A TOTAL CROMULENT RANKING
·Updated:
·

​There are three questions are guaranteed to send fans of "The Simpsons" into a tizzy:

  1. "What's the best episode?" 
  2. "When did the show start to get bad?" 
  3. "In 'You Only Move Twice,' did Homer mean he saw someone say 'Goodbye' to a shoe before that gag?"

Well, the first question is easily settled (it's "Marge vs. the Monorail," don't @ us), the third is an eternal mystery and the question of the show's decline will always be up to debate — except for one fan.

Sol Harris decided to re-watch all of "The Simpsons," rank each episode, and then chart the quality of the series over time:

 

The methodology is simple: Harris graded each episode on a 1-to-10 scale and then averaged the episode ranks for each season to generate this chart. By Harris' judgement, "The Simpsons" reached its peak with season 6 and began to nosedive starting with season 10.

While the rankings are subjective and unlikely to settle any fiery fan disputes — for the dissenters, here are Harris' individual episode rankings and a version of the chart using IMDb scores — the factoids Harris sprinkles throughout the chart are particularly interesting. The existence of four episodes with titles that pun on "Mona Lisa" is depressing… but maybe not as depressing as the fact that the show has outlived Cobain, Hendrix and Winehouse. Ay caramba indeed.

[@solmaquina]

Want more stories like this?

Every day we send an email with the top stories from Digg.

Subscribe