10. The hair tonic. Homer grows a full head of hair overnight, gets promoted into an office with a key to the executive washroom, and loses it all when the hair does. A whole career built on a bottle. (Simpson and Delilah, season 2)

9. The Be Sharps win a Grammy, and years later, when they reunite on a rooftop, a real Beatle drives past and isn't impressed. It's a whole rock-and-roll rise and fall in twenty-two minutes. (Homer's Barbershop Quartet, season 5)

8. Homer's cheap late-night Mr. Plow commercial, which runs at an hour when only insomniacs are watching. I've seen actual local ads on Channel 12 that were worse. (Mr. Plow, season 4)

7. Throwing the anchor off the runaway monorail, and watching it catch on a giant donut. Of all the things in Springfield to save the day. (Marge vs. the Monorail, season 4)

6. Thrown out of an all-you-can-eat seafood restaurant, Homer takes them to court over the meaning of "all." And somehow he's not entirely wrong. (New Kid on the Block, season 4)

5. Loose potato chips floating in zero gravity on the space shuttle, and Homer drifting after them, set to the same waltz the old space movie used. Perfect. (Deep Space Homer, season 5)

4. The chili cook-off, the peppers, and the long, strange walk through the desert that follows. With Johnny Cash as the voice of a coyote. (El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer, season 8)

3. Taking a hit on the head in the bottom of the ninth, out cold, and winning the championship without ever swinging. (Homer at the Bat, season 3)

2. Lying on the hood of the car at the end of the night, alone, looking up at the stars after his mother has to leave again. No joke. That's the point. (Mother Simpson, season 7)

1. The photographs of Maggie. At the power plant, Homer tapes pictures of his baby daughter over a discouraging sign at his workstation, arranged so they change the message into a reason to keep going. The best forty seconds the show has ever done, and I will hear no argument. (And Maggie Makes Three, season 6)