The Simpsons: 15 Most Underrated Golden Age Episodes

"Que sera, sera, Whatever will be, will be"

From the super friends, to Flanders' solo, to Homer eerily predicting the outcome of the conclusion, this 21 minutes of TV brilliance is immensely packed with content, maybe even more than any other in the franchise. There's no way that balancing all of these conflicting aspects should bear fruit as sweet as this and as a result, it creates an experience that feels unique almost 27 years later and remains in direct contention with Homer's Enemy and You Only Move Twice as the unparalleled Simpsons experience.

Heavily featuring Bart as the subject for most of the runtime before transitioning to a Homer and Flanders story within a single moment, this absolute masterclass of writing melds its ambitious ideas in a perfect seamless sequence from start to finish.

The jokes are firing on all cylinders, from outset to outcome. New background characters like the nerds (or Super Friends as they prefer to be called) make an immediate impact, and the impact anticipated from the comet itself gives the episode an overall sense of unease and impending doom reminiscent of the movie that would come later.

Obviously, this is The Simpsons, so it's a fleeting sense of doom, but it still works perfectly despite that, encapsulating the very ethos of everything the show used to be.

Heart, witticisms, mystery, intrigue, humour, characterisation, and subtle nuanced jokes like the one you'll find upon further inspection of Flander's bomb shelter that meld together to create a criminally underrated episode which should always be in the discussion of the series' most elite offerings.