What is the best Simpsons episode of all time? Every diehard Simpsons fan has their pick — some love the song-filled Colonel Homer, others go crazy over Last Exit to Springfield, and my personal favorite is the rather underrated Bart’s Comet. With 740 episodes, it’s incredibly difficult to settle on just one episode to enthrone as The Simpsons’ finest half-hour, especially since the show has so many stellar ones. However, if there is one episode that comes close to being the definitive best Simpsons episode, it’s Season 4’s Marge vs. the Monorail.
Just about every Best Simpsons Episodes list has this episode as an entry – and usually very high up the list, too. The title boasts a 9.1 out of 10 rating on IMDb. Conan O’Brien has even said that this was his favorite of the episodes he wrote. It really is a treasured episode among Simpsons nerds, and rewatching it 30 years after its release, it’s not hard to see why.
From the first second to the last, Marge vs the Monorail contains just about everything that made The Simpsons such an iconic show. Pop culture references, joke-per-minute writing, fun songs, memorable cameos, a shining moment from nearly every beloved character including new ones — Marge vs the Monorail is the go-to episode to show someone who’s never seen a Simpsons episode before and wonders why the animated sitcom is so beloved.
Firstly, let’s talk about the episode’s biggest appeal: Lyle Lanley. Thirty years later and the character remains one of The Simpsons’s most popular characters, despite only appearing in this episode alone. Really, how could you not love him? From his very first line (“You know, a town with money’s a little like the mule with a spinning wheel. No one knows how he got it, and danged if he knows how to use it”), Lyle’s charmingly manipulative nature is on full display, and he’s so successful at conning people into trusting him that you can’t help but be smitten by him too.
Phil Hartman gives a fantastic vocal performance as the con artist and Lyle even gets an incredibly catchy song, The Monorail Song. This number is such an earworm and even after so long, remains one of the show’s greatest musical moments, up there with Bagged Me a Homer and We Put the Spring in Springfield. Ask any Simpsons diehard and they’re sure to sing you every lyric of this song — and they might even do all the character voices.
But he’s not the only character allowed to shine in this episode — nearly every beloved recurring character from the show gets a hilarious moment. Homer, Marge, Lisa, Bart, Mayor Quimby, Grampa Simpson, Barney, even Miss Hoover and Ralph, all these characters get memorable comedic moments, with some being recognized as being among the best scenes in the show’s history.
Some especially funny ones include Smithers trying to convince people of Mr. Burns’s lie (“I like the way Snrub thinks!”), Ralph quizzing Lyle about the speed of the monorail (“Can it outrun The Flash?”), and Homer thanking donuts for helping him save the day (“Donuts. Is there anything they can’t do?”).
My absolute favorite moment of the entire episode is when Krusty tries to jump off the monorail and Leonard Nimoy saves him, then saying, “The world needs laughter.” I remember seeing this episode for the first time at a young age and laughing so hard because I was so taken aback by it. It’s such a bizarre moment that can only really exist in a show as genius and outrageous as The Simpsons. When the sitcom was at its best, there wasn’t a single line of dialogue wasted.
Speaking of Nimoy, Marge vs. the Monorail squeezes every possibility it can for a joke with his appearance. It’s one of their best celebrity cameos of all time and Nimoy himself seems to be having a ton of fun with his vocal performance. Even non-Trekkies will find themselves laughing at Mayor Quimby mistakenly buttering him up with a Star Wars quote, and him quite literally disappearing at the end of the episode.
Rich Moore, the episode’s director, would go on to direct some of the most beloved animated comedies of the 2010s, with Wreck-it Ralph, Zootopia, and Ralph Breaks the Internet (the latter two co-directed with Byron Howard and Phil Johnston respectively.) While Moore has also directed a number of other Simpsons episodes, Marge vs. the Monorail is easily his best — and that’s saying something when he also directed Cape Feare.
The Simpsons has a huge number of near-perfect top-tier episodes, something not a lot of animated sitcoms can claim. It’s a little easy to forget that given how much of a decline in quality the show has experienced, but Marge vs. the Monorail remains a fantastic example of how tremendous the sitcom once was. This episode is an uproarious tour-de-force in comedic writing with lines and gags that still hold up to this day.
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