On January 14th, 1990, the first official episode of The Simpsons, “Bart the Genius,” aired on the Fox network. Who knew that 25 years later, we’d still be getting brand new episodes every Sunday? While most folks see the show as an ailing series in steady decline (I won’t lie, it was rough around Season 18), I’ve been hanging on for those 25 years. See, The Simpsons is a very, very special show to me. It started five months after I was born (the show and I are the same age), it was my first word (a garbled mix of Homer and Bart, sounding like “Hort”), and a little piece of me is going to break when it finally ends.

In honor of this monumental anniversary for my favorite TV series, I’ve perused my DVD sets and VHS tapes and formed a list of my Top 25 episodes. I’ve set no rules for myself (so unfortunately there’s a lot of love for season six), and tried my hardest to fully utilize my experience as a Simpsons junkie. I’ve broken up this list into two parts, with the second half located here.