The Simpsons: Every Golden Age Season Ranked

Best offerings: "Bart Gets an F", "Lisa's Substitute", "One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish".

Moving away from the animated - for lack of a better word - atrociousness of the first season, you can really see the show flourish both aesthetically and structurally, with the season's opener "Bart Gets an F" not only remaining one of the most pivotal episodes in the shows canon - setting standards extremely high right off the bat - but 31 years later, it remains the most viewed.

The overhaul in the quality of episodes is certainly something to be admired. The first ever Halloween special was born here (later renamed Treehouse of Horror in 2002), there's a sudden increase in the focus of sentimentality as opposed to unquenchable laughter and the stories feel more grandiose, imploring various new elements such as Homer's long-lost brother.

The stories are mostly superior to the former season, but still incur the problem of jumping around far too often and far too quickly, rushing too fast to the conclusion. The characters haven't completely developed their personalities yet - just look at any episode with Lisa before Lisa's substitute - and some stories are painstakingly missing something that should so clearly be featured or they're infuriatingly too short-winded and then spend the next 10 minutes trying to keep you entertained.

Overall, it's still a wonderful season and you can see the emergence of something special, but it's not quite there just yet.