The Simpsons: 10 Best Episodes From The Past 15 Years

7. The Fool Monty

Season 22, Episode 470 - November 2011 Amnesia episodes are not the way to go in almost any series - unless, of course, it's an animated series (or Married with Children, because frankly, Peggy Bundy losing her memory and winding up becoming a great wife and mother was a wonderfully done amnesia episode in a live-action sitcom). As such, The Simpsons made this plot device work, work well, and managed to make a running joke in real life pay off - the comparison of the plot of the Simpsons Movie to Stephen King's novel Under the Dome. A little background: The Simpson's Movie sees a dome placed over the town of Springfield. Under the Dome by Stephen King, which came out after the movie but was actually something King had come up with decades before and had been a well-documented unfinished novel, is about the town of Chester's Mills, which has a mysterious invisible dome trapping residents within the town boundaries. So when Mr. Burns loses his memory, only to have it return and discover that the people of Springfield had lied to him about who he was, in a rage he threatens to trap them all under a dome, like the plot of King's novel - only to be met with yawns, and comments like "It's been done" and "we could just dig our way out." It was a well done moment that I suspect King himself had a chuckle at, if he's not too busy writing about lamp monsters. The episode is far from a one-joke outing, and shows that the Simpsons can still bring the laughs even with a tired plot device like amnesia.