The first Simpsons episode I ever saw was Bart the Daredevil. I was 10 years old. The first girl I ever had an unrequited crush on recorded it for me and furtively slid the VHS across my desk at school. Since that moment, The Simpsons has come to mean more to me than any other TV show before or since. It's deep in my bones.
Even now, my brain's resting state is basically just a collage of Simpsons quotes. The other day in the shower I got locked into an unbreakable cycle of Dr Nick Riviera's line: "If it isn't my old friend Mr McGreg, with a leg for an arm and an arm for a leg." I can't think about American politics without automatically remembering the show's slogans for the Republicans and Democrats (respectively "We Want What's Worst For Everyone" and "We Hate Life and Ourselves"). I can't watch Planet of the Apes any more, because it's not a patch on the musical Stop The Planet of the Apes I Want to Get Off. I say, or at least think "Everything's coming up Millhouse" weekly. Whatever Simon Callow thinks about Shakespeare, that's how I feel about The Simpsons.
It's not just the series that's informed my love. It's the city-sized crater that it has left in modern culture. The second album I ever bought was The Simpsons Sings the Blues. The poster we unanimously decided to adorn our living room wall with at university was the one with the entire population of Springfield on it. Theres still a Moe's Tavern clock on my bedroom wall at my mum and dad's place. My first – and only, since it turns out they're completely unwearable – pair of silk boxer shorts had Homer Simpson's face on it.
Despite it being 25 years old, The Simpsons has never let me down. Its beginnings, when it was still in thrall to the marketing power of Bart Simpson, might have bordered on faddy. But, unlike other crazes that have sprung up since – unlike Pokémon or Glee soundtracks or Alf pogs – The Simpsons has endured. This is partly because, as animated figures, they're stuck in time in a way that flesh and blood actors can never be. But it's mainly because the quality of the writing is so absurdly high.
Sure, for at least the last decade, people have claimed that The Simpsons isn't as good as it used to be. And, well, of course it isn't. Nothing is as good as The Simpsons used to be. Nothing in popular culture even comes close to touching what The Simpsons could achieve at its peak. For a brief period of time – maybe four years, maybe a shade longer – it practically vibrated with brilliance. Each episode was a dizzying tower of jokes, all firing off in every conceivable direction; satirical, slapstick, referential. An episode would start in one direction, only to violently about-turn seven minutes in. And then, sometimes, when everything aligned, it could slam on the brakes and come up with an ending as heartbreaking as "Do it for her". At its peak, The Simpsons was perfect.
I don't know why I'm referring to it in the past tense. It isn't quite the peerless sitcom of old, but The Simpsons is still a huge part of my life. To this day I still race to finish my work by 6pm so I can watch The Simpsons on TV. Even if it's an episode I've seen dozens of times before, I'll still find moments that had passed me by, or references that I didn't get when I was 10, or jokes that I'll just never tire of hearing.
A few years ago, I started a website with a stranger. She suggested naming it after the knuckle tattoos that Sideshow Bob got in Cape Feare. Now she's my girlfriend, and that probably isn't a coincidence. Thanks to The Simpsons, everything really is coming up Millhouse.
