This story was originally published in October 2014. We’ve updated it in honor of the 35th anniversary of The Simpsons’s series premiere.
In 2014, 25 years and hundreds of hours into The Simpsons’s run, Vulture assembled a list of the 100 essential episodes. Intended to reflect the show’s continued quality over the decades, it spanned different eras, looking beyond the obvious entries from the mid-’90s golden age to also include then-recent, and thereby controversial, additions to the canon.
In the ensuing decade, The Simpsons has kept evolving, and so, too, must this list. Since it was originally published, TV’s longest-running sitcom has entered a new Renaissance era characterized by an eagerness to find unexpected ways to grapple with the legacy of a show that its current creative…
