When Mr. Burns announces that none of the workers will be getting Christmas bonuses and Marge reveals that she spent the extra Christmas gift money on getting Bart's "Mother" tattoo removed, Homer keeps his lack of funds for the holidays a secret and gets a job as a mall Santa.

To get back at class nerd/teacher's pet, Martin Prince, for ratting him out to Principal Skinner for vandalism on school property, Bart switches his own intelligence test with Martin's. During a parent/principal conference about the defaced wall, the school counselor, Dr. Pryor, announces that Bart is a genius and only acts out because public school isn't stimulating enough, so Bart is sent to a school for genius kids — and finds out just how painfully below average he is.

After being fired from his job at the nuclear plant and failing to find a new one, Homer becomes depressed and suicidal — but saving his family from getting hit by a truck prompts Homer to become a safety advocate for the entire town.

After being embarrassed by the rest of his family at a company picnic, Homer becomes overly obsessed with everyone in his family being perfect, up to the point where he takes his family to Dr. Marvin Monroe, an unorthodox counselor who uses shock therapy to "cure" them.

After defending Lisa from school bully Nelson Muntz, Bart becomes Nelson's latest school bullying target. Having become sick and tired of the harassment and torment, Bart, Grampa Simpson, and Herman (a slightly deranged military antique store dealer with a missing arm) rally the town's children into fighting back against Nelson and his cronies with a couple hundred water balloons.

Lisa becomes depressed about life and meets a homeless jazz musician named Bleeding Gums Murphy. Meanwhile, Homer tries to beat Bart at a boxing video game.

The Simpsons go on vacation in a rickety RV — and end up lost in the woods when the RV goes over a cliff.

While cornered by the entire town, Bart tells the story of how he cut off the head of the Jebediah Springfield statue to impress local thugs, Dolph, Jimbo Jones, and Kearney.

Homer's thoughtless birthday gift to Marge causes the first of many marriage crises between them when Marge takes bowling lessons and is charmed by a French bowler named Jacques.

While Marge and the kids go out to eat at a seafood restaurant, Bart (who just got a spy camera in the mail) comes across a private bachelor party where Homer is dancing with a belly dancer known as Princess Kashmir, takes a photo of it, and passes it around the neighborhood. When Marge confronts Homer about the incriminating evidence, she throws him out for a day, then tells him that she will take him back — but only if he takes Bart to see the stripper and show that the dancer is more than just a sex object for horny men.

After getting in trouble for flushing a cherry bomb down the boys' room toilet (which leads to Principal Skinner's mother, Agnes, getting hurt), Bart is sent to France on a foreign-exchange program, where a pair of low-rent winemakers treat him like a slave. Meanwhile, the rest of the Simpson family host an Albanian boy named Adil whom Homer loves, but does Adil love Homer or is he using him to get information on the nuclear plant for his country?

Bart and Lisa play amateur sleuth for their hero, Krusty the Clown, after he's accused of robbing the Kwik-E-Mart and Homer implicates him in the crime.

After Marge calls a radio station psychiatrist and spills her guts on how uncaring Homer is, Homer makes up for it by taking Marge out on the town and leaving the kids with the only babysitter who isn't afraid of caring for the Simpson kids...who turns out to be a wanted fugitive.

After fumbling through his book report on Treasure Island, Bart is ordered to study hard and pass his upcoming history exam — or he'll be in the fourth grade for another year.

Homer tries a new hair growth formula — Dimoxinil — and wakes up with a full head of hair, which wins him a promotion at work. However, Homer's hair and success prove to be short-lived when it is revealed that he fraudulently charged the Dimoxinil to the company health plan.

The first of the annual Halloween spook-fest where Bart and Lisa tell scary stories in their treehouse while Homer eavesdrops. In "Bad Dream House", the Simpsons move into a haunted house whose spirits urge them to kill each other. In "Hungry Are the Damned", The Simpsons get abducted by aliens who may or may not be fattening them up for dinner. Finally, Lisa tells her spin on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven", where the narrator (Homer) is haunted by a raven (Bart) while pining for his lost Lenore (Marge).

Mr. Burns runs for governor of whatever state Springfield is in to keep his power plant from shutting down after Bart catches a three-eyed fish in the nearby river and the fish becomes headline news.

After feeling that his goody-two-shoes neighbor, Ned Flanders, is better than him in every way, Homer decides to prove his family's worth...by forcing Bart to compete in a mini-golf tournament with Ned's son, Todd.

Bart destroys Lisa's Thanksgiving centerpiece and runs away from home when he gets punished for refusing to apologize to her.

A night at a monster truck rally featuring daredevil Lance Murdock prompts Bart to do daredevil tricks on his skateboard — and set his sights on jumping Springfield Gorge.

Marge leads a protest against The Itchy & Scratchy Show after Maggie whacks Homer on the head with a mallet, but viewer interest drops when the Itchy & Scratchy cartoons become mind-numbingly boring and Marge gets branded a hypocrite when her anti-TV violence group wants to go after Michaelangelo's David for depicting male frontal nudity, but Marge sees nothing wrong with the statue.

After Bart is run over by a car, his family tries to create a lawsuit against Mr. Burns. Both Burns and the Simpsons elaborate on the true story, which leads to yet another strain on Marge and Homer’s marriage.

The Simpsons have dinner out at a new sushi restaurant, which turns deadly when Homer eats some improperly-cut fugu and is told by Dr. Hibbert that he has only 22 hours left to live.

When the TV malfunctions, Marge and Homer plan to tell their children a story. After refusing to tell the story of how Bart was born (which would later be seen exactly one season later in Season 3's "I Married Marge"), they choose to tell the story of how Homer and Marge met in high school—and how Marge almost fell in love with a nerd named Artie Ziff.

Homer becomes the most popular person in town, when he gets an illegal cable hookup. But Lisa doesn't approve and fears that Homer will go to hell for violating the Eighth Commandment ("Thou shalt not steal").

Worried that Selma is depressed over being single and childless, Marge orders Homer to find her sister a man — but ends up pairing Principal Skinner with Patty (who's celibate here, but later episodes would have her come out as a lesbian) by mistake. Meanwhile, Bart is sentenced to reseed the school's field with Groundskeeper Willie (in his first appearance) after spelling his name out on it with an herbicide he created in science class.

Grampa suffers a heart attack while complaining about a bad McBain movie, and, worried that he may be dying soon, tells Homer that he has an illegitimate half-brother named Herb Powell, who turns out to be a rich, yet struggling car company owner in need of a million-dollar idea, but can Herb really count on the idiot half-brother whom he's never met?

After Santa's Little Helper gets in trouble for destroying Homer's new sneakers, eating Homer's macadamia nut cookie, and tearing Marge's heirloom quilt, Bart enrolls the hound into an obedience school, which Santa's Little Helper must pass if he wants to continue being the Simpsons' pet.

Grampa falls in love with an old woman named Beatrice, but when his family forces him to miss her birthday (and death), he disowns Homer — and gains Beatrice's inheritance.

Marge revives her passion for art after finding her old Ringo Starr portraits (which were rejected in high school by her art teacher) and is commissioned to create a portrait for Mr. Burns. Meanwhile, Homer decides to exercise after getting stuck in a water slide at Mt. Splashmore and being humiliated on the evening news.

After Ms. Hoover announces that she's on medical leave for Lyme disease, Lisa finds a kindred spirit in her substitute teacher, Mr. Bergstrom, but when he leaves and Ms. Hoover returns, Lisa is crushed and angry that Homer doesn't care. Meanwhile, Bart runs for class president.

When Marge throws a dinner party, Homer gets drunk and makes a fool of himself (even going as far as tricking Maude Flanders into digging for nuts so he can ogle her cleavage) and Marge forces Homer to explain to Bart what he did and go on a marriage retreat (which Homer wants to abandon so he can go after a legendary catfish). Meanwhile, after their babysitter freaks out over memories of Bart trying to run her over with the family car, Grampa Simpson steps in to care for the kids — and Bart and Lisa take advantage of the old man by making him do whatever they want (eat ice cream instead of dinner, smoke cigars, drink coffee, and have a wild party).

Bart becomes obsessed with buying the first issue of Radioactive Man, but can't scrape together the $100 he needs to make it his own, even after working for the elderly Mrs. Glick, who hires him to do yardwork. Enlisting Milhouse (who was more interested in getting a baseball card) and Martin (who also wanted the first issue of Radioactive Man) Bart is finally able to buy the comic, but ends up fighting with his two best friends over who gets to keep it.

Homer discovers that Bart has a rare blood type that can save Mr. Burns' life, Homer convinces Bart (who was the only Springfieldian that has the blood type) to give blood (in the hopes that Burns will give the Simpsons a cash reward), but when all Burns gives Bart is a "Thank You" card, Homer writes a nasty letter to Burns which ends up getting sent to him by Bart.

When Homer is declared insane after coming into work wearing a pink T-shirt (that turned pink after Bart put his lucky red cap in the wash) and having Bart fill out his psychiatric evaluation for him, Homer is committed to the New Bedlam Rest Home for the Emotionally Interesting and meets a big, bald mental patient who claims he's pop singer Michael Jackson. Meanwhile, Lisa is depressed over her upcoming eighth birthday.

Thanks to Lisa's patriotic winning essay in a contest sponsored by Reading Digest magazine, the Simpsons win a trip to Washington, D.C. However, Lisa's faith in democracy is shaken when she sees her local representative taking a bribe for a permit to cut down the Springfield National Forest.

When Ned Flanders announces at a barbecue that he is starting his own general store catering to the left-handed, Homer wishes that his goody-goody neighbor will suffer financial ruin. Meanwhile, Bart takes karate class but ends up cutting the activity when he realizes that the task was not as exciting as it was cracked up to be.

After suffering from bad luck, Bart accidentally stumbles into the Legitimate Businessman's Social Club, a mobster front. He becomes their bartender, but when he shows up late at work and blames Principal Skinner, Fat Tony then goes to confront Skinner. The next day when Bart comes to school, he discovers that Skinner is missing.

During a near-fatal meltdown at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, Homer frantically presses buttons on his console until he hits the right combination and saves the day. Homer becomes a hero even though he realizes in his heart that what he did was a fluke. Meanwhile, Bart's friendship with Milhouse has changed when Luann won't let him play with Bart anymore because she says that Bart is a bad influence on her son and has banned Milhouse from seeing Bart.

Krusty the Clown has dinner with The Simpsons (as a thank-you to Bart for clearing his name in "Krusty Gets Busted"), but the fun turns to tears when Krusty confesses that he's Jewish and that his rabbi father has disowned him for wanting to go into showbiz.

The sequel to the original Treehouse of Horror, where the three tales of terror for this year come from Lisa, Bart, and Homer eating too much candy before bed on Halloween night. In "Lisa's Dream: The Monkey's Paw", Homer's monkey paw souvenir from Morocco makes wishes come true for his family — and misfortune to befall everyone else; in "Bart's Dream: The Bart Zone," Bart's omnipotence forces everyone in town to bow to his whims and think happy thoughts or incur his wrath; and in "Homer's Dream: If I Only Had a Brain," Mr. Burns builds the perfect robot worker after firing Homer, but the experiment goes awry when Mr. Burns and Smithers go grave-robbing for a brain and happen upon Homer's (who is actually napping in a ditch at his new job as a grave digger).

Homer makes up for his latest example of fatherly ineptitude (failing to get Lisa a saxophone reed in time for the school talent show) by purchasing Lisa the one thing she has always wanted: a pony. However, the pony proves to be more expensive than first thought, so Homer takes a second job at the Kwik-E-Mart to keep Lisa happy.

Bart becomes deeply immersed in competitive soapbox racing while Homer begins to realize that he is not as good a father as he thought. After attending a lecture at the National Fatherhood Institute, Homer becomes a more attentive father, helping Bart build the ultimate soapbox racer. But Bart chooses not to use it in his big race against Nelson, instead opting to borrow Martin's scientifically engineered aerodynamic racer.

Homer tells Moe of creating a zesty drink called the Flaming Homer. It is so good that Moe steals Homer's recipe (which includes cough syrup), renames it the Flaming Moe and takes credit for inventing it. The Flaming Moe revitalizes business, turning Moe's Tavern into the hottest location in Springfield, and causing the relationship of Homer and Moe to splinter.

Depressed over spending all his time at work and not enjoying life, Mr. Burns decides to sell the nuclear plant to fill his already fat wallet, and the German investors interested in the plant fire Homer for not being an efficient worker.

While Marge is at the doctor's to see whether or not she's pregnant for the fourth time, Homer tells the kids the story of his post-high school life with Marge, including how Bart was conceived at the mini-golf course, how Homer and Marge quickly got married at a roadside chapel, and how Homer provided for his new family by getting a job at the nuclear plant.

Bart uses a radio microphone that he got on his birthday to trick the townspeople into thinking a little boy is stuck in the town's well, but when Bart goes to retrieve the radio, he's the one stuck in the well with no one to help him.

Homer and Lisa find a way to bond approaching their different interests (and intellects), with Homer using Lisa's uncanny ability to accurately predict the winning team on football games to win a fortune under the guise of Sunday being "Daddy-Daughter Day". When Lisa realizes near the end of the football season that she was only being used, she gives Homer a final bet that could make or break their relationship. Meanwhile, Marge gets new clothes for Bart by going shopping together.

After suffering a mental breakdown while doing errands, Marge decides that a vacation away from the family will do her some good — but it ends up being bad for everyone else, including Maggie, who runs away to find her; Homer, who can't find his youngest daughter, and Bart and Lisa, who have to endure a weekend with the Gruesome Twosome, Patty and Selma.