The Simpsons: 8 Episodes From The Bad Seasons You Need To Watch
6. 22 For 30
22 For 30 is an episode which perfectly encapsulates the current era of The Simpsons. It lacks the notable lines the first ten years had scattered everywhere like discarded rakes, but it's a completely one-off episode that goes for the jugular with meta. Stylised like an ESPN documentary (the acclaimed 30 For 30), an unwitting Bart is embroiled in a points shaving scandal for Springfield Elementary's basketball team.
Stephen Curry has a cameo, but it's a little blink and you'll miss it. What the episode certainly makes more of here is their animation. There's a neat section where we see Bart's skills develop in detention, and the episode fully sells us the documentary format with characters talking to the camera and chyrons rolling.
The episode does a good job of explaining point shaving and gambling enough that you can follow the story without being suffocated by sportsball talk. The actual gameplay depicted is a lot cleaner than when they've shown soc... football (sorry, I just can't), which means very little screentime is wasted.
We get a little chunk of Fat Tony's backstory thrown in there to tie the episode all together too. A definite slam dunk for the past five years.