includes the best dialogue of all-time — as quoted by @DingleDangel:
Marge: "Homer, there's someone here who can help you!"
Homer: "Is it Batman?"
Marge: "No, he's a scientist"
Homer: "Batman's a scientist!"
3: Last Exit To Springfield (Season 4 Episode 17)
@JamieTheCFH thought this the "perfect example of the new 'darkness' The Simpsons developed by season 4". Mr Burns tries to bribe Homer as head of the union, but Homer mistaking his move as a homosexual advance from Burns – with the result that Burns thinks he's a great negotiator: "Sorry, Mr. Burns, but I don't go in for these backdoor shenanigans. Sure, I'm flattered, maybe even a little curious, but the answer is no!"
Number 2: Cape Feare (Season 5 Episode 2)
"Every second line is the most brilliant gag," thinks @Saint1976. "The rakes, the letters, the Thompsons, Hannibal crossing the alps, the chainsaw and hockey mask, the cactus patch, Grandpas pills and the wolves, the score to HMS Pinafore, bake him away toys. I could go on. I'm giggling at my desk just trying to remember them all."
Number 1: You Only Move Twice (Season 8 Episode 2)
"You Only Move Twice is not only the best Simpsons episode ever but one of the best episodes of ANYTHING ever," reckons @WilburWhateley, a view that's far from unique. It is written by the most prolific, celebrated and reclusive writer from The Simpsons early years, John Swartzwelder – a man who when smoking was banned from his local diner, bought the booth in which he used to sit, smoke and write and installed it in his own home. Spoofing Bond, with brilliant sight gags, featuring the fantastic supervillain/ entrepreneur Hank Scorpio and a relentless string of classic gags, it's the one Simpsons episode everyone agreed they loved.
Scorpio: "By the way, Homer. Which is your least favourite country? Italy or France'?
Homer: "...France"
Scorpio: "Nobody ever says Italy..."
Interestingly, all of your top 10 come from the first decade of The Simpsons - in fact of the 100 or so episodes voted for, only a handful were from the 21st century. So just for our own amusement – no chart this time – what are your favourite Simpsons episodes from the past 12 years?
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