The Simpsons: Every Golden Age Season Ranked
3. Season 8
Best offerings: "Homer's Enemy", "You Only Move Twice", "The Springfield Files".
The best way to describe season 8 would be to sum it up as a self-aware, self-referential swansong. A season that clearly indicates the series was beginning to steadily decline, but enabled the writers to go all in by ascertaining that knowledge in advance, and as you can imagine, they took full advantage of it.
Oh, and it also contains what most people consider to be the two greatest episodes in its entire run: "Homer's Enemy" and "You Only Move Twice".
It isn't just the writers that are getting into the spirit either, as the illusive, almost transcendental animation in some episodes - namely The Mysterious Voyage of Homer - is as imaginative as it is ingenious.
In no other season are the visuals, such a complimentary spectacle to the story being woven around them, nor is there a season where the nature of the topics are so indifferent from one to the next.
Simplistic stories are unabashedly present and accounted for, such as Lisa's Date with Density, a simple story surrounded by jump-the-shark moments such as Hurricane Neddy and Burns, Baby Burns. Beyond that are meta humour based showings like The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show, along with Brother From Another Series.
There's honestly no shortage of creative momentum in this season, and it feels both like a testament to the show's quality, as well as a loving tribute to the legions of endearing fans.