My Little Project: A Simpsons Chronology

Here's the plan. In an attempt to create a coherent Simpsons' timeline, I will go through every episode and, by using the context clues, arrange the episodes as they would occur chronologically. Tedious? Yes. Pointless? Pretty much. Fun? Almost.

Every day, I will chronicle an episode. I am going in order of production codes and stopping once I hit the Mike Scully era, because at that point, all reason and logic is out the window. I shall break down every episode as follows:

Summary: One sentence summary of the show

References to Time: This can be anything ranging from what season it is to the age of the characters. If specific years are mentioned, I'll note how this year fits into Simpson-time (for example, "Bart is born in 1980" is equal to "Bart was born 10 years ago").

References to Other Episodes: Any episode that is referenced will probably fall before this one in the chronology

SLH Presence: Usually by the end of an episode everything goes back to normal. Some episodes change things permanently. The first broadcast episode of The Simpsons added Santa's Little Helper to the cast. This category will chronicle major events that usually affect future episodes, including whether or not SLH appears.

Minimum Time Spanned: Some episodes take place in a day, some in a month. This is to help keep everything to the shortest about of time that the episode could take place in so it can be placed in the timeline without issue.

Canon: Is the episode canon or not canon? I'll also point out specific moments that lead to contradictions in the timeline. For my purposes, jokes that break continuity will be considered non-canon if they contradict major storylines.

Favorite Moment: Since the final product of this project won't appear until I've amassed a few episodes, I might as well add portions that can be read before the timeline is finished.

Review: A mini-review of the episode

I expect that the 8 seasons I will cover should ultimately boil down to a 1-2 year span in the life of the Simpsons. It may seem like a big waste of a Simpsons fan's time but I saw someone do it for Full House. The Simpsons deserves it more.