Another day, another box of stolen pens.— Homer
Another day, another box of stolen pens.— Homer
House of Whacks: The Simpsons get a home automation computer (voiced by Pierce Brosnan) which tries to kill Homer. Curse of the Dummy: A gypsy curses Homer. Wiz Kids: The children attend Springfield Elementary School for Wizards in a Harry Potter-like adventure.
After accidentally joyriding in Wiggum's police car, Bart is sentenced to be tethered to Homer at all times.
While Moe returns to Bartending School to re-ignite his passion for work, he puts Homer in charge of the tavern. But when Moe returns and gives the bar a facelift, Homer and the barflies open their own bar in the Simpsons' garage.
Mr. Burns dates a much younger woman (with Homer's help), but her old boyfriend, Snake, gets jealous and kidnaps her and Homer.
A hypnotist releases a childhood trauma within Homer - when he was little, Homer found a dead body. And so The Simpsons set out to solve the mystery of the unknown corpse.
After Homer & Bart's rocket inadvertently destroys Springfield's church, the church rents out its wall space to advertisers to cover the cost of repairs, Horrified, Lisa leaves the church and converts to Buddhism.
After a family fight over a Monopoly game, a social worker visits the family and shows them how to become a functional family again. Until Homer's Las Vegas wife shows up...
After Springfield is named the World's Fattest Town, Marge goes on an anti-sugar crusade and sugar is banned from the town.
After Homer breaks his jaw in an accident it is wired shut, making him a better listener and well-mannered husband. However, when the wires come off, Marge realizes that she preferred the old Homer.
Artie Ziff returns to Springfield and offers Homer one million dollars for a weekend alone with Marge.
Bart develops a crush on Rainier Wolfcastle's daughter Greta. However after Bart dumps her and regrets it, she goes out with Milhouse.
Bart meets a movie star of westerns from the 1950s and attempts to revive his career.
Grandpa Simpson falls in love with a new woman who persuades him to renew his driving license.
Homer reads three stories from a children's book. Bart is Hamlet, Lisa is Joan of Arc, and Homer is Odysseus.
A young Brazilian orphan that Lisa has been sponsoring goes missing, and so the Simpsons journey to Brazil to find him.
After being attacked by crows, Homer gets addicted to medical marijuana.
The Springfield Friars Club roasts Homer Simpson, with from clips from the Simpsons' past escapades.
Homer gets furious over Bart's online animated comic strip,
While the townspeople re-enact the Civil War, Apu has an affair with the Squishee lady at the Kwik-E-Mart.
When Lisa joins a gymnastics class outside of school, she meets up with two college students, and pretends to also be a student.
When an old woman who Homer and Marge have been helping is murdered, they are the prime suspects.
After a blackout in Springfield, the citizens begin looting. When Chief Wiggum is useless at restoring order, Homer starts his own security firm.
To quote Matt Groening from The Simpsons Forever book: "Time has a way of slogging on". And so we come to the thirteenth year of The Simpsons' brilliant comedy.
Season Thirteen (2001-2002) marked a notable turnaround in episode quality for many fans. Mike Scully left, and was replaced as Executive Producer by Al Jean, a former EP with Mike Reiss in Seasons 3 and 4. Out were some of Homer's "jerkass" qualities, and in was a more caring Homer in favour of self-improvement (though this didn't last long).
This year marked the end of constant Homer episodes, and introduced some more character episodes - most notably, Marge-based episodes. My personal favourites here include Marge's crusade to ban sugar; Homer getting his jaw wired shut; the return of Artie Ziff; Bart's comic-strip-turned-internet-cartoon, Angry Dad, temporarily taking the world by storm; and Lisa posing as a college student (my favourite episode of the whole Jean era).
