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Here we go. This is the first actual season five episode of The Simpsons. The first two were held over from the production of the fourth season. David Mirkin wasn’t the showrunner on those. The writing staff he put together didn’t handle either episode. Oh, and this episode is absolutely great. It’s one of my five favorite episodes of The Simpsons. It’s “Homer Goes to College.”
This is also the last episode Conan O’Brien wrote. He left during the fifth season to start hosting a talk show. It turned out well. Many consider “Marge vs. the Monorail” to be Conan’s greatest work as a Simpsons writer. That’s a great episode. “Homer Goes to College” is better.
It’s there in the title, but also it isn’t. What makes “Homer Goes to College” so genius is that he assumes college will be like all the bad ‘80s campus comedies he’s watched. Instead, he’s just at a college in the 1990s and the dean is cool. It’s a genius twist on things, and Homer is so funny in this episode.
Basically everything in this episode is so funny. “Homer Goes to College” has a plot that is funny, which is not always the case even in really good Simpsons episodes. The jokes are also great, though. So many great jokes.
Of course, Conan isn’t fully responsible for that. One, the writers’ room did rewrites, as always. Two, Dan Castellaneta did the “S-M-R-T” thing himself. Still, “Homer Goes to College” stands as a testament to how strong a writer Conan O’Brien was. Had he not become an iconic talk show host, he would have made a fine sitcom writer long term.
