This story was originally published in October 2014. We’ve updated it in honor of the 35th anniversary of The Simpsons’s series premiere. In 2014, 25 years and hundreds of hours into The Simpsons ’s run, Vulture assembled a list of the 100 essential episodes.
Intended to reflect the show’s continued quality over the decades, it spanned different eras, looking beyond the obvious entries from the mid-’90s golden age to also include then-recent, and thereby controversial, additions to the canon. In the ensuing decade, The Simpsons has kept evolving, and so, too, must this list. Since it was originally published, TV’s longest-running sitcom has entered a new Renaissance era characterized by an eagerness to find unexpected ways to grapple with the legacy of a show that its current creative staff came up watching.
Much like The Simpsons today, this list is now the product of multiple writers over multiple years with different ideas about what makes a good episode of The Simpsons . It is intended to be a reflection of the full continuum of the show’s greatness beyond the handful of seasons generally accepted as “the best,” which means newer entries that have found ways to broaden our understanding of what it means to be an essential episode of The Simpsons may appear instead of certain assumed classics . So in honor of 35 years and counting of great Simpsons episodes, here are 100 episodes that paint a picture of all the things the series does best.
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