On Feb. 20, 1992, more American homes tuned into The Simpsons than they did The Cosby Show or the Winter Olympics from Albertville, France. A foul-mouthed cartoon on a fourth-place network bested the Huxtables and the world's best amateur athletes. Fox over NBC and CBS—its first-ever victory in prime time. New over old.

It turns out there is a way to judge how much you love a TV show, to calculate how much you really know about said show over other equally-obsessed fans. And no, I’m not talking about Scene-It. I’m referring to Classic Simpsons Trivia Night, held recently at Brooklyn’s Berry Park bar.

Do all or even most of these gags connect with a viewer under 25 who isn't a 20th century pop culture junkie? I doubt it. Granted, some of the jokes were inside even for 1992-93 -- "The Great Gabbo" and the Eastern bloc cartoon "Worker and Parasite," for instance. But most weren't. They referred to things that were current or that felt that way, thanks to syndication or shared childhood viewing experiences. Circa 2011 that's no longer the case. "Krusty Gets Kancelled" is one of the greatest of all "Simpsons" episodes, but if it were a poem, it would need to have nearly as many footnotes as "The Waste Land" -- and the further away from its original air date we get, the truer that's going to be.

It is an honor to be invited as a guest voice on The Simpsons. Only after you’ve “made it” in some way within your chosen field will this gesture be extended. Athletes, actors, artists, and architects alike have been written in as guests over the 22-season run of the show, all contributing to its Guinness Book world record for Most Guest Stars. Only a fraction of these people, however, have been asked back a second time. In that regard, Phil Hartman is in an elite class with Albert Brooks, Jon Lovitz, Kelsey Grammer, and Joe Mantegna as frequent guests. (Coincidentally, this is also my Murderer’s Row dream-cast for a Glengarry Glen Ross stage revival.) As a frequent-frequent guest, though, Phil Hartman was in a class all his own: he was featured in 52 episodes over a period of eight years. To this day, that’s over a tenth of the total output of a show that also holds the world record for Longest-Running Sitcom of all time.

There are 22 games based on The Simpsons. 22. That’s a lot, even by video game standards. By comparison, the long running South Park has had only four video game adaptations and the juggernaut Family Guy has had one. And explaining away the difference by claiming the latter franchises don’t have the same marketability or commercial base as The Simpsons is easily dismissed when you look at the sales of DVDs, posters, toys, t-shirts, and other goods licensed by the shows.

But there’s a difference between tragic, which can often be funny, and depressing. Allow me to present to you eight episodes of The Simpsons that made me shed a tear or two, often out of sadness and occasionally out of joy.

So don't view this as a definitive list of the best episodes. It's not meant to be! Instead, it's a collection of people talking about specific episodes that meant a lot to them. I know that there are dozens of episodes that have criminally been left out, and I had to stop myself from writing up more than one myself. But it's a testament to this show that there are just so many Best Episodes Ever, isn't it?

But Bart Simpson the character and Bart Simpson the hit television show character are two different animals, and in the first few years of The Simpsons, the latter threatened to take over. The marketing focus of the show fell almost entirely on Bart (or, at least, Homer reacting to Bart). “Eat my shorts!” became a catchphrase on the level of “Yeah, baby!”

This last one was the 100th episode of the show, and it went through some pretty serious revisions from pitch to final draft. This is a transcription of a conversation about that specific episode, edited for length and clarity. Also included are the original Story Pitch, Final Outline and First Draft from the writing process (which you can find explained in detail here).

RT @tcarmody: I love Bill Oakley -- I think his & JW's years running The Simpsons (Seasons 7 & 8) are among the very best. http://j.mp/e ...